The Epistle to the
Romans

INTRODUCTION

Let me say just a word concerning Paul the apostle. With his writings we actually come now to a different method of revelation. God has used many ways to communicate to man. He gave the Pentateuch—the Law—through Moses. He gave history, He gave poetry, and He gave prophecy. He gave the Gospels, and now we come to a new section: the Epistles, the majority of which were written by Paul.
Adolf Deissmann tried to make a distinction between epistles and letters. Having examined the papyri that were found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, he made a decision between literary and nonliterary documents, placing the Epistles of Paul in the latter category, thereby making them letters rather than epistles. However, a great many scholars today think this is an entirely false division.
These letters that we have—these epistles—are so warm and so personal that, as far as you and I are concerned, it is just as if they came by special delivery mail to us today. The Lord is speaking to us personally in each one of these very wonderful letters that Paul and the other apostles wrote to the churches. Nevertheless, Romans contains the great gospel manifesto for the world. To Paul the gospel was the great ecumenical movement and Rome was the center of that world for which Christ died. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans is both an epistle and a letter.
Paul made this statement in Romans 15:15–16, “Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given to me of God, That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.” Paul made it very clear here that he was the apostle to the Gentiles. He also made it clear that Simon Peter was the apostle to the nation Israel. For instance, in Galatians he said, “(For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:) And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision” (Gal. 2:8–9). Therefore you see that Paul was peculiarly the apostle to the Gentiles. When you read the last chapter of Romans and see all those people that Paul knew, you will find that most of them were Gentiles. The church in Rome was largely a gentile church.
Paul also made the point that, if somebody else had founded the church in Rome, he would never have gone there. Instead, he said that he was eager to go there. “So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also” (Rom. 1:15). He wanted to go to Rome to preach the gospel. In Acts 26 Paul recounted to Agrippa the message the Lord gave to him when He appeared to him: “Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:17–18).
Further, Paul would never have gone to Rome, although he was eager to go, if anyone else had preached the gospel there ahead of him. In Romans 15:20 he said, “Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation.” Paul, my friend, just didn’t go where another apostle had been. We can conclude, therefore, that no other apostle had been to Rome.
Now that leads me to say a word about Rome, and the question is: Who founded the church in Rome? I am going to make a rather unusual statement here: Paul is the one who founded the church in Rome, and he founded it, as it were, by “long distance” and used the “remote control” of an apostle to write and guide its course.
Let me make this very clear. You see, Rome was a tremendous city. Paul had never been there, no other apostle had been there, and yet a church came into existence. How did it come into existence? Well, Paul, as he moved throughout the Roman Empire, won men and women to Christ. Rome had a strong drawing power, and many people were in Rome who had met Paul throughout the Roman Empire. You might ask, “Do you know that?” Oh, yes, we have a very striking example of that in Acts where we find Paul going to Corinth. “After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth; And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers” (Acts 18:1–3). Paul had met Aquila and Priscilla—their home was in Rome, but there had been a wave of antiSemitism; Claudius the emperor had persecuted them, and this couple had left Rome. They went to Corinth. We find later that they went with Paul to Ephesus and became real witnesses for Christ. Then, when Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans, they had returned to Rome, and Paul sent greetings to them. We do have this very personal word in Acts concerning this couple. What about the others? Well, Paul did know them. That means he had also met them somewhere and had led them to Christ. Paul was the founder of the church at Rome by “long distance”—by leading folk to Christ who later gravitated to Rome.
Paul knew Rome although he had not been inside her city limits at the time of the writing of the Roman epistle. Rome was like a great ship passing in the night, casting up waves that broke on distant shores. Her influence was like a radio broadcast, penetrating every corner and crevice of the empire. Paul had visited Roman colonies such as Philippi and Thessalonica, and there he had seen Roman customs, laws, languages, styles, and culture on exhibit. He had walked on Roman roads, had met Roman soldiers on the highways and in the marketplaces, and he had slept in Roman jails. Paul had appeared before Roman magistrates, and he had enjoyed the benefits of Roman citizenship. You see, Paul knew all about Rome although he was yet to visit there. From the vantage point of the world’s capital, he was to preach the global gospel to a lost world that God loved so much that He gave His Son to die, that whosoever believed on Him might not perish but have eternal life.
Rome was like a great magnet: It drew men and women from the ends of the then-known world to its center. As Paul and the other apostles crisscrossed in the hinterland of this colossal empire, they brought multitudes to the foot of the cross. Churches were established in most of the great cities of this empire. In the course of time, many Christians were drawn to the center of this great juggernaut. The saying that “all roads lead to Rome” was more than just a bromide. As Christians congregated in this great metropolis, a visible church came into existence. Probably no individual man established the church in Rome. Converts of Paul and the other apostles from the fringe of the empire went to Rome, and a local church was established by them. Certainly, Peter did not estabish the church or have anything to do with it, as his sermon on Pentecost and following sermons were directed to Israelites only. Not until the conversion of Cornelius was Peter convinced that Gentiles were included in the body of believers.
Summarizing, we have found that Paul is the one writing to the Romans. He was to visit Rome later, although he knew it very well already. And Paul was the founder of the church in Rome.
As we approach this great epistle, I feel totally inadequate because of its great theme, which is the righteousness of God. It is a message that I have attempted over the years to proclaim. And it is the message, by the way, that the world today as a whole does not want to hear, nor does it want to accept it. The world likes to hear, friend, about the glory of mankind. It likes to have mankind rather than God exalted. Now I am convinced in my own mind that any ministry today that attempts to teach the glory of man—which does not present the total depravity of the human family and does not reveal that man is totally corrupt and is a ruined creature, any teaching that does not deal with this great truth—will not lift mankind, nor will it offer a remedy. The only remedy for man’s sin is the perfect remedy that we have in Christ, that which God has provided for a lost race. This is the great message of Romans.
Friend, may I say to you that the thief on the cross had been declared unfit to live in the Roman Empire and was being executed. But the Lord Jesus said that He was going to make him fit for heaven and told him, “… Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). God takes lost sinners—like I am, like you are—and He brings them into the family of God and makes them sons of God. And He does it because of Christ’s death upon the cross—not because there is any merit inus whatsoever. This is the great message of Romans.
It was Godet, the Swiss commentator, who said that the Reformation was certainly the work of the Epistle to the Romans (and that of Galatians also) and that it is probable that every great spiritual renovation in the church will always be linked both in cause and in effect to a deeper knowledge of this book. It was Martin Luther who wrote that the Epistle to the Romans is “the true masterpiece of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel, which is well worthy and deserving that a Christian man should not only learn it by heart, word for word, but also that he should daily deal with it as the daily bread of men’s souls. It can never be too much or too well read or studied; and the more it is handled, the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.”
Chrysostom, one of the early church fathers, had the epistle read to him twice a week. And it was Coleridge who said that the Epistle to the Romans was the most profound writing that exists. Further, we find that one of the great scientists turned to this book, and he found that it gave a real faith. This man, Michael Faraday, was asked on his death bed by a reporter, “What are your speculations now?” Faraday said, “I have no speculations. My faith is firmly fixed in Christ my Savior who died for me, and who has made a way for me to go to heaven.”
May I say to you, this is the epistle that transformed that Bedford tinker by the name of John Bunyan. A few years ago I walked through the cemetery where he is buried, and I thought of what that man had done and said. You know, he was no intellectual giant, nor was he a poet, but he wrote a book that has been exceeded in sales by only one other, the Bible. That book is Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It is a story of a sinner saved by grace, and that sinner was John Bunyan. And the record of history is that this man read and studied the Epistle to the Romans, and he told its profound story in his own life’s story, the story of Pilgrim—that he came to the cross, that the burden of sin rolled off, and that he began that journey to the Celestial City.
Let me urge you to do something that will pay you amazing dividends: read the Book of Romans, and read it regularly. This epistle requires all the mental make-up we have, and in addition, it must be bathed in prayer and supplication so that the Holy Spirit can teach us. Yet every Christian should make an effort to know Romans, for this book will ground the believer in the faith.

OUTLINE

I. Doctrinal, Chapters 1–8(“Faith”)
A. Justification of the Sinner, Chapters 1:1–5:11
1. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–17
a. Paul’s Personal Greeting, Chapter 1:1–7
b. Paul’s Personal Purpose, Chapter 1:8–13
c. Paul’s Three “I Am’s,” Chapter 1:14–17(Key verses, 16–17—the revelation of the righteousness of God)
2. Revelation of the Sin of Man, Chapters 1:18–3:20(This is “Sinnerama.” Universal fact: Man is a sinner. Ecumenical movement is away from God. Axiom: World is guilty before God—all need righteousness.)
a. Revelation of the Wrath of God against Sin of Man, Chapter 1:18–32
(1) Natural Revelation of God (Original Version), Chapter 1:18–20
(2) Subnatural Response of Man (Reversion), Chapter 1:21–23
(3) Unnatural Retrogression of Man (Perversion), Chapter 1:24–27
(4) Supernatural Requittal of God (Inversion), Chapter 1:28–32
b. Revelation of the Sin of Good People, Chapter 2:1–16(Respectable people need righteousness.)
c. Revelation of the Sin of Israel Under Law, Chapters 2:17–3:8
d. Revelation of the Universality of Sin, Chapter 3:9–20
(1) Judge’s Verdict of Guilty against Mankind, Chapter 3:9–12(Man cannot remove guilt.)
(2) Great Physician’s Diagnosis of Mankind, Chapter 3:13–18(Man cannot change his nature. Man has incurable disease.)
(3) Purpose of the Law, Chapter 3:19–20(Law reveals sin, not salvation. Last word “sin,” 3:20.)
3. Revelation of the Righteousness of God (Righteousness Provided), Chapters 3:21–5:11(Righteousness of God defined—not the character of God nor self-righteousness of man)
a. Justification by Faith Explained, Chapter 3:21–31(Definition: Justification is the act of God that declares a sinner righteous by faith on the merit of Christ’s sacrifice. It is the addition of the righteousness of Christ as well as the subtraction of sins.)(Propitiation—“mercy seat” (Heb. 9:5); Redemption—to pay a price for deliverance. Propitiation is toward God. Redemption is toward sin.)
b. Justification by Faith Illustrated, Chapter 4:1–25(Demonstrations—Abraham and David)
c. Justification by Faith—Results Derived, Chapter 5:1–11Eight benefits:
(1) Peace—verse 1
(2) Access—verse 2
(3) Hope—verse 2
(4) Patience—Fruit of Tribulations—verse 3
(5) Love—verse 5
(6) Holy Spirit—verse 5
(7) Deliverance from the Great Tribulation—verse 9
(8) Joy—verse 11(Reconciliation is toward man. Definition: Change from enmity to friendship. Justification by faith is an act of God which is permanent.)
B. Sanctification of the Saint, Chapters 5:12–8:39
1. Potential Sanctification, Chapter 5:12–21(Federal headship, of Adam and Christ)
(a) Headship of Adam, Chapter 5:12–14(Death—Sin)
(b) Headship of Christ, Chapter 5:15–17(Life—Righteousness)
(c) Offense of Adam vs. Righteousness of Christ, Chapter 5:18–21(Disobedience vs. Obedience; Judgment vs. Free Gift; Sin vs. Grace; Condemnation vs. Justification)
2. Positional Sanctification, Chapter 6:1–10(Union with Christ in His death and resurrection, the basis of deliverance from sin)
3. Practical Sanctification, Chapter 6:11–23(Obedience to God leads to the experience of deliverance from sin.)
4. Powerless Sanctification, Chapter 7:1–25
(a) Shackles of a Saved Soul, Chapter 7:1–14(Spiritual Emancipation)
(b) Struggle of a Saved Soul, Chapter 7:15–25(Civil War—No good in old nature, no power in new nature)
5. God’s New Provision for Sanctification, Chapter 8:1–39(Powerful Sanctification)
(a) New Law: Holy Spirit vs. Law, Chapter 8:1–4
(b) New Struggle: Holy Spirit vs. Flesh, Chapter 8:5–13
(c) New Man, Son of God: Holy Spirit and Spirit of Man, Chapter 8:14–17
(d) New Creation: Old vs. New; Bondage vs. Liberty, Chapter 8:18–22
(e) New Body: Groaning vs. Redeemed Body, Chapter 8:23–27(The Holy Spirit helps us in our present bodies.)
(f) New Purpose of God, Chapter 8:28–34(God’s purpose guarantees the salvation of sinners.)
(g) New Security of the Believer, Chapter 8:35–39(God’s love guarantees the security of the believer.)
II. Dispensational, Chapters 9–11(“Hope”)
A. God’s Past Dealings with Israel, Chapter 9
1. Israel Defined, Chapter 9:1–5
2. Israel Identified, Chapter 9:6–13
3. Choice of Israel in the Sovereign Purpose of God, Chapter 9:14–24
4. Choice of Gentiles in the Scriptural Prophecies of God, Chapter 9:25–33
B. God’s Present Purpose with Israel, Chapter 10
1. Present State of Israel—Lost, Chapter, 10:1–4(Reason: Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.)
2. Present Standing of Israel—Same as Gentiles, Chapter 10:5–12(“For there is no difference”)
3. Present Salvation for Both Jew and Gentile—Hear and Believe the Gospel, Chapter 10:13–21
C. God’s Future Purpose with Israel—Remnant Regathered as a Nation and Redeemed, Chapter 11
1. Remnant of Israel Finding Salvation, Chapter 11:1–6
2. Remainder of Israel Blinded, Chapter 11:7–12
3. Reason for Setting Aside the Nation Israel—Salvation of the Gentiles, Chapter 11:13–21
4. Restoration of Nation Israel—Greater Blessing, Chapter 11:22–32
5. Reason for Restoring the Nation Israel, Chapter 11:33–36(Locked in the riches of the wisdom of God)
III. Duty, Chapters 12–16(“Love”)
A. Service of “the Son of God,” Chapters 12–13
1. Relationship to God (“Present—Yield”), Chapter 12:1–2
2. Relationship to Gifts of the Spirit, Chapter 12:3–8
3. Relationship to Other Believers, Chapter 12:9–16
4. Relationship to Unbelievers, Chapter 12:17–21
5. Relationship to Government, Chapter 13:1–7
6. Relationship to Neighbors, Chapter 13:8–14
B. Separation of “the Sons of God,” Chapters 14–16
1. Relationship to Weak Believers, Chapters 14:1–15:3(Three Principles of Conduct for Christians)
(a) Conviction, Chapter 14:5
(b) Conscience, Chapter 14:22
(c) Consideration, Chapter 15:1–2
2. Relationship of Jews and Gentiles as Believers, Chapter 15:4–13(Racial Relationships)
3. Relationship of Paul to Romans and Gentiles Generally, Chapter 15:14–33(The Gospel and Gentiles, Chapter 15:16)
4. Relationship of Christians to One Another Demonstrated, Chapter 16:1–27(Thirty-five persons mentioned by name—mutual love and tender affection)

CHAPTER 1

Theme: Paul’s personal greetings; Paul’s purpose; Paul’s three “I ams”; a natural revelation of God; subnatural response of man; unnatural retrogression of man


This opening chapter is an inclusive as it embraces the introduction, the missionary motives of the great apostle, the definition of the gospel, and the condition of man in sin which necessitates the gospel. This chapter furnishes the tempo for the entire epistle.
Romans teaches the total depravity of man. Man is irrevocably and hopelessly lost. He must have the righteousness of God since he has none of his own.
It is interesting to note that this great document of Christian doctrine, which was addressed to the church at Rome to keep it from heresy, did not accomplish its purpose. The Roman church moved the farthest from the faith which is set forth in the Epistle to the Romans. It is an illustration of the truth of this epistle that man does not understand, neither does he seek after God.
Verses 16 and 17 have long been recognized as the key to the epistle. These two verses should be memorized and the meaning of each word digested. The words will be dealt with individually when we come to them.

PAUL’S PERSONAL GREETINGS


Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God [Rom. 1:1].


The name Paul comes from the Latin Paulus, meaning “little.” (He was Saul of Tarsus but was also called Paul as indicated by Acts 13:9.)
Paul identified himself to the Romans in the very beginning as a slave, or doulos, of the Lord Jesus Christ. He took the position of a servant willingly. The Lord Jesus Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, but He never makes us His slaves. You must come voluntarily to Him and make yourself His slave. He will never force you to serve Him. He said even to Jerusalem, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!” (Luke 13:34). On another occasion our Lord said, “And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40). It is wonderful beyond measure that you have the privilege of making yourself a bondslave to the Lord Jesus Christ. You must do it on your own; He will not force you.
On the road to Damascus, the Lord said to Paul, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” And Paul replied, “Who art thou, Lord?” He said, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” It was at this moment that Paul came to know Him as his Savior. Then Paul’s question was, “What wilt thou have me to do?” (see Acts 9:4–6). This is when Paul made himself a bondslave of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle”—the infinitive of the verb “to be” is not in the original manuscripts. Paul was a “called” apostle—called is an adjective—he means that he is that kind of an apostle. It was not his decision that made him an apostle. It was God’s decision, and God called him. Paul first made himself a bondslave of Christ, and now he is a called apostle, a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. One whom He has chosen is the only kind of servant God will use. There are too many men in the ministry today whom God has not called. Paul could say, “… woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16). You may remember that Jeremiah was called when he was a child (Jer. 1:4–10). God said of the false prophets, “I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied” (Jer. 23:21). Jeremiah was a called prophet, and Paul was a called apostle.
Paul says that he is an apostle, which means “one who is sent.” Our Lord said that he that is sent [apostle] is not greater than he that sent him (see John 13:16). The same word occurs again in Philippians 2:25. The word has the technical meaning in the New Testament of one chosen by the Lord Jesus to declare the gospel. He must be a witness of the resurrected Christ. Paul said that the resurrected Christ had appeared to him. “And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:8). Then Paul asks the rhetorical question, “Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? …” (1 Cor. 9:1).
Another evidence that Paul was an apostle was that he had what we call “sign gifts.” He said that he could speak in other languages, other tongues. I believe that when he went through the Galatian country, for instance, into that area along the Aegean Sea where there were so many Greek cities and tribes in which unfamiliar languages were spoken, Paul was able to speak the language of each tribe as he came among them. He had the apostolic gift of tongues. Also he had the gift of healing, a gift that I do not believe is in existence today. When God heals in our day, He does it directly. I tell folk that I take my case directly to the Great Physician, not to one of the interns. I know that God heals, but He does not give that gift to men in our day. However, Paul had the gift of healing; he was an apostle. He could also raise the dead. We have records of both Peter and Paul raising the dead. They were apostles.
Now, Paul is a bondslave of Jesus Christ; he is a called apostle; and he is “separated unto the gospel of God.” Notice that “separated” is used with the preposition unto, not from. He was separated unto the gospel of God.
The word separated is a marvelous word. There are several words that have almost an opposite meaning. For instance, there is the word cleave. An object can cleave to something or an object can be cleaved asunder. One time cleave can mean to join together and another time it can mean to separate. Paul was a separated Christian, but he was separated to something, not from something. I am afraid that many Christians today are only separated from something. When I hear some people talk, I get the idea that they are doing a spiritual striptease. They say, “I don’t do this and I don’t do that anymore.” Well, my friend, unto what are you separated? Paul tells us that the Thessalonians turned to God from idols. They did not get up in a testimonial meeting and say, “We do not go to the temple of Apollo anymore.” There was no need to say that because they were separated unto the Lord Jesus Christ. A Christian who is separated from something and not separated unto Christ will have a barren life. His life will be without joy, and he will become critical and sometimes cynical. A phrase in the marriage ceremony I use says, “Do you promise to love and to keep yourself unto her (or him) and no one else?” This is separation unto one person. That is what marriage is. Imagine a fellow on the first night of his honeymoon saying to his new bride, “I have a girl friend in this town. I think I will go to see her.” There are many Christians who practice that kind of “separation”! If you are separated unto Christ, you will have a life that appeals rather than one that turns people off. A little Chinese girl once said, “Christians are salt. Salt makes you thirsty.” Think it over, friend. Do you make anyone thirsty for Christ, the Water of Life?
The word separated is the Greek word aphonzoµ, the same word from which we get our word horizon. I have noticed when taking off on a plane that the horizon becomes enlarged. I remember a flight from Athens, Greece. When we took off, I tried to see the Acropolis and the ocean, but I could not see a thing. We had not gone far when I could see the ocean, the Acropolis, the outer islands, and the mountains. The higher we flew, the wider was the horizon. It is wonderful to be separated unto Christ because He brings you to the place where your horizons are enlarged. This is what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13:11 when he says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
I can recall a time in my early boyhood when I used to play house. Because there was a bunch of girls in the neighborhood and only a couple of boys, in order to play, we played house with the girls. There came a day, friend, when I outgrew that stuff, and I went outside and played baseball. The girls would say, “Let’s play house.” I would reply, “No, I am playing first base on the team. I am not interested in playing house anymore.” I had a new horizon. Today I am not only uninterested in playing baseball, I can’t play baseball. But I am interested in something else. My horizons have widened. And, friend, when you are separated unto Christ, it doesn’t mean you become little and narrow. Rather, life broadens out to include innumerable thrilling and wonderful experiences.
Now notice that Paul says he is separated unto “the gospel of God.” In other words, man did not create the gospel. When you and I arrived on the scene, the gospel had been in existence for over nineteen hundred years. He didn’t wait until we got here to see if we had a better plan. It is God’s gospel. We can take it or leave it. The gospel was originated by God.


(Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) [Rom. 1:2].

The gospel is not brand new. It was promised by His prophets all the way through the Old Testament. It is a message that God loves mankind and that God presents a way of saving mankind. It brings us into a love relationship. He loves us and gave Himself for us. How wonderful!
Verses 2–6 form a parenthesis which gives a definition of the gospel. First of all, it is all about Jesus Christ.


Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh [Rom. 1:3].

The word concerning is the little Greek preposition peri—used also in periscope and perimeter—and means “that which encircles.” The gospel is all about Jesus Christ. It is what He has done. It is “concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
We have His full title here. He is the Son of God, and He is Jesus Christ our Lord. That is His wonderful name. We often hear today that we need the religion of Jesus. My friend, He had no religion. He didn’t need one—He is God. What we need today is to have a religion that is about Jesus, that surrounds Him, that is all about what He has done. Jesus Christ actually is God. He cannot worship; He is to be worshiped. Somebody objects, “But He prayed.” Yes, because He took the place of humanity. He prayed as a means of accommodation. For instance, at the grave of Lazarus the Bible says, “… Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 11:41–42). My friend, He prayed to help our faith, but He is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Notice that He also is of the seed (the sperm) of David, according to the flesh. This is the humanity of Jesus. He is virgin born because He is declared—horizoned out to be—the Son of God with power.


And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead [Rom. 1:4].

You see, the Resurrection did not make Him the Son of God; it simply revealed who He was.
Declared is from the same Greek word horizo, which we have seen before. Jesus is declared, He is horizoned, the Son of God. This gives us the perfect humanity of Christ and the perfect deity of Christ. One of the oldest creeds in the church states that He is very man of very man and that He is very God of very God. And Paul said it before the creed was written. Here it is. Jesus Christ is not any more man because He is God, and He is not any less God because He is man. He is God-man.
He is declared to be the Son of God “according to the spirit of holiness.” This could mean the human spirit of Jesus, but I personally believe the reference is to the Holy Spirit. I believe the Trinity is in view here.
Now notice that He is declared to be the Son of God “by the resurrection from the dead.” The Resurrection proves everything. It is Resurrection that sets Him forth as the Son of God. As you read through the Bible you will discover that the Lord Jesus Christ is presented in the power of His resurrection. First He is seen in the days of His flesh, walking upon the earth, despised and rejected of men. He is seen even in weakness as He sits down to rest at a well and as He sleeps through a storm on the sea. And He finally is brought to ignominy and shame and death upon a cross. Although He was a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, there came a time when He was raised from the dead. His resurrection proves that He was accurate when He said, “… Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23). The days of walking along the dusty roads of Israel are over now; He has come back from the dead in mighty power. His resurrection proves His virgin birth. He is the Son of God with power.
Then there is another great truth here. We see Christ, resurrected and presently seated at the right hand of God in the heavens, interceding today for believers and giving them power and comfort. There is a Man in the glory, but the church has lost sight of Him. We need to recover our awareness of Him. Are you having personal contact with the living Christ today?
Also the resurrection of Christ insures that He will return to this earth as the Judge and as the King of kings and Lord of lords. He will put down sin, and He will reign in righteousness on this earth. He will judge mankind, as Paul said to those glib, sophisticated Athenian philosophers, “… we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because he hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:29–31). It is a most solemn fact that because Jesus Christ came back from the dead, you will have to stand before Him someday. Will you stand before Him as one who has trusted Him as your Savior, or will you stand before Him to be judged? If you have not received Him as your Savior, the condemnation of God must be upon you. You cannot stand before Him in your own righteousness. You must be condemned to a lost eternity unless you trust Him as your Savior. The Resurrection is the guarantee that each one of us is going to have to face the Lord Jesus Christ.


By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name [Rom. 1:5].

“Grace and apostleship” are significant terms. “Grace” is God’s method of salvation. None of us could ever have been saved if God had not been gracious. Although “apostleship” referred specifically to Paul and the others who were technically apostles, every believer is a “sent one.” The word in the Greek is apostoleµ, meaning “a sending forth.” Every believer should be a witness, one sent forth with a message. What are you doing to get the Word of God out in these days? That is the business of those who have received grace and apostleship.
For the “obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name”—this epistle opens with obedience and closes with obedience. In the final chapter Paul says, “For your obedience is come abroad unto all men” (Rom. 16:19), also “made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Rom. 16:26). Obedience to the faith is very important to God. God saves us by faith, not by works; but after He has saved us, He wants to talk to us about our works, about our obedience to Him. I hear many people talk about believing in Jesus, then they live like the Devil and seem to be serving him. My friend, saving faith makes you obedient to Jesus Christ.
Is there a difference in faith? There surely is. The difference is in the object of your faith. For example, I believe in George Washington. I consider him a great man, our first president, the father of our country. Also, I believe in Jesus Christ. Now my faith in George Washington has never done anything for me. It has nothing to do with my salvation and has very little effect upon my life. But my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is quite different. “Saving faith” brings us to the place where we surrender to the Son of God who loves us and gave Himself for us. While correct doctrine is very important, there is a discipline and a doing that goes with it. You can’t be the salt of the earth without combining both of them. By the way, have you ever considered that salt is composed of sodium and chloride, and each taken by itself would poison you? However, when they are combined, they form a very useful ingredient. Believing and doing go together, my friend, to make us the salt of the earth. My favorite hymn has always been “Trust and Obey,” by Rev. J. H. Sammis.

But we never can prove
The delights of His love,
Until all on the altar we lay,
For the favor He shows,
And the joy He bestows,
Are for them who will trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.


Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ [Rom. 1:6].

The called are the elect. Who are the called? Well, they are those who have heard. The Lord Jesus made it clear when He said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). If you are following someone or something else, you haven’t heard Him, you are not one of His sheep. The ones who hear and follow Him are the called ones. Let’s not argue about election. It is as simple as this: He calls, and you answer. If you have answered, you are among the elect, one of “the called of Jesus Christ.” Paul assures the Roman Christians that they are called-ones.
This concludes the profound parenthesis in the introduction to this letter to the Romans. Dr. James Stifler calls our attention to four features of this parenthesis: Paul has a message in accord with the Scriptures; the message is from the risen Christ; the message is universal; and the message is for the obedience to the faith.
Now Paul returns to the introduction proper.


To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ [Rom. 1:7].

“Beloved of God”—isn’t that lovely? God loved those believers in Rome. When I was there not long ago, there was a strike going on, and I found it a little difficult to love anybody as I was carrying my own suitcases up to my room and unable to get any kind of service—even a taxi. But God loves us. How wonderful!
“Called to be saints” should be simply “called saints”—the verb to be is not in the better manuscripts. They were “called saints” and this is the name for every believer. A saint is not one who has been exalted; a saint is one who exalts Jesus Christ. A person becomes a saint when Jesus Christ becomes his Savior. There are only two classes of people in the world: the saints and the ain’ts. If you are not an ain’t, then you’re a saint. And if you are a saint, you have trusted Christ. It is not your character that makes you a saint, it’s your faith in Jesus Christ and the fact that you are set apart for Him. As Paul said of himself in the beginning, he was a bondslave of Jesus Christ.
“Grace and peace” constitute the formal introduction in all of Paul’s letters. Grace (charis) was the Gentile form of greeting, while peace (shalom) was the Jewish form of greeting. Paul combined them.

PAUL’S PURPOSE


First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world [Rom. 1:8].


Word had filtered out throughout the empire that many in Rome were turning to Christ—so much so that it disturbed the emperors. Later on, persecution began. Paul mentions here that their faith was spoken of throughout the whole world.
I wonder about your group, your church. Has anybody heard about your personal testimony? What is it worth today? My, what a testimony this church in Rome had at the beginning!


For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers [Rom. 1:9].

“The gospel of his Son”—in the first verse Paul called it “the gospel of God,” and later he will call it his gospel.
“Without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.” Paul had a long prayer list. When I was teaching in a Bible institute, I gave the students the assignment of recording each time Paul said he was praying for somebody. Many of the students were deeply impressed at the length of Paul’s prayer list. He says here that he prayed without ceasing for the Roman believers.


Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you [Rom. 1:10].

Paul is praying for a “prosperous journey” to come to Rome. When we read about his journey in the Book of Acts, it doesn’t look exactly prosperous—he went as a prisoner, he got into a terrific storm at sea, the ship was lost, and he was bitten by a viper when he made it to land. Yet it was a prosperous journey.
He says he wants to come to Rome “by the will of God.” I believe he went there by the will of God.


For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established [Rom. 1:11].

He wants to come to Rome to teach the Word of God. Paul loved to teach the Word of God. When a preacher does not want to teach the Word of God, he becomes a clergyman, he becomes an administrator, he becomes a promoter, but he is not a minister of the Word anymore. I know several men in this position. One man said, “I don’t enjoy preaching anymore.” I said, “For goodness sake, get out of the ministry. You have no business in the ministry if you don’t love to teach the Word of God!”


That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me [Rom. 1:12].

In other words, Paul would communicate something, but the believers in Rome would also communicate something to him. They would be mutually blessed in the Word. Not too long ago I had the privilege of speaking to a conference of over a thousand students. I laid it on the line for those folks and was a little hard on them at the beginning. Then I saw how wonderfully they responded, and it opened my eyes to a new world. I left that conference singing praises to God for the privilege of being there. While I was ministering to them, they were ministering to me. This is what Paul is talking about here.

Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles [Rom. 1:13].
He was hindered from coming to them, although he longed to come. Many of these folks were his converts, as he had led them to Christ when he had met them in different parts of the Roman Empire. His desire to have “fruit among you” probably does not refer to soul winning, but to the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of believers (see Gal. 5:22–23).

PAUL’S THREE “I AMS”


I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise [Rom. 1:14].


“To the Greeks, and to the Barbarians” was the Greek division of all mankind. The Greeks were cultured, educated, and civilized. The barbarians were those whom we label pagan and heathen today. Actually, it is a false division, but it encompasses all mankind and was understood by Romans.
Paul said, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians.” How did he become indebted? Did he run up a bill for neckties and shoes (that is what Rome is famous for today) and forget to pay the bill? No, he had had no business transaction with these people. However, he had had a personal transaction with Jesus Christ which put him in debt to every man, because the grace of God had been so bountifully bestowed upon him. Paul was in debt to a lost world. I hear Christians say, “I pay my honest debts.” Do you? Not until every person has heard the gospel of Jesus Christ have you and I paid our honest debts. One day I was driving with a preacher friend of mine in the interior of Turkey. (Turkey is closed to the gospel—a person can get into trouble even propagandizing there.) As we were driving along, we came to a little town in which all of the signs were in Turkish, and we felt very much like strangers in a strange land. Then way down at the end of the street we saw a big sign which read: “Coca-Cola.” I said to my friend, “Is it not interesting that Coca-Cola in just a few years has done a better job of advertising and getting out its message than has been done with the gospel in over nineteen hundred years?” We have not paid our debt, friend, until all have heard the good news, and multitudes have not yet heard. Paul says, “I am debtor,” and that was another reason he wanted to come to Rome.
Then Paul has another “I am.”


So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also [Rom. 1:15].

Paul has said that he is a debtor; now he says he is ready to pay. In other words, Paul says, “My side is ready.” In The Epistle to the Romans Dr. James Stifler writes, “He is a master of his purpose, but not of his circumstances.” He is not only ready, he is eager to preach it. Oh, how we need that enthusiasm and high anticipation of getting out the Word of God!
In the next verse we have the third “I am” of Paul. Also verses 16 and 17 give us the key to this great Epistle to the Romans.


For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek [Rom. 1:16].

“I am not ashamed of the gospel” (“of Christ” is not in the better manuscripts). Paul says, “I am debtor…. I am ready…. I am not ashamed.” I’m debtor—that is admission; I am ready—remission; I am not ashamed—submission. These are the three “missions” of Paul: admission, remission, and submission.
Why did Paul say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel”? As I walked down the streets of Ephesus and looked at the ruins of marble temples, I realized that there was not a church building in Ephesus in the first century. In Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the gorgeous temple of Diana (or Artemis), but there was no church building. I suppose there were folk in Rome who were saying, “Well, brother Paul hasn’t come to Rome because he is just preaching a message geared for poor people. The message he preaches is without prestige; there are no great temples connected with it. He would be ashamed to bring it to an important place like Rome.” So Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”
Now why is Paul not ashamed of the gospel? “It is the power of God”! The Greek word translated “power” is dunamis, from which we get our word dynamite. It is dunamis power! It is the kind of power Dr. Marvin R. Vincent calls divine energy! In itself the gospel has power, innate power.
It has power for a very definite thing: “It is the power of God unto salvation.” That is the end and the effect of the gospel. “Salvation” is the all-inclusive term of the gospel, and it simply means “deliverance.” It embraces everything from justification to glorification. It is both an act and a process. It is equally true that I have been saved, I am being saved, and
I shall be saved. The gospel is “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” It’s to everyone. It includes the entire human race, irrespective of racial or religious barriers. And it is personal; it is directed to every individual—“whosoever will may come.”
It is universal in scope, but it is limited to “every one that believeth.” This statement wraps up election and free will in one package. The only way of procuring salvation is by personal faith.
“To the Jew first, and also to the Greek” does not imply that the Jew has top priority to the gospel today. The important thing is to make sure the Jew is on a par with the Gentile as far as evangelism is concerned. Chronologically the gospel went to the Jew first. If you had been in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, you would have seen an altogether Jewish meeting. And Paul in his missionary journeys took the gospel first to the Jewish synagogue, but in Acts 13:46 we are told, “Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” The gospel began in Jerusalem, a Jewish city, then spread to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Dr. Stifler calls our attention to three very pertinent truths in this verse: the effect of the gospel—salvation; the extent—it is worldwide—to everyone; the condition—faith in Jesus Christ.


For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith [Rom. 1:17].

“A righteousness from God is being revealed” is a literal translation. It should not be the righteousness of God, because that would be His attribute, and God is not sharing His attribute with anyone. It is a righteousness, and it is from God; it is not man’s righteousness. God has already said that He will not accept the righteousness of man, for the righteousness of man is as filthy rags in His sight according to Isaiah 64:6. Paul is talking about the imputed righteousness of Christ. God places a lost sinner in Christ, and He sees him in Christ. The believer is absolutely accepted because of what Christ has done for him. The only method of procuring this righteousness is by faith. It is a by-faith righteousness. You can’t work for it; you can’t make a deposit on it; you can’t buy it. You can do nothing but accept it by faith. “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9).
The word for “righteousness” is dikaiosune. This word occurs ninety-two times in the New Testament, thirty-six times in Romans. The phrase “a righteousness from God” occurs eight times in this epistle. The root word dike means simply “right.” Justice and justify come from the same word. “To be right” is the primary meaning, which is the antonym of sin. Dr. Cremer gives this apt definition: “It is the state commanded by God and standing the test of His judgment; the character and acts of a man approved of Him, in virtue of which the man corresponds with Him and His will as His ideal and standard.” The righteousness he is talking about is what God demands, and it is what God provides—it is a righteousness that is from God.
“From faith to faith” simply means out of faith into faith. God saves you by faith, you live by faith, you die by faith, and you’ll be in heaven by faith. Let me use a homely illustration. Quite a few years ago I was born deep in the heart of Texas. When I was born, my mother said the doctor lifted me up by my heels, gave me a whack, and I let out a cry that could be heard on all four borders of that great state. I was born into a world of atmosphere and that whack started me breathing. From that day to this I have been breathing atmosphere. From air to air, from oxygen to oxygen. Much later, in the state of Oklahoma, I was born again. I was saved by faith, and from that time on it has been by faith—from faith to faith.
“As it is written” refers to Habakkuk 2:4, where the statement is made, “… the just shall live by his faith.” This is quoted in three great epistles of the New Testament: Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews.
“The just shall live by faith”—justification by faith means that a sinner who trusts Christ is not only pardoned because Christ died, but he also stands before God complete in Christ. It means not only subtraction of sin, but addition of righteousness. He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25)—that we might stand before God complete in Christ.
The act of God in justification by faith is not an arbitrary decision on His part. He does not disregard His holiness and His justice. Since God saves us by grace, this means that there is no merit in us. He saves us on no other ground than that we trust Jesus. God is in danger of impugning His own justice if the penalty is not paid. He is not going to open the back door to heaven and slip sinners in under cover of darkness. But because He loves you, Christ died for you to make a way. The Lord Jesus Christ is the way to heaven. Since Christ paid the penalty for our sin, salvation is ours “through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:25). The hymn writer is correct—

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

This concludes Paul’s introduction. Now he begins a new section in which he reveals the sin of man. My friend, this is “sinnerama.” The universal fact is that man is a sinner. The ecumenical movement is always away from God. We can put down the axiom that the world is guilty before God; all need righteousness. In this section Paul is not attempting to prove that man is a sinner. If you attempt to read it that way, you will miss the point. All Paul is doing is stating the fact that man is a sinner. He not only shows that there is a revelation of the righteousness of God, but that there is also the revelation of the wrath of God against the sin of man.

A NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD


For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness [Rom. 1:18].


“The wrath of God is revealed.” Actually, if you want to know what salvation really is, you have to know how bad sin is. Stifler says, “Sin is the measure of salvation.” The wrath of God is God’s feeling, not His punishment of sin. It is His holy anger. Wrath is the antithesis of righteousness, and it is used here as a correlative.
“Is being revealed” is God’s answer to those who assert that the Old Testament presents a God of wrath, while the New Testament presents a God of love. There is a continuous revelation of the wrath of God in both the Old Testament and New Testament. It is revealed in our contemporary society. This is God’s constant and insistent displeasure with evil. He changes not. God is merciful, not because He is lenient with the sinner, but because Christ died. The gospel has not changed God’s attitude toward sin. The gospel has made it possible to accept the sinner. The sinner must have either the righteousness or the wrath of God. Both are revealed from heaven. And you can see it on every hand. If you want to know how bad sin is, look at the cases of venereal diseases today. You don’t get by with sin, my friend. I won’t give personal illustrations, but I have been a pastor long enough to see again and again the judgment of God upon sin. It is revealed from heaven. Also there will be a final judgment.
“Against all ungodliness”—ungodliness is that which is against God. It is that which denies the character of God. Oh, the irreligiousness of today! There are multitudes of people who disregard the very existence of
God—that is a state of the soul. That is sin. “Unrighteousness” is against man. Ungodliness is against God, but unrighteousness is against man. What does that mean? It is the denial of the rule of God. It is the action of the soul. That man who gets drunk, goes out on the freeway, breaks the traffic laws, and kills someone—that man is unrighteous. He is sinning against man. Another example is the man who is dishonest in his business dealings. God hates man’s unrighteousness. He will judge it.
“Who holds the truth in unrighteousness” is literally to hold down, suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The wrath of God is revealed against folk who do this.


Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them [Rom. 1:19].

There is an original revelation from God.


For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and God-head; so that they are without excuse [Rom. 1:20].

This universe in which you and I live tells two things about God: His person and His power. This has been clearly seen from the time the world was created. How can invisible things be seen? Paul makes this a paradox purposely to impress upon his readers that the “dim light of nature” is a man-made falsehood. Creation is a clear light of revelation. It is the primary revelation. The psalmist said, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained” (Ps. 8:3). Also “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).
“His eternal power and Godhead”—His eternal power and deity, power and Person. Creation reveals the unchangeable power and existence of God. Paul said this, “… he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). And because all of us are the offspring (not the sons) of God, Paul said, “Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:29). Dr. James Denny writes, “There is that within man which so catches the meaning of all that is without as to issue in an instinctive knowledge of God.” I think the most ridiculous position man can hold is that of atheism. It is illogical and senseless. When the psalmist said, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Ps. 14:1), the word for fool means “insane.” A man is insane when he denies the existence of God.
“So that they are without excuse.” Creation so clearly reveals God that man is without excuse. This section reveals the historical basis of man’s sin. It did not come about through ignorance. It was willful rebellion in the presence of clear light.

SUBNATURAL RESPONSE OF MAN


If you examine the next few verses carefully, you will see that there are seven steps which mankind took downward from the Garden of Eden.


Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things [Rom. 1:21–23].

There is no such thing as man moving upward. These verses contradict the hypothesis of evolution. Man is not improving physically, morally, intellectually, or spiritually. The pull is downward. Of course this contradicts all the anthologies of religion that start with man in a very primitive condition as a caveman with very little intellectual qualities and move him up intellectually and begin moving him toward God. This is absolute error. Man is moving away from God, and right now the world is probably farther from God than at any time in its history. The fact of the matter is that every primitive tribe has a tradition that way back in the beginning their ancestors knew God. Dr. Vincent in Word Studies in the New Testament says, “I think it may be proved from facts that any given people, down to the lowest savages, has at any period of its life known far more than it has done: known quite enough to have enabled it to have got on comfortably, thriven and developed, if it had only done what no man does, all that it knew it ought to do and could do.” No people have ever lived up to the light that they have had. Although they had a knowledge of God, they moved away from Him.
“They glorified him not as God.” They did not give Him His rightful place, and man became self-sufficient. In our day man has made the announcement that God is dead. In the beginning the human family did not suggest that God was dead, they simply turned their backs upon Him and made man their god.
“Neither were thankful.” Ingratitude is one of the worst sins there is. You recall that the Lord Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one returned to thank Him. Only ten percent were thankful, and I believe it is less than that today.
“Became vain in their imaginations”—they even concocted a theory of evolution.
“Their foolish heart was darkened.” They moved into the darkness of paganism. You see living proof of this as you walk down the streets of Cairo in Egypt or of Istanbul in Turkey. In fact, all you have to do is walk down the streets of Los Angeles to know that man’s foolish heart is darkened.
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” The wisdom of man is foolishness with God. Man searches for truth through logical reasoning but arrives at a philosophy that is foolish in God’s sight.
“And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.” Have you noted that the unsaved world has made caricatures of God? Look at the images and the idols of the heathen. I was aware of this during my visit to the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus. That city in the Roman Empire reached probably the highest degree of culture in civilization that any city has ever reached. Yet at the heart of that city was one of the most horrible images imaginable, enshrined in the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Called also Diana, she was not the lovely image you see in Greek sculptures. She is like the Oriental Cybele, the mother goddess, the many-breasted one. She had a trident in one hand and in the other a club—she was a mean one. That is the idea the most cultured, civilized people had of God! She was a female principal, and gross immorality took place around her temple, and dishonesty of the worst sort. They had turned the glory of the uncorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man. Actually, idolatry is a cartoon of God; it is a slander and a slur against Him. Personally I do not like to see pictures of Jesus, as Paul said that we know Him no longer after the flesh (see 2 Cor. 5:16). He is the glorified Christ. He is not that picture you have hanging on your wall, my friend. If He came into your room, you would fall on your face before Him. He is the glorified Christ today. Don’t slur our God by having a picture of Him! The Greeks made their gods like men; the Assyrians and the Egyptians and the Babylonians made their gods like beasts and birds and creeping things. I walked through the museum in Cairo and looked at some of the gods they had made. They are not very flattering representations, I can assure you.
Man did not begin in idolatry. The savage of today is very unlike primitive man. Primitive man was monotheistic; idolatry was introduced later. In the Word of God the first record we have of idolatry is in connection with Rachel stealing her father’s idols (Gen. 31). Man descended downward; he did not develop upward. Religiously man has departed from God. Sir William Ramsay, who was once a belligerent unbeliever, wrote in The Cities of Paul: “For my own part, I confess that my experience and reading show nothing to confirm the modern assumptions in religious history, and a great deal to confirm Paul. Whatever evidence exists, with the rarest exceptions, the history of religion among men is a history of degeneration…. Is it not the fact of human history that man, standing alone, degenerates; and that he progresses only where there is in him so much sympathy with and devotion to the Divine life as to keep the social body pure and sweet and healthy?” My friend, the reason today there is failure in our poverty programs and health programs and other social programs is because of gross immorality and a turning away from God. They say, “We want to be practical, and we do not want to introduce religion.” That’s the problem. The only practical thing for man to do is to return to the living and true God.

UNNATURAL RETROGRESSION OF MAN


Now we see the results of man’s revolution against God. In the remainder of this chapter it says three times that God gave them up.


Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves [Rom. 1:24].

Man’s degeneration is measured by his perversion of sex. While many churches in our day are espousing sex perversion instead of condemning it, God says He has given them up. Idolatry and gross immorality are the bitter fruits of rejecting God’s revelation.
“God gave them up” is literally God handed them over—it is positive, not a passive attitude.


Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen [Rom. 1:25].

“Who exchanged the true God for the lie.” The suggestion is that they turned from God to Satan, the author of the lie and the father of idolatry. This is idolatry which led to the lowest depths of moral degradation.


For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet [Rom. 1:26–27].

These are passions of dishonor and disgrace and depravity—regardless of what public opinion is today. Perversion entered into Greek life, and it brought Greece down to the dust. Go over there and look at Greece today. The glory has passed away. Why? These were their sins.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient [Rom. 1:28].
Anybody who tells me that he can be a child of God and live in perversion, live in the thick mire of our contemporary permissiveness, is not kidding anyone but himself. If he will come to Christ, he can have deliverance.
The next three verses list a frightful brood of sins which follow man’s rebellion against God.


Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful [Rom. 1:29–31].

In my book Reasoning Through Romans, I define these sins, but it is enough to say here that this is what the human family is doing today. I used to tell the students in my classes to buy any of our metropolitan daily newspapers, sit down, and find a headline for every sin that is mentioned here. This is the condition, not only of Cairo, not only of Calcutta, not only of Peking, but also of the United States today. How much longer will God tolerate it and be patient with us? He has judged great nations in the past who have gone in this direction.


Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them [Rom. 1:32].

Man has a revelation from God, but he flagrantly flaunts it by defying the judgment of God against such sins. He continues to practice them and applauds and approves those who do the same.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: God will judge self-righteous and religious people


In this chapter Paul is showing that God will judge self-righteous and religious people. There are many people like the man on the top of the hill who looks down at the man at the bottom of the hill and says, “Something should be done for that poor fellow. We ought to start a mission down there. We should start giving him soup and clothes and a shower bath. I am living on the top of the hill, and I do not need anything.” The hurdle to meet the demands of God is just as high on top of the hill as it is at the bottom of the hill. The only difference is that the man at the bottom of the hill will probably see his need sooner than the man at the top of the hill. Religious people, self-righteous people, and so-called good people need a Savior. In chapter 2 Paul sets down certain principles by which God is going to judge “good” people. Chapter 1 reveals the unrighteousness of man, and chapter 2 reveals the self-righteousness of man.

Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things [Rom. 2:1].
This puts before us the very important issue of this chapter. It’s well to keep in mind here that Paul is not talking about salvation. He is talking about sin and the basis on which God will judge men. These principles of judgment are not the basis of salvation; they are the basis of judgment. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be judged by them. I thank God for a Savior today, and Scripture presents the gospel as the only means of attaining eternal life. To reject the Son of God immediately brings upon a person the judgment of God, and the only verdict here is guilty. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12). And He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). And then listen to the Lord Jesus after that marvelous, wonderful John 3:16—we generally stop there—but He continues. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:17–18). Also, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). So today these folk who do not have Christ are lost. You may be a religious person, you might be a good person, but without Christ, my friend, you’re lost.
“Thou art inexcusable, O man”—“man” is the Greek anthrope, a generic term meaning both men and women. It includes both Jews and Gentiles and refers to mankind in general.
“Whosoever thou art that judgest.” He passes now from the general to that which is specific, from the masses to the individual person. And he addresses any person of the human race, but he limits it to those who judge others. Now, the word here for “judge” carries the thought of judging with an adverse verdict. It can be translated, “Whosoever thou art that condemnest another.” Therefore this raises the question: What should be the attitude of a believer today toward this awful, horrible group who are mentioned in Romans 1? It should be this: We should want them to get saved; we should try to get the gospel to them; they are poor, lost creatures. It should be as the hymn writer, Fanny Crosby, expressed it:

Rescue the perishing,
Care for the dying,
Snatch them in pity from sin and the
grave;
Weep o’er the erring ones,
Lift up the fallen,
Tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save.

This should be our attitude, while making it clear that they need to be saved and delivered from perversion and immorality.
“For thou that judgest doest the same things” may give a wrong impression. “Same” is the Greek auta, and the meaning is not identical things, but things that are as bad in God’s sight as the awful, depraved acts of the heathen which are offensive to the cultured and refined sinner.
Let me illustrate this. I heard a man who is not saved say that he didn’t believe that hell could be heated hot enough for Hitler. My friend, he is sitting in judgment. He is taking the place of God. And you and I are sitting in judgment on those who are not on our plane. We use society’s standards today, and it varies. If someone does not measure up to the standard of your little group, you condemn him. I know some churches where members can get by with lying, with being gossipers, and with being dishonest, but they couldn’t get by with smoking a cigarette! They would be condemned for that. My friend, when you judge other people, you are assuming the position of judge. God is saying that by the same token that you have the right to judge other people by your standards, He has the right to judge you by His standards. If we could see ourselves as God sees us, we could see that we are obnoxious; we are repugnant! What contribution can you and I make to heaven? Would we adorn the place? I get the impression from some people that heaven is going to be a better place when they get there—yet the earth has not been a better place since they have been here! My friend, you try to deny God the same privilege you have of sitting in judgment on others. Well, God is going to judge you, and He won’t judge you by your standards, but by His standards. Does that begin to move you? It ought to, because I have found that we don’t come up to God’s standards.
Now Paul puts down the principles by which God will judge the refined and cultured sinner. Here is the first great principle.


But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things [Rom. 2:2].

In other words, he says, “We know that the judgment of God is according to reality.” There are so many folk today, including church members, who live in a world of unreality. They do not want to hear the truth of the gospel. Now, I hear a great many pious folk who say, “Oh, I do want to study the Bible.” And then when they get into the Word of God, they find what John found in the Book of Revelation when he began to see the judgments of God. When he first started out, it was thrilling, it was “sweet in his mouth.” But when he ate that little book, it gave him indigestion, it was “bitter in his belly” (see Rev. 10:9–10). And there are a great many Christians today, who say they want Bible study, but they don’t want reality. They do not want to hear the truth. “We know that the judgment of God is according to reality [the factual condition of man] against them which commit such things.”
Now keep in mind that these are principles of judgment, not principles of salvation. Man has an inherent knowledge that he must be judged by a higher power. The coming judgment of God is something every man out of Christ either dreads or denies. The Scripture is very clear on judgment. Paul said to the Athenians, “Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). And Paul reasoned, you remember, with Felix about righteousness and self-control and judgment to come. And it frightened this fellow, Felix. In fact, he didn’t want to hear another sermon. The judgment of God is in contrast with man’s judgment. Man does not have all the facts and his judgment is partial and prejudiced. God’s judgment takes in all the facts. God knows the actual state of man—just what he is. And on that basis He will judge him.
As a boy, I used to pick cotton—and I wasn’t very good at it. I’d bring in a sack of cotton to be weighed, and they only weighed what I brought in. The man weighing the cotton didn’t ask me where I picked it or how I picked it or to whom it belonged; he just weighed it. “… Thou art weighed in the balances …” (Dan. 5:27), is God’s word to every man that boasts of his morality. I think the great delusion of the cultured person is that the depraved person must be judged, but he’s confident that he will escape because he’s different. Most people believe Hitler and Stalin ought to be judged, but they think they should escape. God will judge man for what he is in His sight. Do you want to stand before God on that basis? I don’t.


And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? [Rom. 2:3].

Robert Govett has called attention to the four ways of escape which are open to the man who breaks human laws:

1. His offence will not be discovered.
2. He may escape beyond the jurisdiction of the court.
3. After arrest, there may be some legal technicality which will cause a breakdown of the legal procedure.
4. After conviction, he may escape from prison and stay under cover.

None of these avenues of escape are open to man in regard to divine judgment. Your offenses will be discovered. You cannot go beyond God’s jurisdiction. There will be no legal technicality. You will never be able to escape from prison. The writer of Hebrews asked, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation …?” (Heb. 2:3).


Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? [Rom. 2:4].

We ought to recognize today that the goodness of God is something that ought to bring us to our knees before Him. But instead of that, it drives men from God. The psalmist was disturbed by the way the wicked could prosper. God didn’t seem to do anything to them. In Psalm 73, he says, “For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men…. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth…. Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end” (Ps. 73:3–5, 9, 17). They will face God’s judgment, my friend.
And, by the way, if you’re a lost man, don’t think I am the sort of preacher that tries to take everything away from you. If you haven’t trusted Christ and your only hope is in this life, brother, you had better suck this earth like it is an orange and get all you can out of it. Drink all you can, sin all you can, because you won’t have anything in the next life. You had better get it while you are here if that’s the way you want to live. Eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow you die. My friend, you need a Savior. And the goodness of God ought to lead you to Him.


But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God [Rom. 2:5].

If you are not saved, let me say this to you: you know God has been good to you. God has blessed you. Think of the multitudes of folk on this earth who have nothing, who are literally starving to death. And here you are, a wicked man, living on top of the world. Do you think God is not going to judge you? Do you think that you are going to escape? My friend, the very goodness of God ought to lead you to repentance.
As we come to verse 6, we see the second great principle.

Who will render to every man according to his deeds [Rom. 2:6].
He shall reward every man according to his works. Absolute justice is the criterion of the judgment or rewards. Man’s deeds stand before God in His holy light. No man in his right mind wants to be judged on this basis. Remember Cornelius—he was a good man, but he was lost.


To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life [Rom. 2:7].

Let’s keep in mind that under this second principle, a way of life is not the subject. Rather, a way of life is the basis of judgment. The “do-gooder” will be judged according to his works. John said, “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Rev. 20:12). The man who wants to work for eternal life may do so. He will be judged according to his deeds, but he is warned that they will avail nothing. “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:15). Trusting Christ as Savior puts your name in the “book of life.” Eternal life is not a reward for effort; it is a gift to those who trust Christ.
Now notice the third principle of judgment.


For there is no respect of persons with God [Rom. 2:11].

This was also a great principle of the Old Testament. “For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward” (Deut. 10:17). Simon Peter discovered this when he went into the home of Cornelius. “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34). God plays no favorites. He has no pets. All men are alike before Him. Justice is blindfolded, not because she is blind, but that she may not see men in either silk or rags; all must appear alike. Church membership, a good family, being an outstanding citizen, or having a fundamental creed give no advantage before God at all. Do you have a Savior, or don’t you? That is the all-important issue.


For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law [Rom. 2:12].

This is another great principle by which God is going to judge. Notice how it is expressed in the next verse.


(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified [Rom. 2:13].

I hear it said that the heathen are lost because they haven’t heard of Christ and haven’t accepted Him. My friend, they are lost because they are sinners. That’s the condition of all mankind. Men are not saved by the light they have; they are judged by the light they have. “For not the hearers of the law are just before God”—many folk seem to think that if they just approve the Sermon on the Mount, they are saved.
Now here is the fifth principle.


Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) [Rom. 2:15].

God can and will judge the heathen by his own conscience. Some folk think because the heathen do not have the revelation of God that they will escape God’s judgment. But the fact is that they are not living up to the light they have. God will judge them on that basis.


In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel [Rom. 2:16].

We have a false idea today that because we happen to be good folk, that is, we think we are, that we’ll be saved. God is going to judge the do-gooders. And He will judge them by Jesus Christ who said that if a man looks upon a woman to lust after her, he is guilty of adultery (see Matt. 5:27–28). This is only one example of the secrets of the human heart. Do you want the secrets of your heart brought out—not the lovely things you have said, but the dirty little thoughts that come to you? This should cause all of us to flee to Jesus to save us!
God is going to judge religious people, the Jews in particular, because theirs was a God-given religion.


Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God.
And knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law [Rom. 2:17–18].
Religion was no longer a crutch for this man. It caused him to be proud and self-sufficient. Light created an added responsibility, which brought a greater condemnation. The Jew had ten advantages over the Gentiles, which are listed in these verses. The first five are what he was: (1) Bears the name Jew; (2) rests upon the Law; (3) boasts in God; (4) knows the will of God; (5) proves the things which are more excellent, being instructed out of the Law.


And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,

An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law [Rom. 2:19–20].

The last five personal privileges of the Jew are what he did: (1) Art persuaded that thou thyself art a guide of the blind; (2) a light of them that are in darkness; (3) a corrector of the thoughtless or immature; (4) a teacher of babes or proselytes; and (5) having in the law the outward form of knowledge and truth.
Now here is Paul’s question:


Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?

Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? [Rom. 2:21–22].

Paul mentions three common sins: (1) immorality—sin against others; (2) sensuality—sin against self; and (3) idolatry—sin against God.
“Teachest thou not thyself?” In other words, “Do you practice what you preach?” For many of us our preaching is better than our living.
“Dost thou commit sacrilege?”—or “Do you rob temples?” When the Jew was in Babylonian captivity, he took “the gold cure,” and, as far as I can tell, he was never given to idolatry after that. However, he didn’t mind handling merchandise that came from heathen temples and selling it in his business. Today there are certain Christians who handle merchandise in their business (in order to make money) that they would condemn in their church.
Now the three sins that Paul mentions—immorality, sensuality, and idolatry—he had dealt with in inverse order in chapter 1. Idolatry was the terrible climax for the Jew; he could go no lower than that. I wonder if you and I make a mockery of the person of Christ. Someone has put the question in poetic language:

The gospel is written a chapter a day
By deeds that you do and words that you say.
Men read what you say, whether faithless or true.
Say, what is the gospel according to you?

Now he deals with something that is extremely vital.


For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision [Rom. 2:25].

Circumcision was the badge of the Mosiac system—and that’s all it was. There was no merit in the rite itself. That badge indicated that the man believed the Mosaic Law. Now for them to be transgressors of the Law brought circumcision into disrepute. That which should have been sacred, became profane.
This thought can be applied to our church sacraments. Water baptism is rightly a sacrament of the church, if it is the outward expression of a work of God in the heart. But it is a mockery if the person who is baptized gives no evidence of salvation. This also can be said of church membership. The lives of some church members make membership a mockery.
Listen to Paul as he continues:


Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? [Rom. 2:26].

To use another figure of speech, if my wife loses her wedding ring, that does not mean she becomes unmarried. Marriage is more than a wedding ring, although the ring may be the symbol of it.

And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law? [Rom. 2:27].
Using again the illustration of a wedding ring, to wear a wedding ring speaks of something sacred. But to be unfaithful to that which it stands for makes the wedding ring a disgrace. On one occasion when I was in a motel in another city, I saw a man who was a deacon in a church, sitting at a table, having a very friendly talk with a very beautiful young lady who was not his wife. The thing that impressed me was that as his hand hung over the side of the table, the light was shining on his wedding ring, making it stand out. I thought, what a mockery! When the man saw me, he was embarrassed, of course. But, you see, the wedding ring was meaningless.
The point Paul is making here is that circumcision should stand for something.


But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God [Rom. 2:29].

The Mosaic Law had already stated that circumcision was of the heart. Listen to Moses in Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.”

CHAPTER 3

Theme: Availability of a righteousness from God


What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? [Rom. 3:1].


“Profit” means that which is surplus, that which is excess, and the Question has to do with the outward badge of God’s special covenant with the Jews, circumcision.
It looks as if Paul is in danger of erasing a distinction which God has made. The question is, if Jew and Gentile are on the same footing before God, what then is the supposed advantage of the Jew and what good is circumcision?
Let me give you a statement of Dr. James Stifler: “If circumcision in itself does not give righteousness, if uncircumcision does not preclude it, what profit was there ever in it? A distinction that God made among men seems, after all, not to be one.” Now, this is the same question, I think, that we hear today. I get it because the gospel that I preach says that church membership has no advantage for salvation, that any rite or ritual you go through is meaningless as far as salvation is concerned. God has the world shut up to a cross. He’s not asking you to join anything or do anything. What God is asking the lost sinner to do is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he shall be saved. And until a person answers that question, then God hasn’t anything else to say to him. After he’s saved, then God probably will talk to him about church membership and about baptism. We hear people say today, “Well, doesn’t my church, my creed, my membership, my baptism help toward my salvation?” The answer is no, it doesn’t help you toward salvation. But if you are saved, then these things are a badge, and these things are a means of communicating to the world who you are. But if you’re not measuring up, then your church membership and your baptism are a disgrace; and instead of being sacred they become profane.
Now Paul is going to answer the question: What advantage then did the Jews have?

Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God [Rom. 3:2].
Paul is saying, “Yes, the Jew has an advantage.” The advantage, however, created a responsibility. We need to note carefully the advantage the Jew had because there is a great deal of confusion in this area. I know men who are teaching in theological seminaries who make no distinction between Judaism in the Old Testament and the church in the New Testament. Paul is making it clear that God not only gave to the nation Israel the oracles of God—they were the ones who communicated the Word of God—but in the Word of God was something special for them. God is not through with the nation Israel. I always test a theologian at that particular point: Does God have a future for Israel? My friend, if God doesn’t have a future for Israel, I don’t think He has a future for you either or for that theological professor. All God’s promises are in the same Word of God. God is going to make good John 3:16, and God is also going to make good His covenant with Abraham in chapter 12 of Genesis. Listen again to Dr. Stifler as he is speaking of Israel: “His advantage was not that God sowed Judaism and the world reaped Christianity. That blots out Judaism. It was first of all ‘that unto them were committed to the oracles of God,’ not that they were made a mere Bible depositary, but that God gave them, as Jews, promises, not yet fulfilled, and peculiarly their own. The Old Testament, the record of its oracles, contains not one promise either of or to the church as an organization. It does not predict a church; it foreshadows a kingdom in which the Jew shall be head and not lose his national distinction as he does in the church.” Now, friend, I think that’s one of the most important and profound statements that has been made concerning the Word of God. At this point “great” theologians differ. Dr. Adolph Saphir was a converted Jew, and he made this tremendous, pointed statement: “The view that is so prevalent, that Israel is a shadow of the church, and now that the type is fulfilled vanishes from our horizon, is altogether unscriptural. Israel is not the shadow fulfilled and absorbed in the church, but the basis on which the church rests.” Friend, that is an important comment, and that’s what Paul is saying here—that the Jew has a great advantage. God has a future for him, and his faithlessness will not destroy God’s promise. Listen to Paul:


For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? [Rom. 3:3].

“If some were without faith” is a better translation. Shall their lack of faith cancel out the faithfulness of God? This is another objection that would be put up, and Paul meets this by going back to the first. Now if the advantage of the Jew did not serve the intended purpose, does this not mean God’s faithfulness to His people is annulled? The Jew failed; doesn’t that mean God failed? No. God’s promise to send Israel the Redeemer was not defeated by their willful disobedience and rejection. All His promises for the future of the nation will be fulfilled to His glory in spite of their unbelief. Now, my friend, you may not like that, but I personally thank God that His promises to me do not depend on my faithfulness. If it had depended on me, I would have been lost long ago. Thank God for His faithfulness!


God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged [Rom. 3:4].

In other words, the unbeliever that raises this question is a liar and God is going to make him out to be a liar someday. Why? Because the faithfulness of God is true and cannot be changed. How important that is! John says, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son” (1 John 5:10). How bad is it not to believe that God gave His Son to die for you? Well, I’ll tell you how bad it is: You make God a liar. That’s what you do when you reject His Son.


But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) [Rom. 3:5].

By some subtle sophistry it might be argued that since the nation’s unbelief merely puts in contrast the faithfulness of God, God is not just to punish that which brings greater glory to Himself. A better translation would be: “Is God unjust who visiteth with wrath by judging” these people? Now this is the severest criticism that Paul faced in preaching the gospel of the grace of God. If God uses sin to get glory to Himself, then He should not punish the sinner. This, of course, was used by some as an excuse for sinning. We’ll find this again in Romans 6:1 and will deal with it then. Paul asks the question in such a way in the Greek as to demand a negative answer. God is not unjust. He says, “I speak as a man.” That doesn’t mean that Paul is not writing this particular passage by inspiration, but rather that he is presenting this question from the finite and human standpoint.
Now, the whole point is this: if my unrighteousness reveals the marvelous, wonderfully infinite faithfulness of God in the grace of God, then has God a right to judge me? That’s what Paul is asking here. This makes it very clear that the unsaved world in Paul’s day understood that Paul was preaching salvation by the grace of God. How wonderful!


God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? [Rom. 3:6].

If God would have no right to judge us because our sin merely reveals the grace of God, then God would have no right to judge any person, you see, because they would reveal something of the common grace of God.
Paul’s answer is again an emphatic and categorical denial of any such premise that God is unjust. The argument here is that if this particular sin merely enhances the glory of God and the grace of God, then all sin would do the same. Therefore, God would not be able to judge the world. He would abdicate His throne as Judge of all the earth. This specious argument would say that Hitler ought not to be judged. And whoever you are—even if you are an unbeliever—you do believe that some people ought to be judged. Now, you may not think that you ought to be, but you believe somebody ought to be judged. Everyone believes that. We have that innate sense within us today, and God has put it there.


For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? [Rom. 3:7].

The lie here means moral falsehood. Each individual could claim exemption from the judgment of God because his sin had advanced the glory of God.


And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just [Rom. 3:8].

In this verse Paul drives his argument to its logical, yet untenable conclusion. This is called an argumentum ad absurdum. If sin magnifies the glory of God, then the more sin the more glory. Some had falsely accused Paul of teaching this absurdity. It was ridiculous, for it was Paul who insisted that God must judge sin. As surely as there is sin there must be judgment. You see, this facetious type of argument which Paul has met here makes a Robespierre a saint in the name of utilitarianism. It’s the old bromide that the end justifies the means.
Now we come to this section where we have the accusation of “guilty” by God against mankind. Paul is going to conclude this section on sin by bringing mankind up before the Judge of all the earth. And the accusation of “guilty” is made by God against all mankind—both Jew and Gentile, black and white, male and female, rich and poor. It doesn’t make any difference who we are; if we belong to the human race, you and I stand guilty before God. And then Paul is going to take us to God’s clinic. It’s a real spiritual clinic, and the Great Physician is going to look at us. We see that there are fourteen different charges made; six of them before the Judge and the other eight before the Great Physician who says we’re sick. In fact, we’re sick nigh unto death. To tell the truth, we are dead in trespasses and sin. That is our condition.


What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin [Rom. 3:9].

Now Paul doesn’t mean “proved” here. That word is a little too strong; it does not have quite that shade of meaning, because Paul is not trying to prove man a sinner. Rather, he is showing that God judges sin. He assumes man is a sinner, and you don’t have to assume it—it is evident. He is merely stating that which is very obvious today. The better word is charged—“for we have before charged both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.” He is just stating the case, by the way, that it doesn’t make any difference who we are today—high or low, rich or poor, good or bad—we’re all under sin.
Now it’s very important to understand what it means to be “under sin.” Man is a sinner four different ways. God is giving man four strikes (in baseball you get only three). (1) Man is a sinner by act. (2) Man is a sinner by nature. Sinning does not make a sinner; we sin because we are sinners. (3) Man is a sinner by imputation. We’ll see that later in this epistle. (4) The estate of man is under sin. We all are under sin—the entire human family.
This is the first charge:


As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one [Rom. 3:10].

This should read, “It is written that there is none righteous, no, not one,” because it is a free rendering of Psalm 14:1 where David makes the positive statement that “none … doeth good.” “Doeth good” and righteousness are the same.
What does it mean to be righteous? Well, it means to be right. Right with whom? We are to be right with God. And if we are going to be right with God, it is a little different from being right with your fellow man. When we have differences with friends, we may or may not be to blame, but we have to reach some sort of compromise. But if we are going to be right with God, we are going to play according to His rules. Actually, you can’t play games with Him. You see, God’s salvation is a take it or leave it proposition. God is not forcing anybody to take His salvation. You don’t have to be saved. You can turn it down. God says, “This is My universe. You’re living on My little world, using My sunshine and My water and My air, and I have worked out a plan of salvation that is true to My character and My nature. My plan and My program is the one that’s going to be carried out. You’re a sinner, and I want to save you because I love you. Now here it is. Take it or leave it.” That’s what God is saying to a lost world. This is what He is saying to you. Have you accepted it? Well, I want you to know that I have accepted it. To be right with God, then, means to accept His salvation.
When I was in school, I had a professor of sociology who really enjoyed batting that little ball around, saying, “Who is right? Who is going to make the rules?” Well, I know one thing: that professor is not going to make the rules. I know something else: I am not going to make the rules, and you are not going to make the rules either. God makes the rules. Take it or leave it. That is God’s plan; that is God’s program. There is none who is righteous, none right with God. But He has worked out a plan. No one has done good according to God’s standard, according to God’s method. That is the Judge’s first charge.
The second charge is this:


There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God [Rom. 3:11].

In other words, there is none who acts on the knowledge that he has. No one is the person he would like to be.
The third charge:
“There is none that seeketh after God.” God is not concealed today. God is not playing hide and seek with man. He has revealed Himself. You remember that Paul told the Athenians, the philosophers on Mars’ Hill: “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). He is not winking at sin today. God is out in the open telling man that he is a sinner and offering him salvation. And His salvation is clear, you see. That’s what He is saying here. And there is none that seeks after God. The anthologies of religion say man is out looking for God—how fallacious they are! It’s claimed that in the evolutionary process religion is man’s search for God. Well, actually, is religion man’s search for God? No. That’s not what the Bible teaches. Believe me, man hasn’t found out very much about God on his own. He hasn’t advanced very far in that direction, because he’s going the wrong way. He’s going away from God.
Then the fourth charge that He makes is:


They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one [Rom. 3:12].

They’ve detoured. They left the way they knew was right. And primitive tribes have an ancient tradition that way back at one time their forefathers knew the living and true God. My friend, if you are honest, you know that you are not doing what you ought to do. Furthermore, you are not going to do it, although you know what it is. You have gone out of the way. Man has deviated from the way. This is the fourth charge that God makes.
The fifth charge is: “they are together become unprofitable.” The word unprofitable suggests overripe, spoiled fruit. It could be translated, “they have altogether become sour.” I am very fond of fruit, especially the papaya. But when it passes the ripe state and becomes rotten, there is nothing quite as bad as that. Mankind is not lush fruit; he is corrupt fruit. That is what the Judge of all the earth is saying.
The sixth charge: “there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” This is a triple negative. Mankind is like a group of travelers who have gone in the opposite direction from the right one, and not one can help the others. Our Lord said to the religious leaders of His day, “You are blind leaders of the blind” (see Matt. 15:14). That is what the Judge of all the earth says about you and about me and about everyone on the face of the earth.
Now Paul transfers us over to God’s clinic into the hands of the Great Physician. This is a spiritual clinic, and the Great Physician says that we are spiritually sick.

Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips [Rom. 3:13].
When you go to the doctor, what’s the first thing that he says to you? Well, I have to go in for a regular check-up because of the fact that I apparently have cancer in my system, and I report regularly in case of an outbreak. Well, it is a ritual for me to go in, and I sit down in the little room where he does his examination. Do you know the first thing that he says to me? “Open your mouth.” Then he takes a little wooden stick and pushes it around in my mouth, and he looks at my throat. Likewise God, the Lord Jesus, the Great Physician, does that with mankind. Do you know what He says? “Their throat is an open sepulchre.” Have you ever smelled decaying human flesh? When a little girl in Nashville was kidnapped many years ago, the sheriff of the county was a member and a deacon in my church. He called me up and told me they had found the body of a little girl, and they were going out to exhume it. He wanted to know if I wanted to go with them. I got to the place where they had taken the body out—it had been buried several days—and the body was corrupt. Oh, it was terrible! I’ve never been as sick in my life as I was at the odor of corrupt human flesh. I always think of that in connection with this verse.
When God looks down at you, friend, He doesn’t say what a sweet, fine little boy or girl you are. God says you smell like an open grave! Someone, I think it was Mel Trotter, said, “If we could see ourselves as God sees us, we couldn’t even stand ourselves!” Well, that is what Paul is saying here.
And “with their tongues they have used deceit.” That’s number two. And the second thing my doctor says to me (after he looks at my throat) is, “Stick out your tongue!” That’s what the Great Physician says to the human family. “Stick out your tongue.” And when God looks at the tongue of mankind—that means your tongue and mine—do you know what He says? “The poison of asps is under their lips.” There’s a snake house and a place for reptiles in the zoo in San Diego, California, which I have been through several times. As I look-at the vicious fangs of those diamondback rattlers, I think of the poison that is there. Friend, right now, if you go and look in the mirror, you will see a tongue that is far more dangerous than any diamondback rattlesnake. He can’t hurt your reputation at all. He can kill your body, but he can’t hurt your reputation. You have a tongue that you can use to ruin the reputation of someone else. You can ruin the fair name of some woman. You can ruin the reputation of some man. I think today the most vicious thing in some of our churches is the gossip that is carried on. I actually advised someone not too long ago not to join a certain church, because I happen to know that some of the worst gossips in the world are in that church. And I want to tell you they have slaughtered the reputation of many individuals. Do you know who they are? They are the so-called spiritual crowd. I call them the spiritual snobs, because that’s what they are. With their tongues they use deceit, and “the poison of asps [adder’s poison] is under their lips.” Oh, how vicious the human tongue is! How terrible it can be.


Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness [Rom. 3:14].

This is the fourth thing the Great Physician says about man. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud; under his tongue is mischief and vanity. Also he is prone to curse. And if you listen to what is being said today, you know that cursing is in the vocabulary of all men, whether he is a ditch digger or a college professor. They’re better at using profanity than they are at any other language. A man challenged this verse one time when I was a pastor in downtown Los Angeles. He didn’t believe it was true. So I said to him, “Let’s test it. You and I will walk out here to the corner, and the first man who comes by, whoever he is, you punch him in the mouth and see what comes out. I guarantee that it will be as God says.”
Then God says the fifth thing.


Their feet are swift to shed blood [Rom. 3:15].

Isaiah 59:7 gives the unabridged version: “Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.” What a picture this is of mankind—“Their feet are swift to shed blood.”


Destruction and misery are in their ways [Rom. 3:16].

Man leaves desolation and distress behind him. This is included in Isaiah 59:7 which we have quoted.


And the way of peace have they not known [Rom. 3:17].

Man does not know the way of peace. Look about you in the world today. After all these years man is still talking about peace, but he hasn’t found it. Just read your newspaper, my friend; there is no peace in this world.


There is no fear of God before their eyes [Rom. 3:18].

Paul seems to sum up all of man’s sin in this final statement. He has no fear of God at all. Man is living as if God does not exist. Man actually defies God. What a picture this gives of mankind!
Now we come to the final thing Paul has to say about sin. Because there are still those who will say, “Well, we have the Law and we’ll keep the Law. We will hold onto it.”

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God [Rom. 3:19].
Man cannot attain righteousness by the Mosaic Law. It is as if mankind in desperation grabbed for the Law as the proverbial straw when drowning. The Law won’t lift him up. Actually, it does the opposite. To hold onto the Law is like a man jumping out of an airplane, and instead of taking a parachute, he takes a sack of cement with him. Well, believe me, the Law will pull you down. It condemns man. It’s a ministration of death.


Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin [Rom. 3:20].

Now, I challenge any person today who believes that you have to keep the Law to be saved to take this verse and explain it. “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” And “justified” means to be declared righteous, to be saved, to meet God’s standards. You can never do it, my beloved. It’s absolutely impossible for mankind to do. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified.” Then what is the purpose of the Law? “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” Rather than providing a salvation for man, the Law reveals man to be a sinner.
Between verses 20 and 21 there is a “Grand Canyon” division. We move out of the night into the day. Now Paul begins to speak of God’s wonderful salvation. He will talk about justification by faith, which will be explained in the remainder of the chapter.

AVAILABILITY OF A RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM GOD


But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets [Rom. 3:21].


“The righteousness of God” should be a righteousness of God, since the article is absent in the Greek. This “righteousness” is not an attribute of God—He says that He will not share His glory with another—nor is it the righteousness of man. God has already said that “… our righteousnesses are as filthy rags …” (Isa. 64:6), and God is not taking in dirty laundry. Then what righteousness is Paul speaking of? It is the righteousness which God provides. Christ has become our righteousness. “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). Also we are told in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” It is very important for us to recognize that God is the One who provides this righteousness. It’s not something that you and I can work out, but rather it is something that God has provided for us. A righteousness that God demands, God also provides.
This is a righteousness that is apart from the Law. That is, you can’t get it, my friend, by doing something or keeping something—not even God’s law. You can’t keep the Law to begin with. God can’t save you by law for the very simple reason that you can’t measure up to it. God can’t accept imperfection, and you and I cannot provide perfection. Therefore, He cannot save us by law. “Being witnessed by the law and the prophets” means that the Law bore witness to it in that at the very center of the Mosaic system was a tabernacle where bloody sacrifices were offered which pointed to Christ. Also the prophets witnessed to it when they spoke of the coming of Christ, His death and resurrection. For example, Isaiah prophesied, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all…. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53:6, 10).
Both the Law and the prophets witnessed to this righteousness that God would provide in Christ.


Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference [Rom. 3:22].

When I was a young preacher I thought that the grace of God had to go way down to reach the bad sinners but didn’t have to go down so far to reach others who weren’t so bad. But now I know that God’s grace has to go all the way to the bottom to get all of us. Each one of us is completely lost outside of Christ. Either you are absolutely saved in Christ, or you are completely lost outside of Christ. All of us need the righteousness of Christ. There is no difference.
The righteousness of Christ comes to us through our faith in Christ. Great men of the past have given some apt definitions of this righteousness. William Cunningham wrote: “Under law God required righteousness from man. Under grace, He gives righteousness to man. The righteousness of God is that righteousness which God’s righteousness requires Him to require.” That is a deep definition, but it is a good one. The great Dr. Charles Hodge has given this definition: “That righteousness of which God is the author which is of avail before Him, which meets and secures His approval.” Then Dr. Brooks gives this definition: “That righteousness which the Father required, the Son became, and the Holy Spirit convinces of, and faith secures.” Dr. Moorehead writes: “The sum total of all that God commands, demands, approves, and Himself provides.” I don’t believe it can be said any better than the way these men have said it.
Now this righteousness, as we have seen, is secured by faith, not by works. Let’s look at these verses together.


Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God [Rom. 3:22–23].

Let me give you a free rendering of these verses: Even the righteousness from God which is obtained by faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon all that believe: for there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory [approval] of God. That this righteousness is by faith, not by works, the Lord Jesus made clear when they asked Him, “… What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said unto them, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:28–29). And the important thing about securing this righteousness of God is not that there’s any merit in your faith or that there’s merit in just believing. Because, actually, faith is not a work on your part. The object of faith is the important thing. Spurgeon put it like this: “It’s not thy hope in Christ which saves you. It’s Christ. It’s not thy joy in Christ that saves you. It is Christ. And it is not thy faith in Christ that saves you, though that be the instrument, it is Christ’s blood and merit.” Now, friend, that’s very important to nail in our thinking.
And that righteousness is like a garment. It is available to all, but it only comes upon all that believe. And then he says that it’s needed by everyone: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Now that doesn’t mean that there is not a difference in sinners. Let me illustrate this with a very homely illustration. Let’s suppose that we folk here in California play a game called “Jumping to Catalina.” Catalina Island is out in the Pacific Ocean at least fifteen or twenty miles from the shore of California. We will go down to the pier in Santa Monica, and we will take a big running jump, and we’ll see who can jump to Catalina. Somebody’s going to say, “That’s an impossible jump!” Frankly, no one has jumped it, but it’s a lot of fun playing the game. Suppose you and I play the game. You may be able to jump farther than I can jump, but you will miss Catalina. And the fellow who jumps the farthest gets the wettest and has to swim farther back to shore. Of course, nobody could jump to Catalina. Some are better than others, but it’s rather childish to play a game like that and say, “I jumped farther than you did. I’m better than you are, and I’m better than half the church members.” Suppose you are—and you may well be—but what difference does that make? You have not come up to the glory of God.


Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus [Rom. 3:24].

“Freely” is the Greek word doµrean, translated in John 15:25 “without a cause.” Our Lord Jesus said that they hated Him freely, without a cause—there was no basis for it. Now Paul is saying, “Being justified freely—without a cause.” There is no explanation in us. God doesn’t say, “Oh, they are such wonderful people, I’ll have to do something for them!” As we have seen before, there is nothing in us that would call out the grace of God, other than our great need. We are justified without a cause. It is by His grace, which means that there is no merit on our part. Grace is unmerited favor; it is love in action.
It is “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Redemption is always connected with the grace of God. The reason that God can save you and me is that Christ redeemed us, He paid a price. He died upon a cross to make it available to us. You see, justification by faith is actually more than subtraction of our sins—that is, forgiveness. It is the addition of the righteousness of Christ. In other words, we are not merely restored to Adam’s former position, but now we are placed in Christ where we shall be throughout the endless ages of eternity the sons of God!
John Bunyan was driven almost to distraction because he realized that he was such a great sinner with no righteousness of his own. And he said at that time, “When God showed me John Bunyan as God saw John Bunyan, I no longer confessed I was a sinner, but I confessed that I was sin from the crown of my head to the sole of my feet. I was full of sin.” And Bunyan struggled with the problem of how he could stand in God’s presence even with his sins forgiven. Where could he gain a standing before God? And so, walking through the cornfields one night, as he wrestled with this problem, the words of Paul (who was another great sinner, who called himself the chief of sinners) came to him, and his burden rolled off his shoulders. The word from Paul was Philippians 3:9: “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” And when you read Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, you’re reading actually the story of Bunyan’s life. And you remember, when Pilgrim came with that great burden on his shoulders through the Slough of Despond, he didn’t know what to do until finally he came to the cross, and there the burden rolled off, and he trusted Christ as his Savior.
“By his grace” is the way God saves us. This is the fountain from which flow down the living waters of God in this age of grace. And so, because of what God has done—sending His Son to die—God is able to save by grace. And Paul in Ephesians 2:4–5 says, “But God, who is rich in mercy [that means He has plenty of it], for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;).” And Dr. Newell said of that grace, “The grace of God is infinite love operating by an infinite means—the sacrifice of Christ; and an infinite freedom, unhindered, now, by the temporary restrictions of the law.” Today a holy God is free to reach down to meet your needs. How wonderful it is to know a holy God is free to save those who will trust Christ. Dr. Newell again said, “Everything connected with God’s salvation is glad in bestowment, infinite in extent, and unchangeable in its character.” And it’s all available, and only available, in Christ Jesus. He alone could pay the price. As Peter put it to the nation Israel, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).


Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus [Rom. 3:25–26].

Notice it is “faith in his blood.” That blood speaks of His life—“… without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). And I tell you, when you put a knife in the body of a man and the blood pours out, that man is a dead man because “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” And the life of Jesus Christ was given. That blood is a very precious thing according to Simon Peter.
Now, these two verses are filled with words that are jawbreakers: propitiation, righteousness, remission. Although they are difficult words, don’t be too frightened of them, because when we boil them down to our size, we find that in these two verses we have what Calvin called the very marrow of theology. Calvin also wrote: “There is not probably in the whole Bible a passage which sets forth more profoundly the righteousness of God in Christ.”
“God hath set forth”—God is the sole architect of salvation, and He is the One today who is able to save. You and I cannot save; no religion can save; no church can save. Paul said to the Corinthians, “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ …” (2 Cor. 5:18). He did it. Now, He is giving to us the ministry of reconciliation, and so all that the holy God is asking you and me to do today is to be reconciled to Him. You don’t have to do anything to soften God’s heart. I have a friend who was an evangelist for years, and he always liked to get people to cry. I used to ask him how many tears you’d have to shed to soften God’s heart. “Oh,” he said, “don’t be ridiculous.” I told him, “I’m not being ridiculous. You are. You say you’ve got to come down to the altar and shed some tears.” My friend, God’s heart is already soft. All you have to do is come. He is reconciled to you. He says to you, “Be ye reconciled to God.” Christ exhibited or displayed.
“To be a propitiation” points back to the time over nineteen hundred years ago when Christ was set forth as the Savior. You will recall that the veil of the temple hid the mercy seat and only the high priest could go in past that veil. But today Christ has been set before us as the mercy seat. Speaking of the mercy seat, the writer of Hebrews says, “And over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercyseat …” (Heb. 9:5)—the Greek word for mercy seat, hilasterion, is the same word translated “propitiation.” Christ has been set forth as the mercy seat. You recall that the poor publican cried out, because he needed a mercy seat, “… God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13), which literally is, “God, if there were only a mercy seat for me, a poor publican, to come to!” You see, when a Jew became a publican, he cut himself off from the temple and from the mercy seat that was there. Paul is saying that now there is on display a mercy seat—God hath set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. It is wonderful to know that we have a holy God who in joy and in satisfaction and delight can hold out to the world today a mercy seat.
And God doesn’t reluctantly save you. If you come, He saves you wholeheartedly, abundantly. Some folk tell me that after I am saved I still have to search and pray and tarry for something more. My friend, when I came to Jesus, I got everything (see Eph. 1:3). Oh, how good He was! He didn’t hold back anything. And He says to come, He can accept you. “… him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). Actually, you and I were shut out from a holy God. But the way now has been opened up for us by His blood.
“To declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past.” That doesn’t mean your sins and my sins of the past; it means the sins of those who lived before the cross. You see, back in the Old Testament, they brought a little lamb. And I’m sure you don’t take a little lamb to church to sacrifice. Today it would be sinful to do that. But back then, before Christ came, it was required; the Law required it. Now, that little lamb pointed to the coming of Christ. No one back in those days believed that the little lamb could take away sins. I don’t think any of them did. Suppose you had been there when Abel brought a little lamb to God, “Abel, do you think this little lamb is going to take away your sin?” He would have told you no. And you would have said, “Then why did you bring it?” His answer would have been, “God required it. God commanded us to bring it.” Hebrews 11:4 tells us “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain….” In other words, he did it by revelation, because “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). The only way Abel could have brought that sacrifice by faith was for God to have told him to bring it. And that is what God did.
You might have said to Abel, “Specifically what do you think God has in mind?” And I think he would have said this, “Well, God has told my mother that there’s coming a Savior. We don’t know when, but until He comes, we’re to do this because we’re to come by faith.” And so the “sins that are past” means that up to the time when Christ died, God saved on credit. God did not save Abraham because he brought a sacrifice. God never saved any of them because they brought a sacrifice. A sacrifice pointed to Christ. When Christ came, He paid for all the sins of the past and also for the sins this side of the cross.
“To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” On this side of the cross we don’t bring a sacrifice, but we are to trust in Christ and His blood.
Now Paul raises a question:


Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith [Rom. 3:27].

If God is saving by faith in Christ and not by your merit, your works, then where is boasting? What is it that you and I have to crow about? We can’t even boast of the fact that we’re fundamental in doctrine. We have nothing to glory in today. Paul asks, “Where is boasting then?” And he answers the question he raises.
“It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.” The word law in the first instance is not restricted to the Old Testament Law but means the principle of law—any law, anything that you think you can do. The second reference to law excludes the Old Testament Law and means simply a rule or principle of faith. In other words, God has the human race not on the merit system, but on the basis of simply believing what He has done for us. Therefore, it excludes boasting.


Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law [Rom. 3:28].

This is not a conclusion that Paul is coming to or even a summing up of what he has said. Rather, he is giving an explanation of why boasting is excluded. Why is boasting excluded? Man is justified by faith.
Now Paul not only drives the nail in, he turns the board over and clinches it. Listen to him:

Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also [Rom. 3:29].
In other words, does God belong to the Jews alone and not also to the Gentiles? And Paul says, “Yes, to the Gentiles also.” Now, listen to this. This is a very cogent argument. Paul says, “If justification is by the law, then God does belong to the Jews. But if justification is by faith, then He is the God of both Jews and Gentiles.” Now, notice the logic of this. If the Jew persisted in this position, then there must be two Gods—one for the Jews, one for the Gentiles. But the Jew would not allow this. He was a monotheist, that is, he believed in one God. Probably the greatest statement that ever was given to the nation Israel was Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: Jehovah, our Elohim is one Jehovah” (literal translation mine). That was the clarion message He gave in the pagan world before Christ came.


Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith [Rom. 3:30].

In other words, there’s only one God. And in the Old Testament, He gave man the Law. Man failed. God didn’t save them by their keeping the Law; salvation was always by the sacrifice which man brought in faith, pointing to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.


Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law [Rom. 3:31].

The reference to the Law, I think, brings in another meaning of this word. It is not restricted to the Mosaic system here. Neither does it refer to just any law. Rather, it refers to the entire Old Testament revelation. “Faith” excluded the works of the Law. But did it abrogate the entire Old Testament revelation? Of course not! Paul will demonstrate in the next chapter by Old Testament illustrations of two men, Abraham and David, that it did not exclude that. These two key men, outstanding men, were saved, not by law but by faith. To begin with, Abraham was born and lived and died four hundred years before the Law was ever given. Abraham did not live on the basis of the Mosaic Law since it was not yet given in his day. God saved him on a different basis, which is by faith. And somebody says, “Well, then what about David?” Now, very honestly, do you think David could have been saved by keeping the Law? Of course he couldn’t. The Old Testament made it very clear that David broke the Law. And yet God saved him. How? Well, He saved him by faith. David trusted God and believed God. Even in his sin, he came in confession to God. God accepted him and saved him by faith.
Today, my friend, when you and I will take the position that we’re sinners and come to God and trust Christ as our Savior—regardless of who we are, where we are, how we are or when we are—God will save us. For God today has put man on one basis and one basis alone. His question is, what will you do with My Son who died for you on the cross?

CHAPTER 4

Theme: Abraham; David; Abraham justified by faith

In this great section of justification by faith, we have seen the doctrine. Paul has vividly stated that man is a sinner. Then he revealed that God provides a righteousness for sinners, and justification by faith has been explained. Now he will illustrate this truth with two men out of the Old Testament: Abraham and David.
In Paul’s day Abraham and David were probably held in higher esteem by the nation Israel than any other two whose lives are recorded in the Old Testament. Abraham was the founder of the Hebrew race, and David was their greatest king. Paul uses these two Old Testament worthies as illustrations to establish his statement in chapter 3 that there is concord and agreement between the Law and the gospel. Although they represent two diametrically opposed systems, neither contradicts nor conflicts with the other. And they are not mutually exclusive. Even under the Law and before the Law, faith was God’s sole requirement. Abraham, before the Law, was justified by faith. And David, under the Law, sang of justification by faith. Paul is not presenting some strange new doctrine which cancels out the Old Testament and leaves the Jew afloat on the sea of life holding onto an anchor rather than being in a lifeboat. Paul is showing that Abraham and David are in the same lifeboat, which he is offering his own people in his day, labeled “justification by faith.” The Law was a pedagogue—it took the man under Law by the hand to lead him to the Lord Jesus Christ.

ABRAHAM


Now we see in the first five verses that Abraham was justified by faith.


What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? [Rom. 4:1].

Let’s rearrange the modifiers and phrases to help us follow the thought of Paul: Therefore, what shall we say that Abraham, our first father, has found according to the flesh, that is, by natural human effort? The therefore that opens this chapter connects this argument with what Paul has been talking about back in the third chapter. The gospel excludes boasting and establishes the Law, as we have seen. Abraham and David confirm Paul in this thesis.
Paul uses the idiomatic phrase “What shall we say?” here and in the other argumentative portions of this epistle. In the first division, Paul did not attempt to prove or argue that man is a sinner. For this reason we did not find this phrase there. Also in the last section of this epistle, which is practical, it is entirely omitted.
“Abraham, our first father” reveals that the nation Israel began with Abraham. “First father,” I think, is a peculiar expression. It reveals the importance attached to Abraham, who was first chronologically and also first in importance. Many years ago when I was a pastor in Nashville, several friends that I had known before I studied for the ministry—they were Jewish friends—invited me to come up one evening to speak to a group in the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. So I spoke to them on the glories of the Mosaic Law. I was amazed to find that they reckoned their ancestry from Abraham—they never went past Abraham. Quite a few of their questions revealed that, and finally I asked them some questions. I asked, “Don’t you count Noah or Adam in the line?” These young Jewish friends laughed and said, “No, we stop with Abraham. He’s our first father.”
“Pertaining to the flesh” could modify Abraham, or it could modify the verb has found. What has he found according to the flesh? Abraham has found that Abraham’s works according to the flesh did not produce boasting but produced shame and confusion. That was Abraham’s works. He had nothing to boast of. Oh, don’t misunderstand; I think Abraham was a great man, and especially in that matter of Lot. He wouldn’t let the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah reward him. But in another section Abraham didn’t believe God, and he ran down to Egypt. This matter of that little Egyptian maid that he got and the son that came from her, these are things that are not to be boasted of by Abraham.
Now notice how Paul develops this.


For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God [Rom. 4:2].

If Abraham were justified (declared to be righteous) by works—that is, the works of the flesh “he hath whereof to glory,” but not before God. He can glory in self, but he cannot glory before God. It was assumed that Abraham had good works that counted before God. And the fact of the matter is that Abraham had many good works. But the startling thing was to discover that these good works were not the ground of salvation but were the result of his salvation and the result of being justified by faith. You see, James and Paul did not contradict each other when James said, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” (James 2:21). The works that James described are not the works of the flesh under the Law, because Abraham wasn’t under the Law. They were works of faith. Abraham believed God, and he offered up Isaac. But did he actually do it? No, God stopped him and would not let him go through with it. Why? Because it was wrong. You see, Paul and James quote the same verse: Abraham believed God, and He counted it unto him for righteousness (cf. Gen. 15:6; James 2:23; Rom. 4:3). But James goes to the end of Abraham’s life, to the time that he offered up Isaac. Abraham stood on the same ground on which the weakest sinner stands. Granted that he did have works in which to boast, but he could never boast before God, because God does not accept the works of the flesh. The works of the flesh cannot stand before His holiness, and certainly Abraham’s works were tinctured.

For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness [Rom. 4:3].
Paul appeals to the Scripture as final authority. He even personifies it here—the Scripture is God speaking. What does the Scripture say? There is no other authority to which he can appeal. It was Dr. Benjamin Warfield who made this statement: “The Bible is the Word of God in such a way that whatever the Bible says God says.”
How I wish that more men who claim to be evangelical really believed the Word of God—that it is the Word of God, that it is God speaking. Paul quotes from the Old Testament directly about sixty times in this epistle. This quotation is, of course, from Genesis 15:6: “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” Paul is saying, “Hear what the Scripture says; God is speaking to you in His Word.” How tremendous this is.
This promise was given to Abraham at a time when he raised a question with God: “… what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless …?” (Gen. 15:2). God gave him no assurance other than a confirmation of the promise that his seed would be like the stars. In other words, Abraham simply believed God. He took the naked Word of God at face value, and he rested in it. Newell puts it like this: “There was no honor, no merit, in Abraham believing the faithful God, who cannot lie. The honor was God’s. When Abraham believed God, he did the one thing that a man can do without doing anything! God made the statement, the promise, and God undertook to fulfill it. Abraham believed in his heart that God told the truth. There was no effort here. Abraham’s faith was not an act, but an attitude. His heart was turned completely away from himself to God and His promise. This left God free to fulfill that promise. Faith was neither a meritorious act by Abraham, nor a change of character or nature in Abraham; he simply believed God would accomplish what He had promised: ‘In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed’ (Gen. 12:3).” How wonderful! “Counted unto him for righteousness.” God counted, reckoned, it to him. God put it to Abraham’s account. He imputed it over to him for righteousness. It was not righteousness, but that is how God reckoned it.


Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness [Rom. 4:4–5].

It is a general rule that a workman is paid wages for the services that he renders. A man works for so much an hour, or he is paid so much for a particular job. Obviously Abraham was not a workman, for he did not earn what he received. His salvation was received on the only other basis, and that was undeserved favor—by the grace of God—and he believed God. “But to him that worketh not”—that is, there is nothing that you can do that will merit salvation. But you believe on Him, that is, on God, who declares the ungodly righteous. And the only kind of people God is saving are unrighteous people. Somebody says, “You mean that He doesn’t save good people?” Well, do you want to name one? God will save any man who is good. But Scripture, as we’ve already seen, says, “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). This is according to God’s standard, not according to my little standard or your standard. If you want to name somebody who is good, you will make God out a liar. Are you prepared to do that? And, of course, you would have to prove your point.
“His faith is counted for righteousness.” Faith is the only condition. God accepts faith in lieu of works. There is no merit in faith, but it is the only way of receiving that which God freely offers. Faith honors God and secures righteousness for man. God put down righteousness in Abraham’s account to his credit. His faith counted for what it was not—a righteousness from God. This is important to see.

DAVID


Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works [Rom. 4:6].


David lived under the Law—Abraham did not because no law had been given during his lifetime. The Mosaic system didn’t come along until four hundred years later. However, although David lived under the Law, David could never be saved under the Law. And therefore David described the blessedness that God reckons righteousness without works—because David had no works. The works that he had were evil. And therefore righteousness must be totally apart and separate from works. Righteousness must come on an entirely different principle.

Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered [Rom. 4:7].
This is a direct quotation from Psalm 32, verses 1 and 2. And this is one of the great penitential psalms of David—Psalm 51 is the other one. These verses are the outcome of David’s great sin and his confession and acceptance which followed.
“Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven.” Are you one of the blessed ones today? Well, I’m glad to be in that company, in that number. “Blessed” expresses, oh, that glorious, wonderful joy of sins forgiven! This is the greatest statement of all, and David knew this by experience.
“Iniquities” is lawlessness. David deliberately broke the law. He didn’t do it ignorantly. He knew what he did, and he was forgiven.
“Are forgiven” refers to a definite and complete act of remission. A hard-boiled judge may under certain circumstances remit sins. But this speaks of the tenderness of God by taking the sinner into His arms of love and receiving him with affection. His sins are covered. How? Because Jesus Christ died and shed His blood, my friend.


Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin [Rom. 4:8].

In other words, joyful is the man whose sin the Lord will not put to his account. David was a great sinner. And God put away his sin, as Nathan informed him. Nathan said to David, “… The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die” (2 Sam. 12:13). Nevertheless, David was chastened. David set his own penalty when he responded to Nathan’s account of the rich man who took the poor man’s ewe lamb: “And he shall restore the lamb fourfold …” (2 Sam. 12:6). Four of David’s children were killed—the child of Bathsheba, Amnon his firstborn, Absalom, and Adonijah. Sorrow plagued David all the days of his life. David’s guilt was not put on his account, though—Another bore it for him. Little wonder that he could say, “Joyful is the man whose sin the Lord will in no wise put to his account.”

ABRAHAM JUSTIFIED BY FAITH


Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness [Rom. 4:9].

The argument now returns to Abraham to illustrate that justification is universal. Since David has spoken of the joy of the man under law who has been forgiven, the answer of the Jew would be that David belonged to the circumcision and only the circumcision could expect this joy. For this reason Paul returns to Abraham to show that Abraham was justified before the Law was given and also before he was circumcised.


How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision [Rom. 4:10].

God made the promise to him, and he believed God long before there was any kind of agreement made at all—other than that God said He would do it. Abraham believed the naked Word of God.


And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also:

And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.

For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith [Rom. 4:11–13].

God made that promise to Abraham long before circumcision was introduced. Abraham just believed God; that’s all.


For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect:

Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace [Rom. 4:14–16a].

You see, God saved Abraham by faith alone.
Now notice something else here. Abraham was justified actually by faith in the resurrection.


And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb [Rom. 4:19].

There is no merit in faith itself. You see, there was nothing around Abraham in which he could trust—nothing that he could feel, nothing that he could see,nothing. All he did was believe God. That’s important.

He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God [Rom. 4:20].
He was not double-minded. That’s the whole thought here. He looked away from his circumstances to the promise. He believed the promise, in spite of the fact that the circumstances nullified it. He put confidence in the promise because of the One who gave it, thus giving worship to God. You see, man was created to glorify God, but by disobedience he did the opposite. And, my friend, the only way you can glorify God is to believe Him.


And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform [Rom. 4:21].

“Fully persuaded” means that he was filled brimful. There was no room for doubt.


And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness [Rom. 4:22].

This faith in the resurrection—life from the dead—is what God accepted from Abraham in lieu of his own righteousness, which he did not have. God declared Abraham righteous for his faith in the promise of God to raise up a son out of the tomb of death, that is, the womb of Sarah. God promises eternal life to those who believe that He raised up His own Son from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea, the place of death.


Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;

But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead [Rom. 4:23–24].

The womb of Sarah was a tomb. It was a place of death. But out of that came life. Abraham believed God. And this is what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56).


Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification [Rom. 4:25].

That is faith, not only in the death of Christ, but also in His resurrection. Matthew Henry put it like this: “In Christ’s death He paid our debt; in His resurrection He took out our acquittance.” God justifies those who believe in the death and resurrection of Christ. How wonderful this is! Have you gone that far with God? Do you believe Him?

CHAPTER 5

Theme: Benefits of salvation; sanctification of the saint


As we come to the fifth chapter of Romans, we find Paul answering one of the questions that would naturally arise in the minds of those who had read his epistle to this point. He has told us that we have been saved by the redemption that we have in Christ, the redemption that had been purchased at tremendous price upon the cross. It delivers us from the guilt of sin so that the sin question has been settled. This means that we will not come before God for judgment which will determine our salvation. It means that an eternal home is waiting for those who have trusted Christ. Now the question Paul will answer is: What about the here and now?
I have heard liberal preachers say, “I do not believe in a religion of the hereafter; I believe in a religion of the here and now.” In San Francisco in the early days of the “hippie” movement, I was talking to a young vagrant on a street corner, and he didn’t want to hear about Christianity. He said, “That’s ‘pie in the sky by and by’ religion, and I don’t care for that.” And so I said to this young fellow, “Then you believe in getting your pie here and now and not by and by?” He said, “That’s right.” I told him that it didn’t look to me like he was getting very much pie in the here and now, and he admitted that he wasn’t. So I said, “Well, it is tragic indeed to miss the pie here and now, and miss it hereafter also.”
Paul now is going to show that there are certain benefits that accrue to the believer right here and now when he trusts Christ, when he’s been justified by faith in the redemption that we have in Christ. And actually these are benefits that the world is very much concerned about, and would like to have them.
Many people are spending a great deal of money today trying to attain the things that are the present benefits of every believer. That doesn’t mean that all believers are enjoying them. However, God has them on the table for you, and all you have to do is reach over and take them (see Eph. 1:3).

BENEFITS OF SALVATION

1. Peace


Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ [Rom. 5:1].


“Therefore being justified by faith” refers to the one act of faith the moment we trust Christ.
“We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Bible mentions several kinds of peace. First, there’s world peace. The United Nations has worked for it as the old League of Nations did. They didn’t get anywhere in the past, and they’re not getting anywhere today. As I write this, a great many people believe that if you protest loudly enough you can bring peace to the world by human manipulation or psychological gyrations. Well, my friend, as long as there is sin in the hearts of men, there never will be peace in the world—not until the Prince of Peace comes. Christ will bring peace on this earth. But world peace is not the kind of peace that Paul is talking about here.
Then there is that peace which is known as tranquility of soul. That is the peace to which the Lord Jesus referred when He said to His disciples, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you …” (John 14:27). This is a peace that comes to certain believers who have trusted Christ and who are resting in Him and who are doing His will. I wish I could say that I experience this peace all the time. I do not. I recognize that it is available for every believer today. I suppose I am like most believers in that I have up and down experiences. There are times when this peace floods my soul, and it is wonderful. But there are times when I am under pressure or under tension or when I am weary and this peace somehow eludes me. However, Paul is not referring to the peace of personal tranquility.
Then there is a third kind of peace which Paul mentions to the Philippian believers—“the peace that passeth all understanding” (see Phil. 4:7). Well, since it passes all understanding, I certainly don’t know what it is, and I have a notion that you don’t know either. The peace Paul is talking about, which he lists as the first benefit of salvation, is “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the peace that comes to the soul of one who has trusted Christ as Savior and knows that God no longer has any charge against him, that he is no longer guilty. He knows that God, who had to be against him in the past, is now for him. He knows that he has a salvation that is permanent and eternal. This is the peace that comes because of sins forgiven and because everything is right between you and God. You will notice that Paul mentions again and again that we have peace through the blood of Jesus Christ, which means that everything is all right between our soul and God. That is wonderful peace!
This was explained to me by a wonderful pastor when I was a young boy in my teens. He said that when man sinned in the Garden of Eden, not only did man run away from God—and found himself alienated from the life of God, with no capacity for God and no inclination to turn to Him—but God also had to turn away from man. Then when Christ died on the cross, God turned around, so that now a holy God can say to a lost sinner, “Come.” His arms are outstretched. He says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will rest you” (Matt. 11:28, literal translation mine). This is peace, the rest of redemption.
My friend, God is reconciled. You don’t have to do anything to reconcile Him, as we have seen. A great many people think that you have to shed tears to reconcile God. You don’t need tears to soften the heart of God! You don’t have to do anything. Because Christ died on the cross, God is reconciled today. The message of the gospel is, “Be ye reconciled to God.” The next move is yours. When you accept His salvation, then you experience peace that your sins have been forgiven.
There are a great many people who pillow their heads at night, not knowing what it is to have peace in their hearts. Oh, how many weary souls today are laboring with a guilt complex and would love to go somewhere to have that guilt removed from their souls! A Christian psychologist told me several years ago, “The only place you can have a guilt complex removed is at the cross of Christ.” Peace is the first wonderful benefit that accrues to the child of God.
2. Access

By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God [Rom. 5:2].
“Access” means that you and I have access to God in prayer. It’s wonderful to have someone to go to and talk to about yourself and about your problems and about your friends and your loved ones. Today we as children of God have access to a heavenly Father who will listen to us here and who does answer our prayer. Now, that doesn’t mean He answers it the way you want it answered, but He always hears you, and sometimes He shows He is a good Heavenly Father by saying no. He will answer according to His wisdom, not according to our will. You will notice that we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.
3. Hope
“And rejoice in hope of the glory of God” is the third benefit. The hope that is mentioned here is the hope that the Scriptures hold out. Paul said to a young preacher by the name of Titus, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). (I don’t think looking for the Great Tribulation is very much of a hope. I’m certainly not looking for it because that would be a dread rather than a hope.) To look for the Lord to come and take His church out of this world, that’s a glorious hope, and it will take place at His appearing.
Now, the child of God has this hope. That means he has a future. He has something to look forward to. You and I are living in a day when man has all the comforts of life in an affluent society, but the interesting thing is, he has no future. James Reston, one of the reporters and editors of The New York Times, several years ago made the statement that in Washington there is a feeling that the problems have so mounted and multiplied that man is totally incapable of solving the problems of this world. The Word of God, you know, goes along with that—I suppose that was one time that The New York Times and the Bible agreed. What a dark outlook is being given to us today, and the band can play and you can wave the flag all you want, but you’d better face facts: there’s a cancer in the body politic. One of the last statements that Bernard Shaw made before his death was that he had pinned his hopes on atheism, but he had found that atheism did not solve the problems of the world. Then he made this remarkable comment, “You are looking at an atheist who has lost his faith.” When an atheist loses his faith, he has nothing in the world to hold onto.
The world today is looking for a hope, looking for a future. This explains the restlessness that is throughout the world, and I think it explains a great many of the movements of the present moment. I believe it has driven a great many folk to alcohol and drug addiction and down other avenues that are dead-end streets. Why? Because they’ve lost hope of the future.
Well, the child of God has a hope, a blessed hope. And he knows that all things are going to work together for good (see Rom. 8:28). He knows that nothing is going to separate him from the love of God (see Rom. 8:39). How wonderful that hope is, the blessed hope of the church.
4. Triumph in troubles


And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

And patience, experience; and experience, hope [Rom. 5:3–4].

In other words, we joy in troubles, knowing that trouble works patience—patience doesn’t come automatically—and patience, experience; and experience, hope.
It is quite interesting to see the three words that are associated with trouble. One is joy, another is hope, and the third is patience. God has to work that into us although it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it takes trouble to bring out the best in the believer’s life. The only way God can get fruit out of the life of the believer is by pruning the branches. The world does it differently. If you, as an unbeliever, are in a nice, comfortable situation and have no troubles, then you can have fun, you can also be patient, and you may have a little hope as you go along. But that is not the way it is with the child of God. Actually, trouble produces these fruits in our lives.
5. Love of God


And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us [Rom. 5:5].

“The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts” doesn’t mean our love for God; it means God’s love for us. And this love is made real by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.
6. The Holy Spirit
This is the first time in the Epistle to the Romans that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is mentioned. This is only a reference to Him in this list of present benefits. We will not come to the ministry of the Holy Spirit until we get to chapter 8 of Romans where He is mentioned more than twenty times. Here we are simply told that the Holy Spirit is given to every believer—not to only some believers, but to all believers. Even to the Corinthians Paul wrote, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Cor. 6:19). The Corinthian believers were certainly a carnal lot—in fact, Paul called them babes in Christ—yet the Holy Spirit indwelt them. That’s wonderful! I’m glad that, when I came to Christ, I got everything God offers in salvation.
And it is the Holy Spirit who actualizes, or makes real, the love of God in the hearts of believers—that is, God’s love for us. Today we need to be conscious of the fact that God loves us. How people need to be assured of that in their lives! Only the Spirit of God can make real to us God’s love.
Now notice how Paul explains the love of God.


For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly [Rom. 5:6].

Christ died for the ungodly—not for the good boys and girls, but for ungodly sinners—those who actually were His enemies, who hated Him, to whom He said when they were crucifying Him, “… Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do …” (Luke 23:34). And, friend, you and I were numbered with the ungodly.
A few years ago I talked to a young man who had love written on his cap, on his funny coat, on his trousers, and even on his shoes! I asked him why. He said, “Why, man, God is love.” I agreed with that. Then he said, “God saved me by His love.” I replied, “I disagree with that. God does not save you by His love.”
Now that seems startling to a great many folk even today. But actually, friend, God does not save you by His love. You see, God is more than love; He is holy and He is righteous. God cannot open the back door of heaven and slip sinners in under the cover of darkness, and He can’t let down the bars of heaven and bring sinners in. If He does that, He’s no better than a crooked judge who lets a criminal off. God has to do something for the guilt of sinners. There must be judgment, you see. However, God does love us. Regardless of who you are or what you have done, God loves you. It is wrong to say to children, “If you are mean, Willie, or if you do what is wrong, God won’t love you.” The interesting thing is that God will love little Willie, regardless of what he does. And He loves you. You can’t keep God from loving you. Now you can get to the place that you do not experience the love of God. For instance, you can’t keep the sun from shining, but you can get out of the sunshine. You can put up an umbrella of sin, an umbrella of indifference, an umbrella of stepping out of the will of God, which will keep His love from shining on you. Although all these things will remove you from experiencing God’s love, He still loves you.
As I was talking to this young fellow with love written on his clothing, I asked him to show me a verse in the Bible that said God saves us by love. Of course he didn’t know any. I said, “The Word of God says, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God’ (Eph. 2:8). God saves us by His grace, not by His love. ‘God so loved the world’ that He saved the world? Oh, no—He couldn’t. A holy God has to be true to His character. But He did this: ‘… God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16).”
God has demonstrated His love for you, my friend, in that He gave His Son to die for you. He paid the penalty for your sin, and our holy God now can save you if you come His way. Of course, you’ll have to come His way. There is a mistaken idea today that you can come to Him your way. This isn’t your universe; it’s His universe. You and I don’t make the rules. He makes the rules. And He says that no man comes to Him except through Christ (see John 14:6).
Now notice how he continues.


For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die [Rom. 5:7].

Do you know any folk who would die for you? Could you put upon the fingers of one hand those who would be willing to die for you? By the way, could you put upon one finger those who love you enough to die for you? Well, you certainly could put it upon one finger, because God loved you enough to send His Son to die for you. And if it were necessary, He would appear today to die for you again, if it would take that to save you. He loves you that much.


But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us [Rom. 5:8].

He died for you and me. That is where God revealed His love. And God doesn’t save us by love. He now saves us by grace because the guilt of sin has been removed by the death of Christ, and He can hold out His arms and save you today.
7. Deliverance from wrath


Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him [Rom. 5:9].

The “wrath” mentioned here is what the prophets spoke of: “That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Zeph. 1:15). What is the great day of wrath? It is what the Lord Jesus called the Great Tribulation. And Paul tells believers that we shall be “saved from wrath.” We have been saved from the penalty of sin; He is constantly saving us today from the power of sin; and He is going to save us in the future from the presence of sin. That means that every believer will leave this earth at the Rapture. We will escape that day of wrath, not because we are worthy, but because we have been saved by the grace of God. We have been saved by grace; we live by the grace of God; and ten billion years from today we will still be in heaven by the grace of God. We are saved from wrath through Him—through Christ.


For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life [Rom. 5:10].

You see, He died down here to save us; He lives up yonder to keep us saved.
8. Joy


And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement [Rom. 5:11].

We joy in God! I think this is one of the most wonderful statements we have in Scripture. It means that right now, wherever you are, whatever your problems are, my friend, you can joy, rejoice, in God. Just think of it! You can rejoice that He lives and that He is who He is. You can rejoice because He has provided a salvation for us and is willing to save us sinners and bring us into His presence someday. He has worked out a plan to save us because of His love for us. Isn’t that enough to make you rejoice? Oh, the child of God should have joy in his heart. He doesn’t need to go around smiling like a Cheshire cat, but he certainly ought to have a joyful heart. I love the song, “Let’s Just Praise the Lord.” These are the eight wonderful benefits of salvation. Let’s just praise the Lord!

SANCTIFICATION OF THE SAINT


We have seen the salvation of the sinner; now we are coming to the sanctification of the saint. In salvation we are declared righteous, but God wants to do more than declare a person righteous. Justification does not make a person righteous. It means that before God’s holy court, before the bar of heaven, a lost sinner is now declared righteous, but his heart has not been changed. My friend, if you think God intends to leave a sinner in his sin, you are wrong. God wants to make us the kind of folk we should be. So God also has a plan in salvation whereby He not only declares a sinner righteous, but He is also going to make a sinner righteous. That is, God provides a way that a sinner may grow in grace and become sanctified (set apart) for God.
The remainder of this chapter is labeled potential sanctification. Now let me warn you that you may find this difficult to understand and difficult to accept.
In potential sanctification we have what is known as the federal headship of Adam and Christ.

HEADSHIP OF ADAM


Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned [Rom. 5:12].

Let me give you my own translation of this verse, which may bring out the meaning a little better: “On this account (the plan of salvation for all by one Redeemer) just as through one man sin entered (as a principle) into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread throughout upon all men on the ground of the fact that all sinned.”
Now we need to understand that the sin we’re talking about is the sin of Adam, that first sin of Adam—not his second one or his third one or his fourth one—his first sin of disobedience in the Garden of Eden, which brought death upon all of his offspring.
Now that brings me back to consider something that is very important: You and I are sinners, as we have said, in four different ways. (1) We are sinners because we commit acts of sin. Also, (2) we’re sinners by nature (sin doesn’t make us sinners, but we sin because we have that nature). (3) We are in the state of sin. God has declared the entire human family under sin. (4) Finally, you and I are also sinners by imputation. That is, Adam acted for the human race because he was the head of it.
It is on the basis of the federal headship of Adam that now God is able through the federal headship of Christ to save those who will trust Christ. This is what theologians have labeled the federal headship. Adam and Christ are representatives of the human race. Adam is the natural head of the human race. By the way, I accept that. I saw a bumper sticker that interested me a great deal. It read, “My ancestors were human—sorry about yours.” This lays in the dust the idea that you can be a Christian, believing the Word of God, and also accept the theory of evolution. Adam is the head of the human family. That is what Paul is saying here—he is the natural head. And his one act of disobedience plunged his entire offspring into sin. We are all made sinners by Adam’s sin.
First, let’s see what this does not mean. It does not refer to the fact that we have a sinful nature inherited from Adam. It is true that I got a sinful nature from my father, and he from his father, and on back. Also, I passed on that nature to my child and to my grandchildren. The first grandchild was such a wonderful little fellow, I was beginning to doubt the total depravity of man. But as he began growing up, he began to manifest this depraved nature. Now I have a second grandson, a redheaded boy, and does he have a temper! Now I am convinced again of the total depravity of man. I have seen a manifestation in those two little fellows of a nature they got from their grandmother (I think!). Although you and I do have sinful natures and do pass them on to our offspring, this particular verse does not refer to that fact.
Also, the verse before us that says “all have sinned” does not mean that we are guilty of a sinful act. Of course, we are guilty, but that is not what the verse is talking about.
Now let’s see what it does mean. It does refer to the fact that we are so vitally connected with the first father of the human race that before we even had a human nature, before we had committed a sin, even before we were born, we were sinners in Adam.
Maybe you don’t like that. But God says that that is the way it is. We see it illustrated in Hebrews 7:9, “And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.” That is, long before Levi was even born, he paid tithes to Melchisedec. How could he do it? “For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him” (Heb. 7:10). In just such a way, Adam’s sin was imputed to us. What Adam did, we did. God could put all of us in a Garden of Eden and give us the same test He gave to Adam. Do you think you would do any better with your sinful nature than Adam did without a sinful nature? I don’t think so. We might as well accept the fact that Adam’s one act of disobedience made all of us sinners.
Now let me give you a personal illustration. My grandfather lived in Northern Ireland although he was Scottish. Even in his day they were fighting, and he didn’t like it. So he emigrated to the United States. Now, what my grandfather did, I did. When he left Northern Ireland, I left Northern Ireland. And I thank God he left. I really appreciate what Grandpa did for me! What he did, I did because I was in him. The reason I was born in America is because of what he had done.
In this same way Adam’s sin is imputed to us.
We have already seen that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us by the death of Christ. Christ is the head of a new race, a new redeemed man, and the church is His body, a new creation. The hymn writer put it accurately: “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. She is His new creation by water and the word.” The church is a new creation, a new race. This is what Paul says, “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit…. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:45, 47). Now, there will not be a third Adam, for Christ is the last Adam. There will be the third and fourth and myriads of men because Christ is the second man, but He’s not the second Adam. He is the last Adam. He is the head of a new race. That is something that is preliminary.
As we go through this section, we will notice an expression that is very meaningful. It is “much more.” What Paul is going to say is that we have “much more” in Christ than we lost in Adam. That expression occurred in verse 9, “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” And in verse 10, “Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” There is a great deal of “much more” in this section. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 21–22, I read this, “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Now, death came by Adam. And if you want proof that the first sin of Adam was a representative act, consider why a little infant will die when that little child has not committed a sinful act. Well, that little infant belongs to the race of Adam. In Adam all die. You see, God did not create man to die. God had something better in store for man and does today.
Now, with that thought in mind, let’s move on to verse 13.


(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law [Rom. 5:13].

From Adam to Moses sin was in the world, but at that time sin was not a transgression; it was merely rebellion against God. I think this is the reason God did not exact the death penalty from Cain when he murdered his brother. I cannot think of a deed more dastardly than what he did, but at that time God had not yet said, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exod. 20:13). Actually, God put a mark on Cain to protect him. A little later on you find that one of the sons of Cain, Lamech, tells why he killed a man. He says, “I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold” (Gen. 4:23–24). You see, Lamech had a reason. Also, that generation that was destroyed at the Flood was saturated with sin. They were incurable incorrigibles. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). But not one of them broke the Ten Commandments—because there were no Ten Commandments then. But they were judged because they were sinners. And, friend, that answers the question about the heathen being lost who haven’t heard the gospel. The answer is that all men belong to a lost race. It may be difficult for you and me to accept this fact, but you and I have been born into a lost race. We’re not a lovely people. We are not the product of evolution—onward and upward forever with everything getting better. You and I belong to a lost race, and we need to be redeemed. Even the very thoughtlife of man is alienated from God.
Somebody may say, “Then I think God is obligated to save all of us.” No, He is not. Suppose that you could go down to an old marshy lake covered with scum where there are hundreds of turtles, and you take a turtle out of there. And you teach this turtle to fly. Then this turtle goes back to the lake and says to the other turtles, “Wouldn’t you like to learn to fly?” I think they’d laugh at the turtle. They’d say, “No! we like it down here. We don’t want to learn to fly.” And that is the condition of lost mankind today. People don’t want to be saved. People are lost, alienated from God. Now, that’s a great truth that does not soak into our minds easily, because we have that lost nature. We just love to think that we’re wonderful people. But we are not, my friend.


Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come [Rom. 5:14].

Paul is personifying death. He speaks of the fact that death reigned like a king from Adam to Moses. Although he had not broken the Ten Commandments—because they hadn’t yet been given—man was yet a sinner.
The word death is used in a threefold way in Scripture. There is what is known as physical death. That refers only to the body, and it means a separation of the spirit from the body. This death comes to man because of Adam’s sin. Also, there is spiritual death, which is separation from and rebellion against God. And we inherit this nature from Adam, by the way. We are alienated from God, and we are dead in trespasses and sins (see Eph. 2:1). That is the picture that Scripture presents. Then there is eternal death. That is the third death that Scripture speaks of, and it is eternal separation from God. And, unless man is redeemed, eternal death inevitably follows (see Rev. 21:8).
Adam is here definitely declared to be a type of Christ—“who is the figure” or “he is the type of him who was to come.” That is, Adam is a type of Christ.

HEADSHIP OF CHRIST

But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many [Rom. 5:15].
We have “much more” in Christ. Today we are looking forward to something more wonderful than the Garden of Eden. As the writer of Hebrews tells us, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11:13).


And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification [Rom. 5:16].

Now I recognize that this is a difficult section, and this is one of the most difficult passages. To simplify it, all this section means is this: one transgression plunged the race into sin; and one act of obedience and the death of Christ upon the cross makes it possible for lost man to be saved.


For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ) [Rom. 5:17].

Paul has previously stated (v. 14) that death reigns as king. Death came to the throne by one man who committed only one offense—that is, the original sin, the one act, involved the race. Here Paul presents another kingdom which is superior to the kingdom of death. It is the kingdom of life. It is offered to the subjects of the kingdom of death through the superabundance of grace. Man has only to receive it. The King of the kingdom of life is Jesus Christ. The gift comes through Him.


Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life [Rom. 5:18].

This is the underlying principle of the imputation of sin and the imputation of righteousness. This is the doctrine of the federal headship of the race in Adam and Christ.


For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous [Rom. 5:19].

Here Paul sums up his argument on federal headship: Adam’s one act of disobedience made all sinners—not just possessors of a sin nature, but guilty of the act of sin. Christ’s obedience—His death and resurrection—makes it possible for God to declare righteous the sinner who believes in Him.


Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound [Rom. 5:20].

When God gave the Law, He gave with it a sacrificial system. Then later on Christ came to fulfill that part of it also. In other words, God has given to the human race, a lost race, an opportunity to be delivered from the guilt of sins—not the nature of sin. You and I will have that old sin nature throughout our lives.


That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord [Rom. 5:21].

“As sin hath reigned unto death”—you and I are living in a world where sin reigns. Do you want to know who is king of the earth today? Well, Scripture tells us that Satan is the prince. He is the one who goes up and down this earth seeking whom he may devour (see 1 Pet. 5:8). “Sin hath reigned unto death,” and the cemeteries are still being filled because of that.
“Even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” He is calling out a people—out of a lost race—and He is “teaching turtles to fly” if they want to. However, the turtle nature doesn’t want to fly. Man is alienated from God; he has a sin nature. Now God offers salvation to a lost race.
The claims of God’s righteousness are fully met in the death of Christ. The kingdom is fully and firmly established on the cross of Christ. All other ground is sinking sand. The believing sinner now has eternal life by being united to the last Adam, the raised and glorified Savior. This makes possible the sanctification of the saved sinner, which is the theme of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 6

Theme: Positional sanctification; practical sanctification


We discovered in chapter 5 that sin has come through the headship of Adam and that sanctification comes through the headship of Christ. Because of the natural headship of Adam, sin was imputed to the human family. But there is another head of the human family, and that is Christ. He brings life and righteousness. He removes the guilt of sin from us. And on that basis, He can move into the lives of those who trust in Him and begin to make them righteous. That is, He can begin to make them good.
Now here in chapter 6 we begin with what I have labeled “positional sanctification.”
Let me say a word about this matter of sanctification. There is a difference between justification and sanctification. These are two words from the Bible, my friend, that you ought to cozy up to and get acquainted with. There is a difference between merely being saved from sin and being made the type of folk we should be because we are separated unto God.
Identification with Christ for justification is also the grounds of our sanctification. We are in Christ. These are two different subjects, but they are not mutually exclusive. Justification is the foundation on which all the superstructure of sanctification rests.
Now let me put it like this: justification is an act; sanctification is a work. Justification took place the moment you trusted Christ—you were declared righteous; the guilt was removed. Then God began a work in you that will continue throughout your life. I believe in instantaneous salvation, but sanctification is a lifelong process. In other words, justification is the means; sanctification is the end. Justification is for us; sanctification is in us. Justification declares the sinner righteous; sanctification makes the sinner righteous. Justification removes the guilt and penalty of sin; sanctification removes the growth and the power of sin.
God is both an exterior and interior decorator. He is an exterior decorator in that He enables us to stand before Him because He has paid the penalty and removed the guilt of sin from us. But He is also an interior decorator. He moves into our hearts and lives by the power of the Holy Spirit to make us the kind of Christians we should be. God does not leave us in sin when He saves us.
This does not imply that sanctification is a duty that is derived from justification. It is a fact that proceeds from it, or rather, both justification and sanctification flow from being in Christ, crucified and risen. The sinner appropriates Christ by faith for both his salvation and his sanctification. We’re told in 1 Corinthians 1:30, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”
Up to chapter 6, Paul does not discuss the holy life of the saint. From chapter 6 on, Paul does not discuss the salvation of the sinner. He wasn’t talking about the saint and the life he is to live when he was discussing salvation. Now he is discussing that. Therefore, the subject of this chapter is the ability of God to make sinners, whom He has declared righteous, actually righteous. He shows that the justified sinner cannot continue in sin because he died and rose again in Christ. To continue in sin leads to slavery to sin and is the additional reason for not continuing in sin. The believer has a new nature now, and he is to obey God. This section delivers us from the prevalent idea today that a believer can do as he pleases. Union with Christ in His death and resurrection means that He is now our Lord and our Master. He gives us freedom, but that freedom is not license, as we are going to see.

POSITIONAL SANCTIFICATION


What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? [Rom. 6:1].

Paul is being argumentative. He wasn’t, you remember, when he was discussing sin. Rather, he was stating facts. He wasn’t trying to prove anything. He just looked at life in the raw, right down where the rubber meets the road, and said that we are all sinners. However, now he uses this idiomatic question which opens this chapter, and he is argumentative. In the Greek the question is asked in such a way that there is only one answer. He precedes the question with “What shall we say then?” After you see God’s wonderful salvation, what can you say to it? Our only fitting response is hallelujah! What else can you say to God’s wonderful salvation? Now Paul’s argumentative question is this: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?”
And this, my friend, is God’s answer to the question of whether, after we are saved, we can continue to live in sin. The answer is, “God forbid” or “perish the thought!” or “may it never be!”


God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? [Rom. 6:2].

The very fact that Paul is asking this question makes it obvious that he understood justification to mean a declaration of righteousness; that it did not mean to make a person good, but to declare a person good. Justification means that the guilt or the penalty of sin is removed, not the power of sin in this life.
Now he is going to talk about removing the power of sin. If God has declared you to be righteous and has removed the guilt of your sin, then, my friend, you cannot continue in sin. The answer is, “God forbid!”
“How shall we, that are dead to sin”—this is something that is misunderstood. We are never dead to sin as long as we are in this life. The literal translation is, “How shall we who have died to sin.” Note this distinction. That means we died in the person of our substitute, Jesus Christ. We died to sin in Christ. But we are never dead to sin. Any honest person knows he never reaches the place where he is dead to sin. He does reach the place where he wants to live for God, but he recognizes he still has that old sin nature.
It is verses like that that have led a group of sincere folk, whom I call super-duper saints—I hope I’m not being unfair to them—to feel they have reached an exalted plane where they do not commit sin. One such group is a branch of those who teach the “victorious life.” They feel they have reached the pinnacle of perfection. There are different brands of these, I know, but one group was especially obnoxious several years ago in Southern California. One young man approached me following a morning worship service, and he asked, “Are you living the victorious life?” I think I shocked him when I said, “No, I’m not!” Then I asked him, “Are you?” Well, he beat around the bush and didn’t want to give me a direct answer. He said he tried to. And I said, “Wait a minute, that’s not the question. You asked me if I am living it, and I said no. Now you answer me yes or no.” And to this good day he hasn’t answered me. Like most of them, he was a very anemic-looking young fellow; I suspected he was a fugitive from a blood bank. He continued arguing his case. “Well, doesn’t the Scripture say, ‘I am crucified with Christ?’ and doesn’t it say that we are dead to sin?” I said, “No, that is not what the Scriptures say. We died to sin in Christ—that’s our position—but we are never dead to sin in this life. You have a sinful nature; I have a sinful nature; and we’ll have it as long as we are in this life.” He persisted, “Then what does it mean when it says we are crucified with Christ?” So I told him, “When Christ died over nineteen hundred years ago, that is when we died. We died in Him, and we were raised in Him, and we are joined now to a living Christ. This is the great truth that is there. I don’t know about you, but I’m not able to crucify myself. The very interesting thing is that you can kill yourself in a variety of ways—by poison, with a gun, by jumping off a building—but you cannot crucify yourself. Maybe you can drive the nails into one hand on a cross, but how are you going to fasten the other hand to the cross? You cannot do it. How are you going to crucify yourself? You cannot do it. My young friend, you were crucified over nineteen hundred years ago when Christ died.”


Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into this death? [Rom. 6:3].

This again is a verse that has been misunderstood. If you find water in this verse, you have missed the meaning.
Many years ago the late Dr. William L. Pettingill was conducting a conference in the church I was pastoring, and as I was driving him back to the hotel after a service, I said, “Dr. Pettingill, did I understand you to say there is no water in the sixth chapter of Romans?” (I should add that he was the strongest “immersionist” I have ever met in my life.) He laughed and said, “No, that’s not exactly what I said. I said that if all you see in Romans 6 is water, you have missed the point.” I said, “Well, if you go that far, that is wonderful for me because it confirms the great truth that is here.”
What did Paul mean by the word baptize in this third verse? I do not think he refers to water baptism primarily. Don’t misunderstand me; I believe in water baptism, and I believe that immersion best sets forth what is taught here. But actually he is talking about identification with Christ. You see, the translators did not translate the Greek word baptizoµ, they merely transliterated it. That is, they just spelled the Greek word out in English, because baptizoµ has so many meanings. In my Greek lexicon there are about twenty meanings for this word. Actually baptizoµ could refer to dyeing your hair. In fact, there was a group in Asia Minor who dyed their hair purple; and they belonged to a baptizoµ group. But here in Romans 6:3 Paul is speaking about identification with Jesus Christ. We were baptized or identified into His death. In 1 Corinthians 12:13 Paul says, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body….” We are identified in the death of Christ, as Paul will explain in the next verse.
Now Paul is going to say that there are three things essential to our sanctification. Two of them are positional; one of them is very practical. For the two that are positional, we are to know something. Every gadget that you buy has instructions with it. When I buy a toy for one of my grandsons, I take it out of the box, and I try to follow instructions for assembling it—and sometimes it is very difficult for me to do. Well, living the Christian life is such an important thing that it comes with instructions. There are certain things we are to know. We are to know that when Christ died over nineteen hundred years ago, we were identified with Him. Let me make it personal. Nineteen hundred years ago, they led me outside of an oriental city by the name of Jerusalem. By the way, I stood at that spot not too long ago. I looked up to Gordon’s Calvary, the Place of the Skull, Golgotha. I tried to visualize the One who died there. When He died there over nineteen hundred years ago, He took Vernon McGee there. I was the one who was guilty. He was not guilty. Don’t argue with me about whether the Jews crucified Christ—He died on the Roman cross—but let’s not argue that. My sin put Him up there, and your sin put Him up there, my friend. We were identified with Jesus Christ. That is something that we should know, and it is very important for us to know. We’re identified with Him.
Now Paul will amplify this:


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].

“We are buried with him by baptism into death”—just as we are identified with Christ in His death, likewise are we identified with Christ in His resurrection. We are joined today to a living Christ. In other words, our sins have already been judged; we are already raised; and we are yonder seated with Christ in the heavenlies. My friend, there are only two places for your sins: either they were on Christ when He died for you over nineteen hundred years ago—because you have trusted Him as your Savior—or they are on you today, and judgment is ahead for you. There is no third place for them.
“We are buried with him by baptism [identification] into [His] death.” Frankly, although I was reared a Presbyterian, I think that immersion is a more accurate type of this identification. I think the Spirit’s baptism is the real baptism. Water is the ritual baptism, but I do think that immersion sets forth the great spiritual truth that is here. This is the reason a child of God should be baptized in water in our day. It is a testimony that he is joined to the living Christ. That is all important.
What did Peter mean when he said in 1 Peter 3:21, “… baptism doth also now save us …”? How does it save us? Well, in the preceding verse he talks about eight souls who were saved in the ark. They went through the waters of judgment inside the ark. The folk in the water were those who were outside the ark, and they were drowned. The eight people in the ark didn’t get wet at all—yet Peter says they were saved by baptism. Obviously the word baptism has nothing to do with water in this instance; rather it means identification. They were identified with the ark. They had believed God, and they had gotten into the ark. God saw that little boat floating on the surface of the water. Now today God sees Christ; He doesn’t see Vernon McGee because I am in Christ. He is my ark today. Christ went down into the waters of death, and we are in Christ. And we are raised with Him. We are joined to Him. This is important. Don’t miss it. If you do, you will miss one of the greatest truths of the Christian life.


For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection [Rom. 6:5].

In other words, if we are united by being grafted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also united by growth—grafted, vitally connected—in the likeness of His resurrection. We actually share the life of Christ somewhat as a limb grafted into a tree shares the life of the tree. The life of Christ is our life now.

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin [Rom. 6:6].
“Knowing this”—these are things we know.
When Paul says your “old man” is crucified with Him, he doesn’t mean your father; he means your old nature is crucified with Him. “That the body of sin might be destroyed”—the word destroyed is katargeo, meaning “to make of none effect, to be paralyzed or canceled or nullified”—“that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Paul is not saying that the old nature is eradicated. He is saying that since the old man was crucified, the body of sin has been put out of business, so that from now on we should not be in bondage to sin.


For he that is dead is freed from sin [Rom. 6:7].

For he who died is declared righteous from sin. He is acquitted. That is his position.


Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him [Rom. 6:8].

If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also be living with Him both here and hereafter. We share His resurrection life today, and we will be raised from the dead someday.


Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him [Rom. 6:9].

“Knowing”—this is something else we are to know.
“He ever liveth” is the victor’s chorus. The glorified Christ says, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev. 1:18). The Resurrection opens up eternity to Christ, and it will open up eternity to those who will trust Him.


For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God [Rom. 6:10].

He died one time, but He is alive today. And He ever lives to make intercession for those who are His. Because of this, He can save you right through to the uttermost.
Now we come to the second thing that we as believers are to reckon on.


Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. [Rom. 6:11].

“Reckon” doesn’t mean I “reckon” or “suppose,” as some of us Texans use it. Rather, we are to count on the fact that we are dead unto sin and alive unto God. We are to reckon (count on it) that our old nature lay in Joseph’s tomb over nineteen hundred years ago, but when Christ came back from the dead, we came back from the dead in Him. This is something to count on.


Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof [Rom. 6:12].

That is, don’t let sin keep on reigning in your body, that you should obey the desires of the body.

PRACTICAL SANCTIFICATION


We have seen that sanctification is positional. That means we are to know something. We are to know God’s method of making a sinner the kind of person He wants him to be. While justification merely declared him righteous, removed the guilt of sin, it did not change him in his life. It gave him a new nature. Now he is to know that he was buried with Christ and raised with Him. God wants him to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. The believer is joined to the living Christ. He is to reckon on that fact; he is to count on it. He is to consider it as true. You see, God saved us by faith, and we are to live by faith. Many of us, and that includes this poor preacher, have trusted Him for salvation, but are we trusting Him in our daily living? We are to live by faith.
Now we come to that which is very practical indeed. You are to yield yourself or present yourself to God.

Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God [Rom. 6:13].
Yield is the same word as present in Romans 12:1: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God….” This is a presentation of yourself for service. Yield is the same word, and it means “to present yourself.” The idea of the surrendered life or the yielded life sounds colorless to so many people. We talk about surrendering and at the same time living the victorious life, and they seem to be a contradition of terms. I like the word present much better—“Neither present ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.” The reason most of us get into trouble is because we yield ourselves to the old nature. By an act of the will we can yield ourselves to do God’s will through the new nature.
A little girl fell out of bed one night and began to cry. Her mother rushed into her bedroom, picked her up, put her back in bed, and asked her, “Honey, why did you fall out of bed?” And she said, “I think I stayed too close to the place where I got in.” And that’s the reason a great many of us fall, my friend. It is because we are actually yielding ourselves to the old nature. We’re following the dictates of the old nature; that is what gets us into trouble.
Although we will not get rid of that old nature in this life, we are told now, “Yield yourselves unto God.” Just as you yield yourself to do sin, you are to yield yourself unto God “as those that are alive from the dead.” You’re now alive in Christ. You have a new nature. You’ve been born again.
“And your members as instruments of righteousness unto God” deals with that which is specific and particular. What is your real problem, friend? I know what mine is. What about yours? Whatever that specific thing is, yield it to God. A bad temper? Well, take that to Him and talk to Him about it. What about a gossipy tongue? A dear lady who attended a “tongues meeting” was asked if she wanted to speak in tongues. She exclaimed, “Oh, my no. I’d like to lose about forty feet off the one I have now!” If your tongue is your problem, yield it to God. And by the way, in this day in which we are living, what about immorality? Sex is the big subject of the hour. My, everybody’s getting in on the act today. Is that your sin? Well, you’re to yield yourself to God—your members “as instruments of righteousness unto God.” And don’t tell me you can’t do it. You can do it through the power of the Holy Spirit.


For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace [Rom. 6:14].

The Law was given to control the old nature. As a believer, you are not to live by the old nature. You have a new nature, and you are to yield yourself or present yourself to God. What a glorious, wonderful privilege it is to present ourselves to Him!


What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid [Rom. 6:15].

Let me give my translation of this verse, which may be helpful: What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? (Should we commit an act of sin? For you are no more under law, but under grace.) Away with the thought (perish the thought). The form of the question is put differently here than it was back in verse 1. Paul has demonstrated in the past fourteen verses that God’s method of sanctification is on the same basis as justification; it is by faith, faith that God can do it. You and I cannot do it. When we learn that we cannot live the Christian life, we have learned a great lesson. Then we are prepared to let Him live it through us.
Paul’s question here is whether there should be an assist given to grace to accomplish its high and holy end. In other words, the natural man thinks there ought to be some laws, rules, or regulations given. In the course of the church’s history we have had all kinds of groups that have come up with rules for living the Christian life. There were the Puritans, a wonderful group of folk, and we owe a great deal to them, but they had a strict observance of the Sabbath day (they called Sunday the Sabbath, which, of course, it is not). A strict observance of Sunday was an obsession with them. We have a carry-over of that today. There are a great number of groups who put down certain rules for a believer. Some of our fundamental people have made, not ten commandments, but about twenty new commandments. If the believer does certain things and refrains from doing certain other things, he is living the Christian life. This is the reason, friend, that I oppose the idea that you can become a wonderful Christian by taking some of these short courses being offered today. That’s not the way you are to do it. We have a girl in our office who took a course, and, oh, she was enthusiastic. But you ought to see her today. She is really in a depression. Why? Because she tried to do it by rules and did not let Christ do it.
The Christian life is not following certain rules; you can follow rules and regulations and still not be living the Christian life. Somebody asks, “Then what is the Christian life?” The Christian life is to be obedient unto Christ. It means communication with Christ. My friend, do you love Him? That’s the important thing. He says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15, italics mine). Identification with Christ is positional sanctification, as we have seen. That is basic. But obedience to Christ is the experience of sanctification, and that is practical sanctification. It is just as simple as that, my friend. It is not how you walk, but where you walk—are you walking in the light, walking in fellowship with Christ? Sin will break the fellowship, of course, and then we are to confess our sin. The Lord Jesus said to Peter yonder in the Upper Room, “If I wash you not, you have no part with me” (see John 13:8). We don’t have fellowship with Him unless we confess our sins to Him as we go along. Our part is confession; His part is cleansing (see 1 John 1:9). The important thing for you and me is to have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and to obey Him. Then we will be living the Christian life.
Vincent once said to Godet, “There is a subtle poison which insinuates itself into the heart even of the best Christian; it is the temptation to say: Let us sin, not that grace may abound, but because it abounds.” You see, there are many Christians today who say, “I am saved, and I can do as I please.” My friend, if you have been saved by grace, you cannot do as you please, as we shall see in the eighth chapter of Romans.
In his letter to the Galatian believers, Paul makes it clear that there are three ways in which you can live: (1) You can live by law; (2) you can live! by license; (3) you can live by liberty. To live by law, everyone puts down some principle. I read of a movie star who said that his whole life was given to sex—that’s his law; he lives by that. Regardless of who you are, if you are living by law, you are living by the old nature. Then, the other extreme which Paul is guarding against here, is license. If you are a child of God, you can’t do as you please; you have to do as Christ pleases. You must be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ, present yourself to Him. This is practical, a great deal more practical than you may realize.


Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey: whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? [Rom 6:16].

“Know ye not”—when Paul says this, we can be sure that we believers don’t know, and we need to know.
“To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are.” Every person who is living is a bond servant to someone or something. I heard a contemporary commentator observe that every person obeys some person or some thing. That is true. You could even be obeying Satan himself. Because of our very natures, we are servants or slaves to something or to somebody.
Now Paul is saying here that the one who is our master is the one whom we obey. If you obey sin, then that is your master. Don’t say Christ is your master if you are living in sin; He is not your master. He brings you into the place of liberty. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36)—free to do what? You will be free to live for Him, free to obey Him. And the Lord Jesus said again, “… Verily, verily, I say unto you. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). Now let me use a very homely illustration. There is a very swanky club across the street from the church I served in downtown Los Angeles. It is made up of rich men, and I’m told that it costs several thousand dollars to join this club. If you belong to it, you probably own a Cadillac and have a chauffeur. Well, one day as I looked out the window, I saw a group of chauffeurs standing around talking, and there were several Cadillacs parked there. It was after lunch. Finally, I saw a very distinguished-looking gentleman come out of the club; he made a motion and said something. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I saw one of the chauffeurs leave the group of about fifteen men. He went over, opened the door of the car, the distinguished-looking man got in, then he went around, got in the driver’s seat and drove off. Now, I came to a very profound conclusion: that chauffeur was the servant or the employee of the man who called him. I don’t think those other fourteen chauffeurs were employed by the man in the car because they didn’t obey him. Only the man who obeyed him was working for him. He obeyed him because that man was his master. This is what Paul is saying. Regardless of who you are, whomever you obey, whatever you obey, that is your master. You are obeying something or someone.
Now that brings us to a personal question. Is Christ really our master today? Just because you don’t murder, you don’t lie, you don’t do other things the Mosaic Law prohibits, doesn’t mean you are living the Christian life. It may mean you are living a good life, but that is all. The Christian life is one where we obey Christ.

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 [Rom 6:17].
In other words, when you were in the world, when you were lost, you obeyed sin. It was natural for you to do that. A man may live such an exemplary life that the chamber of commerce presents him with a medal and a loving cup and makes him the citizen of the year. I overheard such a man talking one time after he had been presented with the cup as the outstanding citizen of a certain community. The language of this man was the foulest language I had ever heard. He may be the outstanding citizen of that community, but it’s quite obvious whom he’s obeying. He is obeying the Devil! The fact that you obey Christ is the thing that is important.
Now, another thing that we need to understand is that, when you have been saved, you have a new nature that can obey Christ. Paul went through the experience, as we shall see in the next chapter, of being a new Christian and discovering that there was no good in his old nature. Paul says, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:18). Although many of us have not discovered this, there is no good in us; the old nature has no good in it. You can do a lot to improve it, but you sure can’t make it good.
The second startling fact is this: there is no power in the new nature. That’s where most of us make our mistake. We think that because we are now Christians, we can walk on top of the world. We can’t. We are just as weak as we’ve ever been before. This is the reason that we have to walk by faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit of God can produce the Christian life, as we shall see.


Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness [Rom. 6:18].

We have been liberated. In other words, He has made it possible for us to live the Christian life. It does not mean that sin has been eradicated or removed. It does mean that now we can live for God.


I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: 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 [Rom. 6:19].

Let me give you my translation of this verse: I speak in human terms on account of the difficulties of apprehension or the weakness of your human nature; for as you presented or yielded your members slaves for the practice of impurity and to lawlessness; even so now present your members slaves to righteousness.
Paul explains here, I think, why he uses the term servants. He half-way apologizes in the last verse for using it. Slavery was common in the Roman Empire. Out of the 120 million people in the Roman Empire, one half were slaves. Many Christians were slaves. And the little Epistle to Philemon reveals that freedom was a prized possession and difficult to obtain. Now Paul uses this familiar metaphor which he describes as “human terms”—“I’m speaking to you in human terms.” He doesn’t mean he is not speaking by inspiration, but he is speaking in a manner which we will understand. And we will understand by these human terms that we are actually slaves.
Now, the religious rulers were insulted when the Lord suggested that they were slaves of sin. Remember the Lord Jesus said to those Jews that believed on Him, “… If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:31–34). Oh, how many men and women today are slaves of sin! Observe the tragedy of our young people who have rebelled against the rules and regulations of the establishment and who have been destroyed by the thousands by drugs and alcohol! You may be delivered from one group with its rules and regulations, but if you don’t turn to Christ, you may be getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. What is happening in our culture today is one of the saddest things of our contemporary age. The Lord Jesus says that when you commit sin, you are the servant of sin.


For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness [Rom. 6:20].

That is, you didn’t think of serving Christ then; you weren’t interested in that. You were free from Him.


What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death [Rom. 6:21].

You were not only free from Christ, you were fruitless. You did as you pleased. The only fruit was shame. Actually, it was not real freedom, it was license. Do you want to go back to the old life?
I receive scores of letters from young people who were formerly known as “hippies” and have turned to Christ. They are ashamed of that old life. When you drop into sin, does it break your heart? The difference between a child of God and a child of the Devil is that a child of the Devil just loves doing what the Devil wants done. But to the child of God it is a heartbreak.


But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life [Rom. 6:22].

He sets before believers now the golden and glad prospect that is theirs as slaves of God. They are freed from sin which leads to death, and they can have fruit which will abide into eternity. Life eternal is in contrast to death. An illustration of this is seen in the lives of pioneer missionaries. I think of the group of young people, some of them still in their teens, who went out to the Hawaiian Islands in 1819. They gave their lives gladly, joyfully, to the service of Christ. (They have been maligned in recent years. Oh, how the godless tourist loves to hear them ridiculed!) But they laid the foundation for the greatest revival that has taken place since Pentecost—more people were won to Christ per capita. I never grow weary of hearing their story. They had fruit, my friend. How wonderful it was!
Now Paul concludes this section:


For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord [Rom. 6:23].

The Devil is the paymaster, and he will see to it that you get paid. If you work for him, the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life. And you will receive that gift by faith.
You are saved by faith. You are to live by faith. You are to walk moment by moment by faith. You cannot live for God by yourself any more than you can save yourself. It requires constant dependence upon Him, looking to the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.

CHAPTER 7

Theme: Shackles of a saved soul; struggle of a saved soul


The theme of sanctification began in the latter part of chapter 5 where it was “potential sanctification.” Then in chapter 6 we saw “positional sanctification”; that is, identification with Christ in His death and resurrection. We are to reckon on that, present ourselves to Him, and trust him to live the Christian life through us.
Now in the chapter before us there are two subjects: the shackles of a saved soul and the struggle of a saved soul. The Law cannot produce sanctification in the life of the believer; it merely shackles it. Neither can the believer produce sanctification in his life by depending on the desire of the new nature. Just to say you want to live for Christ won’t get you anywhere. You need to present yourself to Him recognizing that you are joined to the living Christ.
The importance of this chapter cannot be overemphasized. Let me give you a quotation from Dr. Griffith Thomas: “Dr. Alexander Whyte once said that whenever a new book on Romans comes out and is sent to him by its publisher for consideration, he at once turns to the comments on chapter VII, and according to the view taken of that important section he decides on the value of the entire work.” Then Dr. Frederic Godet makes this bold statement: “But it is a hundred to one when a reader does not find the Apostle Paul logical that he is not understanding his thought.” Paul is certainly logical all through this chapter.
When I was a young man, a very wonderful itinerant Bible teacher, who was a great blessing to multitudes of folk, was a great help to me. He was never a pastor, and he taught that we are to detour around the seventh chapter of Romans; we are not to live there. We are to get into the eighth chapter of Romans. For several years I taught that philosophy also. But I have now been a pastor for a long time and I have come to the conclusion that we are not to miss the seventh chapter of Romans. I am sure that many a pastor wishes his church members would get into the seventh of Romans, because the man who gets into the seventh of Romans will get into the eighth of Romans. I am of the opinion that the way into the eighth chapter is through the seventh chapter—at least that is the route most of us take. Well, you are not to detour around it, because if you do, you are not on the direct route. It reminds me of a jingle:

To dwell above
With the saints in love—
Oh, that will be glory!
But to stay below
With the saints I know—
That’s another story!

In this “struggle of a saved soul” a believer reaches out and grabs a straw. Sometimes that straw is the Mosaic Law. And he finds that he has gotten hold, not of a straw, nor even of a life preserver, but actually of a sack of cement, and it is pulling him under. He can’t live that way. As a result, multitudes of the saints accept defeat as normal Christian living. There are many saints who are satisfied to continue on the low level of a sad, shoddy, sloppy life. God doesn’t want us to come that route.
The “powerless sanctification” of this chapter shows us the way we are not to live. Many years ago a cartoon appeared in a daily paper—when it was popular to make things and repair things yourself—showing a mild-mannered man in a “Do-It-Yourself Shop.” His hands were bandaged, and one arm was in a sling. He was asking the clerk behind the counter, “Do you have any undo-it-yourself kits?” Today we as believers need to know that we cannot live the Christian life; we need to learn that we cannot do it ourselves. In fact, we need an undo-it-yourself kit; that is, we need to turn our lives over to the Spirit of God, yield to Him, and let Him do for us what we cannot do ourselves.
The Mosaic Law is where many Christians go to try to find Christian living. Now Paul is going to show that the Mosaic Law has no claim on the believer. Actually, the Law condemned man to die; it was a ministration of condemnation (see 2 Cor. 3:9). You don’t contact the judge who sentenced you to die and ask him how you are going to live!

SHACKLES OF A SAVED SOUL


Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to) them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? [Rom. 7:1].


Know ye not” is an expression that occurs again and again in the writings of Paul. Putting it into the positive, it is, “Are you so ignorant?” When Paul says, “Know ye not,” you may be sure that the brethren did not know.
“I speak to them that know the law.” The Mosaic Law had had over a millennium’s trial with God’s chosen people in a land that was favorable and adaptable to the keeping of the Law—the Law was not only given to a people but to a land. Yet Israel did not keep the Law. Remember that Stephen in his defense said that they had “… received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it” (Acts 7:53). Peter calls it a yoke “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (Acts 15:10).
Now Paul will give an illustration that I think is a great one. Unfortunately folk try to draw from it rules for marriage and divorce. But Paul is not talking about marriage and divorce here. Rather, he is illustrating by a well-established and stated law that a wife is bound to a living husband and that death frees her from the status of wife.


For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband [Rom. 7:2].

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but when the husband dies, she is completely discharged from the law of her husband. In other words, if he is dead, she is no longer married to him.


So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man [Rom. 7:3].

Some folk insist that divorce and remarriage is not permitted under any circumstances according to this verse. We need to thoroughly understand the background. What would happen under the Mosaic Law if a man or woman were unfaithful in marriage? Suppose a woman is married to a man who is a philanderer, and he is unfaithful to her. What happens? He is stoned to death. When the old boy is lying under a pile of stones, she is free to marry another, of course. In our day we cannot apply the Mosaic Law—we can’t stone to death the unfaithful. And Paul is not giving us instructions on divorce and remarriage here; he will do that elsewhere. The point Paul is making here is that when a woman’s husband dies, she is no longer a wife, she is a singlewoman again. This is, I think, a universal principle among civilized people. There are heathen people who put the wife to death when the husband dies, but civilized folk have never followed that practice.
Paul goes on to amplify the law of husband and wife. He brings into sharp focus her status in the case that her husband is alive and again in the case that the husband is dead.


Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God [Rom. 7:4].

In other words: Accordingly, my brethren, you (old Adamic nature) also were done to death as to the Law; the Law was killed to you by means of the body of Christ; that you should be married to another, even to Him who rose from the dead, that we might bear fruit unto God.
The wife represents the believer in Christ. The second husband represents Christ. We are joined to Him. But who is the first husband?
Let’s see what some have said. Dr. William Sanday interprets him as the old state before conversion: “The (first) Husband—the old state before conversion to Christianity.” Dr. Stifler concludes that the first husband is Christ crucified. Dr. William R. Newell held that the first husband set forth Adam and our position in him.
Personally, I consider the latter the best interpretation, because all the way through this section, beginning at chapter 5 where there were two headships—Adam and Christ—we have seen the first Adam and the last Adam, the first man and the second man. We are joined to Adam through the old Adamic nature. The Law was given to control the old Adamic nature, but it failed through the infirmity of the flesh. The Law actually became a millstone around the neck of the Israelite. It never lifted him up, but it kept him in slavery for fifteen hundred years. Its demands had to be met, but man could not meet them. It was indeed a ministration of condemnation. If the Gentile had to adopt the Law when he became a believer, there was no hope for him either. Paul says that Christ died in His body, we are identified with Christ in His death, and now we are dead to the Law and the Law is dead to us. That first husband is Adam, and we are no longer joined to him. Now we are joined to the living Christ. We died with Him and we have been raised with Him. He is the second husband, the living Christ, who enables us to bear fruit. We know Christ no longer after the flesh; it is the resurrected Christ we are joined to. The Law is not given to the new man in Christ—old things have passed away and all things have become new (see 2 Cor. 5:17). The believer is not under law but under grace—this is the ipso facto statement of Scripture. Believer, believe it! It is so, for God says it!
Now let me illustrate this with a very ridiculous illustration that I heard when I was a student in seminary down in Georgia. Back in the antebellum days, before the Civil War, there was a plantation owner, a very fine, handsome man married to a beautiful woman, and they lived happily in a lovely home. Then he became sick and died suddenly. It was a great heartbreak to her, for she loved him dearly, and she did a strange and morbid thing. She had his body embalmed, placed in a sitting position in a chair in an air-tight glass case, and situated in the great hallway of her lovely southern home. The minute you opened the door, you were looking at him. Well, her friends realized that this wouldn’t do, so they urged her to go away and travel for awhile. So she went North, then traveled abroad for almost two years. During that time she met another man, fell in love with him and married him. On their honeymoon they came to her plantation home. The new bridegroom did as a new bridegroom is supposed to do, he picked her up and carried her over the threshold. When he put her down, he was staring into the face of a man in a glass case. He said to his bride, “Who is that” Well, she had forgotten about him. She told him that he was her first husband. They both decided it was time to bury him, which was the proper thing to do. She was married to a new man; the old man was dead. Now I confess that that is a ridiculous story; I sometimes wonder if it really ever happened. Whether or not the story is true, it is true that there are many believers today who have dug up the Law—in fact, they have never buried the Law. They have the Law sitting in a glass case, and they are trying to live by the Law in the strength of the old Adamic nature! How ridiculous! The believer is joined to the living Christ today, and the Christian’s life is to please Him. Oh, how important that is. I can’t overemphasize it.

For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death [Rom. 7:5].
Face this squarely, my friend. Are you able in your own strength to keep the Law? The Law was a straitjacket put on the flesh to control it. The flesh rebelled and chafed under the irksome restraint of the Law. The flesh had no capacity or desire to follow the injunctions of the Law. The flesh broke out of the restraint imposed by law and therefore brought down the irrevocable penalty for breaking the Law, which is death.


But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter [Rom. 7:6].

“But now we are delivered from the law” means discharged or annulled from the law. Notice the paradoxes in this section. In verse 4 it was having died, they bear fruit; here in verse 6 they have been discharged, yet they serve. Today we are to serve Him, not on the basis or the motive, “I ought to do it,” but now, “I delight to do it because I want to please Christ.” The believer is set free, but now in love he gives himself to the Savior as he never could do under the Law. Note this little bit of verse I used to carry in my Bible when I was a student in college and seminary:

I do not work my soul to save;
That work my Lord hath done.
But I will work like any slave
For love of God’s dear Son.

We serve Christ because we love Him. Our Lord asked Simon Peter the direct question, “… Lovest thou me? …” (John 21:17). That is the question that faces you and me. God’s question to the lost world is: “What will you do with My Son who died for you?” However, His question to the believer is: “Lovest thou me?” The Christian life is Christ living His life through us today. We can’t do it ourselves, nor can we do it by the law. There is nothing wrong with the law—let’s understand that—the problem is with us.


What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead [Rom. 7:7–8].

Let me try to bring out the meaning a little more clearly: What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? Away with the thought! On the contrary, I should not have been conscious of sin, except through law; for I had not known illicit desire (coveting). But sin, getting a start through the commandment, produced in me all manner of illicit desire. For apart from the Law sin is dead.
Paul, you recall, began his argument way back in the sixth chapter of Romans with this expression, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin?” Now again he says, “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin?” In the first part of this chapter Paul seems to be saying that law and sin are on a par. If release from sin means release from law, then are they not the same? Paul clarifies this. He says, “Perish the thought!” Paul will now show that the Law is good; it reveals God’s will. The difficulty is not with the Law; the difficulty is with us. The flesh is at fault.
Paul becomes very personal in the remainder of this chapter. Notice that he uses the first person pronouns: I, me and myself; they are used forty-seven times in this section. The experience is the struggle Paul had within himself. He tried to live for God in the power of his new nature. He found it was impossible. The Law revealed to Paul the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The Law was an X-ray of his heart. That is what the Law will do for you if you put it down on your life. The Word of God is called a mirror; it reveals what we are. If you have a spot on your face, the mirror will show it to you, but it can’t remove the spot. However, God has a place to remove it:

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.

The Law reveals the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The Law is not at fault, but the old Adamic nature is the culprit. The admonition of prohibition contained in the Law makes clear the weakness of the flesh. It shows we are sinners.
Here in California a test was made some time ago. A mirror was put in a very prominent public place, and the test was to see if men or women looked at themselves more. I felt it was an unnecessary test; I could have told them that women looked at themselves more. But unfortunately, the test proved otherwise. We all like to see ourselves. We all like to look in a mirror—except one: the Word of God. We don’t like to look in that one because it reveals us as sinners, horrible, lost sinners.


For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died [Rom. 7:9].

The Law is a ministry of condemnation. The Law can do nothing but condemn us.


And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death [Rom. 7:10].

Oh, the tragedy of the person who seeks to live by the Law! It does not lead him to life. While it is true that God had said, “This do and thou shalt live” (see Deut. 8:1), the doing of it was the difficulty. The fault was not in the Law, but in the one who thought the Law would bring life and power. It did neither. It merely revealed the weakness, inability, and the sin of mankind. If there had been a law which could have given life, God would have given it (see Gal. 3:21). But life and Christian living do not come by the Law.
Let me illustrate this. A car is a very useful thing. But a car in the hands of an incapable driver can be a danger and a menace. In fact, it can be a death-dealing instrument. The fault is not with the car; the fault is with the driver. The problem is man; he is the culprit.


For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me [Rom. 7:11].

Sin is personified again here and is a tempter. Sin tempts every man outside the Garden of Eden relative to himself and God. In the Garden of Eden Satan made man believe that God could not be trusted and that man was able to become god, apart from God. Sin, like a Pied Piper, leads the children of men into believing that they can keep the Law and that God is not needed. This is the false trail that he has been talking about, which leads to death. It was ordained to life, Paul says, and he found it led him to death. Sin at last will kill, for the Law did bring the knowledge of sin, and man is without excuse. Again, the difficulty is not with the Law, but within man.


Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good [Rom. 7:12].

The problem is a human problem. Man is the “x” in the equation of life. He is the uncertain one, the one who cannot be trusted.


Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful [Rom. 7:13].

Is this a strange paradox? Is it a perversion of a good thing? The commandment was totally incapable of communicating life. Man must have recourse to help from the outside, because the commandment intensified the awfulness of sin.


For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin [Rom. 7:14].

This is Paul’s testimony.
“We know” was the general agreement among believers. The Law is spiritual in the sense that it was given by the Holy Spirit and is part of the Word of God. In other words, that is an expression in Scripture. For example, the Rock is called spiritual in I Corinthians 10:4, for it was produced by the Holy Spirit. Israel in the wilderness had spiritual meat and spiritual drink in this sense—that is, the Spirit of God provided it.
“But I am carnal.” This means, “I am in the flesh [Greek sarkinos].” It does not mean the meat on the bones of the body. This body of ours is neutral and can be used for that which is either good or bad. It is like the automobile I referred to. Carnality refers to this old human mind and spirit and nature which occupies and uses the flesh so that actually the flesh itself is contaminated with sin. (For example, look upon the face of a baby and then look at the face fifty years later. Sin has written indelible lines even upon the surface of the body.) Flesh is inert and has no capabilities or possibilities toward God. It is dominated by a sinful nature, the ramifications of which reach into the inmost recesses of the body and mind. The frontal lobe of the brain is merely an instrument to devise evil. The motor neurons are ready to spring into evil excesses. The heart of man is desperately wicked. He wants to do the things that are evil, and the body responds.
Paul describes his pitiful plight as a slave sold to a Simon Legree taskmaster with a whiplash of evil.

STRUGGLE OF A SAVED SOUL


For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I [Rom. 7:15].

Here we have the conflict of two natures, the old nature and the new nature. There are definitely two “I’s” in this section. The first “I” is the old nature as he asserts his rights.
“For what I would” is what the new nature wants to do. “That do I not”—the old nature rebels and won’t do it. “But what I hate”—the new nature hates it—“that do I”; the old nature goes right ahead and does it.
Do you have the experience of this struggle in your Christian life? Do you do something, then hate yourself because you have done it? And you cry out, “God, oh how I’ve failed You!” I think every child of God has this experience. Paul is speaking of his own experience in this section. Apparently there were three periods in his life. First he was a proud Pharisee under the Mosaic system, kidding himself by bringing the sacrifices and doing other things which he thought would make him right with God. But the Law was condemning him all the while. Then the second period began when he met Christ on the Damascus Road. This proud young Pharisee turned to Christ as his Savior, but he still felt he could live the Christian life. His new nature said, “I am now going to live for God!” But he failed and was in the arena of struggle and failure for a time. I do not know how long it lasted—probably it was not long. There came a day when there was victory, but Paul did not win it; Christ did. Paul learned that it was a matter of yielding, presenting himself and letting the Spirit of God live the Christian life through him.


If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good [Rom. 7:16].

When the old nature breaks the commandment (in this instance it was coveting), then the new nature agrees with the law that coveting is wrong. Paul was not fighting the Law because he broke it. He was agreeing as a believer that the Law was good.


Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me [Rom. 7:17].

In other words: It is no longer I (new nature) who am working it out, but sin (the old nature) living in me. You see, Paul still had the old nature.


For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not [Rom. 7:18].

Paul learned two things in this struggle, and they are something that many of us believers need to learn. “In me (that old nature we have been talking about) dwells no good thing.” Have you learned that? Have you found there is no good in you? Oh, how many of us Christians feel that we in the flesh can do something that will please God! Many believers who never find out otherwise become as busy as termites and are having about the same effect in many of our churches. They are busy as bees, but they aren’t making any honey! They get on committees, they are chairmen of boards, they try to run the church, and they think they are pleasing God. Although they are busy, they have no vital connection with the person of Christ. His life is not being lived through them. They are attempting to do it in their own strength by the flesh. They haven’t learned what Paul learned: “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.” Let me make it personal. Anything that Vernon McGee does in the flesh, God hates. God won’t have it; God can’t use it. When it is of the flesh, it is no good. Have you learned that? That is a great lesson. The Lord Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh …” (John 3:6) (and that is all it will ever be), but “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin …” (1 John 3:9). My, how wonderful that is! We are given a new nature, and that new nature will not commit sin. I assure you that the new nature won’t commit sin. When I sin, it is the old nature. The new nature won’t do it; the new nature just hates sin. That new nature won’t let me sleep at night; it says, “Look, you are wrong. You have to make it right!”
Paul found out something else that is very important for us to learn: “for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.” He found there is no good in the old nature and there is no power in the new nature. The new nature wants to serve God, but the carnal man is at enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be (see Rom. 8:7). But the new nature has no power.
I remember when I started out, oh, I was going to live for God! That’s when I fell on my face, and I have never fallen harder than I did then. I thought I could do it myself. But I found there was no power in the new nature. And that is the reason that an evangelist can always get response in a meeting. I’m afraid ninety percent of the decisions that are made in our churches today have been made by Christians who have been living in defeat in their Christian lives. What they are really saying is, “I want to live for God. I want to do better.” Often an evangelist in a meeting says, “All of you that want to live for God, put up your hand. All of you today that want to come closer to God, put up your hand. Those of you who want to commit your life to God, come forward.” The minute an evangelist says that, he’s got me. That is what I want to do. That new nature of mine says, “I sure would like to live for God.” But there is no power in it. That is what multitudes of believers fail to recognize. There have been folk who have been coming forward for years, and that’s all they have been doing—just coming forward! They never make any progress. Oh, how they need to understand this truth!


For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do [Rom. 7:19].

Have you experienced this?


Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me [Rom. 7:20].

It is that old nature, my friend, that is causing us trouble.


I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me [Rom. 7:21].

When you are attempting to serve God in the Spirit, have you discovered that the old nature is right there to bring evil? Perhaps an evil thought will come into your mind. Every child of God, regardless of his state, must admit that in every act and in every moment evil is present with him. Failure to recognize this will eventually lead to shipwreck in the Christian life.


For I delight in the law of God after the inward man [Rom. 7:22].

“The inward man” is the new nature.


But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members [Rom. 7:23].

You see, you don’t get rid of the old nature when you are saved. And yet there is no power in your new nature. “I see a different law” is the enmity of the old nature against God. It causes the child of God who is honest to cry out, as Paul cried:


O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? [Rom 7:24].

This is not an unsaved man who is crying, “O wretched man that I am”; this is a saved man. The word wretched carries with it the note of exhaustion because of the struggle. “Who is going to deliver me?” He is helpless. His shoulders are pinned to the floor—he has been wrestled down. Like old Jacob, he has been crippled. He is calling for help from the outside.


I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin [Rom. 7:25].

“I thank God [who gives deliverance] through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is the answer to Paul’s SOS. God has provided deliverance. It introduces chapter 8 in which the deliverance is given in detail. Both salvation and sanctification come through Christ; He has provided everything we need.

Run, run and do, the Law commands
But gives me neither feet nor hands.
Better news the Gospel brings,
It bids me fly and gives me wings.

CHAPTER 8

Theme: The new man; the new creation; the new body; new purpose

This chapter brings us to the conclusion of sanctification. In fact, it presents three great subjects: sanctification, security, and no separation from God. Here it is powerful sanctification in contrast to powerless sanctification. In this chapter we are going to see God’s new provision for our sanctification.
While inadequacy has been my feeling all the way through this epistle, especially here I feel totally incapable of dealing with these great truths. This is such a glorious and wonderful epistle that all we can do is merely stand as Moses did at the burning bush with our feet unshod and our head uncovered, not fully realizing or recognizing the glory and wonder of it all.
Chapter 8 is the high-water mark in Romans. This fact is generally conceded by all interpreters of this great epistle. Spencer said, “If Holy Scripture were a ring and the epistle to the Romans its precious stone, chapter eight would be the sparkling point of the jewel.” Godet labeled it, “this incomparable chapter.” Someone has added, “We enter this chapter with no condemnation, we close with no separation and in between all things work together for good to those that love God.”
My friend, how could you have it any better than that? We find that there is to be given to the child of God in this life joy and peace. He is to live for God in the very presence of sin. Sin is not to dictate his life’s program. It has already been shown that there is nothing in the justified sinner that can produce this ideal state. We have seen that the new nature has no power and the old nature has no good. Then how is a child of God to live for God? Paul cried out for outside help, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). In other words, who is going to enable me to live for God?
Paul concluded chapter 7 by saying, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” Now chapter 8 will give us the modus operandi; that is, the means by which the victory is secured.
This chapter introduces us to the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification. The Holy Spirit is mentioned nineteen times in this chapter. Up to chapter 8 there were only two casual references (see Rom. 5:5; 7:6). In this epistle we see the work of the Blessed Trinity:

God the Father in creation (Rom. 1:1–3:20)
God the Son in salvation (Rom. 3:21–7:25)
God the Holy Spirit in sanctification (Rom. 8:1–39)

Now here in chapter 8 we see the Holy Spirit and real sanctification. A life that is pleasing to God must be lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. As Paul said to the Ephesian believers, “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in the regenerated life of a believer, delivering the believer from the power of sin—even in the very presence of sin—and performing all God’s will in the life of the believer.
Godet labels the first eleven verses “The Victory of the Holy Spirit over Sin and Death.”


There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit [Rom. 8:1].

“Who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” does not really belong in this verse. Apparently some scribe picked it up from verse 4 where it belongs. The literal rendering is: “Therefore now, not one condemnation.” This is the inspired statement that, in spite of the failure that Paul experienced in chapter 7, he did not lose his salvation. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. However, he wasn’t enjoying the Christian life—he was a failure, and he was a wretched man. God wanted him to have joy in his life. Now how is he to have this? Notice the next verse.


For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death [Rom. 8:2].

This is a very important statement. This little word for occurs seventeen times in this chapter. Because it is the cement that holds the chapter together, it is a word that requires real mental effort. We need to follow the logic of the apostle Paul. One of the great expositors of Romans said that if you do not find Paul logical, you are not following him aright.
“The law of the Spirit” means not only a principle of law, but also the authority which is exercised by the Spirit.
“The Spirit of life” means the Holy Spirit who brings life because He essentially is life. He is the Spirit of life.
“In Christ Jesus” means that the Holy Spirit is in complete union with Christ Jesus. Because the believer shares the life of Christ, He liberates the believers.
“The law of sin and death” is the authority that sin had over our old nature, ending in complete severance of fellowship with God. That new nature could not break the shackles at all. Only the coming of a higher authority and power could accomplish this, namely the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit operates upon the new nature, which is vitally joined to the life of Christ. The man in Romans 7, who was joined to the body of the dead, is now joined to the living Christ also.

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit [Rom. 8:3–4].

We have here the whole crux of the matter. Let me give my translation, which may bring out several things we need to understand. “For the thing impossible for the Law in which it was powerless through the flesh, God, having sent His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin, and in regard to sin, He condemned the sin in the flesh; in order that the justification (the righteous result) of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit.”
It was impossible for the Law to produce righteousness in man. This is not the fault of the Law. The fault lay in man and the sin in his flesh. The Law was totally incapable of producing any good thing in man. Paul could say, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:18). And, friend, that is Scripture, and that is accurate. Man is totally depraved. That doesn’t mean only the man across the street or down in the next block from you, nor does it mean only some person who is living in overt sin; it means you and it means me. The Holy Spirit is now able to do the impossible. The Holy Spirit can produce a holy life in weak and sinful flesh. Let me illustrate this truth by using a very homely incident. Suppose a housewife puts a roast in the oven right after breakfast because she is going to serve it for the noon meal. The telephone rings. It is Mrs. Joe Dokes on the phone. Mrs. Dokes begins with “Have you heard?” Well, the housewife hasn’t heard, but she would like to; so she pulls up a chair. (Someone has defined a woman as one who draws up a chair when answering a telephone.) Mrs. Dokes has a lot to tell, and about an hour goes by. Finally our good housewife says, “Oh, Mrs. Dokes, you’ll have to excuse me. I smell the roast—its burning!” She hangs up the phone, rushes to the kitchen, and opens the oven. Then she gets a fork and puts it down in the roast to lift it up, but it won’t hold. She can’t lift it out. She tries again, closer to the bone, but still it won’t hold. So she gets a spatula. She puts the spatula under the roast and lifts it out. You see, what the fork could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, the spatula is able to do. Now, there is nothing wrong with the fork—it was a good fork. But it couldn’t hold the flesh because something was wrong with the flesh—it was overcooked. The spatula does what the fork could not do.
The Law is like the fork in that it was weak through the flesh. It just won’t lift us up; it can’t lift us up. But a new principle is introduced: the Holy Spirit. What the Law could not do, the Holy Spirit is able to do. Therefore, you and I are to live the Christian life on this new principle. We are not to try to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We’ll never make it that way, my friend. We make resolutions and say, “I’m going to do better”—all of us have said that. But did we ever do better? Didn’t we do the same old things?
God is able to do this new impossible thing by sending His very own Son, His own nature in the likeness of sinful flesh. Christ had the same kind of flesh that we have, apart from sin. Notice how the writer to the Hebrews puts it: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil…. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:14, 16–17). Also he says, “For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). Then he says, “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me” (Heb. 10:5).
This was God’s way of getting at the roots of sin in our bodies, minds, and spirits. He could condemn and execute sinful flesh on the cross so that it had no more rights in human beings. God was able to deal with sin itself—Christ was identified with us—what condescension! Sin has been condemned in these bodies of ours. It has not been removed, in spite of the belief of some very sincere people. These bodies are to be redeemed—“… raised a spiritual body … ” (1 Cor. 15:44). Today, the Holy Spirit is the Deliverer from sin in the body. A great many people think it would be wonderful if Christ would come and take us out of this world of sin—and that would be wonderful. I wish He would come right now. However, there is something even more wonderful than that. It is this: He enables you and me to live the Christian life right where we are today in this old world of sin. That is more wonderful. Our Lord Jesus said in His high priestly prayer, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:15). Down here is where the victory is.
“That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled”—this is the passive voice. It means that the Holy Spirit produces a life of obedience which the Law commanded but could not produce. The Holy Spirit furnishes the power; the decision is ours.
The next verse introduces us to a new struggle. It is not for us to do the fighting. Now it is the Holy Spirit versus the flesh.


For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit [Rom. 8:5].

“Do mind the things of the flesh.” When I was holding a meeting in Middle Tennessee after I was first ordained, I was invited to dinner in a lovely country home. The housewife had prepared some wonderful fried chicken. When we were already sitting at the table, she went out to call her little boy again. After she’d called him several times, she came in and said, “That young’un won’t mind me.” And what she meant was, “That young one will not obey me.” Paul, you see, sounds like a good Southerner because he uses this word, “they mind the things of the flesh.” We have seen that before in the sixth chapter of Romans. My friend, if you live habitually in the flesh and obey the things of the flesh, and the new nature doesn’t rebuke you, you must not have a new nature—because “they that are after the Spirit [mind] the things of the Spirit.” A believer has been given a new nature, and now he can yield himself to the new nature. And this is an act of the will. This is the new struggle that’s brought to our attention. “The flesh” describes the natural man. The Lord Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—it will always be flesh. God has no program to change the flesh. Rather He brings in something new: “and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
A new struggle is brought to our attention. It is no longer the new nature or the believer striving for mastery over sin in the body; it is the Holy Spirit striving against the old nature. The little boy coming home from school was being beaten up by a big bully. He was on the bottom, and the big bully was pounding him very heavily. Then he looked up from his defeated position on the bottom, and he saw his big brother coming. The big brother took care of the bully while the little fellow crawled up on a stump and rubbed his bruises. The believer has the Holy Spirit to deal with the flesh, that big bully. I learned a long time ago that I can’t overcome it. So I have to turn it over to Somebody who can. The Holy Spirit indwells believers. He wants to do that for us, and He can!
“They that are after the flesh” describes the natural man. Paul paints his picture in Ephesians 2:1–3. “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins: Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” This was the condition of all of us until we were saved.
And the “flesh” includes the mind. “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled” (Col. 1:21). It includes the total personality which is completely alienated from God.
The natural man strives and even sets his heart upon the things of the flesh. Here is his diet: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19-21). It is an ugly brood!
In Colossians Paul says: “But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds” (Col. 3:8–9). The Lord Jesus said: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matt. 15:19).
It is humiliating but true that the child of God retains this old Adamic nature. It means defeat and death to live by the flesh. No child of God can be happy in living for the things of the flesh. The prodigal son may get into the pig pen, but he will never be content to stay there. He is bound to say, “I will arise and go to my father.”
“They that are after the Spirit” are born again, regenerated and indwelt by the Spirit of God. They love the things of Christ. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:1–2). And Paul says, “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering” (Col. 3:12). These are just some of the things for which the child of God longs. You and I cannot do these things by effort. It is only as we let the Spirit of God work in our lives that they will appear.
Here is another great principle.


For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace [Rom. 8:6].

“For to be carnally minded” means that you are separated from fellowship with God and that flesh is death here and now. The Spirit who indwells the believer brings life and peace. When we sin, we are to come to Him in confession and let Him wash us. This restores us to fellowship.
The “life” He offers speaks of full satisfaction and the exercise of one’s total abilities. Oh, to live life at its fullest and best! Many people think they are really living today, but it is a shoddy substitute for the life God wants to provide.
“Peace” means the experience of tranquility and well-being regarding the present and future. Oh, my beloved, how you and I need to get into that territory!
There is one thing for sure: if you are living in the flesh, and you are a child of God, you are not having fellowship with God. You can’t. The Lord Jesus in the Upper Room said to Simon Peter, “… If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me” (John 13:8). Now, my friend, He meant that. He will not fellowship with you or with me if we are committing sin and are continuing to live in the flesh. “Well,” somebody says, “what are we to do?” Do what Simon Peter had to do—he stuck out his feet and let the Lord wash them. And you and I need to go to Him in confession. First John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins.” Who is “we”? We Christians. “He is faithful and just …” when He does it, because it will take the blood of Christ, my friend. You and I do not know how wicked the old nature is. And we need to go to Him for cleansing.
The English poet, John Donne, using the mythological story of the labors of Hercules—where that strong man of the ancient world was confronted with the task of cleaning out the Augean stables—illustrates this important truth. Though Hercules was able to perform the task, Donne shows that man cannot clean the much greater filth of the human heart. He writes:

Lord I confess that Thou alone are able
To purify this Augean stable.
Be the seas water, and all the land soap
Yet if Thy blood not wash me—there’s no hope.

The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, keeps on cleansing us from all sin” (see 1 John 1:7). This old nature is totally depraved. God has no plan to redeem it. He gives us a new nature. And you and I can’t live for God in that old nature. If you continue to live in that old nature, you must not be a child of God. Somebody says, “Then if a child of God sins, what’s the difference between him and the lost man?” The difference is simply this: when the lost man goes out at night and paints the town red, he comes back and says, “I’ll get a bigger brush and a bigger bucket of paint next time; wow, I want to live it up!” While the child of God, if he does a thing like that, will cry out to God, “Oh, God, I hate myself for what I’ve done!” And this idea today that you can somehow train your old nature, and live in it, is false. That’s the thing that leads to legalism. Legalists—well, I call them Priscilla Goodbodies and Goody-goody-gumdrops, those sweet lovely people who are trying to control the flesh—they are so pious! I want to tell you, they are the worst gossips you have ever met.
Dr. Newell has put down some very interesting statements which I would like to pass on to you. “To hope to do better is to fail to see yourself in Christ only.” You say, “I hope to do better.” You know you’re not. You need to see yourself in Christ today and realize that only the Spirit of God moving through you can accomplish this. And then Newell says again, “To be disappointed with yourself means you believed in yourself.” Somebody says, “Oh, I’m so disappointed in myself.” Well, you had better be disappointed in yourself. You know no good thing is going to come out of the flesh, friend. Stop believing in yourself, and believe that the Spirit of God today can enable you through the new nature to live for God. Also Newell says, “To be discouraged is unbelief.” Somebody says, “Oh, I’m so discouraged.” My friend, that means you don’t believe God. God has a purpose and a plan, a blessing for you. And you need to lay hold of it. Here is another statement: “To be proud is to be blind.” We have no standing before God in ourselves. Oh, my friend, see yourself as God sees you. Here is the final gem: “The lack of divine blessing comes from unbelief, not a failure of devotion.” I am sick and weary of these super-duper pious, “dedicated” Christians who talk about their devotion. My friend, the lack of divine blessing comes because we do not believe God. It is not because of a lack of devotion. Oh, to believe God today! Now, real devotion arises not from man’s will to show it, but from the discovery that blessing has been received from God while we were yet unworthy and undevoted. Nothing I get from God has come through my devotion. I haven’t anything to offer Him. It comes because of His marvelous grace. And I’ve seen these folk who preach “devotion” troop down to dedicate their lives in services. I got so sick and tired of seeing that same crowd come down—and you could not trust them, my friend. They were liars. They were dishonest. They were gossips, and they would crucify you. May I say to you, you do not need to dedicate yourself. What you need today is to believe God can do something and you can’t do anything. Now, somebody says, “That’s pretty strong.” I hope that it is. I intend for it to be that way, because Paul is making it very clear here. The carnal mind is enmity against God.


Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God [Rom. 8:7–8].

This verse reveals how hopelessly incorrigible and utterly destitute the flesh really is. It is a spiritual anarchist. This demolishes any theory that there is a divine spark in man and that somehow he has a secret bent toward God. The truth is that man is the enemy of God. He is not only dead in trespasses and sins but active in rebellion against God. Man will even become religious in order to stay away from the living and true God and the person of Jesus Christ. Man in his natural condition, if taken to heaven, would start a revolution, and he would have a protest meeting going on before the sun went down! Jacob, in his natural condition, engaged in a wrestling match. He did not seek it, but he fought back when God wrestled with him. It wasn’t until he yielded that he won, my friend.
Anything that the flesh produces is not acceptable to God. The so-called good work, the civilization, the culture, and man’s vaunted progress are all a stench in the nostrils of God. The religious works of church people done in the lukewarmness of the flesh make Christ sick to His stomach (see Rev. 3:15–16).
I wonder if we are willing to accept God’s estimation of our human boasting. This is a terrible picture of man; but it is accurate. Yet there is deliverance in the Spirit of God. Are you willing, my friend, to turn it over to the Holy Spirit and quit trusting that weak, sinful nature that you have? That is the question.


But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his [Rom. 8:9].

This first “if” is not casting a doubt over the Roman believers’ salvation. They are saved. Let me give you a literal translation: “But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit since the Spirit of God really dwells in you.” That is the real test. But if anyone has “not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” The true mark of a born-again believer and a genuine Christian is that he is indwelt by the Spirit of God. Even Paul could say to the carnal Corinthians: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Cor. 6:19). When Paul went to Ephesus the first time, he missed something; he missed the distinguishing mark of the believer. So he asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They didn’t even know what he was talking about. So he asked them, “… Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism” (Acts 19:3). Well, John’s baptism was unto repentance; it was not to faith in Jesus Christ. So he preached Christ to them. Then they received Him and were baptized in His name (see Acts 19:5). A believer is a new creation. Do you love Him? Do you want to serve Him? Are these things uppermost in your mind and heart? Or are you in rebellion against God?

And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness [Rom. 8:10].
In other words: Now if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead on account of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. He is saying here that you and I are in Christ, and since we are in Him, when He died, we died. And we are to reckon on this, as we have already been told. Also we are to yield, that is, present our bodies to Him. Don’t say you can’t do this—that is not the language of a believer. Paul could say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
If you today are not conscious of the presence of the Spirit of God in your life and if you do not have a desire to serve God, then it would be well to do as Paul suggests, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Cor. 13:5). The Lord wants us to know that we are in Christ. “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
If you are not sure that Christ is in you, He extends this invitation: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). Is your door open? Has He come into you? My friend, the body has been put in the place of death. This is something the child of God should reckon on. And he should turn over his life to the Spirit of God, saying very definitely, “I cannot do it, Lord, but You can do it through me.”


But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you [Rom. 8:11].

These bodies that you and I have will be put in the grave one of these days, if the Lord tarries. However, the indwelling Holy Spirit is our assurance that our bodies will be raised from the dead (2 Cor. 5:1–4). Because Christ was raised from the dead, we shall be raised from the dead. The Holy Spirit will deliver us from the “body of his death”—this old nature.


Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh [Rom. 8:12].

In other words, we are not to live according to the flesh. God created man body, mind, and spirit. When man sinned, his spirit died to God. Remember that God had warned, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). After Adam ate of the fruit, he lived several hundred years—physically; but spiritually he died immediately. Man was turned upside down. The body, the old nature, the flesh became dominant. Today man is dead spiritually. Regeneration means that you are turned right side up, that you are born again spiritually, and that you have a nature which wants to serve God.
Oh, my friend, to stay close to Christ is the important thing. You can be active in Christian work, as active as a termite, yet Christ can be in outer space as far as you are concerned. The natural man says he owes it to his flesh to satisfy it. He may rationalize his dishonesty by saying, “A man has to eat.” A movie star has said, “I live for sex, and I have to have my needs met.” We hear this today on every hand. Satisfying the old nature has plunged our nation into the grossest immorality! But God says that we as believers are not debtors to the flesh. My friend, the flesh—and we all have it—is a low-down, dirty rascal. And we don’t owe it anything.


For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live [Rom. 8:13].

“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die”—die to God. That is, you have no fellowship with Him. I am not talking about a theory; if you are a child of God, you know this from experience. If you are a child of God and you have unconfessed sin in your life, do you want to go to church? Do you want to read your Bible? Do you want to pray? Of course you don’t. You are separated from God.
“But if ye through the Spirit”—you can’t do it yourself—“do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” Let’s be practical now. What is your problem today? Liquor? Drugs? Sex? You may say, “I don’t have those problems!” Then how about your thought-life? How about your tongue? Do you gossip? Do you tell the truth? Whatever your problem is, why don’t you confess it to God, then turn it over to the Holy Spirit? My friend, if you deal with it in reality, you won’t need to crawl up on the psychiatrist’s couch. He won’t help you. He can shift your guilt complex to another area, but he can’t get rid of it. Only Christ can remove it; He is in that business. He says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will rest you” so that you will know what it is to have sins forgiven (see Matt. 11:28).

THE NEW MAN


We come now to a new section concerning the new nature of man.


For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God [Rom. 8:14].

That makes sense, doesn’t it? God does not drive His sheep; He leads them. When our Lord told of the safety and security of the sheep, He made it clear that they were not forced into the will of His hand and that of the Father. He said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them [and I drive them out! Oh, no] and they follow me” (John 10:27). They are the ones who are safe and secure; they follow Him. They are led by the Spirit of God. They hear His voice because they have a new nature, and they follow Him.
I have been preaching the Word of God for a long time. I have found that those who are His sheep will hear His voice. The others—they hated me and wanted to get rid of me. Why? They were not His sheep. The Lord Jesus said, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). A young pastor came to me and said, “I’m having all kinds of trouble!” I asked, “Who is giving you trouble?” He said, “My church officers and my Sunday school teachers.” So I asked him what he had been doing. He said, “Well, I’ve been preaching the Bible, following your Thru the Bible method.” I said to him, “Well, thank God. You will find that a lot of your folk are not really His sheep.” Friend, His sheep will follow Him—they have to because they are His, you see. That’s what Paul is saying here.


For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father [Rom. 8:15].

“Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear”—there is not that spirit of fear within you, wondering about your spiritual condition, unhappy, and despondent. Instead, you are filled with joy because you are His child. And the Spirit of God wells up within you, saying, “Abba, Father.”
The word Abba is an untranslated Aramaic word. The translators of the first English Bibles, who had great reverence for the Word of God, who believed it was indeed the Word of God, would not translate it. Abba is a very personal word that could be translated “My Daddy.” We don’t use this word in reference to God because of the danger of becoming overly familiar with Him. But it expresses a heart-cry, especially in times of trouble.


The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God [Rom. 8:16].

I found this true the first time I went to the hospital for cancer surgery. I turned my face to the wall, like old Hezekiah did, and said, “Lord, I’ve been in this hospital many times. I’ve patted the hands of folk and had prayer with them, and told them, ‘Oh, you trust the Lord; He will see you through.’ Lord, I have told them that, but this is the first time I’ve been in here. Now I want to know whether it is true or not. I want You to make it real to me. If You are my Father, I want to know it.” And, my friend, He made it real. At a time like that the Spirit of God cries out, “Abba, Father”—it just wells up within you. How sweet it is to trust Him, turn yourself over to Him.


And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together [Rom. 8:17].

“If so be” assures the fact that the child of God will suffer with Him. I believe it could be translated “since we suffer with Him.” I don’t think the “if” is as important as some folk make it out to be.
My friend, what are you enduring for Him today? Whatever it is, Paul makes it clear that it is just a light thing we are going through now. But there is a weighty thing, an “eternal weight of glory” that is coming someday. In eternity we will wish that we had suffered a little more for Him, because that is the way He schools and trains us. “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb. 12:6).

THE NEW CREATION

This brings us to a new division in this eighth chapter of Romans.
Not only the bodies of believers are to be redeemed, but we’re going to find out that this entire physical universe, this earth on which you and I live, is to be redeemed. That is the purpose of God. In fact we’re trading in this old earth for a new earth, a new model, brand new, wherein there will be no sin. No curse of sin will ever come upon it again. That is something that is quite wonderful. Someone said to me not long ago, “I believe that healing is in the Atonement.” I think I shocked the person when I said, “I believe that too. Not only is healing in the Atonement, but a new body is in the Atonement, and a new world is in the atonement of Christ. But we don’t have it yet.” The political parties and the United Nations have been trying to bring in a new world for years, but we certainly do not have these yet. But Christ is going to bring it in someday through His redemption. And then I’m going to get a new body. I’m looking forward to that. This one I’ve got is wearing out, and I want to trade it in for a new one. And that’s coming. And healing—I’ll grant that it is in the Atonement, but I don’t have all of that yet. I still have cancer.


For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us [Rom. 8:18].

“I reckon” means that Paul calculates, counts upon, both the debit and credit side of the ledger of life.
“The sufferings of this present time” are the common lot of all believers. This generation, which is enjoying more creature comforts than any other in history, frowns upon this statement, but even present-day Christians cannot escape suffering.


For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God [Rom. 8:19].

Let me give my translation of this verse: For the creation, watching with outstretched head (head erect), is waiting (sighing) for the revelation of the sons of God.
The world is not waiting for the sunrise of evolution’s pipe dream. The pipe dream of evolution will never come true. However, creation is waiting “for the manifestation of the sons of God.” Creation is like a veiled statue today. When the sons of God have removed the outward covering of this flesh, creation also will be unveiled. What a glorious day that will be!


For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope [Rom. 8:20].

“For the creation was subjected to vanity”—vanity means “failure, decay, something that is perishable.”
“Not willingly” means not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it on the basis of hope. King Solomon, who was quite a pessimist, by the way, wrote: “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again” (Eccl. 1:7). There is a weary round of repetition. The rivers run into the sea, and the Lord has quite a hydraulic pump that pumps the water right out of the ocean, and with His good transportation system, the wind moves the clouds across the dry land, and here comes the rain again. It fills the rivers, and the rivers run into the sea. There is a monotony about nature; you see it on every hand. Nature is waiting for the promised manifestation, the unveiling.
“Creation was subjected to vanity” because God made it that way. The curse of sin came upon man in Adam’s disobedience, but the physical world also came under the curse. Remember that God said to Adam, “Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread …” (Gen. 3:18–19). I enjoy going out to the Hawaiian Islands; I know of no place quite as delightful. Yet on a golf course in that “paradise” I found—of all things—thorns! I knocked a ball out in the rough there, out in the lava, and I have never seen as many thorns as were there. I have a pair of shoes that have thorns in them to this good day—I can’t get them all out. Even in that paradise there are thorns. There is a curse on creation.


Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God [Rom. 8:21].

Man has a dying body. As someone has said, “The moment He gives us life, He begins to take it away from us.” And there is death and decay yonder in nature. Go out in the beautiful forest, and there you see a tree lying dead, corrupt, rotting. That’s nature. And you catch the stench of the decaying bodies of dead animals.


For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now [Rom. 8:22].

Browning in his Pippa Passes writes.

God’s in His Heaven—
All’s right with the world.

The Christian knows that that is not true. God is in His heaven all right, but all is not right with the world. The Word of God is more realistic: “How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate” (Joel 1:18).
Some have called our attention to the fact that nature sings in a minor key. The wind blowing through the pine trees on a mountainside and the breaking of the surf on some lonely shore—both emit the same sob. The music of trees has been recorded, and it is doleful. The startled cry of some frightened animal or bird pierces the night air and chills the blood. Surely nature bears audible testimony to the accuracy of Scripture. Godet quotes Schelling in this connection, “Nature, with its melancholy chorus, resembles a bride who, at the very moment when she is fully attired for the marriage, saw the bridegroom die. She still stands with her fresh crown and in her bridal dress but her eyes are full of tears.”
It is accurate to say that “nature is groaning.”

THE NEW BODY


And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body [Rom. 8:23].


Not only does nature groan, but the believer is in harmony with nature. This verse is devastating to those who propose the theory that the mark of a Christian is a perennially smiling face. They contend that a Christian should be a cross between a Cheshire cat and a house-to-house salesman. A Christian should grin—at all times? Smile your troubles away is good for Rotary, but it is not the Christian method.
We groan within these bodies. Some years ago when I began to move into middle age, I would come down the steps in the morning groaning because my knees were hurting. My wife told me I ought not to groan! I told her it is scriptural to groan. Paul says, “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven” (2 Cor. 5:2). Also the psalmist wrote, “I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears” (Ps. 6:6). Our Lord Jesus did some weeping also. Although I believe He was a joyful person, there were times when He wept. In these bodies we groan.


For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? [Rom. 8:24].

“We are saved by hope” speaks of the work of Christ for us on the cross and our faith in Him. But that is not all. We have a redeemed body coming up in the future.


But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it [Rom. 8:25].

You see, faith, hope, and love are the vital parts of the believer’s life. There would be no hope if all were realized. Someday hope will pass away in realization. In fact, both faith and hope will pass away in the glory which shall be revealed in us. Only love abides.


Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered [Rom. 8:26].

Years ago when the late Dr. A. C. Gaebelein was speaking, a very enthusiastic member of the congregation kept interrupting with loud amens. That annoyed Dr. Gaebelein. Finally, he told him, “Brother, the Scripture says that the Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered—so don’t you utter them if it’s the Spirit of God.” We didn’t even know how we ought to pray; but the Spirit of God will make intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Have you gone to God sometimes in prayer when you actually did not know what to pray for? All you could do was just go to Him and say, “Father.” You could not ask anything because you didn’t know what to ask for. At times like this the Spirit “helpeth our infirmities.” How wonderful that is!


And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God [Rom. 8:27].

Now, if I go to God in prayer and say, “Look, Lord, I want You to do it this way,” That’s the way I usually do it, and I may not get the answer the way I prayed. But it’s wonderful sometimes to go to the Lord and say, “Lord, I don’t know what to ask for. I don’t know what to say. But I’m coming to You as Your child. And I want Your will done.” And the Spirit of God then will make intercession for us according to the will of God. My, again, how wonderful that is!
NEW PURPOSE

We come now to the new purpose of God. If Romans is the greatest book of the Bible, and chapter 8 is the high-water mark, then verse 28 is the pinnacle. God’s purpose guarantees the salvation of sinners, and the next three verses give the “ascending process of salvation,” as William Sanday calls it.


And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose [Rom. 8:28].

I have translated it this way: But we know (with divine knowledge) that for those who love God, all things are working together for good, even to them who are called-ones according to His purpose.
The late Dr. Reuben A. Torrey (I had the privilege of being pastor for twenty-one years of the church that he founded) was a great man of God, greatly abused and misunderstood. He knew the meaning of this verse, and he called it a soft pillow for a tired heart. Many of us have pillowed our heads on Romans 8:28. We know the whole creation is groaning, but we also know something else: all things are working together for good—even the groanings.
“We know” is used five times in Romans, and “know” is used thirteen times. It refers to that which is the common knowledge of the Christian, that is, that which the Holy Spirit makes real. “Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth” (see 1 Cor. 8:1), and this is the knowledge that only the Spirit of God can make real to our hearts. Charles Spurgeon used to say, “I do not need anyone to tell me how honey tastes; I know.” And I can say, my friend, that I know God loves me. I don’t need to argue that point; I know it.
“For those who love God” is the fraternity pin of the believer. “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision [that is, there is no badge]; but faith which worketh by love” (Gal. 5:6). Love is the mark. The apostle John put it like this: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation [the mercy seat] for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:10–16). My friend, you are going to have trouble believing that God loves you, and you will have difficulty loving God, if you are hating other Christians. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And the apostle Peter said: “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8). The thing that will bring joy and brightness into your life is the sincere love of God.
“All things”—good and bad; bright and dark; sweet and bitter; easy and hard; happy and sad; prosperity and poverty; health and sickness; calm and storm; comfort and suffering; life and death.
“Are working together for good” is causative and means that God is working all things—there are no accidents. You remember that Joseph could look back over his life, a life that had been filled with vicissitudes, disappointments, and sufferings, yet he could say to his brethren—who were responsible for his misfortune—“… ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good …” (Gen. 50:20). And I am confident that we as children of God will be able to look back over our lives someday and say, “All of this worked out for good.” Job could say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him … ” (Job 13:15). That is the kind of faith in God we need, friend. We know that He is going to make things work out for good because He’s the One who is motivating it. He’s the One who is energizing it.
However, we often cry out, as Jeremiah did, “Why did you let me see trouble?” (see Jer. 11:14). It was during the San Francisco earthquake many years ago that a saint of God walked out into the scene of destruction and debris and actually smiled. A friend asked her, “How can you smile at a time like this?” Her reply was, “I rejoice that I have a God who can shake the world!” How wonderful to be able to face life—and death—unafraid. I think of Paul who could face the future without flinching. He said to his friends, “… What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13). Many of us would like to come to that place of total commitment to Him.
Now notice that all things are working together for good for them “who are the called” ones, and it is “according to his purpose.” This is something that is hard for a great many people to swallow. “The called” are those who not only have received an invitation, they have accepted it. And they were born from above. They know experimentally the love of God. Paul describes three groups of people, and I think they are the three groups that are in the world today: “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23–24). (1) The Jews trusted in religion, rite and ritual. To them the cross was a stumblingblock. (2) The Greeks (the Gentiles) trusted in philosophy and human wisdom. To them the cross was foolishness. (3) “The called” were a group out of both Jews and Greeks who were chosen not because of their religion or wisdom. God called them. To them the cross was the dynamite of God unto salvation. “The called” heard God’s call. That is important.
Let me go back to my illustration of the turtles. Suppose you go down to a swamp, and there are ten turtles. You say to the turtles, “I’d like to teach you to fly.” Nine of them say, “We’re not interested. We like it down here; we feel comfortable in this environment.” One turtle says, “Yes, I’d like to fly.” That is the one which is called, and that is the one which is taught to fly. Now that doesn’t have anything in the world to do with the other turtles. They are turtles because they are turtles. My friend, the lost are lost because they want it that way. There is not a person on topside of this world that is being forced to be lost. They are lost because they have chosen to be lost.
A boy down in my southland years ago wanted to join a church. So the deacons were examining him. They asked, “How did you get saved?” His answer was, “God did His part, and I did my part.” They thought there was something wrong with his doctrine, so they questioned further. “What was God’s part and what was your part?” His explanation was a good one. He said, “God’s part was the saving, and my part was the sinning. I done run from Him as fast as my sinful heart and rebellious legs could take me. He done took out after me till he run me down.” My friend, that is the way I got saved also.
This does not destroy or disturb the fact that “whosoever will may come” and “whosoever believeth.” Henry Ward Beecher quaintly put it, “The elect are the whosoever wills and the non-elect are the whosoever won’ts.” And it is all according to His purpose. And, my friend, if you have not yet got your mind reconciled to God’s purpose and to God’s will, it is time you are doing that, because this is His universe. He made it. I don’t know why He made a round earth instead of a square one—He didn’t ask me how I wanted it—He made it round because He wanted it round. My friend, His purpose is going to be carried out, and He has the wisdom and the power to carry it out. Whatever God does is right. Don’t you criticize God and say He has no right to save whoever wants to be saved. He has the right to do it. He is just and He is loving, and anything my God does is right.
There was a great theologian in the past by the name of Simeon. In his sermons on Romans 8 he said there were three reasons why he preached on the doctrine of election: It laid the axe at the root of pride, presumption, and despair. I like that. My friend, there is no place for human pride in the doctrine of election. It is God’s work, His wisdom, and His purpose that is being carried out. The will of God comes down out of eternity past like a great steamroller. Don’t think you can stop it. In fact, you had better get on and ride.


For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified [Rom. 8:29–30].

“For” refers back to verse 28 to remind us that he is not talking about anybody being elected to be lost, but he is speaking of “the called,” the predestined ones. Predestination never has any reference to the lost. You will never find it used in connection with them. If you ever hear someone talk about being predestined to be lost, you know he is not being scriptural.
Predestination means that, when God saves you, He is going to see you through. Whom He foreknew, He predestinated, and whom He predestinated, He called, and whom He called, He justified, and whom He justified, He glorified. In other words, this amazing section is on sanctification—yet Paul does not even mention being sanctified. Why? Because sanctification is the work of God in the heart and life of the believer. This is God’s eternal purpose. It just simply means this: When the Lord—who is the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, the Good Shepherd of the Sheep, and Chief Shepherd of the Sheep—starts out with one hundred sheep, He’s going to come home with one hundred sheep; He will not lose one of them. You may remember that our Lord gave a parable about this, recorded in Luke 15. There was a shepherd, a good shepherd, who represents the Lord Jesus. One little old sheep got lost, got away. You would think He might say, “Well, let him go. We’ve got ninety-nine of them safe in the fold. That’s a good percentage.” Anyone raising sheep knows that if you get to market with a little over fifty percent of those that are born, you’re doing well. But this is an unusual shepherd. He is not satisfied with ninety-nine. If He justifies one hundred sheep, He’s going to glorify one hundred sheep. I’ll make this rather personal. Someday He will be counting them in—“One, two, three, four, five … ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine—where in the world is Vernon McGee? Well, it looks like he didn’t make it. We’ll let him go because a great many people didn’t think he was going to make it anyway.” My friend, thank God He won’t let him go. That shepherd is going after him. The doctrine of election means that the Lord will be coming home with one hundred sheep! This is not a frightful doctrine; it is a wonderful doctrine. It means that Vernon McGee’s going to be there; and it means you are going to be there, my friend, if you have trusted Christ. This is a most comforting doctrine in these uncertain days in which we live.


What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? [Rom. 8:31].

“What shall we then say to these things?” My answer is, “What can I say? This is so wonderful I have nothing to add!”
“Who can be against us?” God is on our side. Nobody will be able to bring a charge against us in His presence.


He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? [Rom. 8:32].

How wonderful that is! He did not spare His Son. He spared Abraham’s son, but not His own. Since He gave His Son to die for us, He will give us all things that we need. Somebody may say, “But I may not be able to hold out.” He is going to do that for you—He will hold you. His sheep are safe, my friend. It is not because they are smart sheep. A rancher in San Angelo, Texas, who raises sheep, told me, “Sheep are stupid!” Also they are defenseless. They don’t have sharp claws or fangs to protect themselves. They can’t even run very fast. They are little old helpless animals. If a little old sheep stands up and sings, “Safe am I,” is that sheep safe? Yes. Smart sheep? No, stupid. That little sheep is safe because he has a wonderful Shepherd.
“How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Dwight L. Moody illustrated it somewhat like this: Suppose I go into the finest jewelry store in the land, and they bring out the loveliest diamond, and the owner says, “It’s yours!” And I say, “You don’t mean that you are giving me this valuable diamond!” He says, “Yes. I am giving it to you.” If he gave it to me, do you think I would hesitate asking him for a piece of brown wrapping paper to wrap it up and take it home with me? My friend, since God gave his Son to die for you, don’t you know that He is going to give you everything that is necessary in this life and in the life to come?


Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.

Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us [Rom. 8:33–34].

God’s elect are justified sinners. God has placed His throne behind them. Who is going to condemn them? Nobody can condemn them. Why? “It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again.”
Christ has removed all condemnation, and the believer is secure because of the fourfold work of Christ: (1) Christ died for us—He was delivered for our offenses; (2) Christ was raised from the dead, raised for our justification; (3) He is on the right hand of God. He is up there right now, my friend. He is the living Christ. Do you need Him? Why don’t you appeal to Him? (4) He maketh intercession for us. Did you pray for yourself this morning? You should have. But if you missed praying, He didn’t. He prayed for you. How wonderful! This fourfold work of Christ is the reason that nobody can lay anything to the charge of God’s elect.


Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? [Rom. 8:35].

He mentions everything imaginable here.
Is it possible that “tribulation” or trouble can separate us? No, my friend, because He won’t let it. “Distress or anguish?” Oh, you may think God has let you down, but He hasn’t. “Persecution”—and this means legal persecution. It means there are those who will carry on a campaign against you. But that will not separate you from the love of Christ. “Or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” By the way, this is a brief biography of Paul’s life. He knows from experience that these will not separate you from Christ’s love.


As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter [Rom. 8:36].

This is a quotation from Psalm 44:22: “yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” This is a frightful picture of the saints in this day of grace. I believe with all my heart that this is the attitude of a satanic system toward the child of God even in this hour. Also the history of the church reveals this. My friend, if you stand for God today, it will cost you something.
My first job, as a kid about fifteen years old, was in an abatoir, a slaughterhouse. I worked right next to the man who took a sharp knife and cut the sheep’s throat. To see animals slaughtered by the hundreds was a frightful spectacle. I got so sick I had to go outside and sit in the fresh air.
And, friend, it is sickening to see what is happening to some of the saints of God in our day. But even this will not separate us from the love of God.


Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us [Rom. 8:37].

How can a sheep for the slaughter be more than a conqueror? This is another wonderful paradox of the Christian faith. What does it mean to be more than a conqueror? It means to have assistance from Another who gets the victory for us, who never lets us be defeated. The victory belongs to Christ; not to us. The victorious life is not our life. It is His life.


For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord [Rom. 8:38–39].

“For I am persuaded” means that he knows.
“Death” cannot separate us—in fact, it will take us into His presence. The response of many of the early Christian martyrs when they were threatened with death was, “Thank you, you will transport me right into the presence of my Savior.” You can’t hurt people like that.
“Life”—often it is more difficult to face life than to face death. But life’s temptations, failures, disappointments, uncertainties, and sufferings will not separate us from the love of God that is in Christ our Lord.
“Angels”—and I think he means fallen angels—“principalities and powers” are spiritual enemies of the believer (see Eph. 6:12). “Things present” means present circumstances.
“Things to come” refers to the future.
“Nor height, nor depth” may refer to the space age in which we live.
“Any other created thing” would include anything else you want to mention. Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God which is centered in Christ.
My friend, salvation is a love story. We love Him because He first loved us. Nothing can separate us from that. We entered this chapter with no condemnation; we conclude it with no separation; and in between all things work together for good. Can you improve on this, friend? This is wonderful!

CHAPTER 9

Theme: Israel defined; Israel identified; the choice of Israel is in the sovereign purpose of God; the choice of Gentiles in the scriptural prophecies


We have now come to the second major division of this epistle. Romans chapters 1–8 is doctrinal. Romans chapters 9–11 is dispensational. Romans chapters 12–16 is duty. The first eight chapters of Romans emphasize faith. Chapters 9–11 emphasize hope. Chapters 12–16 emphasize love. There is another way to view Romans: The first section deals with salvation; the second section with segregation; and the last section with service.
Paul has concluded the first eight chapters of Romans, and he has put salvation on a broad basis, because the entire human race is lost. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). God has made salvation available to everyone on one basis alone—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is now ready to discuss the second major division.
Some have attempted to dismiss this section by labeling it an appendix. Others minimize its importance by terming it a parenthesis and not actually pertinent. However, it is not only pertinent, it is vital to the logic and doctrine of the epistle.
There is a sense in which chapters 8 and 12 can be joined together as two boxcars. But Paul was not making up a freight train when he wrote Romans. Romans is not a freight train but a flowing stream. Chapters 9–11 can no more be removed than you can take out the middle section of the Mississippi River without causing havoc. Griffith Thomas writes, “The chapters 9–10-11 are an integral part of the epistle and are essential to its true interpretation.”
There are certain grand particulars which reveal the significance of this section. They are: The psychological factor; the historical factor; the doctrinal factor.
The psychological factor has to do with the personal experience of the apostle Paul. It is not entirely accurate to state that Romans comes from the head of the apostle and Galatians comes from his heart. The heart of Paul is laid bare in the opening of chapter 9—and in fact, throughout this section. There is a great gap between chapter 8 and chapter 9. Chapter 8 closes on the high plane of triumph and joy in the prospect of no separation from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Chapter 9 opens on the low plane of despair and sorrow. Obviously a change of subject matter brought about this heartbreak in the apostle. This we shall observe when we consider the text.
The historical factor takes into account the unique position and problem in Paul’s day. Modern interpretation has largely failed to take into consideration this factor. The present-day church is for the most part Gentile, and the Jewish background has been all but forgotten. Men assume that the Old Testament promises are merged and dissolved into the church. The arbitrary assumption is that the church is heir to the prophecies of the Old Testament and that God is through with the nation Israel.
Some time ago a Christian organization held a prophetic congress in Jerusalem. It was rather amusing because a meeting that was to be so important ended up as a “tempest in a teapot.” Many writers who covered the congress said that the city of Jerusalem did not even know that it was taking place. It is interesting to compare this congress with the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 when the whole city was shaken. Half of those present in the congress had no place for the nation Israel in God’s plan for the future. They felt that God was through with Israel. If that were true, why did they go to Jerusalem to hold a prophetic congress? They could have gone just as well to Scappoose, Oregon, or Muleshoe, Texas. God is not by any means through with Israel, as we shall see. Stifler states this view:
It has been tacitly assumed in Christian interpretation that Judaism’s day is over; that an elect, leveling church built on faith in Christ was the intent of the law and the prophets; and that it was the duty of all Jews to drop their peculiarities and come into the church. Such an assumption the Jews ascribed to Paul. It is strangely forgotten that the mother church in Jerusalem and Judaea never had a Gentile within its fold, that none could have been admitted, and that every member of that primitive body of tens of thousands was zealous of the law (Acts 21:20). They accepted Jesus as the Messiah, but abandoned none of their Old Testament customs and hopes. Christianity has suffered not a little in the continuous attempt to interpret it not from the Jewish, but from the Gentile point of view. The church in Jerusalem, and not the church in Antioch or Ephesus or Rome, furnishes the only sufficient historic outlook (James M. Stifler, The Epistle To the Romans, p. 162).

My friend, it is a very narrow view to assume that God is through with the nation Israel. Paul’s answer to, “Hath God cast away his people?” is a sharp negative: “God forbid” (Rom. 11:1). He is going to show that the promises that God made to the nation Israel are going to be fulfilled to that nation. Also he will show that God has made certain promises to the church, and today He is calling out an elect people, both Jew and Gentile, to form the church. This is exactly the conclusion to which the Council at Jerusalem came (Acts 15). This is actually the crux of the interpretation of prophecy: “And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things. Known unto God are his works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:13–18).
James is making it very plain that God is calling out a people to His name. When He concludes this, He will remove the church from the earth and will turn again to Israel. But even at that time, God is not through with Gentiles. We are told that all the saved Gentiles at that time will enter the kingdom with Israel, and God’s kingdom will be set up on this earth. This historical factor cannot be ignored.
The doctrinal factor concerns the right dispensational interpretation and the sovereign purposes of God. Paul has traced in the first eight chapters the great subjects of sin, salvation, and sanctification—all the way from grace to glory. In this age, nationality, ritual, and ceremonies have no weight before God. Faith is the only item which God accepts from man. Any person, regardless of race or condition, can find mercy. This does seem to level out the very distinctions made in the Old Testament. But Paul is going to answer that, and he begins by the rhetorical question: “Hath God cast away his people?” (Rom. 11:1). The answer, of course, is that He has not. Paul began this epistle, you remember, by saying that the gospel is “to the Jew first” (Rom. 1:16), which I think means that chronologically it was given to the Jew first.
Chapter 9–11 is a very important section. It may not deal with Christian doctrine, but it deals with the eschatological, that is, the prophetic, section of the Bible that reveals God is not through with Israel.
Now as we begin chapter 9, notice that this has to do with God’s past dealings with Israel. In chapter 10 we will see God’s present dealings with Israel and, in chapter 11, God’s future dealings with Israel as a nation. God’s reason for dealing with the nation in the past did not derive from their exceptional qualities or superior efforts. On the contrary, all of God’s actions are found in His own sovereign will. He functions through mercy in His dealings with Israel and all others—with you and me. Luther’s statement affords a fitting introduction to this chapter. “Who hath not known passion, cross, and travail of death cannot treat of foreknowledge (election of grace) without injury and inward enmity toward God. Wherefore take heed that thou drink not wine while thou art yet a sucking babe.” This is strong medicine we are going to look at here.

ISRAEL DEFINED


I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost [Rom. 9:1].


Let me give you my translation of this verse: I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience in the Holy Spirit bearing witness with me.
This seems to be a very formal introduction coming from the apostle Paul, but you must remember that at the time he wrote this he was accused of being an enemy of his own people. We are told in Acts 23:12, “And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.” Now Paul uses an expression that is a favorite with him: “I tell the truth, I do not lie.”

That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart [Rom. 9:2].
It is impossible for us to appreciate adequately the anguish of this great apostle for his own nation. His patience in the presence of their persistent persecution is an indication of it. He knew how they felt toward Christ and toward Christianity, for he once felt that way himself. He had been a Pharisee, a leader; he longed for them to come to Christ as he had.


For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh [Rom. 9:3].

I’d like to give you a different translation of this: For I was wishing (but it is not possible) that I myself were accursed (devoted to destruction) from the Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
The verse presents a real problem in translation. If you want a free translation, here it is: For I was once myself accursed from Christ as my brethren, my kinsman according to the flesh.
Frankly, I do not understand Paul at all, if our Authorized Version has translated it accurately. Paul has just said in chapter 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Now Paul says, “I wish I were accursed.” That is idle wishing, Paul. You can’t be accursed—you just told us that. This, then is just an oratorical gesture; you are not sincere when you say a thing like this.
However, the apostle Paul is always sincere. He didn’t use oratorical gestures. So I believe he is saying, “For I was once myself accursed from Christ just like my brethren. I know I cannot be accursed, and I want them to come to know Christ and be in my present position.” Professor J. A. Bengel said, “It is not easy to estimate the measure of love in a Moses and a Paul.” Moses expressed the same sentiment in Exodus 32:31–32, “And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.”


Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;

Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen [Rom. 9:4–5].

Paul raises the question: Who are Israelites? There are eight things that identify Israelites:
1. The Adoption. The adoption was national and pertained to the national entity, not to separate individuals. The only nation that God ever called His “son” is the nation Israel: “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn” (Exod. 4:22). Again in Deuteronomy 7:6 “For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” Either God meant this or He did not mean it. And if He didn’t mean it, then I don’t know why you believe in John 3:16—both promises are in the same Book. I believe John 3:16, and I believe Deuteronomy 7:6. He said “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” (Hos. 11:1). God speaks of the nation—not just an individual—the nation of Israel as being His son. He never said that of any other people. The adoption belongs to Israel.
2. The Glory. This was the physical presence of God with them as manifested in the tabernacle and later in the temple. Exodus 40:35 reveals, “And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” The children of Israel are the only people who have ever had the visible presence of God. There is no visible presence of God today. We need to remember that fact.
Many years ago there was an evangelist who put up a tent in Southern California. He bragged that you could see angels walking on top of the tent and that you could see angels inside the tent. The minute he made a statement like that I knew there was something radically wrong. I also knew there was an explanation, and there was—the man died an alcoholic. I imagine that, after two or three drinks, you could see angels walking on tents, and he probably did. But only Israel truly had the visible presence of God. The church does not have it. Why? Because the Spirit of God indwells every believer, making real the living Christ who is at God’s right hand.
3. The Covenants. God has made certain covenants with the nation Israel that He intends to carry out. Many of them He has already carried out. He said He would make them a blessing to all people. He said to David that this One would come in his line. All of this has been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. God made many covenants with Israel—with Abraham, with David, with the nation—which He has not made with any other people. To Israel belong the covenants.
4. The Law. The Mosaic Law was given to the nation Israel. “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine” (Exod. 19:5). Then God says in Exodus 31:13, “Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you.” This is for the nation Israel, you see.
I have been asked, “Why don’t you keep the Sabbath day?” I do not keep it because I am not a member of the nation Israel. Others have asked me, “Did God ever change the Sabbath day?” God has not changed the Sabbath, but He has sure changed us. We are in Christ, and that is a new relationship. He gave the Mosaic Law to Israel.
5. The Service of God. This had to do with the worship of the tabernacle and temple. They were to be a kingdom of priests. “And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel” (Exod. 19:6). The nation failed God, but God did not give up His purpose that they should be priests. God took the tribe of Levi and gave them the responsibility of serving and caring for the tabernacle and, later on, the temple. In the future, in the millennial kingdom the nation Israel will once again be God’s priests upon the earth.
6. The Promises. The Old Testament abounds with promises made to these people. God told Joshua, “Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel” (Josh. 1:2). The children of Israel were to possess the land. I was over there some time ago, but I didn’t cross the Jordan because it wasn’t safe—probably someone would have shot at me. Several years ago I did cross the Jordan River, but not because God gave a command to Joshua and the people of Israel. I have never felt that any of the land of Palestine belonged to me. The land is beginning to bloom like a rose, but much of that land is still barren. It will be a beautiful land again when the Lord Jesus comes to rule. It has never been my land, and it never will be. The land of Palestine was given strictly to the Jews.
7. The Fathers. This refers primarily to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
8. Christ the Messiah. He came according to the flesh. When He came to this earth, He was a Jew. The woman at the well called Him a Jew (see John 4:9). Paul is careful to say that we know Him no longer after the flesh: “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Cor. 5:16). Paul identifies Jesus as God, and to Paul He is the God-Man. John 1:14 tells us, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” Christ came as a human babe to the nation Israel. The woman at the well identified Him as a Jew, and I think she was in a better position to say who He was than some scholar in New York City sitting in a swivel chair in a musty library.
Perhaps “Christ the Messiah” should be separated from the other seven features because it is greater than all the others. “For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham” (Heb. 2:16).

ISRAEL IDENTIFIED


The Israel of another time period has already been defined. Now let us identify them in Paul’s day and in our day also.


Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel [Rom. 9:6].

This is a strange expression. In other words, not all the offspring, the natural offspring of Israel, are the real Israel. The Jew in Paul’s day raised the question as to why the Jew had not wholeheartedly accepted Christ since theirs was an elect nation. Is not this failure on God’s part? Paul partially dealt with this problem at the beginning of Romans 3. Now Paul is going to make a distinction between the natural offspring of Jacob and the spiritual offspring. Always there has been a remnant, and that remnant, whether natural or not natural, has been a spiritual offspring. This is a distinction within the nation Israel, and he is not including Gentiles here at all. The failure was not God’s; but the people had failed. God’s promises were unconditional.

Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but. In Isaac shall thy seed be called [Rom. 9:7].
This verse is a devastating blow to the argument of those who were attempting to stand against Paul. If the “seed” were reckoned on natural birth alone, then the Ishmaelites, Midianites, and Edomites would be included. A fine Arab man in Jericho said to me several years ago, “I want you to know that I am a son of Abraham.” I could not argue against that. He was a son of Abraham. These others were all the physical offspring of Abraham. To be the natural offspring of Abraham was no assurance that a person was a child of promise.
You will recall what the Jews said to the Lord Jesus on one occasion, “… Abraham is our father. Jesus said unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham.” Then the Lord continued saying, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a lair, and the father of it” (John 8:39, 44).


That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed [Rom. 9:8].

The apostle Paul makes a clear distinction between the elect and the nonelect in the nation Israel. “The children of the flesh” are not the children of God. “The children of the promise” are the ones counted for the seed. In Acts 21:20 Dr. Luke tells us, “And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law.” There were in Israel thousands of Jews who turned to Christ after His death and resurrection. They were the elect, and Paul always called them “Israel.” When we come to the Book of the Revelation where our Lord was speaking to the churches (the turn of the first century), He says to them in effect, “They do not even belong to a synagogue that worships Me any longer; it is a synagogue that worships Satan” (see Rev. 2:9; 3:9).


For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son [Rom. 9:9].

The children of the promise are not those who believed something—Isaac did not believe before he was born! Isaac was the promised seed. God promised, and God made good. Now we are coming to some strong statements.


And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac [Rom. 9:10].

Isaac and Rebecca are likewise given as an illustration of this principle of the divine election.


(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) [Rom. 9:11].

Although this verse is in parentheses, its truth is of supreme importance. Some explanation may be offered for God’s rejection of Ishmael, but that is not possible in the case of Isaac and Rebecca’s children—those boys were twins! God rejected the line of primogeniture, that is, of the first born, and chose the younger son. At that time Jacob had done no good, and Esau had done no evil. It does not rest upon birth—that was identical—and it does not rest upon their character or their works. Paul makes the entire choice rest upon “the purpose of God according to election.” He further qualifies his statement that it is not of works, but rests upon God who calls. However, the calling in this verse is not to salvation.


It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger [Rom. 9:12].

This is a quotation from Genesis 25:23, which was given before the two boys were born. “And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.”

As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated [Rom. 9:13].
This is a quotation from the last book in the Old Testament (see Mal. 1:2–3). This statement was not made until the two boys had lived their lives and two nations had come from them, which was about two thousand years later, and much history had been made. A student once said to Dr. Griffith Thomas that he was having trouble with this passage because he could not understand why God hated Esau. Dr. Thomas answered, “I am having a problem with that passage too, but mine is different. I do not understand why God loved Jacob.” That is the big problem. It is easy to see why God rejected Esau, friend. He was a rascal; he was a godless fellow, filled with pride, and from him came a nation that wanted to live without God and turned their backs upon Him. I can understand why God rejected Esau, but not why He chose Jacob. The Bible tells us that He made His choice according to His sovereign will.

THE CHOICE OF ISRAEL IS IN THE SOVEREIGN PURPOSE OF GOD


What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid [Rom. 9:14].


What will we say to this? Is there injustice with God? Perish the thought! Let it not be. The answer is a resounding no!
The natural man rebels against the sovereignty of God. If anything is left to God to make the choice, man immediately concludes that there is injustice. Why is that?
There are people today who have applauded some of the presidents we have had during the 1960s and 1970s. Apparently—I don’t know if we will ever get the truth—there have been bad judgments made during their terms in office, and as a result thousands of our boys have died. Yet one of those men received more votes than any man who has run for president. The remarkable thing is that we often do not question the judgments of men, but we do question the judgments of God.
My friend, although we cannot intrude into the mysterious dealings of God, we can trust Him to act in justice. We cannot avoid the doctrine of election, nor can we reconcile God’s sovereign election with man’s free will. Both are true. Let’s keep in mind that this is His universe. He is sovereign. I am but a little creature on earth, and He could take away the breath from me in the next moment. Do I have the audacity to stand on my two feet, look Him in the face, and question what He does? That would be rebellion of the worst sort. I bow to my Creator and my Redeemer, knowing that whatever choice He makes is right. By the way, if you do not like what He does, perhaps you should move out of His universe and start one of your own so you can make your own rules. But as long as you live in God’s universe, you will have to play according to His rules. Little man needs to bow his stiff neck and stubborn knees before Almighty God and say, “There is no unrighteousness with Thee” (see John 7:18).


For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion [Rom. 9:15].

Moses, you recall, wanted to see the glory of God. God said in effect, “I’ll show it to you Moses, but I’ll not show it to you because you are Moses.” Now, Moses was a very important person. He was leading the children of Israel through the wilderness. God says, “I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. I will do this for you, not because you are Moses, but because I am God!” Do you know why God saved me? It was not because I am Vernon McGee but because He is God. He made the choice, and I bow before Him.


So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy [Rom. 9:16].

God’s mercy is not extended as a recognition of human will, nor is it a reward of human work. Human-willing and human-working are not motivating causes of God’s actions. Man thinks that his decision and his effort cause God to look with favor upon him. Stifler states it succinctly when he says, “Willing and running may indicate the possession of grace, but they are not the originating cause” (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 172). God extends mercy, and He does it because he is God, my friend. Who are we to question Him? I bow before Him today.


For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth [Rom. 9:17–18].

God says that He used Pharaoh. “But,” you may say, “he was not elected.” No, he sure wasn’t. Just think of the opportunities God gave him. Pharaoh would have said, “I am Pharaoh. I make the decisions around here. I reject the request to let the people of Israel go.” God says, “You may think you won’t, but you are going to let them go.” God’s will prevails. When the Scriptures say that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it means that God forced Pharaoh to make the decision that was in his heart. God forced him to do the thing he wanted to do. There never will be a person in hell who did not choose to be there, my friend. You are the one who makes your own decision.

Thou wilt say then unto me. Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? [Rom. 9:19].
This is the reasoning of the natural man: If God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, why should He find fault with Pharaoh? Wasn’t he accomplishing God’s purpose?


Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? [Rom. 9:20].

Human reasoning is not the answer to the problem. The answer is found only in the mystery and majesty of God’s sovereignty. Faith leaves it there and accepts it in humble obedience. Unbelief rebels against it and continues on under the very wrath and judgment of the God it questions.
Johann Peter Lange has well stated it: “When man goes the length of making himself a god whom he affects to bind by his own rights, God then puts on His majesty, and appears in all His reality as a free God, before whom man is nothing, like the clay in the hand of the potter. Such was Paul’s attitude when acting as God’s advocate in his suit with Jewish Pharisaism. This is the reason why he expresses only one side of the truth.”

You cannot put one little star in motion;
You cannot shape one single forest leaf,
Nor fling a mountain up, nor sink an
ocean,
Presumptuous pigmy, large with
unbelief!
You cannot bring one down of regal
splendor,
Nor bid the day to shadowy twilight
fall,
Nor send the pale moon forth with
radiance tender;
And dare you doubt the One who has
done it all?
—Sherman A. Nagel, Sr.

The important thing is that God is God, and little man won’t change that.
In the next few verses Paul uses the illustration of the potter and the clay. God is the Potter and we are clay. God took man out of the dust of the earth and formed him. He didn’t start with a monkey—man made a monkey of himself, but God didn’t make him like that. God took man from the dust of the ground. The psalmist says, “… he remembereth that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). We forget this sometimes. As some wag has said, when dust gets stuck on itself, it is mud. Abraham took his correct position before God when he said, “… Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27).


Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? [Rom. 9:21].

God reaches into the same lump of humanity and takes out some clay to form Moses. Again, He reaches in and takes out of the same lump the clay to make Pharaoh. It was all ugly, unlovely, sightless, and sinful clay at the beginning. His mercy makes a vessel “unto honour”; that is, a vessel for honorable use. It is the Potter’s right to make another vessel for “dishonour” or common use.


What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.

And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,

Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? [Rom. 9:22–24].

Paul has already established the fact that God is free to act in the mystery and majesty of His sovereignty. Now Paul shows that God deals in patience and mercy even with the vessels of wrath. God did not fit them for destruction; the rebellion and sin of the clay made them ripe for judgment. God would have been right in exercising immediate judgment, but He dealt with these vessels, not as lifeless clay, but as creatures with a free will. He gave them ample opportunity to reveal any inclination they might have of obeying God. Although God hates sin and must judge it in a most final manner, His mercy is constantly going out to the creatures involved.
God suggests that the “vessels of wrath” are the Jewish nation, which was destroyed in a.d. 70. Jesus, you recall, announced this destruction, but He wept over the city, and He prayed, “… Father, forgive them …” (Luke 23:34). When the final judgment came in a.d. 70, God saved a remnant. These were “vessels of mercy.”
THE CHOICE OF GENTILES IN THE SCRIPTURAL PROPHECIES

This is the final division of the chapter. Paul has made it very clear that the nation Israel was chosen by the sovereign will of God, not because of their merit. God not only chose a nation and not only saved those in that nation who turned to Him—and it’s a remnant always—but among the Gentiles He is calling out a people today to His name.


As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.

And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God [Rom. 9:25–26].

“Osee” is the Greek name of the prophet Hosea. This is a quotation from Hosea 2:23, and it refers to the nation Israel. Peter refers this prophecy to the believing remnant in his day which perpetuated the nation. To his people who had turned to Christ, he says, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9–10).
The second prophecy (v. 26) is from Hosea 1:10 and refers to Gentiles anyplace on the earth who turn to Christ now and in the future. As James put it: “That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things” (Acts 15:17).
And so God reached into Europe. He did not send the gospel into Europe because the people there were superior. Some members of the white race seem to think that they are superior people. They are not. The Chinese were way ahead of my ancestors in Paul’s day. My ancestors—and perhaps yours—were there in the forests of Europe. A branch of my family was over in Scotland. I am told they were the dirtiest, filthiest savages who have ever been on this earth. Do you think God carried the gospel to them because they were superior? They were anything but that. “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (v. 16). I thank Him for that—how wonderful it is!


Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:

For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth [Rom. 9:27–28].

A literal translation would be: Isaiah also cried in anguish over Israel, if the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant only shall be saved; for He [the Lord] will execute His word upon the earth, finishing and cutting it short in righteousness.
The quotation Paul uses is from Isaiah 10:22–23. Only a remnant of Israel will be saved in the Great Tribulation Period. If you want to see the percentage, there are approximately fifteen million Jews today. In the Great Tribulation Period we know that only 144,000 Jews will be sealed—that is a small ratio. While I do believe others will be saved during that period, 144,000 will be His witnesses, and a small remnant will be saved. It has always been only a remnant with them, and it is only a remnant with Gentiles. Now don’t ask me why—it is God that shows mercy. If He saved only one, it would reveal the mercy of God, because none of us deserve His mercy.


And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha [Rom. 9:29].

In this verse Paul is quoting from Isaiah 1:9. This is a startling statement, but it is a fitting climax to the sovereignty of God. Even the elect nation would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah in depravity and rebellion to God if He had not intervened in sovereign mercy and recovered a remnant. What an indictment of proud Pharisaism and proud church membership today! Only God’s mercy keeps any of us from going to hell, my beloved.


What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith [Rom. 9:30].

This is a thrilling statement. Gentiles, without willing or working, found righteousness in Christ because God worked and God willed it. The Old Testament Scriptures had prophesied it. As we have seen, Isaiah had said that Gentiles were to be saved.

But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness [Rom. 9:31].
In other words, Israel, pursuing after a law which should give righteousness, did not arrive at such a law. This is a terrifying statement. The Jews tried to produce a righteousness of their own through the Mosaic system. They didn’t produce it—look at the nation today. Religious people are the most difficult people to reach with the gospel—church members, who think they are good enough to be saved.
You will never be able to reconcile the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. But Paul is making it very clear here that if you are going to be saved it is your responsibility. It is “whosoever will may come” (see Mark 8:34) and “… him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). You can come; don’t stand on the sidelines and say, “I’m not elected.” But I have never heard of anybody being elected who didn’t run for office. If you want to be saved, you are the elect. If you don’t, you’re not. And that is all I know about it. I cannot reconcile election and free will. I have come to the place in the sunset of my life that I can say that God is sovereign, and He is going to do this according to His will. And His will is right—there is no unrighteousness with Him. He won’t make a mistake. Men make mistakes: men in government make mistakes, yet people believe in them. My friend, why don’t you believe in God? He is righteous, He is good, and whatever He does it right.


Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone;

As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed [Rom. 9:32–33].

The quotation here is from both Isaiah 8:14 and Isaiah 28:16. The Jews stumbled. To the Gentile the cross is foolishness. The one who believes, either Jew or Gentile, will be saved. The humble mind will come in simple faith. The natural man will still try to produce salvation by some natural process. He will try to reconcile the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man as if the puny mind of man is capable and infallible.

CHAPTER 10

Theme: Present state of Israel; present standing of Israel; present salvation for both Jew and Gentile


We have seen the present state of Israel; they are lost. And that is their condition today. They are lost just as the Gentiles are lost. The reason is that Christ is the end of the law of righteousness.
Now Paul turns from the sovereignty of God to the responsibility of man. He began this thought in the concluding verses of chapter 9.

PRESENT STATE OF ISRAEL


Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved [Rom. 10:1].


They are responsible, you see; they are responsible to God. Our Lord has said to them, “For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thv visitation” (Luke 19:43–44). That is the condition of the nation over there today. They are surrounded by nations that want to push them into the sea. Why? You can blame the Arab, you can blame Russia, you can blame everybody. You can blame God if you want to, because He says the reason they are in such a state—unable to have peace—is that they did not recognize their time of visitation. So Paul says, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” Now notice the three great features in His statement:
1. Israel, with all they possessed (see Rom. 9:4–5) of religion, were not saved. May I say that probably 75 percent of church members are not saved. They are just members of a religious club. They are in rebellion against God in that they will not accept the righteousness God offers in Christ. You can be religious and lost. Israel had a God-given religion, but they needed to be saved. They had religion but not righteousness. They had more than any other nation, but they were lost. Paul’s desire was that Israel might be saved.
2. Israel was savable. Bengel says, “Paul would not have prayed had they been altogether reprobate.” They were savable. Who would have thought that my ancestors in the forests of Germany were savable? They were as heathen as anyone could possibly be. Yet at that time the Chinese had a civilization. Why didn’t the missionaries go in that direction? Why didn’t the apostles say, “Let’s not bother with those pagan Gentiles; they are not even savable”? Pagan Gentiles were savable, and the Jews were savable also.
3. They are on the same plane before God today as Gentiles and should be evangelized as any other people without Christ. There is no difference today. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). The idea of a superior race or an inferior race is ridiculous. The ground at the foot of the cross is all level. Whoever you are, your social position, your church membership, your good works, or the color of your skin will not help you. Without Christ you are a hell-doomed sinner. God is just and righteous when He says that to you. Perhaps you say, “I don’t like what that preacher said.” Well, it is actually what God said, my friend. God is putting it in neon lights here. He doesn’t want you to miss it.
There are those today who believe that the gospel ought to go to Israel first. I think Paul meant that chronologically it went to the Jew first. For the first few years in the city of Jerusalem and in all Israel there was not a Gentile saved. The church was 100 percent Jewish. Although I do not believe we are told to evangelize the Jew first in our day, I certainly do believe that the Jew should not be left out. He is in the plan and purpose of God, and he should have the gospel. I disagree with a man like the late Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, a recent liberal theologian, who is reported to have said (by Time magazine in 1958), “Do not try to convert Jews … Jews may find God more readily in their own faith than in Christianity.” He maintains this viewpoint, so he says, “especially because of the guilt they are likely to feel if they become Christians.” However, coming to Christ is the way to get rid of guilt. They should have the gospel—all people should have it. God is prepared to show mercy today.


For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge [Rom. 10:2].

I know some churches, friend, where the members are as busy as termites. On Monday night they play basketball. On Tuesday night it is football. On Wednesday night it is volleyball. On Thursday night it is baseball. On Friday night they just “have a ball.” They have something going on every night. They have a “zeal of God”—they like to do it all in the name of Jesus. But all they have is religion. My friend, do you have Christ? Have you accepted the righteousness that God offers in Christ Jesus? You cannot be saved on any other basis. You have to be perfect to go to heaven, and I have news for you: you are not perfect. Neither am I perfect. But I am going to heaven because Jesus died for me, was buried, and rose again from the dead. He was delivered for my offenses and was raised for my justification. He is my righteousness. I will go to heaven one day because He took my place. Is Jesus Christ your Savior? Forget your church membership for awhile. I do not mean to minimize your membership, but do not trust it for salvation. The average church today is as dead as a dodo bird. A fellow said to me some time ago concerning the church, “I would just as soon go out and play golf on Sunday.” Knowing the church he attended, I understood how he felt. In fact, I believe he could be more spiritual out on the golf course than he could be in a service in that church. The point is that he should find a church that is really preaching Christ. Oh, how wonderful He is! How important it is to have a personal relationship to Him.


For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God [Rom. 10:3].

This was true of Israel, and it is true of the average church member today. Dr. Griffith Thomas commented on this lack of discernment. “Is it not marvellous that people can read the Bible and all the time fail to see its essential teaching and its personal application to themselves? There is scarcely anything more surprising and saddening than the presence of intellectual knowledge of God’s Word with an utter failure to appreciate its spiritual meaning and force.” I have seen men, officers of the church, who carry such big Bibles under their arms that they leaned in that direction when they walked down the street. I watched them for twenty-one years and saw no spiritual growth. They just did not grow. They had no discernment whatsoever. So many church people have no real discernment of what it really means to be saved.


For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth [Rom. 10:4].

“Christ is the end of the law” means He is the goal. Our Lord made it clear. He said in effect, “I didn’t come to patch up an old garment; I came to give you a new garment—the robe of My righteousness” (see Matt. 9:16). The Mosaic Law was given to lead men to Christ; it wasn’t given to save men. Paul said to the Galatian believers that “… the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). The Law was not given to save us, but to show us that we needed to be saved. It takes us by the hand, brings us to the cross of Christ, and says, “Little fellow, you need a Savior.” The Law came to an end in Christ. “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4). William R. Newell (Romans Verse by Verse, p. 393) made the statement: “The Law is no more a rule of life than it is a means of righteousness.” It is for everyone that believes, which suggests both the freeness and universality of salvation. “Every one”—universal. “Believeth”—oh, the freeness of it! Why don’t you accept it?

PRESENT STANDING OF ISRAEL


For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them [Rom. 10:5].


Granted that you could attain a righteousness in the law, it would be your own righteousness, not God’s righteousness. It could never measure up to His.


But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) [Rom. 10:6].

He talks about ascending up to heaven to bring it down, or going down to hell and bringing it up. My friend, the righteousness that Paul is talking about—he quotes from Deuteronomy 30:11–14—is available!


Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) [Rom. 10:7].

You don’t have to make a trip anywhere to get it.


But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach [Rom. 10:8].

It is available right where you are sitting. A great many folk think they have to go to an altar in some sort of meeting to be saved. But salvation is available to you right where you are now.


That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation [Rom. 10:9–10].

There are many folk who maintain that a believer has to make a public confession of faith. That is not what Paul is saying here. It does not mean to go forward in a public meeting. In the church I served for twenty-one years I saw many people come forward, but they were not all saved. Paul is not saying that you have to make a public confession.
Paul is saying that man needs to bring into agreement his confession and his life. The mouth and the heart should be in harmony, saying the same thing. It is with the heart that you believe. Your “heart” means your total personality, your entire being. You see, there are some folk who say something with their mouths—they give lip service to God—but their hearts are far from Him. When you make a public confession, you be dead sure that your heart is right along with you; that you are not just saying idle words that mean nothing to you personally. If there is confession without faith, it is due either to self-deception or to hypocrisy. If there is faith without confession, it may be cowardice. It seems to me that Paul is saying here that James is accurate, “… faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). If you are going to work your mouth, be sure you have faith in your heart, my friend.
“Believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead” means that the resurrection of Christ is the heart of the gospel. As Paul said earlier, He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).

For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed [Rom. 10:11].
Paul is quoting from Isaiah 28:16: “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” The difference in our translation is not due to Paul’s changing the quotation. Rather, the word for confound and make haste is the same. It means to flee because of fear. Paul is quoting Isaiah to enforce his previous statement that the “by faith righteousness” is taught in other passages of the Old Testament. This passage also shows the universal character of salvation in the word whosoever.


For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him [Rom. 10:12].

There is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek (or Gentile)—all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All, if they are to be saved, must come the same way to Christ. The Lord Jesus said, “… no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). You can’t come to Him by the Old Testament ritual or by the Mosaic Law. Salvation is offered to all people on the same basis of mercy—by faith. Hear and believe the gospel.

PRESENT SALVATION FOR BOTH JEW AND GENTILE


For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved [Rom. 10:13].


This is a remarkable statement, which Paul draws from the Old Testament (see Joel 2:32), to enforce his argument that salvation is by faith. This makes it very clear that both Jew and Gentile are to call on the Lord. To “call upon the name of the Lord” means to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.


How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?

And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! [Rom. 10:14–15].

It is necessary to understand Paul’s position in order to appreciate these verses. The Jews, his own people, hated the apostle Paul even though they applauded Saul, the Pharisee. He is showing the logic of his position. They rejected his claim, or the right of any of the apostles, to proclaim a gospel that omitted the Mosaic system which had degenerated into Pharisaism.
Paul shows that there must be messengers of the gospel who have credentials from God. Paul, you recall, began this epistle with the claim that he was a called apostle of Jesus Christ (see Rom. 1:1). There follows a logical sequence. Preachers must be sent in order for people to hear that they might believe, for they would not know how to call upon God. Paul pinpoints all on believing. This, therefore, necessitated his ministry.
Paul clinches this bit of logic with a quotation from Isaiah 52:7 which says: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!” This quotation precedes the marvelous fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which is a prophecy of Christ’s death and resurrection. He opened it with the prophet’s query, “… Who hath believed our report? …” (Isa. 53:1). The law of Moses surely was not glad tidings of good things, but it was a ministration of death.
We are told here that the feet of those who bear glad tidings are beautiful. I believe that my radio program is important, and I am giving the rest of my life to it. I feel it is important to get God’s Word out to needy people. One day I was making tapes for the program in my bare feet. I looked at them and concluded that they are not beautiful. There is nothing about feet that causes them to be an object of beauty. But God calls beautiful the feet of His called-ones and His sent-messengers—beautiful. Johann Peter Lange has an appropriate word on this: “In their running and hastening, in their scaling obstructing mountains, they are the symbols of the earnestly-desired, winged movement and appearance of the Gospel itself.” That is one of the reasons I love the opportunity provided by radio today. We can scale mountains, go over the plains, reach over the vast expanses of water, and go into the inner recesses of the earth with the gospel. We can go into homes, automobiles, and places of business. We have been even in barrooms with the gospel by radio. It is wonderful to get out the Word of God. It is wonderful to have feet that the Lord calls beautiful!

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? [Rom. 10:16].
While we are amazed at the great number of folk who tell us that they have received Christ because of our ministry, when we look at the total picture, it is a very small minority. Who has believed our report? Not very many.


So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God [Rom. 10:17].

Oh, this is so important! Faith does not come by preaching philosophy or psychology or some political nostrum; it comes by preaching the Word of God. Until you hear the Word of God, you cannot be saved, my friend.


But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world [Rom. 10:18].

While I am not saying that Paul has reference to radio, it certainly applies to radio broadcasting. Radio is a marvelous way of getting God’s Word to the ends of the world.


But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you [Rom. 10:19].

Paul is quoting from Deuteronomy 32:21. Today God is calling out a people from among Gentiles. Paul will develop this thought in the next chapter.


But Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me [Rom. 10:20].

Paul quotes from Isaiah 65:1: “I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.” Even Isaiah predicted gentile salvation. The Gentiles in darkness were finding Christ. What excuse could Israel who had the Old Testament Scriptures offer? They are entirely without excuse.


But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people [Rom. 10:21].

Have you ever stopped to think how tiresome it is to hold your hands out for a long period of time? Try it sometime and see how long you can do it. It is one of the most tiring things in the world. When Moses held up his hands in prayer to God for Israel’s victory in battle, Aaron and Hur had to prop up his hands because he got so tired holding them up (see Exod. 17:9–12). But God says, “I have been holding out My hands to a disobedient people” (see Isa. 65:2). No one knows how gracious God has been to the nation Israel.
Stephen’s final word to this nation is revealing: “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it” (Acts 7:51–53). This is not confined to Israel. It could be said today that God is holding out His hands to a gainsaying world. I marvel at the patience of God. I do not mean to be irreverant, but if I were running the show on this little earth down here, I would make a lot of changes. I would move in like a bulldozer! But God is just holding out His hands to our gainsaying world.

CHAPTER 11

Theme: Remnant of Israel finding salvation; remainder of Israel blinded; reason for setting aside the nation Israel; restoration of the nation Israel


We will see that God has a future purpose with Israel. In chapter 9 we saw God’s past dealings with Israel. In chapter 10 we saw God’s present dealings with Israel: a remnant of Israel is finding salvation. Perhaps you are saying, “Well, it must be a very small remnant.” It is larger than you might think it is. It is estimated that there are about fifteen million Jews throughout the world, and the percentage of those who are believers is probably much higher than that of the gentile world with its four billion people.
We have seen that the nation rejected Christ and the “by faith” righteousness of God in Christ which was offered to them. And now God has rejected them temporarily as a nation. Two questions naturally arise: Has God permanently rejected them as a nation? In other words, does the nation of Israel have a future? Secondly, are all the promises of the Old Testament nullified by the rejection of Israel? Remember that God had promised primacy to Israel in the Old Testament. He had said they would be the head, not the tail, of the nations (see Deut. 28:13). My friend, all the promises of the Old Testament will have a literal fulfillment. Paul will make that clear.

REMNANT OF ISRAEL FINDING SALVATION


I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin [Rom. 11:1].


What people is Paul talking about? Israel. In case the amillennialist might miss this, Paul is very specific. Paul himself is present proof. He is a true Israelite of genuine stock. He is descended from Abraham; he is from one of the twelve tribes of Israel, Benjamin, one of the two tribes that never seceded from the nation. He was 100 percent Israelite.
“God forbid” is more accurately, Let it not be! It is a strong negative. Even the form of the question demands a negative answer. God has not cast away Israel as a nation.


God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying,

Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life [Rom. 11:2–3].

Paul uses old Elijah as an illustration, and he makes a good one. Elijah stood for God, and he stood alone. How I admire that man standing alone for God against 450 prophets of Baal. And Elijah goes to the Lord to complain. He says, “Lord, I am all alone; I am the only one left.” God says, “Wait a minute, you think you are alone, but you are not.”


But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal [Rom. 11:4].

Elijah was totally unaware that God had been working in the hearts of seven thousand men. If there were seven thousand men who had not bowed the knee to Baal, then it follows that there were about twice as many women who did not bow the knee either, if you go by percentages. For the northern kingdom this was a sizable remnant in the day of Ahab and Jezebel.


Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace [Rom. 11:5].

God always had a remnant in Israel. That remnant today is composed of those Jews who have come to Christ. This is the reason Paul will say later that all Israel is not Israel.


And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work [Rom. 11:6].

In other words, grace and works represent two mutually exclusive systems. They are diametrically opposed to each other. The remnant at this time is composed of those who are not saved by works or by merit; they are saved by the grace of God. The future purpose of God—from the day Paul wrote down to the present—concerns those who will accept Christ.
What about those who do not accept Christ? Well, the remainder of Israel is hardened.

REMAINDER OF ISRAEL BLINDED


It is important to notice that they were hardened because they failed; they did not fail because they were hardened. A lot of folk get the cart before the horse—in fact, they get the horse in the cart, and it doesn’t belong there!


What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded [Rom. 11:7].

Did they fail to come to Christ because they had been blinded? Oh, no. They had been exposed to the gospel as no other people have been exposed to it. God said, “All day long have I stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Rom. 10:21). He has been patient with them. Now they are blinded because they would not accept the light He gave them.


(According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day [Rom. 11:8].

They had rejected, you see. When a man rejects, he becomes the most difficult to reach with the grace of God.


And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them [Rom. 11:9].

This is a quotation from Psalm 69:22 which says, “Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.” The table has reference to feasting, which is representative of material prosperity. The children of Israel had great feasts at which they were actually guests of God—they did not invite God to their feasts as the pagans did—rather, God invited them. The Passover was a notable example. The thought here is that they were feasting in a conceited confidence which was entirely pagan. Their carnal security deceived them as to their true spiritual ruin. They trusted the things they ate without any true confidence in God. My friend, this is the condition at the present moment of multitudes of church members. They come to the Lord’s Supper without a spiritual understanding.


Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back alway [Rom. 11:10].

God gives light in order that men might see, but if they are blind, they will not see. The light reveals the blindness of multitudes today. I am amazed that so many intelligent people do not seem to understand what the Bible is all about.

REASON FOR SETTING ASIDE THE NATION ISRAEL


The nation Israel was set aside for the salvation of the Gentiles. Paul deals with this in the following section.


I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy [Rom. 11:11].

In other words: I say then, did they stumble in order that they might fall? Away with the thought—that’s not it. But by their false step, salvation has come to the Gentiles, to provoke Israel to jealousy.
Now Paul opens this verse with the same engaging inquiry as he did verse 1. Do you remember that he raised the question, “Hath God cast away his people?” (v. 1). Rejection is only partial and temporary. His question is, “Have they stumbled in such a way that they will not rise again?” The answer is an emphatic negative. Their fall has enabled God through His providence to open the gates of salvation wide to the Gentiles. The Jew will see the reality of salvation of the Gentiles, that they are experiencing the blessings of God which the Jew thought could come only to him. This should move him to emulation, not jealousy as we define it. In our trips to Israel, we have had several guides who were Jewish. They were puzzled that we were so interested in things that are Jewish in the nation Israel. They marveled at that. I have visited other countries and enjoyed them. I enjoyed England because some of my ancestors came from that area. In Egypt I saw the pyramids and that great hunk of rock there, and now that I have seen it, I don’t want to see it again. But I have an interest in Israel that is not equaled in any other nation. The Jewish people don’t understand this. One Jewish guide talked to me about it. He said, “I want to know why these things are so important to you.”

Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? [Rom. 11:12].
Israel has been set aside; that is, God is not dealing with them as a nation at this time. When God does begin to deal with them, they won’t have any problem with the Arab—that conflict will be completely resolved. Israel will not live in fear, because God has made it very clear that every man is going to dwell in peace and tranquility. “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it” (Mic. 4:4).
Now since their setting aside has brought the grace of God to Gentiles, what about the grace of God toward the Gentiles after the Jews are received again? It will be multiplied. James made this clear at that great council at Jerusalem. He said that God is calling out from among Gentiles a people for His name just as He is calling out Israelites. Then God says, “After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things” (Acts 15:16–17). This is my reason for periodically making a statement—that sometimes puzzles folk—that the greatest “revival” took place on this earth before the church got here. (I use the word revival in the popular sense of a turning to God.) A man by the name of Jonah went into the city of Nineveh and saw the entire city turn to God. It is true that there was a great turning to God on the Day of Pentecost (which marks the beginning of the church), but what was the percentage? Pentecost was a feast in Jerusalem to which all male Israelites were required to go—there must have been several hundred thousand Jews in the environs of Jerusalem. How many were saved? Well, judging from the record, there were probably about ten thousand who were saved after the first few days of preaching. That is actually a small percentage. And the greatest revival since then took place in the Hawaiian Islands. The percentage there was probably 50 percent. But that was small in comparison to the days of Jonah. And I believe that the greatest revival will take place after the church leaves this earth. Actually, the church has not done too well. I believe that after the church has been raptured, multitudes of Gentiles will turn to God—not only in the Great Tribulation Period, but in the Millennium. Gentile nations will enter the Millennium, and a great many of them are going to like the rule of Christ, and they will turn to God during that period. I believe this with all my heart.


For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:

If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them [Rom. 11:13–14].

Perhaps my translation will help you in the understanding of these two verses: “But I speak to you, the Gentiles. Inasmuch, then, as I [Paul] am an apostle of Gentiles, I glorify my ministry, if by any means I may move to emulation, that is, provoke to jealousy them of my flesh, and may save some of them.”
In other words, Paul says, in effect, “I am an apostle to the Gentiles, and I rejoice in that. But as I preach to the Gentiles, I hope it will move many of my own people to turn to Christ also.” Paul, you remember, wrote to the Corinthians, “And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20).
This is the reason Paul went to Jerusalem with his head shaven and under an oath—he was trying to win his people to Christ. Should he have done this since he lived under grace? Living under grace means that he could do it if he wanted to. In his letter to the Corinthians he continued, “To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law” (1 Cor. 9:21). In other words, he was obeying Christ. Then Paul says, “To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). He was first of all fulfilling his office as an apostle to the Gentiles, and in so doing, he was trying to move his Jewish brethren to turn to Christ. Some turned to Christ—only a few—but some. In all of this Paul was fulfilling his ministry, and God was accomplishing His purpose in this age with both Jew and Gentile.
I understand the satisfaction Paul felt in doing what God had called him to do. God has a place for you, my friend. He may want you to get busy and teach a Sunday school class, do personal work, or reach people through a business enterprise. Or He may want you to support another who is really getting out the Word of God. Whatever it is, you will experience great satisfaction in doing what you are confident God has called you to do.


For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? [Rom. 11:15].

It is wonderful to anticipate the future. I think the greatest days are ahead of us. From man’s point of view, the future is dark. Man has gotten his world in a mess. I felt sorry for a businessman to whom I was talking in Hawaii. We started chatting on the golf course. He told me that he was a businessman from Chicago—a vice-president of some concern. Obviously he had money, but, oh, how pessimistic he was about the future. Many thinking people are very pessimistic about the future of our civilization. But my God is on the throne, and He is going to straighten it out. The greatest days are yet in the future. Oh, the glorious future a child of God has. If I were not a dignified preacher, I would say Hallelujah!


For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches [Rom. 11:16].

You may recall that in the Book of Numbers, God said, “Of the first of your dough ye shall give unto the Lord an heave offering in your generations” (Num. 15:21). “Dough,” of course, is bread dough! A part of the dough was offered to God as a token that all of it was acceptable.
The “firstfruit” evidently refers to the origin of the nation: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“Holy” has no reference to any moral quality, but to the fact that it was set apart for God. Now if the firstfruit, or the first dough—that little bit of dough—was set apart for God, what about the whole harvest? Since Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were set apart for God, what about the nation? It all belongs to God, you see. God is not through with the nation Israel.


And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree [Rom. 11:17].

You and I benefit because of the nation Israel. That is the reason I could never be anti-Semitic. I owe too much to them as a nation.


Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.

Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in [Rom. 11:18–19].

The “olive tree” is a picture of the nation Israel, and the “wild olive” is the church. Everything you and I have is rooted in the fact that God called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and that out of the nation Israel He brought Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Lord.


Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear [Rom. 11:20].

The important thing is that they were set aside because of their unbelief. Oh, my Christian friend, you do not stand before God on your merit, your church membership, or your good life. You stand on one basis alone: your faith in Jesus Christ.
Now Paul gives a word of warning.


For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee [Rom. 11:21].

Since God did not spare the nation Israel when they apostatized, the argument is that He will not spare an apostate church. I am more and more convinced that the church which is based on a philosophy or ritual or some sort of gyroflection—the type of church which was designated in the third chapter of the Book of Revelation as the church of Laodicea—will go into the Great Tribulation. As Dr. George Gill used to say, “Some churches will meet on the Sunday morning after the Rapture, and they won’t miss a member.” That’s Laodicea.
In contrast to this, He says to the church of Philadelphia, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation [that is, the Tribulation], which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Rev. 3:10). He promised to keep from the Tribulation that church which has an open door before it and is getting out the Word of God. My friend, I belong to that church; I hope you do also. It is an invisible body of believers. This is the church that will be taken to meet Christ at the time of the Rapture, which precedes the Great Tribulation.

RESTORATION OF THE NATION ISRAEL

Now we shall see that the restoration of the nation Israel will bring the greatest blessing.


Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off [Rom. 11:22].

These are stern words. Paul calls upon the Gentiles to behold two examples. Rejected Israel reveals the severity of God, but to the Gentiles who have turned to God, the benevolent goodness of God is revealed. These two sides of God need to be revealed today: the judgment of God against the rejection of Christ and against sin, and the grace of God to those that will trust Christ.
Paul did not have the complete picture of the severity of God toward Israel. The history of Israel in the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70 and all that succeeded it is a terrifying story. My friend, let’s not trifle with the grace of God. It is grace which has brought us into the family of God and granted us so many privileges. After over nineteen hundred years the gentile church is as much a failure, if not more so, than Israel.


And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again [Rom. 11:23].

Since God accepted Gentiles who had no merit, surely God can restore Israel who likewise has no merit.
“Again” is the key word. God will again restore Israel. The Old Testament makes it very clear that Israel is going to turn to God again. As an example, read Jeremiah 23:3–8, which is one of the many remarkable prophecies of the restoration of Israel. Zechariah speaks of this: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zech. 12:10). This will be the great Day of Atonement. They will turn to God in repentance, and God will save them just as He saves us—by His marvelous, infinite mercy and grace.


For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? [Rom. 11:24].

Paul continues the illustration of the olive tree. The olive tree is Israel with Abraham as the root. Some of the branches were cut off. The nation, as such, was rejected. God grafted in Gentiles, but not by their becoming Jewish proselytes, which would mean they would have to adopt the Old Testament ritual. Rather, He cut off Israel and grafted in the church—including both Jew and Gentile—directly and immediately upon Abraham by faith. If God could and did do that, it is reasonable to conclude that He can and will take the natural branches and graft them in again. In other words, He will not cast Israel away permanently.


For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in [Rom. 11:25].

“The fulness of the Gentiles” began with the calling out of the church. “Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name” (Acts 15:14). It will continue until the Rapture of the church. Blindness and hardening of Israel will continue as long as the church is present in the world.
The word mystery needs a word of explanation. In the ancient world of Paul’s day there were mystery religions. Today it applies in a popular way to a story that has an unrevealed plot or person. It is used in Scripture in neither of these ways. In the New Testament the word is used to refer to that which had been concealed but is now revealed. The mystery here is the identification of the fulness of the Gentiles, which was not a subject of revelation in the Old Testament.


And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins [Rom. 11:26–27].
When Paul says “all Israel shall be saved,” he does not mean every individual Israelite will be saved. It is the nation he has before us in this chapter. In every age, only a remnant is saved. The quotation Paul uses is from Isaiah 59:20 in the Old Testament: “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord.” The message to the individual is that he or she will have to “turn from transgression” to the Lord. There will be a remnant that will turn to Him. All of them will be saved. He speaks of the saved remnant as the nation Israel.
There is always only a remnant that is saved. There was a remnant in Elijah’s day; there was a remnant in David’s day; there was a remnant in Paul’s day; there is a remnant in our day; and there will be a remnant during the Great Tribulation Period.


As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes.

For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance [Rom. 11:28–29].

In other words, with reference to the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes; but with reference to the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts of grace and the calling of God are without repentance—without a change of mind. Paul is summing up the preceding discussion. There have been two lines of thought which are seemingly in conflict and contradictory, although both are true. In the first place, Israel is regarded as an enemy for the sake of the Gentiles—that is, so the gospel can go to the Gentiles. On the other hand, they are beloved for the sake of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, a Christian cannot indulge in any form of anti-Semitism—that is a point I have made before, and I continue to make it.
The failure of Israel and our failure likewise do not alter the plan and purpose of God.
“The gifts” are not natural gifts, but the word has to do with grace.
The “calling” is not an invitation, but it is the effectual calling of God, which is “without repentance.” In other words, God is not asking even repentance from an unsaved person. The “calling of God” does not require any human movement. From God’s viewpoint it is without man’s repentance or change of mind. Some folk think they have to shed tears in order to be saved. Now certainly the shedding of tears could be a by-product of an emotional person who turns to Christ, but the tears have nothing in the world to do with your salvation. It is your faith in Christ that saves you. And neither is your faith meritorious. It is Christ who is meritorious. Your faith enables you to lay hold of Him.


For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:

Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy [Rom. 11:30–31].

You see, Paul is writing to Gentiles—the church in Rome was largely composed of Gentile believers. By this time, many Gentiles were being saved. He is drawing a contrast here between the nation of Israel and the Gentiles. In times past, the Gentiles did not believe, but now a remnant of the Gentiles have “obtained mercy.” During this same time period Israel as a nation, which formerly believed, does not now believe. Paul puts down the principle by which God saves both Jew and Gentile: it is by mercy. Just as God showed mercy to the Gentiles, He will show mercy to the nation Israel.


For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all [Rom. 11:32].

Both Jew and Gentile are in the stubborn state of rebellion and aggravated unbelief. Because of this, by grace we are saved, through faith; and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any of us should boast (see Eph. 2:8–9).

REASON FOR RESTORING THE NATION ISRAEL


What is the reason that the nation Israel will be restored? Well, that is locked in the riches of the wisdom of God. My friend, let’s rest on the fact that what God is doing is wise, it is right, and it is the best that can be done. You and I have an old nature that questions God when He makes a decision. I have heard many Christians say, “Why are the heathen lost when they haven’t heard the gospel? God has no right to condemn them!” My friend, God has every right imaginable. He is God. And what He is doing is right. If you don’t think it is right, your thinking is wrong. And if you don’t think He is being smart, you are wrong. God is not stupid. You and I may be stupid, but God is not. Oh, how we need to recognize this!

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! [Rom. 11:33].
Paul has come to the place of recognizing the wisdom and the glory of all that he has been discussing.
Godet’s statement on this section is worth quoting: “Like a traveller who has reached the summit of an Alpine ascent, the apostle turns and contemplates. Depths are at his feet, but waves of light illumine them, and there spreads all around an immense horizon which his eye commands.”
This section is pure praise and is no argument at all, yet it is the greatest argument of all. If we do not understand the why of God’s dealings with Israel, with the Gentiles, and with ourselves, it is not because there is not a good and sufficient reason. The difficulty is with our inability to comprehend the wisdom and ways of God. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).
Once, while driving back from Texas to California, my little girl developed a fever of 104 degrees. I took her to a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. She did not understand why I had taken her to the hospital, especially when the doctor probed around and actually made her cry. She said, “Daddy, why did you bring me here?” She did not understand that, since she was sick, I was doing the wisest thing I could do under the circumstances and that I was doing it because I loved her. Oh, my friend, God is doing what is best for us. We may not understand the things that happen to us, but we must believe that it is for our good that God allows them. We are like little children, and we cannot understand God’s ways. Our circumstances may not always seem to be good, but they come from the “depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.” God says to us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8–9). Oh, how we need to recognize this fact.


For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?

Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? [Rom. 11:34–35].

These questions that we have here are simple enough, but the answer is not so easy.
“Who hath known the mind of the Lord?” Well, no one knows the mind of the Lord—that’s the answer. It was Paul’s ambition to know Him. He says, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Phil. 3:10).
“Who hath been his counsellor?” No one can advise God. I have seen a lot of church boards that felt they were really giving God good advice, but He doesn’t need it. Have you noticed that the Lord Jesus never asked for advice when He was here on earth? One time—before feeding the five thousand—He asked Philip, “… Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” Why did He ask that question? “And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do” (John 6:5–6). He didn’t need Philip’s advice. The fact of the matter is, he didn’t use His disciples’ advice. They said, “Send them away.” He said, “You give them something to eat.” My friend, God does not ask for advice, although a lot of folk want to give Him advice today.
“Who hath first given to him?” Have you ever really given anything to God which put Him in the awkward position of owing you something? If you were able to give God something, He would owe you something. What do you have that He hasn’t already given you? I think one reason many of us are so poor is simply because we return to Him so little of what he has given us. To tell the truth, God says He won’t be in debt to anybody. When somebody gives Him something, He turns around and gives him more. Years ago someone asked a financier in Philadelphia, a wonderful Christian man, “How is it that you have such wealth, and yet you give away so much?” The financier replied, “Well, I shovel it out, and God shovels it in; and God’s shovel is bigger than my shovel!” Oh, my friend, most of us are not giving God a chance to use His shovel! We cannot do anything for Him—He will give us back more than we give to Him.


For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen [Rom. 11:36].

This just lifts me to the heights. Let me give you my translation: Because out of Him, and through Him, and unto Him are all things. To Him be the glory unto the ages. Amen.
Alford labeled this verse “the sublimest apostrophe existing even in the pages of inspiration itself.”
“Out of Him” means God is the all-sufficient cause and source of everything.
“Through Him” means God is the mighty sustainer and worker. “… My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” Jesus said (John 5:17).
“Unto Him” means God must call every creature to account to Him. All things flow toward God.
“To whom be glory”—the glory belongs to Him in all ages. Are we robbing God of His glory by taking credit for things we have no business to claim? The glory belongs to Him.
Oh, my friend, what a section of Scripture we have been in, and we leave it reluctantly.

CHAPTER 12

Theme: Relationship to God; relationship to gifts of the Spirit; relationship to other believers; relationship to unbelievers


This is the beginning of the final division in the Book of Romans. As you recall, the first eight chapters were doctrinal; the next three chapters were dispensational; now the emphasis in this last section is duty. We come now to the practical application of the theological arguments that Paul has placed before us. Here the gospel walks in shoe leather—and that is where I like it to walk.
In the first part of Romans the reader saw displayed the helmet of salvation and the shield of faith. But in this last section, the feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. We are to stand in the battle; we are to walk in our life; we are to run in the race.
Someone may suggest that we have already studied the practical application in the section on sanctification. There the gospel walked in shoe leather, it is true, but there is a sharp distinction in these two sections. Under “sanctification” we were dealing with Christian character; in this section we are dealing with Christian conduct. There it was the inner man; here it is the outward man. There it was the condition of the Christian; here it is the consecration of the Christian. There it was who the Christian is; here it is what he does. We have seen the privileges of grace; we now consider the precepts of grace. Enunciation of the way of life must be followed by evidences of life. Announcement of justification by faith must be augmented by activity of life.
There is something else we should note as we proceed into this last section. The conduct of the Christian must be expressed in this world by his relationship to those with whom he comes in contact, and these relationships must be regulated in some way. It is so easy to put down rules of conduct, but Paul is not doing that. He has delivered us from the Mosaic Law, and he did not deliver us in order to put us under another legal system. There are a lot of Christians who call themselves separated Christians because they don’t do this, they don’t do that, and they don’t do about fifteen other things. I wish they would do something, by the way. I have found that those folk have gossipy tongues—you had better watch them. They ought to recognize that the child of God is not given rules and regulations. However, Paul puts down great principles that are to guide the believer. The Holy Spirit is giving the believer a road map of life, showing the curves but not the speed limit. He identifies the motels and eating places which he recommends without commanding the believer to stop at any certain one. Detours are clearly marked, and there is a warning to avoid them. The city of Vanity Fair is named, and the routes of exit are clearly marked. The believer is told to leave without being given the exact route by which to leave—there are several routes.
We are coming down the mountain top of Romans 8–11; we leave the pinnacle of Romans 11:33–36, and we now plunge down to the plane of duty—and it is plain duty. This is where we all live and move and have our being.

RELATIONSHIP TO GOD

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service [Rom. 12:1].

In other words: Therefore, I beg of you, brethren, by the mercies of God that you yield your bodies—your total personalities—a living sacrifice, set apart for God, well-pleasing to God, which is your rational or spiritual service.
Notice that the “therefore” ties it into everything that has come before it. Although it has immediate connection with that which has just preceded it, I am of the opinion that Paul is gathering up the whole epistle when he says, “Therefore.”
“I beg of you” is the language of grace, not law. There is no thunder here from Mount Sinai. Moses commanded; Paul exhorts. Could Paul have commanded? Well, he told Philemon that he could have given him a command, but he didn’t. Paul doesn’t command; he says, “I beg of you.”
“By the mercies of God”—the plural is a Hebraism, denoting an abundance of mercy. God is rich in mercy; God has plenty of it, my friend. He has had to use a lot of it for me, but He still has plenty of it for you. “Mercy” means compassion, pity, and the tenderness of God. His compassions never fail.
We are called upon to “present”—to yield. This is the same word we had, you recall, back in chapter 6. Although some expositors suggest that there it refers to the mind while here it refers to the will, I think it is a false distinction. The appeal in both instances is to the will. In the sixth chapter, the way to Christian character is to yield to Him. Here yielding is the way to Christian consecration and conduct.
He says to yield “your bodies,” your total personalities. The body is the instrument through which we express ourselves. The mind, the affections, the will, and the Holy Spirit can use the body.
Vincent has assembled the following Scriptures which reveal this wide latitude. We are told to glorify God in our bodies. “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20). “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death” (Phil. 1:20). “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body” (2 Cor. 4:10).
By an act of the will we place our total personalities at the disposal of God.
This is our “reasonable service,” our rational service, and it is well-pleasing to God.


And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God [Rom. 12:2].

Kenneth S. Wuest has an excellent translation—actually an interpretation—of this verse: “And stop assuming an outward expression that does not come from within you and is not representative of what you are in your inner being, but is patterned after this age; but change your outward expression to one that comes from within and is representative of your inner being, by the renewing of your mind, resulting in your putting to the test what is the will of God, the good and well-pleasing, and complete will, and having found that it meets specifications, placing your approval upon it” (Romans in the Greek New Testament, p. 290).
Although this is rather elaborate, it is exactly what Paul is saying in this passage of Scripture. Paul is urging the believer not to fashion his life and conduct by those around him, even those in the church.
I know two or three groups of folk who, when they come together in a meeting, assume a front that is not real at all. They are super pious. Oh, I tell you, when they meet on Sunday night, you would think they had just had their halos shined. They are not normal and they are not natural. Yet if you want to hear the meanest and dirtiest gossip, you meet with that group! The child of God ought not to be like that. We ought to be normal and natural—or probably I should say, normal and supernatural. It is so easy to play a part. That is what the word hypocrite really means. Hupokrites is the Greek word for actors. They were playing a part. Hupokrites means to answer back. In acting it means to get your cue and to say the right thing at the right time. In our daily lives hypocrisy is to seem to be something that we are not. I have learned over the years that some folk who flatter you to your face, smile, and pat you on the back can be your worst enemies. They are dangerous to be with. It was Shakespeare who said something about the world being a stage and that every man must play a part. This is not true of the believer. He must be genuine because the Holy Spirit is working from within, transforming his life by “renewing” the mind.
Again and again Paul calls attention to this. To the Corinthians he said, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). Also to Titus he said, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5).
By permitting the Spirit of God to renew the mind, the believer will be able to test the will of God and find it good. The minute that you and I assume a pose and pretend to be something we are not, it is impossible for us to determine the will of God for our lives. By yielding, the will of God for the life of the believer becomes good and fits the believer’s will exactly. It’s first good, and then it is acceptable, and finally it is perfect, in that the believer’s will and God’s will are equal to each other. My friend, you can’t improve on that kind of a situation. Paul could say, “I can do all things.” Where? “Through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13). The believer can do all things that are in God’s will. It is wonderful not to have to act the part of being Christian, but just be natural and let the Spirit of God move and work through you. Handley C. G. Moule (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 335) has put it like this:

I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do
Or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child,
And guided where I go.

Oh, to reach the place of just turning this over to the Lord! Paul begs us to do this. This is the way of happiness. This is the way of joy. This is the way of fullness in your life. If you are in a church or in a group of play actors, for God’s sake get away from it and try to live a normal Christian life where you can be genuine. A man said to me the other day, “My wife and I have quit going to such and such a group.” I asked why. He told me, “We just got tired of going to a place where you almost have to assume something that you are not. Everyone there is being absolutely abnormal. The way I found out was that I had an occasion to meet a super pious member of the group in a place of business. I hardly recognized the man—his manner and everything about him was different.” He was “conformed to the world” when he was not with the pious group. Oh, to be a normal Christian and enjoy God’s blessing.

RELATIONSHIP TO GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT


For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith [Rom. 12:3].


This is my translation: For I am saying through the grace given to me, to everyone among you, not to be thinking of himself more highly than that which is necessary to think, but to think wisely of one’s self, even as God has divided a measure of faith to each one.
My translation may have lost something of that pungent statement: “not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.” I imagine that when Paul wrote this, there was a whimsical smile on his face, because there are a great many Christians who are ambitious, who feel that they must have positions of prominence. And I have found out in Christian work that a great many folk in the church want to hold an office. If you want to be a successful pastor today and get a bunch of folk working like termites, you create a great many offices, committees, boards, and have presidents, chairmen, and heads of organizations. You will get a lot of people working who would never work on any other basis. Why? Because they think more highly of themselves than they ought to think.
What we need to do, as Paul says here, is “to think soberly.” He says that we ought not try to advance ourselves in Christian circles. There is the ever-present danger of the believer overestimating his ability and his character and his gifts. We need to have a correct estimation of ourselves in relationship to other members of the church.
When I became pastor of certain churches, I was invited to serve as a board member of certain organizations. Finally I was serving on about a dozen or fifteen boards, and I was really a bored member. I was bored for the simple reason that I don’t have gifts for that type of thing. To begin with, I don’t have the patience to sit and listen to pages of “minutes” that take hours to read. And the second thing is that I just don’t like to sit in a board meeting and listen to a group of incompetent men discuss spiritual matters. It took me a long time to find out I didn’t have the kind of gift that would make me helpful in such situations, and I was killing myself going to board meetings. The Christian life became a round of being bored. Finally one day I came to myself, like the prodigal son, and I sat down and wrote twelve or more letters of resignation. That was one of the happiest days of my life. And today I am not on anybody’s board. I have several friends who say to me, “Oh, won’t you be on my board?” I say, “No, I wouldn’t help you. I have no gift for it. I’m for you, I’ll even pray for you, but I cannot be on your board.” My friend, we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. We need to recognize our inabilities and do the things God wants us to do. It is a joy to get into the slot where God wants you to be!


For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:

So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another [Rom. 12:4–5].

This is the first time that Paul has introduced the great theme of the church as the body of Christ. This is the primary subject in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians. The church as the body of Christ is to function as a body. This means that the many members do not have the same gifts. You may have a gift that I could never exercise. There are many members in the body, hundreds of members, and therefore hundreds of gifts. I do not think Paul ever gave a complete list of all the gifts because every time he dealt with gifts of the Spirit he always brought up new gifts which he had not mentioned in previous lists. I am sure the Spirit of God led him to do that.


Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith [Rom. 12:6].

“Gifts” is the Greek word charismata, which comes from the same stem as the word for grace. It can be translated as “grace” or “free gift” and is what the Spirit of God gives you. He gave to the church men who had the gift of a prophet, or a teacher, etc.
“Having then gifts”—each member of the body of Christ has a gift and a function to perform.
“Differing” means that the gifts differ; it does not mean that some folk do not have a gift. Every individual in the church has a gift. And the gift is part and parcel of the grace of God to us. When God saves you and puts you in the body of believers, you are to function. You are not to function as a machine, but as a member of a body, a living organization. When the gift is exercised, it is confirmed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Every believer needs to test his gift. If you feel that you have a certain gift and you are using it, you ought to test it. Analyze your effectiveness: Are you really a blessing to folk? Are you building up the church? Or are you dividing the church?
“Prophecy” here does not refer to prediction but to any message from God. Notice that prophecy is to be done in “proportion” (this is a mathematical term) to God’s provision of the faith and the power to match the gift.


Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching [Rom. 12:7].

“Ministering” is performing an act of service, referring to a manifold ministry with practical implications. There are multitudinous forms for service in the body of believers which this gift covers—setting up chairs and giving out songbooks is a ministry. Some folk do not have a gift of speaking, but they do have a gift of service. I know one dear lady who can put on a dinner that will make everybody happy. And I believe in church dinners; if you look at me, you will know I have been to quite a few of them—and many that this lady put on. That is her gift, and I’ve told her that. She would never make a good president of the missionary society, and you wouldn’t want her to sing in the choir, but if you want to put on a church dinner for some purpose, she is the one to get. “Ministering” includes many gifts, my friend.


Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness [Rom. 12:8].

“Exhortation” is the Greek word parakleŒsis, literally “a calling near” or “a calling for.” In other words, exhortation is comfort. Some folk have the gift of being able to comfort. I know one pastor who is not a preacher—he knows he is not—but if I were sick or had lost a loved one, he is the man I would want to come to visit me. He can comfort.
“He that giveth” is he that shares his earthly possessions. God may have given you a gift of making money—and that is a gift. I know several Christian businessmen who have the Midas touch. That is their gift.
“He that ruleth, with diligence” refers to the gift of leadership. There are certain men who are leaders, and they need to exercise their gift in the church so that everything might be done decently and in order. The business of the church requires a man with the gift of administration.
“He that sheweth mercy” indicates the gift of performing acts of kindness. For instance, there are some believers who can bring a sunbeam into a sickroom, while others cast a spell of gloom.

RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER BELIEVERS


Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good [Rom. 12:9].


“Let love be without dissimulation”—that is, without hypocrisy. Don’t pat another believer on the back and say something that you don’t mean. Let love be without hypocrisy.
“Abhor that which is evil” means to express your hatred of that which is evil. When you find something wrong in the church, bring it to the attention of the proper authorities. If you are on the board of directors and you find things are being done which are not honest, you are to stand up for the truth. There are too many Mr. Milquetoasts and Priscilla Good-bodies, these sweet folk who haven’t the intestinal fortitude to stand for that which is honorable. This is the reason many good, fundamental churches are in trouble today. We need men and women with backbone to express their hatred for that which is evil.
“Cleave to that which is good.” Cleave means to stick like adhesive tape, to be welded or cemented together with the good things. The believer should always be identified with good things rather than shady or questionable practices.


Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;

Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord [Rom. 12:10–11].

My, how wonderful these things are: have a code of honor, and be aglow with the Spirit of God. Never flag in zeal—have a zeal for the things of God.
“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.” In other words, as to your brotherly love, have family affection one to another. Farrar puts it in this language, “Love the brethren in the faith as though they were brethren in blood.” For example, three men are sitting together. Two of the men are identical twins; one twin is a Christian and the other is not. Sitting with these men is a believer from Africa. His culture, background, and language are all different. The color of his skin is different, but he knows the Lord as Savior. The Christian twin is actually closer to the man from Africa than he is to his twin brother. My friend, you ought to be nicer to your fellow believer because you will have to live with him throughout eternity. You had better start getting along now and practice putting up with his peculiar ways. However, he will have a new body then, and he will be rid of his old nature—and you will also! It will make it better for both of you.
“Not slothful in business” is better translated “never flag in zeal.” It has nothing to do with business. Luther gives it this translation: “In regard to zeal be not lazy.”
“Fervent in spirit,” or aglow with the Spirit suggests that our zeal and enthusiasm should be under the control of the Holy Spirit.
“Serving the Lord” points everything in Christian conduct toward this focal point.


Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;

Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.

Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not [Rom. 12:12–14].

“Rejoicing in hope” should be the portion of the believer. The circumstances of the believer may not warrant rejoicing. The contrary may be true. But he sees the future, and in hope projects himself into other circumstances which are more favorable. I think of a brother down in my Southland years ago. In a church service they were giving favorite Scripture verses. He stood and said that his favorite verse was “It came to pass.” Everyone looked puzzled. The preacher stood up and said, “Brother, how in the world can ‘It came to pass’ be your favorite?” His answer was, “When I have trouble, and when I have problems, I like to read that verse, ‘It came to pass,’ and I know that my trouble or my problem has come to pass; it hasn’t come to stay.” He was looking for a new day out there, and that is what Paul has in mind when he says, “rejoicing in hope.”
“Continuing instant in prayer” is to be a man or woman of prayer.
“Distributing to the necessity of saints” means sharing the necessities of life with needy believers. A great many churches make a great deal of having a fund for the poor, but how much do they use it? God expects us to share what He has given to us with fellow believers who are in need.
“Given to hospitality” means actually to pursue hospitality. That is, we are to seek out other believers to whom we can extend hospitality. There may be a person in your neighborhood or even in your church who is introverted and retiring yet longs for Christian fellowship. We are to look him up and extend our fellowship to him.
“Bless them which persecute you” seems to be a needless injunction for believers. Surely one believer would not persecute another—or would he? It is difficult to bless a man who is kicking you! But we are to bless and “curse not.”


Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits [Rom. 12:15–16].

“Rejoice with them that do rejoice.” The world’s motto is “Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone.” But that is not true of the believer. We are to enter into the joys and sorrows of other believers. Weep with those who weep.
“Be of the same mind one toward another” doesn’t mean uniformity of thought but that we are to have the mind of Christ.
Believers ought to enter emotionally into the lives of other believers. I think that is something that makes genuine Christians so wonderful.
“Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.” My friend, let’s not be afraid of associating with humble men and things of low estate. Paul said to the Philippians, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5)—what kind of a mind did Christ have? A humble mind.
“Be not wise in your own conceits.” In other words, stop being wise in your own opinion. What an injunction that is! A great many of the saints think they are spiritual giants, but they are not. Solomon, who was a man with wisdom from God, gave a very interesting injunction: “Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him” (Prov. 26:12). I wouldn’t dare say a thing like that, but Solomon said it.

RELATIONSHIP TO UNBELIEVERS


You and I live in a world of unbelievers. What is to be our relationship with them?


Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men [Rom. 12:17–18].

“Recompense to no man evil for evil.” The suggestion is that the believer may expect evil at the hands of the world. However, we are not to strike back.
“Provide things honest in the sight of all men.” There is nothing that can hurt the cause of Christ more than a dishonest Christian. The non-Christian is not concerned about the doctrine you hold—whether you are a premillennialist or whether you believe in election or free will. However, he does want to know if you are truthful or not, and he does want to know if you pay your honest debts. Are you a person that a man can depend upon? Providing things honest in the sight of all men is a lot better than giving out tracts, my friend. Let me illustrate this. Some years ago in Memphis, Tennessee, a Christian handed a man a tract. “What is this?” asked the man. The Christian replied, “It is a tract and I want you to read it.” “I don’t read,” the man replied, “but I will tell you what I will do—1 will watch your tracks!” Oh, how accurate that is! The world is watching the tracks that you make, not the tracts you give out. Don’t misunderstand me; giving out gospel tracts is important. But you had better have a life that will back them up when you give out tracts.
“If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably”—I love this because there are people that you just cannot get along with; they won’t let you get along with them. A dear lady who lived alone, a wonderful Christian, called me one day in deep concern because she had a neighbor whom she couldn’t get along with, and she wondered if I would come and talk with the neighbor. As I was driving out there, I was thinking that since this lady had been living alone, although she was a Christian, she might be a little difficult herself. So I went out and talked to her neighbor. Well, the neighbor told me what she thought of me as well as this dear lady. I went back to this wonderful Christian and said, “I don’t think you need to worry anymore if you can’t get along with her. Nobody can get along with that woman. The Bible says ‘as much as lieth in you’; it doesn’t say you have to get along with her. Just do the best you can.”

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head [Rom. 12:19–20].

This is one of the greatest principles you will find in the Word of God, yet it is the most difficult thing for a child of God to do. When somebody hits you on one cheek, it is difficult to turn the other cheek. I am like the Irishman who was hit on one cheek, and he got up and turned the other cheek. This time the fellow hit him so hard, he knocked him down. Then the Irishman got up and beat the stuffings out of the other fellow. Somebody asked him, “Why in the world did you do that? You turned the other cheek; why didn’t you leave it like that?” “Well,” he said, “the Bible says to turn your cheek, and I had only one other cheek to turn. The Lord didn’t tell me what to do after that, so I did what I thought I ought to do.” That is what most of us do. We find it difficult not to hit back. But the minute you and I take the matter into our own hands and attempt to work the thing out by hitting back as hard as we can, we have taken the matter out of God’s control, and we are no longer walking by faith. God is saying to us, “You walk by faith with Me, and let Me handle the matter for you, because I will handle it in a just manner. If this person has injured you, I’ll take care of him.” You and I can turn these matters over to the Lord, and we ought to do that. I can tell you what to do, but I confess that I find it most difficult to do myself. But there have been one or two times when I have turned it over to the Lord, and I have been amazed at how well He handled it. He does it a lot better than I do it.
There was a man, an officer in one of the churches I served, who did me a great injury, a terrible injury. My first thought was to clobber him, but I remembered this passage of Scripture. I went to the Lord and said, “Lord, I’d like to hit back and I can, but I don’t think I will. I’ll turn him over to You, and I expect you to handle him.” Well, I saw that man the other day. I have never looked at a person who is as unhappy as that man is. He has troubles, friend. The Lord has taken him to the woodshed and whipped him within an inch of his life. When I looked into that man’s face, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. I wish I could say that I turn all of these matters over to the Lord, but I confess that sometimes I hit back.


Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good [Rom. 12:21].

In other words, stop being overcome of evil; overcome evil by means of good. As the believer walks through this evil world with its satanic system, he cannot fight it. If you attempt to fight this satanic system, my friend, it will whip you. You cannot adopt the same worldly tactics of hate and revenge. If you do, you can be assured of defeat.
“Overcome evil with good.” God has given the believer the “good,” which is the Holy Spirit. He is to walk in the Spirit. “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). Paul goes on to say, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).

CHAPTER 13

Theme: Relationship to government; relationship to neighbors


As we come to chapter 13, we still are talking about the service of the sons of God. We are going to see that the believer has citizenship in heaven, but he also is a citizen in the world down here, which gives him a two-fold responsibility. If there is a conflict between the two always our first responsibility is to our Lord in heaven.
The Lord Jesus made it very clear that we have a responsibility to human government. You remember that He was asked by His enemies, “Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, or not?” He asked them to show Him a coin—He wanted to teach them from something they themselves had, and also I don’t think He had a coin in His pocket that day. He didn’t have much while He was down here in this world. He asked them whose superscription and whose image was on that coin. They said, “Caesar’s.” Then He made this significant statement, “… Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s” (Luke 20:25).
Governments are ordained of God, and He gave them certain authority. At the very beginning of human government He said, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Gen. 9:6). God has a regard for human life; it is precious in His sight. You have no right to take another human life. If you do, you are to forfeit your own life. Our contemporary society feels differently about it and makes the criminal the hero and the honest man the villain. We live in a day when evil is called good and good is called evil. However, believers have a responsibility to human government. In fact, Paul said to a young preacher, “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.” (1 Tim. 2:1–3). By the way, we are to pray for those in authority, not leave it to the preacher on Sunday morning.
The duty of the believer as a citizen of heaven is spiritual. The duty of a believer as a citizen under a government is secular. These two are separate functions, and to combine them is to fail to keep church and state separate and distinct.
The Jew in Paul’s day was reluctant to bow before the proud Roman state. Jewry had fomented disturbances in the city of Rome, and as a result Claudius had banished them on one occasion. The proud Pharisees rejected the Roman authorities in Palestine in their desire to restore the government to the nation of Israel; it was they who masterminded the encounter with Jesus and raised the issue, “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?” The implications smacked of revolution, as you can see. It is well to remember that the authorities in Paul’s day were mad and murderous. Nero was on the throne of Rome, and there was Pilate and Herod—all a bunch of rascals, yet he said that believers were to obey those in authority.

RELATIONSHIP TO GOVERNMENT


Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God [Rom. 13:1].


We are to submit ourselves to governmental authorities for the very simple reason that they are ordained of God. It is true that the kingdoms of this world belong to Satan and that injustice and corruption abound in all governments; yet God still has control. History is the monotonous account of how a government flourished for a time in pomp and pride and then was brought to ruin and rubble. Why? Because corruption and lawlessness became rampant. As it did, God brought the government to an end. God still rules—even over this earth. God has not abdicated His throne; He is riding triumphantly in His own chariot. Neither is He disturbed about what is happening on this earth.
You will recall that when Uzziah, king of Judah, died, Isaiah was disturbed and very much discouraged. Uzziah had been a good king, and Isaiah thought the government would disintegrate after he was gone. So Isaiah went into the temple, which is a good place to go at a time like that. He came into God’s presence, and He saw the Lord sitting upon the throne, high and lifted up. In other words, God had not abdicated. Uzziah was dead, but God was not dead. God was still on the throne.
Now the allegiance of the Christian is to that throne. And his relationship to his government on earth is submission.


Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation [Rom. 13:2].

In other words, anyone resisting the authority is resisting the ordinance of God. And those resisting shall receive for themselves judgment.
The principle stated in verse 1 raised many questions which the following verses amplify and explain. This verse seems to preclude the possibility of a believer having any part in rebellion or revolution. What about it? James Stifler cites the examples of Cromwell and Washington. Both of those men led a revolution. Stifler offers no solution. I am not sure I have one either, but I am going to do the best I can to solve this. The believer has opposed bad government and supported good government on the theory that good government is the one ordained of God. The believer is for law and order, as over against lawlessness. He is for honesty and justice, as over against corruption and rank injustice. At great moments of crisis in history—and that’s where we are today—the believers have had difficult decisions to make.
I want to briefly give you my viewpoint, and I believe that it will coincide with history. During these last days, which I believe we are in right now, lawlessness abounds. The believer must oppose it; he must not be a part of it, even when it is in his own government. We need to beware of those who would change our government under the guise of improving it. Remember John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod, Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, James, the brother of John, was slain with the sword of Herod, and Paul was put to death by Nero. Yet Paul says, “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation” (v. 2). Therefore, Christianity never became a movement to improve government, help society, or clean up the town. The gospel was the power of God unto salvation of the individual. Paul never went around telling about the deplorable conditions of Roman jails—and he knew them well from the inside. When visiting Rome, my wife and I went to the Mamertine prison, and I got claustrophobia down there. I said to my wife, “Let’s get out of here!” But Paul couldn’t get out; they kept him down in that damp, dark prison. Remember he wrote to Timothy, “Bring my cloak with you” (see 2 Tim. 4:13)—he was getting cold down there.
It is very difficult to say that we are to obey a corrupt government. I am not impressed by these men—preacher or politician—who are running up the American flag and singing the national anthem as promotion for themselves. And behind it is corruption. Frankly, I feel resentful when I hear of certain government officials and certain wealthy men in positions of power who pay no taxes at all when I have a heavy tax burden. There is corruption in government from the top to the bottom, and it is not confined to one party. These unsaved, godless men who are in positions of government actually do not understand the American system. You see, the men who made our laws had a Bible background. I don’t know that Thomas Jefferson was a Christian—he was a deist—but he had great respect for the Word of God. Many of those men were outstanding Christians—John Hancock, whose name is first on the Declaration of Independence, was a real Christian. However, in our day the government is corrupt. I go to the civic centers in our cities, and I see fine buildings, costing millions of dollars, which have been built by contractors who are friends of the politicians. Also I see poverty areas. While both parties talk about eliminating poverty, the poverty remains. Oh, corruption is there. What’s wrong? Well, the thing wrong is the human heart.
What is the Christian to do? My business is to get out the Word of God, and my business is to obey the law. That is what Paul is saying here. Christianity is not a movement to improve government or to help society clean up the town. It is to preach a gospel that is the power of God unto salvation which will bring into existence individuals like the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and gave us a government of laws.
My friend, nothing is wrong with our form of government; there is something wrong with the individuals who are in positions of power. A professor in the history department of the University of Michigan summed it up well when he said, “America is in the hands of those who do not understand the spiritual heritage that we have.”


For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil [Rom. 13:3–4].

The government is to maintain law and order. When it does not do that, it has failed. I feel that a Christian should be opposed to the breakdown of law and order. We are to respect our rulers who are enforcing the law. I have great respect for our army, although it is honeycombed with corruption. I have great respect for police officers, although I know they make mistakes.


Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake [Rom. 13:5].

Christians are to obey the law not only because we’ll be judged and have to pay a fine if we don’t, but obey for conscience sake.


For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing [Rom. 13:6].

Although we may resent the way our tax money is being used, we are to pay taxes anyway.
In this verse the word for minister is one from which we get our word liturgy. It is strictly religious and is the same word used of angels in Hebrews 1:14 where they are called ministering spirits. This means that the ruler occupies a divinely-appointed office. He has no religious function, of course, but he holds a God-appointed office. That makes me pay my taxes, although I resent doing so.
We need today a heaven-sent revival. I am sick and tired of those who are shedding crocodile tears. They remind me of Lewis Carroll’s brilliant satire, Alice in Wonderland. You remember that the Walrus and the Carpenter in this story were walking along the seashore weeping because there was so much sand and not enough oysters. They kept on eating and eating and weeping and weeping. What a picture of corruption! But in all of this the believer should submit to his government.


Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour [Rom. 13:7].

Although there may be unworthy men in the office, we are to respect the office. When I was in the army, I was told to salute the uniform. There were some folk in that uniform that I didn’t care about saluting, but I saluted the uniform. We are to show respect for authority. A Christian will be the best citizen although his citizenship is in heaven.

RELATIONSHIP TO NEIGHBORS


Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law [Rom. 13:8].


Did you borrow your neighbor’s lawnmower? Take it back to him. Housewife, did you borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor? Return it, please. Owe no one anything. In this we find Paul saying that the believer is positively to owe no man anything but love. This is a great principle to guide Christians in installment purchasing. You may ask, “Do you think we should turn in our credit cards?” No, but you had better be able to see your way clear in order to pay your debts.
The believer always owes the debt of love to his neighbor. That does not necessarily mean the man next door, but all people with whom you come in contact. This love is not some sentimental thing. I get a little disturbed when I hear liberalism continually talk about love, love, love. How do you reveal love?


For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself [Rom. 13:9].

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Now don’t tell me that you love someone and are committing adultery with that one. You can call that love if you want to, but it is nothing in the world but sex. It is licentiousness, it is fornication, and it is sin in God’s sight. God hasn’t changed His mind about it.
“Thou shalt not kill.” You can kill a person in more ways than pulling a trigger of a gun. You can destroy them by ruining their reputation.
“Thou shalt not steal.” If you love, you won’t get something dishonestly.
“Thou shalt not covet.” When your neighbor drives up in a new automobile, how do you feel about it? Sometimes we say, “I wish we had the car and they had one just like it.” What we really mean is that we would rather have that car than see them have it.
Paul is saying that our love for our neighbor is revealed in what we do rather than in what we say. He is not putting the Christian back under the Law; he is saying that love manifests itself in not committing adultery, not killing, not stealing, not coveting. You can talk about love all you want to, but if you commit these acts against your neighbor, you have no love for him.


Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law [Rom. 13:10].

Loving your neighbor is the fullness of the law. This love, let me repeat, is the fruit of the Spirit.


And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light [Rom. 13:11–12].
Paul said this nineteen hundred years ago, and certainly we ought to say it with a little more urgency in this day in which we are living. Let me give you my translation: And this—seeing that ye know the time or the season, that now it is the hour for you to wake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is passing, it is far spent, and the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
In this closing section an alarm clock goes off to waken believers who have gone to sleep in the world and have forgotten this added incentive for yielding their total personalities to God. My friend, this is not the time for the child of God to live for the things of this world. I think many a rich Christian is going to be embarrassed when the Lord comes. How big will your bank account be, my friend? Are you using your time and what you possess for God? I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye yield your total personalities—all you are, all you have—to God. This is rational. This is reasonable. This is what you are supposed to be doing, Christian friend.
If we really are looking for the return of Christ, it will purify our lives. “And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). These fellows who get divorces and live like the world, then talk about being premillennial and pretribulational and looking for the imminent coming of Christ, are not being honest. The apostle John says that that man is a liar! Let us wake up, my friend. Let us live for God in this hour!


Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying [Rom. 13:13].

In other words, let us walk honorably as those in the day; not in revelings and drunkenness, not in sexual intercourse and dissolute abandon, not in strife and jealousy.
We hear a great deal about night life. The believer is identified with day life. He walks as one who belongs to the day.


But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof [Rom. 13:14].

Oh, how many believers are making every provision for the flesh but are making no provision to go into His presence. My friend, I beg you to put Christ first in your life and to get out the Word of God. This is all important.

CHAPTER 14

Theme: Conviction; conscience


This chapter brings us to a new section, the final division in the Epistle to the Romans. It is: the separation of the “sons of God.” What do we mean by separation? Frankly, I am tired of “separated” and “dedicated” Christians who are not separated or really dedicated.
There are two areas of Christian conduct. In one area the Bible is very clear, as we saw in the preceding chapter. The duty of the Christian to the state is submission. He is to obey the laws of the land, he is to pay his taxes, and he is to show respect to those in authority. Also chapter 13 was specific on a believer’s relationship to his neighbor: He is to pay his bills; he is not to commit adultery, kill, steal, bear false witness, or covet what another has. In fact, he is to love his neighbor as himself. The believer is to be honest, and he is to avoid reveling and drunkenness, strife, and jealousy. The Bible is very clear on these things.
However, there is another area of Christian conduct on which the Bible has no clear word. Let me mention only two things: the use of tobacco and mixed bathing (that is, both sexes swimming together). If you don’t think these are questionable, let me give you an illustration out of my own experience. My wife was reared in Texas in a Southern Baptist church. She was brought up by a mother and father and pastor who believed that mixed bathing was sinful. Then when she came to California, you can’t imagine the shock she had the first time she went down to the beach with the young people from our church—even in those days they weren’t wearing much. My wife was in a state of shock for twenty-four hours after that! She had never seen anything like it. However, in the area from which she came the use of tobacco was not frowned upon. The officers of her church smoked; in fact, her pastor smoked. When she came to California, she found that using tobacco was taboo. If you were a Christian, you did not smoke.
Is mixed bathing all right in one place and wrong in another place? Is smoking right in one place and wrong in another place? I am sure that the hair on the back of the necks of some of the saints is standing on end, and they are thinking, Dr. McGee you ought to give a lecture against smoking, and you let this subject of mixed bathing alone. Let me assure you that I am not condemning either one, nor am I condoning either one. I’m not going to stick out my neck on questionable things any farther than Paul stuck out his neck.
In this section Paul puts down principles of conduct for Christians relative to questionable matters. He gives us three guidelines: conviction, conscience, and consideration. A Christian should have a conviction about what he does. Conviction means “that which anticipates.” Does he look forward to what he is going to do in high anticipation and enthusiasm? The second guideline is conscience. Does he look back on what he has done, wondering if he were right or wrong? Or does he even hate himself for what he has done? The third guideline is consideration for others. Are other people adversely affected by what he does? These three guidelines give us principles of conduct for our Christian lives.
In our day there are actually two extreme viewpoints about this matter of Christian conduct in questionable matters. And it has created an artificial atmosphere in which one is to live the Christian life. As a result we have abnormal or subnormal Christians in these extreme areas. One extreme position has no wall of separation from the world; the lives of these folk are carbon copies of the unsaved man of the world. Their lives are no different from what they were before their so-called conversion. They indulge in all forms of worldly amusement. They go everywhere the world goes, and they spend their time and energy in activities that have no spiritual profit. There are certain passages of Scripture that have no meaning for them at all. For example: “Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)” (Phil. 3:17–19). There are other folk who do not indulge in any form of worldly amusements, yet they are as worldly as they can possibly be. They gorge and gormandize themselves. They don’t get drunk, but they certainly overeat. Also they over talk—they are great gossips. They even tell questionable stories.
Again let me quote Paul: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). My friend, your thought life is bound to affect your conduct sooner or later. What you keep thinking about you will eventually do. I have found that a great many Christians think about a temptation for a long time before they actually submit to it. This sort of thing is done by a great many so-called Christians. Paul seemed to question whether or not they were Christians, because they lived exactly as the worldling lived.
Now there is a second group that is extreme in the opposite direction. They have reduced the Christian life to a series of negatives. Paul warned the Colossian believers against the group that was characterized by “Touch not; taste not; handle not” (Col. 2:21). These folk rejoice in salvation by grace and deliverance from the Mosaic Law, but they immediately make a new set of ten commandments—only they usually double that number. They become very self-centered, very critical, and very proud. These are the ones that Paul labels “weak in the faith” (v. 1), by the way. And they are the folk who have become very “separated.”
The following letter which I received several years ago illustrates the sad state of one who adopts this position.

I’ve returned to California after a year of full-time Christian service in Ohio and an extended trip east. But I’ve come back almost spiritually shipwrecked! Have been a Christian for three and one-half years and until recently was able to give a glowing testimony about being saved out of Unity.
But lately, I’ve been so dead that Christ seems way up there, and I’m way down here. I have all the negative virtues of a Christian (don’t smoke, drink, play cards, attend movies, use makeup), but those things do not make a happy Christian! My friends tell me I’m becoming bitter—and oh, I don’t want that to happen!
Before becoming a Christian, I was very ambitious, worked hard for whatever I believed in (and incidentally I was listed in Who’s Who)—but now I wonder what’s the use? The world is going from bad to worse. Everything is heading for disaster, and the only hope is to wait for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, my friend, this person was in a terrible condition! Notice how “separated” she was, but this kind of separation will not bring joy in the life.
Somewhere between these two extreme viewpoints of questionable matters in Christian conduct the believer is to walk. These are the Scylla and Charybdis through which the believer must sail his little bark on the sea of life.
I have given a great deal of space to these preliminary remarks because I know there are many puzzled Christians who will be helped by what Paul has for us in this important chapter.


Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations [Rom. 14:1].

To put it another way: Now, the one who is weak in faith, receive him into your fellowship, but not with the view of passing judgment upon his scruples—that is, upon his conduct and upon his viewpoint.
“Now” connects this chapter to what has preceded it. The law of love will now go into action. Having condemned things (in the last part of Romans 13) which are immoral and obviously wrong, like killing, committing adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and coveting, Paul now warns against the danger of condemning questionable matters which are not expressly forbidden in Scripture.
“The one who is weak in the faith” does not mean one who is weak in the great truths of the gospel—the facts of faith—but rather it refers to the abstract quality of faith. It means the faith of the weak falters and hesitates about matters of conduct. He does not know what he should do relative to certain things. This one is to be received into the fellowship of believers with open arms. You may not agree with him, but you are to receive him if he is a believer in Jesus Christ. You are not to receive him in order to start an argument about questionable things. One group of believers is not to sit in judgment upon another group of believers about questionable matters of Christian conduct. Some things are not expressly condemned in Scripture, but some believers separate themselves from these things. And if they want to do this, that’s their business. These things are not to separate believers. The Scofield Reference Bible has a very helpful note on this verse—“The church has no authority to decide questions of personal liberty in things not expressly forbidden in Scripture.”


For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs [Rom. 14:2].

This verse may hurt the extreme separationist. The strong brother in the faith is the one eating all things; the weak brother is the vegetarian. The strong brother realizes that Jesus made all meats clean, “cleansing all meats” (see Mark 7:19). After the Flood God gave all meats to be eaten according to Genesis 9:3, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.”
God made a distinction between clean and unclean animals for the nation Israel. The instructed believer knows this does not apply to him, for the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 8:8, “But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse.” You remember that Peter was given a practical lesson about this subject on the housetop of Simon the tanner in Joppa (see Acts 10:9–16). Peter was proud of the fact that he had not eaten anything unclean. Boy, was he separated, and he was proud of it! The Holy Spirit said to him, “… What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (Acts 10:15).
Paul could eat meat without his conscience bothering him, but Peter had scruples about it. The weak believer who has a background of eating vegetables finds eating meat repugnant to him.
What is the principle? One can eat meat and the other cannot eat meat. By the grace of God one is not to eat meat and the other is to eat meat. Now listen to Paul:


Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him [Rom. 14:3].

I recognize that I am wrong when I condemn these extreme separationists. If they want to be that way, candidly, that is their business. The thing that upsets me is that they want to straighten me out. I know I need straightening out, but they are not the crowd to do it, I’m sure of that. One group is not to condemn the other. If you believe that you should not eat meat (he uses meat as an example, but this could apply to anything else not expressly forbidden in Scripture), then you should not eat meat, my friend. But if you believe that you can eat meat, then you go ahead and eat meat.

Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand [Rom. 14:4].

This is devastating. Paul asks, “What right have you to judge another man’s servant?” What right have you, Christian friend, to sit in judgment on another Christian’s conduct when it involves something that is questionable? Are you God? Is that person accountable to you? Paul says, “He is not accountable to you. He is accountable to God. He is going to stand before his own Master.”
Can you imagine being a dinner guest in someone’s home) and the servant brings in cold biscuits. You say to the servant, “What’s the big idea of bringing me cold biscuits?” And you chide—in our common colloquialism, bawl out—the servant! May I say to you, there would be an awkward silence in that home. That person is not your servant. Maybe she should not have served cold biscuits, but it is not your place to say so. I have a notion that the lady of the house will go back to the kitchen and will tend to the matter.
Now maybe you disapprove of my conduct in one of these doubtful areas. I don’t have to account to you; you are not my master. I am responsible to Jesus Christ. He is my Master.

CONVICTION


Paul gives us now the first great principle of conduct for Christians:


One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind [Rom. 14:5].

“Fully persuaded” means to be convinced, to be assured in your own mind.
Now Paul changes his illustration from diet to the day question. Some people insist that the Lord’s Day is different. Some observe Sunday as the Lord’s Day and others observe Saturday. It is not the day that should be different, but the believer. The particular day is not the important thing. Paul said, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days” (Col. 2:16). Don’t you tell me what day I am to observe. I’m not responsible to you; I am responsible to the Lord Jesus. He is my Master.
When I was a student in seminary, I was in a denomination in the South that were strict Sabbatarians—Sunday was their sabbath, as they called it. And they didn’t believe in traveling on Sunday. I used to take a train to Augusta, Georgia, to preach, and I left on Saturday evening. Some of the officers of the church wanted to know what time the train got into Augusta! Well, it got in early Sunday morning, and one man said to me, “Doesn’t that disturb you?” I said, “It doesn’t disturb me at all.” Now, I respect that man, and I don’t think he ought to travel on Sunday. But when I am traveling from one speaking engagement to another, and it is necessary to travel on Sunday, I do it without the slightest compunction. Paul says that whatever we do, we should be fully persuaded, convinced, and assured in our own mind that it is the right thing to do.
“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” means literally he is to be filled to the brim—mind, heart, will, and the total personality. A believer should do only those things to which he can give himself fully and without reserve. My friend, whatever you do for God, you should do with enthusiasm. I think it is sinful the way some people go to church on Sunday. Can you imagine people going to a football game when the alma mater is playing with that same lackluster attitude they have when they attend church? Personally, I don’t go to football games because I think they are a waste of time. But I don’t criticize other folk for going—that’s their business. But when I go to play golf, I go with enthusiasm. And whatever I do for the Lord, I do with enthusiasm. I teach the Bible because I love to teach it. I would rather do it than anything I know of. One of the reasons church work is bogged down as it is today is that there is a lack of enthusiasm. A man is asked to teach a Sunday school class, and he says, “Oh, if you can’t get anybody else, I’ll take it.” Then don’t take it, brother, if that is the way you feel. It would be better for the class to have no teacher than a disinterested, unenthusiastic teacher. Some people are actually committing sin by doing church work! The first great principle is: “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”
Now let’s bring this principle over to questionable things. Frequently folk, especially young folk, ask me if doing this or that is wrong. I say, “Well, for you I think it is wrong, but for me it’s all right.” Of course they ask me what I mean by that. I tell them, “I have no question about it. If I wanted to do it, I would do it with enthusiasm. The point is, you have a question about it. ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.’ You wouldn’t have come and asked me the question if you had been persuaded in your own mind.” My friend, this is a great guiding principle: if you have a question in your mind about something you are doing—whatever it is—for you it is wrong. It might not be wrong for me, but it is certainly wrong for you.
You recall that Simon Peter followed the Lord afar off after He was arrested. Peter went that night into the judgment hall of the high priest. I sat in the hotel in Jerusalem in the old city on the side of the Valley of Kidron one morning. When the morning sun had come up, it set that whole city ablaze across the Kidron Valley. Over there is a church called the Church of the Cock Crowing. It is situated on the spot where the high priest’s judgment hall was located—that’s where Caiaphas had his home. And that is the place to which Simon Peter came and where he denied three times that he knew the Lord. I am convinced that Simon Peter should not have gone there that night. On the other hand, John, who apparently had a home in Jerusalem and was known in the palace of the high priest, went there and did not deny his Lord. It was all right for John to be there, but it was wrong for Simon Peter. Simon Peter was the weak brother, you see.
Today it is the weak brother who is the “separated” brother. That may seem strange to you. But the people who set up a little legal system of “dos” and “don’ts” bear watching. They are the weak ones. When I was a student in seminary, I used to have a water fight on Saturday night in the seminary dorm. One of the students would gather together two or three of the super-duper saints, and they would pray for us. (I always hoped he would pray that I would win!) We were pretty rough fellows. One night we soaked all the rugs, and we almost got booted out of the place. But this young fellow was a model student. About fifteen years later, I sat down with him and his wife and begged him not to leave her. He told me he had to. I said, “Why?” His reply was this, “Because I have a little daughter by a woman out in Australia, and I want to marry her.” He posed as a super-duper saint, but actually he was a weak brother.
Questionable amusements are wrong for the believer if they are questionable to him. If he can participate in them and maintain a close relationship to Christ, they are not wrong for him. Let me tell you a little story in this connection. Many years ago in Tennessee a young lady went to her pastor with the question, “Do you think it is wrong for a Christian to dance?” He said to her, “Anywhere you can take Jesus Christ with you is all right to go.” That made her angry. She said, “Well, I can taKe Him to the dance.” The pastor said, “Then go ahead.” So she went to the dance. A boy whom she had not met before cut in on her and danced with her. She had determined to take Jesus Christ with her, so she asked him, “Are you a Christian?” He said, “No.” Wanting to make conversation with her, he asked, “Are you a Christian?” She said, “Yes.” And this is what the unbeliever said, “Then what are you doing here?” After she got home that night she decided that maybe she couldn’t take the Lord Jesus Christ there after all.


He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks [Rom. 14:6].

Maybe you play golf on Sunday. If you can take Jesus Christ with you, if you can stop out on the ninth hole and have a prayer meeting with the foursome you are playing with, that would be fine. But what will the foursome playing behind you think when their game is interrupted in this way? When they see you are praying, one of them will say, “What in the world are they doing out here on Sunday morning?”
The important thing to note is that the day is to be “regarded” or observed unto the Lord.
Also, the one who eats meat gives thanks to God from his heart. The one who does not eat meat gives thanks to God from his heart. It is not what is on the table, but what is in the heart that is noted by God. It is the heart attitude that conditions Christian conduct.


For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.
For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living [Rom. 14:7–9].
“None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself” is generally quoted as a proof text that our lives affect others. However, that thought is not in this passage. The fact is that we as Christians cannot live our lives apart from Christ. Whether you live, you will have to live to Him; whether you die, you will have to die to Him. Our Christian conduct is not gauged by the foods spread out on the table, but by the fact that our lives are spread out before Him. That is the important thing. One day we are going to have to give an account of the things we have done in this life. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). At that time it will not be a question of the meat you had on the table; it will be the question of your relationship to Him when you sat down at that table. You can be godless without meat; and you can be godless with meat, of course.
Christ’s death and resurrection are given as grounds for Him to exercise lordship over both the dead and the living:


But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God [Rom. 14:10–12].

“Why dost thou judge thy brother?” You remember that the Lord Jesus said to that bunch of Pharisees who wanted to stone an adulterous woman, “… He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). And not one of those boys threw any stones that day. My friend, you and I need to recognize that we have to give account of ourselves to Him. I’ll be honest with you, that disturbs me a little. I am wondering how I am going to tell Him about certain things. So I can’t sit in judgment upon you; I’m worried about Vernon McGee.


Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way [Rom. 14:13].

Paul is going to develop the thought that our conduct has to be for the sake of the weak brother. If I am traveling in the same car with a fellow who believes he should not travel on Sunday, I’m going to have to stay with him—not because I agree with him, but for the sake of a weak brother.


I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died [Rom. 14:14–15].

Since Christ was willing to die for that weak brother, certainly we ought to be willing to refrain from eating something or doing something that would hurt him in his Christian walk.


Let not then your good be evil spoken of [Rom. 14:16].

In other words, liberty does not mean license. The believer is to use his liberty, not abuse it. We are always to keep in mind how our conduct will affect weaker Christians.


For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost [Rom. 14:17].

This is the only reference in this epistle to the kingdom of God. I do not believe the “kingdom of God” is synonymous with the kingdom of heaven in Matthew’s gospel, which finds its final fruition in the millennial and messianic kingdom here on earth. I believe that the kingdom of God embraces all that is in God’s created universe, which, of course, includes the church. It is broader and larger and includes God’s reign over all His creation. Lange’s definition is satisfactory: “The heavenly sphere of life in which God’s word and Spirit govern, and whose organ on earth is the Church.” This was our Lord’s use of the term. “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Well, that is the heavenly sphere of life in which God’s Word and Spirit govern. As Stifler has said (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 245), “God rules everywhere, but there is a realm where he governs by spiritual forces or laws alone”—which is in the area of the life of the believer. Man is totally incapable of seeing or entering this kingdom without the new birth. This kingdom has nothing to do with eating or drinking, fasting, no meat on Friday, no pork, or a vegetarian diet. These things just do not enter into it.
“Righteousness” in this verse means the same as it does in chapters 1 and 3. It means to be right with God; it means a life lived well-pleasing to Him.
“Holy Ghost” apparently goes with righteousness and refers, not to our standing, but to our walk—we are to walk in the Spirit. It is practical rather than theological. It is moral rather than oral. It is a righteousness in the Holy Spirit rather than righteousness in Christ.
“Joy” is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. Unfortunately, it is often absent from the lives of believers. There should be joy in our lives. This doesn’t mean you have to run around smiling like a Cheshire cat, but it does mean you are to have a joyful feeling deep in your heart.


For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men [Rom. 14:18].

Although, of course, there will be a literal kingdom on this earth, he is talking here about the spiritual realm that you enter by the new birth. Christ is not served by eating and drinking, but our service to Him must pertain to righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. In these things a believer is well pleasing to God and approved of men.
“Approved of men” does not mean that men will get in your cheering section and applaud you because you are a believer. They may even persecute you. But underneath, men do approve of genuine believers, while they despise and reject that which is hypocritical and phony.
This is a great principle of conduct. The walk and talk of the believer should please God and meet the approval of the conscience of men.


Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another [Rom. 14:19].

This is a twofold exhortation. To “follow after the things which make for peace” is to eagerly pursue this course of action. The believer is to make a definite effort to avoid the use of food or any physical thing which offends a Christian brother. This would be the negative aspect of the exhortation. The positive aspect is to press toward the mark of spiritual values: righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. These are the things which build up the believer.


For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence [Rom. 14:20].

On account of food, do not tear down the work of God. Of course the believer has the liberty to eat meat or abstain from it—but neither will commend him to God. We are not to tear down the work of God in the heart of some weak believer for the sake of some physical gratification. That old bromide is active: one man’s porridge is another man’s poison. Esau, for instance, had no regard for God or for his birthright. He exchanged it for a bowl of soup. Well, don’t sell your birthright just to satisfy your appetite.


It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak [Rom. 14:21].

Paul returns to these two points: eating and drinking. Then he goes beyond them with the sweeping statement: nor anything. Anything that is questionable and is a matter of conscience for a weak brother becomes wrong for the strong one.

CONSCIENCE


Now verse 22 gives us the second great principle of Christian conduct.


Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth [Rom. 14:22].

Let me give you my translation of this verse: The faith which thou hast, have thou thyself in the sight of God. Happy is the man who condemneth not himself in the things which he approves—that which he does.
This is the second principle of conduct for Christians. He has already dealt with the aspect of conviction. As we look toward doing something for God, we ask ourselves the questions: Will it be right for me to do this? Can I do it with excitement and anticipation and joy? Now this second exhortation looks back at what has been done. Happy is the man who does not condemn himself in what he has done. The believer should be able to look back upon his conduct without any qualms of conscience.
Let me use an illustration, and I trust you will not misunderstand it. I have been asked the question: “Can a Christian get drunk?” The answer is yes. The prodigal son in Luke 15 was a son out in the far country. I am confident that he got drunk in addition to a few other things, but he was always a son. Then what was the difference between him and the pigs? The difference was that none of those pigs said, “I will arise and go to my father.” You see, as the prodigal son was there with the pigs, he said to himself, I hate it here, and I’m going to get out of this. I am going back to my father and confess what a sinner I am. What, then, is the difference between the Christian who gets drunk and the non-Christian who gets drunk? The difference is simply this: the next morning the man of the world will get up with a headache, put an ice pack on it, and say, “Boy, I sure had a big time! I’m going to get a bigger bucket of paint and a bigger paint brush, and I am really going to paint the town red the next time!” But what will the child of God do? When he wakes up the next morning with a head as big as a barrel, he drops down by the side of his bed and cries, “Oh, God, I hate myself! I don’t want to do that again.” He confesses his sins to God. And the interesting thing is there is no record that the prodigal son went back to the pig pen. He didn’t like it there. That is the difference between a believer and an unbeliever. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.”
My Christian friend, do you look back and hate yourself for what you have done? That is your conscience condemning you. Regardless of what it was and regardless of how many other people do the same thing, for you it was wrong. You might have even been in a church (and a church can be a very dangerous place because Satan is there—he goes to church every Sunday morning, and he goes to the best churches). Do you come home from church and say, “I could bite my tongue off. I wish I hadn’t said what I did.” Well, you should not have said it. “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.”


And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin [Rom. 14:23].

“Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” My friend, you are to believe in what you are doing. If you don’t believe in it, you should not be doing it. Here is a new definition of sin for the believer: Any line of conduct or any act which is not the outflow of faith becomes sin. This is the Holy Spirit’s answer to questionable things. As the believer is saved by faith, just so the believer is to walk by faith.

CHAPTER 15

Theme: Consideration of the weak brother; consolidation of Jews and Gentiles in one body; continuation of Paul’s personal testimony


We have been looking at the great principles of conduct for the Christian. In the preceding chapter we have seen two of these principles: conviction and conscience. Now we see the third: consideration of the weak brother, a thought which is continued from chapter 14. In the first three verses the subject is separation. Then we shall see the consolidation of Jews and Gentiles in one body to glorify God, and finally the continuation of Paul’s personal testimony as the apostle to the Gentiles and to the Romans in particular. This chapter concludes the major argument of the Epistle to the Romans. In the final chapter, Paul will lapse back to personal relationships.
A remark needs to be made here that radical higher criticism has questioned the authenticity of these last two chapters of Romans. Without any valid reason or documentary evidence, the Pauline authorship of these two chapters was rejected. Baur’s school led in this objection. Today the Pauline authorship is established, and we may conclude with this statement from Kerr in his Introduction to New Testament Study, “Despite these objections, the integrity of the epistle as it now stands is certain.”

CONSIDERATION OF THE WEAK BROTHER

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves [Rom. 15:1].

This is the third and last guiding principle which should govern the conduct of Christians. When you invite a Christian over to your house who doesn’t believe in dancing, don’t put on a square dance for him, because you will offend him. Now maybe you can square dance, but I cannot. Why? Because there are certain things I very definitely feel I cannot do because of a consideration of others. Neither have I been inside a motion picture theater in years—I can’t even remember the last time I went. Somebody says, “Oh, you are one of those separated fellows who doesn’t believe you can go to movies.” Maybe you can go—I’m not judging you if you do—but I cannot. One of the reasons is right here: consideration of the weak brother. “We that are strong” I feel applies to me. I feel that I could go without losing my fellowship with the Lord—I’m sure that many of these movies would disgust me today, to tell the truth. But a weak brother might be strongly influenced and his relationship to Christ actually damaged by certain movies. So we who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak.
Paul identifies himself with the strong ones, and he insists that these should show consideration for the feelings and prejudices of the weak believers. He wrote to the Corinthians, “Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend” (1 Cor. 8:13). In other words, Paul said, “I can eat meat. I love a good pork roast. But I will not eat it if it is going to offend my brother.” Also Paul wrote, “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth” (1 Cor. 10:24). Seek the interests of the other man. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).


Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification [Rom. 15:2].

“For his good to edification” means with a view to his building up. The objective of all Christian conduct is the edification of our neighbor. Of course our neighbor is not to be pleased to his detriment or loss. Paul said, “For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews …” (1 Cor. 9:19–20). A great many people criticize Paul and cannot understand why he would take a Jewish oath, shave his head, and go to Jerusalem to the temple. You will understand it if you understand what Paul is saying here: “And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20).
Now let’s keep in mind that we are still in the area of questionable things, things that are not mentioned in Scripture as wrong. Going back to the example of the movies. Would I ever go to a movie? Yes, if I thought by so doing I could win someone for Christ. You may ask, “How far can you carry this?” Well, I know a group that went into a burlesque show to witness. I think they were in the wrong place. I know a girl who started going to nightclubs and drinking with her friends, thinking she could witness to them. But she became an alcoholic, and she didn’t win anybody. I can show you from Scripture that these things are wrong.
However, because the Scripture is silent on many things in our contemporary society, we have been given these great guidelines, three principles of separation: (1) Conviction. Whatever we do is to be done with enthusiasm because we are persuaded in our own minds that it is what God wants us to do. (2) Conscience. Our conduct should be such that we do not look back upon it with qualms of conscience. (3) Consideration. We should show consideration for the feelings and prejudices of the weak believers.


For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me [Rom. 15:3].

The quotation here is from Psalm 69:9. This is an imprecatory psalm and also one of the great messianic psalms. Christ never put His own interest and pleasures first. Stifler thinks that Christ is presented here as an argument rather than as an example. In The Epistle to the Romans (p. 250) he writes, “The Scriptures are not in the habit of holding up Christ as an example, for men are neither saved nor sanctified by an example.” Always when Christ is given as an example it is in connection with the redeeming grace of God.

CONSOLIDATION OF JEWS AND GENTILES IN ONE BODY

Paul now begins to talk about the fact that Jews and Gentiles are in one body to glorify God.

For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope [Rom. 15:4].

The Old Testament, therefore, does have a definite application to believers today. I frequently receive letters from folk who say, “I didn’t know the Old Testament was so practical,” or, “I had not realized that the Old Testament had such meaning for us today. I did not know it spoke of Christ as it does.” Paul here says that it was written for “our learning.”
In my opinion, the greatest sin in the church of Jesus Christ in this generation is ignorance of the Word of God. Many times I have heard a church officer say, “Well, I don’t know much about the Bible, but …” and then he gives his opinion, which often actually contradicts the Word of God! Why doesn’t he know much about the Bible? These things were written aforetime for our learning. God wants you to know His Word. As an officer of the church, are you boasting that you are ignorant of the Word of God? Well, you had better get down to business and find out what God has said to you in His Word. Ignorance of the Bible is the greatest sin of the hour—in and out of the church. Paul says these things were written for your learning.
What will a knowledge of the Bible do for you? “That we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” The Word of God imparts patience, comfort, and hope.
You won’t find any hope in the daily newspaper. You won’t find any hope in modern literature. Look at any field and see if you can find any hope. There is none whatsoever. It is dark and dismal when you look out at this world today. My friend, the only place you can find real hope is in the Word of God.
I was in the state of Washington, speaking at a Bible conference, and it rained and rained and rained. Then it rained some more. Oh, how dark and dismal the days were! For our flight back home we went to the airport, and it was still raining. The plane took off and went up through a heavy layer of cloud. In a few moments we broke out into the light—the sun was shining up there. Oh, how beautiful it was. Less than a mile up, the sun was shining. Here we had been living like a bunch of gophers in all that rain. Now, don’t misunderstand me—Washington needs all that rain to grow that lush vegetation and beautiful trees. But because I live in Southern California, I am used to sunshine, and I love it.
There are a great many Christians today who are living down beneath the clouds. The Lord says, “Come on up here and get in the sunshine of hope!” That is what the Bible will do for you, my friend. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:11). When I was teaching the life of David, scores of people told me what an encouragement David was to them. One person said that he was going through a very dark period in his life and that the study in the life of David delivered him from suicide. Well, that is the reason God put these things in His Word. God put David’s sin on display—and it wasn’t very nice—but God paints mankind exactly as he is for our learning. Everything in the Old Testament is written for our learning and to give us patience and to give us comfort and to bring hope into our lives.


Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus [Rom. 15:5].

Paul pauses here to pray that the blessings which are channeled only through the Word of God might have their effect upon both Jews and Gentiles in the body of Christ; not that they should see eye to eye with each other on meats and drink—they won’t—but that they might demonstrate that they are one in love and consideration one of another.


That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [Rom. 15:6].

There should be such a harmony in their praise that they reveal the unity of believers. When I was a boy in West Texas, we had a Methodist church on one corner, a Baptist church on another corner, and a Presbyterian church on the third corner. A story was told that one night the Methodists were singing, “Will there be any stars in my crown?” And the Presbyterians were singing, “No, not one; no, not one.” And the Baptists were singing, “Oh, that will be glory for me.” Well, that is just a story. I’m sure it never worked out that way, but sometimes it actually looks like that. However, if the Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians are really believers (just to be a member of one of these denominations doesn’t make you a believer, by the way), all three could sit down and sing the doxology together: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” That is the testimony we should give to the world.


Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God [Rom. 15:7].

Let me give you my translation of this: Wherefore receive ye one another, even as Christ also received you to the glory of God.
God receives man—both strong and weak, high and low, Jew and Gentile—on the simple acceptance of Christ. Now let both the strong and the weak receive each other in fellowship. The glory of God is the supreme objective.
A man said to me the other day, “Since you are very critical of the Pentecostal point of view, why is it that Pentecostal brethren are friendly toward you and actually invite you to speak in their churches?” I said, “Well, the reason is that they have more of the grace of God than I have.” A recent letter from a Pentecostal pastor read, “We agree on too many things to let one or two differences separate us.” When we agree on the major doctrines of the faith, though we may differ on minor points, we need to receive one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Although I disagree with Pentecostal brethren on the matter of tongues, I see no reason why I should break fellowship with them. I just pray they will see it as I see it. And the very interesting thing is that one of these days, when we are in His presence, we will agree. In fact, all will agree with me. Do you know why? Because I am going to have to change a whole lot of things also. All of us will be changed, changed into His image and His likeness. Then all of us will agree. In view of that fact, we had better concentrate on the areas in which there is agreement now.


Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers:

And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name [Rom. 15:8–9].

When the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world, He came as “a minister of the circumcision”—this is the only time it is mentioned. His ministry was confined to the nation Israel. He frankly said so Himself: “But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). Also He directed His disciples: “But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6). Christ came to earth about nineteen hundred years ago. He came in this capacity to confirm the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God said that from the loins of Abraham He would bring One who would be a blessing to the world. Christ came to be a blessing to both Jew and Gentile. “And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21). He could not have been “Jesus” unless He had been born in the line of Abraham and David and unless He followed the Law. They called Him Jesus after He was circumcised. He came to fulfill the entire Mosaic system. “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4–5). Salvation came to Israel through Christ in confirming and fulfilling the truth of the Old Testament promises. Also by this method salvation was brought to the Gentiles. The Gentiles’ only claim was upon the mercy of God. No promise was ever made to their fathers. I do not know who my father was, way back in the beginning in the forests of Germany and in Scotland. I do not know his name. But I do know that God never made any promise to him. He did, however, make a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Christ came to confirm the truth of the promises made to the fathers of the Jews, and He also came that the Gentiles might obtain mercy. In this the Gentiles are to glorify God. I thank God that He brought the gospel to my ancestors. They were pagan and savage and had done nothing to merit God’s grace.
“As it is written” introduces four quotations from the Old Testament that show that the Gentiles are to praise God.
“For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name” is a quotation from Psalm 18:49. Christ is praising God through the Gentiles, which implies their conversion.


And again he saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people [Rom. 15:10].

This quotation is from Deuteronomy 32:43. It concludes the song of Moses, which is a prophetic recitation of the history of the nation Israel until the coming of the millennial kingdom. Here the Gentiles are invited to join Israel in praise to God.

And again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud him, all ye people [Rom. 15:11].
This is a quotation from the briefest psalm (see Ps. 117:1). It is an invitation to the Gentiles to join Israel in praise to God. It is interesting to note the occurrence of the word all twice in this brief quotation.


And again, Esaias saith. There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust [Rom. 15:12].

This quotation is from Isaiah 11:10. Though the Messiah is from the line of David, He is to rule over the Gentiles. Obviously it was the clear intention of God that the Gentiles should come to Christ. Some had come to Christ in Paul’s day, and they were the firstfruits of even a greater day. Remember that Paul was writing to the Romans, and the Roman church was largely a gentile church, as are our churches today.


Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost [Rom. 15:13].

“The God of hope” is a new title for God which is thrilling. The believing heart finds here the Rock of Ages who is the shelter in the time of storm. “The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” This is what a study of Romans should do for you. I trust it has given you joy and peace and that it has strengthened your faith. I trust it has brought hope and power into your life, my friend.
This is the benediction that concludes the doctrinal section of the Epistle to the Romans.

CONTINUATION OF PAUL’S PERSONAL TESTIMONY


At this point Paul resumes his personal testimony as an apostle to the Gentiles. You remember that he began this epistle in a very personal manner. Now he leaves the doctrinal section, and he picks up that personal note with which he began the epistle, in which he expressed the desire to visit Rome. “Now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you” (Rom. 1:10). Now listen to him.


And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another [Rom. 15:14].

This, I think, is one of the loveliest passages. Paul is offering in this verse a gentle apology for his frankness and boldness in speaking to the Romans in the doctrinal section. It was not because they were lacking in goodness and knowledge, but rather because they possessed these qualities that Paul was able to be so explicit. Isn’t that wonderful? He gave us the Epistle to the Romans so that he could talk to us about these important issues. My friend, an understanding of the Epistle to the Romans is an essential part of your Christian growth. Every Christian should make an effort to know Romans, for this book will ground the believer in the faith. Paul is being very humble and sweet about his exhortations in this epistle. He is not lording it over God’s heritage.


Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given to me of God,

That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost [Rom. 15:15–16].

When Paul says, “I have written,” he is referring to this Epistle to the Romans. He is explaining the fact of his boldness by reminding the Romans that he is the apostle to the Gentiles. On the basis of this God-appointed office, which came to him through the grace of God, he is exercising that office in writing as he does to the Romans. He is ministering to them. This statement gives added weight to the inspiration of the writings of Paul. He adopts the language of the Levitical temple worship in describing himself as a minister preaching the gospel.
The Gentiles are “acceptable”—apart from the Law or any religion—through Jesus Christ as preached by Paul.
“Sanctified”—the Holy Spirit indwelt the gentile believers, beginning with Cornelius. The sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit begins with Jew and Gentile the moment of regeneration when the Spirit of God takes up His abode within the believer. Paul gave the gospel, but God gave the Holy Spirit when they believed. It must be kept in mind that Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles in a very special sense. As a high priest, Paul offered up the Gentiles, making an offering unto God. It is difficult for us today to fathom the full significance of all this, and yet we as Gentiles have entered into all that this implies. My friend, if you have never thanked God for the apostle Paul, you should thank Him right now. God gave Paul to us. For this reason we should read his Epistle to the Romans.


I have therefore whereof I may glory through Jesus Christ in those things which pertain to God [Rom. 15:17].

Paul had written boldly to the Romans and was rather apologetic about it because he recognized that these saints in Rome probably did not need his instructions. In spite of this, however, he wrote with confidence to them. There is no personal assumption in this. He is a servant of Christ Jesus and is doing His will. This is important to see. There is one thing that should never characterize a servant of God, and that is pride. We should never become officious, but rather take the position that we are merely serving the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is the One in charge.


For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed,

Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ [Rom. 15:18–19].

Paul is saying something very important in this passage. If we are to understand Paul, and especially whether he or Peter founded the church at Rome, we must pay close attention to what he says here. Paul is saying, “I will not take credit for the work of God that is being done by others—especially among the Gentiles.” Of course he couldn’t take credit for what was accomplished on the Day of Pentecost, which was the beginning of the ministry that resulted in the gospel going to the Gentiles. He couldn’t take credit for the gospel going to the first Gentiles. It was Simon Peter who took the gospel to the home of Cornelius. Paul will speak only of those things which Christ wrought by him. He had a peculiar ministry as the apostle to the Gentiles.
“Through mighty signs and wonders,” which were the credentials of the apostles and the ministers in the early church. These were given to establish the church on the right foundation before a word of the New Testament had been written. Paul, speaking to the Ephesian believers, says that they “… are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (Eph. 2:20). He does not intend to say that the apostles are the foundation. There is no foundation but Christ: “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). But the apostles are the ones who put down the foundation of Jesus Christ. That is what Paul is saying here.
Paul says that the gospel of Christ had come through him “unto Illyricum.” Illyricum was a province of the Roman Empire next to Italy. It extended to the Adriatic Sea and the Danube River. Paul, you see, had preached by this time from Jerusalem to the province next to Rome. He had not quite reached Rome. By the way, we have no record of Paul’s journey in this area. Undoubtedly he went many places that are not detailed for us. There are those who believe that Paul went to Spain. I believe this epistle reveals that he did go to Spain, and I think he also went to Great Britain because he covered the Roman Empire, as we shall see.


Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation:

But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand [Rom. 15:20–21].

Perhaps my translation will make these verses a little clearer: Indeed, in this way having made it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, in order that I might not be building upon another man’s foundation: but as it is written, They shall see, those to whom there came no tidings of Him, and those who have not heard shall understand.
It was a point of honor with Paul—not competition—which caused him to go as a pioneer where the gospel had not been preached. Paul had a peculiar ministry. Paul did not minister where a church already existed or where others had gone. He was a true missionary, which is the meaning of the word evangelist in the New Testament. Paul never had a committee to do the groundwork ahead of him. When Paul entered a town, he was not given a welcome. The mayor did not greet him. If anyone greeted him, it was usually the chief of police, who generally arrested him and put him in jail. Since the apostles laid the foundation, the believers would have to be very careful to discern who the apostles were and to whom they were listening. Paul had the credentials God had given to the apostles. It is said of Paul and Barnabas, “Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands” (Acts 14:3). You see, these were the marks of the apostles and the early preachers of the gospel. They did not come with a New Testament in their hands—it hadn’t been written yet. They came with these credentials: mighty “signs and wonders.”
Of course the day came when signs and wonders were no longer the identifying mark. The apostle John, near the end of his long life, wrote; “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed” (2 John 10). Correct doctrine was the identifying mark for a man of God even then. And today the identifying mark is correct doctrine, not signs and wonders.
A tragic movement is going on at this writing. Coming to my desk is literally a flood of letters from people who are being carried away by fanaticism, by wrong teaching, and by false doctrine. Although there is a movement of the Holy Spirit today, there is also a movement of the Devil. Satan is busy. A great many people are being carried away and trapped by incorrect teaching. Paul has been so careful to emphasize the fact that the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. Well, the kingdom of God is not signs and wonders either. It is not any of these outward things. The kingdom of God just happens to be righteousness. I hear of groups meeting and indulging in all kinds of sexual rites—not living for God at all—yet talking about certain signs that they demonstrate, such as speaking in tongues. My friend, it had better be a clean tongue. If the Lord has come into your life, He will clean you up. A clean tongue and one that declares the Word of God accurately is what a great many folk need today. Paul always ministered where the gospel had not previously gone. He was a true evangelist, a true missionary.
Since Paul said that he did not go where the gospel had been preached before, who is the founder of the church in Rome? He makes it very clear, both in his introduction and at this point, that he is the founder of the church in Rome.
In Romans 16 we will be introduced to a group of people in Rome whom Paul knew. The record tells us that Paul led them to the Lord. He reached these people out in the Roman Empire and many of them gravitated to Rome. There they met together around the person of the Lord Jesus. I am sure they talked many times about their beloved pastor, Paul. He founded the church, not by going there in person, but by remote control—you might say, by spiritual radar.
“To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand” seems to be Paul’s life verse as a missionary. It is a quotation of Isaiah 52:15 from the Septuagint version. Paul was thrilled to go and preach the gospel to those who were spiritually blind. After Paul had preached, some brother would say, “I understand, brother Paul. I will accept Christ as my Savior.” My friend, there is no thrill equal to presenting Christ and having people turn to Him.


For which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to you [Rom. 15:22].

When Paul says that he had been “much hindered,” you may be sure of one thing: he was much hindered. Many roadblocks had been put in his way.


But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you;
Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company [Rom. 15:23–24].
Paul makes it clear that he wants to take the gospel way out yonder and that he is coming to Rome. Now he says something unusually strange: “But now having no more place in these parts.” There is a question about what Paul meant by this. Was he saying that there was no longer an opportunity to preach the gospel in the section of the Roman Empire where he was at that time? Had the doors completely closed to him? Had everyone been saved? Had every nook and cranny been evangelized? I used to take the position that the answer was “no” to these questions. However, now that I have visited the sites of the seven churches of Asia Minor, I’m not sure that I was right, because Paul and the other witnesses had been faithful, and the gospel had been sounded out through that entire area. The Word had gone out. Dr. Luke says that everyone, both Jew and Gentile, had heard the gospel. This does not mean that they all had turned to Christ, but they all had heard. Now Paul is looking for new territory. He has his eyes on the frontier of the empire. He says, “Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you.” In other words, Rome was not his destination. He wanted to go to Spain. He had come from one end of the Roman Empire, and he wanted to go to the other end of the Roman Empire. He says, “For I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on way thitherward by you.” You see, Rome was not his terminal. He wanted to go all the way to the other end of the empire.
The question is: Did Paul ever go to Spain? If he did, we have no record of it. But neither have we a record of his journey to Illyricum; we would not know he had been there if he had not mentioned it in verse 19. Personally I believe that Paul did go to Spain and to the rest of the Roman Empire. My reason is a statement that he made when he came to the end of his life. He said, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). Paul said he had finished his course. I don’t think he would have said that if he had not been to Spain, because Spain was on his itinerary.
Paul wanted to go to Spain and he also wanted to go to Jerusalem.


But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints.

For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem [Rom. 15:25–26].

He wanted to go to Jerusalem to take a gift to the poor saints there, and he wanted to take it with his own hands. Why? Because with his own hands he had “wasted” the church at Jerusalem; he had led in the persecution of the believers in Jerusalem. Now it was in the heart of this great apostle to make up for that by taking a gift to them.
“A certain contribution.” The Greek word which is translated “contribution” is koinoµnia, meaning “a fellowship.” This word was used for everything that believers could share: Christ, the Word, prayer, the Lord’s Supper, and material gifts. Christians have fellowship with God, with Christ, and with one another when they give. Fellowship is not just patting somebody on the back. The knife and fork clubs meet every week, and that is fellowship as far as they are concerned. But for a believer, fellowship is sharing the things of Christ. Paul is talking here about going to Jerusalem where previously he had persecuted the church. Now he wants to have fellowship with them; he wants to take a gift to them. In Acts we have the historical record of this: Paul said, “Now after many years I came to bring alms to my nation, and offerings” (Acts 24:17). This collection was very important to Paul. We find him writing about it in 2 Corinthians—in fact, chapters 8 and 9 deal with it.


It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things [Rom. 15:27].

Paul makes it clear that it was a freewill offering. “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). This is the offering Paul collected. Paul makes it very clear that it not only was a freewill offering (they couldn’t give any other way to please God), but he also enforces the fact that they had a moral obligation and debt to pay. The Gentiles had received the gospel from Israel. Our Lord Jesus said, “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). You see, the gospel began in Jerusalem. Macedonia and Achaia were obligated to Jerusalem. Now some of the saints in Jerusalem were having financial difficulties, evidently because of persecution. Macedonia and Achaia could now pay a spiritual debt in the coin of the realm. This is foreign missions in reverse! It is the missionary church helping the home church. This very thing may take place in our nation, by the way, in the not too far distant future!


When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain [Rom. 15:28].

You can see that this gift was on the heart of the great apostle Paul—notice the zeal he had in taking it to Jerusalem. That trip, of course, placed him into the hands of his enemies who had him arrested. I disagree with some of my brethren who believe that Paul was out of the will of God during this time. I maintain that Paul was absolutely in the will of God when he went up to Jerusalem, as we have seen in the Book of Acts.
“And have sealed to them this fruit” is an awkward phrase for us and could mean no more than that he wanted a receipt for the offering. He secured to them the gift. It probably means that he wanted the Jerusalem church to see some fruits of their missionary efforts. I personally believe that if you are going to contribute money to some cause, you ought to know what it is doing. The area of Christian giving is one of grave danger today. I do not believe, Christian friend, that you should give to any work unless you know two things about it: (1) what it is doing, and (2) is it getting out the Word of God in a way that is effectual in hearts and lives?


And I am sure that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ [Rom. 15:29].

This is Paul’s stamp of approval on his prosperous journey to Rome. He went there according to the will of God and in the fulness of his apostolic office. God gave him divine insight into this trip. Paul is not out of the will of God in going to Jerusalem. Neither was he out of the will of God in going to Rome. It may not look like a prosperous journey, but God used it that way. It is very easy for God’s children, when trouble comes and things look dark and doubtful, to say, “I must be out of the will of God.” My friend, just because you have trouble and disturbed feelings does not mean that you are out of God’s will. In fact, it may definitely mean you are in His will. If you are living in perfect calm today and nothing is happening, the chances are you are not in His will.


Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me [Rom. 15:30].

I have been dwelling a long time in this area. One reason is that this is a personal area, and Paul is laying bare his heart. The second reason is that we are seeing how Christianity functioned in the first century. We are seeing the practical side of Christianity. In the first part of Romans Paul gave us doctrine. Now Paul is putting that doctrine into practice.
This is one of the most solemn, earnest, and serious appeals of Paul for prayer that we find in the Bible. He says, “I beg of you, brethren, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and through the love of the Spirit, that ye strive intensely with me in your prayers to God on behalf of me.” Paul recognizes that he is facing danger and has come to a crisis in his ministry. Enemies are on every hand. Paul had reason to fear, as succeeding events proved. He is asking for prayer in a very wonderful way, “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul realized that everything that was to come to him had to come through Jesus Christ. He asked the believers in Rome to join with him in prayer. He says, “I want all of you to pray through Christ—He is our great Intercessor—go through Him to God on my behalf.”
By “through the love of the Spirit” he means that love is the fruit of the Spirit which joins all believers together. And, friend, we ought to pray for each other.
“That ye strive intensely for me.” The Greek word for strive is tremendous. We get our English word agonize from it. Paul is saying, “Agonize with me.”
“On behalf of me”—he is asking for prayer for his personal safety that he might come in “the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.” Oh, my friend, how we need to pray like this—not just praying by rote or by going over our prayer list hurriedly. For the apostle Paul prayer was with great agony, great exercise of soul. He laid hold of God. This kind of praying is so desperately needed today! You and I need people who know how to pray for us.


That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judaea; and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints [Rom. 15:31].

In other words, this is Paul’s prayer request, and it is twofold. His life was in jeopardy from unbelievers in Judea, the religious rulers. He wanted to be delivered from them. Secondly, the church in Jerusalem might be hesitant in accepting a gift from Gentiles, and he wanted them to accept it. My friend, both requests were answered. Somebody says, “Yes, but he was arrested.” Right, but he was immediately put into the hands of the Romans and was enabled to appear before kings, and finally he actually appeared before the Caesar in Rome, which was the fulfillment of the will of God for the apostle Paul.


That I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed [Rom. 15:32].

This is the conclusion of Paul’s prayer request. The prayer was answered: his life was spared, the church in Jerusalem accepted the gift, he did come with joy to Rome—in spite of the fact that he spent two years in jail at Caesarea, was shipwrecked on-the way, and when he arrived in Rome he was in chains. Yet Paul came in the joy of the Holy Spirit. Oh, how all of us need that kind of joy in our lives!
Did Paul find rest and refreshment in Rome? Well, the answer is debatable. He did find all this and more beyond Rome and Spain when he entered the presence of Christ. He wrote near the end of his life to Timothy, his son in the faith: “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:6–8).
This chapter concludes with Paul’s benediction:


Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen [Rom. 15:33].

“The God of peace” shows that Paul experienced peace in prison, in chains, in storm, and in shipwreck. I pray that you and I might have that kind of peace in our lives.

CHAPTER 16

Theme: Commendation of Phebe; Christians in Rome greeted; conduct toward other Christians; Christians with Paul send greetings; concluding benediction


In this final chapter of Romans the gospel walks in shoe leather in the first century of the Roman Empire. It thrills my heart to know that in the pagan Roman Empire there were Christians, witnesses for Christ, walking down the streets of those cities with the joy of the Lord in their hearts. I consider this one of the most revealing chapters that we have in the Epistle to the Romans. Paul has left the mountain peaks of doctrine to come down to the pavements of Rome. Here we see Christianity in action. The great doctrines which Paul proclaimed are not missiles for outer space. They are vehicles which actually operated on Roman roads. The gospel was translated into life and reality. This remarkable chapter should not be omitted or neglected in any study of Romans. William R. Newell has well said, “The sixteenth chapter is neglected by many to their own loss” (Romans Verse by Verse, p. 548).
There are thirty-five persons mentioned by name in this chapter. All were either believers living in Rome or they were believers who were with the apostle Paul—he was probably in Corinth when he wrote this epistle. There is expressed a mutual love and tender affection which was a contradiction of Roman philosophy and practice. (Also, it is rather unlike some churches today!) These Christians were different. Little wonder that Rome marveled at these folk and exclaimed, “My, how these Christians love each other!”

COMMENDATION OF PHEBE


The chapter begins with a commendation of Phebe, the woman who brought this epistle to Rome.


I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea:

That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also [Rom. 16:1–2].

Phebe is the first believer mentioned in this, another catalog of the heroes of the faith. She was a Gentile, as her name indicates. As I have already stated, there were many Gentiles in the church at Rome. She was named for the Greek goddess, Artemis or Diana, who in Greek mythology was the goddess of the moon, as her brother, Apollo, was the god of the sun. Many believers adopted new names at baptism, but Phebe kept her heathen name for some reason.
Phebe was the bearer of the Epistle to the Romans. Apparently she was a very prominent woman in the church, which means she was a woman of ability. She is called a “servant of the church which is at Cenchrea.” Cenchrea is the eastern seaport of Corinth. When I stood at the ruins of ancient Corinth, I looked down and saw in the distance Cenchrea. On that clear day, it looked much closer than the eight or nine miles it is said to be. Apparently Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans while he was at Corinth, and Phebe, who may have been a woman of means or engaged in business, took it with her to Rome. She is called a servant of the church, which means she was a deaconess. The Greek word diakonos is the same word used for deacon. It reveals the fact that women occupied a very prominent place in the early church.
It is my feeling that we would not be seeing women today occupying the position of pastors in the church (which is forbidden by Scripture) if they had been given their rightful position in the church. I think they should be deaconesses in the church and that they should sit on an equality with any other board of the church. The church needs some of the insights and sensibilities that women possess. God has made a woman finer than a man, just as a watch is finer than an automobile. She has been given a sense that man doesn’t have. For instance, she can watch a woman who is a complete stranger to her, and in five minutes she knows a great deal about her simply by observing her dress and her manner. Those of us who belong to the male side of the human race appear stupid at a time like that. We can see if she is good looking or not, but that is the extent of our observation. The church needs the insight that a woman has.
Paul apparently put into Phebe’s hand this Epistle to the Romans rather than trusting it to public transportation. Rome did have mail service, but it was slow. Paul, you see, is going back to Jerusalem, and Phebe brings his epistle with her to Rome.
“I commend unto you Phebe our sister”—Paul commends her to the believers there at Rome. She is the first woman mentioned in this final chapter.

CHRISTIANS IN ROME GREETED


Now Paul sends his greetings to quite a list of Christian folk.


Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus:

Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles [Rom. 16:3–4].

At this time there were gentile churches, you see, and I believe the church at Rome was largely gentile, made up of many races. It was integrated for sure.
“Priscilla and Aquila” were a Jewish couple. How had Paul met them, and in what way were they his helpers? Well, there had been a wave of anti-Semitism that had swept over the city of Rome, and Priscilla and Aquila had had to leave. They came to the city of Corinth while Paul was there and set up shop. Corinth was a good commercial center, and Paul was also plying his trade there. Since they were all tentmakers, this drew them together (see Acts 18:1–3), and Paul led them to the Lord. Then they were with Paul at Ephesus. Perhaps they had gone over there to open up a branch store. In Acts 18:26, we find that they were able to be helpful to Apollos: “And he [Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.” Notice that when we first meet them it is “Aquila and Priscilla.” Now here in Romans it is Priscilla and Aquila. Why are the names reversed? Well, I think here is a case when the woman became dominant in spiritual matters. Spiritually she became the leader, although they were both outstanding workers for Christ.


Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my well-beloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ [Rom. 16:5].

The local church met in private homes at the very beginning. (See Acts 12:12; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15; Philem. 2.) Sanday writes, “There is no decisive evidence until the third century of the existence of special buildings used for churches.” It is the belief of many folk today, and I have found this belief for years, that the church which began in the home will return to meeting in the home. Many of these great big buildings we call churches, with great steeples on them, are nothing more than a pile of brick, stone, and mortar. They are mausoleums, not living churches that contain a real, living body of believers. The church was never intended to be spoken of as a building. For the first three centuries the church was the body of believers and met in homes like that of Aquila and Priscilla.
Epaenetus is a Greek name meaning “praised.” Evidently he was Paul’s first convert in the Roman province of Achaia.

Greet Mary, who bestowed much labour on us [Rom. 16:6].
Mary is a Jewish name, the same as Miriam, meaning “rebelliousness.” She “bestowed much labour on us” means that she labored to the point of exhaustion. What a change had taken place in her life! Before becoming a believer, she was in rebellion, but now she “knocks herself out” for the sake of other believers, because she is now obedient to Christ.


Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me [Rom. 16:7].

Andronicus is a Greek name, and the name has been identified with a slave.
Junia is a Roman name and can be either masculine or feminine. Paul calls them “my fellow countrymen,” which may mean that they belonged to the tribe of Benjamin as did Paul. It does not necessarily mean close blood relationship.
Paul says, they were “my fellow prisoners.” Evidently Paul had met them in one of the numerous prisons of the Roman Empire. These two were well-known to the apostles and were held in high regard by them. Paul had not led them to Christ, as is the natural assumption, for they were in Christ before he was.
The church in Rome was founded by Paul under most unusual circumstances. He had met Aquila and Priscilla in the Corinthian agora, the marketplace, and then he met these two men in jail. These had then gone to Rome and formed the church there.


Greet Amplias my beloved in the Lord.

Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ, and Stachys my beloved [Rom. 16:8–9].

Amplias is a common slave name and occurs in the tombs of the early Christians in the catacombs, always in a place of honor. He evidently was one of Paul’s converts and dear to his heart.
Urbane means “city bred.” In other words, his name actually means “city-slicker.” This was also a common slave name, and it may mean that he was brought up in the city rather than in the country. He is identified as a real worker among believers.
Stachys has been found listed in the royal household. It is a masculine name. He was beloved not only to Paul but to the church.


Salute Apelles approved in Christ. Salute them which are of Aristobulus’ household [Rom. 16:10].

Apelles is the approved one. His is either a Greek or a Jewish name—the name was a common one among the Jews. He had stood some outstanding test. Tradition identifies him as bishop either of Smyrna or Heracleia.
Aristobulus has been identified by Bishop Lightfoot as the grandson of Herod the Great. Or possibly he was a slave who took the name of his master—we can’t be sure of this.


Salute Herodion my kinsman. Greet them that be of the household of Narcissus, which are in the Lord [Rom. 16:11].

Herodion was evidently a Jew, as Paul calls him a fellow countryman. The name suggests the Herod family. He may have been a slave who adopted the name of the family to which he belonged.
Narcissus is the name of a well-known freedman put to death by Agrippina. The one whose name appears here was probably a slave who formerly belonged to him and had taken his name.


Salute Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, which laboured much in the Lord [Rom. 16:12].

Tryphena and Tryphosa are euphonious names that mean “delicate” and “dainty.” I imagine these two little ladies were old maid sisters who came to know Christ. They may have been women of means, and they had supported the apostle Paul. Paul says that they labored “in the Lord”—they were real workers in the church at Rome.
“The beloved Persis” is another woman who “laboured much in the Lord.” Persis is the name of a freedwoman, and her position may have enabled her to do more than the preceding two sisters.


Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine [Rom. 16:13].

Although this man seems to stand in the shadows in this chapter, actually we can know a great deal about him—even to the color of his hair! His name means “red.” Red was the name by which he was called. However, there were many red-haired folk; it was not his hair that made him unusual. The thing that marks him out is the phrase that follows, “chosen in the Lord.” I love that. “But,” you may say, “were not the others in this chapter chosen in the Lord also?” Yes, they were all wonderful saints, but this man was outstanding. Perhaps a better translation would be “distinguished in the Lord.” He was a great saint of God.
That Rufus was prominent in the church is inferred in the reference to his father. When John Mark wrote his gospel, he wrote it primarily for the Romans. In it he mentions the incident of a man by the name of Simon carrying the cross of Christ. “And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross” (Mark 15:21). The Roman soldiers that day saw Jesus falling under the cross. Looking over the crowd they shouted, “Here!” to a big double-fisted fellow, Simon of Cyrene. “You come here and carry it.” And carry it he did—an act that has made him immortal. John Mark, writing to Rome, identifies Simon for them by adding, “the father of Alexander and Rufus”—all the saints at Rome would know Rufus because he was outstanding in the church.
Will you notice further that Paul’s greeting includes the mother of Rufus. “Salute Rufus … and his mother and mine.” While we know nothing of the mother of Paul the apostle and nothing of his father, we learn here of a godly woman in the city of Jerusalem, the wife of Simon the Cyrenian, who was like a mother to the apostle Paul. You may recall that the first time Paul came to Jerusalem following his conversion, the Christians feared him. They were unconvinced that this powerful Pharisee was genuine; they suspected trickery. Yet the mother of Rufus took Paul in, “You just come in and stay with Rufus in his room.” Looking back to that time, Paul writes concerning her, “She is Rufus’ mother, but she is mine also.” What a lovely tribute to this warmhearted Christian mother!


Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and the brethren which are with them [Rom. 16:14].

These are all just names to us, but Paul knew them. Probably he had led them to Christ.


Salute Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with them [Rom. 16:15].

Here is another group of believers who were in the church there in Rome.

CONDUCT TOWARD OTHER CHRISTIANS


Salute one another with an holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you [Rom. 16:16].


This was the formal greeting in Paul’s time—I don’t recommend it for today!


Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.

For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple [Rom. 16:17–18].

Paul puts in this word of warning. We would do well to heed this warning also, my beloved.


For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil [Rom. 16:19].

You see, their faith came abroad also, but the faith is manifested in obedience.
“Wise unto that which is good” means they must be instructed in the Word of God.
“Simple concerning evil” means without admixture of evil. To the Corinthians Paul said, “Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men” (1 Cor. 14:20).


And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen [Rom. 16:20].

It is “the God of peace” who will put down Satan shortly. In the meantime we are to resist the Devil, be sober and vigilant.

CHRISTIANS WITH PAUL SEND GREETINGS


Now Paul sends greetings from those who were with him as he was writing this Epistle to the Romans.


Timotheus my workfellow, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, my kinsmen, salute you [Rom. 16:21].

All of these were companions of Paul. They send greetings to their fellow believers in Rome.


I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord [Rom. 16:22].

Paul, you see, had an amanuensis, a secretary, to write his letters. (The Epistle to the Galatians is the exception.)

Gaius mine host, and of the whole church, saluteth you. Erastus the chamberlain of the city saluteth you, and Quartus a brother [Rom. 16:23].
Paul was staying in the home of Gaius, and Gaius wanted to send his salutations also.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen [Rom. 16:24].

BENEDICTION


Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began [Rom. 16:25].


“The mystery” means that it had not been revealed in the Old Testament. It refers to the present age when God is taking both Jew and Gentile and fashioning them into one body, the church.


But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith [Rom. 16:26].

Here we see the obedience of faith. When you trust Christ, you will obey Him, my friend. The Lord Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). Obedience is the work and fruit of faith.
My favorite hymn is “Trust and Obey” by John H. Sammis:

When we walk with the Lord
In the Light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
Then in fellowship sweet
We will sit at His feet,
Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;
What He says we will do,
Where He sends we will go—
Never fear, only trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and
obey.

To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen [Rom. 16:27].

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Recommended for Further Study)


Barnhouse, Donald Grey. Romans. 4 vols. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1952–1960. (Expositions of Bible doctrines, taking the Epistle to the Romans as a point of departure.)

DeHaan, Richard W. The World on Trial: Studies in Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970.

Epp, Theodore H. How God Makes Bad Men Good: Studies in Romans. Lincoln, Nebraska: Back to the Bible Broadcast, 1978.

Hendriksen, William. The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1980.

Hodge, Charles. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1886.

Hoyt, Herman A. The First Christian Theology: Studies in Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1977. (Good for group study.)

Ironside, H. A. Lectures on Romans. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, n.d. (Especially fine for young Christians.)

Jensen, lrving R. Romans: Self-Study Guide. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, n.d.

Johnson, Alan F. Romans: The Freedom Letter. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1974.

Kelly, William. Notes on Romans. Addison, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, 1873.
Luther, Martin. Commentary on Romans. 1516 Reprint. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1976.

McClain, Alva J. Romans: The Gospel of God’s Grace. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1942.

McGee, J. Vernon. Reasoning Through Romans. 2 vols. Pasadena, California: Thru the Bible Books, 1959.

Moule, Handley, C. G. The Epistle to the Romans. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Christian Literature Crusade, n.d. (See note below.)

Moule, Handley C. G. Studies in Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1892. (Originally appeared in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. These two books by Moule complement each other and are both excellent.)

Murray, John. Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965. (For advanced students.)

Newell, William R. Romans Verse by Verse. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1938. (An excellent study.)

Philips, John. Exploring Romans. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1969.

Stifler, James. The Epistle to the Romans. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1897.

Thomas, W. H. Griffith. The Book of Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1946. (Fine interpretation.)

Vine, W. E. Romans. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1950.

Wuest, Kenneth S. Romans in the Greek New Testament for English Readers. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1955.
Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Right. (Romans). Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1977.

The First Epistle to the
Corinthians

INTRODUCTION

Paul addressed this epistle to the church which was in the city of Corinth. He wrote it from Ephesus around a.d. 55–57 (more likely 57). Carnal Corinth was the sin center of the Roman Empire in Paul’s day. It was labeled “Vanity Fair.” Its location was about forty miles west of Athens on a narrow isthmus between Peloponnesus and the mainland. It was the great commercial center of the Roman Empire with three harbors, of which two were important: Lechaeum, about one and one half miles to the west, and Cenchrea, about eight and one half miles to the east. Since the time of Paul, a canal has been put through the isthmus, and Corinth is no longer an important city.
Even the ruins of Corinth were lost to history for many years. A fishing village had been built over them. In 1928 an earthquake uncovered them, and now much of the city has been excavated.
During that time in history when Greece was independent, Corinth was the head of the Achaean League. Later, in 196 b.c., Rome declared it a free city. In 146 b.c. Corinth rebelled and was totally destroyed by Mummius, the Roman general. Its art treasures were taken to Rome and for a century it lay desolate. One hundred years later, in 46 b.c., Julius Caesar rebuilt the city in great elegance, restoring it to its former prominence and returning its former splendor.
In Paul’s day there were about four hundred thousand inhabitants in Corinth. It was located on this important isthmus, as we previously mentioned, and the commerce of the world flowed through the two harbors connected with the city of Corinth. The population consisted of Greeks, Jews, Italians, and a mixed multitude. Sailors, merchants, adventurers, and refugees from all corners of the Roman Empire filled its streets. A perpetual “Vanity Fair” was held here. The vices of the East and of the West met and clasped hands in the work of human degradation.
Religion itself was put to ignoble uses. A magnificent temple was built for the Greek goddess Aphrodite, or Venus as we know her by the Roman name. In it were a thousand priestesses who ministered to a base worship. Those thousand so-called priestesses were actually nothing in the world but prostitutes. Sex was a religion there. I believe that Corinth could teach this generation about sex. However, I think this generation already knows enough about that subject. We are overwhelmed with it ad nauseam today.
Not only was their religion debased, but the Greek philosophy was in its decay also. The city was given over to licentiousness and pleasure. The Isthmian games were conducted here. The people went on in endless discussions. It was into this kind of setting that Paul came, and later he said, “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). This was a people given over to pleasure, debauchery, and drunkenness. In fact, they coined a word in the Roman Empire which was to “corinthianize.” Believe me, when you would “corinthianize,” it meant that you went to the very limit in sin.
Against this corrupt background Paul preached the gospel in Corinth. He founded a church there and later wrote two epistles to them. Paul came to Corinth on his second missionary journey, and it was the terminus of his third missionary journey. Acts 18:1–18 gives us the account of eighteen months spent in Corinth. It was in Corinth that he met Aquila and Priscilla. They had been driven out of Rome by an edict of Emperor Claudius. Suetonius writes that this edict was issued because of tumults raised by the Jews who were persecuting their Christian brethren.
When Paul first came to Corinth, he preached in the synagogue. As usual, a riot was the result. Paul usually had a riot, revolution, and revival wherever he went. Corinth was no exception.
On Paul’s third journey he spent a long period of time in Ephesus. It was in Ephesus that he did some of his outstanding work as a missionary. Probably that area was more thoroughly evangelized than any other. However, this caused the Corinthians to become disturbed. They were baby Christians, and they were urging Paul to come to them. Apparently Paul wrote them a letter to correct some of the errors that had come into that church. They, in turn, wrote to Paul asking questions that they wanted answered about political issues, religion, domestic problems, heathenism, and morality. Paul answered them and responded to more reports which were brought to him. We do not have that first letter which Paul wrote to them. The letter that followed the reports brought to him is the letter we know today as 1 Corinthians. That is the epistle we are about to study. Later on Paul wrote the letter we now call 2 Corinthians.
The keynote of this epistle is the supremacy of Christ, the Lordship of Jesus. That is so important for us to note, because that is the solution to the problems. You will find here that He is the solution to correct moral, social, and ecclesiastical disorders.
In this epistle we will also find the true doctrine of the Resurrection set forth. That makes this epistle tremendously significant.
A broad outline of this book divides it into three major divisions:

1. Salutation and thanksgiving, 1:1–9
2. Carnalities, 1:10–11:34(Conditions in the Corinthian church)
3. Spiritualities, 12–16(Spiritual gifts)

The spiritualities are far more important than the carnalities. I think we need to realize that over nineteen hundred years ago the church in Corinth was beset with problems. They had lost sight of the main objective, and they had gotten away from the person of Christ. As a consequence, they were overwhelmed with these problems.
Our contemporary church is likewise beset with problems. It is almost shocking to discover that the problems of the church today are the same as they were in Corinth over nineteen hundred years ago. I believe that the real problem today is that we have lost sight of the centrality of Christ crucified. We have lost sight of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That was the problem then, and it is still the problem now. Our study of this epistle should be a relevant and pertinent study for us.

OUTLINE

I. Salutation and Thanksgiving, Chapter 1:1–9
II. Concerning Conditions in the Corinthian Church, Chapters 1:10–16:9
A. Concerning Divisions and Party Spirit, Chapters 1–4
1. Centrality of Christ Crucified Corrects Divisions, Chapter 1
2. Clarity of Holy Spirit Corrects Human Wisdom, Chapter 2
3. Correct Conception of God Clarifies Christian Service, Chapter 3
4. Conditions of Christ’s Servants Constrain Christian Conduct, Chapter 4
B. Concerning Scandals in the Corinthian Church, Chapters 5–6
1. Impurity, Chapter 5
2. Lawsuits among Members, Chapter 6
C. Concerning Marriage, Chapter 7
D. Concerning Christian Liberty, Chapters 8:1–11:1
E. Concerning Women’s Dress, Chapter 11:2–16
F. Concerning the Lord’s Table, Chapter 11:17–34
G. Concerning Spiritual Gifts, Chapters 12–14
1. Endowment of Gifts, Chapter 12
a. Gifts Are Given to Maintain Unity in Diversity, Chapter 12:1–11
b. Members of Human Body Compared to Gifts of Holy Spirit, Chapter 12:12–31
2. Energy of Gifts—Love, Chapter 13
3. Exercise of Gifts, Chapter 14
a. Gift of Prophecy Is Superior to Gift of Tongues, Chapter 14:1–22
b. Order in Local Church for Exercise of Any Gift, Chapter 14:23–40
H. Concerning the Gospel, Chapter 15
1. Prominence of Resurrection in the Gospel, Chapter 15:1–4
2. Proofs of Resurrection, Chapter 15:5–19
3. Parade of Resurrection, Chapter 15:20–28
a. Christ, the Firstfruits, Chapter 15:20–23b
b. Those Who Are Christ’s (Church), Chapter 15:23c
c. Old Testament Saints, Tribulation Saints, Chapter 15:23c
d. Kingdom Set Up, Christ Reigning, Chapter 15:24–25
e. Death Destroyed, Chapter 15:26
f. Christ Returns to His Place in Trinity, Chapter 15:27–28
4. Program and Pattern of Resurrection, Chapter 15:29–50
5. Power of Resurrection, Chapter 15:51–58
I. Concerning Collections, Chapter 16:1–9
III. Closing Exhortations and Benediction, Chapter 16:10–24

CHAPTER 1

Theme: Centrality of Christ crucified; correction of divisions

SALUTATION AND THANKSGIVING


Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother [1 Cor. 1:1].


Will you notice in your Bible that the little verb “to be” is in italics, which means it is not in the original. It should read, “Paul, called an apostle.” This declares what kind of an apostle he is. He is a called apostle. God called him; the Lord Jesus Christ waylaid him on the Damascus road. Then the Spirit of God taught him yonder in the desert of Arabia. He is a called apostle.
He is an apostle of Jesus Christ “through the will of God.” It is the will of God that made him an apostle. This is so important.
It is wonderful today to be able to say, “I am where I am and I am doing what I am doing because of the will of God.” Is that your situation? If you can say that, then I do not need to add that you are a very happy, joyful Christian. You are not only a happy, joyful Christian, but you are one who is well-oriented into life. You have no frustrations. Of course you may have disturbing experiences occasionally, but down deep underneath there is that tremendous satisfaction. Paul had that when he could say that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God.
“Sosthenes our brother”—apparently Sosthenes had brought the message from the church at Corinth, and now he is going to carry this epistle back to them. He is the one who is joining Paul in these greetings.


Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours [1 Cor. 1:2].

Notice it is “unto the church of God which is at Corinth.” It is called the church of God because He is the One who is the Architect of the church. The letter is directed to the “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”
The church is at Corinth, but it is in Christ Jesus. The address of the church is not important, but the person of Christ is all-important. What does it mean to be a Christian? It means to be in Christ! Whether you are at Corinth or at Los Angeles, at Ephesus or at New York City is incidental. The important question is: Are you in Christ Jesus?
Paul calls them “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The term sanctification is used in several different ways, as we have already seen in Romans. Here it is positional sanctification, which is the position we have in Christ. When sanctification is joined to God the Father or God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, then it is generally positional. When sanctification is connected with the Holy Spirit, then that is practical sanctification. We will learn in verse 30 that Christ has been made unto us sanctification—along with wisdom and righteousness and redemption. He is our sanctification.
You see, friend, you are not going to heaven until you are perfect—I am not either. And I am not perfect, not even near it. The fact of the matter is that if you knew me like I know myself, you wouldn’t listen to me. But wait a minute! Don’t tune me out because, if I knew you like you know yourself, I wouldn’t speak to you. So let’s just stay connected here, if you don’t mind.
Sanctification is a position we have in Christ. If you have trusted Him, He has been made over to you your sanctification. You are as saved right now as you will be a million years from now, because you are saved in Christ. You cannot add anything to that.
There is also a practical sanctification, which is something that varies. These Corinthians don’t sound like sanctified saints. The work of the Holy Spirit was not very much in evidence in their lives. But they were positionally sanctified in Christ Jesus.
They were “called to be saints”—again, note that “to be” is in italics, which means it is not in the original. Just as Paul was a called apostle, they were called saints. We are also called saints. We do not become saints by what we do; we become saints because of our position in Christ. The word saint actually means “set aside to God.” Every Christian should be set aside to God. For example, the pans and vessels that were used in the tabernacle and later in the temple were called holy vessels. Holy? Yes, because they were for the use of God. On what basis is a child of God a saint or holy? On the basis that he is for the use of God. This is the position that we have. I repeat again, one is not a saint on the basis of what one does. All of mankind is divided between the “saints” and the “ain’ts.” If you “ain’t” in Christ, then you are an “ain’t.” If you are in Christ, then you are a “saint.”
The Corinthians are called saints together “with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” Possibly it would be more correct to say, “with all that in every place, both theirs and ours, who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.” This also indicates that the teaching of this epistle is addressed to the church at large, which is composed of all who call upon the Lord Jesus, whether it be in Corinth or elsewhere.
Now Paul uses his usual introduction: “grace and peace.”


Grace be unto you, and, peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 1:3].

Grace and peace are always in that sequence. Grace (charis) was the word of greeting in the Greek world. Peace is the Hebrew shalom, a form of greeting in the religious world. Paul combined these two words and lifted them to the highest level. You and I are saved by the grace of God; it is love in action. When we have been saved by the grace of God, then we can have the peace of God in our hearts. Have you received Christ as your Savior? Are your sins on Christ? If they are, you will have peace in your heart because He bore your sins. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Grace and peace are two great words.


I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 1:4].

“By Jesus Christ” would be better translated “in Jesus Christ,” because it is in Christ that we have all of these blessings. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (see Eph. 1:3). This is the place of blessing.
“Jesus Christ” should be Christ Jesus—Christ is His title, while Jesus is His human name. Christ is literally anointed, which is the official appellation of the long-promised Savior. Is it important to say Christ Jesus instead of Jesus Christ? It was to Paul. Paul tells us that he never knew Him after the flesh. That is, he didn’t know the Jesus who walked this earth in the days of His flesh. He may have seen Him; I think he was present at the Crucifixion. But his first personal contact was with the resurrected Christ, and to Paul He was always the Lord of glory. In most of Paul’s epistles it should read Christ Jesus rather than Jesus Christ.


That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge [1 Cor. 1:5].

This is what Paul is talking about in Colossians 3:16 when he says: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Since I can’t sing it, I can say it; that is, I can talk about the Word of God. In some churches the Psalms are sung. I think the whole Bible could be put to music. But I couldn’t sing it. The important thing is to have the Word of Christ in our hearts. That does not necessarily mean to memorize it. It means to obey it. If Christ is in your heart, you are obeying Him, and you are thinking upon Him. He occupies your mind and your heart. Some of the meanest little brats that I have ever met have memorized over a hundred verses of Scripture. That doesn’t mean no one should memorize Scripture just because some mean brats have memorized it. It does mean that simply memorizing Scripture is not what is meant by hiding it in your heart. You hide it in your heart, my friend, when you obey Him, think about Him, are occupied with Him. “In every thing ye are enriched in [not by] him.” When He becomes the Lord in your life, it will solve many of your problems. That is what Paul is going to talk about in this epistle.


Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:

So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 1:6–7].

Here he intimates one of the problems that this church was having. They were carnal. They were occupied with only one gift. Paul says at the very beginning that he doesn’t want them to come behind in any gift. There are many gifts. Paul wants all these gifts to be manifested in the church.
“Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” means that they are to be occupied with Him.

Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 1:8].
He says “blameless” he does not say they will be faultless. There will always be someone who will find fault with you. But you are not to be worthy of blame. “That ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And the “day of our Lord Jesus Christ” is not only referring to the present day, but to the day He will come and take His church out of the world. Paul will talk about that in this epistle also.
Now we come to the last verse of Paul’s introduction, the salutation and thanksgiving. This verse could easily be passed over with the feeling that you hadn’t missed very much. Yet I feel that verse 9 is probably the key to the epistle. It emphasizes that the Lord Jesus Christ is the solution to the problems that they had in the church and also to the personal problems that were present among the believers in Corinth. It is startling to note the similarities between the problems in the Corinthian church and the problems today. The solution is the same now as it was then.


God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord [1 Cor. 1:9].

Have you noticed that the Lord Jesus Christ is mentioned in this section in practically every verse? Actually, it isn’t practically every verse; it is every verse. This is the ninth reference to Him in nine verses. It is obvious that Paul is putting an emphasis upon the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is an extended name given to our Lord here—“called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” This gives four points of identification for Him. So there is no way of misunderstanding.
He makes two tremendous statements: God is faithful, and we are called unto the fellowship of His Son.
“God is faithful.” Men are not always faithful. Even believers are not always faithful. But God is faithful.
“By whom ye were called” is the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
We are called “unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” The word that is important here in connection with the Lord Jesus Christ is fellowship. The word is the Greek koinonia, and it is used by Paul again and again. Actually, the word can have several different meanings. It can mean fellowship as we understand it today. It can be used to mean a contribution. In Romans 15:26 he says they made a certain koinonia for the poor saints which were at Jerusalem, and there it means a contribution. In 1 Corinthians 10:16 the word koinonia is used in connection with Communion. He is speaking of the Lord’s Supper and writes: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the [koinonia] communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the [koinonia] communion of the body of Christ?”
Koinonia can also mean a partnership, and I believe that is the way it is used here in this ninth verse. “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the [partnership] fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Now this is without doubt one of the greatest privileges that is given to us. If you are in Christ, if you have come to Him and accepted Him as your Savior, then you are in partnership with Christ. He is willing to be our partner. Therefore this means an intimate relationship to Christ.
There are different kinds of partnerships. There can be a partnership in business. I know two men who are in partnership. These fellows were friends in the military service, and when they came out of the service years ago, they formed a partnership in business. One of them was converted to Christ; the other was not. It has been an unhappy partnership ever since then. They have a big business with a lot of investments and the partnership cannot be broken. It is a partnership, but it is not a happy one.
Then there is marriage with a partnership in a love relationship. This should be a very close, intimate relationship. There is a passage in the Old Testament that makes me smile because I know God had man and wife in mind when He wrote it. He said among other things that they were not to hitch an ox and an ass together for plowing. They were not to plow together. Well, in marriage I have seen many an ox and an ass hitched up together! That ought not to be, because marriage is a partnership.
What does it mean, then, to be in partnership with the Lord Jesus? For one thing, it means that in business you own things together with Him. Everything that I own belongs to Jesus Christ. It belongs to Him as much as it does to me. Therefore, He is interested in what I own. Now I must confess that there was a time when I owned a few things that I don’t think He cared about. There was a time when I very selfishly thought only of myself in connection with what I owned. But now, although I don’t own too much—when He is in partnership with me, He is not in what you would call big business—what I have is His. I have a nice Chevrolet car because a wonderful dealer helped me get it. When I drove out with it, it was mine, but I told the Lord Jesus that it was His, too. He has taken many a ride in it with me, by the way. Whatever I have is His also. I thank Him for my house, and I thank Him for taking care of it because it is His, too, you see. Whatever I have is His.
The marriage partnership means different things. It means having mutual interests. I’m in that kind of partnership with the Lord Jesus, too. That means that Christ is interested in me and I am interested in Him. That carries it to a pretty high plane, you see. Also, we have a mutual devotion. His resources are mine, and mine are His. He doesn’t get very much, but He owns me. I have presented my body to Him. Now that answers quite a few questions for me about where I can go and what I can do. For example, I used to smoke quite a bit. Now I have metastatic cancer in the lungs, and it would be pretty foolish for me to smoke now. However, long ago when I made the discovery, not just that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but also that Christ belongs to me and I belong to Christ, I wanted to give Him the best body that I could. That is when I gave up smoking. That decided the question for me. Do you see that our decisions are made on a higher plane than simply “Dare I do this?” or “Ought I do that?” We belong to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ belongs to us.
Also in the love partnership there is a mutual service. God accommodates Himself to our weakness. I need His gentleness, and I accept His power. A verse of Scripture which deals with this is a verse that I believe has been mistranslated. This was called to my attention by G. Campbell Morgan. The verse is Isaiah 63:9: “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.” It sounds as if in our weakness He becomes weak. The better translation puts it in the negative: “In all affliction he was not afflicted.” That is a lot more meaningful to me. It means that when I stumble and fall, He does not stumble and fall. He accommodates Himself to my stumbling, my blindness, my ignorance, my weakness. Although He accommodates Himself to that, He does not become weak at all. I heard a preacher make the statement that if you get into trouble ignorantly without realizing it, or you are caught by circumstances, He will help you out of it. But if you go into sin deliberately and foolishly, He will let you alone rather than help you work it out. I am here to say that this has not been my experience. I have made many blunders, and I have stumbled and I have fallen. Many times I have done it deliberately. Yet my Lord never let me down. He was always there. He accommodated Himself to my weakness. How wonderful that is, friend! The partnership of Jesus Christ is the solution to the problems of life.
Verse 9 concludes Paul’s salutation. Actually, all the rest of the epistle is a big parenthesis until we come to 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” “Therefore” gathers up all this marvelous epistle and goes way back here to verse 9. I can depend on the faithfulness of God “by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
It has taken me a long time to learn this. In fact, I have had to retire to learn this. I am just going ahead with Him as my partner. I face all of today’s problems with Him as my partner. I can count on Him. I can look to Him. He is part and parcel of all of it. This is the solution to the problems and the frustrations of life, my beloved.
This concludes the introduction, which is a salutation and thanksgiving. The body of the epistle concerns conditions in the Corinthian church, and there were real problems, as we shall see.

DIVISIONS AND PARTY SPIRIT

Verse 10 begins a new section in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian believers. He is addressing himself now to the primary problem in the Corinthian church. It is surprising to see that their problems have a very familiar ring. I don’t know of a church today that does not have problems, and many of them are the same as those that the Corinthian believers faced.

CENTRALITY OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED CORRECTS DIVISIONS

Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment [1 Cor. 1:10].

Notice that the Lord Jesus Christ is again mentioned in this verse. This epistle emphasizes the lordship of Christ. We hear a great deal about His lordship, but we see very little of it today. For this reason the church and individual Christians have serious problems. It is not enough to talk about the lordship of Christ. Is He your Lord? Have you made Him your Lord and your Master?
“That ye all speak the same thing” doesn’t mean that everyone must say the identical words. It means believers shouldn’t be clawing one another to death, fighting with each other, hating each other.
The word for “divisions” is schisma. It means there should be no open break, no fracturing of the church, which is done by fighting, by gossip, criticism, hatred, or bitterness. Believe me, friend, I see that in many contemporary churches. These things cannot be in your life if Jesus Christ is your partner.
Let “there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” What is “the same mind”? Well, it is the mind of Christ (see Phil. 2:5–8).


For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you [1 Cor. 1:11].

The word for “contentions” here is eris. Now Eris was the goddess of strife and wrangling. There was strife, quarreling, schisms, and wrangling in the church at Corinth. Paul got his information firsthand—he named his source—he said he got his information from Chloe. My friend, if you are going to make a charge, back it up with your name like Chloe did. When I first became pastor in downtown Los Angeles, a man came to me and said, “I want to tell you about a certain situation.” He told me about a certain man and, believe me, it wasn’t very nice. He wanted me to do something about it. He said, “You ought to bring this up before the board, and if they can’t handle it, then it should be brought before the church.” I answered, “Fine, that is the way it should be done. What night can you come?” “Oh!” he said, “I don’t intend to come. You’re the pastor, you are the one to handle it.” I answered, “You are right. I am the one to handle it. I am the pastor now. However, you will need to be present to make the charge.” “Oh,” he said, “I won’t do that.” So I told him, “If you are not willing to sign your name to the charge, we will forget it.” And we forgot it, because he refused to back up the charge with his name. One must admire Chloe there in Corinth. Chloe told it as it was, brought it out into the open, and said, “There is trouble in our church, bad trouble, and it needs to be dealt with.”
My friend, when there is sin in the church, it is like a cancer. It needs to be dealt with. When I had cancer, I went to my doctor for help. Imagine him saying, “Now we don’t want to get excited; we don’t want to get disturbed; we don’t want to become emotional; we don’t want to cause any trouble. We want you to have a nice, peaceful mind; so I will sprinkle a little talcum powder on this place and everything will be all right.” Well, friend, I would have smelled good, but I would have died of the cancer. You’ve got to deal with a cancer, and you’ve got to deal with trouble in the church. Woe to the man who exposes it, but if that is not done, the church is going to suffer. Of course it will!
The trouble with the church in Corinth was that they had a bunch of baby Christians. Babies generally do a lot of howling, you know. When I was a pastor in Pasadena, we had a nursery room for babies, and we called it The Bawl Room. I have learned that in some churches the entire church is a bawl room, because of the bawling baby Christians.


Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ [1 Cor. 1:12].

Divisions were being caused by believers following different leaders of the church. They formed cliques around certain men. In one group were the proud pupils of Paul; in another the adoring admirers of Apollos, and there were some who liked Simon Peter, or Cephas, and they formed the chummy cult of Cephas.
We know quite a lot about Paul. He was intellectual, he was brilliant, and he was courageous—but apparently not attractive physically. Simon Peter was fiery. He had been weak at first, but he became a rugged preacher of the gospel. He had a great heart and was very emotional. Apollos was one of the great preachers of the apostolic church. He was not an apostle and has not been given much recognition, but he was a great preacher. I think he was the Billy Graham of that day. All three of these men had strong personalities, but they did not cause the divisions. They all contended together for the faith. They maintained the unity of the Spirit, and they all exalted Jesus Christ. It was the members of the church in Corinth who were guilty of making the divisions.
One little group said, “Oh, we love brother Paul because he’s so spiritual.” Another group said, “We like Simon Peter because he pounds the pulpit and is so evangelistic.” Another said, “we love this man Apollos. He soars to the heights, and he reaches the multitudes.” They were not taking into account the fact that all three of them were God’s men. Paul is going to write to them about this. He is going to show them that the centrality of Christ is the answer to the factions and fractures in the church. My friend, there will be no solution until men and women are willing to come to the person of Christ.
In addition to the three groups, a fourth group was saying, “We are of Christ.” They were not actually putting Christ first, but they were the super-duper spiritual group. It is my private opinion that this was the worst group of all. They made a little cult of Christ. They had their little clique in the church and they excluded other believers. They were the spiritual snobs.
Do you realize that you and I are living in a day when the church has been destroyed from the inside? The problems are not on the outside today. Innumerable churches have long since been destroyed by liberals in the pulpit. Go around on Sunday night or at midweek service and see what the attendance is. Many churches are destroyed by the man in the pulpit. If the man in the pulpit is sound in the faith, you’ll find troublemakers in the pew. That is where strife is stirred up. This does more damage to the cause of Christ than alcohol or atheism or worldliness. In many churches they are doing what they did in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee; they’re feudin’ and fussin’ like the Martins and the Coys.

Oh, the Martins and the Coys,
They was reckless mountain boys,
And they took up fam’ly feudin’ when they’d meet.
They would shoot each other quicker
Than it took your eye to flicker.
They could knock a squirrel’s eye at ninety feet.
Oh, the Martins and the Coys,
They was reckless mountain boys,
But old Abel Martin was the next to go.
Though he saw the Coys a-comin’
He had hardly started runnin’
’Fore a volley shook the hills and laid him low.
After that they started out to fight in earnest
And they scarred the mountains up with shot and shell.
There was uncles, brothers, cousins,
They say they bumped them off by dozens,
Just how many bit the dust is hard to tell.
Oh, the Martins and the Coys,
They was reckless mountain boys,
At the art of killin’ they became quite deft.
They all knowed they shouldn’t do it,
But before they hardly knew it,
On each side they only had one person left.
“The Martins and the Coys”
—Ted Weems and Al Cameron

This may sound corny and very silly, but unfortunately feudin’ and fussin’ go on inside churches. This is what they were doing in the Corinthian church. Now Paul tackles this problem. He asks,


Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? [1 Cor. 1:13].

The answer is obvious. Of course, Christ is not divided. Anything that breaks up the unity in Christ has something wrong with it—regardless of what it is. The crucifixion of Christ is the bedrock of Christian unity, and it is absurd to contemplate establishing a unity on any other basis.
“Were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” In this instance I do not believe Paul is referring to water baptism, which was always in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather, he is referring to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. His question is: “Were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” They would have to say, “Of course not! We weren’t baptized in your name. The baptism that placed us in the body of Christ was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. No man could do that for us.” You see, Paul is attempting to direct their thinking away from man and back to Christ. They needed to be occupied with the person of Christ. Very candidly, I have always been able to fellowship with any man, regardless of his label, if he can meet with me around the person of Christ.


I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius;
Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name [1 Cor. 1:14–15].
Here he is talking about water baptism. He is saying that he didn’t specialize even in that because of the danger of folk thinking that he was baptizing in his own name. You see, he is focusing on the centrality of Christ. There are folk even in our day who think that water baptism saves them or that it actually has some mystical power that cannot be gotten otherwise.


And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other [1 Cor. 1:16].

Paul attached so little importance to baptism that he couldn’t really remember whether he had baptized anyone else or not.


For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect [1 Cor. 1:17].

It is important for us to see today that there are a great many people who are dividing and separating over many secondary issues. This causes schisms and strife in the church. The church in Corinth was fractured by that kind of party spirit. Three men, Apollos, Paul, and Cephas, had brought to Corinth a message that had a unifying quality and power. The gospel they preached emphasized fusion and not faction. However, because these people were baby Christians, they began to put the emphasis on individuals. Now Paul is drawing their attention away from their factions and their party spirit and turning them to the centrality of Christ.
In the city of Corinth, as well as in many other cities of that day, the emphasis was on philosophy. We shall see this as we move into the chapter.


For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God [1 Cor. 1:18].

The cross divides men. The cross divides the saved from the unsaved, but it doesn’t divide the saved people. It should unite them, you see. A Dutch artist painted a picture called “The Last Judgment.” It depicts the throne of God, and away from that throne the lost are falling into space. And as they fall, they cling together. This is an accurate picture of the one world that men are working for today. The lost want to come together in one great unity, and they are going to accomplish a great union in the last days. But cutting across the grain of the ecumenical environment and the contemporary thought is the gospel of Christ. Lord Jesus called Himself a divider of men, and the dividing line is His cross. The preaching of the Cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto the saved person it is the power of God.
Paul makes it very clear that his method was not in the wisdom of the words of the world, not in the method of dialectics of divisions or differences or opinions or theories, but he just presented the cross of Christ. That brought about a unity of those who were saved. To those who perish, the cross of Christ is foolishness; but to the saved man it becomes the power of God. The cross of Christ divides the world, but it does not divide the church.


For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe [1 Cor. 1:19–21].

Notice that it is not foolish preaching but the foolishness of preaching.


For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness [1 Cor. 1:22–23].
Notice that Paul divides mankind into two great ethnic groups: the Jews and the Greeks (meaning Gentiles). He recognizes this twofold division. The Jew represented religion. He had a God-given religion. The Jews felt that they had the truth, and they did—as far as the Old Testament was concerned. The problem was that it had become just a ritual to them. They had departed from the Scriptures and followed tradition, which was their interpretation of the Scriptures. The power was gone. Therefore, when Christ appeared, they asked for a sign. Rather than turning to their Scriptures, they asked for a sign. “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:38–40). The Lord Jesus gave to them the sign of resurrection.
The Greeks were the Gentiles. They represented philosophy. They were the lovers of wisdom. They said they were seeking the truth; they were searching and scanning the universe for truth. They were the rationalists. While the Jews ended up in ritual, the Gentiles ended up as rationalists and had to conform to a pattern of reason.
About four hundred years before Christ came, the Greek nation constructed on the horizon of history a brilliance of mind and artistic accomplishment of such dimensions that it still dazzles and startles mankind. It continued for about three centuries. By the time of Christ, the glory of Greece was gone. It just fizzled out. There were men like Pericles, Anaxagoras, Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who left certain schools such as the Epicurean school, the Stoic school of philosophy, and the Peripatetic school. Then they all disappeared.
There followed two thousand years of philosophical sterility and stagnation in the world. Then there appeared men like Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes, and there was a rebirth of great thinkers for a brief period of brilliance. This was again followed by decadence, and we are still in it today—even though some of our boys think they are very smart.
“What is truth?” asked the fatalistic Pilate. Bacon asked the same question, and philosophy is still asking that question. Philosophy still has no answers to the problems of life. “Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”
Someone has defined philosophy as a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. The Greeks sought after wisdom. Today man is still searching for some theory or formula, and he thinks that it is through science that he will get the answers to some of the questions of life. Do you think that man today has the answers to the questions of life? I was interested in a statement which I found in a periodical: “The truth is that modern man is overimpressed by his own achievements. To put a rocket into an orbit that is more than a hundred miles from the surface of the earth takes a great deal of joint thought and effort, but we tend to overstate the case. Though men who ride a few miles above the earth are called astronauts, this is clearly a misnomer. Men will not be astronauts until they ride among the stars, and it is important to remember that most of the stars are thousands of lightyears away. The Russians are even more unrestrained in their overstatements, calling their men cosmonauts. Someone needs to say, ‘Little man, don’t take yourself quite so seriously.’”
Man today thinks he has a few answers. Where are the wise today? It is a good question to ask. You see, God has made foolish the wisdom of this world.
“For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” This is a tremendous statement.
“But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” The Jews found the Cross to be a stumblingblock, a skandalon. They wanted a sign. They wanted someone to show the way. They wanted a pointer, a highway marker. They would have accepted a deliverer on a white charger who was putting down the power of Rome. But a crucified Christ was an insult to them. That meant defeat—not victory. They didn’t want to accept that at all. “As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Rom. 9:33). And Peter wrote this: “Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed” (1 Pet. 2:7–8). A crucified Christ was a stumblingblock to the Jew.
To the Greeks (or Gentiles) the cross was foolishness, an absurdity. They considered it utterly preposterous and ridiculous and contrary to any rational, worldly system. In Rome there has been found a caricature of Christianity, a figure on the cross with an ass’ head. Also in our day our Savior is being ridiculed.
Now Paul bears down on philosophy. While he was in the city of Corinth, he was preaching Christ. “And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles” (Acts 18:6). Can philosophy lift man out of the cesspool of this life? It never has. Notice that men will be saved, not by foolish preaching, but by the preaching of “foolishness,” that is, by the preaching of the Cross. It is not the method but the message that the natural man considers foolish. Men still reject it. Today the wisdom of the world is to have an antipoverty program or some other kind of program. Or the wisdom of the world is to save man from his problems by education. May I say that what man needs today is the gospel. The wisdom of the world has never considered that.
Now Paul introduces another class of mankind. “Unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks”—these are the called, the elect. They have not only heard the invitation, they have responded to it. And they have found in the cross of Christ the wisdom and power of God which has transformed their lives, made them new men. The Lord Jesus molded eleven men, then called Saul of Tarsus, and sent them out. They took the gospel to Corinth with its sin, to Ephesus with its religion. For over nineteen hundred years the gospel has been going around the world, and it is the only help and the only hope of mankind.


But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called [1 Cor. 1:24–26].

Some folk like to give emphasis to the prominent folk who have accepted Christ—the entertainment greats, the leaders in industry, and the prominent in government. But God majors in average people. He is calling simple folk like you and me.


But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty [1 Cor. 1:27].

This does not mean these men are foolish. It means they seem foolish to the world. They are not weak; they are weak in the estimation of the world. This is God’s method. He even chooses the base.


And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

That no flesh should glory in his presence [1 Cor. 1:28–29].

We do not have a thing to glory about.


But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption [1 Cor. 1:30].

Oh, my friend, He is everything that we need. I wish I could get that over to you. He has been made to us wisdom. He is our righteousness. He is our sanctification and our redemption. Whatever it is that you need today, you will find it in Him.


That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord [1 Cor. 1:31].

Our glory should be in the Lord. We should glory in the Lord Jesus Christ today. Let me ask you, what do you glory in? What are you boasting of today? Are you boasting of your degrees? Of your wisdom? Of your wealth? Of your power? Are you boasting today of your position and your character? My friend, you don’t have a thing of which you can boast—and I know I haven’t. But we can boast of Christ. He is everything. He is everything that we need.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: The clarity of the Holy Spirit corrects human wisdom


And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God [1 Cor. 2:1].


First, I would like to call your attention to the fact that Paul did not use the philosophic method of preaching. He was not a textual or a topical preacher; he was an expositor of the Word of God. I personally believe that is God’s method. It was the method our Lord used, by the way. Neither did Paul use flowery nor oratorical language.
Secondly, Paul did not come in the wisdom of the world, declaring the testimony or the mystery of God. What does he mean by a mystery? We will be confronted with this word again in the epistle. A mystery simply means “that which had not been revealed before.” The mystery of God which Paul preached was that Jesus Christ had been crucified. That had not been preached before but now had been revealed. In the Old Testament the crucifixion of Christ was revealed in type and in prophecy only. The actual event was something new, something not previously revealed.


For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified [1 Cor. 2:2].

Paul did not enter into philosophical discussions that gender strife. He simply stayed right with the preaching of the cross of Christ. He preached a crucified Savior, One who had died for the sins of the world. That is the type of ministry which is so desperately needed today.


And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling [1 Cor. 2:3].

Paul opens his heart and lets us see his inmost thoughts. He makes it very clear that while he was among them he was greatly disturbed. He was “in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” Little wonder that he could say that God had chosen the weak things of this world. Paul had no exalted conception of himself; yet he was a great intellect and a great man in many ways. Obviously, he never thought of himself as great.


And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power [1 Cor. 2:4].

In our day we have a great many words of man’s wisdom. There is a great deal of preaching, but very little of it is done “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” The feeling is that we only need the right method or the right topic or the right style. Oh, how we need the power of the Holy Spirit in our preaching!


That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God [1 Cor. 2:5].

In other words, if human wisdom is used to win a man, then his faith stands on human wisdom. If a man is brought to faith through the power of God, then his faith rests upon that. This is the reason I sincerely question a great deal of this apologetic preaching today—such as trying to prove that the Bible is God’s Word or that the first chapter of Genesis is scientific or that the Flood really happened. Don’t misunderstand me, there is a place for that, and I thank God for men who have specialized in those areas. But we need to understand that salvation does not rest upon whether we can actually prove the inspiration of Scripture, although I certainly believe we can prove it. The question is: What does your faith rest upon? Apologetic preaching will call our attention to the Word of God, but our faith must rest on the power of God.


Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought [1 Cor. 2:6].

Paul says, “I do not use the worldly methods at all.”

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory [1 Cor. 2:7].
Again here is this word mystery. Let’s be clear on this word. It has no reference to what we commonly think of as an enigma or with a “who-done-it”—that is, a story dealing with the solution of a mysterious crime. It is not something of a secretive quality or character. The word mystery, as used in the Scriptures, refers to something which was not known in the past but is now revealed. This word occurs about twenty-seven times in the New Testament. Our Lord used it when He said “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven…” (Matt. 13:11). The parables that follow in Matthew 13 are the “mystery parables.” Why are they called the mystery parables? It is because in them Jesus explains the direction that the kingdom is going to take in the interval between the rejection of the King and the time when He comes to set up His kingdom. That segment of history was actually not revealed in the Old Testament at all. God had not yet revealed that to men. When Jesus spoke the mystery parables in Matthew 13, He was revealing this for the first time. What had been previously hidden, Jesus revealed.
Now here in the Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul says, “God’s wisdom in a mystery.” This is quite interesting because it is a word that came out of Greek schools of philosophy, of the occult, and of science. Paul fastens on this Greek word, and he says, “We speak God’s wisdom in a mystery,” but he gives it an entirely new meaning. Mystery comes from the word meaning “mouth,” and it means to shut the mouth—it is something secretive. However, Paul never used it in that way. Rather, that which had been silent has now become vocal. That which had not been known and couldnot be known by human investigation now is known. “Mystery” in the New Testament always means something undiscoverable by the activity of the human intellect but is revealed so that human intellect can apprehend it.
“We speak the wisdom of God”—Paul says, “We have a philosophy.” It is not of this age, not of this world, but it is God’s wisdom, and it pertains to the cross of Christ. “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.”


Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory [1 Cor. 2:8].

You see, they did not know.


But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him [1 Cor. 2:9].

This verse surely has been misunderstood. It has gone to a funeral too many times. This is a verse that should never go to a funeral. It has been wrongly used so many times to imply: Here lies dear Mr. So-and-So. His remains are here before us. In this life he didn’t understand too well, but now he is in glory and he understands all things. This is not what Paul intended this verse to convey! Paul is saying that right here and now there are certain things that the eye has not seen. We get a great deal of information through the eye-gate. We learn more through our eye-gate than we do in any other way. Another way we gain human wisdom is through the ear-gate. We certainly learn by hearing. Paul says there are certain things we simply cannot learn by hearing. Then he says, “neither have entered into the heart of man,” that is, by cogitation, thinking, or reasoning. There are certain things which cannot be attained by human means. You cannot discover God by searching for Him. The things which God has prepared for them who love Him are not gotten through the eye-gate, the ear-gate, or by reasoning. Then how are you going to get them?


But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God [1 Cor. 2:10].

What we cannot get through the eye-gate or the ear-gate, the Spirit of God can teach us. There are many things we can learn by studying the Bible—such as the history of it, the poetry of it—but we cannot get spiritual truths that way. Why? Because “God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.” There are certain things that only the Spirit of God can reveal to us.

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God [1 Cor. 2:11].
You and I can understand each other because we have human spirits. For instance, I know how you feel when you fall down. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? One snowy morning in Nashville I watched an elder of my church come out of his house with two scuttles full of ashes that he was taking out to the alleyway to dump into his garbage can. He slipped and fell, but he held onto the scuttles. He didn’t spill an ash, but he really fell hard. He got up and looked all over the landscape to see if anybody had watched him. Why did he do that? He was embarrassed. I knew exactly how he felt, because it sure did look funny and I couldn’t help but laugh. Because I have the spirit of man and he has the spirit of man, I knew exactly how he felt. However, I do not know how God feels. If I am to understand anything about God, He will have to reveal it to me.


Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God [1 Cor. 2:12].

There are certain things that we can understand only if the Spirit of God reveals them to us, and He does this freely. He wants to be our Teacher!


Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual [1 Cor. 2:13].

Now Paul will make a very profound statement, and it is one of the axioms of Scripture.


But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned [1 Cor. 2:14].

But the natural man cannot receive the things of God. Why not? Because they are foolishness to him. If you are not a Christian, my friend, what I am saying seems foolish to you. If it doesn’t, there is something wrong with you or there is something wrong with me—one of us is wrong. God says the natural man finds the preaching of the cross of Christ for salvation foolish. It simply does not make sense to him.
“Neither can he know them.” When I was a student in college, I had the high-minded notion that anything that any man wrote I could understand. Well, I have found that isn’t true. Certainly I cannot understand the Word of God until the Spirit of God opens my heart and mind to understand. It is spiritually discerned. Only the Spirit of God can take the things of Christ and show them unto us. The Lord Jesus said that: “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:13–14). My friend, unless the Spirit of God shows you the things of Christ, this Epistle to the Corinthians will mean very little to you.


But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.

For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ [1 Cor. 2:15–16].

“He that is spiritual” is the one who has the Holy Spirit within him; he is a child of God.
He “judgeth all things” means that he understands these things. “Yet he himself is judged of no man” means that he is not understood. The spiritual man is in contrast to the natural man. He understands divine truth, but he is misunderstood by the natural man.
“Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?” Who can instruct God? Who understands the mind of the Lord? We cannot tell God anything, but God can reveal a great deal to us. However, the Spirit of God cannot reveal spiritual things to us until we have the mind of Christ. If you are not a saved person, don’t you really think that the preaching of the Cross is foolishness? Don’t you think that a man dying on a cross is totally defeated? Doesn’t that impress you more as a bit of foolishness rather than the actual way of salvation? Yet God says that His method and His wisdom was to give His Son to die on the cross for us in order that we might be saved and that we must put our trust in Him. If you are being honest, I believe you must admit that it does sound foolish.
The other day I read a letter from a man who is a comedian. He says he is a comedian in a nightclub. He listens to me teach the Bible by radio, and he thinks I am an oddball. In fact, he thinks I am funnier than he is! Well, that is the way he should feel. Why? Because he is a natural man and cannot discern spiritual things.
You will remember that we labeled this chapter The clarity of the Holy Spirit corrects human wisdom. Paul has presented two classes of mankind: the natural man and the spiritual man.
The natural man is the man who is the son of Adam, born into the world with a sinful nature, a propensity to do evil. In fact, that is all the natural man can do. Even when we “do good,” we act from mixed motives. (After we become believers, we ought always to search our hearts to see if we are acting from mixed motives, even when we are trying to do the Lord’s work.) Paul says that the natural man will not receive the things of the Spirit of God; they are foolishness to him.
Yesterday in the mail I received a letter from a politician, a representative from this area to Washington, D.C. Reading this letter would lead one to think he is going to bring in Utopia and the Millennium altogether. My, he has happy solutions for all the problems of the world! Of course, the opposite party doesn’t have the benefit of his vast wisdom and knowledge. When I had read his letter through, I had the feeling of keen disappointment. First of all, I know he cannot do what he is saying he will do. Secondly, I realize that he is a natural man. He has no understanding of that which is spiritual. He is not interested in any spiritual solutions to the problems. He thinks he knows how to solve the drug problem, but not in a spiritual way. He promises to solve lawlessness, but not in a spiritual way. He knows no more about spiritual matters than a goat grazing upon grass on the hillside. Years ago it was Gladstone who said that the mark of a great statesman is that he knows the direction God is going to take for the next fifty years. This politician would certainly not qualify by that definition. Actually, we cannot expect too much of the natural man. He will tell you, “I do the very best I can,” which is probably an accurate statement.
Then there is the other man, the spiritual man. Paul says that the spiritual man “judgeth all things,” meaning he understands, he has a spiritual discernment. His spiritual discernment causes him to be misunderstood by the world because the natural man simply cannot understand why he does the things he does. That is the difference between the spiritual man and the natural man.
You will note that they are the kind of men they are because of their relationship to the Book, the Word of God. To the natural man it is foolishness. The spiritual man discerns the Word of God and recognizes its importance.

CHAPTER 3

Theme: Correct conception of God clarifies Christian service


As we have seen in chapter 2, Paul has presented two classes of mankind: the natural man and the spiritual man. Now he makes a further division, and it is among believers: carnal Christians and spiritual Christians. Their status as carnal or as spiritual will manifest itself in their lives and in their Christian service.


And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ [1 Cor. 3:1].

So here we have the third class. He is the unnatural Christian or the unnatural man. We learned about the natural man, also we learned about the spiritual man—whom we can call the supernatural man. Here we have the unnatural man. He is unnatural because he is a Christian but is still carnal. He is still a babe in Christ.
In the entire first part of this epistle Paul is speaking about carnalities. In the last part of the epistle he speaks of spiritualities. I think Paul got very tired of talking about carnalities because, when he reached chapter 12, you can almost hear him heave a sigh of relief. And he begins to talk to them about something else: “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant” (1 Cor. 12:1).
The carnal Christian is the one who hasn’t grown up spiritually, and it is evident that he lacks spiritual discernment—not because he doesn’t have the Holy Spirit dwelling within him, but because he is not growing in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. Again this is a consequence of his relationship to the Word of God. That is so important to see. This unnatural man, this carnal Christian, is a babe in Christ. He has an ability but no desire. A baby has the potential to become a learned man, but he has to start out by drinking milk. Paul carries this figure of speech over to the spiritual level.


I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able [1 Cor. 3:2].

Paul cannot talk to such folk about spiritualities. They are not yet ready for it. First he must talk to them about their carnalities. Unfortunately, it is on this level that most church members are living today.
How can we identify the carnal Christian? It is the Christian who is using the weak arm of the flesh. He uses carnal methods to obtain spiritual goals. An obvious example is the kind of Christian who says, “Let’s have a banquet or let’s put on a musical and introduce some of this modern music.” This is carnality.
The Greek word for carnal is sarkikos, which means “fleshly.” In Latin and French the word carna means “sensual.” We get our word carnival from two words, carne vale, which mean “farewell flesh.” You see, carnival was something they had before the season of Lent. During Lent they would practice farewell to the flesh with certain denials of pleasure to the flesh; so just before Lent they would gorge and gourmandize the flesh, get drunk, satisfy and satiate the flesh in every possible way. Then they would be able to do without such things during Lent! An example of this is the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. That literally means “fat Tuesday” and refers to the Tuesday before Lent begins.
Paul described folk like this when he used the expression, “… whose God is their belly…” (Phil. 3:19). You say, “Oh, that’s crude.” I agree with you; it is crude. But the thing it speaks about is even more crude. This would be an apt description of a lot of folk. Their motto is: Do what comes naturally. Let the flesh have its way.
Perhaps you are saying, “Well, I’m not a carnal Christian. I don’t believe in carnivals—I even get sick on a Ferris wheel. I am a separated Christian.” What is the mark of carnality? Paul will tell us here.


For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? [1 Cor. 3:3].

You see, the carnal Christian is not necessarily one who rides on roller coasters. It does not mean one who promotes carnivals in his church. What is a carnal Christian? Where do you see him in evidence? Wherever there is strife and division, there is actually a “carnival” going on. In many of the fundamental churches one can see divisions and gossip and strife and bitterness and hatred. When that is going on, we know that the flesh is on display. Sometimes Christians can lose their tempers and cover it over by saying, “Well, I am just being frank.” No, they are just being mean, that’s all. My friend, you can turn a Sunday school class into a carnival, a missionary society into a carnival, or a prayer meeting into a carnival when you gossip or stir up strife and envy and division.
My friend, you may not do “worldly things” and still you may be a carnal Christian. Listen to Paul:


For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase [1 Cor. 3:4–6].

Paul says, “Both of us are workmen for God.” Paul was the one who was the missionary—he had opened up new territory. Apollos came along and held meetings and preached and built up the saints. They were both servants of God.


So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase [1 Cor. 3:7].

The important thing is not who the preacher is; the important thing is whether God is using him. If God is using him, then God should have the credit for the results. Give God the praise and the glory.


Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour [1 Cor. 3:8].

We need to recognize that God uses many workmen. They may each be doing things a little bit differently. That is why we should not go into a tirade against any individual whom the Lord is using. There are many men who use different methods. Many men do things in a different way from the way I would do them. Yet God uses these men. We are all workmen together with God.


For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.
According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon [1 Cor. 3:9–10].
The foundation was put down over nineteen hundred years ago. You and I cannot put it down. All we can do is to point to that foundation which is Jesus Christ. We can build on that foundation. The important thing is to get out the Word of God and to preach the gospel which alone can save men.


For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 3:11].

Are you building on Him? That is the important question for the believer. When you came to Christ, you came with no works. You came bringing nothing to receive everything! You were put on that Rock which is Christ. Now you can build on that. This is where good works come in.


Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;

Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is [1 Cor. 3:12–13].

Paul says that you can build on the foundation that has already been laid with six different kinds of material: gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. Fire won’t hurt the first three on the list. Actually, the fire purifies gold and silver and precious stones. But fire certainly gets rid of the last three on the list. Wood, hay, and stubble will all disappear into smoke. The believer is at liberty to build on the foundation with any of these materials: gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble.
This teaches that the believer can work for a reward. If any man’s work abides, work that he has built on the foundation that has already been laid, he shall receive a reward.


If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward [1 Cor. 3:14].

That is, he shall receive a reward if he is building with gold, silver, or precious stones.
I am of the opinion that we have many wonderful saints of God about us today. I have been able to meet some of these folk—some of them personally and some by letter—whom God is using in a marvelous way. They are building in gold.
As you well know, a little piece of gold isn’t as visible as a hay stack. Possibly God is the only One who knows that it is gold. Now a haystack is another thing—I have traveled across flat farmland, and it seemed to me I could see haystacks that were twenty miles away. There are a lot of folk building haystacks, and everybody hears about what they are doing. The haystacks are going to be tested someday, and then there won’t be one haystack left, because the testing is going to be by fire. The same thing will be true of works of wood or stubble.


If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire [1 Cor. 3:15].

You see the contrast: “If any man’s work abide” which he built on the foundation, he shall receive a reward; if any man’s work goes up in smoke, he will suffer a terrible loss, but he himself will be saved. He does not lose his salvation if he is on the foundation, which is trust in Christ, even though he receives no reward.
Friend, what are you building today? What kind of material are you using? If you are building with gold, it may not be very impressive now. If you are building an old haystack, it will really stand out on the horizon, but it will go up in smoke. I like to put it like this: there are going to be some people in heaven who will be there because their foundation is Christ but who will smell as if they had been bought at a fire sale! Everything they ever did will have gone up in smoke. They will not receive a reward for their works.
Now if you are a carnal Christian, you cannot expect a reward because you have not been rightly related to God through the Word of God. The carnal Christian is the one who does not know the Word of God. You see, one can identify the three categories which Paul mentions by their relation to the Word of God. The natural man says it is foolishness. The spiritual man discerns the Word, and it gives him spiritual insight. The carnal Christian says, “Let’s have a banquet and not a Bible study.” Or he says, “Let’s listen to music rather than to the teaching of the Word of God.” That is the way you can identify the carnal Christian.


Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are [1 Cor. 3:16–17].

The child of God is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul will bring this matter to our attention again. Our very bodies belong to Him!

THE BELIEVER POSSESSES ALL THINGS IN CHRIST


Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise [1 Cor. 3:18].


Unfortunately, most of our seminaries today are trying to train “intellectual” preachers. I have listened to some of them, and very few of them are really intellectual. May I say again that the important thing is to know and preach the Word of God. Oh, if only I could get that across to some of these smart-aleck young fellows in seminary! I have the privilege of speaking in many seminaries today, and I have met so many boys in the seminaries who want to be “intellectual.”


For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;

Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;

And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s [1 Cor. 3:19–23].

Oh, how wonderful it is that we do not have to be confined to one narrow group or one particular denomination. Instead of feeling that we belong to so-and-so and can be taught by only one particular teacher or preacher, we can know that all the men of God belong to us. How wonderful! The reason I get along with the Pentecostal brethren is because I know they belong to God. Oh, my friend, those folk belong to me, too. And I belong to them. How glorious it is to meet around the person of Christ with other believers who are on the foundation which is Jesus Christ!

CHAPTER 4

Theme: Conditions of Christ’s servants constrain Christian conduct


This is the final chapter in which Paul is dealing with the divisions and the party spirit which was in the church in Corinth. In this chapter, he speaks of the conditions of Christ’s servants—and that is what should constrain Christian conduct.


Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God [1 Cor. 4:1].

Let us pause to look at this wonderful verse. We are all “the ministers of Christ.” Every believer is a minister of Christ. Sometimes a member of a congregation will say, “There is my minister.” Well, I hope he is rather a minister of Christ, because he is responsible to Him. And you, as a minister of Christ, are responsible to Him.
We are all ministers. You are a preacher, whether you like it or not. Now don’t get angry with me for saying that. There was a man living near our church in Pasadena, when I was pastor there, who was an alcoholic, a real sot. He lived with his mother who was a wonderful Christian lady, and she asked me to talk with him. One day when I saw him staggering down the street, I just sort of detoured him into my study. He sat down and I told him what a sorry fellow he was. He agreed with every bit of it. Then I said to him, “Do you know that you are a preacher?” Well, he stood up and said, “Don’t you call me that—I’ll hit you!” He didn’t mind being called a drunkard or an alcoholic, but he surely didn’t want to be called a preacher! Well, we are all preachers. As I told him, “We preach some message by our lives. You are saying something to the world and to those around you by your life. You can’t help it. I live my life unto you and you live our life unto me. It’s just that way. We have that kind of influence.” My friend, if you are a believer, you are a minister of Christ. What kind of message are you giving?
Notice that a minister of Christ is a “steward of the mysteries of God.” In Paul’s day, a steward was the person who managed the household for the owner. He had charge of the house, the food, the clothing, and that sort of thing. He would give out things to the household as they needed them. Just so, a minister of Christ should dispense the Word of God to the members of the household.
Here we have that word mystery again. Remember that mysteries are those things which had not been revealed before but are now made known. The mysteries cannot be understood by the natural man. It is only the Spirit of God who can take the things of Christ and show them to us. The “mystery” here is actually the gospel, the Word of God. Since we are stewards of the “mysteries of God,” we are to dispense those mysteries.
After concluding His “mystery parables” in Matthew 13, “Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord” (Matt. 13:51). I’m inclined to think that they didn’t really understand at that time; Jesus doesn’t say whether or not they understood Him. But He does go on to say to them, “… Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old” (Matt. 13:52). That is what a steward of the mysteries of God should be doing—bringing forth out of the Word of God things new and things old. Folk sometimes say to me after a Bible study or after a sermon, “That’s old. I’ve heard that before.” I answer, “Well, I am a steward to bring forth things both new and old. Today I brought forth a little of the old. It is my business to bring forth the old as well as the new.” That is the calling of a steward of the mysteries of God, and I can’t think of any calling higher than that.


Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful [1 Cor. 4:2].

Notice that it is not required of a steward to be eloquent or to have many gifts, only that he be found faithful. There are so many who will be rewarded someday, not because they did some great thing or had some great gift, but because they were faithful in what they did and how they did it. I learned over the years as a pastor of a church that there were always the faithful few. I could depend on them. And I knew where they stood.


But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.

For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord [1 Cor. 4:3–4].

These two verses actually present the three courts before which we all must appear. They may seem to be rather difficult verses, but actually they are not. They tell us that you have no right to sit in judgment on me, and I have no right to sit in judgment on you, because we both are going to stand before a higher court.
1. The first court is the lower court. It is the court of the opinion of others. He says, “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment.” Phillips, in his paraphrase, gives an excellent interpretation of this. “But, as a matter of fact, it matters very little to me what you, or any man, thinks of me …” (1 Cor. 4:3, phillips). That is not a literal translation, but it is a good interpretation.
This is a striking statement, and it may sound as if Paul were antisocial. However, Paul was not callous or contemptuous of the opinion of others. He was not immune to the expression and the estimation of those about him. He defended his apostleship with great feeling when he was challenged by his critics. He was always hurt by false rumors. Right here in this very chapter he made mention of it: “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: Being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day” (vv. 11–13). You can see that Paul was very sensitive to the opinions of others; yet his life was not directed by them. They were not at the steering wheel of his life.
Whether we like it or not, we all stand before the judgment seat of others. It is something that we cannot avoid. Abraham Lincoln said, “Public opinion in this country is everything.” Unfortunately, it is true. There is a danger to defer to the opinion of others, to yield to the criticism of our enemies and surrender to them. Many of our courts favor the popularity of the crowd instead of justice—certainly the politicians favor the crowd. Some will surrender principles and honor and reputation. John Milton said, “The last infirmity of a noble mind is the love of fame.” Unfortunately, that is what many go out to seek today. Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune said, “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today will curse tomorrow, only one thing endures—character.” Someone else has said, “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” I’m afraid that is true, also.
Although Paul was sensitive to the opinion of others, that opinion did not become the guiding principle of his life. “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment.”
2. The second court is a higher court. It is the court of one’s own conscience. “Yea, I judge not mine own self.”
Is conscience a safe guide? Paul says that it is not an accurate guide. We are to be led of the Spirit. We have already studied about the age of conscience in the Book of Genesis, and there we saw that it ended in the judgment of the Flood. Christians should have an enlightened conscience. When it rebukes us and tells us that we are wrong, we should obey it. However, our conscience can also approve our easygoing ways and can appeal to our vanity and can flatter us. Then we should beware of it. We all stand or fall before this court.
It was Longfellow who put it like this: “Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.” An honest man will not be guided by the opinion of others, but he will do what he thinks is right. It is a brave formula. It is a noble rule. Yet Paul said that he didn’t follow it: “… I don’t even value my opinion of myself … but that doesn’t justify me before God” (1 Cor. 4:4, phillips). It wasn’t that Paul knew some bit of evidence against himself. On the contrary, he says he knew nothing against himself, but that still didn’t clear him before God. It is characteristic of our human nature to be harsh on others and very lenient with ourselves.
That was David’s problem. He could see the evil in someone else, but he couldn’t see it in himself. How about us? When others hold tenaciously to some opinion, we call them contentious, but when we do it, we are showing the courage of our convictions. Others cause divisions and make trouble, but we are standing for the right. Others are backslidden when they forsake God’s house, but we have a good reason. You know we are not very apt to be severe upon ourselves. We always like to cast ourselves in a leading role, and generally we distort it.
No, we do not stand or fall before ourselves. God may reverse the decision of this second court, the court of our own conscience.
3. There is a third court before which we must stand—“he that judgeth me is the Lord.” The supreme court is of the one and only Master; it is the beµma or the judgment seat of Christ. Paul says that he is going to stand someday before the judgment seat of Christ. Each one of us will appear before that judgment seat. (He will say more about this in chapter 5 of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians.)
What is going to be judged there? We know that we shall not be judged for our sins, because a believer’s sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west (see Ps. 103:12). Our sins are under the blood of Jesus Christ and God remembers them no more. The believer will be judged for his stewardship. All our physical possessions—our bodies, our material resources, our giving—these are the things that will be brought up for judgment. So you can see that being a faithful steward is very important.
After all, we own nothing. We have learned before that all things are Christ’s and that we belong to him. We are in partnership with Him. We saw at the close of chapter 3 that all things are ours. Paul is ours and Apollos is ours. Calvin is ours and John Wesley is ours and Martin Luther is ours. This world we live in is ours—we can enjoy the beauty of its scenery, the mountains, the trees, the ocean, and life itself. (I wouldn’t want to be dead today, would you?) But even death is ours! Dr. Parker says, “Death is yours. It belongs to you. Death is not to master you, you are going to master it.” Death is yours. How wonderful that is. When we belong to Christ, all things are ours—present and future. And we are stewards of all He has entrusted to us.

Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God [1 Cor. 4:5].
He is the One who will judge. If we sit in judgment on someone else, we are taking the Lord’s place. This is why we need not react to insult or criticism by fighting back. God will judge us fairly, and He knows all the facts. (Anyway, we probably know worse things about ourselves than does the person who is criticizing us!) The hidden works of darkness are going to be brought out into the light in the presence of Jesus Christ. He will make manifest the counsels of the hearts. This is why we should be very careful how we live today.
Then there is this remarkable statement: “then shall every man have praise of God.” I believe that He is going to find something for which He can praise every saint of God.
In the Book of Revelation Christ has a word of commendation for each of the seven churches of Asia Minor—with the exception of Laodicea, which probably was not really His church anyway. He had words of commendation for the churches in spite of their faults. And I think He will be equally gracious to each individual saint.
A dear little lady in a church years ago always had something good to say about everybody, especially the preacher. One day they had a visiting preacher who delivered the most miserable sermon they had ever heard. The people wondered what in the world the dear little lady would say about such a sermon, and they gathered round as she went out. She smiled and shook hands with the preacher, then she said, “Oh, pastor, you had a wonderful text today!” And, my friend, I think our Lord is going to find something praiseworthy in each of us!

THE APPLICATION


And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another [1 Cor. 4:6].


Remember that one of the problems in the Corinthian church was divisions. So now Paul says that he is using this for an illustration for them. Paul and Apollos were friends; they both belonged to Christ, and Christ belonged to both of them. Both men were exercising their gifts.


For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? [1 Cor. 4:7].

Do you have a gift? You may have a very outstanding gift, but you have nothing to boast about, because God gave it to you. You are not the originator of your gift. We ought to thank God for our gifts.


Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.

For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men [1 Cor. 4:8–9].

The apostles in that great martyr period of the church have been set before the world as a spectacle. Not only are they a spectacle to the world but also to angels and to men—and I think that refers to us today. Other men have labored, my friend, and we have entered into their labors.
Now Paul will tell us what he had gone through in order that we might have this epistle and be enjoying the study of it right now.


We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.

Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace;

And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:

Being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day [1 Cor. 4:10–13].

You and I can’t imagine how the apostle Paul suffered in order to get out the gospel of Jesus Christ. He evangelized Asia Minor. We are told that in the province of Asia everyone, both Jew and Gentile, heard the Word of God!


I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.

For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel [1 Cor. 4:14–15].

Paul was the missionary who led them to Christ. It is a wonderful thing to be the spiritual father of someone whom you have led to Christ.

For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church [1 Cor. 4:17].

We see here the personal esteem Paul had for Timothy.


Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you.

But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power.

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power [1 Cor. 4:18–20].

Paul says that he is not so much interested in their talk, but he wants to know whether or not there is power in their lives.


What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness? [1 Cor. 4:21].

Their attitude and action will determine how Paul shall come to them. Will he need to come with a “rod” of correction, or can he come in love and in a spirit of meekness?

CHAPTERS 5–6

Theme: Scandals in the Corinthian church

IMPURITY


It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife [1 Cor. 5:1].


This was a case that was up before the church. This was not gossip. It could be translated: “It is reported actually and factually.” This was not just a rumor that was going around. This case was common knowledge. It was such fornication that was not even mentioned among the Gentiles. It was the sordid story of a man who took his father’s wife, his own stepmother.


And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you [1 Cor. 5:2].

The apostle is using strong language here. He is dealing with a very grievous sin. The congregation in Corinth was compromising with this evil.
We need to recognize that flagrant sin in the church must be dealt with. The Lord Jesus had given detailed instructions in Matthew 18: “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican” (Matt. 18:15–17).
They did not carry out this procedure in Corinth. This was a case of compromise with evil. John Morley has said that compromise is the most immoral word in the English language. I think I would agree to that. The church in Corinth was compromising itself by compromising with this evil.
There are certain things about this case that we need to note. This case was an acknowledged situation which had no need of proof. This was not a matter of gossip or of hearsay. Paul would never have brought up something like this if it had simply been a rumor.
Also we need to note that it was not a questionable sin. It was a glaring sin, and it was actually recognized by the world outside as being sin. It was incest. This is in contrast to questionable activities, which should not be brought out in the open and dealt with by the church. Let me give an illustration of what I mean.
A lady was converted in the church where I served as pastor. She called me one day about three months after her conversion, and she was very disturbed. She said, “I’m very disappointed and very discouraged. I have been a chain smoker and have wanted to give up cigarettes. I have tried for three months and I have failed. I have come to the place where I hate them and I hate myself for not being able to give them up. What should I do?” I gave her several suggestions. I said, “Look, it is a questionable sin, and it is one that you hate and want to give up. I don’t blame you; your testimony is involved. First of all, continue to pray, and ask your personal friends to continue to pray for you, as you say they are doing. Also I will pray for you. I know God will give you the victory, because you want it. Secondly, don’t be discouraged. And the third thing is: please do not tell it to the dear saints in the church. If you do, they will absolutely skin you alive, because they consider it the worst sin in the world.” After about three months I saw her coming into the church, and I could tell by her face something had happened. After the service she could hardly wait to talk to me. She said, “I have wonderful news for you. From the day I talked to you down to the present, I haven’t smoked once. God has given me deliverance!”
Now, smoking is one of the things I classify as a questionable sin. It is not mentioned in the Word of God; nor does it have any question of immorality connected with it. Therefore, it is to be handled differently. It is not to be brought before the church for judgment. By contrast, this case of immorality in the Corinthian church was a flaunting of God’s law. Therefore, this needed to be handled with church discipline. There was no doubt about this being a sin. It is not a questionable matter. It was such a horrible sin that it was not even practiced by the Gentiles outside the church.
I would like to say something to our present generation. Living together without being married is sin in God’s sight. It makes no difference what public opinion says about it or how many people are practicing it. The Word of God calls this sin, and there is no other way one can look at it. It is not a questionable sin as far as the Word of God is concerned.
The church in Corinth did not need to establish the fact that the man was living in sin. Their error was that they tolerated it. They condoned the sin by doing nothing about it. They compromised, and that is the worst thing they could have done. You can put this down as an axiom: A pure church is a powerful church; an impure church is a paralysed church. You can look around you at churches today and see whether or not that is true.


For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,

To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus [1 Cor. 5:3–5].

Paul is telling them to meet together, and if this brother will not forsake his sin, they are to deliver him over to Satan. That is a tremendous statement. Does he really mean that? He said it; apparently he meant it.
This is something that the Word of God teaches. Do you remember that Job was delivered over to Satan? Satan came to the Lord and complained that He wouldn’t let him touch Job. He told God in effect, “You tell me how good a man Job is, but if You will just let me get to him, I will show You whether or not Job really is true to You. He will curse You to Your face!” So the Lord gave Satan permission to test Job—with the limitation that he could not take Job’s life. There is a great comfort in this for us: Satan cannot touch a child of God unless he has the permission of God Himself. And if God does permit it, then it is for a reason.
You will also remember that the Lord Jesus told Peter that Satan desired to have him to sift him as wheat. The Lord Jesus permitted Satan to do this to Peter. Peter was turned over to Satan, and that night he denied his Lord. What he did was just as dastardly as the crime of Judas Iscariot. However, Peter hated himself and he hated what he had done, but it taught him how weak he was. God used this experience to produce the kind of man who would get up and preach the sermon that Peter preached on the Day of Pentecost.
Then there is the example in 1 Timothy 1:20 where Paul writes: “Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.” These two men were professing Christians, but they were blaspheming. Paul says he delivered them over to Satan.
Now I realize there is danger of our feelings and our emotions getting involved, and there is a danger of fanaticism to which some people are inclined; but in our churches today we do have certain men and women who are hurting the cause of Christ. I believe we have the right to ask God to deliver them into the hands of Satan, to be dealt with, so that they won’t hurt and harm the body of Christ. I pray that God will deliver certain men over to Satan to let him give them a good workout. It will either bring them to God (if they are true believers) or it will reveal the fact that they are not genuine believers at all. If they are Christians, then they will come out clear-cut and come out clean for God and for the Lord Jesus Christ. I think we have a right to pray that prayer.
This is strong medicine! And for these carnal Corinthians it was strong medicine. Paul is writing that, although he can’t be with them in his body, he is with them in his spirit. He tells them the way he is voting. And his prayer is to deliver this man into the hands of Satan.


Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? [1 Cor. 5:6].

Do you know what the church in Corinth was doing? At the same time that they were shutting their eyes to the sin that was in their own congregation, they were bragging about their other activities. They were glorying—boasting. Probably they bragged about the missionaries they sent out and about being true to the Scriptures and about winning souls for Christ. What hypocrisy! Yet there are many folk who feel that being busy in Christian work covers a multitude of sins. Paul says that their glorying was not good. Didn’t they know that a little leaven leavens the whole. lump? Leaven is never a symbol of the gospel; it is always a principle of evil, and it represents evil in this instance.


Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us [1 Cor. 5:7].

What does leaven do to the bread? Well, you put it in the dough, set it in a warm place, and the bread begins to puff up. When it gets to a certain height, the bread is put into the hot oven. Why? To stop the leavening process. If the bread did not get into the oven, that leavening process would go on and the bread would rise higher and higher. Finally the whole loaf would be corrupt and rotten. Now that is exactly what happens with evil in the church if it is not dealt with. Finally the whole thing will blow up and will destroy the effectiveness of the church. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump; so it must be purged out.
In the Old Testament, after the Feast of the Passover there followed immediately the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Paul says that Christ, the true Passover Lamb, has now been sacrificed for us. This should be followed by lives that are free from leaven. Instead, this Corinthian congregation was allowing leaven—that is, evil—to come right into their church. These were the very ones who were talking about the death of Christ and the crucifixion of Christ, and yet they permitted leaven to enter into the church.


Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [1 Cor. 5:8].

Paul is not talking about how a person is saved. He is talking about the walk of the believer after he has been saved. Sincerity never saved anyone. But if you are a child of God, you will be sincere. The world today needs to see sincerity among believers and needs truth among believers. Paul says, “Let’s have sincerity and truth in the church there in Corinth.” You see, the church there was really insincere. They had gross immorality in their midst. They thought they could get by with this, and they pretended that everything was all right. They were pretending that they were telling the truth and living the truth when actually they were not.


I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:

Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat [1 Cor. 5:9–11].

Paul had previously written to them and had condemned these sins. Corinth was a city given over to immorality. There were a thousand priestesses at the temple of Venus or Aphrodite who were nothing in the world but harlots. They were prostitutes, and the whole city was given over to this immorality in the name of religion. Now here they are permitting this immoral man to come into their fellowship and to eat with them. They patted him on the back and accepted him as one of their own when they knew he was living in sin. The church in Corinth thought they could drop down to the level of the world.
Does the church today think it can drop down to the immorality of the world and get away with it? My friend, the church today has lost its power. I am speaking of the church in general. Thank God there are still wonderful churches left, churches that stand out like beacon lights across this land, Bible churches that stand for the Word of God. The other day I heard of a young preacher who took a stand when they tried to introduce hard rock music into his church. It meant that he lost several hundred of his members who walked out. I thank God for a preacher like that, one with intestinal fortitude. Most men today are compromising and shutting their eyes and letting the world come in. The church has lost its power. An impure church is a paralysed church, and a pure church is a powerful church. That is true for the individual also.
Now Paul says this does not apply to fornication only. He also applies it to covetousness. How about a deacon in the church who has sticky fingers? How about the man in the church who has his hand on a lot of money? Paul also includes idolaters, those who are fooling around with other religions. I heard about a leading officer of a church who walked out and joined a cult. I am telling you that the Word of God teaches that a little infection in the church must be dealt with or else it is going to corrupt and wreck the church. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump.


For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?

But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person [1 Cor. 5:12–13].

Paul says that he is not judging the people on the outside. That is not his business. He is to judge those inside the church. God will judge those who are on the outside. It is the business of the church to judge evil which is in the church.
We are interested to know how things worked out in Corinth. To find the answer we need to turn to 2 Corinthians 2:4–8: “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you. But if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part: that I may not overcharge you all. Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many. So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you that ye would confirm your love toward him.”
This immoral man had come in deep repentance after Paul put it down on the line in his previous epistle. Today we need a great deal of courage—not compromise—in the church to point out these things and say, “This is sin.” I think that when this is done, the believer who is in sin will confess, like this man in Corinth and like David did, and will repent and change his ways. The Corinthian church handled this very nicely. Why? Because Paul had the courage to write this kind of letter. In 2 Corinthians Paul explains why he had done it: “Wherefore, though I wrote unto you, I did it not for his cause that had done the wrong, nor for his cause that suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear unto you” (2 Cor. 7:12).
Paul says that he wrote as he did for the welfare of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today we hear this flimsy, hypocritical attitude: “Well, we don’t want to air this thing. We don’t want to cause trouble. We’ll just sweep it under the rug.” My friend, God cannot bless a church or an individual that does this. If God did bless, God would be a liar. And you know that God is no liar. He will judge inaction in a case like this.
This chapter has a tremendous lesson for us. And it is very practical, is it not?

LAWSUITS AMONG MEMBERS

Chapter 6 will deal with the subject of the Christian and his relation to the state. The Christian is told that he has a dual citizenship. I think that is often misconstrued by outsiders as well as by believers. Philippians 3:20 states: “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” The Greek word for “conversation” is politeuma, which literally means “Our politics is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
His citizenship in heaven does not relieve the Christian of his responsibility to the state. The Christian has a responsibility to each, that is, to God and to the state. Our Lord expressed this when the Herodians pressed on Him the subject of taxation. The Herodians asked, “Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?” (Matt. 22:17). Jesus answered, “… Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:21). The Christian has a responsibility to the state, and he also has a responsibility to God. The Christian has both secular and spiritual responsibilities.
The apostle Paul defines some very specific responsibilities of Christians to the state. There are certain guidelines which cannot be misunderstood. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2:1–4: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” Our obligation to the state is to attempt to have a peaceful, law-abiding society with recognition of authority. Why is this so important for the Christian? It is in order that we might get out the message of the gospel.
Paul discusses the same subject in Romans 13:1–4: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good….”
This was written at a time when the Roman government was tyrannical. The emperors of that era were dictators, and many of them were persecutors of the church. If anyone tried to oppose the Roman government, he was in real trouble, because there was no place to which one could flee where the government could not find him and arrest him. Even in that government, however, there was a freedom to preach the Word of God. That is the thing that Christians should keep in mind.
Back in Genesis we are shown that it was God Himself who ordained the state. As far as I can tell, that has never been changed. God put down this principle: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Gen. 9:6). To maintain the dignity and a respect for humanity, capital punishment must be used.
I have a letter from a very sweet lady who is very softhearted and feels that I am terrible because I believe in capital punishment. She says that Jesus wouldn’t do that. She wants to know whether I would be willing to pull the switch at the electric chair. Very candidly, I wouldn’t like to do it—that is not my job; I have been called to do something else. But I do want to say this: If this sweet lady wants to be safe in her home, there had better be somebody who is willing to pull that electric switch. We are living in a time of lawlessness. The reason is that we have softhearted judges, and I’m afraid some have been softheaded as well.
The church and the state were to be kept separate. The church was not to dominate the state, not to dictate to it. The state was not to control the church nor to take the place of God. In a secular society, secularism always takes the place of God. That is modern idolatry today. A great many people are putting secularism in the place of God. Someone sent me a modern-day parody on Psalm 23 which begins, “Science is my shepherd, I shall not want.” We find the church getting involved in secularism. I have a quotation from a liberal which reads: “To rebel against human law in the name of a higher law can be creative, saving the world from stagnation, but to disobey the law can also be anarchic and destructive, for too easily can men convince themselves that their opinions are those of God.” Too many of our statesmen today think they stand in the place of God and that they speak in the place of God.
With that kind of background I think we are prepared to look at chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians. We are still in that division of the epistle which deals with scandals in the Corinthian church. The first was concerned with impurity, and this chapter is concerned with lawsuits among members.


Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? [1 Cor. 6:1].

This may sound to you like a very strange statement, and it may need some explanation. He does not say that Christians are not to go to law. If Christians did not use the benefit of the law, they would suffer great loss at the hands of the unsaved. He is saying that Christians should not go to law against each other—Christian against Christian. The differences between believers are not to be taken to a secular court. They should be settled by believers. This is something which churches and believers in general ignore today.
After I had come to Southern California as a pastor, I was rather amazed one day when a man came in quite excitedly and wanted to bring a charge against an officer of the church. He claimed this man had beat him out of a sum of money in a business deal. He said, “Now I want you to bring him up before the board and to make him settle with me.” I told him, “I think you are approaching this the right way. When can you appear before the board and make your charges?” “Oh,” he said, “I’ve told you about it. That is all that is necessary.” I pointed out to him that I had no way to verify the charge. It would be necessary for both men to appear before the board. Then I asked him, “Would you be willing to accept the verdict of the board?” “Well,” he said, “it all depends on how they decided it. If they decided in my favor, I would accept it.” So then I asked him if he would accept the verdict if it were against him, and he assured me that he would not. Of course, I told him that we might as well forget the whole matter. I said, “You are not really willing to turn this issue over to other believers for a verdict.”
Church fights should not be aired in state courts before unbelievers. Individual differences among Christians should be adjudicated by believers. It is bad enough when two Christians are divorced, but it is an extremely serious matter when Christians go before a secular court and air their differences before unbelievers. When a Christian couple come to me and tell me they simply cannot get along, and I see there is no way of working out a reconciliation, I advise a legal separation, not a court trial.
Why should a believer let other believers be the judges rather than take his case to the unsaved world for their judgment? Again, this does not forbid a Christian from going to court with an unbeliever. Why should two believers bring their differences to be settled by other believers? Paul gives a threefold reason regarding the capabilities of believers to judge.

THE CAPABILITY OF THE BELIEVERS


Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? [1 Cor. 6:2].


My friend, if you are a believer in Christ, you will have a part with the Lord Jesus in ruling the earth someday. This is not talking about the judgment at the Great White Throne, which will be the judgment when the lost appear before Christ. No, this has to do with the adjudication of the affairs of the universe down through eternity.
1. Saints will judge the world.
The saints shall judge the world. I believe this has to do with what Paul wrote to Timothy, “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us” (2 Tim. 2:12). I believe this means that we shall pass judgment on the affairs in this world.


Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? [1 Cor. 6:3].

2. Saints will judge angels.
Paul is using a series of “know ye nots.” When Paul said, “Know ye not,” you can be sure that the brethren did not know. This was a polite way of saying they were ignorant of these things.
This certainly opens up a whole new vista of truth. I do not understand what this means; it is beyond my comprehension. All I know is that man was made a little lower than the angels, and through redemption man was lifted into a place of fellowship with God, a position above the angels. Also, God permitted man to fall. He never would have permitted that if it would not work out for good. It will result in bringing man into a higher position. The old bromide is not true that says that the bird with the broken wing never flies so high again. Man flies higher. We are going to be above the angels. We are going to judge them and have charge of them. May I say again, this is beyond my comprehension, but I believe it.
To pick up the third “know ye not,” we skip down to verse 9:


Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God [1 Cor. 6:9–10].

3. Unrighteousness is not in the kingdom.
Listen very carefully because this is important. No secular judge or jury is equipped to make spiritual decisions, because they do not comprehend spiritual principles. That is why court cases that pertain to churches and Christians go haywire the minute they hit the legal mills. A secular judge may know the material in the law books, but he knows nothing about spiritual decisions. He has no spiritual discernment.
To be very candid with you, it would be with fear and trembling that I would go into court and have a secular judge handle me or my property. I don’t think a secular judge is capable of doing that, and I don’t think a secular jury can either. Following a trial here in Southern California I looked at the jury shown on television and said to my wife, “I thank God my life is not in the hands of the twelve people I see there.” After the trial was over, some of the jurors made statements for the television program which revealed that they were not capable of judging the case. Yet Christians will trust that crowd rather than take their cases to other believers who do have spiritual discernment.


I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?

But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers [1 Cor. 6:5–6].

Of course, not every Christian is a capable judge, but Paul is saying, “I speak to your shame, isn’t there a wise man among you?” When you go to a secular court, you are saying that none of the saints are capable of judging. Well, I know some dear brethren in the Lord with whom I would be willing to risk my life. I am confident they would render a just verdict.
Now why does a Christian have a capability to judge? Paul will give us three reasons:


And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God [1 Cor. 6:11].

“Ye are washed.” It is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration …” (Titus 3:5). We have been born again, washed. Because the mercy of God has reached down and touched us, we ought to know how to extend mercy. We can be merciful because we have experienced mercy. We should recognize that there are many wonderful believers today who have been washed. We should trust ourselves to them rather than to the unsaved.
“Ye are sanctified.” Sanctification in the Corinthian epistles is of two kinds, but I think here it means positional sanctification, that is, being in Christ. This means that Christ is on our side and all believers are brothers in Christ. If another Christian judges me, it means that one of my brothers is judging me. I would be willing to trust myself to the judgment of a brother. A little girl was carrying a heavy baby down the street. A man saw her and asked, “Little girl, isn’t that baby too heavy for you?” “Oh, no,” she said, “he’s my brother.” The relationship makes a lot of difference. A brother is not too heavy. I am in Christ and my brother is in Christ; so I should be willing to trust my brother.
“Ye are justified.” The third reason my brother is capable of being a judge is that his sins are already forgiven, as mine are. He has been declared righteous before the throne of God, as I have been. “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth” (Rom. 8:33). “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). A fellow Christian knows this, and I feel that he could handle my case better than anyone else.

THE BELIEVER’S BODY IS THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT


All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any [1 Cor. 6:12].


There are a lot of things which a believer can do, but they are not expedient to do. I could mention many things; Paul mentions one here:


Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body [1 Cor. 6:13].

Meats shall be destroyed someday. Our stomachs shall be destroyed someday. There is Christian liberty in what we eat.
In contrast, our bodies are not to be used for fornication. Our bodies belong to the Lord.


And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.
Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid [1 Cor. 6:14–15].
Young folks today think that they can live together without being married. One such couple came to me wanting to talk about going into Christian service. They weren’t married, but they were living together! I told them, “You get married.” They asked, “Why?” I said, “Because God commands it. That is the way God wants it to be. Until you are willing to do that, you cannot serve Him.”


What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body [1 Cor. 6:16–18].

My friend, you cannot live in immorality and serve Christ. Unfortunately, we find that public opinion generally accepts immoral persons; but God does not accept them.


What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s [1 Cor. 6:19–20].

Here is a remarkable truth which many believers have not received. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Because our bodies belong to God, we are not to share our bodies in fornication. This leads to a discussion of marriage, which will be the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 7

Theme: Marriage


This chapter concerns marriage; so we shall be discussing the subject of sex. I think we will probably handle it in a more dignified manner than is usual today because we are going to follow Paul.
In the previous chapter Paul had given them the spiritual truths that, by application to the problem of marriage, can solve matters that relate to sex in marriage. You will remember that he emphasized that our bodies belong to God and that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost. Our bodies are to be used for the glory of God.


Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman [1 Cor. 7:1].

It is obvious that the Corinthian believers had written a letter to Paul concerning this problem. We do not have the question, but we do have Paul’s answer. Paul has taken a long time to get to this. He first dealt with the divisions and the scandals in their midst. However, he has no reluctance in dealing with the subject of marriage, and he writes boldly and very frankly. Before we get into the text itself, I wish to deal with two introductory matters.
First there is the question: Was Paul ever married? If Paul was never married, then in his explanation he is simply theorizing. He is not speaking from experience. However, Paul did not do that. Paul always spoke from experience. It was not the method of the Spirit of God to choose a man who knew nothing about the subject on which the Spirit of God wanted him to write.
It has always been assumed that Paul was not married on the basis of the seventh verse: “For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.” If we are going to assume that Paul was not married, we need to pay attention to the verse that follows: “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.” Someone will say, “He still says that he is unmarried.” Granted. We know he was not married. But notice that he mentions two classes here: the unmarried and the widows (or widowers). He could have been unmarried or a widower.
It is difficult to believe that Paul had always been unmarried because of his background and because of who he was. Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin. In Acts 26:10 Paul says, “Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them.” How could he give his voice against them? It was by his vote in the Sanhedrin, which means he was a member of the Sanhedrin. Since Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin, he must have been a married man because that was one of the conditions of membership.
There was an insistence upon Jewish young men to marry. The Mishna said this should be at the age of eighteen. In the Yebhamoth, in the commentary on Genesis 5:2 it states: “A Jew who has no wife is not a man.” I believe it is an inescapable conclusion that Paul at one time was a married man. He undoubtedly was a widower who had never remarried. In chapter 9 we read, “Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” (1 Cor. 9:5). I think Paul is saying, “I could marry again if I wanted to; I would be permitted to do that. But I’m not going to for the simple reason that I would not ask a woman to follow me around in the type of ministry God has given to me.”
It is my conviction that in the past Paul had loved some good woman who had reciprocated his love, because he spoke so tenderly of the marriage relationship. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph. 5:25).
I would like to give you a quotation from F. W. Farrar who writes in his Life and Work of St. Paul: “The other question which arises is, Was Saul married? Had he the support of some loving heart during the fiery struggles of his youth? Amid the to-and-fro contentions of spirit which resulted from an imperfect and unsatisfying creed, was there in the troubled sea of his life one little island home where he could find refuge from incessant thoughts? Little as we know of his domestic relations, little as he cared to mingle mere private interests with the great spiritual truths which occupy his soul, it seems to me that we must answer this question in the affirmative.”
The position of many expositors is that Paul had been married and that his wife had died. Paul never made reference to her, but he spoke so tenderly of the marriage relationship I believe he had been married.
The second introductory matter is not a question but a statement. We need to understand the Corinth of that day. If we do not, we are going to fall into the trap of saying that Paul is commending the single state above the married state. One must understand the local situation of Corinth to know what he is talking about. Notice the first two verses again.


Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.

Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband [1 Cor. 7:1–2].

We need to understand Corinth. I have been to the ruins of ancient Corinth. Towering above those ruins is the mountain which was the acropolis, called Acro-Corinthus. The city was dominated by the Acro-Corinthus, and on top of it was the temple of Aphrodite. It towered over the city like a dark cloud. Today the ruins of a Crusader fort are there. When the Crusaders came, they used the stones from the temple of Aphrodite to build their fortress.
This temple was like most heathen temples. Sex was a religion. There were one thousand so-called vestal virgins there. In that temple you could get food, drink, and sex. Those vestal virgins were nothing in the world but one thousand prostitutes. Sex was carried on in the name of religion. That was the philosophy of Plato, by the way.
People tend to forget the immorality of that culture. A man once said to me, “Socrates wrote in a very lofty language.” Yes, sometimes he did. He also told prostitutes how they ought to conduct themselves. The whole thought was to get rid of the desires of the body by satisfying them. That is heathenism. That came out in two basic philosophies of the Greeks. Stoicism said the basic desires were to be denied; Epicureanism said they were to be fulfilled all the way.
The wife in the Roman world was a chattel. She was a workhorse. A man generally had several wives. One had charge of the kitchen, another had charge of the living area, another was in charge of the clothes. Sex was secondary because the man went up to the temple where the good-looking girls were kept. There they celebrated the seasons of fertility, and believe me, friend, that is what was carried on.
You will still find the same thing among the Bedouins in Palestine today. They have several wives, and it is a practical thing for them. One takes care of the sheep, another goes with the man as he wanders around, another stays back at the home base where they have a tent and probably a few fruit trees. He thinks he needs at least three wives.
Now Paul lifts marriage up to the heights, out of this degradation, and says to the Corinthians they are not to live like that. Every man is to have one wife, and every woman is to have her own husband. Paul lifted woman from the place of slavery in the pagan world, the Roman Empire, and made her a companion of man. He restored her to her rightful position. He was in Ephesus when he wrote to the Corinthians, and in Ephesus there was much the same thing in the awful temple of Diana. It was to the Ephesians that Paul wrote, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph. 5:25).
Now I know somebody is going to say that he also told wives to obey their husbands. I would like to know where he said that. He did write, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (Eph. 5:22). Have you ever looked up the word submit to see what it means? To submit means to respond. Wives are to respond to their own husbands. The wife is to react to the man. Man is the aggressor. He initiates the expression of love, and the woman is the receiver. This is not a matter of sex alone; it involves a couple mentally, spiritually, psychologically, and physically. Man is the aggressor; woman is the receiver.
God created man and woman that way in the beginning. He created woman as the “helpmeet,” a helper suitable for him or corresponding to him. She is the other part of man. When a husband says, “I love you,” she answers, “I love you.” When a man admits that he has a cold wife, he is really saying that he is a failure as a husband and that he is to blame for the condition.
Paul lifts woman from the slave state to that of a partner of man. Listen to the next verse:


Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband [1 Cor. 7:3].

She is to respond to him. He is to tell her that he loves her.


The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife [1 Cor. 7:4].

The man is not to run up to that temple of Aphrodite. That is sin. Love and sex are to take place at home. That is exactly what he is saying here. The only motive for marriage is love—not sex, but love. I am convinced that Paul had known the love of a good and great woman.
So many of the great men in Scripture knew the love of a woman. There are Adam and Eve, Jacob and Rachel, Boaz and Ruth, David and Abigail—it was Abigail who told David, “… the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God …” (1 Sam. 25:29).
It is said of John Wesley that when he came to America he was not a saved man. He wrote, “I came to this country to convert Indians, but who is going to convert John Wesley?” The story goes that the crown had sent to America an insipid nobleman. Due to the terrible custom of that day, the nobility was entitled to marry the finest, and he had married a woman of striking beauty and strong personality, who also was an outstanding Christian. Then there came into their colony this fiery young missionary. And these two fell in love. But she said, “No, John, God has called you to go back to England to do some great service for Him.” It was she who sent John Wesley back to England—to marry the Methodist church. Back in England Wesley was converted, and she was his inspiration. Behind every great man is a great woman.
Now Paul continues his guidelines for conduct in marriage.


Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment [1 Cor. 7:5–6].

He says this is not a commandment, but it is a guideline to follow so that Satan will not have an opportunity to tempt either member of the marriage relationship.


For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that [1 Cor. 7:7].

At this time Paul did not have a wife. He did not remarry. He was not taking a wife along with him on his travels.
There are people in the Lord’s work who have not married. They have made that kind of sacrifice—some for several years, some for their whole lifetime. You remember that the Lord Jesus said, “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake …” (Matt. 19:12).
When I began in the ministry, I attempted to imitate a man who was a bachelor. I thought that was the happiest state, but I soon learned that it wasn’t for me. I wanted a wife. Paul says that is all right—“every man hath his proper gift of God.”


I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.

But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn [1 Cor. 7:8–9].

It is better to marry than to burn with passion.

COMMAND TO THE MARRIED


And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:

But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife [1 Cor. 7:10–11].


Here is a commandment. Paul is putting it on the line. The wife is not to leave her husband, and the husband is not to leave his wife. If one or the other is going to leave, then they are to remain unmarried.
Now there was a new problem which presented itself in Corinth. After Paul had come and had preached the gospel to them, a husband in a family would accept Christ but the wife would not. In another family it might be that the wife would accept Christ and the husband would not. What were the believers to do under such circumstances?


But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.

And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy [1 Cor. 7:12–14].

If one was married to an unsaved man or to an unsaved woman and there were children in the family, Paul said they should try to see it through. Paul says, “Stay right where you are if you can.”


But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace [1 Cor. 7:15].

If the unbeliever walks out of the marriage, that is another story. Then the believer is free. Now the question which is asked is whether that one is free to marry again. I believe that under certain circumstances Paul would have given permission for that. I do not think one can put down a categorical rule either way for today. I think that each case stands or falls on its own merits. I’m afraid this can easily be abused, even by Christians. I am afraid sometimes a husband or a wife tries to get rid of the other and forces them to leave in order that they might have a “scriptural ground” for divorce.


For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife? [1 Cor. 7:16].

This should be the goal of the wife. I know several women who were married to unsaved men and tried to win them for Christ. This also should be the goal of the husband who is married to an unsaved woman. Winning them for Christ should be uppermost in their consideration.


But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches [1 Cor. 7:17].

Paul is advising people to stay in the situation in which they are. They are not to walk out of their marriage after they have heard and accepted the gospel. They are to stay married if the unbelieving partner will allow it.
This ought to answer the question for today. Unfortunately, there are some ministers and evangelists who have advised people who have had a divorce and have remarried to go back to their first mate after they had come to Christ. May I say, I can’t think of anything more tragic than that kind of advice. I know one woman who finally ended up in a mental institution because she followed the advice of some evangelist who told her to leave her second husband and her lovely Christian home and go back to a drunken husband whom she had previously divorced. How foolish can one be? We need to understand what Paul is saying here.


Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised.

Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.

Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called [1 Cor. 7:18–20].

Paul now expands the application of this principle. It applies to other relationships in life. For instance, if when you are converted you belong to the circumcised, that is, if you are an Israelite, don’t try to become a Gentile. If you are a Gentile, don’t try to become an Israelite. Circumcision or uncircumcision is no longer important. Obedience to Christ is the issue now. The Israelite and the Gentile are one in Christ.
The whole point here is that in whatever state you find yourself when you accept Christ, stay right there. I have known many businessmen who get into some Christian organization after their conversion, and the next thing I know they come to me and say that they are thinking of giving up the business and going into full-time Christian work. My friend, if you are a successful businessman, God may have given you a gift to minister in that particular area. He may not intend for you to change and go into full-time Christian work. Let’s go on and listen to what Paul says.


Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.

For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant [1 Cor. 7:21–22].

In that day there were slaves and freemen. If a person were a slave or a servant of a man, he was not to try to get loosed from that, thinking that God wanted him to be freed from his master.
I find today that there are many housewives who get the notion that they are to become great Bible teachers. They get so involved in it that they neglect their families.
I shall never forget the story I heard about the late Gypsy Smith. A woman came to him in Dallas, Texas, and said, “Gypsy Smith, I feel called to go into the ministry.” He asked her a very pertinent question (he had a way of doing that), “Are you married?” She said that she was. “How many children do you have?” She answered that she had five. He said, “That’s wonderful. God has called you into the ministry, and He has already given you your congregation!”


Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men [1 Cor. 7:23].

You have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. Now don’t be a slave to someone. Does this sound like a contradiction? Let me explain by an example. A cocktail waitress was converted by hearing the gospel on our radio broadcast. Everything about the Bible was brand new to her. She asked me a question about whether she should give up being a cocktail waitress because she just didn’t feel right about it. I answered her that it was up to her. I said, “That is a decision that you must make. If you have a conviction about it, then give it up. If you want to know what I think about it personally, I think you ought to give it up. However don’t give it up because I say so, but give it up if that becomes your conviction.” She did give it up and found another job within a couple of weeks. She had been bought with a price; she was not to be a servant of man.


Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God [1 Cor. 7:24].

This is the important consideration. When a person is converted, whatever he is doing, wherever he is, he is to remain in that position as long as he is free in his relationship to God. God must be first. “Therein abide with God.” If his situation will not permit God to be first, then he should change the situation, as the cocktail waitress did.
CONCERNING MARRIAGEABLE DAUGHTERS

The discussion for the remainder of this chapter is an answer to the second question which the Corinthians had asked Paul and is related to the first question. Remember that all this must be interpreted in the light of what Corinth was in Paul’s day, and then it can be applied to the day in which we live. Corinth was such a corrupt place, and manhood was corrupted there. When womanhood is corrupted, manhood will descend to a low level—that has always been the story. So there was this question among Christian parents in Corinth: What should they do about their marriageable daughters? Before they were converted, their friends were drunken sots who went up to the temple of Aphrodite to the prostitutes there. What should the single Christian girls do now? Paul will deal with this question.


Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful [1 Cor. 7:25].

“Now concerning virgins”—several of the translations have it: “Now concerning virgin daughters,” which I think clarifies it. That is really what he is talking about here.
This reveals that Paul knew the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He taught. However, he specifically says here that concerning virgins he has no commandment of the Lord. “But,” he says, “I give my own judgment.” He is giving his opinion as a capable judge because he had obtained the mercy of God and he wanted to be faithful to God. In other words, he possessed the qualifications a judge should have, as he had told them in chapter 6.


I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be.

Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife [1 Cor. 7:26–27].

“The present distress” was that awful situation in Corinth which Paul knew was not going to continue. Someone asked me, “Do you think this excessive immorality and this lawlessness in our nation will continue?” If it does continue, my friend, it will bring down our houses and destroy our nation—then it will be ended for sure.
Now what does he say? In he present distress, since you have come to Christ at such a difficult time, if you are bound to a wife, stay with her. If she is unsaved, stay with her as long as you can. If you are not married, then, because of the present distress with the tremendous immorality that is here, it would be best for you to remain single. Paul says this is his judgment.


But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh: but I spare you [1 Cor. 7:28].

Of course it is not sinful to marry. But the sea of matrimony is rough under the most favorable circumstances. He is trying to save them from much trouble. That reminds me of the country boy who was being married. The preacher said to him, “Wilt thou have this woman to be thy lawfully wedded wife?” The young fellow answered, “I wilt.” And I guess he did! In our day we are seeing the shipwreck of a growing number of marriages—even among Christians. The divorces in Southern California are now about equal in number to the marriages. That reveals we also have a “present distress.”
Now Paul goes on to discuss other things with them, all in the light of the present distress, the shortness of time, the urgency and immediacy of the hour. He mentions five things which are necessary, which are inevitable, and which are the common experience of mankind in this world. He discusses marriage, sorrow, joy, commerce, and then relation to the world in general.
Marriage is the first one he discusses. “Sure,” Paul says in effect, “it is all right to go ahead and marry, but remember that you will have trouble.” And they will. In counseling I have tried to tell young people that the romantic period will pass. When the first month’s rent comes due and there is not much money in the treasury, believe me, romance flies out the window.


But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none [1 Cor. 7:29].

Paul is saying that in spite of the stress of the times, they are to put God first. If you are married, can you act as if you are not married in that you put God first?


And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not [1 Cor. 7:30].

“And they that weep, as though they wept not.” Are you going to let some sorrow, some tragedy in your life keep you from serving God?
“And they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not.” Are you going to let pleasure take the place of your relationship to God, as many do?
“And they that buy, as though they possessed not.” Will you let your business take the place of God? Many a man has made business his god.


And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away [1 Cor. 7:31].

You and I are in the world, not of the world; but this doesn’t mean that we are to walk around with an attitude of touch not, taste not, handle not. We are to use this world. This past summer I made a trip up into the Northwest, and I stopped many times to look upon those glorious forests that they have up there. I used them—they blessed my heart. I enjoyed them. But I didn’t fall down and worship any one of those trees! We are to use the things of this world but not abuse them. We are not to substitute them for the Creator.
“The fashion of this world passeth away.” Do the things of this life control your life, or does Christ control your life? This is what Paul is talking about.
Now he goes back to a discussion of marriage.


But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord [1 Cor. 7:32].

Paul now gives some practical observations. The unmarried person doesn’t have to worry about changing the baby’s diapers or going out to buy food for the family. He or she can give his or her time to the things of God.


But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife [1 Cor. 7:33].

The married man tries to please his wife. This is normal and natural, and Paul is not saying it is wrong.


There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction [1 Cor. 7:34–35].

Paul is making it very clear that the important thing is to put God first. That should be the determining factor for every person in a marriage relationship. I don’t care who you are or how spiritual you think you may be, if you are not putting God first in your marriage, then your marriage, my friend, is not the ideal Christian marriage.
He comes back to his judgment that the single person can attend upon the Lord without distraction.


The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord [1 Cor. 7:39].

That is, she is to marry another Christian, of course.


But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the Spirit of God [1 Cor. 7:40].

Paul makes it clear again that this is his judgment, his advice. The important thing is to serve God, to put God first in your life. If a person is married, God should still be first in his life. Unfortunately, there are many Christian couples who are compatible—they are not going to the divorce court—but God does not have first place in their marriage.
In deciding your marital status, the most important consideration is not what your Christian friends will say or how society in general will regard you. The question you need to ask yourself is: In what way can I put God first in my life?

CHAPTER 8

Theme: Christian liberty regarding eating meat


We are in the section of the epistle dealing with Christian liberty, which extends from chapter 8 to the first verse of chapter 11. It touches on several aspects of Christian liberty. Chapter 8 deals with the problem of whether or not we should eat meat and the liberty that a child of God should have in this particular area.
We need to recognize as we go through this section of the epistle that Paul is writing to the Corinthians and that he has called them carnal, babes in Christ. He deals first with carnalities, and later he will deal with spiritualities. Since it is in the level of carnalities that the contemporary church lives and moves and has its being, this section is pertinent for you and me.
The subject of diet is just as controversial as marriage and divorce. Diet is a fad with many people. (Right at the moment diet is more than a fad with me, because my doctor has put me on a very strict diet.)
Diet generally is an essential part of the ritual of many of the cults and “isms.” Many of them have stringent rules about diet. It is interesting that God in the Old Testament gave Israel certain restrictions about eating meat. An edible animal had a parted hoof and chewed the cud. That eliminated the pig whose hoof is parted but does not chew the cud. There were also certain fowl and fish which were designated by name as unfit for food. You can find these listed in the Book of Leviticus and also in Deuteronomy, chapter 14.
A friend of mine, who belonged to a cult that would not eat pork, was discussing this with me one day. So I asked him, “Have you ever eaten ossifrage?” “A what?” “An ossifrage.” “Well,” he said, “I don’t even know what it is.” So I told him, “You’d better find out what it is because you may come to my house someday and I might serve you roast ossifrage, which for you would be as wrong to eat as pork.” It is amazing that the cults that place such importance on the Old Testament dietary regulations are so ignorant of the actual details.
Why did God give a special diet to Israel? He makes it very clear: “Ye are the children of the Lord your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth. Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing” (Deut. 14:1–3). Also, I do believe that diet is important for health. God gave Israel foods that were good for them. Even doctors today prescribe diets which exclude certain foods.
The Bible puts up a red light and is very specific on many things which are wrong for us to do. For example, God condemns drunkenness. There can be no argument nor question about that. However, there is a gray area, questionable practices, doubtful things about which the Bible is silent. These are things which are neither black nor white, and the Bible doesn’t give us specific instructions. For example: Should a Christian smoke? In the South they think that mixed bathing is wrong and smoking is all right. On the West Coast boys and girls, men and women swim together without compunction, but they condemn smoking. There are different rules which have been put down by certain groups of Christians. They may be good rules or they may be bad rules—I’m not going to argue about that. What I want you to see is the great principle which Paul is laying down here.
There is another preliminary consideration which is an understanding of Corinth in Paul’s day. If you do not understand the background, you will miss the whole point of the chapter. It is this: the best place to eat in Corinth was not at the swankiest restaurant; the best place to get good meat was in the meat shop that was run by the temple.
In Corinth the people brought sacrifices of animals to offer to the idols. They would bring the best animals they had. The meat was offered to the idol, but it didn’t stay there long because they believed that the spirit of the idol ate the spirit of the animal—and that finished the meal for the idol. Then they took the meat to the shambles or stalls around the temple, which was the meat market where the meat was sold. If you wanted to buy fillet or the best steaks or the best prime rib roast in Corinth, you had to go to one of those shops at the temple to get meat which had been offered to idols.
Some of the Christians in Corinth were offended by this practice and were asking Paul about it. They would be invited out to dinner with another Christian family and would be served a lovely fillet mignon. During the course of the conversation they would say, “My, this is wonderful meat. Where did you get it?” The lady would answer that she got it at the temple meat market. This would offend the couple who felt that it was wrong to eat anything that had been offered to idols. This is the question which Paul discusses in this chapter. Should a Christian eat meat that had been offered to idols? This was a real problem to the people in Corinth, because many of them had come out of that background of idolatry, and they thought it was a compromise with idolatry. Others in the church felt that it made no difference. Let’s listen to Paul as he discusses this problem in the city of Corinth.

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY CONCERNING MEAT


Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.

And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know [1 Cor. 8:1–2].


Knowledge blows up like a balloon or like an automobile tire. Love doesn’t blow up, but it fills up. Love for God and love for others should determine our conduct. Knowledge alone puffs up and tends to make us harsh in our dealings with others. This is a danger with a great many folk who feel that they have a lot of knowledge and yet in reality know very little.
Let me give an illustration. We had just concluded a service at a Bible conference in which six young men had received Christ. A man came to me and insisted that I break away from everyone else and discuss with him the subject of election (he erroneously felt that I had alluded to it in my message). I took a few moments to talk with him until I discovered that he didn’t want to discuss it; he wanted to tell me what he thought about election. I discovered that he had been reading on that subject recently and that he thought he knew everything about it. As I listened to him, I could picture myself as a young seminary student going into the office of a theological professor to tell him what I thought about election. I thought I was telling him something he didn’t know! Well, I don’t care what stage of spiritual development you are in today, you don’t know everything about any subject—and I don’t either. All of us are in the learning process. Paul could say of himself, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings …” (Phil. 3:10). It is the knowledge of Christ which we need above everything else. If the man who wanted to argue about election had been governed by love, he would have been rejoicing over the conversion of these young men and would not have taken me away from folk who needed encouragement and counsel.
Paul is saying that we have a certain knowledge and, because of that certain knowledge, our behavior is governed by it.


But if any man love God, the same is known of him [1 Cor. 8:3].

We ought to be governed by love rather than knowledge.


As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one [1 Cor. 8:4].

After you have come to Christ, after you have the Word of God, you know that an idol is nothing. That is the way Paul spoke of the idols—they are nothing. There is but one God. So he says that the meat that was offered to the idol was not affected. Nothing happened to it. It was not contaminated. In fact, it was prime meat. So the instructed Christian could go there to get his meat and eat it with no problem.


For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,)

But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him [1 Cor. 8:5–6].

These idols were merely called gods. As I stood in the ruins of the temple of Apollo in Corinth, I thought of this passage of Scripture. I thought of all the sacrifices that had been offered to that image of Apollo there. It was nothing. The meat was brought in to the idol, put there for a little while, and then it was taken to the meat shop. It didn’t make any difference in the meat—the idol was nothing. The instructed Christian knew that. He knew there is but one God, the Father, and that there is but one Lord Jesus Christ. He made all things, and all things belong to Him.


Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled [1 Cor. 8:7].

The weak ones, the babes in Christ, the carnal Christians, these were the ones who were offended by the meat offered to idols. They did not have the knowledge. Their consciences bothered them. So they criticized the others who felt at liberty to eat the meat.
May I say that we still find the same thing today. We have people who call themselves separated Christians. They think they are being very spiritual when, actually, they are revealing that they don’t have the knowledge. They are the ones who say you can’t do this and that. They are the ones who are offended at Christians who use their Christian liberty. They are like the Christians at Corinth who were offended when they were served meat offered to idols and said, “Oh, no, we are separated. We won’t touch that meat.” That kind of separation is not due to spirituality; it is due to ignorance.
Now Paul lays down a great principle:


But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse [1 Cor. 8:8].

Meat has nothing to do with our relationship to God.
You will remember that Simon Peter had trouble with this. He had been brought up to consider certain things unclean according to the Mosaic Law. When the sheet came down from heaven in his vision and the Lord told Peter to arise and eat, Peter refused. He said, “… Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean” (Acts 10:14). (He calls Him Lord at the same time that he is failing to obey Him.) Then the Lord said, “… What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (Acts 10:15). In other words, God is no longer making the distinction between the clean and the unclean animals. That is passed. Now we can eat any animal that we wish to eat.
Down in San Antonio, Texas, they can rattlesnake meat. Now if you are going to have rattlesnake for dinner, please don’t invite me to come over. This has nothing to do with religious scruples, but it has a lot to do with a weak stomach.
Paul has stated a great principle here. Meat does not commend you to God. You may do as you please in such matters. This is the liberty that a believer has.


But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak [1 Cor. 8:9].

Now it is not a question of its being right or wrong to eat meat. It is a concern for others. You have the liberty to eat the meat if you want to. But what about your concern for others? You have the knowledge, but what about your love? Do you have love for your weak brother? Are you concerned how this will affect him?


For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol’s temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols [1 Cor. 8:10].

The reason many of us who are in Christian service do not do certain things is so that we may not offend others. Let me give an illustration. There was a time when I loved to dance. In fact, I was chairman of the dance committee of an organization before I accepted Christ. After I started studying for the ministry, I gave up dancing.
In college the president of the ministerial students was also president of the student body, and he was active in promoting dancing. Knowing I had been chairman of a dance committee, he tried to get me to help him. I told him, “No. I can’t do that.” I am not going to argue if it was right or wrong, because it is not a question of knowledge. There are many things I am at liberty to do which I do not do. Why? Well, my decision is on the basis of love. I do not want to hurt my weak brother. Because of my example, he might be out there on the floor dancing the fandango—or whatever they dance today—and I don’t want to be responsible for drawing him away from the Lord. He is a weak brother.


And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? [1 Cor. 8:11].

You see, we operate on a different principle. It is not a question of an activity being right or wrong. It is a question of its effect on that weak brother or upon your neighbor. You see, knowledge, after all is a very dangerous thing.


But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ [1 Cor. 8:12].

When we are responsible for a believer falling away from Christ, we are affecting Christ Himself.


Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend [1 Cor. 8:13].

Here is the motivation for action on these things. Paul will go over this same principle again in chapter 10, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not” (1 Cor. 10:23).
There is no point in arguing about whether something is right or wrong. It is a question of the effect upon the weak brother. It is not a question of knowledge. All things are lawful for me. The liberty of the Christian is not pinned down by legality. He is not circumscribed by rules of conduct. His liberty is limited by love. His motivation should be not to offend the brother but to be a blessing to him. That is how to determine Christian conduct. That is the motivation for Christian conduct. My knowledge can tell me that it is perfectly all right for me to do something, but my love for the weak brother will keep me from doing it.

CHAPTER 9

Theme: Christian liberty regarding service for Christ


In chapter 8 Paul dealt with the matter of Christian liberty in regard to eating meat which had been offered to idols. The principle he laid down was that in doubtful matters the motive for Christian conduct was regard for fellow believers. We won’t do anything which causes a weak brother to stumble.
This shows us that there is a limitation on our Christian liberty. This can be stated in a graphic way. You have a perfect right to swing your fist any way you want to, but where my nose begins your liberty ends.
Paul lays down this principle several times in the Epistle to the Corinthians. “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Cor. 6:12). “But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse” (1 Cor. 8:8). “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not” (1 Cor. 10:23). He goes on to say that no man should seek his own, but every man should seek the good of his neighbor. Christian liberty has its limitations for this reason.
Now Paul is going to illustrate this matter of Christian liberty in another field. He will discuss his own right as an apostle, his official right. Then he will discuss his right to be supported by the church. He had the right to expect the church to care for him and all his needs as a preacher of the gospel. He uses these personal matters to illustrate Christian liberty.
Paul first defends his official right as an apostle. Paul was in the habit of defending his apostleship because it was challenged in many places.


Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? [1 Cor. 9:1].

“Am I not an apostle?” Of course the answer is, “Yes, Paul, you are an apostle.” The way this question is couched in the Greek demands a positive answer.
“Am I not free?” The answer is, “Yes, Paul, you are free.”
“Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” One qualification of an apostle was that he had personally seen Jesus Christ. Paul had satisfied that requirement.
“Are not ye my work in the Lord?” The Corinthian believers were the evidence of his apostleship.

If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord [1 Cor. 9:2].
“If I be not an apostle unto others”—but he was an apostle to others. The “if” is the if of condition.
“Yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord.”
As far as the Corinthian church was concerned, he didn’t have to defend his apostleship. It was evident to the Christians there that he was an apostle.


Mine answer to them that do examine me is this,

Have we not power to eat and to drink? [1 Cor. 9:3–4].

The word for “answer” in the Greek really means defense. It is as if Paul were in court and were being charged concerning his apostleship. He is giving his defense to those who examine him. What is his defense?
“Have we not power to eat and to drink?” As an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul had a right to eat and to drink. As an apostle he had that liberty. However, that liberty is curbed and curtailed by others. He had made the bold declaration, “Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend” (1 Cor. 8:13). He had the right to eat meat, but he was not going to eat meat. Now that is an exercise of free will, isn’t it? It is free will to be able to do something and then choose not to do it. In a sense, that is a higher liberty, perhaps the highest liberty that there is. If you cannot do something, you do not do it; there is no exercise of free will in that. But if you are able to do something and then choose not to do it, that is a revelation of your free will.


Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? [1 Cor. 9:5].

Evidently “the brethren of the Lord” refers to the half brothers of Jesus, James and Jude, who were apparently married. And Peter was married. They took their wives with them when they went out on their missionary journeys. Paul says that he has the same freedom, but he chose not to have a wife because he felt his ministry would be curtailed and hindered.
Today in Bible conference work if you take your wife, they wonder whether you can’t go anywhere without her. If you don’t take your wife, they wonder what is wrong. A preacher is in a bad way. When my daughter was growing up, my wife stayed at home to take care of her, and I would go alone to the Bible conferences. I would be quizzed by some of the curious saints and I would have to go into detail to explain why Mrs. McGee wasn’t with me. Now my daughter is grown and married, so my wife goes everywhere with me. Every now and then one of the saints asks, “Does your wife go with you all the time?” as if to say, “Can’t you ever get away from her?” In the ministry you will be questioned regardless of what you do.
Paul faced this same sort of thing. Paul says that he has the right to take a wife with him—he has that liberty—but he has made his decision to remain single. After all, he was a pioneer missionary, and his was a very rugged life.


Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working? [1 Cor. 9:6].

He is saying that he and Barnabas could stay home if they wished. In other words, “We don’t have to go as missionaries—our salvation wouldn’t be affected if we stayed home.”
Now he is going to get around to this matter of paying the preacher.


Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?

Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also?

For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [1 Cor. 9:7–9].

In those days an ox was used to tread out the corn. They hitched the ox to a horizontal wheel, and he walked around in a circle over the grain. This separated the grain from the chaff. Then the chaff was pitched up into the air so the wind would blow it away, and the good grain would fall down onto the threshing floor. God said they were not to muzzle the ox that was treading out the grain. Why? He was working and was to be permitted to eat the grain as he worked. That was the way God took care of the ox—He made that a law. The application is that the preacher is not to be muzzled. He is to be fed for his work.
I heard a story about a preacher in Kentucky who drove a very fine, beautiful horse, but the preacher himself was a very skinny fellow. One day one of his church officers asked him the question (which had been a matter of discussion), “How is it, preacher, that your horse is so fine looking and you are such a skinny fellow?” The preacher answered, “I will tell you. I feed my horse, and you are the ones who feed me.”
God says not to muzzle the ox that is working for you, and Paul applies that principle to pastors and teachers. God not only cares for oxen, He cares for preachers. Paul is saying that he, as an apostle who has fed others, has a right to be fed.


Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.

If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? [1 Cor. 9:10–11].

Paul mentions this again in the Epistle to the Galatians. If folk have given you spiritual blessings, spiritual riches, then you should share your carnal blessings with them. I heard Torrey Johnson down in Bibletown in Florida say several times—and I think it is a good principle—that you ought to support the place where you get your blessing. Suppose you go down to eat at a certain restaurant. You don’t walk down the street and around the corner into another restaurant to pay your bill; you pay the restaurant that fed you. Yet many people do that sort of thing with their spiritual food. They get their spiritual blessings in one place, and they give their offerings in another place.


If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ [1 Cor. 9:12].

Paul has a right to be supported for his work. Yet, he doesn’t want to do anything that would hinder the gospel of Christ. Therefore he doesn’t receive any remuneration; he supports himself by plying his trade, which is tentmaking.
In our day there are many religious rackets. To say there are not is to be as blind as a bat. Unfortunately, there are men who make merchandise of the gospel of Christ—there is no doubt about it. However, it is God’s method that those who have a spiritual ministry are to be supported by those who benefit.


Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? [1 Cor. 9:13].

That is God’s method.


Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel [1 Cor. 9:14].

It is not wrong for the minister who has been a blessing to his people to be supported by the people. I have discovered that, when people receive a blessing, for the most part they will support the place where they get their blessing.


But I have used none of these things: neither have I written these things, that it should be so done unto me: for it were better for me to die, than that any man should make my glorying void [1 Cor. 9:15].

You see, Paul did not take a salary. He was able to say that the church in Corinth was not supporting him; he didn’t receive anything from them. Paul supported himself by tentmaking.


For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel! [1 Cor. 9:16].

I understand Paul’s feeling. To be frank with you, necessity is laid on me also. I dare not stop giving out the Word of God. Of course, I would not lose my salvation if I stopped, but I continue because I feel an inner compulsion, and also I love to teach and preach the gospel.


For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.

What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel [1 Cor. 9:17–18].

Paul did not preach the gospel for an ulterior motive and neither do I. Yet God has promised a reward. I know we will not be disappointed.

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more [1 Cor. 9:19].
He had the freedom to make himself a servant!
Now he gives this very familiar testimony of his own ministry.


And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law;

To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.

To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak:I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.

And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you [1 Cor. 9:20–23].

Paul says, “I’m doing all of this because I am out on the racetrack. I am like an athlete out there running.” Running for what? A prize.


Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain [1 Cor. 9:24].

In an athletic event, only one can come in first. But in the spiritual race all of us can win the prize if we are getting out the Word of God.


And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible [1 Cor. 9:25].

The awards that God gives won’t swell your bank account down here and remain here when you leave; they will be for your eternal enrichment.


I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air [1 Cor. 9:26].

Paul says that he is not just shadowboxing. He is not just playing at this thing. He is not playing church. This is real.


But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway [1 Cor. 9:27].

The translation “castaway” is unfortunate. The Greek word is adokimos, which means “not approved.” Paul is thinking of the judgment seat of Christ where the rewards are given. In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians he will talk about the fact that we shall all appear before the judgment seat of Christ where awards are given. Paul says that he is out on that racetrack trying to run so that he will get a reward. That is the reason he preaches the gospel as he does. Paul has liberty. This is the choice that he has made.
I think every Christian ought to work for a reward. We do not work for salvation; that is a gift given by the grace of God. My friend, if you are going to get a reward, you will have to work for it. If you are going to get a reward, then you had better get out on the racetrack and start moving.

CHAPTER10

Theme: Liberty is not license


We are still in the section concerning Christian liberty, which extends through this chapter and into the first verse of chapter 11. We are going to see another area of liberty illustrated through the nation Israel.


Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea [1 Cor. 10:1].

“Moreover, brethren” ties into the last verse of chapter 9. Paul had just been saying that he did not want to be disapproved at the judgment seat of Christ, but he wanted to receive a reward.
“I would not that ye should be ignorant.” When Paul writes that, you can be sure that the brethren were ignorant or unaware of something he is going to explain to them. The church in Corinth was a mixed church; that is, it was made up of both Jews and Gentiles. Today a Jewish Christian is somewhat unusual, but in that day a Gentile Christian was more unusual, since the first Christians were Jews.
When Paul says, “All our fathers,” he is speaking to the Jewish part of the congregation. They, along with Paul, were Israelites and shared the same history.
“Our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea” refers, of course, to the time when the people of Israel were escaping from Egyptian bondage and crossed the Red Sea.


And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;

And did all eat the same spiritual meat;

And did all drink the same spiritual drink:for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness [1 Cor. 10:2–5].

“Many of them” is in the Greek “most of them.” This shows how far a person can go and still be a believer. It reveals the wonderful liberty the Israelites had when they crossed the Red Sea. The Mosaic Law had not been given at that time; so they were not under law. They had great liberty, but they abused that liberty. Privilege is no insurance against ultimate failure. Many a rich man’s son has had to learn that. It has also been learned by many men who had certain privileges granted them in the political realm or in the business world or in the social world.
They “were under the cloud”—that is, they had guidance. They all passed safely through the sea.
They “were all baptized unto Moses.” Here we come again to that word baptized. Baptized can mean many things. I have a classical Greek lexicon which gives twenty meanings for the Greek word baptizo. Our translators never did translate the word; they merely transliterated it. They simply took the word out of the Greek and gave it an English spelling. Therefore, to try to say exactly what the writer had in mind is difficult, because the translators did not attempt to do that. They just spelled the word out. A great many folk have dogmatically narrowed down the word to one meaning.
Now baptizo means to “identify.” In fact, water baptism has that meaning, as it speaks of our identification with Christ. We are buried with Him by baptism—by the baptism of the Holy Spirit—that is what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is. He identifies us with the body of Christ—He puts us into the body as a member. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13). Paul will deal with this in chapter 12.
But here we have the statement that they were “baptized unto Moses.” How were they baptized unto Moses? Don’t try to tell me that Moses had a baptismal service at the Red Sea and baptized them, because, actually, they did not get wet at all! The record in Exodus tells us that they went through the sea on dry ground. When God dried up the Red Sea for them, He dried it up—they didn’t get wet at all. They went over on dry land. The folk who really got wet were the Egyptians. They were soaked through and through. So obviously when it says they were baptized unto Moses, he is not talking about water. Neither is it the baptism of the Holy Spirit, because it says they were baptized unto Moses. Well, it simply means that they were identified with Moses. Hebrews 11:29 says, “By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.” The children of Israel were identified with Moses. By faith they passed through the Red Sea. Whose faith was it? It wasn’t their faith. They had none. Read the story in Exodus—they wanted to go back to Egypt, and they were blaming Moses for bringing them out into that awful wilderness. It was Moses who had the faith. It was Moses who went down to the water and smote the Red Sea as God had commanded. It was Moses who led them across on dry ground. When they got to the other side, they sang the song of Moses (see Exod. 15). What a song it was! The people of Israel were identified with Moses.
All of this is a picture of our salvation. Christ went through the waters of death. And we are brought through by His death, identified with Him, and now identified with a living Savior, baptized into Christ. That is the way baptism saves us. When we trust Christ, the baptism of the Holy Spirit puts us in Christ.
Water baptism illustrates this and is very important, but it is merely ritual baptism. Real baptism is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Now the people of Israel were baptized unto Moses, and they were able to cross the Red Sea. “And did all eat the same spiritual meat”—the manna. “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ”—that is, it sets forth Christ.
“But with most of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”
Why was all of this recorded for us? Paul tells us the reason:


Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted [1 Cor. 10:6].

The first five verses give us the illustration of the liberty that these people enjoyed as a nation. Now in this very searching section we learn that these people abused their liberty. He makes an application of that for us. It happened to them for examples unto us. This was written for you and for me, and so we ought to pay close attention to it. The Israelites had this wonderful liberty, and what did they do with it?
It says that they lusted after evil things. What were those things? Well, we can turn back and see: “And the mixed multitude that was among them fell a—lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes” (Num. 11:4–6). They lusted, we are told, after evil things. What was wrong with leeks, onions, and garlic? Well, if they ate those things they wouldn’t be very desirable companions, but the point is that they lusted for that which was outside the will of God for them. This was the beginning of their defection.
Have you noticed how many times it is desire that leads to sin? It started back in the Garden of Eden. “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen. 3:6). It was the desire for something outside the will of God. What is desire, after all? Psychologists talk about inhibitions and prohibitions, and they speak of desire as the supreme thing in life. What is desire? In these instances it was to want that which was outside of the will of God.It wasn’t God’s will for them to have those things at that particular time.


Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play [1 Cor. 10:7].

An idol is anything in your life that you put in the place of God.


Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.

Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.

Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer [1 Cor. 10:8–10].

Paul lists some of the sins of the people. These people had continually murmured and complained against God. This is an illustration of those who want those things that are outside the will of God. God always has something good for His people. That was true then, and it is still true now. But they constantly wanted something that was beyond God’s will for them.


Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come [1 Cor. 10:11].

We are to learn a lesson from all this. We do have Christian liberty, but our desires are to be according to the will of God. That is so important for us to see.


Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall [1 Cor. 10:12].

It makes no difference who you are, you could fall today. It would be very easy for any one of us to blunder and stumble and fall. One can be a mature Christian, a real saint, and still fall. Therefore, you and I need to be very careful that we stay in the realm of the will of God where we are not quenching the Spirit of God in our lives.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it [1 Cor. 10:13].

A great many people feel that nobody has ever been tempted as they are tempted. My friend, no matter what temptation you experience, there have been others who have had the same kind of temptation. The encouraging thing is that God will make a way of escape for you. God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can endure.
Dr. Hutton used to say it like this: “God always makes a way of escape and sometimes the way of escape is the king’s highway and a good pair of heels.” In other words, let the Devil see your heels—run as hard as you can to get away from the temptation. One of the reasons we yield to temptation is that we are like the little boy in the pantry. His mother heard a noise because he had taken down the cookie jar. She said, “Willie, where are you?” He answered that he was in the pantry. “What are you doing there?” He said, “I’m fighting temptation.” My friend, that is not the place to fight temptation! That is the place to start running.


Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.

I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say [1 Cor. 10:14–15].

Idolatry was a temptation in Corinth. Idolatry may not be a temptation to you, but the Bible tells us that covetousness is idolatry. There is a lot of that around today.
Paul is going on to teach that fellowship at the Lord’s Table requires separation.


The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.

Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?

What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? [1 Cor. 10:16–19].

Paul’s argument here is quite logical. He says that an idol is nothing. So if you offer meat to an idol, it is nothing—the meat is not affected at all.


But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils [1 Cor. 10:20].

Paul is still talking about Christian liberty. Although the idol is nothing, behind the idol is demonism—Paul recognizes this.


Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils [1 Cor. 10:21].

That is, for some people to eat meat which had been sacrificed to idols would be idolatry. A believer would have to examine his heart very carefully.


Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he? [1 Cor. 10:22].

Paul now comes back to what he said at the very beginning of this section on Christian liberty.


All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not [1 Cor. 10:23].

Paul says that he has the freedom to do these questionable things, things on which the Bible is silent as to their being right or wrong. For example, I think Paul would say, “If I felt that I should go to the games, I would go.” I think Paul must have attended the great Olympic events which took place in his day, because many of his illustrations are taken from athletic events that were carried on in the great Colosseum and stadiums of that day. Paul says all such things are lawful for him, but all things are not expedient because of the fact that the thing he could do might hurt a weak believer. He says, “All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.” That is, they don’t “build me up in the faith.”
A young preacher once asked me, “Do you think a preacher ought to go to ball games?” He knew I didn’t go. I said this to him, “Although I always enjoyed participating in all athletic events, I’ve never been much of a spectator at any of them. I don’t have much interest in watching somebody else play football or baseball, especially when they are being paid for it. I always played for fun and enjoyed it. However, when I was in school, I read a very helpful book which pointed out that a preacher should confine his life to that which he can use in his ministry—what he sees, where he goes, what he experiences—because his total life is his ministry. Everything should be grist for his mill. In other words, a minister should take into the pulpit his entire life (he is not to have a hidden part) and be able to use all of it.” So I said to him regarding baseball, “If you can use the baseball game—and you can—there would be nothing wrong in your going. You could draw many good illustrations from a baseball game. However, it might not be expedient for you to go because it might have a bad influence on someone else.”
So Paul lays down this guideline:


Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth [1 Cor. 10:24].

The Christian has a tremendous liberty in Christ. However, we are to seek the welfare of the other man. So a Christian’s life should not be primarily directed and dictated by liberty. Liberty is limited by love. A Christian is not pinned down by legality; he is not circumscribed by strict rules. He is limited by love. He should be concerned about his influence and effect on others. That is the thought which Paul has here.


Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake:

For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof [1 Cor. 10:25–26].

The Christian can enjoy all the things of God’s creation—the beauties of it and the produce of it. The Lord has provided it.
Now Paul is going to give a very practical suggestion. He says that when you go out to eat, don’t say to your host, “This is a very lovely steak that you have here today. Where did you get it? My butcher doesn’t have meat like this to sell to the public.” Then your friend may tell you that he went to the temple to buy the meat. The best thing to do is not to ask where the meat came from.
Now Paul gives a very practical illustration:


If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake [1 Cor. 10:27].

If you are invited to the home of an unbeliever, go and eat whatever is put before you. Don’t ask any questions.


But if any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof [1 Cor. 10:28].

Now there is another principle involved, and this is an entirely new matter. Paul has advised to eat everything and ask no questions. But suppose there is someone else at the table who sees you eat the meat and says, “This meat has been offered to idols.” In that case you should not eat the meat—not because eating it is wrong, but because it is obvious it may harm the person who pointed it out to you. It is not because of your conscience but because of his conscience that you should not eat the meat. There is no rule that you should not eat the meat. But out of your love, out of your desire to help that brother whose conscience is bothered, you should not eat the meat. That is the whole point.
Let me illustrate this. Down in Georgia they have a berry that is called a scuppernong. It is similar to a grape, but it grows singly on a vine. They make wine out of it. A friend of mine told me that he went to preach in a certain church and was invited out to dinner by one of the church officers. He was handed a glass of scuppernong. He didn’t know what it was, but he tasted of it. He realized that it had an alcoholic content—he is not a super pious individual, but he put the glass down. His host said to him, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?” He said, “I think it is delicious, but I noticed that it is wine, and I feel that I as a Christian should not drink it.” Well, that created a tense moment, but he got his point across. I feel that he did the right thing.
The question would arise: did that minister have as much right to drink it as the elder did? He did—there’s no question about that. But he also had a testimony, which is the reason he did not drink it. So many Christians are harsh in their dealing with others because their motive is legality—“I don’t do this, and you shouldn’t do it.” However, if their motive were love, the approach would be altogether different. Love for the other believer should be the motive in the Christian’s conduct.


Conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other: for why is my liberty judged of another man’s conscience? [1 Cor. 10:29].

Why should I be restricted by some of these weak brethren?

For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that for which I give thanks? [1 Cor. 10:30].
Paul asks, “Isn’t it unfair to judge me because of another man’s conscience?” He answers by stating a great principle:


Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God [1 Cor. 10:31].

Paul has stated certain great principles that relate to Christian liberty. One of those principles is: “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.” Also, “all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.” Now here is another one: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” This is the test every believer should apply to his life. Not “should I do this, or should I do that,” but “can I do it for the glory of God?” Unfortunately, there are Christians who don’t even go to church for the glory of God. They go for some other reason—maybe to criticize or to gossip. With a motive like that it is better to stay at home. Whatever a believer does should be done for the glory of God. That is very important.


Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God [1 Cor. 10:32].

Here Paul divides the whole world into three groups: Jews, Gentiles, and church of God. Some of these folks have differing beliefs. An example would be the Jewish abhorrence of pork. It would certainly give offense to invite a Jewish friend for dinner and serve him ham. A believer should love other people enough so that his actions will not offend them. There are a lot of Gentiles who have peculiar notions, too. It would be impossible to please all of them, but we should try not to offend those with whom we have contact. Neither should we offend those who are of the church of God. Some young people who were rebelling against “the establishment” came to me and said they had attended a certain church and were rebuked because of the way they dressed. They asked me if I thought the members of that church were all wrong. I told them I thought that both groups were wrong. Neither acted in love. The members of the church were wrong in criticizing them before others. On the other hand, these young folk knew their clothes and hair would be an offense to the members of the church. So none of them showed love toward the other. We are told that we are not to offend either the Jews, the Gentiles, or the church of God. This includes the entire human family. These are the three divisions of the human family today, but one of these days the church of God is going to leave this earth. Then there will be only the Jews and Gentiles in the world, and God has a tremendous program which will take place at that time.


Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved [1 Cor. 10:33].

Now primarily what we do we are to do for the glory of God—“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” A Christian woman can wash dishes and sweep the floor to the glory of God. A Christian man can mow the lawn and dig a ditch for the glory of God. Regardless of what you are doing, if you cannot do it for the glory of God, you should not be doing it. As we live like this we are a testimony to the world—that those who are lost might be saved.
Friend, it is more important for us to make tracks in the world than to give out tracts. A zealous man in Memphis, Tennessee, was handing out tracts to everyone. He handed a tract to a man, but he would not accept it. He asked, “What is that?” “A tract,” was the answer. “I can’t read,” said the man, “but I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll just watch your tracks.” That is much more impressive. People read our tracks in life better than they read tracts that we hand out. It is a good thing to give out tracts, but along with them we must also make the right kind of tracks.
Now the first verse of chapter 11 belongs in this division:


Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ [1 Cor. 11:1].

This is something that very few of us can say. Well, I shouldn’t include you, but it is something that I dare not say. I want you to be a follower of Christ and a follower of Paul—but don’t follow me in everything. What a tremendous testimony Paul gives in that statement!

CHAPTER 11

Theme: Women’s dress; the Lord’s Table


We have concluded the section concerning Christian liberty, which extended from chapter 8 to the first verse of this chapter. Now Paul is dealing with other matters about which the Corinthian church had written him.
Someone is probably saying, “Do you mean to say that God is giving instructions regarding trivialities like a woman’s dress? Certainly God cannot be concerned with what a woman wears or whether a man gets a hair cut!” Well, the Bible makes it clear that God is interested in what we are wearing and how we fix our hair. God says, “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matt. 10:30). This idea that only your hairdresser knows is not true; God knows, my friend. He has a great deal to say about these and related subjects. The most intimate details of our lives are under His inspection. There is probably no single item that takes up more space in newspapers, magazines, radio time, and television time than what men and women wear. The Word of God has some things to say about that, too.

WOMEN’S DRESS


Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you [1 Cor. 11:2].


Up to this point he had said, “I praise you not,” but here Paul has an item of praise for them. He praises them because they have remembered him in prayer and in their giving, and they were practicing the ordinances he had taught them.


But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor. 11:3].

I realize full well that there are people today who like to emphasize the middle statement: “the head of the woman is the man.” But, my friend, when you put all these statements together, you don’t come up with a lopsided viewpoint. Paul is putting down another great principle here: This is authority for the sake of order, to eliminate confusion.
This principle is important in the church as well as the home. Several years ago a pastor was having trouble in his church, and I asked him what the problem was. He said it was that he had too many chiefs and not enough Indians—everyone wanted to be a leader. Today we find churches which have courses in leadership training. I’d like to know where you find that in the Bible. There are organizations which exist solely for the purpose of training young people to be public speakers. Paul says we are to “study to be quiet” (1 Thess. 4:11). I wish we could put the emphasis where the Bible puts it. We don’t need all this leadership training. We need folk who will act and live like Christians. That is the important thing.
The important word here is head. “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” The head is that portion of the body that gives the direction.
This verse does not say that the head of every Christian man is Christ. The word man is generic—it is a general item. It says the head of every man is Christ. It is the normal and correct order for Christ to be the head of every man. Until a man is mastered by Christ, he is not a normal man. Some men are mastered by drink; some are mastered by passion; most are mastered by the flesh. Every man should be mastered by Christ. Augustine said, “The heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in thee” (Confessions, Bk. 1, sec. 1). The heart of man is restless until he makes Christ the head. Men who have accomplished great things for God have done this. I think of Martin Luther and Wilberforce and Augustine who were profligate until they were mastered by Christ. I hear it said of a man today, “He is a Christian man.” Is he mastered by Christ? That is the important thing, and that is what Paul is saying.
“The head of the woman is man”—there is no article in the Greek, it is not the man. Notice it is not every woman; it is not an absolute. It refers to marriage where the woman is to respond to the man. It is normal for the woman to be subject to the man in marriage. If a woman cannot look up to a man and respect him, she ought not to follow him and surely ought not to marry him. But a real woman responds with every fiber of her being to the man she loves. He, in turn, must be the man who is willing to die for her—“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph. 5:25).
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan told about a friend of his and his wife’s who was a very brilliant woman. She had a strong personality, was an outstanding person, and was not married. He asked her one day the pointed question, “Why have you never married?” Her answer was, “I have never found a man who could master me.” So she never married. May I say that until a woman finds that man, she would make a mistake to get married. If she marries a Mr. Milquetoast, she will be in trouble from that day on.
“The head of Christ is God.” There is a great mystery here. Jesus said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), but He also said, “… for my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). In the work of redemption, He voluntarily took a lower place and was made lower than the angels. He walked a lowly path down here. We are admonished, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:5–7).
Now Paul is going to apply this principle of headship to the situation in Corinth. An unveiled woman in Corinth was a prostitute. The situation in your church or in your community may be different than it was in Corinth, but there is a principle here and it still applies today.


Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head [1 Cor. 11:4].

The rabbis of that day taught that a man was to cover his head. Paul says that they actually misinterpreted Moses and the reason for the veil. “And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished” (2 Cor. 3:13). This refers to an experience Moses had when he came down from the mount where he had communed with God. When he first came down, the skin of his face shone, but after awhile that glory began to disappear. Therefore, he covered his face so they wouldn’t discover the glory was disappearing (see Exod. 34:33–35).
Paul is saying to the men that they ought not to cover their heads. A man created in the image of God, who is in Christ by redemption, is to have his head uncovered as a symbol of dignity and of liberty. He is not to be covered when he prays or when he prophesies. When he is praying, he is speaking for man to God, making intercession. When he is prophesying, he is speaking for God to man. Whenever he is standing in these two sacred, holy positions he is to have his head uncovered.


But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven [1 Cor. 11:5].

They had a women’s liberation movement going in Corinth centuries ago, and it was going in the wrong direction. Paul says that the man should have his head uncovered but that the woman should have her head covered.
I want you to note that it says “every woman that prayeth or prophesieth,” which means that a woman can pray in public and it means she can speak in public. Folk who maintain that the Bible says a woman cannot do these things are entirely wrong. The woman has the right to do these things if God has given her that gift. Some women have the gift.
I know several women today who are outstanding Bible teachers. They can out-teach any man. One preacher told me this very candidly, “My wife is a much better Bible teacher than I am.” An officer of the church said they would much rather hear her speak than hear him speak. She had the gift of teaching.

For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered [1 Cor. 11:6].
This had a peculiar and particular application to Corinth. The unveiled woman in Corinth was a prostitute. Many of them had their heads shaved. The vestal virgins in the temple of Aphrodite who were really prostitutes had their heads shaved. The women who had their heads uncovered were the prostitutes. Apparently some of the women in the church at Corinth were saying, “All things are lawful for me, therefore, I won’t cover my head.” Paul says this should not be done because the veil is a mark of subjection, not to man, but to God. Now this had a local application; it was given to the women in Corinth. Does it apply to our day and society? Well, I have heard that a new hat is a morale builder for women. A wife said to her husband, “Every time I get down in the dumps, I go and buy a new hat.” His response was, “I have been wondering where you got those hats!” Seriously, regulations for a woman’s dress are in regard to her ministry. If she is to lead, she ought to have her head covered. Other passages will give us more information about this. “I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works” (1 Tim. 2:8–10). This states that if the woman is to lift up holy hands in the service in leading, she is not to adorn herself to draw attention to herself. Very candidly, it means that the woman is not to use sex appeal in the service of God. That is exactly what it means, my friend. She is not to use sex appeal at—all it will not win her husband to Christ either.
The Bible has more to say on this subject. “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives …. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Pet. 3:1, 3–4). God is saying that a wife cannot win her husband to Christ by sex appeal. This does not mean that she is not to be appealing to her husband, but it does mean that a woman never wins her husband to Christ by sex appeal. There are women in the Bible who had sex appeal: Jezebel, Esther, Salome. Then there are some who stand out in Scripture as being wonderful, marvelous, godly women whom God used: Sarah, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, and Mary the mother of Jesus. Then there is also something said to the husbands. “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered” (1 Pet. 3:7). Many a family today have their prayers hindered because the husband and wife are not getting along as they should.
Now Paul goes back to the principle he laid down for men in verse 4.


For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.

Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man [1 Cor. 11:7–9].

The woman’s place is to be a helpmeet to the man. She is to be the other part of him. No man is complete without a woman except where God has given special grace to a man for a special work. Listen to the next verse.


For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels [1 Cor. 11:10].

Now here is a reference to angels that I don’t understand. I am of the opinion that we are being observed by God’s created intelligences. We are on a stage in this little world, and all God’s created intelligences are watching us. They are finding out about the love of God, because they know we are not worthy of the love of God. They probably think God would have done well to have gotten rid of us because we are rebellious creatures in His universe. But He didn’t! He loves us! That display of His love is in His grace to save us. The angels probably marvel at His grace and patience with little man.


Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord [1 Cor. 11:11].

The power of the woman is to hold her man because she is a woman. The man holds his woman because he is a man. This is the marriage relationship as God ordained it. When that relationship doesn’t exist, then God’s ideal is lost.


For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God [1 Cor. 11:12].

They are inseparable. Man is not a sphere but a hemisphere; woman is not a sphere but a hemisphere. It is nonsense for either men or women to talk about liberation. The man needs the woman, and the woman needs the man. This is true liberty in the glorious relationship of marriage.


Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? [1 Cor. 11:13].

A woman ought not to call attention to herself when she is speaking for the Lord or teaching a Bible class or praying. There should be no sex appeal. Also, she needs to remember that her sex appeal is a tremendous thing which has the power to either lift a man up or drag him down.

Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? [1 Cor. 11:14].
As I write this, long hair is a fad among men. Men who let their hair grow so long that you can hardly recognize them seem to me to be expressing a lack of purpose in life. I wonder if it is a movement toward the animal world. Notice that Paul asks, “Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?” We have an example of this in the Old Testament. The Nazarite vow was an act of consecrating oneself to God. It was symbolized by long, uncut hair. This meant that a Nazarite was willing to bear shame for God’s name. Even at that time men’s long hair was considered shameful.


But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering [1 Cor. 11:15].

Now it is true that today we have liberty in Christ. The length of the hair is really not so much the issue as the motive behind it. Many men wear long hair as a sign of rebellion, and many women cut their hair as a sign of rebellion. Our moral values get turned upside down, and there is a danger of being an extremist in either direction.
Extremism leads to strange behavior like the lady who went to the psychiatrist because her family had urged her to go. The psychiatrist asked her, “What really seems to be your trouble?” She said, “They think it is strange that I like pancakes.” He answered, “There is nothing wrong in liking pancakes. I like pancakes myself.” So she said, “You do? Well, come over sometime; I have trunks filled with them!” You see, my friend, you can be an extremist in that which is a normal thing.
Now Paul says that it is not really the haircut or the style of the dress that is of utmost importance.


But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God [1 Cor. 11:16].

Paul concludes by saying that the church ought not to make rules in connection with the matter of women’s dress or men’s hair. The really important issue is the inner man. It is the old nature which needs a haircut and the robe of righteousness. My friend, if we are clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness and if our old nature is under the control of the Holy Spirit, that will take care of the outer man. The haircut and the style of clothes won’t make much difference. Paul is saying that he is not giving a rule to the churches. He just states what is best in his opinion. We should remember that in all our Christian liberty we are to think of others and of our testimony to others. We should be guided by the principles he has laid down: to glorify God, and not to offend others.

THE LORD’S SUPPER


Now we move to a new topic, and it seems we go from one extreme to the other—from hair and dress to the, Lord’s Supper. This is probably the most sacred part of our relationship to God. I am confident that the Lord’s Supper is something that is greatly misunderstood in our churches. As a result, it is almost blasphemy the way it is observed in some places. Paul is going to say here that God judges us in the way that we observe the Lord’s Supper. Actually, among the Corinthians some were sick and some had died because of the way they observed it. They did not discern the body of Christ. I wonder whether we discern the body of Christ today. Most, of us observe the method that is used. We note every detail of the ritual, but do we really discern the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper?
The Lord’s Supper is the highest expression and the holiest exercise of Christian worship. In Corinth it had dropped to such a low secular level that they were practically blaspheming it. I would have included this section in the “spiritual” division of this epistle except for the fact that Paul is dealing with a very bad situation in Corinth. Therefore, I place it in the “carnal” division of the epistle.
Three of the four Gospels record the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and it is repeated in this epistle. It is interesting that nowhere are we commanded to remember the Lord’s birthday, but we are requested and commanded that those who are His own should remember His deathday.
Paul attached the utmost importance to the Lord’s Supper. In verse 23 he says, “For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread.” Paul received this by direct revelation: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). Paul received a direct revelation of the gospel and a direct revelation of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord gave him special instructions concerning it—remember that Paul was not in the Upper Room at the institution of the Lord’s Supper.
I admit that it is rather difficult to see the connection of what Paul says to the Corinthian church with our celebration of the Lord’s Supper. There is no exact parallel, because the situations are not similar. In that day the Lord’s Supper was preceded by a social meal. It was probably celebrated in the homes and celebrated daily. Acts tells us, “And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved” (Acts 2:46–47).
Aristides, an Athenian philosopher who lived in the early part of the second century, describes the way the Christians of his day lived: “Every morning and all hours and on the account of the goodness of God towards them they praise and laud Him…. And if any righteous person of their number passes away from the world they rejoice and give thanks to God…. If a child chance to die in its infancy they praise God mightily, as for one who has passed through this world without sin.” That is the statement from one who was not a member of the church but observed it from the outside in the second century.
The church in Corinth followed the procedure of having a meal in connection with the Lord’s Supper. After all, the Passover was that kind of celebration in the Upper Room. After our Lord had celebrated the Passover supper, He took bread and broke it. On the dying embers of a fading feast, He did something new. Out of the ashes of that dead feast, He erected a new monument, not of marble or bronze, but of simple elements of food.
Today we have a custom among churches, clubs, fraternities, banks, and insurance companies of getting together and having a meal and a time of fellowship together. A great many folk criticize church banquets, and I have too, when they center only on the physical man. In the early church they had these dinners for fellowship, and they were called an agape or “love feast.” This was a part of the fellowship of the church, the koinonia. In that day the social gathering led right into the Lord’s Supper. It was kept separate, but the agape always preceded the Eucharist. Later on these feasts were separated, and they are not practiced like that today. We do not have a “love feast” or dinner which precedes the Lord’s Supper.
Because of the separation, we do not duplicate the bad situation that prevailed in the Corinthian church. However, there are certain lessons here for us.


Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse [1 Cor. 11:17].

The word declare is actually a command, and unto you in the Authorized Version is in italics, which means it is not in the original text. It should be “Now in this I command, I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse.” In other words, they should have come together for a great spiritual blessing, but it didn’t amount to that.


For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it [1 Cor. 11:18].

He is not talking about an edifice, a building. He is talking about when the believers come together—that is the true church. Today when we speak of a church, we always identify a building as the church. We think of the Baptist church, the Methodist church, the Presbyterian church, or the independent church down on the corner. The chances are that those buildings are closed and nobody is there. The building is not the church—it is just a building. The church is the people. It is difficult for us to think in a context like that.
When the Corinthian believers came together, the divisive or party spirit that we saw in chapter 1 was carried over into the Lord’s Supper. That division was there.


For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you [1 Cor. 11:19].

This helps to explain the cults and “isms” such as we have in Southern California. Why does God permit them? Let me give you an illustration. Have you ever noticed when a woman is cooking something and there is an accumulation on the top that she skims it off? Well, that is what God does. To tell the truth, I think the churches are filled with unbelievers today. A large percentage of the people in the churches are not saved at all. They are just members of a church. The Lord skims them off. How does He do that? Well, they go off into the cults and the “isms.” That is what Paul is saying here: “There must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” Heresy comes along in these cults or “isms,” and a lot of people go out of the churches and flock to them. The Lord is skimming them off so that those who are genuine may be revealed.


When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper [1 Cor. 11:20].

The “this,” which is in italics in the Authorized Version, is not in the original. He is saying, “When ye come together into one place, it is not possible to eat the Lord’s Supper.” It is impossible for them to celebrate the Lord’s Supper because of the way that they conducted the feast which preceded it. Under such circumstances they couldn’t celebrate the Lord’s Supper.


For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken [1 Cor. 11:21].

What a comment that is! Some poor fellow would come to the dinner, and he couldn’t even bring a covered dish of scalloped potatoes. He was that poor. And he was hungry. Next to him would sit a rich fellow who had fried chicken and ice cream, and he wouldn’t pass one bit of food to the poor fellow who was hungry. The fellowship was broken. There could not be fellowship when there was a situation like that.
And then there was something else.


What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not [1 Cor. 11:22].

If they were not going to share in true fellowship, they should have eaten at home. What they were doing was fracturing and rupturing the church. And some were actually getting drunk during this agape love feast. They were in no condition to remember the death of Christ at all. It would all be fuzzy and hazy to them. Paul says again, “Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.”

THE REVELATION TO PAUL


For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread [1 Cor. 11:23].


Sometimes people say they want to celebrate the Lord’s Supper exactly as the Lord did—then they have it at an eleven o’clock morning service. If you want to have it at the time the Lord had it, it must be at night. They went in at night to eat the Passover supper, and it was at that supper that the Lord instituted the Lord’s Supper.
It was the very same night in which He wa betrayed. At that supper He took bread.


And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me [1 Cor. 11:24].

Paul wasn’t present in the Upper Room. He got this as a direct revelation from the Lord. It was the night when the forces of hell met to destroy our Savior. I think the simplicity and the sublimity and the sanity of this supper is tremendous.
Notice that it says, “when he had given thanks.” He gave thanks that night while the shadow of the cross hung over the Upper Room. Sin was knocking at the door of the Upper Room, demanding its pound of flesh. And He gave thanks. He gave thanks to God.
Then, “he brake it.” There has always been a difference of opinion among believers, on that. Do you break the bread, or do you serve it as it is? The Roman Catholics break it, the Lutherans do not, and most Protestant churches do not.
In several churches in which I served I instituted an evening communion, because the Lord instituted the Lord’s Supper at night. I also tried something else. I asked the one who served the bread to the congregation to take a piece and break it before them. That spoke of the broken body of our Lord.
The breaking of the bread also indicates that this is something that is to be shared. Bengal made this statement: “The very mention of the breaking involves distribution, and rebukes the Corinthian plan of every man his own.”

After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me [1 Cor. 11:25].
The bread speaks of His broken body; the cup speaks of the New Covenant. Have you noticed that it is called the cup? (It is also called the fruit of the vine in some instances, but it is never called wine). Have I heard that argued! “Should we have fermented or unfermented wine for the Lord’s Supper?” That is baby talk to ask questions like that. My friend, we can know it was unfermented. This is Passover, the time of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Do you think that they had unleavened bread and leavened grape juice (wine is leavened grape juice)? The whole business was unleavened—it had to be at the Passover feast. But the interesting thing is that here Jesus calls it the cup. His body was the cup that held the blood. He was born to die and to shed that blood. Again and again the apostles remind us that we have forgiveness of sins because of the blood, that He has extended mercy to us because of the blood. He did not open the back door of heaven and slip us in under cover of darkness. He brings us in the front door as sons because the penalty of sin was paid when the demands of a holy God were met. Let’s not forget that, my beloved, in this day when the notion is that God can shut His eyes to sin and do nothing about it. He has done something about it. This is the cup; it holds the blood of the New Covenant.


For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come [1 Cor. 11:26].

Paul here adds something new. In 1 Corinthians he is always opening up a door or raising a shade, letting us see something new. Here it is “till he come.” When we observe the Lord’s Supper, that table looks in three different directions. (1) It is a commemoration. He repeats, “This do … in remembrance of me.” This table looks back over nineteen hundred years to His death upon the cross. He says, “Don’t forget that. It is important.” That is to the past. (2) This table is a communion (sometimes we call it a communion service). It speaks of the present, of the fact that today there is a living Christ, my beloved. (3) It is a commitment. It looks to the future—that He is coming again. This table won’t last forever; it is temporary. After the service it is removed, and we may not celebrate it again because we just do it until He comes. It speaks of an absent Lord who is coming back. It looks to the future.
The Lord Jesus Christ took these frail elements—bread and grape juice, which will spoil in a few days, the weakest things in the world—and He raised a monument. It’s not of marble, bronze, silver, or gold; it is bread and juice—that’s all. But it speaks of Him, and it tells me that I am responsible for His death.


Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.

For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body [1 Cor. 11:27–29].

What does he mean to “discern” the Lord’s body? Looking back in church history you will find that the churches had a great problem in determining the meaning of this. What does it mean to discern the Lord’s body? The answer of the Roman Catholic church is that transubstantiation takes place, that when the priest officiates at the altar, the bread actually becomes the body of Christ, also that the juice actually becomes the blood of Christ. If this were true, to eat it would be cannibalism. (Thank the Lord, it does not change; it is still bread and juice). But they were wrestling with the problem. How do you discern the Lord’s body in this? In the Lutheran church (Martin Luther didn’t want to come too far, as he had been a Roman Catholic priest), it is consubstantiation. That is, it is in, by, with, through, and under the bread that you get the body of Christ. It is not the body, but it is the body. You can figure that one out—I can’t. Then Zwingli, the Swiss Reformation leader, came all the way. He said it was just a symbol. And the average Protestant today thinks that is all it is, a symbol. I disagree with that explanation as much as I do with the other two. It is more than a symbol.
Follow me now to the Emmaus road, and I think we shall find there recorded in Luke’s gospel, chapter 24, what it means to discern Christ’s body and His death.
Two of Jesus’ disciples, two believers, are walking home after having witnessed the terrible Crucifixion in Jerusalem and the events that followed it. Are they down in the dumps! As they walk along discussing these things, our resurrected Lord joins them and asks what they are talking about that makes them so sad. Thinking Him to be a stranger, they tell Him about Jesus’ being condemned to death and crucified and about the report of the women who went to the tomb. “And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. Then he [Christ] said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.” He acted as if He were going through the town without stopping. “But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.” It was dangerous to walk those highways at night.
“And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them ….” A few days before He had eaten the Passover with His own, now these are two other disciples, and here is the first time after His resurrection He is observing the Lord’s Supper.“And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.” Wasn’t that wonderful to have Him present for the meal! In the meal He takes the bread, He breaks it, He blesses it, He gives it to them. “And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us …” (Luke 24:24–32). He had a meal with them. Then what did He do? He revealed Himself. That was the Lord’s Supper.
Oh, friend, when you observe the Lord’s Supper, He is present. Yes, He is! This is not just a symbol. It means you must discern the body of Christ. You have bread in your mouth, but you have Christ in your heart. May God help us to so come to the table that Jesus Christ will be a reality to us. God forgive us for making it a dead, formal ritual!


For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep [1 Cor. 11:30].

They suffered sickness and death. Why? Because they had participated in the Lord’s Supper unworthily—that is, in an unworthy manner.


For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.

But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world [1 Cor. 11:31–32].

This is talking about believers. We can judge ourselves when we are wrong. If we don’t, He will judge us. When we are judged of the Lord, we are chastened so that we shall not be condemned with the world. He is going to judge the world in the future. Therefore He has to deal with His own now.


Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another.

And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come [1 Cor. 11:33–34].

There were other things wrong in the Corinthian church, but Paul is not going to write about them now. He says that he will straighten out those things when he gets there.

CHAPTER 12

Theme: Endowment of gifts

The first section of 1 Corinthians had to do with carnalities, as we have seen. Chapter 12 begins a new section which deals with spiritualities. And the first three chapters concern spiritual gifts: chapter 12, the endowment of gifts; chapter 13, the energy of gifts; chapter 14, the exercise of gifts.

GIFTS ARE GIVEN TO MAINTAIN UNITY IN DIVERSITY


Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant [1 Cor. 12:1].

Notice that in the text of your Bible the word gifts is in italics, which means that word is not in the original. It was added for the sake of clarity; but, very frankly, I don’t think adding the word clarified anything. Actually, it has added confusion. In The Revised Standard Versionit is spiritual gifts; in The New English Bible it is gifts of the Spirit; in The Berkeley Translation it is spiritual endowments. The Scofield Reference Bible has a good footnote about this.
The Greek word is pneumatika, which literally means “spiritualities.” It is in contrast to carnalities. One does not need to add the word “gifts.” Back in the third chapter Paul was discussing the divisions among the Corinthian believers, and he wrote, “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ” (1 Cor. 3:1). That first section is about carnalities, because their questions were about carnalities and the things that carnal Christians would be interested in. The carnalities had to do with their divisions, their wrangling about different leaders, about adultery, about going to court against a brother, the sex problem, women’s dress and men’s haircuts, the love feast, gluttony and drunkenness at the Lord’s Supper. That is all carnality, and we can find the same things in the church today. The section on carnalities was corrective.
Now we come to the section on spiritualities, and this is constructive. Paul was glad to change the subject; I think he heaved a sigh of relief when he got here to chapter 12. He was willing to discuss the other problems with them, but he really wanted to talk to them about the spiritualities.
The modern church needs to change the same old subjects which are discussed. In a very sophisticated manner Christian educators say that we should tell our young people about sex. Friend, we had better tell them about spiritual things. There are so many programs in the churches that the young people never get anywhere near the Bible. They have conferences on whatever carnality is the popular issue or the fad for the moment. All of that is a sign of carnality.
In this section Paul will touch on three subjects: the unifying Spirit, the law of love, and the triumph the believer has in the Resurrection. The gifts of the Spirit just happen to be one of the spiritualities, by the way.


Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led [1 Cor. 12:2].

The idols were voiceless, dumb idols. Remember that previously Paul said the idols are “nothings.” That is why the meat offered to the idols was not contaminated. The idols were nothing. Unfortunately, everyone doesn’t quite understand that. Back in Psalm 115:5 the psalmist says, “They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not.” This is what Habakkuk wrote: “What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?” (Hab. 2:18).
The very interesting thing is that he is going to talk about the gifts that the living God gives to believers. So first he reminds them how they formerly were carried away unto these dumb idols.


Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost [1 Cor. 12:3].

Here is a great truth, an absolute verity of the Christian life: the lordship of Jesus Christ. “No man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed.” You cannot belittle Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God. It won’t work. Also, “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy [Spirit] Ghost.” Oh, of course we can pronounce the word Lord. But remember what the Lord Jesus said: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:21–23). Why will that be? Because their profession is on the surface. The Lord Jesus was not their Lord.
Making Jesus Lord is a conviction of the soul. What is the central truth of the Christian faith? There are those who say it is the cross of Christ, but I rather disagree with that. Although we come to the Cross to be saved, we do not stay at the Cross. We become united to the living Christ. That is the thing which is all important.
Listen to the way Simon Peter concluded his message on the Day of Pentecost: “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). He is the Lord. He is sovereign. His sovereignty is the important thing in the Christian life.
The Holy Spirit commands the soul’s obedience and allegiance to Jesus. The true church is made up of those who have gathered around that truth as interpreted by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit interprets the lordship of Jesus to my life. Remember the great question which Jesus asked, “… whom say ye that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). Jesus is still asking that same question. You may be of any occupation, any color, any status in life—whoever you are, wherever you are, however you are—Jesus asks you, “Whom say ye that I am?” He asked His disciples that question, and Simon Peter spoke for the group. He said, “… Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). He is the Anointed One. He is the King. He is the Lord. No man is fit to serve Christ’s church unless he has been mastered by Jesus Christ. We have seen that earlier in this epistle. Now Paul emphasizes that again.
The unifying work of the Holy Spirit today is to reveal the lordship of Jesus to all believers. Within this unity there is diversity of gifts.


Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit [1 Cor. 12:4].

There is a distribution of gifts. In order to have the unity, He gives different gifts to different individuals. The Greek word for “gifts” is charisma. Some people try to make this word apply to tongues, and they speak of the charismatic movement. This reveals their ignorance, as the word refers to all the gifts which the Holy Spirit gives to the believers in the church.


And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord [1 Cor. 12:5].

That is, there are diversities of ministrations, but the same Lord—the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn’t make any difference which gift you may have. It is the Lord Jesus who is using that gift, and He is using it for His glory.


And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all [1 Cor. 12:6].

There are diversities of operations—that is, of the energy. But it is the same God who works in all, and He is the One who works in the believer.
This reminds us that there is but one God—but He is a Trinity. The Trinity works together; there is a unity. But there is a diversity in unity. Notice this: The Holy Spirit bestows the gifts; the Lord Jesus Christ administers the gifts—they are under His direction; the Father God supplies the power, and He energizes the gifts. All of this is for the one purpose of exalting and glorifying the lordship of Jesus Christ.


But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal [1 Cor. 12:7].

First of all, let’s define a gift. What is a gift of the Spirit? It is a capacity for service. It is a function. This is Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer’s definition: “A gift in the spiritual sense means the Holy Spirit doing a particular service through the believer and using the believer to do it.” To this I would like to add that it must be done in the power of the Spirit of God. To make this personal: I am nothing, I have nothing, I am of no use to God or man. That is not a pious platitude; it is a fact. But He gave me a gift, and I’m to exercise that gift. That is, I believe, the only way the Spirit of God will manifest Himself in my life.
“The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.” “Manifestation of the Spirit”—that is what a gift is. A gift is the manifestation of the Spirit.
This does not necessarily mean the exercise of a natural gift. For example, a woman has a gift of singing. She has a marvelous voice. But if she does not sing in the power of the Holy Spirit, God can’t use it—and He doesn’t use it. This is the reason that music in the average contemporary church has sunk to such a low level. Musicians think that all they need is talent and training. They think if they have that, they have it made, and the Lord can’t get along without them. The fact of the matter is that He can get along better without them. I have been in many, many places across the country and have ministered in many pulpits. I have learned much through the years, and I can tell when a musician is adding to the service or detracting from it. I have had the experience of hearing a solo sung immediately before the message that absolutely ruined the message before I even stood to my feet. I have felt like getting up, pronouncing the benediction, and going home. Now let me make it very clear that I believe the Holy Spirit can use the natural ability of a believer if the believer will let Him do it. But natural talent alone is nothing unless it is under the control of the Holy Spirit.
There are those who have no particular natural talent. They say that since they can’t sing in the choir or teach in the Sunday school, there is nothing for them to do but to sit in the pew. That is one of the most tragic mistakes made in the church.
This verse tells us that every believer has a gift. Every believer! “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.”
The word for “man” in the Greek is anthropoµs, which is a generic term and actually means man or woman, boy or girl. It doesn’t make any difference who you are. If you are a child of God, you have a gift. You have been put into the body of believers as a member of the body, and you are to function as a member of the body of Christ.
“The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.” What is the purpose of the gift? It is to build up the church, the body of believers. It is not to be exercised selfishly, but is to give spiritual help to other believers.


For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit [1 Cor. 12:8].

“Wisdom” means insight into truth. I do not think everyone can come to an understanding of the Bible, which is the reason we need teachers, and the Spirit of God has given us teachers. “Wisdom” is insight into the truth of the Word of God. “Knowledge” means to investigate or to dig into the truth. Many people simply do not have the time to dig into the Word of God, to dig out the nuggets. One man who supports our radio program very generously says, “I’m just paying for the nuggets that you deliver to me.” As a businessman and executive he does not have hours and hours to study. I don’t think God is asking him to do that. He supports the program, and I do the digging for him. I think that is my gift. So he and I are working together as partners, each exercising his own gift. This is very practical.


To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit [1 Cor. 12:9].

Faith, we are told in the Scriptures, is the substance of things hoped for. That is a gift. Some people have the gift of faith.
I have a combination of Scottish and German blood in me. When you get that combination, it’s bad. I have pessimist blood in me, and I look at everything from that point of view. In every church in which I served, God gave me several people who had the gift of faith. Many a time an officer has come and put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Look, preacher, this thing is going to come through just right.” And you know, it did. He had the faith; I didn’t. Faith is a gift of the Spirit.
“To another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit.” That means that the sick were healed by the laying on of hands. I believe this was a gift given to the apostles and to men in the early church. I don’t think that gift is needed today. We should take our case directly to the Great Physician. We don’t need to go through a man or woman down here and ask them to pray for us or lay their hands on us. Take your case directly to Him.
Remember that the centurion came to Jesus and asked Him to heal his servant. He didn’t ask Jesus to lay hands on his servant. He simply asked Jesus to say the word and his servant would be healed. He had faith, such faith that Jesus marveled at him and said, “… I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel” (Luke 7:9). So take your case directly to the Great Physician. It reveals a lack of faith in Him to go to a so-called healer.
I believe that the Holy Spirit gives certain gifts that are peculiar for specific ages. No one today has the same gift that Martin Luther had in his day. I think the Spirit of God gives gifts to the body of Christ so that it might function in the age in which it finds itself in order that the whole body might profit from it.


To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues [1 Cor. 12:10].

“The working of miracles” is to do supernatural things. There were miracles in the apostolic age, but today we are seeing greater things. When Jesus was here and He spoke a word to a person—like the woman at the well or to Nicodemus—and that person was converted, I don’t marvel at that. But when I speak the Word or you speak the Word and somebody is saved, that is a greater work.
To “prophesy” means to declare the will of Christ. That is, to prophesy is to preach the Word of God. We need people today who are willing to do that. We need people who will speak the Word of God and then trust God to use that Word through His Spirit.
The “discerning of spirits” means the ability to distinguish between the false and the true.I am convinced that I do not have that gift at all. I have been deceived probably more than any preacher ever has been deceived. I have trusted men—certain preachers and certain church officers—and thought they were genuine; yet they have let me down horribly. I have been deceived by liars and dishonest folk whom I thought to be wonderful people. On the other hand, you find some people who have discerning of spirits. My wife has been a great help to me in this connection. She tells me, “Now you be careful there, watch out for that individual,” or, “I think this one is a very wonderful person.” She is generally right, and I am generally wrong. She has the discerning of spirits.
Another gift is “kinds of tongues” (the word divers is not in the original). Are these unknown tongues? No, you do not find unknown tongues in Scripture. These are known languages. There are still many, many languages into which the Bible has not been translated. Instead of wasting time trying to invent an unknown language, let’s get the gospel translated into these known languages that don’t have it yet. Some folk have the gift of translating.


But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will [1 Cor. 12:11].

The Holy Spirit is sovereign in all this. However, we do have the right to pray for the best gifts, which is what Paul is going to tell these Corinthians. They were carnal Christians, living on a very low spiritual level. They were fascinated by the tongues movement. That is why Paul is discussing it in this epistle. He was trying to correct the things that were wrong in the Corinthian church, and there were many things wrong. He is showing them that there are many gifts and that the Holy Spirit distributes to each one individually as He wills.

MEMBERS OF THE HUMAN BODY COMPARED TO GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT


For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ [1 Cor. 12:12].


In the consideration of this passage let us drop down to include two other verses: “But now are they many members, yet but one body” (v. 20) and “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (v. 27). Paul is using a comparison to the human body. As one body has many members performing different functions, so the members of the church need to perform different functions. The human body has many members, hundreds, even thousands of members. In the church, the body of Christ, there are many gifts, hundreds, probably thousands of gifts.
On a hunting trip I stepped off a cliff and hurt my foot. When I went to the doctor, I asked him how many bones were in the foot. He told me there were twenty-seven. I said, “I think I hurt all twenty-seven of them!” “No,” he said, “you hurt only one.” Now I tell you, I may have hurt only one of them, but my whole foot was painful. When one member suffers, they all suffer.
The body is composed of many members.There are the bones and muscles, the glands and the organs, the nerves and the blood vessels. On one occasion, after I had spoken at a baccalaureate service in a prep school in Atlanta, Georgia, I went to a doctor’s home for dinner. He asked me if I knew which was the most important part of my body while I had been speaking. I guessed it was my tongue.“No,” he said, “the most important part of your body today was a member that no one was conscious of. It was your big toe. If you didn’t have a couple of big toes, you wouldn’t have been able to stand up there at all.”
I have thought a great deal about that. Suppose when I would go somewhere to preach, my big toe would rebel and say, “Look here, I refuse to go. I’ve been going with you for years and you have never called attention, to me. People see your lips and tongue and your face, but they don’t ever see me. Why don’t you ever take off your shoe and sock and let them get a look at me sometime?” Well, now, I don’t think folk would be interested in seeing my big toe—it is not very attractive. In fact, it is unattractive, yet it is an important part of my body.
There are many members in the body of Christ. Some of them we don’t ever see. Some of the most important members in churches where I have served have been men and women whom the church knew nothing about. They weren’t the officers or the Sunday school teachers or the soloist or the preacher. They were quiet, unobtrusive folk who prayed and who exercised their gift of faith.
Now how does a person get into this body of believers?


For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit [1 Cor. 12:13].

This is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who puts us into the body of believers and who gives a gift to each particular member. We are to function in that body, and we are to use that gift. It may be that we are the “big toes” with an unseen but important ministry. We each have a gift, and we are each to function.

For the body is not one member, but many.

If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? [1 Cor. 12:14–17].

Suppose there would be a return of the gift of tongues such as there was in the apostolic times. It still would be true that not everyone would speak in tongues. The analogy is to our bodies. Our bodies are not all tongue. (I have met a few people who seemed to be all tongue, but they are exceptions!) The Holy Spirit is not going to give the same gift to every person. Like the human body, there need to be eyes and ears and feet and hands. Different people are given different gifts by the Spirit of God so that the body of Christ can function in all its necessary capacities.


But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him [1 Cor. 12:18].

God is the One who sovereignty gives the gifts, and He gives them as it pleases Him. He is the One to be pleased, you see. These gifts are in the body so that the body can function.
A man in one of my congregations had an unusual gift. He was not an usher, but he would stand in the back of the church and if there was any kind of disruption or commotion in the service, he would take care of it. If a baby was crying in the church, one of the ushers might ask the mother to leave and antagonize her by doing so. But this man had a gift. He would go to the mother and play with the baby a few minutes and then say, “By the way, we have a nursery here. Would you like me to take the baby down there or show you where the nursery is?” The mothers always responded. He just had a way of handling people. As I told him, he had a rare gift and one that is needed in the church.
You may be surprised that something like that is a gift. Of course, it is a gift, and so is cooking or baking or sewing.
We can get some idea about gifts from incidents in the Bible. Ananias and Sapphira had gifts, but they had not submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and their gifts were not functioning for the Lord. So they fell down dead before Simon Peter. They couldn’t exist in the early church. They had gifts, but they were not exercising them as they should.
There was a woman by the name of Dorcas who had a gift of sewing, and she used that gift under the lordship of Christ. She exercised it in the will of God. When she died, Simon Peter went to Joppa and the widows had a regular fashion show as they showed Peter the dresses that Dorcas had made. The reason they wore them was that these were all that those poor women had to wear. Dorcas and her gift were important in the early church, so much so that Peter raised her from the dead. She had a gift that was still needed.
Simon Peter had a gift. He was the great preacher on the Day of Pentecost. God used him mightily. When God no longer needed his gift, he died—he was not raised from the dead.
My friend, the Spirit of God is sovereign in all this. He is the One who determines what is important and what is not important. If God has called you to bake a cake or to sew a dress, then do it. That is a gift. The Holy Spirit wants us to use our gifts and to bring them under the lordship of Jesus Christ.


And if they were all one member, where were the body?

But now are they many members, yet but one body.

And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary [1 Cor. 12:19–22].

You and I need each other, and the Lord wants to use all of us.


And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.

For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked:
That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another [1 Cor. 12:23–25].
You have seen some little, underdeveloped boy taking exercises and lifting weights. He is trying to develop some muscles and trying to develop some strength. Just so, God pays attention to the body of believers so that the small gifts are developed. I think there are many gifts in the church which need to be developed today.
Perhaps you feel that you are not doing anything for the Lord. One of the most thrilling things in the world, especially if you are a young person, is to find out what God wants you to do and where He wants you to go. What a thrill, what an experience, what an adventure to find out what gift God has given you!
Paul goes on to say that this should all be done so that there is no schism in the body. The members should all have the same care one for another.


And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it [1 Cor. 12:26].

My friend, there is no place for jealousy in the church—we all are members of the same body. If one is honored, me all receive that honor. And when one member is suffering, we all suffer with him.


Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.

And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of hearings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues [1 Cor. 12:27–28].

What about the gift of “helps”? Oh, what a wonderful gift that is! If you have it, I hope you are exercising it.


Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles?

Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? [1 Cor. 12:29–30].

Some of these gifts have disappeared. They are not in the church because they are not needed in the church today. There are no longer apostles in the church, nor are there prophets—in the sense of being able to foretell future events.
Paul also makes it very clear that all people do not have all the gifts. Are all apostles? The obvious answer is, “No.” Do all work miracles, or do all have the gift of healing, or do all speak with tongues? The answer is, “No, they do not.”


But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way [1 Cor. 12:31].

Although the Holy Spirit is sovereign in bestowing gifts, we have the right to ask God for the gift we want. He says we are to “covetearnestly the best gifts.”
Not having been brought up in a Christian: home, I had no Christian training at all. When I went away to seminary, I didn’t even know the books of the Bible.I had graduated from college where the emphasis was placed on the intellectual and the philosophical, and I was trying to be that kind of preacher. Then I heard Dr. Harry Ironside speak. He explained Scripture in a simple manner. And I heard him make the statement, “Put the cookies on the bottom shelf so the kiddies can get them.” And I remembered that my Lord had said “Feed my sheep” (see John 21:16). He hadn’t said, “Feed my giraffes.” So I went to God and prayed, “Lord, I want to be that kind of preacher.”
Later, I substituted for Dr.Ironside a Dallas Theological Seminary, and when he passed on, the seminary’s president, Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, called me on the phone He asked, “Would you take Dr. Ironside’s lectures here at the seminary?” I could hardly answer him clearly, and I almost rudely hung up the phone. I dropped to my knees, and confess that I wept as I thanked God. I said “Lord I prayed that You would let me teach like Dr. Ironside, and You have answered my prayer!” I coveted earnestly the best gift, and He answered my prayer. Although I am no Dr. Ironside, how I thrill today at the experience and the privilege of teaching the Word of God.
My friend, you have the right to ask God for thebest gift. Several folk have written this to me: “I certainly hope you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Well, for your information, I have received it, not as an experience or something I received after I was saved, but the Holy Spirit has put me into this body of believers, which is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Also these folk say, “We hope that ye will speak in tongues.” Well, my prayer is that I can speak in the English language a little better. Why? For the simple reason that the gift God gives us is for the profit—the wealth—of the church. Regardless of the gift God gives to you, the purpose of it is to be helpful to other believers, other members of the body.

CHAPTER 13

Theme: Love—the energy of the gifts


This chapter is properly called the love chapter of the Bible. Many men have attempted to give an exposition of it. Frankly, I have preached on it only once or twice in my ministry. Although I have taught it whenever I have come to it in a program of going through the Bible on radio or at any of the churches I have served, candidly, it is a passage that passes beyond my comprehension and capability. In 1884 Henry Drummond wrote a very brilliant essay entitled, The Greatest Thing in the World. It was put into my hands very early in my Christian life. It is a great little book on this thirteenth chapter.
The word charity, which is used throughout this chapter, should be love. The Vulgate, which is the Latin translation, and Wycliffe’s English translation used the word charity, and this word was carried over into the King James Version. The Greek word is agape, which is properly translated love.
You will not find a definition of love in this chapter. Sometimes definitions are destructive. To try to define love would actually be a very serious violation of this chapter. When you try to define a rose, you can read the description of a rose that botany gives you, but that definition doesn’t picture a rose like I know a rose to be. Or have you ever had anyone describe a sunset for you? I remember one evening at the Island of Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands standing on the deck of a little boat and seeing the moon come up. It was such a thrill that it made the goose pimples come up all over me. I wish I could picture it for you, but I cannot. This chapter gives to us a display of love, not a definition.
There are three words in the Greek which are all translated by our one word love. There is the word eros. That is the word for passion, the word used for lust. It is used of Aphrodite and Eros, or Venus and Cupid as we more commonly know them. Sex would be our word for it today. This word does not occur in the New Testament at all.
Then there is the word phileoµ which means “affection.” We find that root in our words Philadelphia and philanthropist. It means a love of man, a love of a brother. It means human love at its highest, a noble love.
The word agapaoµ is the highest word for love in the New Testament and means “divine love.” It is more than love in the emotion; it is love in the will. It is love that chooses its object. It is a definition of God, for God is love. Now I am going to give you an outline of the chapter. Again, this seems like a violation of the chapter, but the mechanics will help us understand it.

The preeminence of love—its value (vv. 1–3)
The prerogative of love—its virtue (vv. 4–7)
The permanence of love—its victory (vv. 8–13)

Remember how this chapter follows the thought in chapter 12, which was the endowment of gifts. Chapter 13 tells of the energy of the gifts. All gifts of the Spirit are to be exercised in love.

PREEMINENCE OF LOVE—ITS VALUE


Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal [1 Cor. 13:1].


I am sure the tongues of angels means eloquence. I have never heard an angel speak, but I think Paul had heard them.
The most marvelous eloquence without love is nothing in the world but a noisy bell. Dr. Scroggie says it like this: “Language without love is noise without melody.” McGee says it like this: “Chatter without charity is sound without soul.” You can sing like a seraph, but without love it is nothing but the hiss of hell. Love gives meaning and depth and reality, and it makes eloquence meaningful.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing [1 Cor. 13:2].
The first verse was speaking of love as it comes from the heart. This is from the mind, love as an act of the intellect. Knowledge alone is not sufficient. Love must be added to that knowledge. Understanding alone is not enough. Love must be added to that understanding. I feel this is the sad plight of Bible-believing churches in our day. There is a knowledge of the Bible and an understanding of the truths of the Bible but a lack of love. How terrible to find churches filled with gossip, bitterness, and hatred! Along with knowledge there must be love.


And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing [1 Cor. 13:3].

This love is an act of the will. Love involves the heart (v. 1), the mind (v. 2), and the will (v. 3). Love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Although we are to covet earnestly the best gifts, they are to be exercised in love—and only the Spirit of God can do that.
Look at it this way: Write down a string of zeros—eloquence alone is zero, prophecy alone is zero, knowledge alone is zero, faith alone is zero, sacrifice alone is zero, martyrdom alone is zero. Six zeros still add up to nothing. But you put the numeral I to the left of that string of zeros, and every zero amounts to something. And, friend, love is the thing that needs to be added to every gift of the Spirit. Without love your gift is worthless.

PREROGATIVE OF LOVE—ITS VIRTUE


Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up [1 Cor. 13:4].


“Love suffers long,” which means it is patient and kind. Love is impossible without kindness. Love without kindness is like springtime without flowers, like fire without heat. Remember how Paul admonished, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). This is the positive side. Now notice the negative side.
“Love envieth not.” Love does not envy, which means that love is content with its lot. We all know that life is filled with inequality. Some men are rich, and I hear Christians ask, “Why did God bless that man with so much wealth and not give me some?” Love recognizes that there are inequalities, and love is satisfied with its lot. Remember that the very first murder, when Cain slew Abel, was prompted by envy.
We do well to ponder the example of John the Baptist who showed no envy when the ministry of Jesus was growing in popularity with the people. John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). When we consider that we each have a different lot in life and each have a different ministry for the Lord, we should consider the words of our Lord Himself when He talked to Peter: “… If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me” (John 21:22). Bacon said that envy “is a vile affection and it’s most depraved of any thing.”
An example of a man who loved another man without envy is Jonathan. Although he was the crown prince, he did not envy David even though he knew that David would occupy the throne in his stead.
“Love vaunteth not itself.” Moffitt translates this “makes no parade.” It is not boastful or ostentatious. You know, there is a vulgarity about boasting.
A young preacher stood up in a conference in Tennessee and said, “I want you to know that I’m not a trained minister. I am an ignorant minister, and I’m proud of it.” The bishop answered him, “I can see you have a lot to be proud of, and, young man, it is dangerous to boast even about ignorance.”
Love is “not puffed up.” That means it does not travel on air—it is not inflated. You know what it is like to be traveling on a tire filled with air, then suddenly have a flat tire. There is many a flat tire even among Christians because there are so many who are puffed up. When the air is gone, there is nothing there!


Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil [1 Cor. 13:5].

Love does not behave itself unseemly; that is, it doesn’t act peculiar. It is true that in 1 Peter the believers are called a peculiar people, but they shouldn’t act peculiar. It literally means a people for His possession. We are to exercise courtesy. We are not to be rude. We are not to act like strange people. We ought to be polite. Unfortunately, there is so much today that can be called unlovely religion. But love does not behave itself unseemly.
Love “seeketh not her own.” Love inquires into the motives for action; that is, it asks, “Why am I doing this?” Since I have been retired, I have examined my own heart as I never did before. I have searched out my own motives. Am I doing it out of love for Christ? That is so important. Love is the secret of service.
Love “is not easily provoked.” It doesn’t have a bad temper. Being provoked is the vice of the virtuous. I’m afraid it is the vice of many of us.
Love “thinketh no evil.” How sad it is to see people thrive on gossip. There are Christians who ladle up dirt. They are suggestive in what they have to say.


Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth [1 Cor. 13:6].

Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but love rejoices in the truth. What brings joy to your heart? Bad or good? Which is it? If you hear something bad about someone who is your enemy or whom you do not like, do you rejoice? Or does it make you sad to see your enemy suffer?


Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things [1 Cor. 13:7].

Love bears all things. “Bears” has the thought of protection. Love puts up an umbrella for others.
Love “believeth all things.” That does not mean that love is foolishly credulous. It does mean that love does not regard people with suspicion.
Love “hopeth all things.” Oh, the optimism of love!
It “endureth all things.” Love remains strong through testing.
We learn from all this that love is an abstract noun, but it is not to remain abstract. It is to be translated into life and action. It is to express itself in action through patience, through kindness, without envy, without boastfulness.

PERMANENCE OF LOVE—ITS VICTORY


Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away [1 Cor. 13:8].


Love never fails. That is why at the end of the chapter it says, “Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Love abides. It is permanent.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a poem entitled “I Loved Once,” in which she writes, “They never loved who dreamed that they loved once,” and “Love looks beyond the bounds of time and space, Love takes eternity in its embrace.” Love is deathless. It is never defeated, never disillusioned, never disappointed. Love that is a passion burns like a straw stack and is soon consumed. That is the reason there are so many divorces today. It was not the kind of love that holds two hearts together. Love is eternal. It is permanent. God’s love is that kind of love. How wonderful that is! His love looks beyond the bounds of time and space and takes eternity in its embrace. Christ never ceased loving. You can’t do anything to keep Him from loving. No sinner has committed an unpardonable sin. You may be in the state of unbelief, but He still loves you. You may have committed ever so great a sin, but He still loves you. You cannot keep Him from loving you. You can put up an umbrella to keep yourself out of the rain, but you cannot stop the rain from falling. Neither can you stop God from loving you—regardless of the umbrella of sin or unbelief that you are under.
It is so wrong to tell children that God won’t love them. I used to be in a Sunday school class of little fellows. They were a bunch of mean brats—I was the only good boy in the class! The teacher would say to us, “God won’t love you boys if you keep acting that way.” I used to think, God surely can’t love me very much. But He did in spite of my meanness. How wonderful it is to know that God loves us!
Prophecies shall fail—that is, they will be fulfilled. They will then be history, not prophecy. Tongues are going to stop. Knowledge will vanish away. For example, the science that I learned in college is already out of date. The science of today will be replaced by the science of tomorrow. Knowledge is progressive. It vanishes away.


For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away [1 Cor. 13:9–10].

Paul says this:


When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known [1 Cor. 13:11–12].
A great many people ask, “Will I know my loved ones in heaven?” You surely will. What is the scriptural proof? “Now we see through a glass, darkly.” You have never seen me. It is possible you may think you have seen me, but what you saw was a suit of clothes with a head and two hands sticking out of it. You didn’t really see me. And I have never really seen you, because we just see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know only in part, but then I shall know even as also I am known. Someone asked G. Campbell Morgan, “Do you think we will know our loved ones in heaven?” Dr. Morgan in his truly British manner answered, “I do not expect to be a bigger fool in heaven than I am here, and I know my loved ones here.”


And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity [1 Cor. 13:13].

The object of our faith will be fulfilled. All our hopes will be realized. There will be nothing left to hope for; so hope will disappear. There will be no need for faith. However, love is going to abide. The greatest of these is love. Faith, hope, and love are the high words of the Christian vocabulary.
In this chapter Paul is not describing an abstract term—love. He is writing a biography of Jesus Christ. Of Him it was written, “… having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). The love of Jesus is an eternal love. My friend, Jesus Christ will never cease loving you.

CHAPTER 14

Theme: Exercise of gifts


We are in the section of the epistle concerning spiritual gifts. In chapter 12 we saw the endowment of gifts. Gifts were given to maintain the unity of the church in a diversity. Each member has a separate gift; yet all are to function together as the body functions with its many members. The eye cannot do what the ear does, and the ear cannot do what the eye does. Each must function in its own way.
We are put into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit, and we are placed there to exercise a gift. Paul tells us at the end of chapter 12 that we should covet earnestly the best gifts, and yet he will show us a more excellent way. That way is by love. The entire chapter 13 is on the subject of love. He concludes by saying that the greatest of these is love, and he continues by saying that we are to follow after love.

GIFT OF PROPHECY IS SUPERIOR TO GIFT OF TONGUES


Paul now follows right on and says that we should follow after love, but we should desire spiritualities.


Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy [1 Cor. 14:1].

We should desire spiritual gifts—I think it would be unusual if a Christian didn’t want that—“but rather that ye may prophesy.” To prophesy is to give out the Word of God, to speak it simply and to speak it intelligently.
He makes a distinction between the gifts which the Spirit gives and the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, etc., which are more important than the gifts of the Spirit. Some very sincere people say to me, “Dr. McGee, I am going to pray that you receive the gift of the Spirit.” I tell them I appreciate their interest, but I would rather they would pray that I may have the fruit of the Spirit. I wish I could see more fruit of the Spirit in the lives of the believers and in myself. I would like to see more love. That is the essential thing, and that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit of God can produce fruit in our lives.
“But rather that ye may prophesy.” Actually, Paul was trying to get the Corinthians off this preoccupation with tongues. In effect he is saying to them in this whole section, “Cool it, brethren, don’t go off into fanaticism or an emotional binge. Hold all things in their right proportion.” In the previous chapter he said that tongues will cease. They will stop. That is the same word that we see posted on the highway. A traffic officer once told me that s-t-o-p means stop! I am afraid a great many folk do not understand what Paul is saying here: “Whether there be tongues, they shall stop.” It was Dr. A. T. Robertson who made this statement: “Tongues seem to have ceased first of all the gifts.” Chrysostom, one of the early church fathers, writing in the third or fourth century, stated: “This whole passage is very obscure; but the obscurity arises from our ignorance of the facts described, which, though familiar to those to whom the apostle wrote, have ceased to occur.”
It is interesting to note that Jesus never spoke in tongues. There is no record of the apostles speaking in tongues after Pentecost. We do not have an historical record of Paul speaking in tongues or any sermon delivered in a tongue—although we know from verse 18 that Paul did speak in tongues because he said, “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all.” I did not realize the import of this statement until I was in Turkey. I visited the ruins of the seven churches there, and obviously Paul had preached in all of them; then going way out into the interior, into Anatolia, I realized that Paul had walked across that section—all the way from Tarsus, his hometown. It is a distance of hundreds of miles, and in that section there was tribe after tribe speaking different languages. I have often wondered how Paul was able to speak to them. Well, he spoke as the apostles did on the Day of Pentecost. Every man heard him speak in his own tongue. He probably said to the Corinthians, “If you want tongues, go out on the mission field and start speaking in the languages of those people.”
Today God has raised up certain organizations like the Wycliffe Bible Translators who are attempting to translate the Bible into all the known tongues of the world. That, my friend, is the greatest tongues movement that I know anything about!
We know that at one time Paul was caught up to the third heaven. He tells us that he heard unspeakable words. I don’t think those were unknown words or unknown tongues; they were words that he was not permitted to speak. Tongues are not a rapturous, ecstatic, mysterious language. They are not a mixed-up medley of rhapsody. Tongues were foreign languages. On the Day of Pentecost the apostles spoke in foreign languages so that every man there heard the gospel in his own language.
Now notice that chapter 14 is an extension of the love chapter. It begins: “Follow after charity [love], and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.”


For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries [1 Cor. 14:2].

Note that the word unknown is in italics in your Bible, and that means it is not in the original Greek. Nowhere in the Bible does it speak of unknown tongues. It should read: “For he that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.” Because nobody will understand him, he is not to speak in a language that is unknown to the group—unless somebody there can interpret.
We will see in this chapter that there are three gifts which Paul emphasizes: prophecy, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. Have you ever noticed that there is very little reference to tongues in the Bible except in these three chapters? There are references to it in Mark 16:17 and Acts 2:3–4, 11; 10:46; 19:6. Cornelius and his household spoke in tongues. The disciples of John in Ephesus spoke in tongues after Paul had preached the gospel to them. We find, therefore, that tongues were used at the institution of the dispensation of grace. Every time tongues were used, they were used in that connection. There was speaking in tongues on the Day of Pentecost when the gospel went to the nation of Israel. There was speaking in tongues at the home of Cornelius when the gospel was opened to the Gentiles. There was speaking in tongues in Ephesus when the gospel moved out into the uttermost parts of the earth. Those are the three instances.
“For he that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.” That is, he doesn’t understand it.


But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort [1 Cor. 14:3].

Paul is emphasizing the gift of prophecy. He asks them not to go into the tongues which were delighting them, but to speak the Word of God which is for edification, for comfort, and for exhortation.


He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church [1 Cor. 14:4].

The tongue, when it is exercised by the individual, is a selfish sort of gift, but prophesying, or teaching, is for the edification of the church.

I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying [1 Cor. 14:5].

To prophesy is to give forth the Word of God. The important thing is not a tongues meeting but a Bible study. “He that prophesieth” is one that teaches. No one is to speak in tongues unless there is someone there to interpret so learning can take place.


Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine? [1 Cor. 14:6].

Paul is saying, “If I don’t make any sense when I come to talk to you, what is the use of my coming?”


And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped?

For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? [1 Cor. 14:7–8].

I have often thought that I could be a musician if I could do with a musical instrument what the “unknown tongues” folk do with sounds. Although I cannot read music and have no ear for it, I could just toot away on a horn. But of course it would just be a meaningless noise. Even a lifeless instrument like that is to have meaning in this world.
“If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” The trumpet was used to alert the troops for battle. And, my friend, today we need a clear-cut presentation of the gospel.


So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air [1 Cor. 14:9].

Paul says in effect, “Let’s get off this kick. Let’s start making sense, if you don’t mind.”


There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.

Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church [1 Cor. 14:10–12].

There are many languages in the world However, there cannot be communication between people who do not speak the same language. If you speak in a language that in one in the church can understand, how can this edify the people in the church? That is the important issue. Does it edify the church? Does it build up the believers?


Wherefore let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that he may interpret [1 Cor. 14:13].

Anything that is said in a tongue should be interpreted. Otherwise it does not make any sense to anyone. If the speaker cannot interpret, then there must be someone else there who has the gift of interpretation.


For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful [1 Cor. 14:14].

That, my friend, is the answer to those who say that they speak in tongues for their private devotions. If the “understanding is unfruitful,” you don’t get a spiritual lift out of it; that is, the Holy Spirit is not ministering to you. If you get a lift, it is merely psychological. Paul says your understanding is unfruitful.


What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.

Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? [1 Cor. 14:15–16].

In other words, say something profitable so a brother can say “amen” to it.


For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified.
I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all:

Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue [1 Cor. 14:17–19].

Now I think Paul means that, as a missionary he had spoken in at least a dozen different tongues—and probably that could be multiplied by four or five. When he was out on the mission field with a foreign tribe, they couldn’t understand his language and he couldn’t understand theirs. Then he spoke to them in their tongue. He made sense to them, but it didn’t make sense to Paul himself. But when he is in the church where there are believers who speak the same language as he does, he will speak in a tongue that everyone can understand.


Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men [1 Cor. 14:20].

He is chiding the Corinthians again. He has called them carnal—babes in Christ. Now he tells them not to act like children.


In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord [1 Cor. 14:21].

You see, he does mean a language that is understood. He says, “I am going to speak to another people in their tongue.”


Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not: but prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe [1 Cor. 14:22].

This is what he is saying: “When I went out to the mission field [let’s say Antioch in Pisidia], they were speaking a different language, so I spoke to them in their own tongue. And when I presented the gospel to them in their own language, they believed. Now when I meet with these folk in the land of Israel, I speak in the language they know and I know. Therefore I am prophesying. That is, I am teaching the Word of God to them.”

ORDER IN LOCAL CHURCH FOR EXERCISE OF ANY GIFT


If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? [1 Cor. 14:23].


We do not want a stranger to step into the church and think he has entered into a group of people who have gone mad. If there is one thing we need today, it is the logical, meaningful presentation of the Word of God. People in this world are intelligent, they are scientific, they are sophisticated. They want a logical message which can be understood. The Word of God needs to be presented so it can be understood.


But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all:

And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth [1 Cor. 14:24–25].

In other words, if you are preaching the Word of God and an unbeliever comes in, he will come under conviction and be converted.


How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying [1 Cor. 14:26].

If there is going to be any speaking in a tongue, there must be an interpreter there, and the message must be edifying. A former student of mine, who had been a Roman Catholic, went into a tongues meeting and recited part of a mass in Latin. When he sat down, another man rose up to interpret. He went on to say this, that, and the other thing. Then this friend of mine got up and said, “I just want you to know that that is not what I said. I gave you the Latin mass.” And as he started to tell them what he had really said, the ushers hustled him out of the meeting and told him not to come back. I don’t blame them for that, and I do not think it was proper for my friend to do that. I simply tell this to emphasize the fact that speaking in a tongue may be the least edifying and may even be a hoax.


If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret.
But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God [1 Cor. 14:27–28].
Not only must there be edification, but there must be order. If someone is going to speak in a tongue, there must be an interpreter, and the message must make sense in conformity with the Word of God. If it is otherwise, the Spirit of God is not in it—you may be sure of that. If no interpreter is there, or if two or three have already spoken, the one wanting to speak in a tongue is to be silent. He can go off somewhere and speak by himself.


Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge.

If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace [1 Cor. 14:29–30].

There were prophets in the church of that day, and they could speak prophetically. We know that the daughters of Philip prophesied (see Acts 21:9). In the same chapter we are told that Agabus also prophesied. We don’t have that gift of foretelling the future anymore. Even the weatherman doesn’t do very well in the area of prediction!


For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted [1 Cor. 14:31].

They may all prophesy one by one. Everyone can have something to say about the Word of God. I have been greatly blessed by statements that some folk have made in testimony meetings.


And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.

For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints [1 Cor. 14:32–33].

A church service is to be orderly.


Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law [1 Cor. 14:34].

Now what is he talking about here? Tongues. He is not saying that a woman is not to speak in church; he is saying that she is not to speak in tongues in the church. My friend, if you take the women out of the tongues movement, it would die overnight. You may say, “That’s not a nice thing to say.” I know it’s not nice, but it is true.


And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only? [1 Cor. 14:35–36].

The Word of God came to them, of course.


If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.

But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant [1 Cor. 14:37–38].

This is the real test. If a man today says that he is a prophet or that he is spiritual—because he can speak in tongues—let him acknowledge that what Paul is saying here is a commandment of the Lord.


Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues.

Let all things be done decently and in order [1 Cor. 14:39–40].

Here again we are encouraged to covet the best gift. Evidently teaching the Word of God is the best one, and I thank God for that.
“Let all things be done decently and in order.” This is a great principle. When I attended a tongues meeting in the South, I must confess that I could see neither rhyme nor reason in the entire service. It was all in confusion—not even an organized confusion, but hopeless confusion. Paul says that this is not the way things of God should be carried on.
This brings us to the conclusion of this section. If you have disagreed with me, I trust you will not fall out with me, but that you will search this Scripture. If I am wrong, pray for me.

CHAPTER 15

theme: Resurrection


We have come to a chapter that can be classified as one of the most important and crucial chapters of the Bible. If you would select ten of the greatest chapters of the Bible—which men have done from the beginning of the Christian era—you will find that 1 Corinthians 15 will be on your list and has been on practically all the lists ever made. It is that important. It is so important that it actually answers the first heresy of the church, which was the denial of the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this chapter Paul is coming to the third great spirituality. You will recall that first he dealt with carnalities. He dealt with those things which seemed so important to the Corinthians and still seem so important to us today. Then Paul turned from the carnalities to the spiritualities. How wonderful it is to know that every believer has a gift from the Holy Spirit. I can’t think of anything more thrilling than to know that God has given you and me a gift to function in this world and that we are to be partners with Jesus Christ in the tremendous enterprise of making Him known!
Then Paul goes on to the great love chapter. All gifts are to be exercised in love, and love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t something that we can work up. It is given to us. Above everything else we need to see love, this fruit of the Spirit, in the life of a believer.
Now we come to the third great spirituality, which is the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our own resurrection. The glory of the Chrisitan faith is that it never views life as ending with death. This life is not all there is. The Christian faith always looks beyond the sunset to the sunrise. It looks out yonder into eternity—and what a hope it offers! This is another factor which gives meaning and purpose to life. I expect to live an eternity. I am not in a hurry to get there, and I want to stay in this life as long as I can because I think that this is the place of service. I think this is the place of preparation. I think that rewards are determined by what we do down here, and I want to get a few good works on my side of the ledger. That is why I would like to stay here and serve Him as long as He will allow me to stay. We used to sing a song, “Will there be any stars in my crown?” I don’t hear that sung anymore. Why not? Well, it is because people are trying to be the star down here. Oh, my friend, that we might get the tremendous view which the resurrection of Jesus Christ should give to the believer. We have lost sight of the Ascension, and we have our minds on the incidentals. This adds up to one tragedy after another in the lives of professing Christians.
This great resurrection chapter actually deals with the gospel. It shows that the most important part of the gospel is the resurrection of Christ. Frankly, without that, everything else—even the death of Christ—is meaningless. He was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification according to Romans 4:25. In His death He subtracted our sins, but in His resurrection He gave to us a sure, abundant entrance into heaven. We stand in His righteousness. He was delivered for our offenses, but He was raised again for our justification (our righteousness).
Before we get into this chapter, it would be well to define and delineate very sharply the meaning of the Resurrection. The Resurrection is not spiritual, but it is physical. The word is anastasis nekroµn, which means the “standing up of a corpse.” These bodies of ours are to be raised; the Resurrection in Scripture always refers to the body. Anastasis means “to stand up.” Histemi means “to cause to stand.” Ana means the standing up of the body. It cannot refer to a spiritual resurrection.
C. S. Lewis, the brilliant Oxford don, ridiculed the liberals in England in his day. They would talk about the Resurrection being spiritual, so Lewis would ask, “What position does a spirit take when it stands up?” That is a question for the liberal to kick around for a while. Scripture teaches that the Resurrection means to stand up.
In Paul’s day, in Corinth and in the Roman world, there were three philosophies concerning death and life after death. There was Stoicism, which taught that the soul merged into deity at death. There was, therefore, a destruction of the personality. Such a concept makes the Resurrection a nonentity. Then there was the Epicurean philosophy, which was materialistic. It taught that there was no existence beyond death. Death was the end of existence. The third was Platonism which taught the immortality of the soul, believing in a process like a transmigration. You still find that teaching in Platonism today in the religions of India and in the cults of America. It denies the bodily resurrection. Because of these philosophies, when Paul mentioned the Resurrection while he was in Athens, they thought he was talking about a new god.
We need to understand very clearly that Paul is not talking about a spiritual resurrection. The soul does not die. The minute a body dies, the person goes somewhere. If the person is a child of God, to be absent from the body means to be present with the Lord (see 2 Cor. 5:6–8). If a person is not a child of God, then he goes to the place of torment—our Lord labeled it that.
The divisions of this chapter are as follows:

1. The prominence of the Resurrection in the gospel—verses 1–4
2. The proofs of the Resurrection—verses 5–19
3. The parade of the Resurrection—verses 20–28
4. The program and pattern of the Resurrection—verses 29–50
5. The power of the Resurrection—verses 51–58

PROMINENCE OF RESURRECTION IN THE GOSPEL


Paul states that the Resurrection is part of the gospel; in fact, there is no gospel without the Resurrection. Dr. Machen says that Christianity does not rest on a set of ideas or creeds, but on facts. The gospel is not the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. The gospel is a series of facts concerning a Person and that Person is Jesus Christ.
Now listen to the way Paul states it:


Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures [1 Cor. 15:1–4].

The question sometimes arises whether the gospel originated with Paul. He says, “I delivered unto you … that which I received.” From whom did he receive it and where? He received it out yonder in that Arabian desert where the Lord took him and taught him. When Paul was confronted by the Lord on the Damascus road, he did not know that Jesus was back from the dead. He asked, “… Who art thou, Lord? …” (Acts 9:5). He didn’t dream that “the Lord” was Jesus. Paul himself had to be convinced of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He didn’t think it up. He received it.
Paul says that he declares the gospel to them. What is the gospel? “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” That is the gospel. These are the facts. My friend, there is no gospel apart from those three facts. That is what the gospel is. Jesus Christ died for you and for me. He was buried and He rose again. That is gospel—t’s good news.
Now suppose that you come to me today and say, “Teacher, I have good news for you—I would like to see you become a millionaire.” I would say, “Well, that would be nice.” Then you would tell me your plan. You would say, “You get a job, and in a thousand years you will be worth a million dollars.” I would say, “Well, I sure would like to have a million dollars; I could use it to get the gospel out, but if you think by my working I can make a million dollars, you are wrong. That’s not good news. In fact, it is bad news!” However, suppose you come to me and say, “I have discovered someone who was interested in you. In fact, he loved you so much that when he died he left you a million dollars!” That, my friend, would be good news!
The gospel does not tell us something that we must do. The gospel tells us what Jesus Christ has already done for us. He died for our sins according to the Scriptures, He was buried, He rose again the third day.
He died. That is an historical fact. Very few would deny that. He was buried—that needs to be added. Why is that so important? It proves that He didn’t just disappear. It means that they actually, literally had His body. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea and the others who saw Him crucified knew who He was. They knew it was Jesus. They buried Jesus. That is very important. It confirms His death.
He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. The Resurrection is a part of the gospel. The tomb was empty. That is the proof. The gospel is that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again. This is the first proof.
There is another proof of the Resurrection, and that is the experience of the Corinthians. Let’s listen to it again. “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain” (vv. 1–2). “Unless ye have believed in vain”—that is, unless it was an empty faith.
There is a faith that is an empty faith, of course. But he says, “By which also ye are saved.” The church is the proof of the Resurrection.
There were eleven discouraged men in Jerusalem or its environs. They were ready to go back to fishing. They had just gone through enough trouble. If Jesus was dead, they didn’t want the body out of the grave. They wanted it to stay there. They wouldn’t go break a Roman seal and face a Roman guard to steal a body which could only bring them more trouble. Then what happened? Word came to them that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead! That fact transformed these men. That revolutionary fact brought the church into existence. Through nineteen centuries there have been millions of people who have said that Jesus Christ is alive. You simply cannot explain the church apart from the Resurrection. I am saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Without His resurrection I would have no gospel, no living Christ, no Savior. The existence of the body of believers is the second great proof of the Resurrection.
There is another proof. Notice that it says He died for our sins “according to the scriptures” and that He was buried and rose again the third day “according to the scriptures.” What Scriptures? The Old Testament Scriptures. I would love to have been with Paul the apostle when he arrived in Europe and went to Philippi, Thessalonica, then down to Athens, and over to Corinth. I think he had with him a parchment which was the Old Testament. I imagine that when he went into a synagogue and mentioned the death of the Lord Jesus, the Jews said, “But this is not in our Scriptures.” Then he would turn to the Book of Genesis and say, “I’d like to remind you about the offering of Isaac and how Abraham received him back from the ‘dead’—he was ready to kill the boy. Now God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up freely for us all.” Then he would turn to the Mosaic system of sacrifice, to the five offerings in Leviticus, and show them how they pictured Christ, then to the great Day of Atonement and the two goats which pictured Christ’s death and resurrection. Also he would cite Aaron’s rod that budded and the Book of Jonah, which typifies resurrection. Then he would turn to Psalm 22 and Psalm 16. He would show them Isaiah 25 and in Isaiah 53 he would point out that He was wounded for our transgressions and He was bruised for our iniquities. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of all of us. So he could show them from the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus Christ was to die and to rise again. The expectation of the Old Testament was not for this life only but also for the life that is to come.
There are some folk who say they do not believe in a “hereafter religion” they want a here-and-now religion. May I say to you that I have both—a here-and-now religion and a hereafter religion.

PROOFS OF RESURRECTION—WITNESSES


Now as another proof of the Resurrection Paul lists a number of witnesses. You just can’t get around witnesses. Any lawyer today would love to have as many witnesses for his position as Paul lists here as proofs of the Resurrection.


And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve [1 Cor. 15:5].

He mentions Cephas first. This is, of course, Simon Peter, to whom Jesus appeared privately. You may ask, “What took place?” It is none of my business, and I guess it is none of yours. It is not recorded for us. Jesus appeared to Peter. After all, he had denied Him. Peter had to get things straightened out with the Lord. You see, our Lord is still in the footwashing business.
Then He was seen “of the twelve.” Who are the Twelve? He appeared to Cephas privately, then He appeared to the ten (Judas was dead at this time). “The Twelve” was used as a collective term for the body of disciples. It does not necessarily imply that twelve disciples were present. However, when you put them all together and Paul joins them, you have twelve men.

After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep [1 Cor. 15:6].
Jesus was seen of five hundred people at one time. I think this was up yonder around the Sea of Galilee. Remember that He had told them He would meet with them in Galilee. So I believe that His true followers went up to Galilee to meet Him there. As they traveled northward, I’m sure folk would ask them, “Now that Jesus is dead, are you going back to fishing?” They would answer, “No, Jesus is back from the dead and we’re going up there to meet Him.” There were five hundred of His followers who met Him there.


After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time [1 Cor. 15:7–8].

“He was seen of James”—this was probably a private interview. He was seen again by all the apostles. Lastly, He was seen by Paul. My friend, it is very difficult to argue with a man who has seen Him.


For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me [1 Cor. 15:9–10].

Paul calls himself the least of the apostles. He is being very modest here. Inspiration guarantees that this is a statement which came from his heart. My heart says, “Paul, you’re great. I can’t consider you the least of the apostles.” But Paul says he isn’t worthy to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church of God. He considered himself to be the chief of sinners. Yet he was the hardest worker of any of the apostles. But, very candidly, he tells us that it was the grace of God that enabled him to accomplish what he did.


Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed [1 Cor. 15:11].

I am tired of men talking about being Christians and denying the facts of the gospel. You are not a Christian if you deny the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. You have a perfect right to deny these things if you wish, but you have no right then to call yourself a Christian. It says here that when these Corinthians heard the gospel, they believed, and that is when they became Christians.
This is so crucial and so critical that we are going to review it to emphasize it. What is the gospel? It is the good news that Christ died, was buried, and rose again on the third day. He didn’t vanish or disappear. He rose again. The tomb is empty. Jesus Christ is alive today. These are the historical facts. The gospel is not a theory, not an idea, not a religion. The gospel consists of objective facts. This is the gospel which Paul preached. It is not simply a subjective experience which Paul had; it is fact.
It tells us in verse 1 that the Corinthians received it and in verse 11 that they believed it. What does it mean to receive Christ? John 1:11–13 tells us, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” To receive Christ means to believe on His name. Our first verse says of the gospel relative to the Corinthians, “which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand.” That was their current state. They stood in a living faith in relationship with a living Lord Jesus Christ. Where do you stand today?
The second verse says, “By which also ye are saved.” The gospel does not save if it is just a head knowledge. It is not just a nodding assent to the facts. It is the One of whom the gospel speaks who does the saving—Christ saves. When you accept the facts of the gospel, when you put your faith in Christ absolutely, then you are saved. As Spurgeon put it, “It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee. It is not thy hope in Christ that saves thee. It is Christ. It is not even thy faith in Christ, though that be the instrument.” It is Christ’s blood and merit that saves.
This gospel was preached to the Corinthians. Paul said, “You received it, you stand in it, and you are saved.” Then he adds, “Unless ye have believed in vain.” If their faith does not rest upon the facts, then it is a vain faith, of no effect, and theirs is not a genuine conversion. Faith itself has no merit. The important thing is the object of your faith—in whom you believe. Have you trusted a Savior who died, who was buried, and who rose again from the dead?
We spoke of the significance of the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures as an evidence of the Resurrection. Then there were the witnesses who were alive at the time Paul was writing: Cephas, the twelve, the five hundred, James, all the apostles, and finally he himself, all of whom saw the resurrected Christ. Of himself he says, “as of one born out of due time.” That is, his was not a late birth but an abortion, a premature birth. He is a picture of that remnant which is to be saved after the church is removed from this earth.


Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? [1 Cor. 15:12].

Some of these people with backgrounds of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Platonism were denying the Resurrection. It wasn’t that they were specifically denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but they did not believe in any resurrection at all.
Now Paul begins a series of “ifs”—“if Christ be not risen.” Paul faced the fact. My Christian friend, don’t hide your head like an ostrich under the sand and say, “Well, we can’t be sure about the Resurrection, so let’s not say too much about it. Let’s walk as if we were walking on eggshells.” My friend, I am on a foundation; that foundation is the Rock, and the Rock is Christ. He came back from the dead. Paul is not afraid that Christ might not have risen from the dead. He puts down these “ifs” as a demonstration of the importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.


But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen [1 Cor. 15:13].

If there is no resurrection from the dead, then Christ is not risen. They are linked together. And it is on the basis of the resurrection of Christ—Paul is going to say later on—that Jesus Christ is the firstfruits. That means there will be more to follow. He is the firstfruits, and later at His coming there will be the resurrection of those who are His.


And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain [1 Cor. 15:14].

Perhaps you belong to a church which denies that Christ arose from the dead. If Christ is not bodily risen from the dead, then our preaching is vain. Not only that, but our faith is vain also. You might just as well drop your church membership. It’s no good. There is no reason to go to church or to hear a sermon if Christ is not raised from the dead.


Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not [1 Cor. 15:15].

All the apostles were liars if Christ had not risen. Every one of these men was a false witness if Christ is still in the grave. Have you ever noticed that men do not die for that which they know to be a lie? Men do die for a lie, but they think it is the truth. For instance, millions of men died for Hitler because they believed in him. The apostles testified that they saw the risen Christ, and they were willing to die for that declaration. I’ll let you decide if they were right or wrong. But men do not die for what they know is a lie.


For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins [1 Cor. 15:16–17].

If Christ is not raised, then, my friend, you are a lost, hell-doomed sinner, and that is all you can ever be. If Christ be not raised, every one of us is still in our sins.


Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished [1 Cor. 15:18].

There have been millions upon millions of believers who have died trusting Christ as their Savior. If Christ is not risen, then every one of them has perished.


If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable [1 Cor. 15:19].

May I say to you that I think Christianity is a here-and-now religion. Paul makes that clear in the sixth chapter of Romans. But Christianity is also a hereafter religion. If Christ be not raised, we have been deluded and we are about the most miserable people in this world today. But we’re not! We are rejoicing!
That is the end of Paul’s “ifs.” Will you face up to the possibilities which he presents? Go through the “ifs” logically and you will see that the human family is lost and hopeless if Christ had not been raised from the dead.

PARADE OF THE RESURRECTION


So I want to join Paul as he declares the Resurrection—

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept [1 Cor. 15:20].
Christ is the firstfruits. In the Old Testament they had the festival of firstfruits when they would bring the first sheaf of grain to the Lord. This meant that there would be more to come, otherwise it couldn’t be the firstfruits. The fulfillment of that is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He came back from the dead in a glorified body. And He is the only one who has come back from the dead in a glorified body.


For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all he made alive [1 Cor. 15:21–22].

After the festival of the firstfruits came Pentecost, which was fifty days later. That found its fulfillment in Pentecost in the New Testament when the church began. But it will find its ultimate fulfillment when Christ comes for His own and they shall all rise to meet Him in the air. That will be the real Pentecost. A Pentecostal brother of mine said, “You know, Brother McGee, I’m expecting a Pentecost.” I shocked him when I said, “I’m looking for Pentecost too.” He said, “Oh, you don’t mean it!” I said, “I don’t mean it like you mean it—you think you are going to repeat the Day of Pentecost down here. The Pentecost I am waiting for is when the Lord Jesus comes to take His church out of his world.” Christ is the firstfruits.


But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming [1 Cor. 15:23].

How wonderful that is! “Christ is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept”—meaning the sleep of death. “For since by man came death [that man is Adam], by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” “In Adam all die”—the proof that you are in the family of Adam is that you are going to die unless the Lord comes to take you in the Rapture. “Even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.
“But every man in his own order.” There is not a general resurrection day. It is interesting that the Reformers recovered a great deal of the truth of the Bible, but they didn’t recover all of it. We are living in a day when there is much Bible study in the field of eschatology; that is, the doctrine of the last things—prophecy. It is a study of prophecy. In times when great truths are being recovered one also finds a lot of heresy and just plain “nutty” ideas. There is a lot of false teaching about prophecy, largely because of ignorance of the whole scope of Scripture. I firmly believe that the Book of Revelation should not be taught unless one has studied the other books of the Bible first. Prophecy is important, but it is not everything. The great Reformers recovered much Bible truth, but they missed this teaching of the Bible that every man will be raised in his own order, that there is not general resurrection day.
Christ is the firstfruits, and then “afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.” What is He coming for? He is coming for His church, my friend.


Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power [1 Cor. 15:24].

“Then cometh the end”—the end of what? The end of the age. How will the age end? There, will come the Great Tribulation, and then there is going to be the millennial kingdom here on the earth. Satan will be released again for a little while, then he will be cast forever into the lake of fire, and the Lord Jesus Christ will establish His kingdom forever. That will be the eternal kingdom. Actually, the eternal kingdom is a further projection of the millennial kingdom, only the millennial kingdom will be a time of trial. “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God.” When will this take place? At the end of the millennial kingdom, Christ will put down all rule and all authority and power.


For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet [1 Cor. 15:25].

That is Satan.


The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death [1 Cor. 15:26].

I’ll be glad when we get rid of that fellow!


For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him [1 Cor. 15:27].

So Christ is not subject to God—but wait minute, notice what the next verse says.

And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all [1 Cor. 15:28].
This means that when Christ has completed His millennial reign here upon this earth and has established His eternal reign (I believe that He will turn over to David His throne or the earth), then He will return back to His place in the Godhead where He was in the beginning, so that “God may be all in all.”

PROGRAM AND PATTERN OF THE RESURRECTION


Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead? [1 Cor. 15:29].


“What shall they do”—that is, what shall they accomplish?
We have already learned that the word baptize means identification with someone or something. In this case Paul is speaking of identification as a dead person. He asks, “What shall they accomplish which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all?” Why are they then identified as the dead? This does not imply that the Corinthian believers were being baptized for their dead relatives or friends. It means that they were baptized or identified with Christ Jesus—who had died for them and He was now risen from the dead. They were dead to the world but were alive to Christ.


And why stand we in jeopardy every hour?

I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily [1 Cor. 15:30–31].

Paul is saying that if Christ be not raised from the dead, then they are foolish to put their lives in danger. However, since Christ is raised from the dead, believers are identified with Him. As Paul said to the believers at Rome, “Know ye not, 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 by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3–4). We are joined to a resurrected, living Christ. “Now if Christ was not resurrected, then,” Paul says, “I am foolish to make the sacrifices I have made down here—my life stands in jeopardy every hour. I am constantly in danger of death.”


If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die [1 Cor. 15:32].

Paul asks, “Why should I be put in a lions’ cage for my faith in Christ if Christ did not rise from the dead? I am identified—I am baptized—into His death. I am identified as a dead man because I am joined to a living Christ.” Being identified with Christ in His death and resurrection is a tremendous fact! Let’s not reduce it to some little water baptismal service that would be meaningless.
If Christ is not risen and if the dead will not be resurrected, then we might as well adopt the hedonistic philosophy of the Epicureans who say, “Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die.”


Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.

Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame [1 Cor. 15:33–34].

The Corinthian believers were being deceived by those who questioned the Resurrection. They were listening to those who had plenty to say but no knowledge of God. Paul is saying that if they get the wrong information, they will act wrong. He admonishes them to stop sinning—because there will be a resurrection.


But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? [1 Cor. 15:35].

Paul will answer two questions: the how and the what. Men fail to distinguish the difference between the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. Plato and Cicero argued for the immortality of the soul. Paul is arguing for the resurrection of the body. The Sadducees denied any resurrection, any life after death. And Christ Himself had answered them: “But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:31–32).
Paul has answered those who denied the resurrection of the body by the resurrection of Christ whose body was raised up.
Now the question is, “How can a body that dies be raised up again and be the same?” Paul says that we learn from nature that the bodies are not identical—they are the same but not identical.

Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die [1 Cor. 15:36].
The answer to the first question: the how. He says in effect, “If you only had sense enough to see it, you would see that in a seed which is planted, there is dissolution and continuity—a seed that is planted will produce seeds which are essentially the same as that seed. But the seed itself has died and disintegrated, so that the seed it produces is not the very seed that died. It is like that seed, but it is not the same seed. In the seed that is planted there is a disintegration and yet there is a continuity. It is a mystery, but it is not an impossibility.”
What is death? Death is a separation. It is not the ending of the spirit or of the personality. These do not die. The real “you” goes on to be with the Lord if you are a child of God. It is the body that disintegrates. Death is a separation of the body from the individual, from the person. The body disintegrates, decays, decomposes. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes applies only to the body.
Paul now answers the second question: What body is raised up?


And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain [1 Cor. 15:37].

The sowing of grain is the illustration. Christ is the firstfruits, then we’ll be coming along later. We are waiting for the rapture of the church when Christ takes the believers out of the world. If at the time of the Rapture we are already dead, we will be raised up. If we are still alive at the time of the Rapture, we’ll be caught up and changed. The seed, you see, does not provide itself with a new body, neither does the sower, but God provides it:


But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body [1 Cor. 15:38].

Then Paul moves into another area. All of this is the mystery of life. Actually the mystery of life is greater than the mystery of death. When you sow wheat, wheat comes up—not barley or corn. That little grain that forms on the stalk is like the one you sowed—not identical, but certainly very similar.
Now he moves from the area of botany to zoology.


All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds [1 Cor. 15:39].

The difference between a dead body and the resurrection body is greater than the difference between men and beasts, fish and birds. Paul says that all flesh is not the same flesh.


There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory [1 Cor. 15:40–41].

Now he has moved into the realm of astronomy and says that all the bodies of the solar system are not the same. The sun is not the same material as the moon, neither is it the same as the stars. The stars differ from each other. There is a solar system, a stellar system, planets, and suns.


So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption [1 Cor. 15:42].

You see, the body that was given Adam was always subject to death. Although he would not have died if he had not sinned, his body would have been subject to death. However, by resurrection we get a body that is incorruptible.


It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power [1 Cor. 15:43].

We will get glory and color and beauty and power—all of these things—with the new body.

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body [1 Cor. 15:44].
Many years ago in the city of New York (in fact, it was way back in the day when liberalism was called modernism, back in the 1920s) they had an argument about whether resurrection was spiritual. The liberal even today claims it’s spiritual. He doesn’t believe in bodily resurrection at all. A very famous Greek scholar from the University of Chicago read a paper on the passage from this verse. His paper put the emphasis on the word spiritual. He concluded by saying, “Now, brethren, you can see that resurrection is spiritual because it says it’s spiritual.” The liberals all applauded, and somebody made a motion that they print that manuscript and circulate it. Well, a very fine Greek scholar was there, and he stood up. And when he stood up all the liberals were a little uneasy. He could ask very embarrassing questions. He said, “I’d like to ask the author of the paper a question.” Very reluctantly, the good doctor stood up. “Now, doctor, which is stronger, a noun or an adjective? A very simple question, but I’d like for you to answer it.” He could see the direction he was going and didn’t want to answer it, but he had to. “Well,” he said, “a noun is stronger, of course.” “Now doctor, I’m amazed that you presented the paper that you did today. You put the emphasis upon an adjective, and the strong word is the noun. Now let’s look at that again. ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.’” He said, “The only thing that is carried over in resurrection is the body. It’s one kind of body when it dies, a natural body. It’s raised a body, but a spiritual body, dominated now by the spirit—but it’s still a body.” And, you know, they never did publish that paper. They decided it would be better not to publish it. May I say to you, just a simple little exercise in grammar answered this great professor’s whole manuscript and his entire argument which he presented at that time.


And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit [1 Cor. 15:45].

You see, the first man, Adam, was psychical—psuchen and zosan in the Greek. That means he was physical and psychological. The last Adam (Christ) is spiritual—pneuma or pneumatical, if you want the English equivalent.


Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven [1 Cor. 15:46–47].

The first man is of the earth and is earthy—choikos, meaning “clay,” rubbish if you please. There is so much talk of ecology today. Who messed up this earth anyway? Man. Because man is earthy. Everything that is the refuse of man is rubbish. He is that kind of creature. He fills the garbage cans. But the Second Man is the Lord from heaven.


As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption [1 Cor. 15:48–50].

We are all earthy. We are from Adam and that is our condition. But we are also in Christ. We are joined to Him, and therefore we have a hope, the hope of the resurrection in an eternal body which will forever be with Christ. Today we bear the image of the earthy, but we look forward to the day when we will bear the image of the heavenly.
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Our old bodies are not going to heaven—I’m glad of that. I would like to trade mine in. God is not going to send these bodies into a repair shop. Corruption cannot inherit incorruption. This body must be put into the ground, like a seed. It will come up a new body, a new tabernacle for us to live in. It will not be identical to the old body and yet it will be like the old body.
Out here on the west coast there are many atheists who have their ashes scattered out over the Pacific Ocean after they die. In other words, they challenge God to try to put all of those atoms together again. Our bodies are made up of a few chemicals. Most of the body’s composition is water, hydrogen, and oxygen, with other atoms thrown in with it. Do you think that God cannot bring those atoms together? Or maybe He wants to use other atoms. After all, hydrogen atoms are all very much alike. It wouldn’t make any difference to me if He used other atoms to make my new body. What nonsense to discount the Resurrection because of this! Yet one of the foremost arguments against the possibility of resurrection is that God would not be able to regather all those atoms! My friend, since He made the body to begin with, He certainly can make another like it. He is God, isn’t He? God will get your body together again whether it comes out of the grave or its ashes are scattered out there in the ocean.
The first heresy in the church was the denial of the bodily resurrection. We see how Paul has shown the truth of the Resurrection. He has spoken against the three major philosophies of his day. Stoicism said the soul merged into Deity at death and there was a destruction of personality. Paul says our bodies shall rise. Epicureanism said there was no existence beyond death. Paul says Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and our bodies, too, shall rise. Platonism believed in the immortality of the soul but denied the bodily resurrection. Paul says that our physical bodies shall be made alive as spiritual bodies.

POWER OF THE RESURRECTION


Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed [1 Cor. 15:51].


What is a mystery? We have already discussed it several times. A mystery is something which had not been revealed in the Old Testament but is now revealed in the New Testament. It is something which you cannot learn by the eye-gate or the ear-gate. Nor has it entered into the heart of man—that is, it is not something man would have thought of. It is a fact which must be revealed by God.
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep”—we are not all going down through the doorway of death. “But we shall all be changed.” Whether you die or don’t die, you must still be changed, friend. Sometimes we hear people say, “I hope I am alive at the coming of Christ; so I will just go into His presence.” Well, before any of us can go into His presence, we’ll have to be changed.


In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed [1 Cor. 15:52].

“In a moment,” in the smallest particle of time. The word is en atomo from which we get our word “atom.” Scientists made a big mistake when they called that little fellow an atom. They thought they had found the smallest particle of matter, and now they can cut up the little atom like a railroad restaurant pie. It would have been better if we had named it a stoicheion, which means “a building block.” Actually, Simon Peter uses this word in his second epistle when he says that the elements (stoicheion) shall melt with a fervent heat. And he wasn’t even a scientist; he was a fisherman. But the Spirit of God knew a little about science!
We shall all be changed “in the twinkling of an eye.” How long is that? Is a twinkle when the lid goes down or when it comes up, or is it both of them? Well, it simply means in a moment, in a fraction of a second. There won’t even be time to say, “Here He comes” or “He is here!”
“At the last trump.” What is that? That is His last call. The trumpet is His voice. John tells us in the Book of Revelation, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,” and when he turned to see who was speaking, he saw Christ (see Rev. 1:10–13). So “at the last trump” is the voice of the Lord Jesus. On His last call to mankind, He will call the dead back to life. He said, “…Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43). Someday He will say to me, “Vernon, come forth.” And He will also call you by name.
“And the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”


For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality [1 Cor. 15:53].

Notice the word must—it is emphatic. We cannot go to heaven as we are now. We cannot go to heaven with the old bodies we have. We wouldn’t be able to see what is really up there, nor could we hear the music. Our bodies are quite limited. We are almost deaf and blind as far as heaven is concerned. Even here on earth there is so little of the spectrum that we actually see and so little of the sounds that we actually hear. If we went to heaven in these old bodies, we would miss half of what was taking place. And, my friend, when I go up there, I don’t want to miss a thing! Therefore I’m going to need a new body. “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”


So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory [1 Cor. 15:54].

This is the victory of the Resurrection.


O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 15:55–57].

I heard a Bible teacher say that since God has taken the sting out of death, it is like a bee that has his stinger removed. Well, I can’t tell when a bee’s stinger has been removed. I can’t stop every bee and ask, “Say, do you have a stinger?” Therefore, I am afraid of every bee.
Death has lost its sting, because we are to look way out beyond death. It is a doorway that opens up the vast regions of eternity. It starts us down the hallway, not of time, but of eternity. But I don’t like going through that door.
“O grave, where is thy victory?” It looks as if the grave wins. Many a man has been a successful businessman, but death finally won over him. Many a politician gets elected to high office, even to the presidency, and then dies in office. They reach the heights, but death walks in on them and claims a victory. Death is an awful monster. However, Christ has been down through that way. Just as the ark went down into the Jordan River and over to the other side, so Christ has gone down through the waters of death for me, and He tells me, “I’m your Shepherd. Remember, I not only lead you through this life, but I’ll lead you through the deep waters of death, and I will bring you into eternity.” So like a little child I’m afraid, but I’ll put my hand in His nail-pierced hand, and He will lead me to the other side. “O grave, where is thy victory?”
“The sting of death is sin.” It is sin that has the real stinger.
“The strength of sin is the law.” The law is the mirror that shows us we are sinners.
“But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory.” How? Because we are smart and clever and are overcomers? No, the victory is through our Lord Jesus Christ. Speaking of the tribulation saints, Revelation 12:11 says that they overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb. That is the only way any of us will overcome.


Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord [1 Cor. 15:58].

I think this verse goes all the way back to chapter 1:9. “God is faithful [Oh, how faithful He is], by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” I have been called into the fellowship of His Son. Paul has already told us in this epistle that all things are ours. He said that Paul and Apollos and Cephas and the world and life and death and things present and things to come are all ours, and we are Christ’s. Life is ours, and I want to enjoy life. Death is ours, for we have the One who got the victory over death. Things present (the things of time) and things out yonder in the future are all ours. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us!

CHAPTER 16

Theme: Final exhortations

In this chapter we will find a potpourri, that is, a collection of things. First Paul discusses the collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem, but then he goes on to discuss other things. He will talk about opportunities and opposition, about watching and praying, about the conduct of the church, about the acid test of doctrine, and about that which is ecclesiastical. The total church is in view here. Verses 1–4 concern the collection; verses 5–9 are personal—Paul discusses his personal plans; verses 10–24 deal with personalities, folk who walked down the streets of corrupt Corinth and lived for Christ.

THE COLLECTION


Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye [1 Cor. 16:1].


Paul begins this chapter by talking about taking up an offering! You would think that after Paul had discussed the Resurrection, that most glorious doctrine of the Christian faith, he would say, “Brethren, we are up in the heavenlies, so let’s just stay up in the clouds.” Instead, all of a sudden it seems like he has pulled out the plug. We find that we have just gone down to the very bottom. He is talking about a collection of money for the poor saints in Jerusalem.
Some pious folk say, “You shouldn’t talk about a collection—that is a material matter. You should talk only of spiritual things.” Generally those people don’t want it talked about because the subject is a little bit embarrassing for them. Paul is going to lay out a method for Christian giving.
Now I hope you have your Bible open and that you will watch very carefully because I am not going to read it correctly. “On the Sabbath day let every one of you give tithes and offerings so that there will not be an offering when I come. It may be that when I get there we will have a special offering or probably a retiring offering.” Somebody will say, “You surely didn’t read it like it is.” No, I didn’t. But I read it the way it is often practiced today.
Now let us read it the way Paul wrote it.


Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come [1 Cor. 16:2].

“Upon the first day of the week.” If you don’t meet on the first day of the week to worship God, then you will want to meet on that day to make your offering, which is a part of worship. That is ridiculous, of course. When he says to bring your offering on the first day of the week, this was the day on which the church came together to remember the Lord Jesus in His death and in His resurrection. He rose on the first day of the week, which is Sunday, not the sabbath day.
“Let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.” He says nothing about tithes and offerings. They were to put aside their offerings as God had prospered them.
When I was pastoring a church in Texas, one of my officers owned several Coca-Cola plants, and one of them was in our town. He was a man of means, and he owned a ranch where we used to go to hunt and fish. Often he would ask me why I didn’t preach on tithing. One day I said, “Why should I preach on tithing?” He said, “Because it is the Bible way of giving.” I agreed, “Yes, it was the Old Testament way of giving, but under grace I don’t believe tithing is the way it should be done.” So he asked me, “How do you think it ought to be done?” I took him to this verse: “As God hath prospered him.” Now this was during the depression. If you are as old as I am, you will remember that the depression in the 1930s was a very serious time. So I said to him, “For some strange reason, Coca-Cola is selling, and you are doing very well. However, there are some members in our church who couldn’t give a tithe right now. I don’t believe God is asking them to give a tenth. There are a few people who are doing well, and they are to give as they have been prospered—and they are not to stop with a tenth. Probably they ought to give a half.” Do you know that this man never again suggested that I preach on tithing! The reason was that he was tithing, but he didn’t want to give as God had prospered him.
“That there be no gatherings when I come.” Paul didn’t want his meeting with them to be spoiled by high pressure methods of taking up an offering. In my day I sometimes had to give as much attention to the offering as to dealing with new converts. Paul tells us how an offering should be collected.


And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem.

And if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me [1 Cor. 16:3–4].

Paul asks them to pick a committee to take the collection to Jerusalem with him. It is well for more than one man to be responsible for the offering. It is dangerous to turn the offering over to a single individual and let one man handle it. Is it that there is a doubt about a man’s honesty if he is a Christian? Well, there may be. Even if a man is honest, there is a certain temptation involved. Paul gives us the best way to handle a collection. He uses very businesslike methods.
Paul talks here of their “liberality.” It is interesting to study the words used for Christian giving. In our passage here he calls it a logia or “a collection.” Then he speaks of their charis or “liberality”—that is the word for “grace.” In Romans 15:26 a “contribution” is called a koinoµnia, a fellowship. In 2 Corinthians 9:5 it is called a eulogia, which means “a bounty” or “a blessing.” Second Corinthians 9:12 calls it a diakonia, which is “an administration” or “ministry.” Acts 24:17 speaks of alms—eleeµmosuneµ, which is “a kind act.” All of these words refer to giving to the Lord, and each of these words can be used.
The interesting word here is “liberality,” which should be grace giving. How has God blessed you? Could your giving to the Lord be considered liberality? In the Book of Leviticus instructions are given about tithing by God’s people in the Old Testament. In the beginning the nation of Israel was a theocracy, and the tithes that the Israelites were to give supported both the government and the temple. They added up to about 30 percent of their total income. This gives us an indication of what the Israelite gave in the Old Testament under the economy of the Law. What do you think would be liberality under grace?

PERSONAL COMMENTS


Now I will come unto you, when I shall pass through Macedonia: for I do pass through Macedonia.

And it may be that I will abide, yea, and winter with you, that ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go [1 Cor. 16:5–6].


“Whithersoever I go” means that Paul doesn’t know where he is going. Do you mean to tell me that the great Apostle of the Gentiles didn’t have a blueprint or a road map from the Lord telling him everywhere he was to go? No, he says that the Lord just leads him along. Paul is in the wonderful position of being gloriously unsettled. He is not sure what he is to do. This is a great satisfaction to me, because I don’t know about the future either. There are folk in Christian service who tell me where they are going and what they will be doing five years from now. This worries me, because I have never received directions like that from the Lord, and I hate to think they have a private line to the Lord that I don’t have! Then when I read about Paul’s not knowing what was ahead for him, it is a great comfort. To Paul and me the Lord doesn’t give a road map; He just leads us from day to day. We are gloriously unsettled.


For I will not see you now by the way; but I trust to tarry a while with you, if the Lord permit [1 Cor. 16:7].

Paul is saying here that he does plan to go to Corinth, but only if the Lord permits it. Shouldn’t we have plans? By all means we should make plans, but those plans always should be amenable to the will of God. We should be willing to change them. We should be willing to shuffle things around. When Paul went out, he did not have a rigid schedule for his missionary journeys. He went as the Lord led him. We see in the Book of Acts how the Lord just practically detoured him on the second missionary journey. Paul was going down into Asia; the Spirit of God sent him over to Europe. He didn’t know he was going to Europe—he didn’t have a visa for Europe—but in that day he didn’t need a visa. He went where the Holy Spirit led him.


But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost [1 Cor. 16:8].

That was his plan.


For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries [1 Cor. 16:9].

This is a wonderful verse that I have put with Revelation 3:8, (which is Christ’s message to the church in Philadelphia): “… behold, I have set before thee an open door …” And Paul says, “A great door and effectual is opened unto me.” These two verses I have found to be true in the ministry God has given to me. Also it is true today that there are many adversaries. Any man who will stand for the Word of God has many enemies. That was the experience of Paul, and it has been my experience also. However, the Lord opens the door and no man can shut it. Thank God for that!
So we see Paul, gloriously happy, rejoicing in the will of God. If the Lord wants him to go to Corinth, he will go.

PERSONALITIES


Now we come to the personalities. These were the folk who walked down the streets of Corinth. Corinth was a most corrupt city, a sensual city given over to immorality. They knew more about illicit sex than this generation knows today. Yet here were folk, walking the streets of Corinth, who knew the Lord Jesus and who lived for Him. They kept themselves unspotted from the world.


Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear: for he worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do.

Let no man therefore despise him: but conduct him forth in peace, that he may come unto me: for I look for him with the brethren [1 Cor. 16:10–11].

Why would they despise Timothy? Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 4:12, “Let no man despise thy youth….” So he is telling the church in Corinth to accept Timothy although he is a young man. He is a preacher of the Word of God.


As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren: but his will was not at all to come at this time; but he will come when he shall have convenient time [1 Cor. 16:12].

Remember that the Corinthian church had divisions over Paul and Apollos and Peter. But Paul loved Apollos, and he makes it clear that they are serving the Lord together. He assures them that Apollos will come to visit them at a later time.

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

Let all your things be done with charity [1 Cor. 16:13–14].

What words these are for us today!


I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the first-fruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,

That ye submit yourselves unto such, and to every one that helpeth with us, and laboureth [1 Cor. 16:15–16].

When we read that word addicted, we immediately think of drug addiction. But these people were addicted to the ministry of the saints. That was a great ministry!
He urges the Corinthians to submit to those who come to serve them.


I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus: for that which was lacking on your part they have supplied [1 Cor. 16:17].

They apparently made up the delegation that brought the letter from the Corinthian church over to Paul. Paul tells the folk in Corinth that these three Christian fellows were so wonderful that they made up for the whole church.


For they have refreshed my spirit and yours: therefore acknowledge ye them that are such [1 Cor. 16:18].

Paul is saying, “Give them a vote of thanks when they get back.”


The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house [1 Cor. 16:19].

That is where many of these people came to know about Christ.


All the brethren greet you. Greet ye one another with an holy kiss [1 Cor. 16:20].

Is this a permit for kissing? It certainly is—if it is a holy kiss. Most kisses are not!


The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand [1 Cor. 16:21].

Paul dictated this epistle and then signed it.


If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha [1 Cor. 16:22].

The Lord Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Do you love Me?” (see John 21:17). He didn’t ask Peter if he would deny Him again. He just asked, “Do you love Me?” That is the acid test today. Do you love Him?
Anathema means “accursed.” Paul is saying, “If any one does not love the Lord, let him be accursed.” Maranatha means “our Lord cometh.”


The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen [1 Cor. 16:23–24].

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will love the saints. The epistle closes on the high note of love.
(For Bibliography to 1 Corinthians, see Bibliography at the end of 2 Corinthians.)

The Second Epistle to the
Corinthians

INTRODUCTION

The author of the epistle is Paul. Paul had written 1 Corinthians from Ephesus where he had been engaged in a great ministry. He had written, “For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Cor. 16:9). I believe that Paul had his greatest ministry in Asia Minor—Ephesus being the springboard and the sounding board for the gospel. I believe that the gospel covered that area in a manner that was probably more effective than it has ever been in any other place at any other time. That is what Paul meant—“For a great door and effectual is opened unto me.”
Because of that ministry, Paul just couldn’t leave and go over to Corinth. In Corinth was that baby church which he had started. That church was filled with carnal Christians. They acted like babies. They wanted Paul to come, because they wanted attention. They wanted food and they wanted a change of garments—I guess you could say they were all wet. They were crying as babies cry. Paul couldn’t come, and they were a little miffed and a little hurt by it. So Paul had written his first letter and had told them that he would be coming later.
Paul remained in Ephesus approximately three years. He didn’t get to Corinth, and the Corinthians were still disturbed. He had sent Titus to Corinth because he could not personally go there at that time. Timothy had been with Paul in Ephesus, and these two left Ephesus and proceeded to Troas to wait for Titus to bring word from Corinth (see 2 Cor. 2:12–13). When Titus did not come, Paul and Timothy went on to Philippi. It was there that Titus met them and brought Paul word about the Corinthians. He brought good news from Corinth—that the Corinthians were obeying the things that Paul had told them to do in his first answer to their questions; that is, in 1 Corinthians.
At Philippi Paul sat down to write this second epistle. The Corinthians still wanted the great apostle to come and be with them. However, any breach between Paul and the Corinthian church was healed. In this epistle Paul opens his heart in a very wonderful way. To tell the truth, Paul lets us come to know him better personally in this epistle than in any other letter.
Second Corinthians deals with conditions of the ministry within the church. (First Corinthians dealt with conditions and corrections in the church.)

OUTLINE

This epistle is difficult to outline, as it is less organized than any of Paul’s other letters, but it contains more personal details. In each chapter there is always a minor theme developed, which sometimes seems to take the place of the major theme and is generally expressed in some striking verse. This may explain the seeming difficulty in outlining and organizing this epistle. We will note this as we consider each chapter.

I. Comfort of God, Chapters 1–7Christian Living
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–2
B. God’s Comfort for Life’s Plans, Chapter 1:3–24
C. God’s Comfort in Restoring a Sinning Saint, Chapter 2
D. God’s Comfort in the Glorious Ministry of Christ, Chapter 3
E. God’s Comfort in the Ministry of Suffering for Christ, Chapter 4
F. God’s Comfort in the Ministry of Martyrdom for Christ, Chapter 5
G. God’s Comfort in All Circumstances of the Ministry of Christ, Chapter 6
H. God’s Comfort in the Heart of Paul, Chapter 7
II. Collection for the Poor Saints at Jerusalem, Chapters 8–9Christian Giving
A. Example of Christian Giving, Chapter 8:1–6
B. Exhortation to Christian Giving, Chapter 8:7–15
C. Explanation of Christian Giving, Chapter 8:16–9:5
D. Encouragement to Christian Giving, Chapter 9:6–15
III. Calling of the Apostle Paul, Chapters 10–13Christian Guarding
A. Authentication of Paul’s Apostleship, Chapter 10
B. Vindication of Paul’s Apostleship, Chapter 11
C. Revelation of Paul’s Apostleship, Chapter 12
D. Execution of Paul’s Apostleship, Chapter 13:1–10
E. Conclusion of Paul’s Apostleship, Chapter 13:11–14

CHAPTER 1

Theme: God’s comfort for life’s plans

The first two verses are an introduction to the epistle. Then the rest of chapter 1 is about God’s comfort for life’s plans. Paul really begins this epistle on a high note.

INTRODUCTION


Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia [2 Cor. 1:1].


Paul is writing in the authority of “an apostle.” I feel that any minister today should speak with authority. There is no use trying to give out God’s Word unless the speaker is convinced of the truth of it himself. If he isn’t speaking the Word with authority, then he ought to start selling insurance, or work in a filling station, or do something else. He should not be in the ministry. We already have too many men who are unsure that the Bible actually is the Word of God—that is the weakness of the contemporary church.
In the early church, when persecution began, the believers said, “O Lord, Thou art God.” My friend, if you are not sure that He is God, you are not sure of anything. And they were sure of the Word of God. They rested upon it at all times. And Paul writes with this authority.
Paul was an apostle “by the will of God.” You can’t go any higher than that. That is authority. If your life is in the will of God, there is no question in your mind. If you are in the will of God, it makes no difference where you are or how you are or what your circumstances may be, you are in a wonderful, glorious place. You may even be lying in a hospital bed. If that is the will of God, that is the proper place for you. I have a friend who is a music director, and he generally begins a song service on some humorous note. I heard him say one time, “Wouldn’t you rather be here than in the best hospital in town?” I have always laughed about that, but I have also thought about it a great deal. If it is God’s will for you to be in the best hospital in town, then that is the greatest place for you to be.
“And Timothy our brother.” I love that. He is a Christian brother to Paul and to the church at Corinth. In another place Paul calls Timothy his son in the faith. However, when Paul is writing to the church, he puts Timothy right on a par with himself. I love the way Paul has of putting others on the same plane with himself.
“Unto the church of God”—this is God’s church we are talking about. I hear people say, “My church,” and sometimes they act as if it were their church. They forget that it is God’s church, that it is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ which He purchased with His blood. In view of the fact that He paid such a price for the church, you and I better not be cheap Christians, expressing our little will in the church. Let’s remember it is His church.
“Which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia.” Paul didn’t confine this to Corinth alone. Paul extended it to all Achaia because, everywhere the gospel went in that day, these people were witnesses. They carried the gospel out to others.
I have gone through that land of Achaia. It is beautiful country. They have the most beautiful grape vineyards I have ever seen anywhere. And beautiful flowers! I can visualize those early Christians, steeped in sin in the city of Corinth. Then when Paul came with the gospel, the scales fell from their eyes. The light broke upon their darkened souls. They turned from their sins to the living Christ. Then they went all over Achaia witnessing for Christ. Many were won for Christ. Paul was also talking to all of them—to “all the saints which are in all Achaia.” How wonderful that is.
Now friend, the church of God which Paul happens to be addressing is this church in Corinth. The church in your hometown, the church in your neighborhood, is also God’s church. Don’t forget that.


Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ [2 Cor. 1:2].

Paul uses this salutation frequently. Grace and peace are those great gifts from God to the believer.

GOD’S COMFORT IN LIFE’S PLANS

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort [2 Cor. 1:3].

The word for “blessed” is actually praise—praise be to God. I wonder how much we really praise Him. I find that I am doing a better job of praising Him since I have retired than I did when I was a pastor.
David put it like this: “I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Ps. 34:1). That ought to get rid of the complaining of the saints. We are to praise the Lord. “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me …” (Ps. 50:23).
“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God is the Father. That is His position in the Trinity. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Jesus Christ wasn’t begotten in the sense of being born. He is the only begotten One in the sense that He occupies a position that is totally unique. He is the eternal Son, and God is the everlasting Father. If you have a Father and a Son like that, then there never was a time when there was any begetting in the sense of being born, of having a beginning. Rather, it expresses the positions in the Trinity. They are both eternal.
Now Paul calls Him “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.” I want to stop here and spend a little time on three words: love, mercy, grace.
So much is being said today about love. It is sloppy theology to say that God saves us by His love. Now it is true that God loves us. Oh, how He loves us! We just don’t know how much He loves us. It would break our hearts if we could comprehend how much God loves us. But God does not save us by His love. The Scriptures teach that we are saved by God’s grace.
Now what is grace? We call it unmerited favor, which means that God saves us on a different basis than merit. God loves us, but He does not save us by His love. He saves us by His grace. Why? Because He is also the God of all mercies—the father of mercies. Mercy means that God so loved us that He provided a Savior for us because He couldn’t save us any other way. Anything that we have today is a mercy from God. He is the Father of mercy. In fact, He is said to be rich in grace and rich in mercy.
Do you need any mercy today? If you need money, you go to a bank to get it. If you need mercy, go to the One who is the Father of mercies. If you need any help, go to Him. After all, anything and everything that you have today is a mercy from God. You don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve anything that I have. I don’t have much, but what I have is a mercy of God.
God was merciful to put me into the ministry. You don’t know me like I know myself. If you knew me as I know myself, you wouldn’t listen to me. Wait a minute—don’t cut me off. If I knew you like you know yourself, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I would quit right now. You see, you and I have been extended mercy, and I am in the ministry because of the mercy of God.
Now I must say something that is difficult for me to say: I have had cancer, probably still have it in my body, by the mercy of God. I hate to say it, but it is true. Everything that we have is a mercy. Not only is He the Father of mercies, He is also the God of all comfort. You can test that in the crucible of life. Suffering is the acid test. He is the God of all comfort. He will comfort you in the hospital. He will comfort you at the funeral home when you have a loved one there. He can comfort you in any place at any time. He is the God of all comfort.
There is an authentic comfort, and there is a counterfeit one. I don’t like to hear people sigh and say, “God has permitted this to come to me and I accept it,” when they don’t accept it but rebel against it. Be honest with God. Tell Him how you feel. Tell Him you don’t like what is happening to you. He knows all about it anyway. He wants you to talk frankly with Him. Comfort can be genuine or fake.
There is a popular notion that comfort is some sort of saccharin sweet sentimentality with a note of weakness. I can remember that when I was a little fellow I was always falling down and skinning my knees. I always wondered why my mother didn’t put me in long pants, but she never did. When I’d skin my knee, she would kiss it and say, “It’s all well now.” She kidded me into thinking it was well and I would quit crying. Now that is sentiment; it’s sweet and lovely. But there came a day when I went away to school and I got discouraged because I didn’t have any money. Then she sat down and talked to me. It was pretty strong medicine. She said, “Now you must be a man, my son.” That was comfort also.
People turn to all sorts of things for comfort. There is a whiskey called “Southern Comfort.” Well, I’m a Southerner, but that is not a comfort, my friend. That will ruin a home. Others turn to drugs for comfort, but there is no comfort there.
The Greek word for “comfort” is parakaleo, which means “to call alongside of.” The Holy Spirit is called the Paraclete. He is called to our side. When the Lord Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, He said, “I will not leave you comfortless …” (John 14:18). The word He used there is orphanos—“I will not leave you orphans. I will send the Comforter to you, the Paraclete.” He said to His own men, “… It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you” (John 16:7).
What is the Comforter then? He is not someone who simply kisses a bruise. He is a helper, a strengthener, an advocate. He is One who is called to help me and to strengthen me, to relieve the loneliness and assuage the grief and calm the fears. He means help in time of terrifying trouble. “Hear, O Lord, and have mercy upon me: Lord, be thou my helper” (Ps. 30:10). That is the cry of the soul that needs the Comforter. God is the God of all comfort.


Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God [2 Cor. 1:4].

It is a very wonderful thing that we have a God who can comfort us in all our troubles. It is one thing to have comfort when the sun is shining and with someone patting us on the back. But, my friend, what we really need is comfort in the time of trouble.
We will see that Paul experienced that kind of comfort in his time of trouble. You see, we need the assurance of the presence of God in all the circumstances of life—in the area of our greatest need, in our loneliness, in the desperate hour of life.
Christianity is just a theory to many people. It is merely a profession; it is like a garment to be put on for special occasions and then wear lightly. It is a stagnant ritual and an empty vocabulary. My friend, may I say to you that the proof of Christianity is how it walks in shoe leather. It wasn’t just a theory to the apostle Paul.


For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation [2 Cor. 1:5–6].

We will find that Paul is going to talk a great deal about the trouble he had and was presently having and of God’s comfort through it all.


And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.

For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:

But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:

Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us [2 Cor. 1:7–10].

This is wonderful. This explains why God permits us to have trouble or to be sick. Paul here says that he was sick nigh unto death. In fact, he had “the sentence of death” in him. He was so ill that I think the doctor told him he would die. There are others who think he is referring to the time the mob tried to attack him in Ephesus. They would have torn Paul to pieces, and he would have been made a martyr. He could have been referring to either experience; both would have carried the sentence of death. But Paul says that God who raises the dead “delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.” That is quite wonderful, and it ought to be practical for us today.
Let me say that God permits Christians to suffer. He has a good reason, a very wonderful purpose in it all. He intends for it to work out for the good of these believers. He intends for it to serve a good purpose so they can comfort someone else.
Everything that you and I have we have because of the mercy of God. And we have it for the benefit of others. Regardless of what you have, God has given it to you so that you can share it with others. He has given it to you as a mercy. If you have health, wealth, youth, talent, or a gift, He wants you to use it to share with others. Each issues from the mercy of God. And wait a minute—suffering also. If you are suffering for Christ, He permits that to happen to you.
Dr. Harry Ironside used to tell the story of a friend of his who was in Vienna, Austria, on a sightseeing bus trip. As they were traveling, some sheep got in the way of the bus and they were held up. The man sitting next to his friend was annoyed by it all because there were only two sheep dogs that were herding those sheep. So this friend, a Christian, said to this annoyed man sitting next to him, “Do you know the names of those two sheep dogs?” And he said, “Why, no, I don’t know the names. Do you know the names?” “Yes, I think I do.” “What are they?” His friend said, “One of them is named ‘Goodness’ and the other is named ‘Mercy.’” He said, “How in the world do you know that?” “Well, he said, I’ll tell you how. David said, ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives.’”
You might not think it was goodness and mercy to have a couple of dogs yapping at you to keep you from going to the left or to the right, but it is God’s mercy that keeps us in the straight and narrow way, and He uses trial and difficulty for that very purpose. He is “the Father of mercies.”
Now I am going to be personal. I had several recurrences of cancer and, I’ll be frank with you, my doctor didn’t offer me much hope. But God has been delivering me—it is amazing. That monster can turn on me at any moment; yet I trust that God will deliver. I received a letter from a man who to me seems arrogant. He wrote, “God has told me that you are going to get well; so you don’t need to worry about it any more.” I wonder, since I was the fellow who had the cancer, why didn’t God tell me that? Well, I’m just waiting on the Lord. I can say with Paul that I trust He will deliver me. We cannot be arrogant with God; we need to walk softly.
Paul is walking softly, but he can say with great assurance, “He has delivered me from death.” And he can say, “Right at the present, He is delivering me.” And then, without any boasting, he says, “We trust that He will yet deliver us.” Paul didn’t know that He would, but he believed that He would. Therefore, on the basis of that, Paul could rejoice in the fact that God was permitting him to give out the gospel in that day.
Paul appeals to these Corinthian believers for prayer.


Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf [2 Cor. 1:11].

God wants us to do this. And I have appealed for prayer. Thank God, folk have been praying for me down through the years.
Yet I think God allows us to have trouble that we might comfort others. Our suffering is for the benefit of others—“that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.” It is amazing how my experience with cancer has been a comfort to others. God permits us to have trouble so that we may be able to comfort others.
Listen to Paul again, “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life” (v. 8).
If you are as old as I am, you may remember the fable we used to have in our readers in school. The sun and the wind were having a contest to see who was the stronger. There was a man walking down the street with his coat on and the wind said, “I can make him take his coat off.” So the wind began to blow. I tell you, it almost blew the man away. The harder the wind blew, the tighter the man wrapped his coat around him. The sun said, “Now it’s my turn to try.” The sun shone down so warm and nice that the man took his coat off. The sun accomplished what the wind could not do.
Now, generally, the wind of adversity won’t take us away from God. When the wind begins to blow, when it gets rough and tough, we turn to our Father who can comfort us. However, we are in a dangerous place when things are going too well for us. When the sun is shining, Christians have it too easy. They remove that robe of practical righteousness, and they begin to compromise with the world. This is exactly what many have done in our day.


For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward [2 Cor. 1:12].

“Our conversation” means our manner of life in the world. Paul says that he can rejoice because of the testimony of his life. He makes it clear that it was not by “fleshly wisdom.” And, my friend, it is not by our wisdom that our lives are a testimony to those around us. If we have been a testimony for God, it is because we have lived our lives in “simplicity and godly sincerity.” Paul is saying that by God’s grace suffering has produced this in his life. You see, suffering is a mercy of God, and it produces qualities in our lives that are to be shared.
When I was in the hospital for my initial cancer surgery, someone sent me this little poem:

I NEEDED THE QUIET

I needed the quiet so He drew me aside,
Into the shadows where we could confide.

Away from the bustle where all the day long
I hurried and worried when active and strong.

I needed the quiet though at first I rebelled.
But gently, so gently, my cross He upheld,

And whispered so sweetly of spiritual things.
Though weakened in body, my spirit took wings

To heights never dreamed of when active and gay.
He loved me so greatly He drew me away.

I needed the quiet. No prison my bed,
But a beautiful valley of blessings instead—

A place to grow richer in Jesus to hide.
I needed the quiet so He drew me aside.
—Alice Hansche Mortenson

My friend, if today you are on a bed of pain, and you are in the will of God, that bed can become a greater pulpit than the one preachers stand behind.


For we write none other things unto you, than what ye read or acknowledge; and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to the end;

As also ye have acknowledged us in part, that we are your rejoicing, even as ye also are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus.

And in this confidence I was minded to come unto you before, that ye might have a second benefit [2 Cor. 1:13–15].

Paul is saying, “Wasn’t I a blessing to you the first time? Now I am coming a second time, and I want to be a blessing to you.”


And to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to be brought on my way toward Judaea.

When I therefore was thus minded, did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea yea, and nay nay? [2 Cor. 1:16–17].

Paul had hoped that he would be able to come to Corinth, but he hadn’t come there yet. Some of his enemies in Corinth were saying that he didn’t mean what he said. They accused him of being insincere. Now Paul is telling them that he certainly was sincere. He says that when he says yes, he means yes, and when he says no, he means no.
Believers today ought to be that kind of folk. They should not use lightness in making appointments and arrangements in the business world and in their daily appointments. We need Christian men and women who will stand by the things that they have said.


But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay [2 Cor. 1:18].

Paul didn’t say, “I will come,” then, “I won’t come”—as though he was being fickle. Why? Because God had led him. He was in the will of God.


For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea [2 Cor. 1:19].

The gospel that he had preached was a glorious, positive gospel, and it was “yea.” The gospel is something God has done for us—it is good news. We have not only the faithful God, but the sure Lord Jesus Christ.


For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us [2 Cor. 1:20].

Everything is positive in Christ. You see, God means well by you, Christian friend.


Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God;

Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts [2 Cor. 1:21–22].

Now you have here not only the faithful God, the true God, and the sure Lord Jesus, but you have the indwelling Holy Spirit. And I believe, very candidly, that you have here in this statement the total ministry of the Holy Spirit today.
“He which stablisheth us.” Now how do you become established? When Paul had written his first letter to these Corinthians—and they had been so fickle—he concluded by saying, “… be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58). What does it mean to be established? We believe that is the work of the Holy Spirit. First of all, the Holy Spirit convicts. The Lord Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit came into the world, He would convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. And the second thing that He would do (if, having been convicted, we confessed our sin and accepted Christ as our Savior) would be to regenerate us, you see. And He not only would regenerate us, He would indwell us. And not only would He indwell us, but He would baptize us.
And by the way, this expression here is quite interesting: “Now he which stablisheth us with you in [into] Christ, and hath anointed us, is God.” God who? God the Holy Spirit, if you please.
Sometimes, especially at funerals, we hear the song, “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.” Well, the word here is not safe in the arms of Jesus. When you are put into Christ by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, you are a part of His body. Rather than being safe in His arms, you are as safe as an arm of Jesus Christ. You are as safe as a member of His body. What a wonderful security that is!
In speaking of the work of the Holy Spirit, Paul uses the present tense. This is what He is doing for you today, my friend: He convicts you, He regenerates you, He indwells you, and He baptizes you.
“Now he which … hath anointed us, is God.” The anointing of the Holy Spirit is a neglected truth in our day. In 1 John 2:20 we are told, “But ye have an unction [that is, an anointing] from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” That anointing is the Holy Spirit. It takes the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into all truth. “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2:27). This ministry of the Holy Spirit is very important. He doesn’t give you a mail-order degree, nor does this knowledge come in a gift-wrapped box. You have the Holy Spirit to teach you, Christian friend, and He alone can open the Word of God to you. That is the reason this is a miracle Book. The Lord Jesus said to His own men, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth …” (John 16:12–13). He wants to guide you into all truth.
“Who hath also sealed us”—that is a marvelous ministry of the Spirit. “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). Is it possible to grieve Him away? No, He has sealed us and is going to deliver us someday. This is somewhat like taking a letter down to the post office. Occasionally some of the mail is lost and never does get delivered. If we want to be very sure that a certain piece of mail arrives, we have that letter registered and a seal put on it. The postal service guarantees that they will get that letter to the person to whom it is addressed. Also, all legal documents bear a seal—“In witness thereof I set my seal” is the phraseology that has come down to us from old English. It is also a brand, a mark of ownership. In the early days of the West, when there were no fences, the cattlemen would brand their cattle. The brand was a mark of ownership.
The Holy Spirit puts a brand on you to show that you belong to God. My friend, if you are a little sheep of His, you are not going to get lost. Oh, you may stray away, but He will come to find you. The Holy Spirit is pictured in Luke’s parable as the woman sweeping the floor, looking for the lost coin until she found it (see Luke 15:8).
“And given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” would be better translated: you are “given the earnest, which is the Holy Spirit in our hearts.” You know that “earnest money” indicates there will be more to follow. When you put down earnest money on a piece of property, it is a pledge that you are going to pay more money on that property. In such a way, God has given us the Holy Spirit, which indicates there is more to follow. This is a wonderful thing.
When people buy on the installment plan, there is a possibility that the buyer may later defect, even though he has put a down payment on the merchandise. But there is no defection in this Buyer. He has purchased us with His blood. He has put down a purchase price, which guarantees that the saved soul will be delivered safely to the Father. It means that the saved soul is in escrow today.
God has put His Holy Spirit into every believer. He is the earnest. He has come into the life of the believer to bring the fullness of God to bear in our experiences. What is it that you need today? You know that He is rich in mercy—He is the Father of mercies. What do you need? Why don’t you go to Him and ask Him for it? Do you need power? Do you need joy? Do you need wisdom? Do you need help? These are comforts—He is the God of all comfort. Paul knew this; he had experienced it. Also, the writer knows it; he has experienced it.


Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth [2 Cor. 1:23].

Paul says that if he had come earlier, he would have done what he did in his first epistle. You have seen that 1 Corinthians is filled with correction. Paul was really stern in that epistle. In effect, he is saying, “If I had come, I would have been stern with you. But I wanted to spare you that; I wanted to see if you would work this thing out yourselves.”


Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand [2 Cor. 1:24].

Paul is saying, “I am not the bishop of your souls. I am not trying to lord it over you. You have complete freedom in Christ. I just want to be a helper of your joy; ‘for by faith ye stand.’” You and I too must stand in our own faith, my friend. Paul stayed away so that their faith might be strengthened and that they might grow in the Lord. And this is one of the reasons God permits many of us to undergo certain hardships and certain difficulties in our lives.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: God’s comfort in restoring a sinning saint

This epistle is teaching us wonderful truths about God’s comfort. In the first chapter we saw God’s comfort for life’s plans. Now we see God’s comfort in restoring a sinning saint. Before the apostle gets into this subject, he continues with the subject of chapter 1. He is explaining his motives for not coming for an earlier visit. Then he discusses the sinning saint in the congregation in Corinth. Finally, he shows that God causes us to triumph in Christ.

PAUL’S EXPLANATION CONTINUES


But I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to you in heaviness [2 Cor. 2:1].


Paul admits that he was discouraged with them. If he had come to visit them, it would have been in sorrow.


For if I make you sorry, who is he then that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me? [2 Cor. 2:2].

Paul didn’t want to come in his sorrow, with tears in his eyes. He would have had them weeping, too. Then who would make Paul glad? They would all have been boo-hooing into their handkerchiefs.


And I wrote this same unto you, lest, when I came, I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought to rejoice; having confidence in you all, that my joy is the joy of you all [2 Cor. 2:3].

Paul wanted to come to them in joy. He had been hoping to get word from them telling him that they had corrected those things about which he had written them.
Now Paul opens his heart to them.

For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you [2 Cor. 2:4].
A great many people today fall out with the preacher when he preaches a message that is rather severe. Sometimes correction from the Word of God will really bear down on the congregation. Some people think that a pastor should not do that. May I say to you, my friend, that a faithful pastor must do that. The command is: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:1–2). Any man who stands in the pulpit today has a tremendous responsibility to rebuke what is wrong. Many of the saints don’t like this. Paul tells them here that his rebuke was not because he was opposed to them, but because he loved them. A faithful pastor shows his love by preaching the Word of God as it is rather than “buttering up” the congregation.

RESTORING A SINNING SAINT


Let me remind you that in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he rebuked them because they were permitting gross immorality in the congregation. In fact, they had a case of incest in their congregation, and they were shutting their eyes to it. (Yet they were acting as if they were very spiritual!) This kind of gross immorality was something that was even shocking to the heathen; yet the congregation was ignoring it. Paul had written them to get this matter straightened out. He read the riot act to them. He told them, “… put away from among yourselves that wicked person” (1 Cor. 5:13).
The congregation did listen to Paul. They excommunicated the man.


But if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part: that I may not overcharge you all.

Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many [2 Cor. 2:5–6].

They had obeyed Paul. They had excommunicated the man, which was the right thing for them to do.
Then the man acknowledged his sin and came under great conviction. Now what ought they to do? They should forgive him.


So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.

Wherefore I beseech you that ye would confirm your love toward him [2 Cor. 2:7–8].

“He will be overwhelmed, not only because of his sin, but because you won’t receive him. So now put your arm about him, and restore him to your fellowship.” To the Galatian believers Paul wrote: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Gal. 6:1).


For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things.

To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ;

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices [2 Cor. 2:9–11].

You see, the Devil tries to push us one way or another. Sometimes the Devil gets us to shut our eyes to gross immorality. There are many instances of that in our churches today. I know one preacher who has had trouble with women in three different churches. Each church he went to serve knew his past record, and still they accepted him as pastor! In shutting their eyes to gross immorality, they were hurting the cause of Christ Jesus.
Now suppose he had repented and had really turned from his sin (which he did not), then they should have forgiven him. Unfortunately, many of our stiff-backed brethren will not forgive anything. That can be the work of the Devil as well as shutting one’s eyes to immorality. Satan gets the advantage of a great many Christians because they are unforgiving. There are two things that we don’t hear very often even in our conservative churches: we don’t hear folk admitting their sins and asking for forgiveness nor do we hear folk forgiving those who confess. There is an unforgiving spirit in many of our churches.
We need to remember that we are all capable of any sin. Whatever the other man has done, we are also capable of doing. When such a man repents from his sin, he is to be restored in the spirit of meekness. He is to be brought back into fellowship. This is part of the ministry. It is a glorious ministry, isn’t it?


Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord [2 Cor. 2:12].

He came to Troas, and there he found an open door. It was the will of God for him to stay there and to preach the gospel rather than proceed on to Corinth at that time. Paul was not being fickle. He was being faithful. He was faithful to the opportunity which God gave him.


I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother: but taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Macedonia [2 Cor. 2:13].

Even while he was preaching the gospel in Troas, he was grieved at heart because Titus hadn’t come to bring him word concerning the congregation in Corinth. He waited for Titus to come, but Titus didn’t come. Then Paul went over to Philippi in Macedonia. It was there that Titus came and brought word that the Corinthians had dealt with this sin in their congregation and that the man had now repented and had turned from his sin.

THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY


Now we come to what some have called the power of the ministry. It is part of the greatness of the ministry, and I rejoice today to be able to preach the kind of gospel and the kind of Word of God that we have to give. We are dealing here with a grand and glorious picture.


Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place [2 Cor. 2:14].

In this dramatic picture, Paul is saying that preaching the gospel is like leading a triumphal entry. The background is a Roman triumphal entry. One of the great Roman generals would go out to the frontier—to Europe where my ancestors were at that time, or down into Africa—where he would have victory after victory, for Rome was victorious in most campaigns. The conqueror would then return to Rome, and there would be a big, triumphal entry into the city. It is said that sometimes the triumphal entry would begin in the morning and go on far into the night. The Roman conqueror would be bringing in animals and other booty which he had captured. In the front of the procession would be the people who were going to be released. They had been captured but would be freed and would become Roman citizens. In the back of the procession would be the captive people who were to be executed.
In these triumphal entries there was always the burning of incense. They would be burning the incense to their gods to whom they gave credit for the victory. All the way through the procession would be clouds of smoke from the incense, sometimes even obscuring the procession as it passed by.
With this as a background, Paul is saying, “Thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ.” This is wonderful, friend. You can’t lose when you are in Christ. You cannot lose! Paul says that God always causeth us to triumph. Wait a minute, Paul. Always? In every place? We know you had wonderful success in Ephesus, but you didn’t do so well in Athens. Do you feel that you triumphed in both places? “Yes,” Paul says, “He always causes us to triumph in Christ!”
“And maketh manifest the savour [the sweet incense] of his knowledge by us in every place.” Are you having a victory when no one turns to Christ? “Oh, yes,” Paul says.


For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish [2 Cor. 2:15].

In that triumphal entry were those who were going to be set free and those who were going to be executed—but all of them were in the triumphal entry.


To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? [2 Cor. 2:16].

Paul is overwhelmed by this—“who is sufficient for these things?” My friend, the greatest privilege in the world is to give out the Word of God. There is nothing like it. I would never want to run for the presidency of the United States. It is difficult to understand why anyone would want to be president in this day of unsolvable problems. But it is glorious to give out the Word of God! Do you know why? Because He always causes us to triumph!
While I was a pastor in Los Angeles, we very seldom had a Sunday when someone didn’t turn to Christ, and many times there were a great many folk.
When the gospel is preached and the multitudes accept Christ, that is wonderful. We can see the triumph there. We are a “savour of life” unto those who are saved. But now wait a minute—what about the crowd which rejects Christ? We are a “savour of death” to them. I often say to the congregation after I have preached a message, “If you go out of here after rejecting Christ, I am probably the worst enemy you will ever have, because now you cannot go into the presence of God and say that you never heard the gospel.” However, all people are now in the triumphal entry. Many will not be set free; they will be judged. But regardless of our destiny, we are in the great triumphal entry of Jesus Christ, because He is going to win, my friend! Every knee must bow to him, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Every individual will have to bow to Him someday—regardless of whether He is the person’s Savior or Judge. No wonder Paul exclaims, “Who is sufficient for these things?”
“To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life.” Today the incense is ascending; the Word is going out. And we are a savor of life to some and a savor of death to others.


For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ [2 Cor. 2:17].

This is the entire plan of the Christian ministry. We are not to corrupt the Word of God or distort it or make merchandise of it, but to give it out in sincerity as the Spirit of God reveals its truth to us.

CHAPTER 3

Theme: God’s comfort in the glorious ministry of Christ


Paul has spoken of the triumph of the ministry. Now he deals with the accreditation of the ministry. He will reach the heights in this chapter.


Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you? [2 Cor. 3:1].

Paul is asking, “Do I need a letter of recommendation from my employer? Do I need a letter from God testifying that I am His minister?” Paul says, “No, I don’t need to have that”—for this reason:


Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:

Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart [2 Cor. 3:2–3].

The proof of the effectiveness of any ministry is whether or not it has a recommendation from God. He is not giving out letters of recommendation; the proof lies in the epistles that are written in the fleshly tables of the heart. I read many letters from folk who have turned to Christ because of my radio ministry. Several years ago a wonderful family came up to me in Houston, Texas. If no one else turned to Christ through my radio program there, I still would consider it worthwhile. They listened to the radio program for three months before they made a decision for Christ, and then the entire family, a handsome family, all received Christ. They are some of the epistles I have down in Texas. I have such epistles in practically every state of these United States and on many foreign shores. They are my letters of commendation.
Paul says to the Corinthian believers, “You are our epistles written in our hearts, known and read of all men.”


And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward [2 Cor. 3:4].

This gives me confidence. I know the Bible is the Word of God. When I was in seminary, I believed it was the Word of God. I think that intellectually it can be determined that it is the Word of God. But today I don’t even need the intellectual demonstrations anymore. I’ve passed that. To me it is very simple—the proof of the Word of God is what it does. They say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. God put it like this: “O taste and see that the Lord is good …” (Ps. 34:8). This is His challenge to you.


Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God [2 Cor. 3:5].

I am sure that you have already sensed the weakness of the apostle Paul in this epistle of 2 Corinthians. But Paul could say, “For when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).
God is not looking for some big something or some big somebody. If He had wanted that, He couldn’t use me and He couldn’t use you. God chooses the weak things of this world, little things, insignificant things to accomplish His purposes. Our sufficiency is of God.

CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW COVENANTS


Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life [2 Cor. 3:6].


We are ministers “of the new testament” would be better translated, ministers of the new covenant. We will see a contrast between the old covenant (the Old Testament) and the new covenant (the New Testament). There is a contrast here in several different ways.
“Not of the letter, but of the spirit.” In the Old Testament, and specifically in the Law, the letter kills; the letter of the Law actually condemns us. The Law says that you and I are guilty sinners. Those letters which were written on the tablets of stone condemned man. The Mosaic Law never gave life. That is the contrast he is making here. The letter kills. “For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”
I have often challenged congregations to name somebody who was saved by the Law. Did you know that even Moses, the law-giver, could not be saved by the Law? Do you know why not? He was a murderer! Also David broke the Law even though he was a man after God’s own heart. Friend, you can’t be saved by keeping the Law. The Law kills you; the Law condemns you.


But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away [2 Cor. 3:7].

The old covenant, the Law, was a ministration of death. When it says that it was written and engraved on stones, we know he is talking about the Ten Commandments.
It “was glorious.” It is the will of God, and it is good, even though it condemns me. There is nothing wrong with the Law. The problem is with me. It shows me that I am a sinner. “So that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away.” That glory on Moses’ face slowly disappeared.


How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? [2 Cor. 3:8].

If the Old Testament was glorious, how much more the New Testament!


For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory [2 Cor. 3:9].

“The ministration of righteousness” is the righteousness which we have in Christ Jesus.


For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.

For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious [2 Cor. 3:10–11].

“That which is done away” is the Law. Notice that it is “done away.” Then how much more glorious is that which remains, that new covenant. He is making a contrast between the giving of the Mosaic Law and the day of grace in which we live.


Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:

And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished [2 Cor. 3:12–13].

To what is he having reference?
We need to recognize that there was a first giving and a second giving of the Law. When Moses went to the top of Mount Sinai, God gave him the tablets of stone, and God Himself wrote the Law on them. That was the Law that the children of Israel were to live by and actually be saved by (if they could keep it—which no one could). And they were going to be judged by it. While Moses was up on the mountain with God, the children of Israel were already breaking the first two commandments: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:3) and “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image …” (Exod. 20:4). The Mosaic Law was a very strict, rigid law. Even Moses said, “… I exceedingly fear and quake:” (Heb. 12:21). It demanded an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, burning for burning, and cutting for cutting. It was absolute, intrinsic righteousness and holiness. Whatever a man deserved according to the Law that was what he was to receive. In Exodus 32 the people were already breaking the Law. What is going to happen? God told Moses to go down to the people. When Moses went down the mountain, he could see from a distance that the children of Israel were breaking the first two commandments, and he didn’t dare bring the tables of the Law into the camp. Why not? If he had, the entire nation of Israel would have been blotted out at that very moment. They would have been judged immediately because the breaking of those laws meant instant death. So Moses smashed those tablets of stone; then he went into the camp.
Now when Moses goes back to the top of Mount Sinai into the presence of God, we see that something happens. Moses recognizes that all Israel should be destroyed because of their sin, but he asks God for mercy. And God gives them a second chance as He gives Moses the second tables of the Law. Moses now understands that God is tempering the Law with mercy and grace. At the very heart of the Mosaic system is to be a tabernacle and a sacrificial system that will be the basis of approach to God, which is “… without shedding of blood [there] is no remission” of sin (Heb. 9:22). But “without holiness, no man is going to see God” (see Heb. 12:14). How in the world are we going to get into His presence? Well, God will have to make a way for us, and God did make a way. What a glorious, wonderful revelation this is. No wonder Moses’ face shone!
When Moses came down from the mount, he had the second tables of the Law, which was a ministration of condemnation and a ministration of death, demanding a righteousness of man which he was unable to produce of himself; but also there was the sacrificial system that manifested the grace of God. It was the grace of God, fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ, that Paul the apostle found—Paul, who had been a man under the Law, a Pharisee of the Pharisees—and that brought him to the place where he could say, “And be found in him [Jesus], not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9). Now here is a ministration of glory indeed, and this is the glorious, gospel.
The Law was glorious. It offered man a way of salvation, but man was too feeble to fulfill its demands. It was a glorious way of life that was pleasing to God, but for man it became a ministration of death because of his lost condition.
However, the glory of the grace of God fulfilled in Christ is a ministration of glory indeed! In another passage it is called “the glorious gospel of the blessed God.” The word blessed means “happy”—the happy God. What is it that makes God happy? The thing that makes God happy is that He is a lover of men and He delights in mercy. He wants to save man. We are told in Micah 7:18: “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.” It is not God’s will that any of the human family should be lost. To the prophet Ezekiel God said, “Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 33:11). God wants to save—saving man is the thing that makes Him happy. We have a happy God. What a glorious picture this gives us.
When Moses came down from the mountain the second time, there was joy in his heart and his face shone. Now there was a way for the children of Israel to come into the presence of God through the sacrificial system.
Now let’s make this very clear again that the veil Moses put on his face was not because his face was shining with a glory so that they couldn’t look at him. It was because that glory was beginning to fade away. The fact that Moses’ face shone was a glorious thing, but the glory began to fade.


But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in Christ [2 Cor. 3:14].

Their minds are blinded until this very day.
The veil that Moses wore on his face is now a veil on the minds of God’s ancient people. It is still there because of the fact that these people actually do not see that Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness. They do not see that He is the fulfillment of the whole Law. The blindness is still there.
When we get into the next chapter, we will find that the “god of this world” has blinded the minds of those who do not believe, and we will see why this is true.

But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart [2 Cor. 3:15].
When they read the Law, they actually think that they are able to keep it. But in reading the Old Testament we do not find the confidence that you would expect in the hearts and minds of God’s people. Even David raised some questions. Job was in absolute bewilderment. Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and wept when he faced death. However, in this day of grace in which you and I live, even the weakest saint who trusts Jesus has absolute assurance of his perfect acceptance with God.


Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away [2 Cor. 3:16].

“It” refers to the heart. When the heart turns to the Lord Jesus Christ, the veil is taken away. Man’s trouble is heart trouble. He is blinded because of the sin in his life. When he is willing to turn from his sin and receive the Lord Jesus as his Savior, “the veil shall be taken away.”


Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [2 Cor. 3:17].

Only the Spirit of God can lift the veil and help us to see that Christ is the Savior. He alone can do that. He is the One and the only One.
You notice that Paul here is saying the very same thing which Simon Peter had said: “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43). My friend, if you do not see the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God is not your Teacher because the Spirit of God takes the things of Christ and shows them unto us. The Spirit of God brings you into the place of liberty. He doesn’t put you under law. He delivers you from law and brings you to Christ. When He does—


But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord [2 Cor. 3:18].

This is a very wonderful passage of Scripture. Paul has been talking about the veil being on the heart; then when we turn to Christ, that veil is taken away. Now as believers we are looking upon the Lord Jesus Christ—but even as believers our eyes are veiled when there is sin in our lives. But when that sin is confessed, and we are in fellowship with Him, we look to Him. Then we, with “open face” or unveiled face, beholding (not reflecting as another version translates it) as in a mirror the glory of the Lord—the idea is not of reflecting in order to transform, but rather that of beholding until transformed. Then we can reflect His image. I feel that a more accurate translation is: we “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
Frances E. Siewert, who lived here in Southern California in Sierra Madre, worked on The Amplified Bible. When she was still alive, she and I used to carry on a friendly battle. She would hear me on the radio and sometimes when I referred to her amplified version, I would question some things. She was a brilliant woman, and I want to be very frank and say that I lost most of the battles. However, I won a friendly battle over this verse. Let me quote this verse to you from her earliest amplified version. “And all of us, as with unveiled face, [because we] continue to behold [in the Word of God] as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into His very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another; [for this comes] from the Lord [Who is] the Spirit.” This is an excellent translation except for the word transfigured. Only the Lord Jesus was transfigured—I’ve never seen a saint yet that I thought had been transfigured. It is true that the Word of God is the mirror that we are to look at, and we are beholding Him—just looking at Christ. That is the reason we need to stay in the Word of God and behold the Lord Jesus. As you behold Him, you are transformed. In other words, the Word of God does more than regenerate you (we are regenerated by the Spirit of God using the Word of God). “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23). Also the Word of God transforms us. Oh, this is so important! I wish I had spent more time looking in the mirror, beholding Him more. My friend, in the Word of God we see Him. He is not a super star; He is not just a man. In the Word of God we see the unveiled Christ. Oh, how wonderful He is!
Dr. H.A. Ironside told the story about an old Scot who lay suffering and, actually, dying. The physician told him he didn’t have very long to live. A friend came to spend a little time with him and said to him, “They tell me you’ll not be with us long.” That’s a nice thing to say to a man who is dying. Then he continued, “I hope you get a wee glimpse of the Savior’s blessed face as you are going through the valley of the shadow.” The dying man looked up when he gathered a little strength and answered, “Away with the glimpse, mon; it’s a full view of His blessed face I’ve had these forty years, and I’ll not be satisfied with any of your wee glimpses now.” How wonderful to behold Him today.
Perhaps some of you remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story about the great stone face. A little lad lived in a village where there was a mountain with a rock formation which they called the great stone face. The people had a legend that someday someone would come to the village who would look like the great stone face. He would do wonderful things for the village and be a means of great blessing. That story really took hold of the lad. During his lifetime he would gaze at the great stone face at every opportunity that he had, and he would dream of the time someone looking like the great stone face would come to the village. Years passed and as time went by, he became a young man, then an old man. He was tottering down the street one day when someone looked up and saw him coming and shouted, “He has come. The one who looks like the great stone face is here.” This man had looked at the great stone face for so long that now he bore its image.
Listen to me. Do you want to be Christlike? Then spend time looking at Jesus. I recall that Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer at the Dallas Theological Seminary used to stop us when we would sing the song, “Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord” by William D. Longstaff. He would say, “Change that first line. Let us sing ‘Take time to behold Him.’” Do you want to be holy? Then behold Him.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus;
Look full in His wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.

I need this. I hope you, too, sense a need of seeing Jesus Christ on the pages of the Word of God so that you might grow more like Him.

CHAPTER 4

Theme: God’s comfort in the ministry of suffering for Christ


Here we have another facet of God’s comfort. We have seen God’s comfort for life’s plans in chapter 1. Then in chapter 2 it was God’s comfort in restoring sinning saints. Chapter 3 showed God’s comfort in the glorious ministry of Christ—wasn’t that third chapter wonderful? Now we are not going to come down from the mountain, but we are going to stay right up there as we see God’s comfort in the ministry of suffering for Christ. We may even have to climb a little higher, and I’m not sure but what we may get into an atmosphere where I really have difficulty in breathing. Paul says, “Come up higher,” and that’s what we want to do.


Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not [2 Cor. 4:1].

This is a glorious ministry. God has given to us a message which no man could have conceived. It would be impossible for a man to work out such a plan as the gospel presents. I don’t know why God allowed me to be a minister of the glorious gospel other than because of His mercy. We have seen before that God is rich in mercy. God did not exhaust His mercy before He got to me, because He saw that I would need a whole lot of it. He has been rich in mercy to me. By mercy He has permitted me to have a Bible-teaching radio program. Since it is by His mercy, we faint not. We rejoice in it!
What is so wonderful about this ministry? I’ll tell you what is wonderful about it. When I was in seminary, I studied religions. In fact, they so fascinated me that in the first few years of my ministry I almost decided to specialize in the field of comparative religions. Although I didn’t do that, I am acquainted with quite a few religions of the world. I want you to know the difference between Christianity—the gospel of the grace of God—and the religions of the world. It is very simply expressed by one word. All the religions of the world say, “Do, do, do.” The gospel says, “Done.” The gospel tells me that God has done something for me; I am to believe it; I am to trust Him. The only way I can come to Him is by faith. That is my approach to Him. “But without faith it is impossible to please him …” (Heb. 11:6). In contrast to this, the religions of this world all say, “Do.” It is almost amusing to see what the cults in this country say one must do to be right with God. One cult declares there are four things, one of them says there are seven things you must do, another has ten things you must do—the Ten Commandments.
Some of these cults say you must have faith. However, by “faith” they do not mean a trust in Jesus Christ, but rather an acknowledgment as historical fact that Jesus lived and that He died over nineteen hundred years ago. May I say to you, it will not save you simply to believe that Jesus died. My friend, Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again, according to the Scriptures. That is the important distinction. In His finished work we must put our trust. It is done.
At one time Paul had been under the Law. He knew what it was to be under a system of “do, do, do.” He says he was “an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee … touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Phil. 3:5–6). He was really under the Law, and he hoped that he would be able to work out his salvation. Then one day he met the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus road. After he came to know Him as Lord and Savior, he wrote, “That I may … be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:8–9). You see, after Paul had stood in the presence of Jesus Christ, he saw that he could never make it on his own. Any righteousness he might have by the Law would not be enough. He would need to have the righteousness of Christ. Paul says that was a new day for him.
It is a new day for each of us when we recognize this fact. Today we need mercy. God has been merciful; God loved us. God in His mercy provided a Savior for us, and now He saves us by His grace. How wonderful He is!


But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commanding ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God [2 Cor. 4:2].

We are saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ Jesus. However, after we have been saved, that gospel must live in us. We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. Coming to Christ and trusting Him is more than an intellectual assent to the fact that Christ died on the cross. It is placing our trust in Him and experiencing His regeneration. When Christ has saved us, we ought to be an example of the gospel. In other words, the man who preaches the gospel should be a holy man. Paul says that we have “renounced the hidden things of dishonesty.”
The translation of this verse from The Amplified Bible is very good, and it brings out all the facets of these words which Paul uses in this verse. Compare your Bible with this version: “We have renounced disgraceful ways—secret thoughts, feelings, desires and underhandedness, methods and arts that men hid through shame; we refuse to deal craftily (to practice trickery and cunning) or to adulterate or handle dishonestly the Word of God; but we state the truth openly—clearly and candidly. And so we commend ourselves in the sight and presence of God to every man’s conscience.”
We are not to walk in hypocrisy. We should not be unreal. Our behavior should not contradict that which we are preaching. It ought to be a conduct which meets the approval of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are not perfect, but we are to walk in a way that is well pleasing to Him.
We are not to handle “the word of God deceitfully.” Someone has translated that “huckstering.” We are not to be huckstering the Word of God. This gets right down to where we live. Mr. Preacher, why do you preach? Are you preaching for money? You say that you preach for the love of souls, but is it really the love of souls? Or is it for money? I need to examine my own heart on this score. Paul wrote, “… woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16).
A person can preach the gospel and say things that are absolutely true, but at the same time his life can be speaking another message. I pray a great deal about this in my own life. I pray, “O God, don’t let me preach unless I can have a clear conscience, and unless I am preaching in the power of the Spirit of God.” I don’t want to preach unless there are those two things. It is a glorious thing to preach the gospel, but it is an awful thing to preach it if down underneath there is a lack of sincerity, a lack of being committed to Him and having a conviction about Him.
Actually, this is directed to the Christian layman. Do you want to be a witness for Christ? You are a witness either for or against Him. When Paul speaks of the ministry here, he is not referring to the clergy or the man in the pulpit; he is speaking of the man in the pew. The man in the pulpit is to train people for the work of the ministry. Our business is to help equip them for that work.
I heard a tremendous analogy the other day: Sheep produce sheep. The shepherd cannot produce sheep. He watches over the sheep. It is the sheep today who are going to win sheep, because sheep produce sheep. My business is to equip the layman to witness.
By the way, are you doing something to get out the Word of God? That is witnessing. God may have given you the gift of making money. Do you use it to send out the Word of God? Perhaps you are a man or woman of prayer, interceding for those who preach and teach the Word of God. You have contact with some person whom no one else could reach. Many people will not listen to me. They tune me in and then they tune me out. Maybe you can reach a person who will not listen to anyone else. God has called you to be a witness, my friend. This is tremendous!


But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them [2 Cor. 4:3–4].

“The god of this world” should be translated “the god of this age.” I don’t like to hear Satan called the god of this world. One fall Mrs. McGee and I had the privilege of driving through eastern Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, around Virginia and across into Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. How beautiful it was! May I say to you that it was God’s world that we were looking at. Although sin has marred it, it is still God’s world.
Satan is the god of this age. He is running it. He runs the United Nations; he runs all the amusements; he is running the whole show as far as I can tell. He is the god of this age.
He has “blinded the minds of them which believe not.” Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t understand the gospel. I have heard it all my life, but it doesn’t mean anything to me.” I have heard people say that again and again. What has happened? The Devil has blinded them. The light is shining, but the Devil has blinded their eyes so they cannot see. This always reminds me of a group of miners who were trapped in a mine in West Virginia after an explosion. Finally rescuers got food over to them, and then they got an electric light over to the place where they were trapped. A young miner there was looking right into the light and said, “Why don’t they turn on the lights?” All of the men looked at him, startled. He had been blinded by the explosion. Satan blinds many folk. They say, “Why don’t you turn on the light? I don’t see the gospel at all.” That is the blindness that comes from Satan.
There are other folk who say, “There are things in the Bible that I cannot believe. I don’t know why, but I just can’t believe them.” I had a letter the other day from a man who accused me of preaching a gospel that is not true and of knowing that the Bible is not true. Oh, what arrogance! I wrote to him that I had never read a letter in which I had seen such a display of arrogance and ignorance. But do you know what was really his problem? It was not that there are things in the Bible which he couldn’t believe. The problem was that there was sin in his life, sin that the Bible condemns. He didn’t want to believe. That is the condition of a lot of folk today. The problem is not with the Bible; the problem is with their lives. My friend, if you choose to go on indulging your sins, then you can go on doing that. It is your loss. But you can turn to Christ. Don’t tell me you cannot. You can turn to Christ if you will. The moment a man comes to the place where he sees himself as a sinner and says, “I am ready to renounce my sin; I’m ready to receive Christ as my Savior,” he will be saved. The Word of God is light. Instead of saying you cannot see the light and instead of trying to blame the Bible, why don’t you face your sins before God? Then there will be no difficulty about your believing.
I would like to give you a quotation from Sir Isaac Newton. Certainly no one could say that he was not an intellectual or that he was not a man of remarkable ability. One day someone said this to him: “Sir Isaac, I do not understand. You seem to be able to believe the Bible like a little child. I have tried but I cannot. So many of its statements mean nothing to me. I cannot believe; I cannot understand.” This was the reply of Sir Isaac Newton: “Sometimes I come into my study and in my absent-mindedness I attempt to light my candle when the extinguisher is over it, and I fumble about trying to light it and cannot; but when I remove the extinguisher then I am able to light the candle. I am afraid the extinguisher in your case is the love of your sins; it is deliberate unbelief that is in you. Turn to God in repentance; be prepared to let the Spirit of God reveal His truth to you, and it will be His joy to show the glory of the grace of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.” Sir Isaac Newton was not only a great scientist but also a great preacher. Why don’t people believe? Because Satan has blinded their eyes “lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” It is a glorious gospel, but it is glorious because it reveals the glory of Christ. Apparently that is what men do not want to see.


For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake [2 Cor. 4:5].

We preach Christ Jesus the Lord. Believe me, my friend, you and I are helpless when we give out the Word of God. There is an enemy opposed to us, and he blinds the minds of people.


For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ [2 Cor. 4:6].

Paul goes back to the time of creation when God created light. I don’t know when creation took place. A great many folk believe that in order to be a fundamentalist one must believe that God created this universe in 4, 004 b.c. I do not know any of my fundamental brethren who hold that asinine viewpoint. Way back yonder in the beginning God created it. He did not give us the date. Our God is a God of eternity. He wasn’t just sitting around twiddling His thumbs waiting for man to appear on the scene. Man is a Johnny-come-lately, of course, but God has been here a long, long, long time. I hold the position that this universe has been here for a long time and that something happened to it. It bears evidence of some titanic convulsion that took place. Something must have happened to a perfect creation. We are told in Genesis 1 that God moved in. The Spirit of God moved, or the actual word is brooded, upon the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light!
Now Paul tells us that God, “who commanded the light to shine out of darkness [in Genesis 1], hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Just as the Spirit of God brooded over the waters, so the Spirit of God broods over a soul. He moves in to bring conviction to our hearts. Then He regenerates us. And the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, shines in. Here we are back looking at Him. As someone has said, “The look saves, but the gaze sanctifies.” We need to spend a lot of time looking at Him. But even doing this, we are weak vessels.


But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us [2 Cor. 4:7].

We are just an “earthen vessel.” The picture here is a vivid one. The Greek word for “earthen” is ostrakinos—this is what archaeologists are digging up today. Actually, many of their diggings are in the old city dumps where all the broken pottery (clay vessels) was thrown. When I was in Lebanon, I went down to Tyre and walked along an excavation. It goes across the place where Alexander the Great filled in between the mainland and the island to form a peninsula there. I walked out on that to see the excavation going on. There was so much broken pottery there that I could have filled bushel baskets. That is how we are pictured here—weak clay vessels, pottery that can be broken.
“But we have this treasure.” What is the treasure? That is the glorious gospel. We carry this glorious gospel in our little, old earthen vessels. That is why Paul says, “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” Sometimes we get the idea we want to be a great preacher or even a great Christian. That is one reason that I am not sure we ought to be having all these testimonies that we hear today. It is pretty easy for a man to begin to brag in his testimony. If Jesus Christ is not glorified in a testimony, there is no point in it whatsoever. After all, we are just servants. That is the best that can be said of us.
The simile of earthen vessels takes us back to the incident at the time of Gideon. In Judges 7 we read that Gideon took only three hundred men with him to free their land of innumerable Midianite invaders. Each man had a trumpet and a torch and a pitcher or an earthen vessel. They carried their torches in the earthen vessels so that the light couldn’t be seen from a distance. Then when they got among the Midianites, they broke the earthen vessels. It wasn’t until the earthen vessel was broken that the light could shine out.
My friend, that is the thing which we need today. We need the vessel to be broken. The apostle Paul was a man who knew what it was to suffer for Jesus’ sake. That vessel had to be broken. The trouble today is that we don’t have very many who are willing to do that. I remember that Dr. George Gill used to tell us this in class: “When someone is born, someone has to travail. The reason that more people are not being born again is that there are not enough who are willing to travail.” We hear a great deal about witnessing today, but, my friend, what kind of a price are you willing to pay? It is not enough to just knock on a door and visit someone. I’m not minimizing that, and I’m not saying it isn’t important, but I am saying that the earthen vessel must be broken. We cannot have our way and His way in our lives. We need to make up our minds whether we are going to follow Him or not.

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair [2 Cor. 4:8].
Paul is making a comparison here. He says, “We are troubled.” That is a comparative degree. But he says, “Yet not distressed.” That is a superlative. He was pressed for room, as it were, but he still had room to preach the gospel. There was hand-to-hand combat in the corner, but he still could turn to God.
“We are perplexed”—he was unable to find a way out—“but not in despair.” He did get out—the Spirit of God led him.


Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed [2 Cor. 4:9].

He was “persecuted,” pursued by enemies, but he was “not forsaken”—he was not overtaken by the enemies. When he was in prison, he could write to the Philippians, “But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places” (Phil. 1:12–13). Even when he was in prison he could always say that the Lord stood by him.
“Cast down, but not destroyed.” This is tremendous—he was smitten down; the enemy got him down, but the enemy did not destroy or kill him. Actually, in all these phrases Paul is making a play on words which is lost in the translation into English. If I could paraphrase it in English, it would be something like this: “I am struck down, but I’m not struck out.” Even at the end of his life Paul could say, “… I have finished my course …” (2 Tim. 4:7, italics mine). Paul seems to be fighting a losing battle. Can’t you sense that this man is very weak? And yet, in his weakness, he is strong. If we could have seen this little crippled, weak, sick Jew up against the mighty juggernaut of Roman power, we would have concluded that he was nothing. But, my friend, the fact is he brought a message that withered the Roman Empire. Even the historian Gibbon said that the Roman Empire could not stand up against the preaching of the gospel of Christ. (May I say that the gospel still continues to topple thrones.) Paul seemed to be so weak, and yet God delivered him again and again. He used miraculous means and He also used natural means. God will never forsake His servants.
You and I live in a day of compromise, a day of expediency, a day when we seem to measure a man by how popular he is or by how many friends he has. The late Dr. Bob Shuler, pastor in downtown Los Angeles, used to say, “I measure a man by the enemies he has.” It is important to make the right kind of enemies. Jesus said that if we would love Him and follow Him, the world would hate us. Paul had the right kind of enemies. I am confident that I have the right kind of enemies also.


Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body [2 Cor. 4:10].

Remember that in 1 Corinthians 15:31 Paul could say that he died daily. In Romans 8:36 he wrote, “As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” In 1 Corinthians 4:9 he wrote: “For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.” Christian, do not be afraid to suffer. Jesus said the world would hate us if we were following Him. It is wonderful to take our place with the Lord Jesus Christ in these days.


For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh [2 Cor. 4:11].

We may actually be the strongest at the moment we feel the weakest.

So then death worketh in us, but life in you.

We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;

Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you [2 Cor. 4:12–14].

It is interesting to note here, and this is very important to see, that Paul did not consider death to be the end. He is looking on beyond. Death is merely one of the experiences which he will have. In the next chapter he will speak of the comfort in the ministry of martyrdom for Christ. There is a comfort in laying down your life for Jesus’ sake. He is saying here that he is joined to a living Christ. He is dead to the things of the world because he is joined to a living Christ. “He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus.”


For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day [2 Cor. 4:15–16].

This is a wonderful verse. As we grow older, we sort of begin to die out as far as the body is concerned. However, we grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. I said to my wife no later than yesterday, “I wish that I were thirty-five years old and knew what I know now.” This old body that I have is dying. I can tell it all over. I’m ready to trade it in on a new model. It is beginning to waste away, but the inward man is renewed day by day. I feel closer to the Lord today than I did the day I entered the ministry. I was young then and I had a lot of enthusiasm, but I didn’t know very much. What a stumbler I was and how often I failed. I was a real ignoramus then. Now I know a little more; I have grown a little down through the years.


For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal [2 Cor. 4:17–18].

Again he makes a contrast. Down here we seem to have a lot of trouble and, my, it does seem to last a long time, doesn’t it? It seems so hard. But when we begin to measure it by the weight of glory that is coming someday, it is a light affliction compared to that weight of glory. Someone has said, “At eventide it shall be light.” “… we spend our years as a tale that is told” (Ps. 90:9). Our years pass as “… a watch in the night” (Ps. 90:4). “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” We are not to fix our gaze on the things which are seen. These things that we see around us are all passing away. The things which are not seen are eternal.
I think of the changes that have taken place right here in Southern California. There were a number of very wonderful Christians whom I knew when I came here in 1940. Many of them are gone today. The cities have changed—everything is different. The things which are seen are passing away. The things which are not seen, those are the things of eternal value, and they are beginning to loom larger and larger. “For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
My friend, I am looking for that city whose builder and maker is God. I love Pasadena; I love Southern California, but I can truthfully say that I am now looking for another city.

CHAPTER 5

Theme: God’s comfort in the ministry of martyrdom for Christ


In this section on the comfort of God, we have seen God’s comfort in the glorious ministry of Christ (ch. 3). How wonderful that He is an unveiled Christ whom we declare today! Also we have seen God’s comfort in the ministry of suffering for Christ (ch. 4), and now we shall see the comfort of God in the ministry of martyrdom for Christ.


For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens [2 Cor. 5:1].

I want you especially to notice what Paul is saying here. He says, “For we know [not we hope or we expect or even that we believe] that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” This is a positive “know.” He knows because of the fact that the Spirit of God has made it real to him.
The word for “tabernacle” is skeµneµ, which means “tent.” That is the same word that was used for the wilderness tabernacle of the Old Testament in the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament into the Greek. The Old Testament tabernacle, the Mosaic tabernacle, was a skeµneµ, a tent. It was a flimsy sort of thing.
This verse has always been a big question mark to me. I have never been too dogmatic about the interpretation of it. But I have now come to the conviction that what he is talking about here is not a temporary body. For many years I thought that God would have sort of a temporary body for us when we got to heaven. It would be like taking your car to the garage for repair work and having a loaner to drive until it is fixed. I thought that the Lord would give us a temporary body until our new body was given to us. I never liked that idea, but it seemed to be what Paul was saying. Now I don’t believe he is referring to a temporary body, because he says it is “eternal in the heavens.” He is talking about that new body that we are going to get.
We need to realize that there is an outward man and an inward man. Paul talked about that in the preceding chapter. The outward man perishes, but the inward man is renewed day by day. A great many people misunderstand that. I had a letter from a man who said the Bible is filled with contradictions, and he said, “I can prove there are contradictions. You talk about So-and-so having gone to be with the Lord, and then you talk about the body that is going to be raised and say that the person is going to be raised from the dead down here. Now that is a contradiction.” This man has missed the entire point. The body is put in the grave, but the individual, the real person, has gone to be with Christ—if that individual is a believer.
The things that are seen are temporal. Maybe you have seen me and maybe you haven’t. When I go to other areas for speaking engagements, some folk drive long distances because they have heard me on the radio and they want to see me. A family in Ohio drove fifty miles just to see how I looked. But actually they didn’t see me, they just saw the house, this old tent, I live in. I’ll be very frank with you, this old tent is becoming very weak, and it is flapping around. Solomon described old age in Ecclesiastes: “In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low” (Eccl. 12:3–4). The “keepers of the house” are the legs, and my old knees are beginning to tremble. “The strong men,” which are my shoulders, are bowed. My wife tells me to stand up straight, and I tell her I can’t stand straight. “Those that look out of the windows” are my eyes—I am wearing trifocals now. “The sound of the grinding is low”—I don’t hear as well as I used to hear. This is old age taking place in the outward man. The things that are seen are temporal.
Also, there is an inward man, and the inward man is spiritual. It is difficult for us to understand that. God is a person, but God is not a physical, a material Being. God is a Spirit. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,” Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4:24.
I hear people say they don’t like getting old. My friend, I am enjoying it. I am really enjoying my retirement from a church because I am doing now what I want to do, and it is wonderful to be able to do that. My doctor has told me, “I want you to do what you want to do.” When my wife tells me to do something, I say to her, “Look, my doctor tells me to do what I want to do, and I don’t want to do this thing that you want me to do.” Sometimes I can get by with that, but not always!
Seriously, it is wonderful to know that every passing year brings me closer to Him. I am going to see Him someday; I am going to see the face of the Lord Jesus, the One who loved me and gave Himself for me. I rejoice in that prospect. To be very frank with you, I don’t have as much conflict with the world, the flesh, and the Devil as I used to have. I think they’ve given up on me. This old house is getting old.
Someone asked President Adams how he felt after he had become an old man. He answered, “I feel fine. This old house that I live in is really getting feeble. The shingles are coming off the top and the foundation seems to be coming out from underneath, but Mr. Adams is just fine, thank you.”
My friend, we have a house eternal in the heavens. This body of ours will be sown a natural body, but it will be raised a spiritual body. He is going to give us a new body up yonder.


For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven [2 Cor. 5:2].

I’m groaning in this body. One just can’t help but groan. Several years ago I built a study up over my garage, which is right next to the house. I couldn’t study in my office at the church; so I transferred my study to this room above the garage. Sometimes, when I start down the steps in the morning, I notice that it isn’t as easy as it was some years ago. I used to come bounding down those steps in the morning, but now I groan with every step. My wife tells me, “You ought not to groan like that.” I remind her, “It’s scriptural to groan. Paul says we groan in this house, and I’m going to groan while I am in this old house of mine.”


If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked [2 Cor. 5:3].

This is interesting. One of these days Jesus is going to call His own out of the world. We will be caught up to meet our Lord in the air, and we are going to stand before Him. What will it be like for us? We will be clothed in His righteousness. We will not be found naked.
Not everyone will be clothed in His righteousness when they are raised from the dead. Christ “… was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25)—that is, our righteousness. But some folk have not accepted His righteousness. They have rejected Christ. Therefore, there is a resurrection of the just and of the unjust. Paul mentions this in Acts 24:15, “… that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both the just and unjust.” Jesus said the same thing in John 5:29. “And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” My friend, you are going to stand in His presence someday. Will you be clothed in the righteousness of Christ? Are you accepted in the Beloved?
This is a good time to mention that the Bible does not teach only one judgment day, but many judgments. (1) There was the judgment which Jesus Christ bore on the cross. It is because Jesus bore this judgment for us that He could say, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation [judgment]; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). (2) There is self judgment. We are told in 1 Corinthians 11:31, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.” (3) Also there is the chastisement of God for the believer. The Lord takes us to His woodshed. “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb. 12:6). (4) The works of the believer are to be judged, as we will see later in this chapter. (5) The nation Israel is to be judged. (6) The gentile nations are to be judged. (7) Fallen angels are to be judged. (8) Finally, there is the judgment of the Great White Throne. All the lost ones are brought there. They will appear naked. They will not be clothed in His righteousness. They will be judged according to their works, which is the way they wanted it to be.


For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life [2 Cor. 5:4].

If you feel like groaning, you just groan, my friend. It’s scriptural. We are burdened. Yes, we are. That is why we groan in these bodies. It is not that we are worried about being unclothed; we know that we shall be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. If He is our Savior, He is our only hope.


Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit [2 Cor. 5:5].

The earnest of the Spirit implies there is more to follow. He has given us the Holy Spirit down here in these weak bodies with all our feebleness, all our frailty. The Holy Spirit is just the earnest. Earnest money is the down payment. Christ has purchased us, and the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer is the down payment. One of these days we will move out of this old house and we will meet the Lord in the air. How wonderfully this opens up such a vista for us.

Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord [2 Cor. 5:6].
We are at home in the body. I like this body of mine. I still have a scar on the side of my temple where I fell against the bed when I was learning to walk. Down through the years I have gotten used to this body of mine, and I feel at home in it. However, as long as I am at home in this body, I am absent from the Lord.


(For we walk by faith, not by sight:) [2 Cor. 5:7].

How could Paul be so sure that when we leave this body we will be present with the Lord? Paul says that we walk by faith. We take God at His Word. I would rather take His Word than anyone else’s word. Faith is taking God at His Word. We are living in these bodies, and we are absent from the Lord.


We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord [2 Cor. 5:8].

A better translation would be “at home with the Lord.” It contrasts being at home in the body with being at home with the Lord. Remember that the soul does not die. The soul never dies; the soul goes to be with Christ. It is the body that is put to sleep. It is the body that must be changed. Remember that there will be a generation that will not go through death, but their bodies will still need to be changed. “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed…. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:51, 53). It is the body that goes to sleep and it is the body that is raised. Resurrection does not refer to the soul or the spirit. The English word resurrection is the Greek word anastasis, which means “a standing up.” It is the body which will stand up. Knowing these things, we walk by faith.


Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him [2 Cor. 5:9].

The Greek word philotim that is translated “labour” literally means “to esteem as an honor”—to be ambitious. It is the same Greek word which is translated “study” in 1 Thessalonians 4:11: “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands….” Be ambitious to mind your own business! In the verse before us it is translated “labour”—we should be ambitious, we should labor, in such a way that we will be accepted of Him. This is not ambition to become a great somebody.
We are accepted in the Beloved. Paul makes this clear in Ephesians, “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Eph. 1:5–6). Being accepted in Christ is my standing before God. God sees me in Christ, and He is made unto me all that I need: wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption (see 1 Cor. 1:30). He is my perfection. God sees me in Christ, and I am complete in Him. You cannot add anything to completeness. When a person has 100 percent, that person has all of it. We who are believers have Christ, and we are accepted in the Beloved. Accepted in Christ is the standing that all believers have before God.
To be accepted of Him is a different thing. This has to do with our state and refers to the way we live our lives. Do we live for Christ? Are we ambitious to be accepted of Him? To be ambitious to be accepted of Christ certainly does not mean that we are to crawl over everybody and step on them in order to get to the top. I am afraid we have people in Christian work who are like that because they want to make a name for themselves.
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan tells how he wrestled with this problem. He was a school teacher when he was called as a minister. It was a very solemn moment for him. He felt that the Lord was saying to him, “You have been set apart definitely for the ministry of the Word. Now do you want to be a great preacher, or do you want to be My servant?” The first thought that Dr. Morgan had was, I want to be a great preacher. That ought to be a wonderful ambition, but after a while the Lord began to press it in upon him, “Do you want to be a great preacher, or do you want to be My servant?” Finally Dr. Morgan came to it. He saw that he had to make a choice. Finally he said, “O blessed Lord, I would rather be Thy servant than anything else.” He was willing to be an obscure preacher. May I say that in my opinion God made G. Campbell Morgan not only His servant but also made him a great preacher. Sometimes we think that our ambition ought to be to do something great for God. God says that He wants us to be His servants. That’s all. You and I need to come to the place where we can say, “Lord, just take me and make me and break me and do with me what You will.” God gave this word through Jeremiah: “And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not …” (Jer. 45:5). That’s putting it plain enough, isn’t it? My friend, are you trying to get great things for yourself? Oh, there are a lot of ambitious preachers and a lot of ambitious laymen and a lot of ambitious Christian workers and a lot of ambitious Christians—but with selfish ambition. Do you really want to be God’s servant? If you do, then you can accomplish something for which He will be able to reward you. To be honest with you, I’m beginning to become just a little worried about this. I want to make sure that I am His servant.
1. I am going to have to stand before Him someday and give an account of my service—and so are you. This should motivate us to serve Him acceptably.


For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad [2 Cor. 5:10].

This is the judgment seat, literally, the beµma. There is still a beµma in Corinth, and when we were there on tour, we took pictures of the ruins of it. This was the place where the judges of the city would meet the citizens and would judge them for certain things—there was no question of life or death. At the judgment seat of Christ only believers will appear. It is not a judgment of the believer’s sins, which Christ fully atoned for on the cross. The judgment is to see whether you are going to receive a reward or not.
When Paul says, “We must all appear,” remember that he is writing to believers. All we believers will be judged, that we may receive the things done in the body. We will be judged on the way we lived the Christian life, how we have lived in these bodies down here. When we go into His presence, we will be finished with these old bodies. The question He will ask is how we used these bodies. How did we live down here?
Paul faces this question when he writes to the Philippians. He says in Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Then he talks of his desire to go to be with Christ but also of his desire to live longer so that he can minister to the Philippians. He wants to stay so that he can preach the gospel of Christ a little longer. I had the same reaction the first time I had surgery for cancer and there was not too much hope for me.
You see, I felt like the little boy years ago in my southland. The preacher asked one night, “How many want to go to heaven?” Everybody put up his hand except that one boy. The preacher looked down at him and said, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?” The boy answered, “Sure, I want to go to heaven, but I thought you was gettin’ up a load for tonight.” Like that boy, I didn’t want to go right away when I had the cancer. Paul didn’t want to go. He said he wanted to stay in his body and preach a little longer. He wanted Christ to be magnified in his body that he might be accepted of Him and that he might receive a reward.
This is the way I feel. I want to stay in this body and do as much for the Lord as I possibly can. Here is the first motivation for believers: We are all going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and we will answer to the Lord for our lives. We are going to give a report to Him. Let me make it very clear that this is not the Great White Throne Judgment of Revelation 20:11–15 where only the unsaved will stand. If you are a believer, your name is written in the Book of Life, and you have eternal life. However, you will stand before the beµma, the judgment seat of Christ, to be judged for rewards. You and I will stand before Him. This should motivate us to serve Him acceptably. Then when we come into His presence, He will be able to say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
2. The fear of the Lord urges us to persuade men.

Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences [2 Cor. 5:11].
I think the word terror could better be translated “fear.” There is a great deal said in the Bible about the fear of the Lord. We are told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (see Prov. 9:10).
One of the tenets of liberalism is that we don’t need to be afraid of God. They characterize God as a sweet, indulgent old man whom you can treat most any way. Liberalism teaches the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man, which is one of the most damnable doctrines abroad today. Do you know that the Word of God says: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31)? Let us not give ersatz bread to the people. Let us not preach a watered-down, sunshiny gospel. Our God is a holy God, a righteous God. It is this holy God who loves you. It is this holy God who wants to save you. But, my friend, if you don’t come to God His way, you will have to come before Him in judgment. “Knowing therefore the terror [fear] of the Lord, we persuade men.” There is many a pulpit from which is never preached a sermon on hell. There are few sermons on punishment, few sermons on judgment. As a result, God’s judgment is almost a lost note in Protestantism today. The Lord Jesus said that He had come to seek and to save that which was lost. My friend, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We need to fear the judgment of God. We need to recognize that we are going to be held accountable to Him.


For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart [2 Cor. 5:12].

In other words, if you are declaring the full counsel of God, you can do it in a loving manner. You don’t have to bring down thunder and lightning. However, we need to recognize and we need to state very clearly that men are lost. If we do say that, we are not commending ourselves; that is, we are not trying to become popular. I am always afraid of the soft-soap type of thing we hear today. There is so much today that goes the way of psychology, how to become a well-adjusted human being. May I say to you that if you are without Christ, it is not a psychological adjustment that you need. You are a hell-doomed sinner, and you are on the way to hell. What you need is Christ!
It may not make me popular to say this to you, but it is the Word of God. We don’t commend ourselves to you. We don’t want you to glory in us. The important thing for us to do is to declare the whole counsel of God. Our motivation to get out the Word of God is a recognition of God’s judgment. That is the thing that would arouse many a sleepy church member today.
Missionaries come and tell about the needs out yonder. May I say that there is a real need in this land of ours. The United States is one of the greatest mission fields today. People in our land are on the way to hell. You rub shoulders with them every day.


For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause [2 Cor. 5:13].

Paul says that the people may think he is crazy. That is all right. He is doing this for God. Or some people may think he is sober—well, it is for their sakes that he is sober.
3. The love of Christ constrains us.


For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:

And that 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. 5:14–15].

“Constraineth us” is a phrase that has been misunderstood. The thought has been that the love of Christ restricts us or straps us down. That is not the meaning of the word that Paul is using here. He says it is the love of Christ that is pushing us out. It is the love of Christ that is motivating us. It is the love of Christ that causes us to give out the Word of God. The love of Christ constrains us.
“Because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead.” It was this that sent Paul out to the ends of the earth with the message of the gospel.
“Because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead.” Mankind is under the sentence of death. When Adam was yonder in the Garden of Eden, he was our federal head; he was the head of that old creation. That old creation was on trial in Adam. God told him, “… Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17). Adam deliberately disobeyed God. He came under the sentence of death, and when he did that, he took the entire human race down with him, for all were represented in him. You and I have been born into a family of death. All mankind now is under the sentence of death.
Someone has said, “The very moment that gives you life begins to take it away from you.” When David wrote, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …” (Ps. 23:4), he was not referring to the end of life; he was saying that all of life is like walking down through the great canyon of death, which gets darker and narrower until, finally, we must go through that doorway of death.
Dr. Ironside used to illustrate this in an unusual way, and I’ll give you my version of his very wonderful illustration. Behind my home is a lovely range of mountains called the San Gabriels. Mount Wilson is in this range, and on top of Mount Wilson is the Hale observatory. Now let’s think of Mount Wilson as representing Paradise, the place where God put man when He first created him. Adam had everything that was good for him, but there was one thing that God told him he was not to do. Adam was a sinless man and he faced a choice. God had asked him not to do one thing, and that was the very thing which Adam did. He fell. We call it the fall of Adam. He came tumbling down off that high mountain and landed way down in the valley where we are today. After he had fallen down into the valley he began to bring into this world a race of People. They don’t come into this world way up yonder where Adam had been on the mountaintop, on the plane where he had been when he was innocent, but down in the valley, the place to which Adam fell.
The Lord Jesus Christ came to this world all the way from heaven. He was the absolutely sinless One. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. He came down here to save sinners. He came down from heaven, but He didn’t go to the mountaintop. There are no people there—He couldn’t find any man on that plane of holiness. They are all in the valley. They are all dead in trespasses and sins. So what did He do? He came down into the valley. He came down into the place of death where all men are. “And that he died for all.” Because men were dead, He went down into death, and now He brings believers up with Him in resurrection life. Does He take them back up to the mountaintop where Adam had been? No, He takes them with Him into the heavenlies. We who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are now seated in the heavenlies. He has “… raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6).
“If one died for all, then were all dead.” He took our place. And those who believe on Him are risen with Him. They are not risen so they can be put back on the mountaintop and come tumbling down again. No, He takes them all the way up to the heavenlies. Christ took our place. And if we are going to live, it is going to be by faith in Him—that those through faith “should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.” Christ died, not only that we should be delivered from death and judgment, but also that we should be brought up from our state of death into newness of life. Now our lives should be devoted to Him that we should live henceforth to the glory of God.
For the child of God this puts a whole new interpretation on the human family.

Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more [2 Cor. 5:16].
Now we do not know men “after the flesh.” Now we see men through different eyes from those we used when we belonged to the world. Out in the world there are only lost men. I know a Ph.D. who teaches at Cal Tech in Pasadena. He is a brilliant fellow, but he is a lost man because he is not in Christ. I know a man from the gutter; he is also a lost man because he is not in Christ. “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh.” That is to say, we do not evaluate men according to their racial background or their social background or their color. We know that according to the old nature they are all lost in sin. But Christ died for all of them. Christ died for the Ph.D. and He died for the man in the gutter. He died for all.
James writes about this in the second chapter of his epistle. He says it is wrong to give the honored place to a rich man who comes into your midst with a ring on his finger and with fine clothing on his back while you give the poor fellow a place to stand in the back. Why is that wrong? Because as the children of God we are to look upon the whole human family as sinners for whom Christ died. Even the line between Jew and Gentile has been erased. All in the human family are sinners before God. The only solution for all is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We do not recognize any man after the flesh. All are on the same level.
“Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.” I believe that Paul did know Christ after the flesh. I think that he was present at the crucifixion of Christ. I can’t imagine that brilliant young Pharisee not being present at the Crucifixion in Jerusalem.
Jesus Christ walked on this earth over nineteen hundred years ago. He was born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, walked in Galilee, began His ministry in Cana of Galilee, went to Jerusalem, died on a cross there, was buried outside the city in Joseph’s tomb, rose again the third day, appeared to those who were His own, and ascended back into heaven. We don’t know Him anymore as the Man of Galilee, friend. There is no Man of Galilee today.
At Christmastime there are a great many people who make a trek to Bethlehem. The place is crowded. What are they looking for? Are they looking for the Babe? He isn’t there! Jerusalem is crowded with tourists at Eastertime. Our risen Lord isn’t there. You see, we don’t know Him after the flesh anymore.
Right now, at this very moment, He is up yonder at God’s right hand. He is the glorified Christ. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh,” now we don’t know Him that way anymore. We are not identified with the One who walked on this earth over nineteen hundred years ago; we are identified with Him who is in glory. That is why it says that we have died with Him and have risen with Him and are now in Christ Jesus in the heavenlies.


Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new [2 Cor. 5:17].

Here we have a tremendous statement. Allow me to change the word creature to the word creation. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.” We hear this verse often at testimony meetings. People will quote this verse and tell about their conversion. They say they no longer indulge in certain bad habits that they had before their conversion, and they consider this change in their habits to be a fulfillment of this verse.
If you and I are a new creation in Christ Jesus, what are the old things that have passed away? Remember that we have talked about all mankind living at the bottom of the hill where all of us are sinners. Now that we have trusted Christ, those old relationships have passed away. We are no longer identified with Adam. We are no longer identified with the world system. We are now identified with Christ. We have been baptized into the body of believers and we belong to Him. The old things have passed away, and the new thing is this new relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are now in a relationship with the glorified Christ.
Let’s be very practical about this. You may ask, “I know that is a wonderful verse, but how may I know absolutely that I am a new creation in Christ?” Listen to what the Lord Jesus said: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). Have you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you trust Him? If you do, He assures you that you have eternal life and will not come into judgment; you have passed from death unto life. This makes you a new creation, no longer subject to judgment and death. You have passed into life.
Do not try to base your confidence on experience. You are a new creation because Jesus says so. The basis is the Word of God. You no longer belong to the old creation that fell in Adam. The new creation stands in Christ Jesus, and you are in Him if you are putting your trust in Him. You and I stand in the place of danger and temptation; we may fail in many, many ways, but the wonderful truth is that the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed us and we are a new creation in Him.
Now Paul is going on to talk about that.


And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation [2 Cor. 5:18].

The ministry of reconciliation is actually God’s call to lost men everywhere to come to Him with all their sins, all their burdens, all their problems, all their difficulties, and to be reconciled to God. I want to spend some time here to look at this matter of reconciliation. The word is used twice in this verse, twice in the next verse, and once in the following verse. Verse 21 doesn’t have the word in it, but it sums it all up. This is a most important subject, and we are in a very important section here.
First let me state that reconciliation is not the same as salvation. Reconciliation goes a step further. It is more than having our sins forgiven and divine justice being satisfied. Reconciliation involves a changed relationship—completely changed. It means to change something inside out and upside down and right side up. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.”
Notice that there is the Godward side of reconciliation. He is the One who did the reconciling. “God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” It is repeated in the next verse.


To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation [2 Cor. 5:19].

Reconciliation is the ministry of changing completely. But who is changing completely? God is never changing—He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It says that God has reconciled us to Himself. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” It is the world that has been reconciled. God has reconciled the world. As we look at the world, we can see that it is going on its sinful way. “We have turned every one to his own way” (see Isa. 53:6). But it is through Christ that the world is reconciled to God, through the death of Christ. This marvelous ministry of reconciliation is the work that Christ has done.
Let me call in another passage of Scripture concerning this. “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight” (Col. 1:20–22). Compare this with Philippians 2:10 in which it says that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth—“under the earth” refers to hell. I want you to notice in the passage in Colossians, when it is speaking of reconciliation, only heaven and earth are mentioned. Hell is not reconciled to God. Although every being in hell will bow to Him, only those in heaven and earth are reconciled. In what way are they reconciled? “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight” (Col. 1:21–22). The death of Christ is what reconciled the world to God.
Notice that God is not reconciled—He has not changed. But the world has been put in a different position. Why? Because Christ died. You see, when Adam sinned back there in the Garden of Eden, a holy God couldn’t reach down and save him. God had to do something about his sin. God had to judge man. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die …” (Ezek. 18:20). God had told Adam, “… for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Adam did die spiritually on that very day, and nine hundred years later he also died physically. When he died spiritually, he became alienated and separated from God; and he had no capacity for God. That is the condition of the world, and God had to judge that.
Now that Christ has died, the position of the world has been changed. Today God has His arms outstretched to a lost world. He says to a lost world, “You can come to Me.” The worst sinner in the world can come to Him. Today it doesn’t make any difference who you are, you can come to Him. Because Christ died, a holy God no longer deals with us in judgment, but now He reaches down to save all those who will come to Him. Jesus Christ bore all that judgment on Himself so that now the world is reconciled to God. You don’t have to do anything to win God over. God is not waiting around the corner to hit you over the head with a billy club. God is not angry with you. God does not hate you. God loves you. Christ did not come to charge man’s sins against him but to pay man’s debt.
The woman taken in adultery is an illustration of this (see John 8:1–11). The Lord Jesus said to that crowd of hypocritical religious leaders, “… He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Then Jesus wrote something in the sand, wrote something on the earth. It is interesting that in Jeremiah 17:13 it says, “… they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.”
It tells us that they left—beginning with the old Pharisees and then down to the younger ones. The older ones had more sense than the young fellows who hung around a little longer. I think probably one of the old fellows had had an affair with a woman over in Corinth. He thought nobody knew about it, but of course the Lord knew all about it. Perhaps Jesus just wrote down the name of that girl, and when the old Pharisee looked down and saw that name written on the ground, he said, “I just remembered I have another engagement,” and he tore out of there in a hurry. Before long they were all gone except one—only Jesus Christ was left. The only One who could have thrown a stone at her did not throw a stone. He asked, “Woman where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:10–11). “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” Jesus was not shutting His eyes to her sin, but for all that sin He was going to the cross. The condemnation was to fall on Him, and because she trusted Him, He could send her away uncondemned.


Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God [2 Cor. 5:20].

Who is an ambassador? Webster says an ambassador is a minister of the highest rank accredited to a foreign government or sovereign as the official representative of his own government or sovereign. “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ.” We are in a foreign land—Peter says that we are pilgrims and strangers down here. Paul says, “For our conversation [citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). Since our citizenship is in heaven, we are ambassadors down here.
When one government sends an ambassador to another government, it means they are on friendly relations. God is still friendly with this world. He has sent us as His ambassadors. One day He will call His ambassadors home. Then judgment will begin.
When man sinned, God in His holiness had to turn away from the world. But God loved man, so He sent His own Son to die on the cross. Now God can hold out His arms to the world and say, “You can come.” We are His ambassadors. As His ambassadors, we are to tell folk, “God will save you!” All God is asking any man to do is to come to Him. God will not try to get even with you. He doesn’t want to punish you. He doesn’t want to lay a hand on you. He invites all people everywhere to come to Him.
This is a great day. We have the privilege of saying to you, “Be ye reconciled to God.” All He asks you to do is to turn to Him. How can He do this? It is because Christ bore it all for us.

On Him almighty vengeance fell
That would have sunk a world to hell,
He bore it for a chosen race,
And thus becomes our hiding place.

God is reconciled. You don’t need to do one thing to win Him over. You don’t have to shed tears to soften the heart of God. He loves you. He wants to save you. Why?


For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him [2 Cor. 5:21].

Jesus Christ took my place down here. He, who knew no sin, came that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He has given me His place, clothed in His righteousness. He took my hell down here so that I might have His heaven up yonder. He did that for me.
Christian friend, have you been able to get out this wonderful Word to anyone else? Whoever you are, wherever you are, however you are, what are you doing today to get this Word of reconciliation out to a lost world? God is reconciled. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He feels toward you just as He did the day Christ died on the cross for you and for all mankind. This is what the world needs to hear from you. The world is reconciled to Him, but they will have to turn around and by faith come to Him. Let’s get this word out, my friend.

CHAPTER 6

Theme: God’s comfort in all circumstances of the ministry of Christ

We find set before us here the requirements of a good minister of Jesus Christ. None of us can read this without saying again, “Who is sufficient for these things?” None of us could meet these high standards. But I want you to notice that we are still in the section of God’s comfort. Here we see God’s comfort in all circumstances of the ministry of Christ.

TRYING EXPERIENCES OF THE MINISTRY


We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain [2 Cor. 6:1].


You will notice in your Bible that “with him” is in italics, which means that these two words have been supplied by the translators. It should be “We then, as workers together.”
There is a line that needs to be rubbed out, and that is the line between the clergy and laity. There are certain ones who have been given the gift of teaching. If I have any gift, it would have to be that one, because if I can’t claim that one, I don’t have any at all. There are those who are gifted to teach, those who are gifted to be pastors, and those who are gifted to be missionaries. We would term them the clergy. But God gives a gift to each member of the body of Christ. There ought not to be the distinction between the pulpit and the pew that we make today. We are all workers together. If you are one who sits in the pew, may I say that you are as responsible to get out the Word of God as I am. I have been given the gift of teaching. You may be a bank president or the president of a large corporation, a truck driver, a housewife, but you are responsible today to get out the Word of God. God has given to the church certain men who will teach, certain men who will act as pastors, certain men who have gifts that are used for the work of the ministry, which is the equipping of the believers to serve.
Again let me repeat the comment of Dr. Earl Radmacher, who is currently president of the Western Conservative Baptist Seminary: “Shepherds do not produce sheep. Sheep produce sheep.” You see, a great many people think it is the business of the evangelist and the preacher to win people for Christ. May I say to you that it is your business. God has given teachers and preachers and evangelists and missionaries to fill out and prepare the body of believers so that those who are sitting in the pews might be equipped for their ministry of going out to witness for Christ. The shepherd doesn’t produce the sheep. He feeds the sheep and he watches over the sheep. He shepherds the sheep, but he doesn’t produce sheep. He can’t. The sheep produce sheep.
Today the whole work of the church is bogged down because the sheep are not out witnessing. I want to raise the question again, and I know I am being very personal about it, what are you doing today to get the Word of God out to others? You can do something that I cannot do and that no preacher in the country can do. There are some people who have confidence in you. They will listen to you but they won’t listen to a preacher—unless you encourage them to listen. I know a very fine businessman who has a speech impediment and doesn’t feel he can speak very well to people. He takes tapes from our program and circulates them everywhere. He knocks on the door of one of his workers or associates, takes along a tape and a tape recorder, and invites them to listen to the tape with him. There is an example of witnessing. We are workers together.
Then Paul says, “We … beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.” How can one receive the grace of God in vain? God has been showering His goodness and mercy on us. To receive His great goodness and to rejoice in the salvation of the grace of God and yet to live carnal, worldly lives is what it means to receive the grace of God in vain. Let me ask you this question: What response are we making today to the love of God’s heart?


(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.) [2 Cor. 6:2].

“Have I succoured thee” means I have helped you.
A great many people say, “Well, I won’t accept Christ now. I will do it some other time.” They postpone it. Some people want to wait until a certain evangelist comes to town or until they can attend a great meeting. Now I don’t know who you are or where you are right now, but if you are not saved, “now is the accepted time.” Look at your clock. Whatever time it is right now is the time for you. Somebody will ask, “Can’t I accept Him tomorrow?” Probably, but you have no promise of a tomorrow. The important thing is that God says the time is right now.


Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed [2 Cor. 6:3].

We need to be very careful about personal behavior. We are to give no offense in anything. An offense here doesn’t mean hurting people’s feelings. I don’t think anyone can serve in the church today without hurting the feelings of someone. Some folk are there for no other purpose than to get their feelings hurt. You have heard the old saying about carrying your feelings on your sleeve. Well, a lot of the saints do just that. Dr. Harry Ironside put it something like this: If you don’t shake hands with them, they feel you intended to slight them. If you do shake hands with them, you hurt their arthritis. If you stop to speak with them, you are interrupting them. But if you do not, you are a little snooty. If you write them a letter, they know you are after their money. If you do not write, then you are neglecting them. If you stop to visit them, you hinder them from their work and bother them, but if you do not visit them, it shows you have no interest in them.
My wife and I got up early one morning and drove two hundred miles before breakfast. We were really hungry and we stopped in a dumpy little place where they served a good Texas breakfast with grits and hot biscuits. When I went to pay the bill, I noticed a sign up by the cash register. “We can’t please everybody but we try.” That may be a familiar sign to you, but it was new to me that morning and it made my day.
“Giving no offence” means that you are so to live that no one can point to you and say, “Because of that man’s life I have no confidence in the salvation he professes.”
Now Paul lists things that should characterize the ministry. They are quite interesting.


But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses [2 Cor. 6:4].

“In much patience.” That is number one on the list. Believe me, I am bowled over by this very first one. I’ll be very frank to admit to you that patience is something I have always lacked. My wife and my best friends say this to me: “Vernon McGee, if you ever preach a sermon on patience and I am there, I’m going to walk out because I don’t think you are the fellow to speak on patience.” So do you know what? I’m not going to speak about patience now. I just want you to notice it is number one on the list.
“In afflictions.” This is something that a great many men in the ministry today must still bear.
“In necessities.” Folk who came through the depression or who were born in a poor home understand this. When I was a boy, I saw the time that there was not a one dollar bill in my home. We would have gone hungry had it not been for the fact that the grocer would sell us groceries on credit. There was many a time I had nothing in the world for supper, the evening meal, but just a glass of sweet milk with crumbled, cold biscuits in it. And do you want to know something? I still think that is delicious. It is better than a lot of French pastry I have eaten.
Dr. Harry Ironside tells about the time he as a young preacher preached in a place for three days and didn’t have a thing to eat during those three days. He was preaching to a group of people who thought he was living by faith, and they surely did let him do it. No money was given him for food. On the fourth morning he was debating whether to stay in bed for breakfast or to get up and tighten up his belt another notch when he noticed a letter being slipped under the door. He got up and opened it and all it said was, “Enclosed is an expression of Christian fellowship,” and there was a ten dollar bill in it. That morning he went out and had the best breakfast he had ever had in his life.
“In afflictions, in necessities, in distresses.” There are a great many folk living today who know what these are. The younger generation doesn’t know. That is what has made the generation gap. I try to tell my daughter about the depression. She answers me, “Dad, I don’t even know what you are talking about.” And she doesn’t know.

In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings [2 Cor. 6:5].
“In stripes.” I have a notion that very few of us know what physical stripes are such as Paul experienced. “Stripes” consisted of forty blows with a rod. However, we have been cut across the face many times by some insulting remark made by some pious saint in a very pious voice. There used to be a dear lady in my congregation who had a very sharp tongue. She would go out of the evening service and would say to me, “Pastor, you had a wonderful sermon this morning”—implying that I could preach a good sermon in the morning but that the evening sermon was not good. That is a way some folk hit a minister across the face.
Paul lists other things that he experienced in his ministry (which few men in my day have had to pass through): Imprisonments, tumults, labors, watchings, fastings—all were familiar to Paul.
Now he goes on to give another set of identifications of the ministry.


By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,

By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left [2 Cor. 6:6–7].

“By pureness.” Believe me, it is important that a minister be pure in his life. Lack of pureness is one thing that hits and hurts the ministry today. It is always tragic when a minister turns up as a bad egg and is found guilty of immorality and impurity. Pureness is important—and it is important to God. “By knowledge.” I do not think that knowledge refers only to a knowledge of the Word of God. A minister of the Word should know a great many things, and he should keep himself abreast of the times in which he lives. “By longsuffering.” Here that comes up again. Longsuffering is patience in a different suit of clothes. “By kindness.” Oh, how folk long to have a pastor who has tender, kindly interest in them! “By the Holy Ghost.” God have mercy on any preacher who tries to preach without the Spirit of God leading and guiding. I am more concerned about that than any other thing. I was pastor in downtown Los Angeles for twenty-one years, and I had followed many great men. I often thought about Dr. R. A. Torrey, the great evangelist of the past, who had been the first pastor of that church. When I would go out to preach, the last thing I would say was, “O Lord, help me to preach in the power of the Holy Spirit!” Vernon McGee in himself is not very much in comparison to those men who went before him. An effective ministry can only be by the Holy Ghost. “By love unfeigned.” Genuine love is so desperately needed today. We do not need pious pretenders quoting pious platitudes. We do not need phony professors of faith who tell you how much they love you and then put a knife in your back. We need real, genuine love. We need the love that the Spirit of God puts into hearts. “By the word of truth.” The “word of truth” means that a preacher should know his Bible. He should preach “by the power of God,” which is possible only as a pastor spends time alone with God before he steps into the pulpit. “By the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left” is right living in all areas.
Next Paul gives us a set of nine paradoxes which should characterize a man of God.


By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true;

As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed;
As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things [2 Cor. 6:8–10].
“By honour and dishonour.” Some may approve and some may disapprove. This gives a well-balanced ministry. “By evil report and good report.” Although some folk will say ugly things about us, we continue to serve the Lord. Shakespeare has one of his characters say, “They praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused.” Flattery harms us more than criticism! “As deceivers, and yet true”—we are called deceivers, yet we are giving out the true Word of God. “As unknown, and yet well known.” A minister of God may not be well known to the world, but he is known to God. “As dying, and, behold, we live”—Paul had taken the place of death, yet he had had new life in Christ. “Chastened, and not killed.” He often experienced persecution, beatings, whippings, stonings, and yet he lived on. “Sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing.” Sorrow was for the sins of the people and their rejection of the gospel, yet he was rejoicing in Christ. “As poor, yet making many rich.” Whenever you find a minister who is rich, watch out. Folk are not supposed to get rich in the ministry. “Having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” You recall that Paul had said in his first letter to the Corinthians that all things were theirs. This includes things in the world, life, death, present or future. “… All are yours; And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:22–23)—oh, how rich we are! And yet we are poor.
Paul has given us three sets of things which characterize the ministry. You will notice that the first set pertains to things which are physical, the second to things which are mental, and the third to things which are spiritual. All are important.

PERSONAL APPEAL OF PAUL


Paul just seems to cry out here. Oh, how he yearned for those converts of his in Corinth. They were little baby Christians, babes in Christ, carnal Christians, but his heart went out to them. It seems his heart almost breaks in this chapter and the next one.


O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged.

Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.

Now for a recompense in the same, (I speak as unto my children,) be ye also enlarged [2 Cor. 6:11–13].

Paul is opening up his great heart of love, and he stirs up the hearts of those who love him. The interesting thing is that he apparently also stirred up the hearts of those who hated God and His Word and who tried to work injury upon those who loved Him and loved the Scripture. We find that was true in the early history of the church, and it is true today. If you stand for God, you will find that it will really cost you something.
We come now to an important passage of Scripture. It is a section which has been often abused and misinterpreted. Some folk try to make it hard as nails, unyielding and unloving. Yet what Paul is saying here is coming from the tender heart of a man whose heart was almost breaking because of his great concern for the Corinthian believers.


Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? [2 Cor. 6:14].

Paul here makes an appeal to the Corinthian believers to make a clean break with idolatry. They are to make a break from the sins of the flesh. They are to be separated from the worldliness that is in the world. Today we use the term “separated believers.” There are many folk who consider themselves to be “separated believers” who are actually as worldly as can be.
Back in the Old Testament under the Mosaic Law God gave a law to His people who were largely engaged in agriculture. He said that they were not to yoke together an ox and an ass. That would be yoking together unequal animals.
One was a clean animal and the other was an unclean animal. Here God is speaking to believers, and He says that the believer should not be yoked together with an unbeliever. How are people yoked together? Well, they are yoked together in any form of real union such as a business enterprise, a partnership, a marriage, a long-term enterprise.
Certainly marriage is the yoking together of two people. An unbeliever and a believer should not marry. A clean animal and an unclean animal should not be yoked together to plow. A child of God and a child of the Devil cannot be yoked together and pull together in their life goals.
Another example of such a relationship is identification with an institution. If a man is a professor in a seminary and he is conservative and holds the great truths of the Bible, but the seminary has gone liberal, such a man should get out of that seminary, because he is drawing a salary there and he is identified with their work and their organization. He is associated with it in a very tangible, real way. He is unequally yoked with unbelievers.
Suppose, however, that an evangelist comes to town and holds services for one or two weeks. Although he uses certain methods that you would not condone, he is preaching Christ and God is blessing his ministry, are you to join with him?
When I was a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, an evangelist came to town and, without saying a word to any of us who were conservative men, put his tent right across from my church and the Baptist church in that end of the city. Then he came over to solicit our help. I was somewhat reluctant because of the ethics of the man. He was really a sort of screwball in many ways. He would conduct the most informal services. He would stop in the middle of his sermon because he had forgotten to make an announcement or had forgotten to take up an offering. The Baptist pastor and I were good friends and both conservative, so we talked it over. We didn’t like all the methods of the evangelist, but we decided that we would support him. He was there for a couple of weeks and people were saved through his ministry. I would never have joined with him in any sort of permanent commitment because of his methods, but I gave him my support for the time he was there. We were by no means yoked together.
Notice how Paul did it. Paul would first go to the synagogue when he entered into a new city. Can you imagine a place where there would be more opposition to Jesus Christ than in the synagogue? Yet that is where Paul began. I am not condemning him for it because God led him to do it that way. Now if Paul had joined himself to one of those synagogues and had become the rabbi in one of them and had stayed there, then that could have been considered a yoke.
You see, Paul is talking about being yoked together in a permanent arrangement like marriage or a business partnership or a professorship in a school or membership in a church. This verse has no reference to my support of an evangelistic crusade. There are many men who do not carry on their ministries the way I do mine—and some of them are so much more successful than I am, that maybe they are right and I am wrong. Of course, I feel that I am right and I intend to go along as I am now. But this won’t keep me from having fellowship with men who do things a little differently as long as they are preaching the same gospel that I preach and they believe the Bible is the Word of God. Paul is talking about yoking ourselves with unbelievers, as he makes clear in the next verse.


And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? [2 Cor. 6:15].

Well, I certainly don’t have any part with them. I am not joining with them permanently in anything, and I trust you are not. Let’s not confuse this with our relationship with other believers who do things in a different way from what we do them.


And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people [2 Cor. 6:16].

Now Paul specifically mentions idolatry. The temple of God has no agreement with idols. Where is the temple of God? Today the temple of God is the human body of each and every believer. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit. The one in whom God dwells cannot be in agreement with idols.


Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,

And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty [2 Cor. 6:17–18].

Paul is appealing to the Christian for separation and for cleansing. He is not to be in agreement with idolatry. He is to be separate from worldliness and from the spirit of worldliness which can creep even into the churches and into the lives of believers. The believer should not even touch the unclean thing.
Back in the Book of Joshua we learned how Joshua and the Israelites took the fortified city of Jericho by faith. However, Achan took the “accursed thing.” Israel had touched what God had declared to be unclean. Then they went up to the little city of Ai with great confidence because they were sure of an easy victory, but Joshua and Israel were overcome and defeated at Ai. God asks for a separation from worldliness and from the unclean thing.
There are a great many Christians who consider themselves separated. They wouldn’t think of doing this or of doing that. Yet they gossip and have the meanest tongues, never realizing that that very thing is worldly and unclean. Or they go in for the latest in dress or for gluttony and yet consider themselves to be separate from worldliness. I don’t mean to sit in judgment—and we ought not to sit in judgment on each other—yet I feel I must point out these things because we need to be very, very careful. It is very easy to talk about the things of God, to claim the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, to say we love Him, to consider ourselves separated unto Him, and still not in reality be separate from the world and separated unto Him.
When I made my decision to enter the ministry, the vice-president of the bank where I worked called me into his office. He was a godless man—he could swear as I’ve never heard anyone swear. I think it rather moved him when I announced that I was giving up my job to study for the ministry. He called me over to his desk and said, “Vernon, I want to tell you a story.” This is what he told me: During World War I he was working in another bank and with him worked a man as godless and worldly as could be. However, this man was the soloist in a church. One day the man who was now the vice-president went to church, and there he heard his co-worker sing a solo, “Jesus Satisfies.” A dear lady said to him afterwards, “Wasn’t that a marvelous solo? It sounded like it came out of heaven!” Since he knew this man at work, he knew that Jesus did not satisfy him. One day this same woman came into the bank to do some business, and the teller who had been the soloist was attempting to get a balance sheet balanced, but it was off, and he began to rip out oaths and curses. The lady was really shocked at this and asked my friend, “Who is that man?” He answered, “That is the voice you heard the other Sunday and thought it came right out of heaven.” The vice-president of the bank was a skeptic and a rascal because he had seen a professing Christian singing, “Jesus Satisfies,” when he knew Jesus did not satisfy that man. He knew that man was immoral, a drinker, and a man of vile language. He knew a Christian should not be like that, and it made him a cynical individual. He reached over and touched me on the knee and said to me, “Vernon, don’t be a preacher unless you mean it.” I have never forgotten that.
God says, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, … and touch not the unclean thing.” Don’t be a Christian unless you mean it. Don’t say that Jesus satisfies you if He is not really satisfying you. This is what Paul is talking about.
Then there is this glorious promise: “And I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” You will be the kind of son or daughter who brings honor to the Father.
A man told me about his boy going away to college. The boy had become alienated from his dad. He was still the man’s son, but the father said to me, “I can’t deal with him as I would like to as a father. I simply can’t talk to him the way I’d like to as a father.” This is what God is saying here.
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, God is always your Father. Don’t forget that. What God is saying here is that He would like to act like a Father to you. He would like to treat you as a son. If you are going off into worldliness, if you don’t mean what you say, if you are hypocritical in your life, then you can be sure of one thing: God the Father will take you to His woodshed. My friend, God does not want to be everlastingly taking you to the woodshed. That is why He asks you to come out from among them, to be separate, not to touch the unclean thing. Then God can have an intimate relationship with you as a Father with a son.

CHAPTER 7

Theme: God’s comfort in the heart of Paul


This is the last chapter in the section on the comfort of God. This is God’s comfort in the very heart of Paul, a very personal and a very wonderful chapter.
As a background for this chapter we need to remember that there had been a man in the church in Corinth who had been guilty of gross immorality. He had had an incestuous and adulterous relationship with his own father’s wife, his stepmother. The church hadn’t dealt with that situation, and Paul had reprimanded them in his first epistle and had said they must deal with it. Now as Paul is writing his second letter to them, they had dealt with this man with the result that he repented and confessed his sin. The church had been accurate in dealing with him. Paul’s letter had had the right kind of effect. Titus came to Paul with the report that this man had been weeping over his sin and that he felt utterly unworthy of further recognition by the church. It is to this matter that Paul is referring.

Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God [2 Cor. 7:1].
What promises is he talking about? He is referring to those at the end of chapter 6. God has said that if we will obey Him, He will be a real Father to us, we will be real sons and daughters to Him, and He can deal with us in that relationship. This does not say that if we don’t come out and be separate, we will lose our salvation. It does mean that if we do not lead a clean life, God can’t treat us as a Father would want to treat His child. I gave the illustration of the father of a wayward son who said, “I’d like to treat him like my son but I cannot. He is alienated from me and he is in trouble and difficulty. He resents me and I can’t be a father to him.” He was the father of the boy, but he couldn’t act like a father. God wants to treat us as a Father. A great many of us do not know by experience what a wonderful Father we have. We don’t give Him a chance to be a real Father to us. What can we do to change that? Paul tells us, “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves.” How can we cleanse ourselves? We cannot cleanse our own conscience from the guilt of sin. I am unable to wash out the stain of a guilty conscience, but God has done that through the death of Christ and the shedding of His blood. After we have been cleansed from our sins by the blood of Christ, our hearts still need a daily cleansing from the contamination of each day. When I receive the Word in faith and I act upon that Word, I am cleansed from all the filthiness of the flesh and spirit. This is what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). The best bar of soap in the world is the Word of God. It will really clean us up. The Holy Spirit enables us to deal with the sin in our lives.
Paul says we are to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit. All sin is filthiness in the sight of God. Then what is the difference between the sins of the flesh and the sins of the spirit?
The filthiness of the flesh are those sins which we commit in the body. This has to do with unholy lusts, unbridled appetites, drunkenness, gluttony, licentiousness, inordinate affection. These are the sins of the flesh. These are the dirty things. You and I need to be aware of the fact that we are living in a world today that is giving a respectability to the sins of the flesh.
An illustration of this is the attitude of the world toward liquor. Most people today say that alcohol is all right. It is well advertised in the media. The other day I heard an advertisement which said, “The mark of a mature, sensible, and successful man today is one who is able to drink cocktails.” What propaganda! What brainwashing of the people! No political dictator has done a more thorough job. The liquor interests do a fantastic amount of brainwashing. But wait a minute! The ad which I was quoting was not for Southern Comfort or Old Crow or some other brand of whiskey. It was an advertisement from an organization which deals with alcoholics. They added, “There are some people who just don’t know how to handle their liquor.” I’ll say there are! There are a whole lot of them—several million of them—and we, the taxpayers, are paying the hospital bills that the liquor interests create. This is an example of the sins of the flesh.
What does the Bible say about this? Listen to Habakkuk 2:15: “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!” God have mercy on you if you serve cocktails in your home and tempt your neighbor to drunkenness. The Word of God rebukes that.
Another illustration of the filthiness of the flesh is the bookstands filled with the vilest pornographic literature that is imaginable which glorifies the human body and sex. In this permissive society God’s Word still condemns the sins of the flesh. If you as a Christian are going to indulge in them, my friend, then God cannot act toward you as your Father. Although you may actually be His son, He cannot treat you as a Father would like to treat His son.
Now Paul mentions the filthiness of the spirit. What are some of those sins? Well, how about gossip, my friend? How about vicious slander against some Christian brother? There are a great many people who would never take a gun and pull the trigger to shoot a man down, but they will take the dagger of gossip and put it in his back when he is not listening. Some of the dear saints in the church engage in that kind of practice.
There are the secret sins of the spirit such as vanity and pride. Conceit, haughtiness, unbelief, and covetousness are the dirty sins of the spirit. There are a lot of saints in the church who live by a series of “don’ts”—don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t play cards. Not one of them would have a cigarette on the end of his tongue, but the words on the end of his tongue burn more deeply than a cigarette could burn. These are some of the sins of the spirit.
Now Paul says that we should “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way: “And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:13–14). Christ is my righteousness. Christ is my holiness. The problem is that my life and His perfection are really far apart. God says we are not to have such a big holiness gap. He wants us to be holy in our lives.


Receive us; we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, we have defrauded no man [2 Cor. 7:2].

Paul assures them that he has corrupted no man. He has defrauded no man. He didn’t come to them to take up offerings for all sorts of projects. I wish a great many Christians could say the same thing. I feel that sometimes things are not done correctly by the deacon boards in our churches. I think that if a person makes a donation for a specific purpose, it is the duty of the deacon board to make sure the money is used for that specific purpose. They do not have the liberty to say, “Oh, we’ll just put this in the general fund,” or, “We think it would be more important to use this to retire our debt on a building.” Paul could assure them that he had wronged no man, corrupted no man, defrauded no man.


I speak not this to condemn you: for I have said before, that ye are in our hearts to die and live with you [2 Cor. 7:3].

Paul loved these Christians. They were constantly on his heart.


Great is my boldness of speech toward you, great is my glorying of you: I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation [2 Cor. 7:4].

Now he tells them that he is comforted and is filled with joy. He goes on to give the reason for this.


For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears.

Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus;

And not by his coming only, but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told us your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind toward me; so that I rejoiced the more.

For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season.

Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing [2 Cor. 7:5–9].

Now this is quite lovely, and the background will help us appreciate what he is saying. Remember that in Paul’s first epistle to them he wrote a very sharp letter. He called them “babes” and “carnal.” He pointed out the gross immorality among them, and he commanded them to deal with it and put it away. And they did deal with it as Paul had instructed them. When Titus arrived in Philippi to join Paul, he brought the news that the church in Corinth had dealt with the situation and that the guilty man had repented of his gross immorality. So Paul wrote in the second chapter of this second epistle that now they should forgive him and comfort him so that he wouldn’t be swallowed up in sorrow. He is to be taken back into the fellowship.
After he had left Ephesus, he had gone to Troas, and there he waited, but Titus didn’t come. Then he began to rebuke himself. He thought, Maybe I shouldn’t have written such a sharp letter to them after all. Or maybe I should have gone to them directly. He went on to Philippi, and it was there that Titus met him and brought him word from Corinth.
Someone is going to say to me, “I thought that the Scripture is verbally inspired and that Paul was writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he wrote to the Corinthians.” That is correct. This is the inspired Word of God. I believe that with all my heart. How is it then that Paul was rebuking himself? It was because Paul was human. God had him write like that to let you and me know how human he really was. Also it shows us how tender and sweet and loving he was and that you and I ought to be the same way. What a lesson in this for us! Once Paul had received the news he could write, “I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation.”
It is possible that someone reading this page should sit down and write a letter to an individual whom he hurt years ago. If that someone is you, tell him that you are sorry and want to make things right. Do you know what you would do for him? You would make him exceedingly joyful. We all need to do more of that.
Paul gets very personal when he says, “When we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears.” This is so personal I almost feel that we shouldn’t read it. But God used a man to comfort Paul: “Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.”
You could help some dear saint of God and be a comfort to him. My friend, when was the last time you went to your preacher and put your arm on his shoulder and said, “Brother, I’ve been praying for you. I see that you are working hard and standing for the things of God, and I just want you to know I am standing with you.” He would appreciate that.
Paul continues: “And not by his [Titus’] coming only, but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told us your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind toward me; so that I rejoiced the more.” In other words, “You comforted Titus and Titus comforted me.”
The other day I was in a church service and a man came to me and said, “My brother who lives back East wrote me. He says that he has been listening by radio to that fellow McGee from California and that, if ever I should meet him, I should tell him that my brother accepted Christ as his Savior.” Now I don’t know why that man’s brother didn’t write to me and tell me that, but he didn’t. He wrote to his brother and his brother told me. I want to say to you that I was comforted by that. It made me know that my radio program is something that I should continue.
The Corinthians had said nice things about Paul. Friend, don’t be so hesitant to say something nice about someone else. Really, your tongue won’t fall out if you say some nice things.
“For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance.” You see, repentance and the shedding of tears are not the same. “For ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.”


For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death [2 Cor. 7:10].

Here we find God’s definition of repentance—real repentance. Repentance is a change of mind. As far as I can tell, the only repentance God asks of the lost is in the word believe. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ! What happens when one believes? There is a change of mind. There is a turning from something to Someone. Listen to what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “… how ye turned to God from idols …” (1 Thess. 1:9)—that was a change of mind. How did it come about? They first turned to Christ. When Paul had come to them, he hadn’t preached against idolatry, he had preached Christ to them. And they turned to Christ. But they were idolaters. So when they turned to Christ in faith, what else happened? They turned from the idols, and that turning from idols was repentance. That is the repentance of the unsaved; it is the repentance to salvation. I don’t know if God wants us to emphasize repentance to the unsaved; He does want us to emphasize Christ. When they respond to Christ, there will be a turning from their old unbelief to Christ.
However, God does emphasize repentance for the believer if he is going in the wrong direction, walking in sin. For him there is to be a turning, a repentance. A lot of people simply shed tears, which may not indicate true repentance. That kind of sorrow is the sorrow of the world and works death. True repentance is godly sorrow, which “worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of”—that is, repentance without regret.
My dad used to tell about a boat on the Mississippi River that had a little bitty boiler and a great big whistle. When it would blow its whistle while going upstream, the boat would start to drift downstream because the boiler was so small it couldn’t propel the boat and blow the whistle at the same time. There are a lot of folk who have a great big whistle and a little bitty boiler. They shed a lot of tears and make a big display, but there is no real repentance. They shed tears, but they keep on going in the same direction.
But with these Corinthian believers their repentance was real.

For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.

Wherefore, though I wrote unto you, I did it not for his cause that had done the wrong, nor for his cause that suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear unto you.

Therefore we were comforted in your comfort: yea, and exceedingly the more joyed we for the joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed by you all [2 Cor. 7:11–13].

He commends them for the fact that they really repented.


For if I have boasted any thing to him of you, I am not ashamed; but as we spake all things to you in truth, even so our boasting, which I made before Titus, is found a truth.

And his inward affection is more abundant toward you, whilst he remembereth the obedience of you all, how with fear and trembling ye received him.

I rejoice therefore that I have confidence in you in all things [2 Cor. 7:14–16].

Paul has opened his heart and has shown his inmost feelings. He is full of joy and rejoicing. He has been comforted. This has been God’s comfort in the heart of Paul.

CHAPTER 8

Theme: Example of Christian giving


The subject now changes. For the previous seven chapters Paul has talked of the comfort of God. I trust it has brought comfort and strength to you to know that you have a Helper in your Christian life. Our natural reaction is to say, “Paul, go on—tell us more about comfort.” However, he changes the subject abruptly. He now talks about the collection for the poor saints of Jerusalem. He brings us back to earth with a thump! The subject changes from Christian living to Christian giving, which is as vital a part as living.
This section, which includes chapters 8 and 9, divides this way:

1. Example of Christian Giving, chapter 8:1–6
2. Exhortation to Christian Giving, chapter 8:7–15
3. Explanation of Christian Giving, chapters 8:16–9:5
4. Encouragement to Christian Giving, chapter 9:6–15

During my twenty-one years as a pastor in downtown Los Angeles I do not think that I preached more than three messages on giving, yet we saw the giving double and triple several times during that period. This confirms my belief that God’s people will support a ministry that teaches and preaches the Word of God. I resent the high-pressure promotion and money-raising schemes which are being used in Christian work. I do not think they are scriptural by any means.
These two chapters give us the most extended and complete section on Christian giving that we have in the Scriptures. Actually, all we need to know is here. There are no rules, but there are certain clear-cut principles for giving. That may strike you as being unusual. Someone may say, “I thought we were to give a tithe.” No, that is not the rule for today. It might be a principle that you would like to follow, but it is not a rule for anyone today.
The word that is important in this section is the word grace. In this chapter the word grace occurs seven times, and it occurs three times in chapter 9—ten times in these two chapters. The subject is the grace of giving.

EXAMPLE OF CHRISTIAN GIVING

Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia [2 Cor. 8:1].

I want to spend a little time here on that word grace. We find it here in the first verse. We find it again in the fourth verse: “Praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints.” The word gift in our translation is actually “grace.” Another way of translation would be, “Praying us with much entreaty that we would give effect to the grace and fellowship of the service to the saints.” The word appears again in the sixth verse. “Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he had begun, so he would also finish in you the same grace also.”
He is calling giving a grace. It is a grace of God. It is a disposition created by the Spirit of God. He is writing to the Corinthians and is telling them that the Macedonians had that kind of grace, and he is hoping that the Corinthians will have that same grace.
The theologian defines grace as the unmerited favor of God. I agree with that, and yet it does not adequately describe this word. It may cause you to miss the rich flavor of it. I studied classical Greek before I studied Koiné, the Greek of the Scriptures, and I found that the Greek word charis means an outward grace like beauty or loveliness or charm or kindness or goodwill or gratitude or delight or pleasure. The Greeks had three graces: good, fine, noble. The Greeks were missionary-minded about their culture, and they wanted to impart this to others.
The Holy Spirit chose this word, gave it a new luster and a new glory, and the Christian writers adopted it. Paul uses it again and again. Now notice carefully this definition: The grace of God is the passion of God to share all His goodness with others. Grace means that God wants to bestow upon you good things, goodnesses. He wants to make you fine and noble, and He wants to bring you into the likeness of His Son. This is the grace of which Paul writes in Ephesians: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). We were lost sinners; we had nothing to offer God for our salvation; so He saved us by grace. He had a passion for wanting to save us. He loved us, but He could not arbitrarily forgive us because He is a holy God. He had to provide a way, and that way was that He sent His Son to die for us. We are told that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (see John 3:16). God is in the business of giving, not receiving. We need to make that very clear.
I think sometimes we give the impression that God is poor and that He needs our gifts. He doesn’t. God is not poor. He says, “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof” (Ps. 50:10–12). God doesn’t get hungry. Even if He did, He would not tell us! God is not in need of anything.
The early church considered giving to be a grace. It was a passion, an overwhelming desire to share the things of God with others.
Paul is writing specifically of a local situation, and we need to recognize that. The Jerusalem church had been the first to give out the gospel—the gospel had begun there. Jesus had told the disciples they should be witnesses unto Him beginning in Jerusalem. The apostles loved Jerusalem, and they locked their arms around their beloved city until persecution drove them from it, scattered them abroad, sent them down the highways into Judea and Samaria and finally to the uttermost parts of the earth. The church in Jerusalem was weakened because of persecution. In fact, there was famine going on, and the church was poverty-stricken.
Now as Paul went about on his third missionary journey, he collected an offering for the church in Jerusalem. That is rather revolutionary. Here the mission churches are sending an offering to help the mother church. Today it is just the opposite. The home church sends out missionaries and supports them out in the foreign field. But in Paul’s day the foreign field was supporting the home church.
Paul was not yet able to come to Corinth; so in this letter he sends instructions to them about how to give. Because he intends to come to Corinth, he tells them that he doesn’t want any kind of promotion for giving—he doesn’t want to be taking up a collection while he is there. He doesn’t want to spend time talking about money after he gets there. This collection was to be done beforehand and then, when he arrived, he could spend his time teaching them the Word of God.
What a contrast that is to the usual method today. The usual invitation that I receive is to come over and hold a meeting and while I am there a love offering will be taken for me. If it were done as Paul suggested, a love offering would be taken before an evangelist or a Bible teacher came to speak.
Now I have given to you the color of the local situation and the background of the instructions in this epistle. The facts of the local situation have now passed into history, but the principles which Paul lays down abide. I believe they are as sharp and fresh today as they were when Paul first gave them.
In the first verse Paul cited the Macedonian believers as examples in Christian giving—this referred to the church at Philippi. In verse 2 he lists their motives and methods of giving.


How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality [2 Cor. 8:2].

Notice that the Macedonians gave out of their “deep poverty.” They didn’t have riches. They didn’t give of their surplus or of their abundance; they gave out of their poverty. I’m afraid we don’t know much about that kind of giving today.


For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves;

Praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints [2 Cor. 8:3–4].

It would be more accurate to translate this: “Praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the grace”—that gift they had taken up was a grace, and it was fellowship, which means it was a sharing of the things of Christ.
You and I cannot realize the love that they had one for another. We talk about social action in the church today; I must confess that we have almost lost sight of it in our fundamental churches. It is a wonderful thing to give to the missions, but must we neglect folks in our own congregations who are in need? Many of them don’t even want their needs to be known in the local congregation because they know it would become a subject of gossip in the church. They don’t want to accept help because they feel it would be more or less a disgrace. I’ve discovered this in my own ministry. Sometimes I could not reveal the name of the person in need to a committee or a group that wanted to know to whom the help was going, because the committee would not keep it in confidence, and by the time it got to their wives, it would be throughout the church. We have lost today this wonderful grace of giving.
Now notice what the believers in Macedonia had done—this is unusual.


And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God [2 Cor. 8:5].

Paul says this was not something that he had expected. First of all, they had given themselves to the Lord. That is basic. Secondly, they had given themselves, apparently, to some local work of Christ and they were sold out to it. They gave themselves to Paul by the will of God, which means they helped him to get out the gospel. You see, they were sold out to God.
Back in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he wrote about the Resurrection and heaven (see ch. 15), and they were about to say, “Brother Paul, tell us more about heaven.” Then Paul shook them right down to their shoestrings by saying, “Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye” (1 Cor. 16:1). He wanted to talk to them about something very practical. And he tells them here in his second letter that they are not to give grudgingly. The Macedonian believers gave out of “the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty.” What a picture! God loves a cheerful giver, and we see it in shoeleather here—it was a fellowship. They shared what they had.
They owed the home church in Jerusalem for all their spiritual blessings. They had received the gospel from them. Now they were returning material gifts to the home church which was in such a sad situation. Paul writes in Galatians 6:6: “Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.” That literally means, “Pay the preacher.” It means, my friend, that you ought to support the work from which you derive a spiritual blessing.
A man, living out of fellowship with the Lord, heard our radio messages and the Word of God brought him back to the Lord. We have a building which belongs to “Thru the Bible” because he gave that building to us. He gave it hilariously. He gave it joyously. That is the way it should be given. It should be out of the abundance of joy. We are never to give reluctantly or because we think we ought to give. We should have a passion to give so that the Word of God can reach others.
You remember that the Lord Jesus stood aside and watched the people give in the temple—I think He still does that. The rich came in and gave large gifts, but the poor little widow came and put in her two mites. The Lord said she had cast in more than they all (see Mark 12:41–44). She gave of her poverty and she gave all that she had. If you measured the value of those little coppers against the riches of that temple, they didn’t amount to anything. But the Lord Jesus gives God’s evaluation: “And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all: For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had” (Luke 21:3–4).
It has been said, “When it comes to giving, some people stop at nothing.” That is where a great many folk stop.
The story is told of a Scottish church that was attempting to raise money for a new building. One member of the church was a rich Scot who was known to be worth fifty thousand pounds. He was a typical Scot and was pretty stingy, like most of us are. A deacon came to see him and asked, “Brother, how much are you going to give for the new church?” The Scot replied, “Oh, I guess I’ll be able to put in the widow’s mite.” The deacon called out in the next meeting, “Brethren, we have all the money we need. This brother is going to give fifty thousand pounds.” The man was amazed. “I didn’t say I would give fifty thousand pounds; I said I would give the widow’s mite.” The deacon replied, “Well, she gave her all, and I thought that is what you meant to give!” It is interesting that God notes what you give but also what you keep for yourself.
In another church they were taking up an offering for a building program. The man calling on one of the members said to him, “How much are you going to give, brother?” “Well,” he said, “I guess I could give ten dollars and not feel it.” The man replied, “Then why don’t you make it twenty dollars and feel it?” You see, the blessing only comes when you feel it, my friend. This is the meaning of “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
The Macedonian believers gave themselves to God. And, my friend, if God doesn’t have you, He doesn’t want anything from you. If God doesn’t have the hand, He doesn’t want the gift that is in the hand.


Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he had begun, so he would also finish in you the same grace also [2 Cor. 8:6].

Paul says that the grace which motivated the Macedonians should be the same grace that would motivate the Corinthians. The real test of any person lies in what he gives. Someone has said there are three books that are essential for a worship service: the first book is the Bible, the second is the hymn book, and the third is the pocketbook. Giving is a part of our worship to God. If we do not have the grace of giving, we should pray to God and ask Him to give us a generous, sharing spirit.

EXHORTATION TO CHRISTIAN GIVING


Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also [2 Cor. 8:7].


Paul is commending them. They abound in faith; they were able to witness; they had knowledge and diligence; and they had love for Paul and for the other apostles. Now he asks them to abound in this grace also. What does he refer to? He means the grace of giving.


I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love [2 Cor. 8:8].

Paul is saying here that giving today is not by law, by rote, or by ritual. I know that there are good Bible expositors who say we are to give the tithe. Obviously, the tithe was basic back in the Old Testament. However, if you examine it very carefully, you will find that the people gave three tithes. One was actually for the support of the government, which would be what we call taxes today. So the “tithe” is not the basis on which Christians are to give. Paul says, “I speak not by commandment.” He is not asking the Corinthians to give because it is a commandment.
Paul gives two reasons why he is asking them to give. The first is “by occasion of the forwardness of others”—which would be the example which the Macedonians had given. The second reason is to “prove the sincerity of your love.” It is still true today that the pocketbook is really the test of a man’s love. It is the most sensitive area of a Christian.


For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich [2 Cor. 8:9].

If you are looking for a standard for giving, here it is: the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He was rich but He became poor. He came down here and took a place of poverty. Imagine leaving heaven and coming down to this earth to be born in Bethlehem, to live in Nazareth, to die on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem, and to be put into the darkness of a tomb! He was rich but He became poor for you and me.

And herein I give my advice: for this is expedient for you, who have begun before, not only to do, but also to be forward a year ago [2 Cor. 8:10].
This indicates that the Corinthians had made a pledge or a promise and had begun to give for this collection a year earlier. This raises the issue of making a pledge to give a certain amount of money. Some people say they don’t think a Christian should make a pledge. I think we need to recognize that we sign pledges for everything else, and I think that people ought to be willing to make a pledge to God’s work. We promise to pay our rent; we sign notes when we buy an automobile or a refrigerator. I say that we can sign on the dotted line for God’s work, too.


Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have [2 Cor. 8:11].

Paul is saying they should carry through with their pledge. They should put their money where their mouth is. However, remember that this is not a commandment. We are not commanded to make a pledge. However, this verse does tell us that if we do make a pledge, then we are to carry it through and perform it.


For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not [2 Cor. 8:12].

Here is something very important to note. Each should give according to “that a man hath,” and he is to do it with a willing mind. No one is to give according to what he does not have.
In the section on 1 Corinthians, I gave an illustration which I will repeat because it is a very fine example of this principle.
When I was pastoring a church in Texas, one of my officers owned several Coca-Cola plants, and one of them was in our town. He was a man of means, and he owned a ranch where we used to go out to hunt and fish. Often he would ask me why I didn’t preach on tithing. One day I said, “Why should I preach on tithing?” He said, “Because it is the Bible way of giving.” I agreed, “Yes, it was the Old Testament way of giving, but under grace I don’t believe tithing is the way it should be done.” So he asked me, “How do you think it ought to be done?” I took him to this verse: “As God has prospered him.” Now this was during the depression. If you are as old as I am, you will remember that the depression in the 1930s was a very serious time. So I said to him, “For some strange reason, Coca-Cola is selling, and you are doing very well. However, there are some members in our church who couldn’t give a tithe right now. I don’t believe God is asking them to give a tenth. There are a few people who are doing well, and they are to give as they have been prospered—and they are not to stop with a tenth. Probably they ought to give a half.” Do you know that this man never again suggested that I preach on tithing! The reason was that he found out that a man is to give according to what he hath, not according to what he hath not.
The tithes were a basic measurement in the Old Testament, and I cannot believe that any Christian today who has a good income should give less than one tenth. In this time of great abundance Christians should be giving more than a tenth.


For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened [2 Cor. 8:13].

Paul is saying that a burden should not be placed on anyone.


But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality [2 Cor. 8:14].

Perhaps you have been blessed with a good automobile, a lovely home, nice furniture, and all the appliances that are considered necessary in our contemporary culture. May I say to you that God expects you to share in the Lord’s work. You may be like my rancher friend who would like to settle for the tithe. He wanted me to preach on the tithe so he would feel comfortable in his giving. After I had talked with him, I don’t think he ever felt comfortable about his tithe-giving. Those who are able to give should give, and we should not burden those who are unable to give.


As it is written, He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack [2 Cor. 8:15].

Paul gives the example of the gathering of the manna in the wilderness. Each was to gather enough for one day. Some man might go out with several baskets and say, “Let’s just fill them up. I’ll gather bushel baskets of manna while I can.” He would go out and greedily gather up much more than he needed. What would happen? After he had eaten what he needed for that day, he would find that all the rest had spoiled by the next morning. It was God’s plan that each one should have just enough and no more.
We will learn in chapter 9, verse 6, that “… He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” I think that God will begin to deal with you as you have been dealing with Him. I think that God keeps books. He does not put us under law because He wants our giving to be a grace, a passion, a desire to share. It should be a joyful experience. You ought to be able to say to other folk, “You ought to listen to Dr. McGee. He’s talking about the most wonderful privilege in the world. He is telling us how we can be happy by giving.” That may sound crazy to you, but that is exactly what Paul is saying here.

EXPLANATION OF CHRISTIAN GIVING


But thanks be to God, which put the same earnest care into the heart of Titus for you [2 Cor. 8:16].


“Thanks” is the same Greek word charis, which has been translated “grace.” Although “thanks” is a good translation, it would be equally correct to translate it “grace be to God.”
Paul is saying that he sent Titus to get their offering, but it was already a grace in his heart. Titus wanted as much as Paul did to take up an offering for the poor saints in Jerusalem.


For indeed he accepted the exhortation; but being more forward, of his own accord he went unto you.

And we have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches;

And not that only, but who was also chosen of the churches to travel with us with this grace, which is administered by us to the glory of the same Lord, and declaration of your ready mind [2 Cor. 8:17–19].

You see, Titus and his companion had this grace in their hearts. The giving was to be for the glory of God. Whatever we give, my friend, should be for the glory of God.


Avoiding this, that no man should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us [2 Cor. 8:20].

Paul is saying, “We are going to be honest in the use of the money we collect from you and in the way we handle it.”


Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men [2 Cor. 8:21].

This is one of the more sensitive areas in the Lord’s work. Many Christian organizations and churches major in heavy promotion to encourage giving to a certain work. No effort—or at best, little effort—is made to tell how the money is used. There should be the presentation of tangible evidence that the money is used to give out the Word of God and that there are results that can be documented—not just isolated cases. There should be confidence in the organization to which we give—that it is honest and is operated on the highest level of integrity. We should not support an organization about which we have doubts. We must remember that this is a big, bad world and that there are religious racketeers in it. We need to beware.
Even Paul, this great apostle, says, “Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.” It should be obvious that the money is being used for the purpose for which it is given.


And we have sent with them our brother, whom we have oftentimes proved diligent in many things, but now much more diligent, upon the great confidence which I have in you.

Whether any do inquire of Titus, he is my partner and fellow-helper concerning you: or our brethren be inquired of, they are the messengers of the churches, and the glory of Christ [2 Cor. 8:22–23].

They can trust Titus. He will make a good report. They can trust Paul who will also report to them. The money will not be delivered by just one person.


Wherefore shew ye to them, and before the churches, the proof of your love, and of our boasting on your behalf [2 Cor. 8:24].

Paul is asking for proof of their love. You see, friend, if you really mean business, there will be more than verbiage. Giving will be a tangible expression of your love.
I’m afraid there are a great many Christians who are like the young fellow who wrote to his girl: “I would cross the widest ocean for you. I’d swim the deepest river for you. I would scale the highest mountain for you. I’d crawl across the burning sands of the desert for you.” Then he concluded with a P.S.: “If it doesn’t rain Wednesday night, I’ll be over to see you.” A great many of us like to talk about how we love Jesus, but we are not willing to sacrifice much for Him.
Paul is urging the Corinthians to show the proof of their love.

CHAPTER 9

Theme: Collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem

This chapter continues directly with the same subject which we had in chapter 8. There it was the grace of giving; now we have before us what Christian giving is.

EXPLANATION OF CHRISTIAN GIVING (CONTINUED)


For as touching the ministering to the saints, it is superfluous for me to write to you:

For I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago; and your zeal hath provoked very many.

Yet have I sent the brethren, lest our boasting of you should be in vain in this behalf; that, as I said, ye may be ready:

Lest haply if they of Macedonia come with me, and find you unprepared, we (that we say not, ye) should be ashamed in this same confident boasting [2 Cor. 9:1–4].


Paul says that he would be very embarrassed if he came over there, having boasted of them to other folk, and then found out they hadn’t given anything. Liberal giving is a real test of any church. I go to some churches that have real spiritual vigor; they are great churches, and I have found out that they are generous in their giving. I have also been to some churches that are really dead spiritually. And I have discovered that they don’t give much either. They are dead in their giving, too. The size of the offering is a pretty good barometer.
Now you see that these Corinthian Christians had made a pledge that they would give something toward the relief of believers in Jerusalem. May I say here that any pledge that a Christian makes is between that person and the Lord. It is a pledge to the Lord that you will do something or that you will give something.
I know a wealthy man who was asked, “How in the world did you become so rich when you give so much away?” “Well,” he answered, “The Lord shovels it in and I shovel it out and God has the bigger shovel.” My friend, we can never outgive God.


Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren, that they would go before unto you, and make up beforehand your bounty, whereof ye had notice before, that the same might be ready, as a matter of bounty, and not as of covetousness [2 Cor. 9:5].

You will notice that the gift is called a bounty. That indicates that it would be a generous gift, which is the evidence of the grace of God working in the heart.

ENCOURAGEMENT TO CHRISTIAN GIVING


But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully [2 Cor. 9:6].


When Paul was talking to the Ephesian elders, he reminded them of this same thing. “I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Apparently, “it is more blessed to give than to receive” was an expression which the Lord Jesus used constantly. I know that this has become a very trite bromide today. It is quoted a great deal and practiced very little.
The word blessed actually means “happy.” It will make you more happy to give than to receive. How does it affect you when you give?
Here is an acid test for you and for me today. Do we sow sparingly? Do we give in that way? Suppose a farmer would sow a bushel of grain on a particular plot of ground and reap an abundant harvest. Suppose he would say the next year, “There is no use wasting a bushel of grain on this ground this year; I will save half a bushel for myself and sow only half a bushel.” Any farmer knows that he would get a very small yield. The principle is that whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully.
When I was speaking at Siloam Springs, Arkansas, some folk came from Oklahoma City. The lady is about my age and she was raised in a little place called Tishomingo, Oklahoma. My father was killed in a cotton gin there and is buried there. In that day it was the custom when there was a death in a family for the neighbors and friends to send food to the bereaved family. I shall never forget the wonderful food that was sent to us at that time. This lady told me that she could recall as a girl that her mother cooked up a great deal of food and sent it over to our house. She said, “I never knew that years later I would be listening to you. We gave you physical food, and now you supply spiritual food for us.” They didn’t sow sparingly, and I hope they are reaping abundantly. I believe this is a true principle in every area of life. One of the reasons some of us are so poor today is that we are so tightfisted when we are dealing with the Lord.


Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver [2 Cor. 9:7].

What you feel right down in your heart you ought to give, that is what you should give. But here is the test: “not grudgingly.” God does not want any grudging giving. What does that mean? God does not want one penny from you if you would rather keep it for yourself.
Perhaps you say, “Well, I am an officer in the church and it is my responsibility to give.” Or, “I am a member of that church and I feel responsible.” It is true that the church may say that to you. As a pastor, I’ve told people, “This is your church and you ought to support it.” But God does not say that. He says that if you are going to give grudgingly, He doesn’t want it. Not only does God not want it, but I believe that God doesn’t use it either.
Not only does it say God does not want you to give if you give grudgingly, neither does He want you to give “of necessity.” He doesn’t want you to give at all unless you are giving willingly and gladly.
Some folk say, “Well, I had better give because everybody else is giving, and it would look bad if I didn’t give something.” That is giving of necessity. God does not want that kind of giving.
“God loveth a cheerful giver.” That should be the happiest part of the service. I have been in many churches where they take up an offering and then the congregation stands and sings, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” I think that is wonderful. The only thing that would be better would be if they would sing it first. This would put them in the attitude of giving and of giving joyfully. Also they would be able to reach for their wallets as they stood up! God loves a cheerful giver. If you can’t give cheerfully, God doesn’t want you to give.


And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work [2 Cor. 9:8].

I have never known anyone who has gone broke giving to the Lord’s work. There may be some who have, but I have never met them in my ministry. I believe that God will bless you. I don’t think the blessings He gives to you will always be material blessings. A great many folk think they can hold God to a promise of material blessings. I don’t think you can. He does promise to bless us with all spiritual blessings.


(As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever.

Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) [2 Cor. 9:9–10].

This is a quotation from Psalm 112. It calls the man blessed who fears the Lord and who gives to the poor. We are to share with those who do not have as much. I believe that in the church we ought to take care of our own. There are so many opportunities to share with folk. Many Christians have the gift of hospitality—and that is a gift. They have a way of opening their homes and making people feel at home. Often they take folk to church first so they hear the gospel and then have them in their home for dinner afterward. That is a marvelous way of witnessing. It is a way to reach the lonely and those who lack fellowship.
Paul gives the illustration of the farmer who doesn’t mind going out to scatter bushel after bushel of seed, because he believes that he will get an abundant harvest. It is God who multiplies the seed of the farmer. It is God who will multiply everything that you do for Him. So don’t be afraid to give to the Lord’s work.
I had an experience once when I had to encourage a young man not to give. He had been recently saved, and he was actually giving so much that he was not keeping enough for his own family. The Bible says that we are worse than the heathen if we do not take care of our own family (see 1 Tim. 5:8). I pointed this out to him and told him that he also needed to care for the necessities of his family, and after that he should give generously to the Lord. God does not want us to be extremists even in this matter of giving. We need to be balanced. We need good, sound, common sense and good, consecrated judgment.


Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.

For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God [2 Cor. 9:11–12].

You see, when you give, it will cause people to thank God for you. It is God who will get the praise and the glory.


Whiles by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men [2 Cor. 9:13].

While I was visiting the mission field in Venezuela a certain missionary there told me about a family that I knew back in Los Angeles. The missionary said, “How generous they have been to me! I thank God for them.” That is the way Paul said it would be. Missionaries in Venezuela were thanking God for a family in Los Angeles. Is anyone anywhere thanking God for your generosity?


And by their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you [2 Cor. 9:14].

Giving is a grace. We are not Commanded to give a tithe. It is not to be something done under law. It is a grace. God asks us to give as a grace according to our circumstances. Some Christians should be giving much more than a tithe. Other Christians are not able to give at all. We are to give as we “are able.” Now Paul caps the whole subject of giving by saying:


Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift [2 Cor. 9:15].

Regardless of how much you are giving, you cannot give like God gives. He has given an unspeakable gift. No man can approach the gift that God gave in giving His own Son to die. Think of this for a moment. We are back to what was said in chapter 8, verse 9. Though He was rich, He left heaven, left all the glory, came down as a missionary to this world. He came not only to live but to give His life in death for you. He came to die on a cross. He came to be brutally killed in order that you and I might have eternal life. He made His soul a sacrifice for sin for you and for me.
We are told in Hebrews that He did this “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb. 12:3). Oh, my friend, He is the wonderful, glorious Savior! Don’t ever bring Him down to a low level. He is the Bright and Morning Star. He is the Son of God who has redeemed us. He is the unspeakable gift to you and me. That is the very apex of giving. No one can go beyond that kind of giving.

CHAPTER 10

Theme: Authentication of Paul’s apostleship

Now we come to the last great division of this epistle, which is the calling of the apostle Paul. The first division I have called Christian living, the second one I called Christian giving, and this one I call Christian guarding. It was a radical change when we saw Paul begin to write about Christian giving. Now we come to an altogether new section, and it marks such a radical change in tone and style that many critics have supposed that this is the beginning of a third epistle. Candidly, I cannot accept that theory. The change in tone can be explained easily on another basis.
As we have seen, the church in Corinth was a divided church. Paul said when he first wrote to them, “For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you” (1 Cor. 1:11). The majority of the church respected the authority of Paul. There was a minority who opposed Paul and rejected his authority. It would seem that in the first nine chapters he is addressing the majority. In chapters 10, 11, and 12 he is addressing the minority. It is like changing from daylight to darkness.
In this section we will find the apostle opening his great heart of love—his heart as a missionary and as a human being. We will meet him as we have never met him before because in this section he actually defends his apostleship.


Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who in presence am base among you, but being absent am bold toward you [2 Cor. 10:1].

You remember that Paul had written a strong letter of correction. The minority criticized him severely, and they were saying, “Paul writes big, but when he is among us he is a nobody.”
Paul beseeches them by “the meekness and gentleness of Christ.” Paul came to Corinth as a tentmaker. He wasn’t chargeable to anyone, and he didn’t want to be. He would work in the marketplace all day. He would perspire and his hands would get dirty. He was working there, and he was talking to the multitude as they passed by. Now the Corinthians would say of him, “He’s not an apostle. Look at him. He’s a tentmaker. He is just an ordinary man.” Well, friend, he was an ordinary man, but he happened also to be an apostle. Paul looked just like anyone else. In fact, some people would have looked down on him because he labored with his hands. So when he says, “I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ,” he is saying that he is like the Lord when He was here on earth. He says, “Who in presence am base among you.” He was not something special to see. He wasn’t a somebody. He was just an ordinary fellow making tents. So the Corinthians would be apt to say, “When he is among us, he is base. But when he writes to us, he is bold and writes with authority. Who does he think he is?”
Paul writes in the meekness and the gentleness of Christ. Our Lord didn’t lift up His voice to defend Himself. Our Lord was not striking in personal appearance, and He did not look as different as the artists would have us believe. He didn’t walk around with a halo around His head. He was meek and lowly, and that is to be the badge of His followers. That is the fraternity pin of believers.
So Paul writes to them and says, “Don’t let looks fool you.” Paul had the authority of an apostle. Paul had a divine mission. He spoke with authority. He was conscious of supernatural power, and he exercised supernatural power. Paul urges them not to force him to exercise his authority. He would like to come again in meekness and gentleness. He urges them not to think of him simply in the flesh.
I don’t think a minister of the gospel today needs to wear a robe or needs to button his collar in the back to prove he is a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe he can prove it by his life and in the fact that he preaches the Word of God. We still find the same tendency among some people as was present in Corinth. They want to degrade the man who teaches the Word of God. The Devil is very clever in this matter. Right now the Devil does not seem to be attacking the Word of God. There is a real interest in the Word of God among multitudes of people. So what does the Devil do? He attacks the reputation of the man of God who is preaching the Word of God. This is the way he gets in. He tries to discredit the man. That is exactly what happened to Paul.
I know of a church where the pastor taught the Word of God. There were some members there who didn’t like him at all, and when he left the church they attempted to crucify the man. Yet they would tell you they believed the Word of God, and they all carried big Bibles under their arms. They don’t really believe the Word of God—in fact, they don’t even know what is in it. If a pastor preaches the Word of God and does not cater to such a group, believe me, he is in trouble. That is the Devil’s method.


But I beseech you, that I may not be bold when I am present with that confidence, wherewith I think to be bold against some, which think of us as if we walked according to the flesh [2 Cor. 10:2].

Paul is saying to them that they should not think of him as walking according to the flesh because he made tents and his hands got dirty and he was sweaty as he worked. This is the way they had evaluated him.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh [2 Cor. 10:3].
The Greek word for flesh is sarx, and it can be used in three different ways. It can speak of the body, the physical body that we have, the meat that is on the bones. It can speak of weakness, meaning that which is psychological. It can also mean that corrupt nature which you and I have, that fallen nature. That is the spiritual meaning. So this word can be used in a physical sense, in a psychological sense, and in a spiritual sense.
Paul uses the word flesh in all three senses but more frequently in the sense of the old Adamic, fallen nature. “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing …” (Rom. 7:18). He is referring to the corrupt nature—he is using flesh in the spiritual sense.
When he says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh,” he is using flesh in the psychological sense. Paul says that he walked in the flesh—weakness. I do not think that Paul came to Corinth in the energy of the flesh. The warfare was spiritual warfare. In his letter to the Ephesians he wrote, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12).
Paul did not come as an ordinary man who was dependent upon the principles of the natural. Paul didn’t come to Corinth to put on a Madison Avenue campaign. He didn’t use the methods of advertising and organization in human effort and energy. This does not mean that there is no time for us to use these. I am just saying that Paul didn’t use them. He was not one of the “personality boys” who use cleverness with many quotations and clichés and who soar to heights of beautiful language. He didn’t come on an anti-Nero or an anti-Caesar campaign. He didn’t come to Corinth to clean up the city. He didn’t come at the invitation of the Christians to put on a campaign.
Paul had written in 1 Corinthians 2:2, “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Paul had a grand perspective of an entire battlefield. There was a heaven to gain, and there was a hell to shun. He was in a warfare that was spiritual and that required spiritual weapons.


(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) [2 Cor. 10:4].

This is a parenthesis, and in this verse Paul does not even list the weapons. Spiritual warfare means that we have a spiritual enemy, and a spiritual enemy requires spiritual weapons. We are told that we have some weapons and they are mighty. They are effective. Are you able to identify those spiritual weapons which we need today?
Our first weapon is the Word of God. We need to have confidence in the Word of God. It is the sword of the Spirit. Paul could come to Corinth, that citadel of philosophy and religion, with the weapon of the Word of God. That is exactly the weapon that he used. Paul writes in Ephesians, “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17). Paul drew his trusty sword, and he depended upon the naked blade of it. He wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).
We, too, need to have confidence in the Word of God. We need to have a firm confidence in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. This must be more than just a creed. I listened to a preacher who said he believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. He quoted poetry and some cute clichés and some pert epigrams. He had every form of philosophical argument but no exposition of the Word of God. May I say to you, that is not confidence in the Word of God, nor is it using the Word as a weapon.
I am conservative in my theology. I believe in the inspiration of the Word of God, which includes the Book of Genesis and especially the account of creation. I believe in hell. In fact, I believe the Bible from the beginning to the end. It is the sword of the Spirit, my friend. It is one of our weapons.
The second weapon is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Paul recognized his own human weakness. He knew that he was sealed by the Holy Spirit and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Another weapon of our warfare is prayer. Now it is true that there is very little about prayer in either of the Corinthian epistles. However, Paul certainly believed in prayer. In the Book of Ephesians he lists this as one of the offensive weapons. “… and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (Eph. 6:17–18).

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ [2 Cor. 10:5].
In this spiritual battle the warriors are successful. When I say this, I do not mean they are victorious. God gets the victory. When we are successful, the glory all goes to Him. “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph”—how? “in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place” (2 Cor. 2:14). We won’t win everyone to Christ, but we can get the Word of God out. Thank God for the open door of witnessing in our day. We are not victorious, but we sure can be successful.


And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ’s, let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ’s, even so are we Christ’s [2 Cor. 10:6–7].

Speaking to the opposition, Paul says, “We belong to Christ as much as anyone.”


For though I should boast somewhat more of our authority, which the Lord hath given us for edification, and not for your destruction, I should not be ashamed [2 Cor. 10:8].

Paul has the authority of an apostle. It is not to destroy them, but for their edification—that is, to build them up in the faith.


That I may not seem as if I would terrify you by letters.

For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible [2 Cor. 10:9–10].

Paul does not want his letters to be bold and terrifying and then he himself to be weak among them. I believe this indicates to us that Paul was not what one would call an attractive man. When people heard Paul, it was obvious to them that he was not preaching to them under his own physical strength or by his eloquence or by his personal magnetism. I think he must have been a weak-looking vessel. Perhaps, as with Samson in the time of the judges, it was obvious that his strength was not within himself but came from the Spirit of God.


Let such an one think this, that, such as we are in word by letters when we are absent, such will we be also in deed when we are present.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise [2 Cor. 10:11–12].

Paul is injecting a little note of humor. A great many folk compare themselves among themselves, which is the reason that many people in our churches think they have arrived. They feel they are really fine, outstanding, spiritual Christians because they compare themselves with other Christians in their group. That is not the yardstick we are to use, my friend. This is one of the tragedies of the hour. A person can be in a cold church and grow cold himself and yet not be conscious of it because he compares himself with the cold Christians around him. We all need to be around other Christians who challenge us. There are too many Christians who are in some little clique or group or church, and they feel smug and satisfied because they are all in the same boat.


But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you [2 Cor. 10:13].

The complaint of the Corinthian believers was that Paul would not come to see them. They said he would spend time with others but would not come to Corinth to see them.
How many Christians criticize their pastor because he doesn’t spend time visiting with them! They want more and more of his time. My friend, when a pastor spends his time petting and pampering people, he is wasting the Lord’s time. He needs to spend his time with those who are desperately in need of help. He also needs to spend time in the Word of God.


For we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure, as though we reached not unto you: for we are come as far as to you also in preaching the gospel of Christ:
Not boasting of things without our measure, that is, of other men’s labours; but having hope, when your faith is increased, that we shall be enlarged by you according to our rule abundantly,

To preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and not to boast in another man’s line of things made ready to our hand [2 Cor. 10:14–16].

Paul tells them they must remember that he came to them first. He was the first one to bring the gospel to them, and he had traveled a long way from home to do that. He tells them that his method is not to come and be a pastor of a church. He had been called to be a missionary. After he would begin a work, he would travel on. He was always moving out to the frontier. He never built on another man’s foundation.


But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth [2 Cor. 10:17–18].

We stand before the Lord for His commending. This is actually a word of warning to us. Don’t criticize someone before you find out what his calling from the Lord is. One man may be gifted in personal visitation, another man may be gifted in the pulpit. If you have a man who is gifted in the pulpit, don’t criticize him, but give him the necessary time to prepare his messages. If he is doing that, then he cannot be spending his time running around to visit you. Another man may not be a brilliant preacher but may be an excellent organizer. Then that is his gift. Find out what the person’s gift is and help that person to exercise his gift. Don’t sit in judgment on him if he is not doing everything you think he should do.
Paul is telling the Corinthian believers that he is doing what God had called him to do. He was called to be a missionary, and that is what he is doing.

CHAPTER 11

Theme: Vindication of Paul’s apostleship


Paul writes very intimately and very personally in this chapter. Paul reminds these folk that they are joined to the living Christ, and he expresses his deep concern for them. I can certainly say that the message of this epistle has been beneficial to me. I have spent a great deal of time studying it, and I have found it has had a real message to my own heart.
This final section of the Epistle to the Corinthians concerns the calling of the apostle Paul. In chapter 10 we found the authentication of Paul’s apostleship. Now we come to a very personal section which is the vindication of Paul’s apostleship.


Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.

For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ [2 Cor. 11:1–2].

Paul came to Corinth. He preached the gospel. A church came into existence because Paul had espoused these people, these believers, to Christ.


But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ [2 Cor. 11:3].

I cannot overemphasize the need of more simplicity in getting out the Word of God. So many of our young preachers are the products of seminaries which are trying to train intellectuals. I was listening to one of these men the other day, and I couldn’t tell what he was talking about. After about fifteen minutes, I was convinced that he didn’t know what he was talking about. They try to be so intellectual that they end up saying nothing. What he needed to do was give out the Word of God. Oh, the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus!
Paul is still making an appeal to that minority group which had stirred up trouble against him and was trying to discredit his ministry. He has already explained the reason he didn’t come to spend more time with them. He had not been called to be a pastor. He was an “evangelist”—literally a missionary who did not want to build on another man’s foundation. He traveled onward and he moved out to the frontier. That was his service, his ministry.
Now he wants them to know that he is an accredited apostle. He writes, “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy.” Why was Paul willing to actually make himself a fool, as it were, for them? Although he would rather speak to them about Christ than to spend the time defending himself, now it was necessary to defend himself—“So I am speaking foolishly.”
He mentions this several times in this chapter. “Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me,” in verse 1. “I say again, Let no man think me a fool; if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me, that I may boast myself a little,” in verse 16. He says it is going to be necessary for him to defend himself, to speak foolishly. The Greek word which is translated “foolish” or “fool” can mean stupid or ignorant or egotistic. Literally it would be “mindlessness,” with no purpose. Paul is saying that spending time in his defense is mindless because it is not getting out the gospel. It doesn’t serve the purpose of his ministry, and yet he feels he must do it because of the opposition of this critical group in Corinth. This is why he asks them to bear with his folly, to suffer him to be foolish so that he can defend his apostleship.
We see the working of Satan in all this. At the very beginning of the early church the Devil used the method of persecution, but he found that he wasn’t stopping the spread of Christianity. The fact of the matter is that the church has never grown as it did those first one hundred years after Christ lived. It swept across the Roman Empire, and by a.d. 315 it had gone into every nook and corner of the Roman Empire. That was during a period of persecution.
When the Devil saw that persecution would not stop the church, he changed to a different tactic. He joined the church. He began to hurt the church from the inside. He still does that today. He attacks the validity of the Word of God, and he tries to discredit the gospel. If that doesn’t work, he tries to discredit the man who preaches the gospel. So he tried to discredit Paul.
Paul makes it very clear that he would rather be preaching the gospel than be spending time defending himself. He takes the time to defend himself because he is jealous over the Corinthians. He loves them. He is afraid they will be beguiled by Satan just as Eve was beguiled by his subtlety. Paul knows that Satan works “so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”


For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him [2 Cor. 11:4].

We still face the problem today of the preaching of another Jesus, another spirit, another gospel. Some time ago there was a musical production called “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” which denies His deity and presents a “Jesus” who never lived. It is the “Jesus” of liberalism dressed in a new wardrobe. And the Jesus of liberalism never existed. If they deny the virgin birth of Jesus, they are talking about some other Jesus, not the Jesus Christ of the Bible. If they do not believe that He performed miracles, they have a different Jesus in mind, because the Jesus in the Gospels is the One who performed miracles. He is the One who died for the sins of the world, which they deny. They deny that He was raised from the dead bodily. They deny that He is the God-Man. Yet one of the oldest creeds declares that He is very God of very God and very man of very man. If that is denied, then a different Jesus is being presented.


For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles [2 Cor. 11:5].

I would rate Paul as the number one apostle; he says he is not the least of the apostles. He wants these Corinthians to know that he is just as much an apostle as any of the others. Just because he came to them as a tentmaker and because he walked in the meekness and gentleness of Christ does not mean that he is not an apostle. You see how Paul is forced to defend himself.


But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been throughly made manifest among you in all things [2 Cor. 11:6].

Paul was a brilliant man, but he used simple language. There are two men who have had a great influence on my life. One was a scholarly man in Memphis, Tennessee, who taught in simplicity. The other was Dr. Harry A. Ironside who was known as a simple preacher. He was a brilliant man, but he preached with simplicity. He put the cookies on the lower shelf where the kiddies could get them. Simplicity was the method of Paul.
Paul says that he was rude in speech. I think that he actually adopted the language that the Corinthians would understand, and I am of the opinion that it may have been a rather rude approach. However, Paul was a brilliant man. From his writings I would judge that he had the highest I.Q. of any man who has walked this earth.


Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely?

I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.

And when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that which was lacking to me the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied: and in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep myself [2 Cor. 11:7–9].

Paul would not allow the Corinthians to contribute to his support at all. He had to work hard at making tents. Some others sent him some support to enable him to spend some time preaching the gospel, but the Corinthians did not help him. That his hands were calloused did not indicate that he was not an outstanding apostle.


As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia.

Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth.

But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we [2 Cor. 11:10–12].

Paul says that he is boasting because it is the truth and because he is jealous over them and fearful for them. Other men, such as Apollos, may have been more eloquent and polished than Paul and did not stoop to do manual labor. Comparison with others is not the issue. Paul worked as a tentmaker. He did not take remuneration from the Corinthians. This does not detract from his apostleship.


For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light [2 Cor. 11:13–14].

Evidently there were deceitful workers who attempted to make themselves apostles of Christ when they were not. They were actually servants of Satan.
People have the idea that Satan has cloven feet and horns. This kind of erroneous idea comes from the great god Pan of Greek mythology, who was portrayed as half animal and was worshiped as Dionysus. Likening Satan to Pan certainly is not the scriptural point of view. Satan himself is an angel of light. If he would make himself visible to you, you would see a being of breathtaking beauty. Paul draws from that this conclusion:


Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works [2 Cor. 11:15].

The frightening statement here is that Satan has ministers. It makes your hair stand on end. As Satan is transformed into an angel of light, so his ministers are transformed as the ministers of righteousness. They are very attractive.
I remember as a boy in my teens I went to hear a lecturer from a certain cult. I was not brought up in a Christian family, and I didn’t know how to differentiate truth from untruth. This man read questions from the audience. I am of the opinion that no one really asked this question but that he made it up himself so that he would be able to make a point. He said someone asked whether he could explain the halo of light that was around his head. Well, I took a good, hard look and I couldn’t see any halo of light around his head. But don’t you see what he was doing? He was making himself to be a minister of light. He was glorifying himself. All Satan’s ministers glorify themselves. This is one way you can tell whether a man is preaching the simplicity of the Word of God or whether he is preaching some other Jesus and some other gospel.


I say again, Let no man think me a fool; if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me, that I may boast myself a little.

That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of boasting [2 Cor. 11:16–17].

Paul says he must go on in this mindlessness, and they should indulge him in this.

Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also.

For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise [2 Cor. 11:18–19].

He adds a bit of holy sarcasm.


For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face [2 Cor. 11:20].

He gives them strong reproof here. He says someone can come in to them, put them back under the bondage of the Law, he can live off them, exalt himself, smite them, and they will put up with that. They will take that kind of treatment from a false teacher.
Now we come to a section where Paul describes his own life as a minister of the gospel. I must confess that I have been in the ministry for many years but when I read what this man Paul went through, I recognize that I have just been playing at it. I have not been a real servant of Christ as this man had been.


I speak as concerning reproach, as though we had been weak. Howbeit whereinsoever any is bold, (I speak foolishly,) I am bold also.

Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I [2 Cor. 11:21–22].

Paul says, “I can prove my genealogy.” There was no question who he was.


Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.

Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one [2 Cor. 11:23–24].

The Jews had a method in those days of delivering thirty-nine stripes, and to prevent killing the person, they would apply thirteen stripes on one side, thirteen stripes on the other side, and thirteen stripes on the back. Paul had had this kind of torture five times.


Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;

In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;

In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness [2 Cor. 11:25–27].

How many of us today could say that we have been through even the smallest part of anything like that? We sit in the lap of luxury. We live in an affluent society. We know practically nothing of hardship for the sake of Jesus Christ.


Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches [2 Cor. 11:28].

Those of us who are pastors have experienced the burden of a church. Paul had the burden of “all” the churches. We know a little of what that entailed.


Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?

If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not [2 Cor. 11:29–31].

Paul says, “Here is my report as a minister of Jesus Christ.”


In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me:

And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands [2 Cor. 11:32–33].

How embarrassing it must have been to have been let down in a basket! When I (and I’m sure other pastors have the same experience) go to a city to hold a meeting or a Bible conference, they always put me in a comfortable motel and are very hospitable to me. I am received with dignity. Imagine Paul having to be let down by the wall in a basket to escape those who were lying in wait to kill him. How embarrassing! Paul did all this for Jesus’ sake.
My friend, don’t brag about what you suffer for Christ. Read this over again. We must all bow our heads in shame and say, “Oh, Lord Jesus, help me to be true to You. Help me to be faithful to You.”

CHAPTER 12

Theme: Revelation of Paul’s apostleship


We hear a great deal in our day about space travel. This has been a big subject through the decades of the 60s and 70s. Men have been to the moon. Actually, that isn’t really very far when one considers space travel. It is a long distance to the moon, and yet it is small compared to the distances to Mars and other planets. Then when one measures the distance to our neighboring constellation of Andromeda that is way out there in space, we must say that man hasn’t been very far yet.
The very interesting thing is that the Bible has the record of three men who journeyed into outer space and then returned—none of whom are in the Old Testament. I know someone will say, “What about Enoch and Elijah?” I do not think they were caught up to heaven. The Lord Jesus said, “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven” (John 3:13). Someone will say, “I thought Elijah was caught up to heaven.” Yes, but after all there are three heavens. There is the first heaven where there are the birds of heaven. There is the second heaven where there are the stars of heaven. There is the third heaven which is the abode of God. Elijah had been caught up into the air spaces. Up to the time that the Lord Jesus made that statement possibly there had been no one else who had been in outer space. He said that the Son of Man came down from heaven. Then we know of two other men who have been to heaven and returned. The apostle John on the Island of Patmos was caught up into heaven. He writes about what he saw and heard in the Book of the Revelation. He was in the third heaven where the throne of God is. “After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the spirit; and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne” (Rev. 4:1–2). Paul was the other man who was taken up into heaven. The record of this is in the chapter before us.
Therefore there are three men who have been able to report from heaven. The Lord Jesus, who is God manifest in the flesh, said more about heaven than anyone else did, and yet He really said very little about it. John doesn’t have too much to say about it. Paul doesn’t have anything to say about it.
Paul tells us something here that he would not have mentioned at all if he had not been forced to defend his apostleship. He tells about his trip into outer space.

PAUL’S EXPERIENCE


It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord [2 Cor. 12:1].


Paul had just listed many incidents showing how he had suffered for Christ’s sake. There wasn’t much glory in that. I think that the Spirit of God had him write down all his experiences so that no man would ever be able to say, “I endured more than Paul the apostle.”
Actually, we should be very careful about the songs we sing. I think of the one:

“Jesus, I my cross have taken
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shall be.”
—Henry F. Lyte

I heard a so-called converted Hollywood star sing that song! I don’t believe that person had given up very much. It would be hypocritical for most of us to sing it. It would be better if we all sang a song like this:

“Alas, and did my Saviour bleed
And did my Sovereign die!
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?”
—Isaac Watts

It is the Lord Jesus who needs to be glorified.
Today we hear testimonies from men and women about their conversions. Generally the testimony is a remarkable conversion. We don’t often hear about the “ordinary” conversions. The thing which I note in a testimony is the place the Lord Jesus occupies. Too often the story goes on and on about the person and what he did and how he lived in sin and how remarkably he changed, while very little is said about the Lord Jesus. Sometimes one wonders whether the Lord Jesus was really needed or not. He gets very little praise and very little glory in most testimonies I hear.
I just received a letter from a man who said, “I turned from a religious system to Christ.” Then Jesus became the center of his life and his sole occupation. He wants to grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the thing that is important.
Having told us how much he had suffered for Christ’s sake, now Paul will come to visions and revelations from the Lord. We already know that the Lord had appeared to Paul on the Damascus road. Have you ever noticed that Paul has very little to say about those personal appearances? Now here is another such incident.


I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven [2 Cor. 12:2].

It was the Lord Jesus who spoke of the birds of heaven, which fly up in the air spaces. They don’t go up very high. Out beyond that is the space that contains the stars of heaven. That still is not the same as the third heaven where the throne of God is to be found. How ridiculous it was for the cosmonauts in the Russian sputnik to say they didn’t see God when they went to the moon. They didn’t go far enough, friend. They must go to the third heaven to find the throne of God.
Paul speaks of his experience of being taken up into the third heaven. He dates it for us. He says it happened fourteen years before he wrote this epistle. That would be approximately the time when he had made his first missionary journey. We are told about his experience at Lystra on that first journey. “And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe” (Acts 14:19–20).
Was he dead? I don’t think they would have left him there unless they were pretty sure he was dead. It is my personal opinion that God raised him from the dead. Paul was rather uncertain whether this was a vision or whether he had been caught up in reality at that time. It is quite evident that he is describing his own experience here.


And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) [2 Cor. 12:3].

Was he actually dead and caught up into heaven? Or had he been knocked unconscious and had a vision? Paul is not dogmatic about it, and we should not be dogmatic about it either. As I have said, I believe he was dead and that God raised him from the dead, but the result was the same either way. He saw the third heaven.
Notice his report:


How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter [2 Cor. 12:4].

Most men would have written several volumes of ponderous tomes on such an experience. And they would have given a whole series of messages about it. But this is all that Paul says. This is his report. He says so much and yet he says so little. There is no description, no Chamber of Commerce advertisement, no promotion, no sales talk, no display, no hero worship of man.


Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities.

For though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool; for I will say the truth: but now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me [2 Cor. 12:5–6].

There is no self-glory here. The man who was taken up into the third heaven and heard unspeakable words is the same man who was let over the wall in a basket.

PAUL’S THORN IN THE FLESH


And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure [2 Cor. 12:7].


Paul says he will tell us about his infirmities, but he will not tell us about the third heaven. Why? Because he was told not to talk about it.
I think many times Satan tries to remove God’s witnesses from the earthly scene. He wants to get rid of them. He uses sickness, disease, a thorn in the flesh.
What was Paul’s thorn in the flesh? I want to let you in on something, give you a little secret information which I hope you won’t divulge to anyone:I don’t know. I don’t know what Paul saw and heard in the third heaven, and I don’t I know what was his thorn in the flesh. I don’t know because he didn’t tell us.
An old Scotch commentator said Paul’s thorn in the flesh was his wife. Well, I’ll imagine that old Scot was having trouble at home, and I think he was wrong. I believe that Paul had been married but was a widower. He wrote lovingly of womanhood, and I think he had once had a wonderful wife. He would not remarry because he didn’t want to subject any woman to the hardships which he had to endure.
It is interesting that God put a zipper on the mouth of Paul and silenced him. He simply does not reveal these things to us.
Someone has said that the reason a dog has so many friends is because he wags his tail instead of his tongue! I suppose most of us would have wagged our tongues a great deal if we had been caught up into the third heaven. Now why did God give Paul a thorn in the flesh? It was to keep him humble, to keep him from exalting himself above measure, having had such a vision.


For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me [2 Cor. 12:8–9].

Now I have a notion that Paul’s problem was very poor vision. When we get to his Epistle to the Galatians, we will find that he mentions that he had to write in large letters, which would indicate that he did not see well. We will discuss that later. Whatever the thorn was, Paul asked the Lord three times to remove it, and the Lord refused. The Lord heard him the first time and the second time and the third time. It was not that the Lord did not hear his prayers; it was that the answer of the Lord was no.
Sometimes you and I keep asking the Lord for something to which He has already answered no. If He doesn’t give us what we ask for, we think He has not answered our prayer. More often than not His answer to my prayers is no. And eventually I discover that His no was the best possible answer He could have given me.
He said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” He said He would not remove the thorn but that He would give Paul the grace to bear the thorn. That is the wonderful thing about it all. “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” In other words, it was obvious in Paul’s ministry that he was so physically weak that the Spirit of God was empowering him. “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” This was Paul’s response to the Lord’s answer. Paul would glory in his infirmities and not in the fact that he had had a vision. That is something you might turn over in your mind the next time you hear someone tell about a vision they have had of the Lord. It probably would be better if that person had a zipper on his mouth. The chances are that he had no vision at all but had eaten something he should not have eaten the night before.


Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong [2 Cor. 12:10].

What a contrast this man is to Samson in the Old Testament. The Spirit of God came upon Samson and he became strong. People marveled at his physical strength, but there came a day when he was very weak. The strong are made weak, and the weak are made strong. God can use the weak man.


I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commanded of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing [2 Cor. 12:11].

Notice how he elaborates on this. He is apologizing again even as he has done many times earlier. Paul considered himself the least of the apostles, yet he says, “In nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing” Someone should have defended him but, apparently, no one did.

Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds [2 Cor. 12:12].
There were certain sign gifts which were given to the apostles to authenticate their message. They had the gift of healing. They could raise the dead and speak in tongues, which does not mean unknown tongues but languages and dialects. Paul had gone through the Galatian country, and there must have been fifty dialects and languages in that area. Paul could speak them all. Had he studied them? No. In that early day it was necessary to get the Word of God out into the Roman Empire in a hurry, and so these apostles were equipped with these gifts. Today missionaries and translators must spend years learning the languages they will use. “Signs of an apostle were wrought among you.” They could identify him as an apostle because he had the gifts of an apostle.
We have just come through a wonderful section of Scripture. Someone has said that one of the reasons Paul was not to tell us about heaven was because there would be a mass exodus up out of this world to get there. I don’t know about that, but it is true that we could spend our time contemplating heaven and lose sight of a lost world that needs to hear of the Savior. Heaven is a wonderful place, but very little is said about it in the Word of God. Probably it is so wonderful that human language cannot describe it. It is our business to try to reach folk with the gospel so that they will be in heaven someday.
Although I cannot tell you much about heaven, I can tell you about the One who is in heaven. We can talk about Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are to fix our eyes on Him. My, how this epistle has emphasized that! Beholding Him, we will become like Him in many ways. The pilgrim journey through this world will be a great deal easier if we will keep our eyes fixed on Him. The sun won’t be so hot, the burden of the day won’t be so heavy, the storms of life won’t be so fierce if we keep our attention fixed upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

PAUL PLANS TO REVISIT CORINTH


For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? forgive me this wrong.

Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children [2 Cor. 12:13–14].


Paul, you see, was their spiritual father. He had led them to Christ and had founded the church in Corinth.


And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved [2 Cor. 12:15].

Paul says, “The more I love you, the less I am loved in return.” It sounds like a complaint, doesn’t it? But the Spirit of God insisted that he not tell about what he had seen in heaven but that he tell about his sufferings and disappointments down here.


But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile [2 Cor. 12:16].

Oh, notice this man. He says, “I wasn’t after what you have, I was after you; I wanted to win you for Christ.” Isn’t that what the Lord Jesus had told His apostles? He said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19)—and He didn’t say that every fish they caught would have a gold piece in its mouth! He made them fishers of men—that is the emphasis.


Did I make a gain of you by any of them whom I sent unto you?

I desired Titus, and with him I sent a brother. Did Titus make a gain of you? walked we not in the same spirit? walked we not in the same steps? [2 Cor. 12:17–18].

Paul didn’t use clever methods; he preached the Word of God in simplicity. He didn’t send other men along after him to make a gain out of the Corinthians.


Again, think ye that we excuse ourselves unto you? we speak before God in Christ: but we do all things, dearly beloved, for your edifying.

For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults [2 Cor. 12:19–20].

These are the things Paul expected to find in the church when he would get there. They expected a great deal of Paul. Paul expected a great deal of them. But what would he find? There would be debates and arguing.
I have been in the ministry for many years, and I am now to the place where I am in no mood for debate. Occasionally I get long letters from folk who listen to my radio program and want to debate a doctrine or a statement I’ve made on the radio. Friend, go on with your viewpoint and pray for me so that, if I am wrong, I will be led to the truth by the Spirit of God. You will not convince me with a long letter, because, frankly, I don’t have the patience to read it. Someone may say that I am very bigoted and narrow-minded. Well, maybe I am, but I just don’t believe that arguing and debating accomplish anything. Our business is to get out the Word of God, and I am not attempting to debate anything. I teach the Word as I come to it as I teach through the Bible.
The contemporary church is filled with the things Paul mentions here—debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, and backbitings.
“Have you heard about So-and-so?”
“No, I haven’t heard.”
“Well, I want to tell you.”
Then they say some pretty mean things about a certain individual. And there are the whisperings. Someone has said that some people will believe anything if it is whispered to them.
Then there is that word swellings. I have often wondered what Paul meant. Probably the best explanation is the one I heard Dr. H. A. Ironside give. He said this reminded him of a frog sitting on the bank of a creek or a pond all swelled up. He looks twice as big as he would ordinarily be. Then what happens? You throw a rock at him and, believe me, he becomes little again and goes right down into the water. Probably the best word that we have to describe “swellings” would be our word pompous. There are some pompous Christians.
“Tumults” are troubles in the church. Little cliques get together and they cause trouble. They circulate petitions to be signed and that sort of thing. That causes a tumult.


And lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed [2 Cor. 12:21].

Corinth was a vile city. It was known as a sin center throughout the Roman Empire. It was the Las Vegas and Reno and any other sinful city that you want to put with it all rolled into one. It was the place people went to sin. It is true that where sin abounded there grace did much more abound. Yet it caused the people of Corinth to look lightly upon these sinful things.
This does not present an attractive picture of the church, does it? I’m sure that as we have gone through this epistle you have thought, The local church in Corinth certainly was not a very good church. That is true. Not only was it true of that church, but it is also true of many of our churches today.
Let’s stop to look at this for a moment. Suppose the Lord took the church out of the world right now. What would happen if He removed all true believers who are in the world? We believe that the Great Tribulation would then begin. A part of the contribution to the Great Tabulation will be the absence of the church. The church today is the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and the Holy Spirit indwells the church today.
Is the world getting better or worse? Some people say that the church hasn’t improved the world because the world is worse now than it was nineteen hundred years ago. I disagree with that. I know it says in 2 Timothy 3:13, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived,” but that doesn’t say the world is getting worse; it says that evil men, will wax worse and worse. I think this means they will get worse in their lifetime and then another generation will come on.
The world is a little better today than it was over nineteen hundred years ago because at that time the world committed a sin which would have been an unpardonable sin had not the Lord Jesus said, “… Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do …” (Luke 23:34). They crucified the Son of God. I recognize that the world today by its rejection of Jesus Christ is crucifying Him afresh. The greatest sin in all the world is the rejection of Christ. The world of each generation has been guilty of that. The Lord Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit would come, He would convict the world of sin, “Of sin, because they believe not on me” (John 16:9). There are many sins which are bad, but the worst sin of all is the rejection of Jesus Christ. The greatest crime that was ever committed on this earth was the murder of the Son of God over nineteen hundred years ago. The world today is still just as corrupt, just as vile, just as mean, and just as wicked as it was then.
I will say that the world today is a better place to have a home than it was nineteen hundred years ago. We can live more comfortably. There are a great many things which make life easier and better than it was nineteen hundred years ago. However, we need to understand very clearly that it was never the purpose of the church to plant flowers in the world any more than it was Israel’s business to plant flowers in the wilderness. They were pilgrims passing through it and they had a message and a witness. This also has been the purpose of the church down through the ages.
The church is a group of people who ought to be holy unto God, ought to be living for God. I wish I could point to the church and say it is doing that and how wonderful it is. Its failure in this area is one of the reasons the present interest in the Word of God has in most instances bypassed the local church. It is too busy with its internal problems. Yet that does not destroy the fact that the church is that group which is loved by the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave Himself for it that He might wash it, that He might cleanse it, and that He might make each believer acceptable to God. Although we are far from what we should be, we should be moving in that direction.
So here in Paul’s Corinthian epistles we have an insight into a church which was in the worst city of the Roman Empire, and how bad it was! I don’t like to hear it said that the church does not in any way affect the world around it. It may look as if it has very little effect, and yet, then as now, if that group of godly people were to be removed from this world, the world would be much worse.

CHAPTER 13

Theme: The execution and conclusion of Paul’s apostleship

EXECUTION OF PAUL’S APOSTLESHIP


This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established [2 Cor. 13:1].


Paul is repeating what he has said earlier. He is going to Corinth for the third time to exercise his office as an apostle. Everything is to be authenticated when he gets there. Everything is going to be brought right out in the open. Paul is going to exercise his office as an apostle, and he is going to show proof of his apostleship by the power of Christ working through Paul’s weakness.


I told you before, and foretell you, as if I were present, the second time; and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned, and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare:

Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you [2 Cor. 13:2–3].

Paul had come to them in weakness, but the Word of God was mighty and had transformed them in that sin-sick city.


For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you [2 Cor. 13:4].

Paul says, “For though he was crucified through weakness.” It sounds strange to hear about the weakness of God. What is this weakness? When He went to the cross, my friend, that was the weakness of God. “Yet he liveth by the power of God.”
Now Paul goes on to something that is very important. There is an inventory which every Christian should make regularly.


Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? [2 Cor. 13:5].

This has nothing to do with free will or election or the security of the believer. Paul says we should examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith or not. We should be willing to face up to this issue. I think two or three times a year we should do this.
When my daughter was just a little thing, she made a confession of her faith to her mother when they were back visiting her grandmother in Texas. She came in one day and said out of a clear sky that she wanted to accept Jesus as her Savior. My wife took her into the bedroom, she got down on her knees and accepted Christ. Regularly after that I would ask her about her relation to Christ. When she got into her teens, she asked, “Daddy, why do you keep asking me whether I am a Christian or not or whether I really trust in Jesus?” I told her, “I just want to make sure. After all, you are my offspring and I want to be sure.” Now not only did I do that for her, I did it for myself also. I think every believer ought to do that.


But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates [2 Cor. 13:6].

Paul has made an inventory of himself, and he wants them to know that he is in the faith.


Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates [2 Cor. 13:7].

Paul is saying that he just wants them to be the type of believers they should be.


For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth [2 Cor. 13:8].

Here is another great truth we should mark well. My friend, you can’t do anything against the truth. That is why I don’t worry about folk who are disagreeing about the Word of God. They cannot do anything against the truth. We should declare the Word of God and not spend our time defending it. God doesn’t ask us to defend it. He asks us to declare it, to give it out.


For we are glad, when we are weak, and ye are strong: and this also we wish, even your perfection [2 Cor. 13:9].

“Even your perfection” does not mean perfect as we usually think of perfection, but it means maturity. He wishes them to be mature Christians. He wants them to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. We still hear that expression today—“Why don’t you grow up?” That is what Paul is saying to them. Grow up in Christ!


Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction [2 Cor. 13:10].

Paul is glad he can write to them at this time. He is writing for the purpose of building them up and not tearing them down.

CONCLUSION OF PAUL’S APOSTLESHIP


Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you [2 Cor. 13:11].


Again he says, “Be perfect”—grow up. Stop being baby Christians. That is something which could be said to many believers today.
“Be of good comfort.” He goes back to the word he used when he began this letter—the comfort of God. Remember that it means help. It means God is the One who is called to our side to help us, to strengthen us, to encourage us. God wants to do that for you today, my friend. No matter who you are, where you are, or how you are, God wants to help you. He can help you through His Word by means of the ministering of the Holy Spirit.
What great verses these are. God is with us to comfort us. We are to grow and mature. We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. Certainly we ought to go forward for God with such encouragement.
“Be of one mind” means to have the mind of Christ.
“Live in peace.” We cannot make peace, but we can live in peace.
“And the God of love and peace shall be with you.” This is the peace of God which passeth all understanding. It is the peace that God made through the blood of the cross. We are to live in that peace today. We are to rejoice in our salvation.
The God of love and peace shall be “with you.” Don’t miss that. You are not alone—God is with you today. How wonderful that is.


Greet one another with an holy kiss [2 Cor. 13:12].

I hope you won’t mind my telling you a story about the late Dr. Walter Wilson. A friend came to see him and his lovely wife. The friend greeted Dr. Wilson with a kiss because he was such a wonderful saint of God. Then he kissed his wife. He said to Dr. Wilson, “Now when I greet you, it is a holy kiss, but when I kiss your wife—wow!” May I say to you, my friend, if you are going to kiss, make sure it is a holy kiss. I would suggest that we confine our kissing to those of the same sex if we intend for it to be a holy kiss!


All the saints salute you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen [2 Cor. 13:13–14].

I have jokingly said that the apostle Paul was a Southerner because he uses the expression “you all.” You know that I am from the South and so you will forgive me if I, too, say, “you all.”
When he says that the blessing of the Trinity should be with “you all,” he includes us with the folk in the church in Corinth. We ought to revel in all that we have in Christ Jesus: the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost. How we ought to bear witness not only to the world but also to our own churches.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Recommended for Further Study)


Boyer, James L. For a World Like Ours: Studies in I Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1971. (Excellent for individual or group study.)

DeHaan, M. R. Studies in First Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1956.

Gromacki, Robert G. Called to Be Saints (I Corinthians). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1977.

Gromacki, Robert G. Stand Firm in the Faith (II Corinthians). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978.

Hodge, Charles. An Exposition of First and Second Corinthians. Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1869. (For advanced students.)

Hughes, Philip E. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962. (A comprehensive study.)

Ironside, H. A. Addresses on First Corinthians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1938. (A fine survey.)

Kelly, William. Notes on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Addison, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, 1878.

Kelly, William. Notes on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Addison, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, 1882.

Kent, Homer A., Jr. A Heart Opened Wide: Studies in II Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1982. (Excellent.)

Luck, G. Coleman. First Corinthians. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1958. (A good survey.)

Luck, G. Coleman. Second Corinthians. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1960. (A good survey.)

Morgan, G. Campbell. The Corinthian Letters of Paul. Westwood, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1946.

Morris, Leon. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958.

Moule, Handley C. G. The Epistle of Second Corinthians. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Christian Literature Crusade, n.d.

Robertson, A. T. The Glory of the Ministry. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1911. (Deals with II Corinthians 2:12–6:10, and should be read by every Christian worker.)

Tasker, R. V. G. The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958.
Vine, W. E. First Corinthians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1951.

The Epistle to the
Galatians

INTRODUCTION

This epistle was probably written by Paul (Gal. 1:1) about a.d. 57, on the third missionary journey from Ephesus during his two years of residence there. There is substantial basis, however, for the claim that it was written from Corinth, shortly before Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans. Dr. Lenski advances the theory that it was written from Corinth on the second missionary journey about April, a.d. 53. After Paul visited the Galatians, he discovered that the Judaizers had followed him and the churches were listening to them. Paul wrote this letter to counteract their message and to state clearly the gospel.
Paul visited the Galatian churches on each of his three missionary journeys. There is no mention in the epistle of another visit to the churches. This epistle was evidently Paul’s last word to these churches, written after he had visited them on his third missionary journey.
In the case of the Epistle to the Galatians, the people to whom it was sent are important, which is not always true with other epistles. Also, the destination of this book has given rise to what is known as the North Galatian and the South Galatian theories. It seems more reasonable to suppose that it was sent to the churches in the area Paul visited on his first missionary journey, but this does not preclude the possibility that it had a wider circulation, even as far north as Pessinus, Ancyra, and Tavium. I believe that Paul was writing to all the churches of Galatia. This area was large and prominent and many churches had been established there.
The word Galatians could be used either in an ethnographic sense, which would refer to the nationality of the people, or it could be used in a geographic sense, which would refer to the Roman province by that name. Regardless of the position which is taken, there was a common blood strain which identified people in that area where there was a mixture of population. The people for whom the province was named were Gauls, a Celtic tribe from the same stock which inhabited France. In the fourth century b.c. they invaded the Roman Empire and sacked Rome. Later they crossed into Greece and captured Delphi in 280 b.c. They were warlike people and on the move. At the invitation of Nikomedes I, king of Bithynia, they crossed over into Asia Minor to help him in a civil war. They soon established themselves in Asia Minor. They liked it there. The climate was delightful, and the country was beautiful. When I visited Turkey, I was pleasantly surprised to find how lovely it is along the Aegean and inland, also along the Mediterranean.
In 189 b.c. these Celtic tribes were made subjects of the Roman Empire and became a province. Their boundaries varied, and for many years they retained their customs and own language. They actually were blond Orientals. The churches Paul established on his first missionary journey were included at one time in the territory of Galatia, and this is the name which Paul would normally give to these churches.
These Gallic Celts had much of the same temperament and characteristics of the American population, that is, of those who came out of Europe or England. It is interesting to see what was said concerning my ancestors (and maybe yours). Many of these Germanic tribes were wild and fierce. Caesar said of them: “The infirmity of the Gauls is that they are fickle in their resolves, fond of change, and not to be trusted.” This description fits the majority of Americans in our day. We are fickle in our resolves. We are fond of change—we want a new car every year. We like to get the magazine that is dated next week. Another described them as “frank, impetuous, impressible, eminently intelligent, fond of show, but extremely inconstant, the fruit of excessive vanity.” That is a picture of the American population today. A man runs for office and we vote for him. Then in four years we forget him. Do you remember who was president ten years ago? Or twenty years ago? We are fickle people, not very constant. I’m very happy that it was said we are eminently intelligent, because that’s what we think also. And the reason for our high estimation of ourselves is the fruit of excessive vanity.
In the Book of Acts we read that the Galatians wanted to make Paul a god one day, and the next day they stoned him. What do we do? We elect a man to the presidency and then we try to kill him in office. I think it is quite interesting that our system of government has survived as long as it has.
Therefore the Epistle to the Galatians has a particular message for us because it was written to people who were like us in many ways. They had a like temper, and they were beset on every hand by cults and “isms” innumerable—which take us, likewise, from our moorings in the gospel of grace.
1. It is a stern, severe, and solemn message (see Gal. 1:6–9; 3:1–5). It does not correct conduct as the Corinthian letters do, but it is corrective. The Galatian believers were in grave peril because the foundations of their faith were being attacked—everything was threatened.
The epistle, therefore, contains no word of commendation, praise, or thanksgiving. There is no request for prayer, and there is no mention of their standing in Christ. No one with him is mentioned by name. If you compare this epistle with the other Pauline epistles, you will see that it is different.
2. In this epistle the heart of Paul the apostle is laid bare, and there is deep emotion and strong feeling. This is his fighting epistle—he has on his war paint. He has no toleration for legalism. Someone has said that the Epistle to the Romans comes from the head of Paul while the Epistle to the Galatians comes from the heart of Paul. A theologian has said, “Galatians takes up controversially what Romans puts systematically.”
3. This epistle is a declaration of emancipation from legalism of any type. It is interesting to note that legalists do not spend much time with Galatians. It is a rebuke to them. This was Martin Luther’s favorite epistle. He said, “This is my epistle. I am wedded to it.” It was on the masthead of the Reformation. It has been called the Magna Carta of the early church. It is the manifesto of Christian liberty, the impregnable citadel, and a veritable Gibraltar against any attack on the heart of the gospel. As someone put it, “Immortal victory is set upon its brow.”
This is the epistle that moved John Wesley. He came to America as a missionary to the Indians. But he made a startling discovery. He said, “I came to America to convert Indians, but who is going to convert John Wesley?” He went back to London, England, and was converted. When I was in London I had a guide take us to Aldersgate and we saw the marker that designates the place where John Wesley was converted. (His was called an “evangelical conversion,” which is the only kind of conversion the Bible speaks of.) John Wesley went out to begin a revival—preaching from this Epistle to the Galatians—that saved England from revolution and brought multitudes to a saving knowledge of Christ. Wilberforce, one of his converts, had a great deal to do with the matter of child labor and the Industrial Revolution that brought about changes for the working man.
In a sense I believe this epistle has been the backbone and background for every great spiritual movement and revival that has taken place in the past nineteen hundred years. And, my friend, it will be the background for other revivals. I would like to see the Spirit of God move in our land today. I would like to hear the Epistle to the Galatians declared to America. I believe it would revolutionize lives.
4. Galatians is the strongest declaration and defense of the doctrine of justification by faith in or out of Scripture. It is God’s polemic on behalf of the most vital truth of the Christian faith against any attack. Not only is a sinner saved by grace through faith plus nothing, but the saved sinner lives by grace. Grace is a way to life and a way of life. These two go together, by the way.

OUTLINE

I. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–10
A. Salutation—Cool Greeting, Chapter 1:1–5
B. Subject Stated—Warm Declamation, Chapter 1:6–10
II. Personal—Authority of the Apostle and Glory of the Gospel, Chapters 1:11–2:14
A. Experience of Paul in Arabia, Chapter 1:11–24
B. Experience of Paul with the Apostles in Jerusalem, Chapter 2:1–10
C. Experience of Paul in Antioch with Peter, Chapter 2:11–14
III. Doctrinal—Justification by Faith, Chapters 2:15–4:31Faith vs. Works, Liberty vs. Bondage
A. Justification by Faith—Doctrine Stated, Chapter 2:15–21
B. Justification by Faith—Experience of Galatians, Chapter 3:1–5
C. Justification by Faith—Illustration of Abraham, Chapters 3:6–4:18
D. Justification by Faith—Allegory of Hagar and Sarai, Chapter 4:19–31
IV. Practical—Sanctification by the Spirit, Chapters 5:1–6:10Spirit vs. Flesh, Liberty vs. Bondage
A. Saved by Faith and Living by Law Perpetrates Falling from Grace, Chapter 5:1–15
B. Saved by Faith and Walking in the Spirit Produces Fruit of the Spirit, Chapter 5:16–26
C. Saved by Faith and Fruit of the Spirit Presents Christian Character, Chapter 6:1–10
V. Autographed Conclusion, Chapter 6:11–18
A. Paul’s Own Handwriting, Chapter 6:11
B. Paul’s Own Testimony, Chapter 6:12–18
1. Cross of Christ vs. Circumcision, Chapter 6:12–15
2. Christ’s Handwriting on Paul’s Body, Chapter 6:16–18The New Circumcision of the New Creation

CHAPTER 1

Theme: Salutation—cool greeting; subject stated—warm declamation; Paul’s experience in Arabia


Galatians is God’s polemic against legalism of every and any description. The Mosaic Law is neither discredited, despised, nor disregarded. Its majesty, perfection, demands, fullness, and purpose are maintained. Yet these very qualities make it utterly impossible for man to come this route to God. Another way is opened for man to be justified before God, a way which entirely bypasses the Mosaic Law. The new route is by faith. Justification by faith is the theme, with the emphasis upon faith.
Three epistles in the New Testament quote Habakkuk 2:4, “The just shall live by his faith.” Romans 1:17 emphasizes the just. Hebrews 10:38 emphasizes shall live. Galatians 3:11 emphasizes by faith.
In Romans the emphasis is upon the fact that man apart from the Mosaic Law is justified before God by faith. In Galatians Paul is defending the gospel from those who would add law to justification by faith. Faith plus law was the thrust of Judaism. Faith plus nothing was the answer of Paul.
The Judaizers questioned Paul’s authority as an apostle and his teaching that simple faith was adequate for salvation. Paul defends his apostleship and demonstrates the sufficiency of the gospel of grace to save.

SALUTATION-COOL GREETING


Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) [Gal. 1:1].


Actually there is no parenthesis necessary in this verse. Paul is simply stating that he is an apostle. The word apostle is used in a twofold sense:

1. One of the Twelve (Acts 1:21–26)
a. With Jesus during His three-year ministry (v. 21);
b. Witness of His postresurrection ministry (v. 22);
c. Chosen by Christ (v. 22; Acts 9:15; 26:16–17).
2. One sent forth. This is the wider sense as used in Acts 11:22.

Paul, in my judgment, took the place of Judas. After the resurrection of Jesus, Matthias was chosen by the disciples to fill the place of Judas, but no information is given about Matthias except the account given in Acts 1:15–26. Matthias is never mentioned again. If the Holy Spirit had chosen him, certainly somewhere along the way He would have set His seal upon this man. Paul, however, proved he was an apostle, and Matthias did not. The election of Matthias as an apostle was held before Pentecost, which was before the Holy Spirit came into the church. For that reason I do not think that the Holy Spirit had anything to do with the selection of Matthias. There are also many elections in our churches today that are obviously not ordered by the Holy Spirit. I believe that Paul is the man whom the Spirit of God chose to take Judas’ place.
In this verse Paul also says that he is not “of men.” The preposition apo conveys the meaning of “not from men,” that is, it is not legalistic. He is not an apostle by appointment or commission after having attended a school or having taken a prescribed course.
Paul also declares that his apostleship is not “by man.” The preposition dia indicates that it was not through man, that is, not ritualistic by means of laying on of hands, as by a bishop or church court. Paul did not have the other apostles lay their hands on his head and say, “Hocus pocus, you are an apostle.”
Paul was an apostle. How? He was an apostle by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead. Jesus laid His hand upon Paul, called him, and set him apart for the office (see Acts 9:15–16).
Now I am an ordained minister from men and through men. I was told that I had to finish seminary and obtain certain degrees before I could be ordained. I did that. That was from men. That was the legalistic side. Next I went before a church body that examined me. Their decision was that I should be an ordained minister. In the Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, I knelt, and a group of men put their hands on me and said, “You are now an ordained minister.” That is the kind of minister I am. Paul said, “I am not that kind of an apostle. Men had nothing to do with it. I am an apostle directly by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.”


And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia [Gal. 1:2].

You will notice that Paul’s greeting is cool, brief, formal, and terse. No one is personally mentioned. He is not writing just to one church. He is writing to several churches—“churches of Galatia.”
The word church is used in two ways in the New Testament. One meaning of church includes the entire body of believers, of all different groups, who have trusted Christ as Savior. The other meaning of church refers to local assemblies, which is how Paul uses the word here. There were churches, or local assemblies, in many parts of Galatia. There was a church in Antioch of Pisidia, in Derbe, in Lystra, and in other places he had visited. Paul was writing to all the churches, to all of the local assemblies; hence the local church—not the corporate body of believers—is in view here. In the Epistle to the Ephesians we look at the church as a corporate body of believers—the invisible church. But the invisible body is to make itself visible today in a corporate body. Believers should be identified with a local body of believers.


Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ [Gal. 1:3].

This is Paul’s formal greeting that he uses in most of his epistles. The word grace (charis) in this verse was the gentile form of greeting in that day, while peace (shalom) was the religious greeting of the Jews. Now the grace of God must be experienced before the peace that is from God the Father can be experienced.


Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father [Gal. 1:4].

This is another marvelous verse—I can’t rise to the level of it; I will simply say some things about it.
Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins.” There is nothing that we can add to the value of His sacrifice. Nothing! He gave Himself. What do you have to give, friend? Anything? Can you add anything to His sacrifice? He gave Himself. How wonderful and glorious that is! I am speechless when I read a verse like this. He gave Himself! When you give yourself, you have given everything—who you are, what you have, your time, your talent—everything. He gave Himself. He couldn’t give any more. Paul just couldn’t wait to say it. Having mentioned Him, he says, “Who gave himself for our sins.” This is the germ of Paul’s subject.
Paul calls Him, “our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is my Savior. Can you say, “The Lord is my Shepherd?” It is one thing to say He is a Shepherd; it is another thing to make it possessive. The Lord is my Shepherd. The Lord is my Savior. Can you say that He is yours?
Paul goes on to say, “that he might deliver us from this present evil world.” Notice that the Lord delivers us from this present evil age. There is, therefore, a present value of the gospel which proves its power and genuineness. The gospel can deliver you. I have received letters from thousands of folks who have turned to Christ and have been delivered. They have been delivered from drugs, from alcohol, and from sex sins. Christ alone can deliver in cases like that. This proves the genuineness of the gospel. Christ gave Himself for our sins. He took your place and my place on that cross. He died for us and rose from the dead “that he might deliver us from this present evil world.”
All we have seen so far does not exhaust the richness of this verse.
Notice that His deliverance is “according to the will of God and our Father.” He can deliver us—and it will not be according to law. But it must be according to the will of God, my friend. The will of God is that, after He has saved us, we are not to live in sin. How wonderful this is! He can deliver us. He wants to deliver us. He will deliver us, and He will do it according to the will of God. It is God’s will that you be delivered.
This verse still is not exhausted. Christ gave Himself that He might deliver us according to the will of God. God can deliver us, but it will not be according to the Law. It must be according to the will of God, my friend. The will of God is that when He saves you, you are not to live in sin. He can deliver us and He wants to deliver us. It is His will that you be delivered. My friend, this is a verse that makes you feel like throwing your hat in the air, does it not?

To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen [Gal. 1:5].
This is a moment wherein Paul stops to render praise to God. I am convinced that we should praise God more than we do. Let us get right down to the nitty-gritty, right down where the rubber meets the road. Did you praise the Lord’s name this morning when you got up? Did you thank Him for a new day? You say, “It was raining.” But did you thank Him for it? Did you praise His name that He brought you to a new day?
I had to have a bout with cancer before I came to the place where I thank Him as I should. Now the first thing I do every morning—whether the sun is shining or it’s pouring down rain—is to say, “Lord, thank you for bringing me to a new day.” How wonderful He is! We need to praise Him more. I want glory to go to the name of my God and my Savior. I don’t want to stand on the sidelines and compromise by endorsing these contemporary dramatic productions and songs that are belittling the Lord Jesus Christ. I am speaking out against them, because He is God manifest in the flesh. He gave Himself for me. I want to praise His name! “To whom be glory for ever and ever.”
“For ever and ever” begins right now and is going on right into eternity.
This concludes Paul’s salutation. Although it contains some glorious truths, I think you will have to admit that it is a cool, impersonal greeting from the apostle Paul.

SUBJECT STATED—WARM DECLAMATION


Paul now states his subject. He goes from cold to hot. In fact, he is hot under the collar. Why? Because there are those who are mutilating the gospel. Paul would give his life for the gospel.


I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel [Gal. 1:6].

There are two aspects of the gospel, and it can be used in two senses: (1) the facts of the gospel, and (2) the interpretation of the facts. The facts of the gospel are the death, burial, and bodily resurrection of Christ. Paul said to the Corinthians, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received [Paul didn’t originate the gospel; he received it], how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3–4). These are the historical facts of the gospel which cannot be changed. You have never preached the gospel unless you have stated these facts. The second aspect of the gospel is the interpretation of the facts. They are to be received by faith plus nothing.
Now the subject of Paul’s letter to the Galatian believers concerns the interpretation of the facts of the gospel. The Judaizers had followed Paul into the Galatian country. They did not challenge the facts of the gospel. After all, five hundred people at once saw the Lord Jesus after His resurrection. When you have that many people around as witnesses, you don’t run around denying the facts of the gospel. The heresy they were promoting concerned the interpretation of those facts. They were very sly and subtle and said something like this, “Did Brother Paul come here among you?” The folk would say, “Yes, he came and preached the gospel and we accepted it. We are converted. We know Christ as our Savior, and we are in the body of believers.” The Judaizers would respond, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Brother Paul is accurate as far as he goes, but he doesn’t go far enough. Did he tell you that you should keep the Mosaic Law? Oh, he didn’t? Well, he should have told you that. Yes, you are to trust Christ, but you must also follow the Mosaic Law or you won’t be saved.”
This is one of the oldest heresies known, and it is still with us today. It is adding something to the gospel of grace; it is doing something rather than simply believing something. It is faith plus something rather than faith plus nothing. Every cult and “ism” has something for you to do in order to be saved.
It is interesting that Paul said to the Philippian jailer, “… Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved …” (Acts 16:31). Simon Peter said to the Sanhedrin, “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Christ told the apostles to preach the gospel of salvation by grace. They were not to do anything to gain their salvation, but they were to trust what Christ already had done for them. The gospel shuts out all works.
Now Paul is writing to the Galatian believers and saying, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel”—


Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ [Gal. 1:7].

The word pervert is the Greek word metastrephoµ. It is a strong word, used by Dr. Luke in speaking of the sun turned to darkness (see Acts 2:20), and by James, speaking of laughter turned to mourning (see James 4:9). To attempt to change the gospel has the effect of making it the very opposite of what it really is. This is important to see.


But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed [Gal. 1:8].

This verse is as strong as anything could possibly be. Paul says that if an angel dared to declare any other message than the gospel, he would be dismissed with a strong invective.
If an angel should appear to me right now and say, “You are right as far as you go, but you also have to do something to be saved”; or if an angel should appear to you as you read this and say, “McGee is correct as far as he goes, but you have to do something else,” both you and I should say, “Get out of here; I’m not listening to you although you are an angel from heaven.”
My friend, in our day we hear many speakers who are trying to give us another “gospel.” They may look like angels to you—after all, Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers are transformed as the ministers of righteousness (see 2 Cor. 11:14–15). Now hear Paul—


As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed [Gal. 1:9].

In strong language Paul says, “If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed,” which literally means let him be damned. Friend, I cannot make that statement any stronger.
The gospel shuts out all works. Romans 4:5 says, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” I find a great many folk who think they have to become good enough to be saved. The other day a man said to me, “McGee, I want to become a Christian. I am going to try to be a little better, and if I improve, I am going to become a Christian.” I said to him, “If you improve, you will never become a Christian. The only class that God is saving is the ungodly. The Lord Jesus said He didn’t come to call the righteous; He came to call sinners. The reason He said that was because there is none righteous, no, not one. Even the righteousness of man is as filthy rags in God’s sight. Law condemns us, and it must make us speechless before grace can save us.”
Romans 3:19 tells us that, “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” The real difficulty is not that people should be “good enough” to be saved, but that they are not “bad enough” to be saved. Humanity refuses to recognize its lost condition before God. This is the human predicament.
The Judaizers did not deny the facts of the gospel—that Jesus died and rose again. What they denied was that this was adequate. They insisted that you have to keep the Law plus trusting Christ. Paul is saying that whoever tries to mingle law and grace—let him be damned! Why? Because they pervert the gospel. They do not deny the fact of the gospel, but they misinterpret those facts. They pervert the gospel.


For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ [Gal. 1:10].

The word persuade means “to make a friend of.” The Scofield Reference Bible translates it “seek the favor of.” In 1 Thessalonians 2:4 and 4:1 it is “please God” in contrast to self or others. The preaching of the gospel is not pleasing to lost man. No man can please both God and man.
If you preach the gospel of grace today, you may get into trouble because it is the gospel of the grace of God that the sinner hates. Many unsaved church members do not want to hear the message of grace. They want to hear a message that appeals to the flesh. The gospel of grace puts us in the dust and makes us beggars before God.
By nature man responds to legalism. He thinks he doesn’t need a Savior. All he needs is a helper. Oh, my friend, we are sinking for the third time! We need somebody to save us. Those who preach law are popular. Not long ago I listened to a local Southern California preacher on television. From a technical and professional standpoint he has one of the finest programs. In his message he talked about Jesus coming into the world. He spoke of Christ’s death and resurrection. But he failed to mention that the people to whom he was speaking were sinners and needed a Savior. He neglected to inform his audience that Jesus died for them and they needed to trust Him to be saved. Rather, he talked about commitment. He invited folk to commit their lives to Christ. Let us be honest, friend. Christ does not want your old life and He does not want mine. We have nothing to commit to Him. He wants to do something through us today. Oh, if only we could learn that!
God is not even asking you to live the Christian life. In fact, you cannot live it. God is asking that He might live the Christian life through you. The Epistle to the Galatians teaches this. But first of all we must come to Christ as sinners and be saved. Our churches are filled today with people who are not saved. Do you know why? They have never come to Christ and received Him as Savior. They feel like they have something to commit to Him. You have nothing to commit to Him, my friend. He wants to commit something to you. He is the One who died, and He is on the giving end. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). It is just as simple as that. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior? This is the important thing.
Man’s conscience witnesses to the law, and legal conviction will lead to works. Man tries to compensate for the fact that he is not doing enough. He tries to balance his good works against his sins and have enough on the plus side to be saved. The apostle Paul, you recall, tried to do this. And he had a whole lot on the plus side. But one day he came to Christ. Then he said, “What was gain for me became loss, and what was loss became gain” (see Phil. 3:7–8).
The Holy Spirit witnesses to grace today. This is gospel conviction that leads to faith. Actually the law denies the fall of man—this was the position of Cain. Grace acknowledges the fall of man, as Abel did when he brought his offering to God.
We come now to a new section that deals with the apostle Paul personally—his experience in Arabia, his experience with the apostles in Jerusalem, and his experience in Antioch with Peter. This will take us through the first half of chapter 2.

PERSONAL—PAUL’S EXPERIENCE IN ARABIA


But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man [Gal. 1:11].


Paul is stating once again, as he did in verse 1, that he is a God-appointed apostle. When he says, “I certify you,” he means, “I remind you.” “After man” should be “according to man.” Paul did not get the gospel he preached from man. The Judaizers not only questioned Paul’s message, they also questioned his apostleship. He was not one of the original Twelve, but a Johnny-come-lately. They cast a shadow upon the validity of Paul’s authority as an apostle. Paul is going to take up this matter with them and show that his apostleship rests upon the fact that he was called directly by the revelation of Jesus Christ.


For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ [Gal. 1:12].

Paul did not receive his apostleship by going to school. Neither did he receive it by being ordained or by hands being laid on his head. Paul’s apostleship and gospel came directly by a revelation (apokalupsis) of Jesus Christ. The Book of Revelation, sometimes called the Apocalypse, is from the same word. The gospel is a revelation as much as is the Book of Revelation. The gospel was unveiled to the apostle Paul. He did not become an apostle through Peter, James, or John. He was an apostle by the direct call of Jesus Christ.


For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:

And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers [Gal. 1:13–14].

Paul says, “For ye have heard of my conversation,” that is, you have heard of my manner of life. Paul now calls the religion in which he was brought up the “Jews’ religion.” Paul was saved, not in Judaism, not by Judaism, but from Judaism.
Now notice this tremendous statement:


But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace,

To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:

Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus [Gal. 1:15–17].

The phrase “but when it pleased God,” in verse 15, means that Paul was called according to the will of God. The word heathen in verse 16 refers to Gentiles. Paul conferred not with flesh and blood—he didn’t get it from any man. Paul received the gospel directly from Jesus Christ.
Many years ago a so-called modernist, who taught old heresy, wrote a book about Paul. He also gave lectures, which I heard. He gave the apostle Paul credit for being a great brain. (I personally believe Paul had the greatest mind of any man who has ever lived. Many scholars, who are better acquainted with Paul than I am, also make this statement.) He pointed out that Paul was a brilliant student of the Mosaic system of Judaism and was a brilliant student of Greek philosophy, and then declared that Paul combined the two and came up with Christianity. Now Paul says here in Galatians that he didn’t get the gospel that way. He received the gospel by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.


Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days [Gal. 1:18].

I suppose that this verse is the same record that is given in Acts 9:26–29 which says, “And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem. And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him.”
When all of this is added up, it means that Paul spent less than three years in the desert. It is interesting how God has trained His men. He trained Moses in the desert. He put Abraham in a rather unique place to train him, and Elijah had that same type of experience. It has been God’s method to put His man out on the desert to train him. David was trained outdoors in the caves of the earth while he was running away from King Saul. Remember that he cried out to God that he was hunted like a partridge—it was open season on him all the time. The Lord used the same method with Paul. God sent him into the desert for less than three years. Then he went to Jerusalem, saw Peter, and stayed with him for fifteen days.


But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother [Gal. 1:19].

Paul had no contact with the apostles except Peter and James, the Lord’s brother. That is all the contact he had with them, and he received nothing from them, as we shall see.


Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not [Gal. 1:20].

The modernist or liberal, to whom I referred, said that Paul got his gospel by making an homogenized stew out of Greek philosophy and the Mosaic system. Paul says here that he didn’t get the gospel from anyone else. Paul also says he does not lie. Someone is lying. I am too polite to call that modernist a liar, but in effect Paul does.


Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia;

And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ:

But they had heard only, That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.

And they glorified God in me [Gal. 1:21–24].

The believers in Jerusalem were rather reluctant to accept the apostle Paul. Without the help of Barnabas, Paul would probably have waited a long time before the church in Jerusalem would have received him. These men were hesitant to receive Paul because he had persecuted the church, but they knew what it was to be converted. They knew what it was to have an absolutely earth-shaking experience that would transform a man. Yet they could not believe that Saul of Tarsus could be converted. It seemed not only improbable but impossible.
In verses 21–24 Paul outlines his first years after his conversion. I don’t think, friend, that they were the happiest years of his life. Apparently he tells us something about the failure in his own personal life in the seventh chapter of Romans. There were three periods in the life of the apostle Paul. Notice briefly the first two periods.
1. Paul was a proud Pharisee. He had a marvelous mind and was an expert in the Mosaic Law. As many of his biographers have said, the world would have heard of Paul even if he had not been an apostle and even if he had not been converted. I don’t think there is any question about that. He was an outstanding man. But he was a proud young Pharisee who thought he knew it all. He hated Christ. He hated the church and attempted to eliminate it. He was ruthless in his persecution of the church.
2. The second period began on the Damascus road when he was knocked down into the dust. This brilliant Pharisee found out that he did not know Jesus Christ, whom to know is life. He had thought Jesus was dead. And he asked, “Who art thou, Lord?” Jesus replied, “I am Jesus whom you persecute. When you persecute My church, you persecute Me” (see Acts 9:5). When Paul became acquainted with his Lord, he immediately asked, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” After Paul met Christ, he spent some time in Arabia. During those first years he attempted to minister and found that what he wanted to do he could not do. Finally he cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). It was not an unsaved man who said that; it was Paul the apostle in the first stages of his conversion.
3. Then came that glorious period when he walked in the Spirit. That was the time he could live for God. That is the place where many of us need to be today. There are so many unhappy Christians. They are saved, I think, but as Dwight L. Moody put it in his quaint way, “Some people have just enough religion to make them miserable.”
I wish we had more information on Paul’s experience with the apostles in Jerusalem. I am sure a question has already come to your mind. If Paul received the gospel apart from the other apostles—who were with the Lord for three years and saw the resurrected Christ—is Paul preaching the same gospel? This is an important matter at this point because if Paul is not preaching the same gospel, something is radically wrong. In the next chapter we shall see that the apostles in Jerusalem approved Paul’s gospel and that it was the same Good News.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: Experience of Paul with the apostles in Jerusalem; experience of Paul in Antioch with Peter; justification by faith stated

Now we come to the second division of this personal section in Galatians. We have seen that the Lord Jesus Christ communicated the gospel directly to Paul. Was it the same gospel that the other apostles had received from the lips of the Lord? We will see the oneness of the gospel and Paul’s experience with the apostles in Jerusalem. We will see the communication of the gospel and see that the church in Jerusalem approved Paul’s gospel.

EXPERIENCE OF PAUL WITH THE APOSTLES IN JERUSALEM


Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also [Gal. 2:1].


It was a master stroke of Paul to take Titus with him. Titus was a young preacher and a Gentile. This, I believe, was the first great council in Jerusalem as recorded in Acts 15. The question to be settled was whether men are saved by the grace of God or whether they should come in under the Mosaic Law. Paul had Titus there as exhibit number one. Titus had not been circumcised. Will he be forced to become circumcised? This was to become a very important matter.
You see, the Judaizers were going about saying that the church in Jerusalem held that all believers in Christ should be under the Mosaic Law. All of the men there at the Jerusalem church, which was an all-Jewish church, had certainly been under it. Many of them still went to the temple to worship. In fact, that must have been the Christian’s meeting place. Paul and Barnabas came there to get the official word regarding law and grace.

And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain [Gal. 2:2].
Paul recognized that if he were preaching a different gospel from what the other apostles were preaching, there was something radically wrong. Paul was willing to admit, “If I were preaching a different gospel, I would be wrong. I have run in vain. I have certainly been disillusioned and misinformed.” So he goes to Jerusalem and communicates that gospel to the apostles there.


But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised:

And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage [Gal. 2:3–4].

Out where Paul was preaching some folk had come into the church under false colors. Apparently they were not believers. They just came in to spy out the liberty which believers had in Christ. They found out that this young preacher, Titus, was a Greek and Paul had not compelled him to be circumcised. So what will the church at Jerusalem decide about him? Paul says, “Well, they didn’t compel him to be circumcised. They didn’t listen to the false brethren. If they had, we would be put right back under the bondage of the Mosaic Law rather than enjoying the freedom by the Spirit of God and the freedom in Christ.”


To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you [Gal. 2:5].

Paul stood by his guns. These false brethren said, “This man Titus who is here meeting with the church (and it was practically all Jewish then) has not even been circumcised!” Paul says, “No, and he’s not going to be circumcised. He is as much a believer as any of you. He has been saved by faith apart from the Law. He is not about to follow any part of the Law for salvation.” This is a tremendous stand that Paul is taking.


But of these who seemed to be somewhat, (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no man’s person:) for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me [Gal. 2:6].

Paul says, “We sat down with the apostles [at least he did, and I suppose Barnabas and Titus were there also] and communicated the gospel.” They said, “Now, Brother Paul, we’ve been hearing these reports. Tell us what you preach.” And Paul told them. Paul finds out that these apostles didn’t have anything to add to what he was preaching. He was preaching the grace of God; they were preaching the grace of God. They find they are in full agreement. They all are preaching the same gospel. This is tremendous!


But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter [Gal. 2:7].

Let’s understand that there were not two gospels in the sense of Peter’s gospel and Paul’s gospel. These men were in complete agreement. The gospel of the circumcision and the gospel of the uncircumcision refer to the groups the gospel was going to. The Gentiles were the group that Paul was speaking to. He was called to go to the Gentiles, the uncircumcised. Peter was called to go to his own Jewish brethren who were the circumcised.


(For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:) [Gal. 2:8].

The proof of the pudding, of course, is always in the eating. What results were they getting? When Peter preached the gospel, quite a few people were saved. When Paul preached the gospel, quite a few people were saved. They were both preaching the same gospel.
Now bringing this principle down to where we live, the real test of any Christian work is not promotion. The real test is the results it gets. God’s people should be very sure that they are supporting a ministry that gets results. If it is not producing results, why in the world do you support it?


And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision [Gal. 2:9].

The apostles accepted Paul’s apostleship. “The right hands of fellowship”—fellowship is the Greek koinonia, one of the great words of the gospel and the highest expression of a personal relationship. It means sharing the things of Christ.

Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do [Gal. 2:10].
Paul came back later with an offering for the poor saints in Jerusalem because that church had been persecuted and was in a sad condition. Because Paul himself before his conversion had led the persecution, he wanted to bring the gift for the Jerusalem church with his own hands.
This was social service. A thing that we fundamentalists are guilty of is a lack of real service in this area. James, in his very practical epistle, says, “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (James 2:15–17). And the apostles there in Jerusalem said, “Now, Brother Paul, don’t forget to help the poor folk.” And Paul said, “That was the very thing I was eager to do.”

EXPERIENCE OF PAUL IN ANTIOCH WITH PETER


In this personal section of Paul’s life we have seen his experience in Arabia with the Lord Jesus Christ, and his experience with the apostles in Jerusalem. Now we see Paul’s experience in Antioch with Simon Peter—I love this section.
The church in Antioch was largely a gentile church, although it was a mixture of Jew and Gentile. We will not understand what happened there unless we consider how the early church operated. They had a love feast which was held in connection with the Lord’s Supper. Paul has a great deal to say about this subject in 1 Corinthians. The early believers came together for a meal, a love feast, before they celebrated the Lord’s Supper. When Gentiles were saved, a problem was raised. In the congregation were Jews who had never eaten anything which had been sacrificed to idols. The Gentiles had been idolaters, and they were accustomed to eating meat that had first been offered to idols. They also ate pork and other animals designated as unclean in the law of Moses. It made no difference to them because they had been reared that way.
What was going to be done to keep from offending the Jewish Christians? Well, in Antioch two tables were established. One was the kosher table; the other was the gentile table. Paul ate at the gentile table. Although he was a Jew, he ate with the Gentiles because he taught that whether you eat meat or you don’t eat meat makes no difference—meat will not commend you to God.
When Simon Peter came up to visit Paul in Antioch, it was a new experience for him because, although converted, he had never eaten anything unclean. Remember what Peter told the Lord on the roof in Joppa before he went to the home of Cornelius. He had a vision of heaven opening and a sheet being lowered in which were all kinds of unclean animals. “And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (Acts 10:13–15).
Peter had been a believer for some time when he came to visit Paul in Antioch, but he had still followed the Jewish eating pattern. When Peter came to the church, he found there a gentile table and a kosher table. Now notice Peter’s reaction:


But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.
For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision [Gal. 2:11–12].
Now this is probably what happened. When the time came to eat, Simon Peter went over to the kosher table, while Paul went over to the gentile table. Peter noticed that there was pork roast on the gentile table. After dinner Peter joined Paul and they went outside for a little walk. Peter said, “I noticed that you ate at the gentile table.” “Yes,” Paul said. “And I noticed that you ate pork tonight. Is it good? I never have tasted it.” “Yes,” Paul said, “it’s delicious.” Then Peter asked, “Do you think it would be all right if I ate over there?” And Paul said, “Well, it is my understanding that we are going to have some nice pork chops in the morning for breakfast. Why don’t you try it?” So in the morning when he came to breakfast, he went over to the gentile table, sat down gingerly and rather reluctantly took a pork chop. After he had tasted it, he said to Paul, “It is delicious, isn’t it!” Paul said, “Yes. After all, under grace you can either eat it or not eat it. It makes no difference. Meat won’t commend you to God.” So Simon Peter said, “I’ll be here tonight and I understand you are having ham tonight. I want to try that.” So at dinner time he starts rushing for the gentile table when he looks over and sees some of the elders from the Jerusalem church who had come to visit also. So Simon Peter went all the way around that gentile table, went over to the kosher table, and sat down like a little whipped puppy. Paul saw him do that, and this is what happened:


And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.

But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? [Gal. 2:13–14].

It was all right for Peter to eat at either table, kosher or Gentile. But after he had been eating at the gentile table and for fear of the brethren from Jerusalem goes back to the kosher table, he is saying by his action that the gentile table is wrong and the kosher table is right.
Now these brethren from Jerusalem were austere legalists. And under grace that was their privilege. I have no objection to folk today who feel that they should not eat certain meats. But they are also to give me the liberty of eating what I choose to eat. Frankly, I do not eat much pork myself for health reasons. But it is not a religious matter at all. Simon Peter turned from the liberty he had in Christ back to Judaism again.
The nature of Paul’s rebuke shows, first of all, the inconsistency of lawkeeping. If it was right for Simon Peter to live as the gentile believers lived, why should he desire the Gentiles to live as the Jews? That is what he was saying when he left the gentile table for the kosher table. If gentile living under grace apart from the Law was good enough for Peter, was it bad for the Gentiles themselves? If Simon Peter was free to live outside the Law, was it not lawful for the Gentiles to do the same?

DOCTRINAL—JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH


This brings us to the doctrinal section of this marvelous epistle, which deals with justification by faith. In this section Paul takes his position as a Jew.


We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles [Gal. 2:15].

The Jew in that day looked upon the Gentile as a sinner. In fact, Gentile and sinner were synonymous terms. Therefore, the rebuke that Paul gave shows the folly of lawkeeping—how really foolish it is.


Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified [Gal. 2:16].

This is a clear-cut and simple statement of justification by faith. Believe me, the legalist has trouble with this verse. I once heard a legalist preach on it, and it was certainly a travesty of interpretation. This verse will upset every legal system there is today. To say that you have to add anything to faith in Christ absolutely mutilates the gospel.
Notice what Paul says here. If a Jew had to leave the Law behind—that is, forsake it—in order to be justified by faith, Paul’s question is, “Why should the Gentile be brought under the Law?” That was the great argument at the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15: “Should the Gentile be brought under the Law?” Thank God, the answer, guided by the Spirit of God, was that the Gentile was not under the Law for salvation—not for his daily living, as he was called to a much higher plane.
Could the Gentile find justification under the Law when the Jew had already proven that it was impossible? The Jews had had the Law for almost fifteen hundred years and had not been able to keep the Law at all. Why force the Gentile under that which had not saved even one Israelite? Gentile believers were already justified by grace. It would be folly for the Gentiles to turn from grace to the Law which had been unable to justify the Jew.
“Knowing that a man.” Now let’s pick this verse apart. This is something you can know—you can know whether you are saved or not. What kind of “man” is this verse speaking about? Anthroµpos is the Greek word, a generic term meaning “mankind.” It speaks of the solidarity of the race, the common humanity that we all have. This breaks the social barrier of color. It breaks the barrier of race. It breaks the social barrier. All men are on one level before the Cross, and that level happens to be “sinner.” You are a sinner. I am a sinner. I don’t care who you are, you are a sinner in God’s sight.
“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law”—the word the is not in the original; so it should read “not justified by works of law.” This includes the Mosaic system, and it includes any legal system. This is what I mean: if you say that you have to join a certain church or that you have to have a certain experience, or that you have to be baptized to be saved, you are contradicting this verse. “Knowing that a man is not justified by works of law”—any law. Paul embraces the whole legal system that is found in every religion. This makes Christianity different from every religion on topside of the earth. Every religion that I know anything about—and I have studied many of the cults and religions of this world—instruct us to do something. Christianity is different. It tells us that we are justified by faith; that is, faith is an accomplished act and fact for you. Every other religion says do. Christianity says done. The great transaction is done, and we are asked to believe it.
Let me call your attention to an important verse in 1 Corinthians: “Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. 12:3). Now the question for you and me is: how can we call Jesus accursed? If you say to me, “McGee, when you came to Christ and accepted Him as your Savior, you didn’t get all that was coming to you. The Holy Spirit can give you something that you didn’t get in Christ, and you ought to seek that today.” My friend, to do that depreciates the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross when He came to this earth to die for you and work out a salvation so perfect that when He went back to heaven He sat down at the right hand of God (see Heb. 1:3). He sat down because there was nothing else to be done. If there had been anything else, He would have done it before He sat down. When you say that He didn’t do it all for me, you are saying that Jesus is accursed. And you can’t say that by the Holy Spirit of God. That is, you are not giving me the word of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:13–14). My friend, when you came to Christ, He gave you everything you will need in this life. Christ is the One who administers all the gifts. The Holy Spirit is the One who gives them, but He is working down here under the supervision of the second Person of the Godhead. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church. My friend, we have everything in Him. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Amen—and when you say “amen,” you are through, my friend. Christ did it all.
This verse is so clear it is impossible to misunderstand it. “Knowing that a man [any human being—man or woman, black or white, rich or poor, Roman, American, Chinese] is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.” It is not faith plus something; it is faith plus nothing.
The verse continues: “even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ.” Who does Paul mean by “we”? He includes himself, meaning we Israelites. He is saying that he and his fellow Jews had to leave the Law, come to Christ, and trust Him in order to be justified by the faith of Christ rather than by the works of law.
The conclusion of this verse is so clear I feel that anybody can understand it: “for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Let’s not depreciate the work of the Lord Jesus by saying that we didn’t get everything from Him. I was a hell-doomed sinner. I trusted Him as my Savior, and I received a perfect salvation from Him.
Now the next verse, I am frank to say, is a little more difficult to understand.


But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid [Gal. 2:17].

The word justified is the Greek dikaiooµ, which means “to declare a person right,” or “to make him right.” We are declared to be right by our faith in Jesus Christ. It means that a sinner who is guilty before God, who is under condemnation and judgment, is declared to be right with God on the basis of his faith in the redemption which we have in Christ. It is not only forgiveness of sins, which is subtraction; it is the addition of the righteousness of Christ. He is declared righteous. The righteousness I have is not my own righteousness, because my righteousness is not acceptable; but I have a perfect righteousness which is Christ.
The sense of this verse seems to be this: Since the Jew had to forsake the Law in order to be justified by Christ and therefore take his place as a sinner, is Christ the One who makes him a sinner? Paul’s answer is, “Of course not.” The Jew, like the Gentile, was a sinner by nature. He could not be justified by the Law, as he demonstrated. This same thought was given by Peter in his address before the great council at Jerusalem: “Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they” (Acts 15:10–11). You see, Peter and Paul were in agreement on the doctrine of justification by faith.


For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor [Gal. 2:18].

In other words, Paul is saying, “If I go back under law, I make myself a transgressor.”
However, he is free from the Law. How did he become free from the Law?


For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God [Gal. 2:19].

Paul is saying, “When Christ died, He died for me. He died in my stead because the Law had condemned me.” You see, the Law was a ministration of condemnation; a ministration of death is what Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians 3:7. It condemns me. Even under the legal system, God would have had to destroy the nation Israel. But He gave the sacrificial system—five sacrifices—all of them pointing to Christ. God, by His marvelous grace, was able to save. Therefore the mercy seat was a throne of grace where a nation could find forgiveness of sins. The Law, therefore, condemned me. The Law has accused man. We stand guilty before the Law. So the Law actually is responsible for Jesus’ dying for us. The Law condemned us—said we had to die. All right now, if I am dead to the Law, then I am no longer responsible to the Law. The Law has already killed me. It has executed me, and I am dead—dead to the Law. Therefore, the Law could not do for me what Christ has done for me. He not only took my place and died for me, but He also did something else. He was able to give me life. He came back from the dead. You see, the Law arrested, condemned, sentenced, and slew us—that is all the Law could do for us. If you want to come by the Law route, you’ll get death. Only Christ can give you life. And, after all, life is what we need today.


I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me [Gal. 2:20].

This verse states a fact which is true of every believer. We are not to seek to be crucified with Christ. I have been to many young people’s conferences, and I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I have seen thousands of young people accept Christ. I have also heard many of those young people at testimony meetings quote verse 20 as they put a faggot on the fire. They did not know any more about what this verse means than does a goat grazing on a hillside.
There are many people today who talk about wanting to live the “crucified” life. That is not what Paul is talking about in this verse. We are not to seek to be crucified with Christ. We have already been crucified with Him. The principle of living is not by the Law which has slain us because it found us guilty. Now we are to live by faith. Faith in what? Faith in the Son of God. You see, friend, the death of Christ upon the cross was not only penal (that is, paying the penalty for our sins), but it was substitutionary also. He was not only the sacrifice for sin; He was the substitute for all who believe.
Paul declares, therefore, that under the Law he was tried, found guilty, was condemned, and in the person of his Substitute he was slain. When did that take place? It took place when Christ was crucified. Paul was crucified with Christ. But “nevertheless I live.” How do I live? In Christ. He is alive today at God’s right hand. We are told that we have been put in Christ. You cannot improve on that. That ought to get rid of the foolish notion that we can crucify ourselves.
When I was a pastor in Los Angeles, a young man came to me after a service and asked, “Dr. McGee, are you living the crucified life?” I think I rather startled the boy when I replied, “No, I am not.” Then I asked him, “Are you?” He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, I am trying to.” Then I told him, “That is not the question you asked me. You wanted to know if I am living the crucified life. I told you no. Now you tell me yes or no about your life. Are you living the crucified life?” Once again he replied, “I am trying to.” I said to him, “You are either living it, or you are not living it. The fact of the matter is you cannot live it.” “Oh,” he said, “why can’t I?” So I pointed out to him that there is something interesting to note about crucifixion. You can commit suicide in many different ways. You can hang yourself, shoot yourself, take poison, jump off of a high building, or jump in front of a truck. There are many ways to end your life, but you cannot crucify yourself. When you nail one hand to the cross, who is going to nail your other hand to the cross? You cannot do it yourself. You must understand what Paul is talking about when he says, “I am crucified with Christ.” Paul was crucified with Christ when Christ died. Christ died a substitutionary death. He died for Paul. He died for you. He died for me.
In Romans 6 we are told that we have been buried with Christ by baptism, by identification. We have been raised with Him in newness of life, and now we are joined to the living Christ. Paul says that we do not know Him any more after the flesh. He is not the Man of Galilee walking around the Sea of Galilee. I walked about in that area some time ago and did not see Him; He is not there today. He is at God’s right hand. He is the glorified Christ.
Paul is saying, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live.” You see, the Law executed us. The Law could not give us life. Who gave us life? “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live.” How do you live? “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” My friend, that is the important thing. He died for me down here that I might live in Him up yonder and that He might live in me down here. “And the life,” Paul says, “which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.” What kind of life is this? It is a life of faith—saved by faith, live by faith, walk by faith. This is what it means to walk in the Spirit.
“I live by the faith of the Son of God”—how tender this is—“who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Christ loved me, but He could not love me into heaven. He had to give Himself for me. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. You can only receive a gift by faith. This applies to any gift, for that matter. You have to believe that the giver who holds out the gift to you is sincere. You must believe that he is telling the truth when he holds it out to you and says, “It is yours.” You have to reach out in faith and take it before it belongs to you. God offers you the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus.
The content of this verse leads me to believe that Paul was present at the crucifixion of Christ. Paul was a Pharisee, and they were the ones who led in the Crucifixion. Paul was a leader in the persecution of the church. He was also one who hated the Lord Jesus Christ. He probably was attending school in Jerusalem, in the school of Gamaliel, at the time of the Crucifixion. I cannot believe this zealous young man would stay home on the day Jesus was crucified. The Scriptures tell us that the Pharisees ridiculed Jesus. They told Him to come down from the cross. Then they sat down and watched Him die—you cannot sink any lower than that. I believe Paul was there that day.
Now after Paul came to know the glorified Christ, the One who died down here, the One who rose again and is at God’s right hand, Paul could remember that day and say, “While I was there ridiculing Him, shooting out the lip at Him, expressing my hatred for Him, He loved me and He gave Himself for me!” He gave Himself—the supreme sacrifice. Paul called himself the chief of sinners, which was not hyperbole or an oratorical gesture. It was an actual fact; he was the chief of sinners.
My friend, you can tread underfoot the precious blood of Christ by ignoring Him, turning away from Him, or turning against Him as Paul did. But it was for that crowd that Jesus prayed, “… Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do …” (Luke 23:34). Even if you hate Him, He was loving you and giving Himself for you.


I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain [Gal. 2:21].

The main thought in this verse is simply that if there had been any other way to save sinners, then God would have used that method. If a law or a religion could have been given that would save sinners, God would have given it. The only way that an infinite God could save you and me was to send His Son to die. He was willing to make the supreme sacrifice.

CHAPTER 3

Theme: Justification by faith; experience of the Galatians; illustration of Abraham

EXPERIENCE OF THE GALATIANS


Paul now goes back to the experience of the Galatians. How were they saved? Were they saved by law or were they saved by faith in Jesus Christ? I personally believe in experience. I had a Methodist background as a boy. I went down to a penitent altar underneath a brush arbor in back of an unpainted Methodist church in southern Oklahoma. I was just a little fellow and I knelt there with an open heart. I believe in experience and when we come to chapter 4, we will deal further with the subject of experience.


O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? [Gal. 3:1].

“O foolish Galatians”—senseless Galatians. The Greek word is anoetoi from the root word nous, meaning “mind.” He is saying, “You’re not using your mind—you’re not using your nous.”
“Who hath bewitched you?” Let me translate that in good old Americano: What’s gotten into you? “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth”—“set forth” is literally placarded or painted. I am not sure that Paul actually drew pictures for the Galatians, but I am sure that he painted word pictures for them. I used to show a great many slides when I was a pastor. It is a marvelous way of teaching the Word of God. For example, I would not attempt to teach the tabernacle without using slides. Now that is the way you “set forth” a teaching, and that is the word Paul uses. “Set forth, crucified among you”—it was His death on the cross that made possible your salvation!


This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? [Gal. 3:2].

Now we need to be very careful here. The gospel is true irrespective of experience. What experience does is corroborate the gospel. There are many people today who reason from experience to truth. I personally believe that the Word of God reasons from truth to experience. Experience is not to be discounted, but it must be tested by truth.
Everyone has different experiences. I heard one of the founders of a cult tell about her experience. Then I heard another woman tell about her experience—and they are entirely different. Which person am I going to follow? To tell the truth, I am not going to follow either one of them.
One time a man got up in a meeting and read a passage of Scripture. He said, “Because there is a difference of opinion concerning the interpretation of this passage, and we don’t want any controversy, let me tell you about my experience.” Well, his experience was as far removed from what that Scripture said as anything could possibly be. He was basing truth on his experience. You simply cannot do that. Experience must corroborate the gospel.
“Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” What does Paul mean by the hearing of faith? Does he mean the ear, the organ of hearing, or the receiving of the message, or the message itself? I think he means the whole process. You have to hear something before you can be saved, because the gospel is something God has done for you, and you need to know about it.
In this section Paul is raising several questions. He tells these folk to look back on what had happened to them and asks six questions that have to do with their experience.
This is his first question: “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Nowhere—not even in the Old Testament—did anyone ever receive the Holy Spirit by the works of the Law. He is received by the hearing of faith. The Galatians never received the Spirit by the Law. The Holy Spirit is evidence of conversion. Scripture tells us, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9). “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13).
Now here is the second question:

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? [Gal. 3:3].
What Paul is asking is this: “If the Holy Spirit is the One who converted you, brought you to Christ, and now you are indwelt by the Spirit of God, are you going to turn back to the Law (which was given to control the flesh) and thick you are going to live on high plane?”


Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain [Gal. 3:4].

Paul asked the Galatians, “Are you going to let all of the things you have suffered come to naught?” He reminded them that they had paid a price for receiving the gospel. Was it all going to be in vain, without a purpose?
Now he raises this question:


He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? [Gal. 3:5].

Paul refers to the ministry that he has had among them. You will recall that his apostleship was attacked by the Judaizers. They said that he was a Johnny-come-lately apostle—not one of the original Twelve. He was not with Christ during His ministry but came along later. Paul reminded the Galatians that he was the one who had come into their country, preached the Word of God to them, and performed miracles among them. He did not do it by the works of the Law—Paul would be very careful to say that. He preached the Lord Jesus Christ as the One who died for them, was raised again, and in whom they placed their trust. When they did that, a miraculous thing took place. They were regenerated. Paul had the evidence that he was an apostle. In that day signs were given to the apostles. As I understand it, the apostles had practically all the gifts mentioned in Scripture; they certainly had all the sign gifts. Paul could perform miracles. He could heal the sick. He could raise the dead. Simon Peter, one of the original Twelve, could do that also. To do this was the mark of an apostle in that day.
Now the apostles have given us the Word of God. We have a faith that is built upon Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone, and a faith built upon the foundation which was laid by the apostles and prophets. That which gave credence to the truth of their message was their ability to perform miracles. They had the sign gifts. (After they had given us the Word of God, the sign gifts disappeared. In fact, I think they disappeared with the apostles.) The important thing for us to note here is that Paul came to the Galatians not as a Pharisee preaching the Law, but as an apostle preaching Jesus Christ. That was something these people had experienced, and Paul rested upon that.
In summary, we have seen that justification by faith was the experience of the Galatians. That is why he asked them, “What has gotten into you?” He mentions the Holy Spirit three times in this section. He reminds them that they did not receive the Spirit by the Law. The Holy Spirit is evidence of conversion. It is important to see that the gospel is true irrespective of the experience of the Galatians or anyone else. The gospel is objective; it deals with what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us. Experience will corroborate the gospel, and that is what Paul is demonstrating in this section. The gospel is sufficient—experience confirms this.

ILLUSTRATION OF ABRAHAM


This section of justification by faith using Abraham as an illustration looms large in this epistle. Then follows an allegory of Hagar and Sarai, which takes us through the rest of chapter 4. So now we come to the heart of this book, the high water mark, where Abraham will be the illustration.


Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness [Gal. 3:6].

This verse is a quote from Genesis 15:6 concerning Abraham, “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” This verse is also quoted in Romans 4:3. The illustration comes from the early part of the life of Abraham, his life of faith. Abraham is the great illustration of justification by faith. Paul uses him as an example in both the Roman and Galatian epistles. It cannot be said that Abraham was justified by the Law because the Mosaic Law was not given until four hundred years after Abraham. Neither can it be said that he was justified by circumcision because he was justified before God gave him the commandment of circumcision. Circumcision was the badge and evidence of Abraham’s faith, just as baptism is the badge and evidence of a believer’s faith today. Neither circumcision nor baptism can save. In fact, they make no contribution to salvation. They are simply outward evidences of an inward work.
The incident referred to is in Genesis 15. After Abraham encountered the kings of the East in his rescue of his nephew Lot, he refused to accept any booty from the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. God appeared to Abraham to assure him that he had done right in turning down the booty, saying, “I am your shield, and your exceeding great reward.” Abraham was a practical sort of individual, and he began talking to the Lord rather straight—and I feel that the Lord wants us to do that, friend. He said, “I don’t have a son, and You told me I would.” The Lord said, “I’m glad you brought that up, Abraham, I’ve been wanting to tell you something.” God had already told him that his seed would be as numberless as the sand on the seashore. Now God takes him by the hand and tells him to look toward the heavens. It must have been night time. I am told that in that section of the world one can see about five thousand stars with the naked eye. With a sixteen inch telescope you would see fifty thousand stars, and I don’t know what you would see with a hundred inch or two hundred inch telescope. Be that as it may, I don’t think any telescope could give you the exact number of stars which could be seen at that time. In effect, God said to Abraham, “You can’t count the stars, and neither can you count your offspring.” Do you know what Abraham’s response was? “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). In the original it is very expressive. Literally it means that Abraham said “amen” to the Lord. God said, “I’m going to do it.” And Abraham said, “Amen.”
Does this have an application for your life and mine? It certainly does. God says to you and me, “I gave My Son to die for you. If you believe on Him you won’t perish. You will have everlasting life.” Will you say “amen” to that? Will you believe God? Will you accept His Son? If you do, you are justified by faith. This is what Abraham did. He believed God, and at that moment God declared him righteous. Because of his works? No! His works were imperfect. He didn’t have perfection to offer to God. (Paul will develop this thought a little later on.) Although Abraham did not have perfection at that time, afterwards he did because his faith was counted for righteousness. That is the doctrine of justification. Abraham stands justified before God.
Next Abraham said to the Lord, “Would you mind putting what you have told me in writing?” Perhaps you are saying, “I have read the Book of Genesis, and I don’t remember anything like that.” Well, it’s here in Genesis 15. Now notice: “And he said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it” (Gen. 15:7). Listen to Abraham’s response. He is talking back to the Lord—he’s not one of these superpious saints. “And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” (Gen. 15:8). In other words, put it in writing. God said to Abraham, “Meet me down at the courthouse and I will put it in writing.” Now somebody says, “Wait a minute. It doesn’t say that.” But it does, friend. “And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon” (Gen. 15:9). That is the way they made contracts in that day. (Jeremiah also tells about making a contract in this way in Jeremiah 34:18.) You see, when a contract was made in that day, one man agreed to do something, and the other man agreed to do something in turn. They cut a sacrifice into two parts and put half on one side and half on the other side, then they would join hands and walk between the two halves. That sealed the contract. It was the same as going before a notary at the courthouse.
So Abraham prepared the sacrifices and waited—he waited all day. Fowls came down upon the carcasses and Abraham drove them away. God was late meeting Abraham; He did not get there until sundown. “And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him” (Gen. 15:12). Just as he is about to sign the contract, God puts Abraham into a deep sleep. The reason for this is that Abraham is not to walk with God through the two halves—Abraham is not to promise anything. God is doing the promising. “And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces” (Gen. 15:17). You see, God passed through between those two halves alone because God made the covenant. And Abraham’s part was only to believe God. If the covenant depended on Abraham’s faithfulness—perhaps on his saying his prayers every night—he might miss one night, and then the promise would be no good. So God was the One who did all the promising, and the covenant depended on God’s faithfulness.
Friend, over nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ went to the cross to pay for your sins and mine. God is not asking you to say your prayers or be a nice little Sunday school boy to be saved. He is asking you to trust His Son who died for you. He makes the contract. He is the One who makes the promise, the covenant, and He will save you. That is the new contract, friend. The old covenant He made with Abraham. Abraham believed God. He said, “amen,” to God. Abraham believed, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. God is still asking us to believe Him. Put your trust in Christ and you will be saved. What a glorious picture we have here.


Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham [Gal. 3:7].

God did this for Abraham before the Law was ever given. God did not make the covenant with him because of Abraham’s good works. He told Abraham, “I’ll do this for you if you believe Me.” Abraham said, “I believe You.”
God wants your faith to rest on a solid foundation. But, my friend, if you come to God, you must come to Him by faith. He has come to the door of your heart. He cannot come any farther. He will not break down the door. He will knock and say, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). Only you can open the door by faith, my friend. When you and I trust Christ as Savior, we are saved the same way that Abraham was saved—by faith.


And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed [Gal. 3:8].

“And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham.” If faith without works was sufficient for Abraham, why should we desire something different? And as the blessing was not for Abraham’s law-works, but for his faith, why should we turn from faith to law-works?
“God … preached … the gospel unto Abraham.” When did He do that? Well, the first illustration Paul gave us was at the beginning of Abraham’s life of faith. Now Paul refers to an incident near the end of Abraham’s life of faith recorded in Genesis 22. It was after Abraham had offered Isaac upon the altar. I say he offered him because he was just within a hair’s breadth of offering him when God stopped him. God considered that Abraham had actually done it. He demonstrated that he had faith in God, believing that God could raise Isaac from the dead (see Heb. 11:19). Now notice God’s response to Abraham’s act of faith: “And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice” (Gen. 22:15–18). Apparently at this time God preached the gospel to Abraham, because the offering of Isaac is one of the finest pictures of the offering of Christ. Although God spared Abraham’s son, God did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all.
The important thing that Paul wants us to see in Abraham’s life is that he obeyed the voice of God. Abraham was willing to offer his son when God commanded it, and when God said stop, he stopped. He obeyed the voice of God. He demonstrated by his action that he had faith in God. Again he believed God and He counted it to him for righteousness.
Some people are troubled because they feel that there is a contradiction in Scripture between what Paul says about Abraham and what James says about him. Paul says that Abraham was justified by faith. James says, “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” (James 2:20–21). However, James goes on to say, “Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?” (James 2:22). John Calvin said it like this: “Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.” In other words, saving faith is a dynamic, vital faith that leads to works. I hope you understand that James is not talking about the works of law. James is talking about the works of faith. Faith produces works. This idea of saying that works will save you is putting the cart before the horse—in fact, some men put the horse in the cart!
It is important to see that faith leads to works, as it did in the life of Abraham. God sees our hearts. He knows whether or not we have trusted Christ as Savior. He knows whether or not we are genuine. Church member, why not be genuine? You can fool the people in the church, and you can fool your neighbors, and you can put up a pious front. But why not be real and have a lot of fun at the same time? You don’t have to pretend. You can be real and trust Christ as your Savior. And a living, dynamic faith will produce works.
A careful reading of the passage in James 2 reveals that James used the history of Abraham to show that faith without works is dead—it is the last of Abraham’s history because this is the last time God appeared to him. It is not that portion of Scripture to which Paul refers in Galatians where he says that Abraham was justified by faith. Paul says that faith alone is sufficient and proves his point from Abraham’s history as recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis. James says that faith without works is dead and proves it by referring to Abraham’s history as found in the twenty-second chapter of Genesis. If Abraham had welshed in Genesis 22 and had said to God, “Wait a minute, I really do not believe what You say. I have been putting on an act all of these years,” then it would have been obvious that Abraham’s faith was a pseudofaith. But God knew back in Genesis 15 that Abraham had a genuine faith.
The works that James speaks about are not works of law at all. The Law had not been given during Abraham’s day. We need to recognize that. James 2:23 says, “And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.” James, at the beginning of this verse, is going back to the reference that Paul gives at first concerning the beginning of Abraham’s life of faith. Then Paul says that the gospel was preached to Abraham at the end of his life when God made this promise to him.
There is no contradiction when you examine passages like the ones written by Paul and James. They are saying the same thing. One is looking at faith at the beginning. The other is looking at faith at the end. One is looking at the root of faith. The other is looking at the fruit of faith. The root of faith is “faith alone saves you,” but that saving faith will produce works.


So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham [Gal. 3:9].

The word faithful in this verse is “believing”—believing Abraham. God saves the sinner today on the same basis that He saved Abraham. God asks faith of the sinner. God asked Abraham to believe that He would do certain things for him. God asks you and me to believe that He already has done certain things for us in giving His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us. Faith is the modus operandi by which man is saved today.


For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them [Gal. 3:10].

The important word here is “continueth.” I am willing to grant that maybe there was a day in your life when you felt very good, when you were on top of the world and singing, “Everything’s coming up daisies.” On that day you walked with the Lord and did not stub your toe. Then you say, “Well, because I did that, God saved me.” But notice what this verse says, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law.” How about that? Do you keep the law day and night, twenty-four hours every day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks out of the year in thought, word, and deed? If you are a human being, somewhere along the line you let down. You are not walking on top of the world all of the time. My friend, when you let down, the law can only condemn you.
I know a fine preacher who is always going around saying, “Hallelujah, praise the Lord.” Someone asked his wife if he was like that all the time. She said, “No, he has his bad days.” We all have bad days, don’t we?
If you are going to put yourself under the law, my friend, and you have a good day, you are not going to be rewarded for it. Suppose I had kept all of the laws of Pasadena, which is my home city, for twenty years. Then I wait at my house for the officials of Pasadena to come and present me with a medal for keeping those laws. Let me tell you, they do not give medals for keeping the law in Pasadena. If I had kept every law for twenty years and then stole something or broke a speeding law, I would be arrested. You see, the law does not reward you. It does not give you life. The law penalizes you.
Faith, my friend, gives you something. It gives you life.

But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith [Gal. 3:11].
Even the Old Testament taught that man was saved by faith. It does not say that anyone was saved by keeping the law. If you find that somebody living back under the law was saved by keeping the law, let me know. I have never read of anyone who was saved by keeping the Mosaic Law. As you know, the heart of the Mosaic system was the sacrificial system. Moses rejoiced that God could extend mercy and grace to people even under the law—that is the reason his face shone as it did. In Habakkuk 2:4 it says that “… the just shall live by his faith.”


And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them [Gal. 3:12].

This also is an important verse. Faith and law are contrary principles for salvation and also for living. One cancels out the other. They are diametrically opposed to each other. If you are going to live by the Law, then you cannot be saved by faith. You cannot combine them. They are contrary.
Let me illustrate this. Our daughter came to visit us while we were in Florida, and we wanted to return to California by train. That was the time when passenger trains were being phased out. We tried to get a train route to California without going through Chicago—both of us wanted to avoid Chicago. Well, it seemed as though we would have to go halfway around the world to go from Florida to California; so we had to come back by plane. When we got the tickets, I said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go by train and plane at the same time—sit in the plane and put our feet down in the train!” (I would feel much safer with my feet in the train, I assure you.) But that’s absurd. If we go by plane, we go by plane; if we go by train, we go by train. They have made no arrangements for passengers to sit in a plane and put their feet down in a train. My friend, neither has God any arrangement for you to be saved by faith and by law. You have to choose one or the other. If you want to go by law, then you can try it—but I’ll warn you that God has already said you won’t make it. “The law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.”


Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree [Gal. 3:13].

“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law”—the Mosaic Law condemned us. It is like the illustration I gave regarding keeping the civil laws in my hometown. I am not rewarded for keeping those laws, and if I break one I am condemned. Christ has redeemed us from the penalty of the Mosaic Law. How did He do it? By “being made a curse for us.” Christ bore that penalty.
“For it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” This is a quotation from the Old Testament, as we shall see, and is a remarkable passage of Scripture for several reasons. One reason is that the children of Israel did not use hanging on a tree as a method of public execution. Instead they used stoning. When my wife went with me to the land of Israel, she noticed something that I had not thought of. She said, “I have often wondered why they used stoning as a means of execution. Now I know. Anywhere you turn in this land there are plenty of stones.” Capital punishment in Israel was by stoning, not hanging. However, when a reprehensible crime had been committed, this was the procedure: “And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance” (Deut. 21:22–23). That is, if he had committed an awful crime and had been stoned to death, his body could be strung up on a tree that it might be a spectacle. But it was not to be left there overnight. The reason He gives is this: he is accursed of God—“that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”
Christ was “made a curse for us.” The question is: When did Christ become a curse? Did He become a curse in His incarnation? Oh, no. When He was born He was called “… that holy thing …” (Luke 1:35). Did He become a curse during those silent years of which we have so little record? No, it says that He advanced “… in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Did He become a curse during his ministry? Oh, no. It was during His ministry that the Father said, “… This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Then He must have become a curse while He was on the cross. Yes, but not during the first three hours on the cross, because when He offered up Himself, He was without blemish. It was during those last three hours on the cross that He was made a curse for us. It was then that it pleased the Lord to bruise Him and put Him to grief. He made His soul an offering for sin (see Isa. 53:10).
“Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” The Greek word for “tree” is xulon, meaning “wood, timber, or tree.” Christ was hanged on a tree. What a contrast we have here. He went to that cross, which was to Him a tree of death, in order that He might make it for you and me a tree of life!

That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith [Gal. 3:14].

Israel had the Law for fifteen hundred years and failed to live by it. At the council of Jerusalem, in Acts 15, Peter said in effect, “We and our fathers were not able to keep the law. Why do we want to put the Gentiles under it? If we could not keep it, they won’t be able to keep it either.” Christ took our place that we might receive what the Law could never do. The Spirit is the peculiar gift in this age of grace.


Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto [Gal. 3:15].

Suppose you make a contract with a man to pay him one hundred dollars. Then about a year later you decide you will pay him only fifty dollars. You go to him and say, “Here is the fifty dollars I owe you.” The man says, “Wait a minute, you agreed to pay me one hundred dollars.” You say, “Well, I’ve changed that.” He says, “Oh, no, you don’t! You can’t change your contract after it has been made.”


Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ [Gal. 3:16].

God called Abraham and promised to make him a blessing to the world. He made him a blessing to the world through Jesus Christ, a descendant of Abraham. Christ is the One who brought salvation to the world.
The word seed refers specifically to Christ (see Gen. 22:18). Christ said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56).


And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect [Gal. 3:17].

God made a promise, a covenant, with Abrabarn. When the Law came along “four hundred and thirty years” later, it didn’t change anything as far as the promises made to Abraham were concerned. Actually, God never goes back on His promises. God promised Abraham, “I am going to give you this land. I am going to give you a son and a people that will be as numberless as the sand on the seashore.” God fulfilled that promise and brought from Abraham the nation of Israel—and several other nations—but the promises were given through Isaac whose line led to the Lord Jesus Christ, the “Seed” of verse 16. God also promised Abraham that He would make him a blessing to all people. The only blessing, my friend, in this world today is in Christ. You may not get a very good deal from your neighbor or from your business or from your church. I don’t think the world is prepared to give you a good deal. But the Lord Jesus Christ has been given to you—that is a good deal! In fact it is the supreme gift which God has made. It is a fulfillment of God’s promise that He would save those who would trust Christ.


For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise [Gal. 3:18].

The promise concerning Christ was made before the Mosaic Law was given, and that promise holds as good as though there had been no law given, my friend. The promise was made irrespective of the Law.
The question arises: Why was the Law given, of what value, is it? Now don’t think that Paul is playing down the Law. Rather, he is trying to help the people understand the purpose of the Law. He shows the Law in all of its majesty, in its fullness, and in its perfection. But he shows that this very perfection the Law reveals is the reason it creates a hurdle which you and I cannot get over in order to be accepted of God.
Now listen to Paul as he talks about the purpose of the Law.


Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator [Gal. 3:19].

The question is: Wherefore then serveth the Law? He is giving a purpose sentence—what was the purpose of the Law? Paul says it was something that was added. It was added because—or better still—for the sake of transgressions.
“Till the seed should come”—that little word till is an important time word. It means the Law was temporary. The Law was given for the interval between the time of Moses until the time of Christ. “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). It is very important to see that the Law was temporary “until the seed should come”—and that Seed is Christ.
The Law was added “because of [for the sake of] transgressions. It was given to reveal not remove sin. It was not given to keep man from sin because sin had already come. It was to show man himself as being a natural, ugly, crude sinner before God. Any man who is honest will look at himself in the light of the Law and see himself guilty. It was not given to prove that all men were sinners, nor was it given (as many liberals are saying today) as a standard by which man becomes holy. Oh, my friend, you would never become holy this way, because, first of all, you can’t keep the Law in your own strength.
Many folk think that man becomes a sinner when he commits a sinful act, that he is all right until he breaks over and commits sin. This is not true. It is because he is already a sinner that a man commits an act of sin. A man steals because he is a thief. A man lies because he is a liar. I find myself guilty of lying—although I blame it on other folk. I leave my house in the morning and the first person I meet says, “My, what a beautiful day!” And I say, “Yes, it is”—when truthfully it is a smoggy day here in pleasant California. I lie about it. Then he asks, “How are you feeling today?” Well, to be honest, I don’t feel well, but I say, “Oh, I’m feeling fine.” Right there in the first few minutes I have lied twice! It’s just natural for us to be that way, my friend. Some of us commit more serious lying than that. Why do we do it? We have that fallen nature. And the Law was given to show that we are sinners, and that you and I need a mediator—One to stand between us and God, One to help us out.


Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law [Gal. 3:21].

“Is the law then against the promises of God?” The expression “God forbid” means certainly not. Why? If there had been another way of saving sinners, God would have used that way. If He could have given a law by which sinner could be saved, He would have done so.


But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe [Gal. 3:22].

We have seen that the Law brought death—“The soul that sinneth, it shall die …” (Ezek 18:20). The Scripture has “concluded all under sin;” therefore all died. What is needed, therefore, is life. We have seen that the Law brings death, which is all that it can do. It is not actually the degree of sin but the mere fact of sin that brings death. Hence, all are equally dead and equally in need. You may not have committed as great a sin as Stalin committed, but you and I have the same kind of nature that he had. In fact, it was Goethe, the great German writer, who made this statement: “I have never seen a crime committed but what I too might have committed that crime.” He recognized he had that kind of a nature. It is not the degree of sin, but the very fact that we are sinners that brings death.
Let me illustrate this fact of sin and not the degree. Picture a building about twenty-four stories high. There are three men on top of the building, and the superintendent goes up to see them and warns, “Now be very careful, don’t step off of this building or you will be killed. It will mean death for you.” One of the fellows says, “This crazy superintendent is always trying to frighten people. I don’t believe that if I step off this building I will die.” So he deliberately walks to the edge of the building and steps off into the air. Suppose that when he passes the tenth floor, somebody looks out the window and asked him, “Well, how is it going?” And he says, “So far, so good.” But, my friend, he hasn’t arrived yet. There is death at the bottom. The superintendent was right. The man is killed. Now suppose another fellow becomes frightened at what the superintendent said. He runs for the elevator, or the steps, and accidentally slips. He skids right off the edge of the building and falls to the street below. He, too, is killed. The third fellow, we’ll say, is thrown off the building by some gangsters because he is their enemy. He is killed. Now the man who was thrown off of the building is just as dead as the man who deliberately stepped off and the man who accidentally slipped off the building. All of these men broke the law of gravitation, and death was inevitable for all of them. It is the fact, you see, and not the degree. It is the fact that they went over the edge—they all broke the law of gravitation.
The question is, “Can the law of gravitation which took them down to death give them life?” It cannot. The Mosaic Law cannot give you life any more than a natural law can give you life after you have broken it and died. You cannot reverse the situation and come back from the street below to the top of the building and live, as it is done in running a movie in reverse. Death follows wherever sin comes. The law of sin knows nothing of extenuating circumstances. It knows nothing about mercy. It has no elasticity. It is inflexible, inexorable, and immutable. God’s Word says, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die…” (Ezek. 18:20). To Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden God said, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). And in Exodus 34:7, He says that He “… will by no means clear the guilty….” Therefore, all have sinned and by the Law we are all dead. The Law slew us. It is called by Paul a “… ministration of death…” (2 Cor. 3:7). It is a ministration of condemnation. The Law condemns all of us.
Can the Law bring life? My friend, the Law can no more bring life than a fall from a high roof can bring life to one who died by that fall. The purpose of the Law was never to give life. It was given to show us that we are guilty sinners before God.
“The scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe” is a tremendous statement.

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed [Gal. 3:23].
“Before faith came” means, of course, faith in Jesus Christ who died for us.
Until the Lord Jesus Christ came, the Law had in it mercy because it had a mercy seat. It had an altar where sacrifices for sin could be brought and forgiveness could be obtained. Mercy could be found there. All the sacrifices for sin pointed to Christ. Before faith came, Paul says, we were kept under the Law—“shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.”


Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith [Gal. 3:24].

This is a remarkable section. Paul is making it very clear here that the Mosaic Law could not save. Romans 4:5 tells us, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” God refuses to accept the works of man for salvation. God says that all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isa. 64:6). God refuses to accept law-keeping. The Law cannot save; it can only condemn. It was not given to save sinners but to let them know that they were sinners. The Law does not remove sin; it reveals sin. It will not keep you from sin, because sin has already come. The Law shows that man is not the way Hollywood portrays him—a sophisticated, refined, trained sinner. Man is actually an ugly sinner in the raw.
I want to use a homely illustration that I think might be helpful. I am going to take you to the bathroom. I hope you are not shocked—television does it everyday, showing someone taking a bath or a shower. I am confident that almost everyone has a bathroom, and in that bathroom is a washbasin with a mirror above it. That washbasin serves a purpose and so does the mirror. When you get dirt on your face, you go to the bathroom to remove it. Now you don’t use the mirror to remove the dirt, do you? If you see a smudged spot on your face, and you lean over and rub your face against the mirror, and one of your loved ones sees you, he will call a psychiatrist and make an appointment to find out what is wrong with you. But, my friend, that won’t happen because none of us is silly enough to try to remove dirt with a mirror.
Today, however, multitudes of people in our churches are rubbing up against the mirror of the Law thinking they are going to remove their sin. The Word of God is a mirror which shows us who we are and what we are—that we are sinners and that we have come short of the glory of God. That is what the Law reveals. But, thank God, beneath the mirror there is a basin. As the hymn writer puts it,

There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
—William Cowper

That is where you remove the spot. It is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that cleanses. The Law proves man a sinner; it never makes him a saint. The Law was given, as Paul says in Romans, that every mouth might be stopped and the whole world become guilty before God (see Rom. 3:19).
“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster,” Paul says. Now he will go on to tell us what he means by this.

But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster [Gal. 3:25].
“Schoolmaster” is the Greek paidagoµgos, and it doesn’t mean school teacher. Schoolmaster is a good word, but it meant something quite different back in the days of Paul. It meant a servant or a slave who was part of a Roman household. Half of the Roman Empire was slave. Of the 120 million, 60 million were slaves. In the home of a patrician, a member of the Praetorian Guard, or the rich in the Roman Empire, were slaves that cared for the children. When a child was born into such a home, he was put in the custody of a servant or a slave who actually raised him. He put clean clothes on him, bathed him, blew his nose when it was necessary, and paddled him when he needed it. When the little one grew to a certain age and was to start to school, this servant was the one who got him up in the morning, dressed him, and took him to school. (That is where he got the name of paidagoµgos. Paid has to do with the feet—and we get our word pedal from it; agogos means “to lead.”) It means that he takes the little one by the hand, leads him to school, and turns him over to the school teacher. This servant, the slave, was not capable of teaching him beyond a certain age, so he took him to school.
Now what Paul is saying here is that the Law is our paidagoµgos. The Law said, “Little fellow, I can’t do any more for you. I now want to take you by the hand and bring you to the cross of Christ. You are lost. You need a Savior.” The purpose of the Law is to bring men to Christ—not to give them an expanded chest so they can walk around claiming they keep the Law. You know you don’t keep the Law; all you have to do is examine your own heart to know that.


For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus [Gal. 3:26].

Paul is going to show in the remainder of this chapter, and in the first part of chapter 4, some of the benefits that come to us by trusting Christ that we could never receive under law. The Law never could give a believer the nature of a son of God. Christ can do that. Only faith in Christ can make us sons of God.
In this verse the word children is from the Greek huios, meaning “sons.” Only faith in Christ can make us legitimate sons of God. I use the word legitimate for emphasis, because the only sons God has are legitimate sons. You are made a true son of God by faith in Christ, and that is all it takes. Not faith plus something equals salvation, but faith plus nothing makes you a son of God. Nothing else can make you a son of God. “For ye are all sons of God.” How? “By faith in Christ Jesus.”
An individual Israelite under the Law in the Old Testament was never a son, only a servant. God called the nation “Israel my son” (see Exod. 4:22), but the individual in that corporate nation was never called a son. He was called a servant of Jehovah. For example, Moses was on very intimate terms with God; yet God said of him, “Moses my servant is dead” (see Josh. 1:2). That was his epitaph. Also, although David was a man after God’s own heart, God calls him “David my servant” (see 1 Kings 11:38).
My friend, even if you kept the Law, which you could not do, your righteousness would still be inferior to the righteousness of God. Sonship requires His righteousness, you see. The New Testament definitely tells us, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12). We are given the power (Greek exousian, meaning “the authority, the right”) to become the sons of God by doing no more nor less than simply trusting Him. A Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus, religious to his fingertips (he had a God-given religion although it had gone to seed), followed the Law meticulously, yet he was not a son of God. Jesus said to him, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). I want to be dogmatic and very plain—neither your prayers, your fundamental separation, your gifts, nor your baptism will ever make you a son of God. Only faith in Christ can make you a son of God.
The most damnable heresy today is the “universal Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man.” It is this teaching of liberalism that has caused this nation to give away billions of dollars throughout the world, and because of it we are hated everywhere. All people are the children of God, they say, and so we have sat at council tables and have engaged in diplomatic squabbles with some of the biggest rascals the world has ever seen. We talk about being honest and honorable, that we are all the children of God, and we must act like sons of God. Well, the Lord Jesus Christ never said anything like that. He once looked at a group of religious rulers and said to them, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do …” (John 8:44). Now I did not say that; gentle Jesus said that. Evidently there were some people in His day who were not sons of God. My friend, I think the Devil still has a lot of children running around in this world today. They are not all the sons of God! The only way you can become a son of God is through faith in Jesus Christ.


For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ [Gal. 3:27].

I hope you realize that this verse is not a reference to water baptism. Water baptism is ritual baptism, and I feel that it is for every believer. Also I believe that the mode of water baptism should be by immersion (in spite of the fact that I am an ordained Presbyterian preacher), because immersion more clearly pictures real baptism, which is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit places you in the body of believers. Paul says, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). This means that we are identified, we are put in reality and truth into the body of believers, the church. “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” God sees you in Christ. Therefore He sees you as perfect!


There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus [Gal. 3:28].

In this body of believers “there is neither Jew nor Greek.” In Christ are no racial lines. Any man in Christ is my brother, and I don’t care about the color of his skin. It is the color of his heart that interests me. There are a lot of white people walking around with black hearts, my friend, and they are not my brothers. It is only in Christ Jesus that we are made one. Thank God, I receive letters from folk of every race. They call me brother and I call them brother—because we are brothers. We are one in Christ, and we will be together throughout eternity.
“There is neither bond nor free.” In our day, capital and labor are at odds with one another. The only thing that could bring them together is Christ, of course.
“There is neither male nor female.” Christ does what “women’s lib” can never do. He can make us one in Christ. How wonderful it is!


And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise [Gal. 3:29].

How can we be Abraham’s descendants? Because of the fact that Abraham was saved by faith, and we are saved by faith. Abraham brought a little animal to sacrifice, which looked forward to the coming of the Son of God, the supreme sacrifice. In my day, Christ has already come, and I can look back in history and say, “Nineteen hundred years ago the Son of God came and died on the cross for me that I might have life, and I trust Him.” Some time ago I had the privilege of speaking to a group of wonderful Jewish folk, and I started by saying, “Well, it is always a privilege for me to speak to the sons of Abraham.” And they all smiled. Then I added, “Because I am a son of Abraham, too.” They didn’t all smile at that. In fact, some of them had a question mark on their faces, and rightly so. If I am in Christ and you are in Christ, then we belong to Abraham’s seed, and we are heirs according to the promise. How wonderful this is!

CHAPTER 4

Theme: Justification by faith; allegory of Haqar and Sarai


Chapter 4 continues the section of justification by faith. Here we see that there is something else that comes through faith in Christ that we could never get by the works of the Law: it gives us the position of sons of God. It brings us to the place of full-grown sons. When we start out in the Christian life, we are babes and we are to grow to maturation. However, God gives us the position of a full-grown son to furnish us with a capacity that we would not otherwise have.


Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all [Gal. 4:1].

The word child in this verse is not the same as child in Galatians 3:26 where it is from the Greek word huios, meaning “son.” Here it is nepios, meaning a little child without full power of speech. “The heir, as long as he is a child (a little one in the family), differeth nothing from a servant.”
Again we will have to go back to the Roman customs to see Paul’s illustration in action. In a Roman home servants had charge of different possessions of the master. Some had charge of the chattels, others of the livestock, others kept books for him, and others had charge of his children. When a little one was born into the home, the servants cared for him and dressed him in playclothes so that he didn’t look any different from the children of the servants with whom he was playing. And he had to obey the servants just like the other children did.


But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father [Gal. 4:2].

“Until the time appointed of the father.” What time was that? It was the time when the father recognized that his son was capable of making decisions of his own, and he brought him into the position of a full-grown son. Notice that it is the father who determined when his son reached the age of maturity. It wasn’t an arbitrary law as we have in our society. It used to be that a young person became of age at twenty-one; now it’s eighteen. I think that some folk are as mature at eighteen as they are at twenty-one. Also there are other folk who haven’t reached maturity at sixty-five. But in Paul’s day, it was the father who decided when the age of maturity was reached. Then they held a ceremony, known as the toga virilis, which gave him the position of a full-grown son in the family.
In a Roman home it must have worked something like this. Suppose the father is a centurion in Caesar’s army. Caesar carries on a campaign way up in Gaul, and the man is up there several years—because that is where our ancestors were, and believe me, they were heathen! So he has trouble with them. He has to put them down, and it takes several years to do it. Because the army is pushing back the frontier of the Roman Empire, the father of the home is away for several years. Finally he returns home. He goes in to shave, and all of a sudden you hear him yell out, “Who’s been using my razor?” Well, I tell you, all the servants come running, because he is the head of the house. They say to him, “Your son.” He says, “You mean to tell me that my boy is old enough to use a razor!” The boy has grown to be a great big fellow. And the father says, “Bring him here.” So they bring him in—he’s a fine strapping boy—and the father says, “Well, now we must have the toga virilis, and we’ll send out invitations to the grandmas, the grandpas, the aunts, and the uncles.” So they all come in for the ceremony of the toga virilis, and that day the father puts around the boy a toga, a robe. That is what our Lord meant in His parable of the Prodigal Son. When the boy came home the father didn’t receive him as just an ordinary son, he received him as a full-grown son, put the robe around him, and put a ring on his finger. The ring had on it the signet of his father, which was equivalent to his signature and gave him the father’s authority. You could see that boy walking down the street now with that robe on. The servant better not say anything to correct him now, and he’d better not try to paddle him now. In fact, he’ll be paddling the servant from here on because he has now reached the age of a full-grown son. That is what Paul meant when he went on to say:


Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world [Gal. 4:3].

“Under the elements of the world” means under the Law. Paul is saying that it was the childhood of the nation Israel when they were under rules and regulations.


But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law [Gal. 4:4].

At the time determined by God, God the Father sent forth God the Son, born of a woman, born under the Law. Mary was a Jewish woman. Out here on the West Coast there is a woman who is saying that Jesus did not belong to any race. How absolutely puerile and senseless! It is an attempt to take a saccharine sweet position which has no meaning whatsoever. The woman at the well (as recorded in the fourth chapter of John’s gospel) knew more than the woman out here knows today. She said, “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? …” (John 4:9, italics mine). She thought He was a Jew, and our Lord didn’t correct her; so I conclude that she was accurate. If you don’t mind, I’ll follow her rather than some of my contemporaries who try to play down the fact that Jesus, according to the flesh, was a Jew. He had a perfect humanity. He also was God manifest in the flesh. In my day that is being questioned. However, the only historical Jesus that we have is the One who is described in one of the oldest creeds of the church as “very man of very man and very God of very God.” I agree with that creed because it is exactly what the Word of God teaches.
Now what was God’s purpose in sending forth His Son?


To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons [Gal. 4:5].

God had a twofold purpose: (1) To redeem those under the Law. They were children under the Law. You see, the Law never made anyone a son of God. (2) That they might receive the adoption of sons.
Adoption has a meaning different from that of our contemporary society. We think of it in relationship with a couple that may not have children of their own. They go to a home where there are children for adoption and see a precious little baby there. Their hearts go out to him, and they adopt him in their family by going through legal action. When the little one becomes their child we call that adoption. However, the Roman custom in Paul’s day was to adopt one’s own son. That, you recall, was what was done in the toga virilis ceremony. Adoption (the Greek word is huiothesia) means “to place as a son.” A believer is placed in the family of God as a full grown son, capable of understanding divine truth.
In 1 Corinthians 2:9–10 we read, “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” This simply means that the truth in the Word of God can only be interpreted by the Spirit of God, and until He interprets it, man cannot understand it. The Holy Spirit alone can interpret the Word of God for us. That is what makes the difference today in certain men. A man can bring to the Word of God a brilliant mind. He can learn something about history, archaeology, and language. He can become an expert in Hebrew and Greek but can still miss the meaning. Why? Because the Spirit of God is the teacher. Even Isaiah the prophet said that: “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him” (Isa. 64:4). If you want to know about Christ, only the Spirit of God can reveal Him to you. Even a mature Christian who has been in the Word for years is as helpless in studying the Bible as a newborn babe in Christ, because the Spirit of God will have to teach each of them.
I hope you will pardon my using a personal illustration. The only way I know a lot of these things is by pouring them through my own hopper—experiencing these truths myself. When I first started my training for the ministry, I was the youngest one in my class. When my father died, I had to quit school for three or four years in order to go to work. At that time I was the youngest one in my class. When I started my training for the ministry, I had those years of high school to make up, and when I went back to school, I was the oldest one in my class. When I entered seminary, I found that I was very ignorant of the Bible. I had never seen a Bible in my home. I had never heard a prayer in my home. I did not know the books of the Bible. I was ignorant, friend. No one could have been more ignorant of the Word of God than I was, and I felt it. I had to spend a lot of time memorizing the books of the Bible and many other basic things that I did not know when I first started studying. I developed an inferiority complex. When I preached as a young man, and I saw people with gray hair in the congregation, I would say to myself, What I am going to say will be baby stuff for those folks because they really know the Bible. However, I really had my eyes opened. I found out that there are still many people with gray hair who are babes in Christ. They have never grown up. The great truth which was given to me at this time was that the Spirit of God could teach me as a young believer as much as He could teach a mature Christian. We both could understand it if the Spirit of God was our teacher. This was a brand new truth for me, and it was a great encouragement as I was starting out in the ministry.
My friend, if you are a new believer, the same Spirit of God who is teaching me can teach you. If you are God’s child, He has brought you into the position of a full-grown son, into the adoption. And, my friend, there is nothing quite as wonderful as that! That gave me confidence when I was a young believer and it gives me confidence to this good day. My friend, the Spirit of God will lead you and guide you into all truth if you want to know it, if you are willing for Him to be your teacher.
This brings us to the third thing that faith in Christ does for us that the Law could never do for us, which is the experience of sons of God.

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father [Gal. 4:6].
“And because ye are sons” is a very strong statement.
Romans 8:16 says it this way, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children [the sons] of God.” Paul continues to say in Romans, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live [as sons]. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:11–14). If you are a child of God, you will want to be led by the Spirit of God. The flesh may get a victory in your life, but it will never make you happy. You will never be satisfied with it, because “… ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.” You don’t need to say, “My, I’m not living as I should live, and I wonder if I’m a child of God.” My friend, “ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom. 8:15–16). This passage in the Epistle to the Romans is the unabridged edition of the parallel passage in Galatians. I wanted you to see all of it.
The word Abba was not translated, I am told, because the translators of the King James Version had a great reverence for the Word of God. When they came to the word Abba, they didn’t dare translate it into English because it was such an intimate word. It could be translated “my daddy.” God is my wonderful heavenly Father, but I would hesitate to call Him “daddy.”


Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ [Gal. 4:7].

The Spirit, therefore, gives us an experience of being a son of God, whereby we can cry out—not just saying the word or putting on a false “piosity”—and call God our Father, because the Spirit is bearing witness with our spirit. This gives us the experience of being a son of God.
There are many folk who believe that the only way you can have an experience is either by reaching a high degree of sanctification—you’ve got to become holy—or you have to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit, as they call it. They insist that if you don’t get up to that level, you will never have an experience. My friend, let me assure you, if you are a new believer or a weak believer, that you can have an experience as a son of God without reaching those levels, because sonship comes to you through faith in Jesus Christ. When folk have reached a high level of spirituality, they tend to think they are superior to the rest of us. However, we are always God’s foolish little children. We are always filled with ignorance and stubbornness and sin and fears and weaknesses. We are never wonderful; He is wonderful. The Lord Jesus is wonderful, and faith in Him will give us an experience. I believe in experience, and I feel that a great many folk today need an experience with God.
Paul Rader, who was one of the greatest preachers this country has ever produced, used some very striking expressions. One day on the platform he said, “The old nature that you and I have is just like an old dead cat. What you need to do is reach down and get that old dead cat by the tail and throw it as far away as you can.” I can say “amen” to that. I wish I could get rid of my old nature. One day Dr. Chafer heard him use this illustration, and he said to him afterward, “Paul, you forget that the old dead cat has nine lives. When you throw him away, he is going to be right back tomorrow.” We will never become perfect saints of God, but we can experience being sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ. “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Many times you and I plod along in our Christian lives, and we don’t have an experience with God. Sometimes life becomes very drab and a little monotonous. But there are other times, especially when God puts us on trial and really tests us, that we have a wonderful experience with our Heavenly Father.
I recall when I was taken to the hospital to be operated on for cancer. No one was ever as frightened as I was because I am a coward, and I don’t like hospitals. (I thank God for them, but I still don’t like them.) I put on that funny looking nightgown they give you that is open in the back instead of the front, and I was trying to get up into the bed. I just couldn’t make it. A nurse came in and said, “What’s the matter? Are you sick?” I said, “No, I’m scared to death!” Then, when she came to get me ready for the operation, I said, “Just let me have a few moments alone.” I had visited in that hospital many times as a pastor—in fact, several hundred times. Now I turned my face to the wall just like Hezekiah did and I said, “Lord, I want you to know that I have been here many times, and I have patted people on the hand and told them that You would be with them. As their pastor I prayed for them and then walked out. But I am not walking out today. I am going to have to stay and be operated on myself. I don’t know what the outcome will be.” I had some things I wanted to tell God. I wanted to tell Him how He ought to work it out. But I just welled up inside, and said, “My Father, I’m in Your hands. Whatever You want done, You do it. You’re my Father.” He was so wonderful to me. That is when He becomes a reality, my beloved. We need to experience Him as our Abba, Father. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children [sons] of God” (Rom. 8:16). Now, I don’t wish you any trouble, but I think it is generally in times of trouble that God makes Himself real to us. I hope that someday you will have such an experience with our wonderful heavenly Father.
There is one more illustration I want to use before I move on. John G. Paton was a pioneer missionary in the New Hebrides. He went to the mission field as a young man with a young bride. When their first child was born, the child died and the wife died. He buried them with his own hands. Because he was among cannibals, he sat over the grave for many days and nights to prevent them from digging up the bodies and eating them. His testimony was that if the Lord Jesus Christ had not made Himself real to him during that time, he would have gone mad.
God makes Himself real during times of distress. When Paul was in prison, he could say, “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me …” (2 Tim. 4:16–17). The Lord stood by Paul. He stood by John Paton. He stood by me. He will stand by you. How reassuring it is to have a Father like that! At such a time He says, “… I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5). I trust you are His son.


Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods [Gal. 4:8].

Paul is speaking of the fact that the Galatians had been idolaters. When I visited that Galatian country in Asia Minor, where the seven churches were located, I saw how completely the population then was given over to the worship of idols. Paul describes idols as vanities—“nothings.” In 1 Corinthians 12:2 Paul called them “dumb idols.” They were nothing and could say nothing. He is telling the Galatians that idols are not real and cannot make themselves real to those who worship them.


But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? [Gal. 4:9].

“Known of God” actually means approved of God or to be acknowledged of God. They had come to Christ through faith and God accepts that. Most of the believers in the Galatian churches were Gentiles. Now that they were Christians, they were turning to the Mosaic Law, which is, as Paul says, like going back into the idolatry they came out of.


Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years [Gal. 4:10].

“Ye observe days,” meaning the sabbath days. Paul said to the Colossians, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days” (Col. 2:16).
“Months” probably refers to the observance of the “new moon” practiced by the people of Israel in the time of the kings. The prophets warned them against it.
“Times” should be translated seasons, meaning feasts. God had given Israel seven feasts, but they all had pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Years” of course would refer to the sabbatic years. The observance of all these things would put these gentile believers completely back under the Mosaic Law.
Today I hear legalists claim they are keeping the Mosaic Law, yet they are keeping only the sabbath day. My friend, all the law comes in one package, including the sabbatic year and the Year of Jubilee. James in his epistle said, “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). That is, he is guilty of being a lawbreaker.

I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain [Gal. 4:11].
Paul is saying, in a nice way, that he thinks he has wasted his time among them. Since they have been saved by grace, their returning to the Law is the same as returning to their former idolatry. He reminded them that they had not known God by means of the Mosaic Law but by faith in Jesus Christ.
We have come now to a personal section (vv. 12–18). It is a polite word that Paul is injecting in this epistle.


Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all [Gal. 4:12].

“Be as I am” is better translated become as I am. The Galatians had been listening to false teachers, and they were looking upon Paul as an enemy because he told them the truth. Paul is saying, “We are all on the same plane. We are all believers, all in the body of Christ. In view of this we ought to be very polite to one another.”


Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first [Gal. 4:13].

Now Paul makes an appeal to them on the basis of his thorn in the flesh. What was that thorn? Let’s read on.


And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus [Gal. 4:14].

“And my temptation which was in my flesh” means the trial, which elsewhere he calls his thorn in the flesh.


Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me [Gal. 4:15].

Probably Paul’s thorn in the flesh was some sort of eye trouble, and it evidently made him very unattractive. I cannot conceive of them wanting to pluck out their eyes and give them to Paul if what he really needed was another leg. Apparently Paul had an eye disease which is common in that land and is characterized by excessive pus that runs out of the eyes. You can well understand how unattractive that would be to look at while he was ministering to them. Paul says, “You just ignored it, and received me so wonderfully when I preached the gospel to you.”


Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? [Gal. 4:16].

I had always wanted to place on the pulpit, facing the preacher, the words, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” A very fine officer of the church I served in downtown Los Angeles did this for me after he heard me express this desire. There is another verse I wanted to place on the audience side of the pulpit, but I never had the nerve to do it. It is these words of Paul: “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” As you know, many folk today really don’t want the preacher to tell the truth from the pulpit. They would much rather he would say something complimentary that would smooth their feathers and make them feel good. We all like to have our backs rubbed, and there is a lot of back-rubbing from the contemporary pulpit rather than the declaration of the truth.


They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them.

But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you [Gal. 4:17–18].

These verses are more easily understood in the American Standard Version which says, “They zealously seek you in no good way; nay, they desire to shut you out, that ye may seek them. But it is good to be zealously sought in a good matter at all times, and not only when I am present with you.” Paul is saying that it is good to seek that which is the very best, but these Judaizers are after you in order to scalp you. They want to put your scalp on their belt and be able to say, “We were over at Galatia, and we had so many converts”—which, of course, would not be actually true. Paul had somewhat the same thing to say to the Corinthian believers: “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds. For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you? forgive me this wrong. Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved” (2 Cor. 12:12–15).
You see, this same crowd of Judaizers had gone to Corinth. The Corinthian believers had loved Paul also, and Paul had to warn them of these men. False teachers are often very attractive. I am amazed at the very fine presentation the cults make. I have watched them on television programs that are done to perfection. That is the subtle part of it. Everything is beautiful to look at, and those taking part are attractive individuals. Also they present a certain amount of truth. For example, I listened to a man who is a liberal give the Christmas story during the Christmas season. No one could have told it better than he did. It was an excellent presentation. But when he began to interpret it, I realized that he didn’t even believe in the virgin birth of Christ. You see, the warning of Paul both to the Galatian and Corinthian believers is very timely for our generation also.

ALLEGORY OF HAGAR AND SARAI


This chapter concludes with an allegory of Hagar and Sarai. All is contrast in this section between these two women. Hagar, and every reference to her under other figures of speech, represents the Law. Sarai, and every reference to her under other figures of speech, represents faith in Christ.


My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you [Gal. 4:19].

Paul addresses his allegory to the Galatian believers by using this tender expression, “My little children”—children is the Greek word teknia, meaning “born ones.” Paul has a very tender heart, and he likens himself to a mother.


I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you [Gal. 4:20].

Paul wanted to be present so that he could speak differently. He was deeply concerned about these people. He had been using strong language in his letter, but you can see his tender heart.


Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? [Gal. 4:21].

There are people who talk about the Ten Commandments or some legal system, but they don’t talk about the penalty imposed by the Law. They don’t present the Law in the full orb of its ministry of condemnation. Notice what happened when God called Moses to the mountain to give the Law: “And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish” (Exod. 19:16–21).
God told the people to stand back, actually to stand afar off, when He gave Moses the Law. Exodus 20:18–19 says, “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”
We cannot conceive of how holy God is. You and I are renegades in God’s universe. We are in the position of being lost sinners in God’s universe with no capacity to follow or obey Him. Romans 8:6 says, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” The carnal mind is enmity against God. My friend, the world is against God; it is not for God. The world is not getting better. It is becoming more evil each day, and it has been bad since the day God put Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Romans 8:7 goes on to say, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” No wonder the children of Israel trembled and moved away from the mountain and said, “We will die.”
Now, my friend, God is high and holy and lifted up, and He dwells in glory. You and I are down here making mud pies in the world because physically we are made out of mud. We creatures walk about here on earth and have the audacity to walk contrary to the will of God! The carnal mind is enmity against God. That is man’s position in the world.
Paul says, “Listen to the Law. You haven’t even heard it yet.” It was true. The Galatians had not actually heard the Law. The giving of the Law was not beautiful and cozy, but terrifying. The Galatians seemed to want to be under law so Paul was going to let them hear it.


For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman [Gal. 4:22].

Using an illustration from the life of Abraham (Gen. 16; 17; 18; 20; 21), Paul is going to make a contrast between these two boys that were born, one to Hagar and one to Sarai. One was the son of a bondwoman; the other was the son of a freewoman. The freewoman represents grace, and the bondwoman represents the Mosaic Law. He is going to point out the contrast between them in what he calls an allegory.
Paul is not saying that the story of Abraham is an allegory—some have interpreted this statement as meaning that—but Paul is saying that the incident of the two women who bore Abraham sons contains an allegory. It has a message for us today.


But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise [Gal. 4:23].

“He who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh.” The Code of Hammurabi, which governed the culture in Abraham’s day, stated that the son of a slave woman was a slave. So even though Ishmael was Abraham’s son, he was a slave.
“He of the freewoman was by promise.” Isaac was a miracle child, that is, his birth was miraculous. Abraham was too old to father a child, and Paul says that the womb of Sarai was dead. She had passed the age of childbearing. The womb of Sarai was like a tomb, and out of death God brought life.


Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar [Gal. 4:24].

“Which things are an allegory,” meaning that these events in Abraham’s life contain an allegory. Paul is going to draw a lesson from it.
“For these are the two covenants”—the first is the covenant of the Law which Moses received from God on Mount Sinai.
“Which is Agar” (Agar is the Greek form of the name Hagar). Paul compares Hagar to Mount Sinai which is synonymous with the Mosaic Law.


For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children [Gal. 4:25].

In Paul’s allegory Hagar is Mount Sinai which corresponds to Jerusalem (the earthly Jerusalem of Paul’s day), because she was still in slavery with her children. In other words, Jerusalem (representing the nation of Israel) was still under the bondage of the Law.


But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all [Gal. 4:26].

“Jerusalem which is above” is the New Jerusalem which is presented to us in the twentieth chapter of Revelation as it comes down from God out of heaven. As old Jerusalem is the mother city of those under the law, so the New Jerusalem is the mother city of the believer under grace. The believer neither here nor hereafter has any connection with legalism.


For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband [Gal. 4:27].

From Sarai (who was barren until the birth of Isaac) there came more descendants than ever came from Hagar. Today the Arabs are fewer than the children of Israel. In this allegory, Paul is saying that God is saving under grace more members of the human family than He ever saved under the Mosaic Law by the sacrificial system.


Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise [Gal. 4:28].

Believers today are also children of promise. Our birth is a new birth, which comes about by our believing God’s promise: “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” (John 3:16). God has said that if we trust Him, we’ll be born again. “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23).

But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now [Gal. 4:29].
My friend, the legalist hates the gospel of the free grace of God. When I was first ordained to the ministry, I preached a sermon on prophecy and made the comment that preaching on prophecy would get me into trouble. After the service, an elder came to me and said, “Vernon, you are mistaken. Preaching on prophecy will never get you into trouble. In fact, you’ll generally get a good crowd. People like to hear prophecy. But if you preach the grace of God, you’re going to get into trouble.” This is the reason that the gospel is trimmed down as it is today. I hear very little gospel, that is, the pure grace of God, preached these days. And I know why—if you preach that, you get a barrage of criticism. Folk insist that I have to also do something or seek something from another source—from the Holy Spirit, for instance, or go through some ceremony in order to receive something that I did not get when I trusted Jesus Christ. My friend, to say that is calling Christ a curse. If you have to add anything to what He did for you, then His death on the cross was in vain. Christ was made a curse for us; but if you don’t accept what He did for you, you are saying that you are not guilty, but that He is guilty. These words of Paul are as relevant in our day as they were in his day: “But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.” The natural man hates the gospel of the grace of God. My friend, it is in us to hate it, because it doesn’t require any doing on our part. Rather, it glorifies Christ and turns our eyes to Him.


Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman [Gal. 4:30].

God commanded the expulsion of the bondwoman and her son (see Gen. 21:10). Today God is saying to you and to me, “Get rid of your legalism. Put all of the emphasis on Jesus Christ.”


So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free [Gal. 4:31].

Abraham could not have both the son of Hagar and the son of Sarai. He had to make a choice. Paul is saying that you can’t be saved by law and grace. You have to make a choice. If you try to be saved by Christ and also by law, you are not saved.
Let me ask you, have you really trusted Christ, or are you carrying a spare tire on your little omnibus; that is, do you feel that you are doing something or being something or trying to attain to something which adds to what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross? If you do, forget it and look to Christ alone; receive everything from Him. He is our Savior. He is our Lord. He is to receive all praise and glory.

CHAPTER 5

Theme: Sanctification by the Spirit; saved by faith and living by law perpetrates falling from grace; saved by faith and walking in the Spirit produces fruit of the Spirit

SANCTIFICATION BY THE SPIRIT


This brings us to the third major division in Galatians after the Introduction. The first section was personal, and it was important for us to know the personal experience Paul had had. Following this was the doctrinal section of justification by faith in which Paul insisted that our salvation must rest upon God’s salvation and that there is only one gospel.
We come now to the practical side, which is sanctification by the Spirit. Justification is by faith; sanctification is by the Spirit of God. Scripture tells us, however, that the Lord Jesus Christ has been made unto us sanctification—that is, God sees us complete in Him. Regardless of how good you become, you will never meet His standard. You will never be like Christ in this life. Christ is the only One about whom God said, “… This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). But the body of believers, the church, has been put in Christ. He is the Head of the body; those of us who are believers are His body in the world today—and we should represent Him, by the way.
The method of sanctification is by the Spirit. In this section we see the Spirit versus the flesh. Either it is a do-it-yourself Christian life or somebody else will have to do it through you. His method is doing it through you.
In this section we see liberty versus bondage. Any legal system puts you under bondage, and you have to follow it meticulously.
Let me illustrate this from my own experience with civil law with which all of us are familiar.
As I was driving my car early one Sunday morning, I came to a corner where there was a stop sign. It was so early, no one else was out; I looked up and down the street, but I didn’t stop—I just crawled through. A traffic officer appeared behind me; he came up to me and asked, “Did you see that stop sign?” I said, “Yes, I saw the sign; I just didn’t see you!” Then he asked, “Do you know what that sign means?” And he proceeded to give me a primary lesson in law. He said, “Stop means stop.” Well, I already knew that; I just wasn’t doing it. Believe me, the law puts you in bondage. And if you are going to drive a car, you had better be under law, because a lot of folk drive through stop signs and cause accidents. Stop means stop. I agreed with him on everything except one: I didn’t think I deserved a ticket. I argued with him about that. And he was a very nice fellow; he saw my point. He said, “Well, I grant you that there is nobody out this morning, but hereafter you stop. Will you?” I assured him that I would stop. Ever since then, even if it is early Sunday morning, I stop at that sign—and wherever I see a stop sign. Now that is legalism. It is an example of legalism that we all understand.

SAVED BY FAITH AND LIVING BY LAW PERPETRATES FALLING FROM GRACE


Paul begins on the note of liberty which we have in Christ. His subject in these first fifteen verses is “Saved by faith and living by law perpetrates falling from grace.” This is what it means to fall from grace: you are saved by faith, then you drop down to a law level to live. We will see this illustrated as we move into this section.


Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage [Gal. 5:1].

He is saying here that not only are we saved by faith rather than by law, but law is not to be the rule of life for the believer. We are not to live by law at all. The law principle is not the rule for Christian living. Paul is saying that since we have been saved by grace we are to continue on in this way of living. Grace supplies the indwelling and filling of the Spirit to enable us to live on a higher plane than law demanded. This all is our portion when we trust Christ as Savior. It is in Christ that we receive everything—salvation and sanctification. Don’t tell me I need to seek a second blessing. When I came to Christ, I got everything I needed. Paul tells me that I have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. Let’s believe Him and start trusting. Let’s stop trying some legal system or rote of rules.
We have a liberty in Christ. He does not put us under some little legal system. We do not use the Ten Commandments as a law of life. I don’t mean we are to break the Ten Commandments—I think we all understand that breaking most of them (i.e., thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, etc.) would lead to our arrest by local authorities. Certainly Christians do not break the Commandments, but we are called to a higher level to live. That level is where there is liberty in Christ. I have a liberty in Jesus Christ, and that liberty is not a rule, but a principle. It is that I am to please Him. My conduct should be to please Jesus Christ—not to please you, not to please any organization, but only to please Him. That is the liberty that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”


Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing [Gal. 5:2].

Circumcision was the badge of the Law. A badge indicates to what organization or lodge you belong. Perhaps Christians should wear a badge because that is about the only way you could tell that some people are Christians. But Paul says that if you so much as put on the badge of the Law, which is circumcision, then Christ does not profit you anything.
Let me use a homely illustration to prove the point. Years ago a tonic called Hadacol was advertised. I don’t think it is sold any more. I am not sure of the details, but they found it was about seventy-five percent alcohol. A lot of people were using it. The company that made it was giving out glowing testimonials about its product. Now suppose a testimonial read something like this: “I took 513 bottles of your medicine. Before I began using Hadacol, I could not walk. Now I am able to run, and I am actually able to fly! I really have improved. But I think you ought to know that during that time I also concocted a bottle of my own medicine and used it also.” Now, my friend, that final sentence certainly muddied the water. There is no way to tell if it was the 513 bottles of Hadacol that cured him or his own concoction. The minute you put something else into the formula, you are not sure.
Now notice carefully what Paul is saying. If you trust Christ plus something else you are not saved. If you go so far as to be circumcised, which is only the badge of the Law, or if you go through some other experience and rest your salvation on that, “Christ shall profit you nothing.” How can He profit you anything when you have made up a bottle of your own concoction rather than trusting Him alone for your salvation?
The way Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer put it always impressed me. It was something like this: “I want to so trust Christ that when I come into His presence and He asks me, ‘Why are you here?’ I can say, ‘I am here because I trusted You as my Savior.’ If He asked me, ‘Well, that is commendable, but what have you done? I happen to know that you were president of a seminary, and that you were baptized. You were also a member of a church. You did many fine things during your ministry,’ then I would reply, ‘It is all true, but I never trusted in any of it for salvation. I trusted only You, my Lord.’” My friend, is that the way you are trusting Christ? Paul makes it very strong when he says, “if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” If you trust anything other than Christ, you are not a Christian.


For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law [Gal. 5:3].

You cannot draw out of the Law just those things that you like. You cannot leave out the penalties and a great deal of the detail. You must take the whole Law or nothing. I am delighted that I am not under the Law. I have liberty in Christ! I must confess that I have a problem of always pleasing Him, but He is the One I am trying to please. I am not following some legal system. “For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.”


Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace [Gal. 5:4].

If you have been saved by trusting Christ, then go down to the low level of living by the Law, you have fallen from grace. This is what “falling from grace” actually means. I can remember as a student in a denominational seminary hearing one theologian say, “Falling from grace is the doctrine which the Methodists believe and the Presbyterians practice.” However, falling from grace does not mean falling into some open sin or careless conduct, and by so doing forfeiting your salvation so that you have to be saved all over again. It has no reference to that at all. “Falling from grace” is the opposite of “once saved always saved,” although both expressions are unfortunate terminology. Paul deals with this matter of falling from grace in the remainder of this chapter. He also deals with it in his Epistle to the Romans. In Romans he begins with man in the place of total bankruptcy—without righteousness, completely depraved, as unprofitable as rotten fruit. Man is a sinner before God. Then at the conclusion of Romans you see man in the service of God and being admonished to perform certain things. Not only is he admonished to perform certain things, he is completely separated to God, and he must be obedient to God.
There are two mighty works of God which stand between the man in his fallen condition and man in service to God. These are: salvation and sanctification. As we have seen, salvation is justification by faith. That is all-important. Sanctification means that after you are saved you are to come up to a new plane of living. I think the greatest fallacy is to believe that service is essential in the Christian life, that you must get busy immediately. The early church was more concerned with its manner of life, and that life was a witness to the world. Today the outside world is looking at the church and passing it by because we are busy, as busy as termites, but we do not have lives to back up our witness. Rather than concentrating on trying to do good, we ought to live “good.” If we are pleasing Christ, we will be doing good also. I think there is more about sanctification in the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians than anything else.
Now how does God make a saved sinner good? Well, He gives him a new nature. Then he is to keep the Law? Oh, no. Emphatically no. This doesn’t mean he is to break the Law, but he is called to live on a higher plane. There is no good in the old nature. Paul found that out, and he also found out from experience that there is no power in the new nature. As to salvation, he said, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing,” and he also found out, “… to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not” (Rom. 7:18, italics mine). And he cries out as a saved man, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). He is not afraid that he is going to lose his salvation, but he is a defeated Christian. God gives a new principle. We will find in this chapter that the new principle is the fruit of the Spirit.
Living the Christian life by this method for some Christians is as farfetched as living on the moon! They never expect to live there. Perhaps they have never even heard about the possibility. My friend, this is the life He wants us to live—by faith. We are saved by grace; we are to live by grace.


For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith [Gal. 5:5].

“The hope of righteousness” is the only prophetic reference in the entire epistle. This is quite remarkable, because in all Paul’s epistles he has something to say about the rapture of the church or about Christ’s coming to earth to establish His kingdom. But here in Galatians he says only this: “the hope of righteousness by faith,” and the hope of righteousness is the Lord Jesus Christ. The only hope is the blessed hope, and Christ is made unto us righteousness.
As I have pointed out, the Epistle to the Galatians was very important to Martin Luther and to the other reformers. This is one of the reasons, I am confident, that they spent so little time on prophecy.
All the schools of prophecy—the premillennialists, the amillennialists, and the postmillennialists have quoted Martin Luther and the other reformers on this matter of prophecy. But I do not think that there was any development of prophecy beyond what the early church wrote until the twentieth century. In this twentieth century there has been tremendous development in prophecy. The Bible institutes were probably the beginning of this movement, then two or three of our seminaries that have emphasized the premillennial position have forced the others to study prophecy. Actually, amillennialists are just a group of the postmillennialists who were forced into the study of prophecy and came up with the theory of amillennialism. Of course, they have been great at quoting the fathers of the postapostolic period. They say, Augustine said thus and so, and he did say it. He was attempting to build the kingdom here, that is, the church was going to bring in the kingdom. This led to postmillennialism, which was, of course, a false position. I don’t feel that we should criticize Augustine for that since he was living in a day when the study of prophecy was not developed. The person of Christ was the great subject during his time, as salvation was the great subject later on.
Therefore the fact that Paul has only this brief reference to prophecy in his Epistle to the Galatians is understandable, since his emphasis is on the gospel and the Christian life. It is important to note the priorities in any book of the Bible and also the priorities that were in existence in any given period. Failing to do this leads to misinterpretation and misunderstanding which is the case in quoting church fathers on the matter of prophecy. After all, the authorities on prophecy are Paul, Peter, James, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We need to note what they have written on the subject of prophecy. But to the Galatians Paul writes simply, “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” I think Paul’s reason for saying this here is that believers are not going to reach perfection in this life. And the greatest imperfection I know of today is to think you have reached perfection. Folk who think they are perfect are imperfect like the rest of us—but they don’t know it.


For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love [Gal. 5:6].

No legal apparatus will produce a Christian life. The formula is simple: “faith which worketh by love.” As we advance in Galatians, Paul will give us the modus operandi, but let us remember that it is a simple formula: “Faith which worketh by love.” That is the way to live the Christian life. Faith will work by love. Love will be the fruit of the Holy Spirit.


Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? [Gal. 5:7].

Paul chides the Galatians. He is giving them a gentle rebuke. They were doing excellently until the Judaizers came along. “The truth” is the gospel, of course, and the Lord Jesus Christ in person.


This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you [Gal. 5:8].

It didn’t come from Christ but from a different source.

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump [Gal. 5:9].
In Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, leaven is always used as a principle of evil. In Matthew 13:33, when the woman hid leaven in three measures of meal, the leaven was not the gospel. It may be the kind of a “gospel” that is passing around today as legal tender, but it is still evil. In fact, Paul says that it is no gospel at all. The Lord Jesus warned His disciples of the leaven of the Pharisees (see Matt. 16:6). I think we need to be warned today of the leaven of legalism. It is an awful thing. Legalism says that when Christ died on the cross for you and me over nineteen hundred years ago, He did not give us a full package of salvation, but that I have to go through a ritual of baptism or seek something else from the Holy Spirit to get the rest of it. My friend, I received it all when I accepted Christ. Now I may have experiences after I am saved, but that does not add to my salvation. Christ is the One who wrought out our salvation. The Lord Jesus said that the woman would take the leaven and hide it in three measures of meal, symbolic of the gospel. In other words, leaven has been hidden in the gospel—and that makes it palatable to the natural man.
I was brought up in the South, and I never knew there was any kind of biscuits but hot biscuits. My mother used to bake them every day. Even yet I can see those biscuits in the dough stage, rising on the back of the stove. When they reached a certain height, she stuck them in the oven. They had leaven in them. When the biscuits were done, I would put butter and honey on them. There was nothing better! That is still my favorite dessert. There is a lot of leaven being put in the gospel today to make it more palatable. Natural man likes the leavened bread. It tastes good. However, we are warned not to do that.


I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be [Gal. 5:10].

Paul believed that the Galatians would ultimately reject the teaching of the Judaizers. He says, “I have confidence in you” that when you get your feet back on the ground, and your heads out of the clouds, you will return to the gospel that was preached to you, and you will see that the teaching of the Judaizers was an intrusion, that it was leaven.


And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased [Gal. 5:11].

This verse is important to note. Paul asks, “If I preach circumcision, why am I persecuted?” Adding something to the gospel makes it acceptable. The gospel, by itself, is not acceptable to the natural man. Preaching the gospel does antagonize some folk. Paul asks, “If I am including something else in the gospel, why am I being persecuted?”
“Then is the offence of the cross ceased.” Actually, the cross of Christ is an offense to all that man prides himself in. It is an offense to his morality because it tells him his work cannot justify him. It is an offense to his philosophy because its appeal is to faith and not to reason. It is an offense to the culture of man because its truths are revealed to babes. It is an offense to his sense of caste because God chooses the poor and humble. It is an offense to his will because it calls for an unconditional surrender. It is an offense to his pride because it shows the exceeding sinfulness of the human heart. And it is an offense to himself because it tells him he must be born again. You know, that was almost insulting to the Pharisee Nicodemus that night when Jesus told him, religious as he was, that he must be born again. For the same reason, a lot of ministers who are preaching the New Birth get in trouble with their congregations. Some members don’t want to be born again—they feel like they’re good enough as they are. It’s an insult to them. The Cross is an offense, but we need to guard against magnifying it.
One of my professors in seminary said a very wise thing. He said, “Young gentlemen, do not tone down the gospel, do not change it, because there is the offense of the Cross. You need to recognize it, but don’t magnify the offense.” Sometimes we become offensive in the way we give the gospel—may the Lord forgive us for doing that. When I was a pastor, a man on my staff antagonized a family and caused them to leave the church. I said to him, “Now look, you and I are not to antagonize people. If anything antagonizes them, let it be the gospel I preach—not you or me, but the gospel.”


I would they were even cut off which trouble you [Gal. 5:12].

I wish these Judaizers were removed from you.

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another [Gal. 5:13].
There are three methods of trying to live the Christian life—two of them will not work. One is a life of legalism, which Paul has been discussing. The other is the life of license, which Paul discussed in Romans 6: After we are saved by grace, can we live in sin? Paul’s answer is, “God forbid.” You can’t live in sin and be a Christian. Now you may fall into sin, but you will get out of it. The Prodigal Son can get in the pig pen, but he won’t settle down there—the pig pen won’t be his forwarding address. He will leave it. The Christian life is neither the life of legalism nor the life of license.
The third method of living the Christian life is the life of liberty, and in the remainder of this chapter he will give us the modus operandi for living by liberty. The life of legalism includes not only the Ten Commandments, but a set of regulations that Bible believers follow today. They tell you where you can’t go, and what you can’t do. I remember a wonderful woman who was a Bible teacher in Texas. She did an outstanding job of teaching the Bible. One day a dear little saint came up to me and asked, “Do you think she is really a Christian? She uses makeup!” Who in the world ever said that makeup was a test of whether or not a person is a Christian? I told this dear saint that the Bible teacher was living under liberty. She might have been using too much makeup, but at her age she probably needed to spread it on a little thicker. Candidly, I do not think it helps her too much, but she has liberty in Christ. Whether you eat meat or do not eat meat won’t commend you to God. Whether you use makeup or don’t use makeup won’t commend you to God. Paul is saying that you can keep every commandment and still not live the Christian life. Even if you kept all Ten Commandments and followed every commandment others put down for you to live by, you still would not be living the Christian life. Also there are the antinomians who think they can do as they please and be living the Christian life. These folk are as extreme as the legalists. The Christian life is not either one; it is liberty in Christ.
“Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh.” What does the gospel of grace do for the believer? It is grace, not law, that frees us from doing wrong and allows us to do right. Grace does not set us free to sin, but it sets us free from sin. You see, the believer should desire to please God, not because he must please Him like a slave, but because he is a son and he wills to please his Father. He does what God wants, not because he fears to do otherwise like an enemy, but because he wants to do it, for God is his friend. God is the One who loves him. He serves God, not because of pressure from without such as the Law, but because of a great principle within—even the life of Christ that is within him.
We serve God because we love Him. The Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (see John 14:15). I have often wondered if a disciple had said, “I don’t love You,” would our Lord have said, “Then forget about My commandments”? The whole basis of obedience is a love relationship to Him. The Law never could bring us to that place. It was negative to begin with. It produced a negative goodness—which is the kind of goodness a great many people have today. Oh, if I could only get this truth through to a great many of the saints! Your negative goodness is a legal goodness. You can say, “I don’t do this and I don’t do that.” But what do you do? My friend, all legal systems produce only negative goodness. They never rise to the sphere of positive goodness where one does things to please God for the very love of pleasing Him. He wants us to serve Him on that kind of basis.
Now Paul is going to reduce it to a simple statement, then he will amplify what he means.


For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself [Gal. 5:14].

Here the Law is reduced to the lowest common denominator. This is the acid test for those who think they are living by the Law. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The “one word” is love.


But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another [Gal. 5:15].

I have always wanted to preach a sermon on this text, and I would entitle it “Christian Cannibals.” Did you know that in many churches today the Christians bite, eat, and devour one another? And the bite is as bad as that of a mad dog. There is nothing you can take that will cure the wound. All you can do is suffer. There are a lot of mad dogs running around today. They will bite and devour you. Unfortunately, the world has passed by the church in our day, and I’m sorry it has because there are many fine people in our churches and many wonderful preachers throughout this country. But the lives of some Christians are keeping the world away from certain churches. I personally know examples of this. I know churches in which the Christians have no love for each other, but they bite and devour one another. It is a terrible thing!

SAVED BY FAITH AND WALKING IN THE SPIRIT PRODUCES FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT


Now Paul is going to contrast what it is to live in the desires of the flesh with the walk in the Spirit. This whole section gives the modus operandi.
As we enter this important section, I want to make a recapitulation and tie it in with what we have had. In this section the theme is sanctification by the Spirit. Paul has told us that we are to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (v. 1). From what has Christ set us free? Paul has already mentioned several things in this epistle. In chapter 1, verse 4, he tells us that Christ has set us free from this present evil world. That is, we don’t have to serve it. Then in chapter 2, verse 20, he says, “I live; yet not I.” You and I cannot live the Christian life, but Christ can live it in us. What wonderful liberty! In chapter 3, verse 13, he tells us that we have been delivered from the curse of the Law. We have been delivered from the judgment and the condemnation of the Law. In fact, we have been delivered from the very Law itself: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4–5).
Now Paul is going to contrast what it is to live in the desires of the flesh with the life of walking in the Spirit. Here is his injunction.


This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh [Gal. 5:16].

This verse states the great principle of Christian living—walk by means of the Spirit. The word for walk is peripateoµ, which means just “to walk up and down.” This Greek word was used for a school of philosophy in Athens, Greece, in which the founder walked up and down as he taught. The principle for us is walking in the Spirit. If we do, we will not “fulfil the lust of the flesh.”
The word lust in our usage today has an evil connotation, which the Greek word does not have. Lust of the flesh refers to the desires of the flesh, many of which are not immoral, but are of the flesh (music, art, and works of dogooders, etc.). There are many things which in themselves are not evil, but they can take the place of spiritual things. Some Christians can get wrapped up in a hobby which takes them away from the Word of God. Many Christians spend a lot of time worshiping before that little idiot box we call TV. Now don’t misunderstand—I watch TV. I am not under any law that says I can’t watch TV. There are a few programs one can enjoy. But watching TV is a desire of the flesh. If it takes you away from that which is spiritual, then it is wrong.


For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would [Gal. 5:17].

A transliteration of this verse will help convey the meaning: “For the flesh warreth against the Spirit, and the Spirit warreth against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” that is, the things that the old nature wanted to do. This is very important to see—the flesh wars against the Spirit, and the Spirit wars against the flesh.
A believer has a new nature. This is what our Lord said to Nicodemus when He said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). The believer still has that old nature of the flesh, and he won’t get rid of it in this life. The idea that we can get rid of that old nature is a tragic mistake. John said, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). My friend, if the truth is not in you, then you must be a liar. That puts the “perfect” individual in the position of being a liar.
We have two natures—the old and the new. That is what Paul describes in the last part of Romans. He himself experienced the turmoil of two natures, and this has also been the experience of many believers. The flesh wars against the Spirit, and the Spirit wars against the flesh. Therefore, we cannot do the things that we would like to do. The new nature rebels against the old nature. They are contrary; they are at war with each other. Have you experienced this in your own life?
There is a song we sing entitled “Come Thou Fount” by Robert Robinson.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.

It is a wonderful hymn. In the last stanza are these words:

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
After this song was written, someone looked at it and said, “That is not my experience—I’ll change that.” So in some hymnbooks we find these words:

Prone to worship, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to love the God I serve.

Which is true? Well, both are true. I have a nature that is prone to wander, prone to leave the God I love. There are times when this old nature of mine wants to wander away from the Lord! Have you had this experience? Also I have a new nature that is prone to worship the Lord. There are times when I am riding along alone in my car, and I just cry out to Him, “Oh, Lord, how wonderful You are! I love You and worship You.” That is the expression of my new nature; my old nature never gets around to praising Him or loving Him. Every believer has an old and a new nature.
There are folk who say, “Well, I can’t tell whether I am walking in the Spirit or not.” Don’t kid yourself about this. You can know. Paul has spelled it out here so that you cannot miss it.


But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law [Gal. 5:18].

The Holy Spirit of God brings us to a higher plane.
Now Paul makes clear what the works of the flesh are:


Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God [Gal. 5:19–21].

This is an ugly brood of sensual sins, religious sins, social sins, and personal sins.

Sensual Sins
Adultery—omitted from the best manuscripts, included in fornication

Fornication—prostitution

Uncleanness—(akatharsia) impurity, sexual sins including pornography

Lasciviousness—brutality, sadism (we see this abounding in our day)
Religious Sins
Idolatry—worship of idols (this includes money and everything that takes the place of God)

Witchcraft—(pharmakeia) drugs (drugs are used in all heathen religions)

Hatred—enmity

Variances—eris (The Greek Eris was the goddess of strife) contentions, quarrels
Social Sins
Emulations—(zelos) rivalry, jealousy

Wrath—(thumos) a hot temper

Strife—factions, cliques (little cliques in a church hurt the cause of Christ)

Seditions—divisions

Heresies—parties, sects

Envyings—(phthonos)

Murders—omitted from the best manuscripts probably because it is included in other sins mentioned here. The Lord said if you hate you are guilty of murder
Personal Sins
Drunkenness

Revelings, wantonness

Notice that Paul concludes this list of the works of the flesh by “and such like,” which means there are many others he could have mentioned.
“They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” “Which do” indicates continuous action. Our Lord gave the illustration of the Prodigal Son who got down in the pig pen but didn’t stay there. The only ones that stay in a pig pen are pigs. If a son gets there, he will be very unhappy until he gets out. If you can continue to live in sin, you are in a dangerous position. It means you are not a child of God.
Now, having listed the works of the flesh, Paul will list the fruit of the Spirit. Notice the contrast: works of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit. The works of the flesh are what you do. The Ten Commandments were given to control the flesh. But now the Christian life is to produce the fru


But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law [Gal. 5:22–23].

The Lord Jesus Christ talked about the fruit of the Spirit in John 15. He said that without Him we could do nothing. And fruit is what He wants in our lives. He wants fruit, more fruit, and much fruit. In His parable of the sower, He spoke of seed bringing forth thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and an hundredfold (see Matt. 13). He wants us to bear much fruit. Now the fruit is produced by the Lord Jesus using the Spirit of God in our lives. He wants to live His life through us. That is the reason I keep saying that you are never asked to live the Christian life. You are asked to let Him live through you. No believer can live the Christian life himself. The old nature cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit.
Paul makes it clear in Romans 7:18 that the new nature has no power to produce the fruit of the Spirit. He said, “… to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.” That is the problem with many of us. How do you do it? This is not a do-it-yourself operation. But how are we going to let the Spirit of God produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives?
The subject of fruit bearing is an interesting one. When speaking about it, I like to use the illustration of my ranch. I have a ranch in Pasadena. It is not what you would call a big ranch. It is 72 feet wide and goes back about 123 feet. My house is right in the middle of it. I have a nice nectarine tree out in front, which really produces fruit. I have three orange trees, four avocado trees, a lemon tree, and a few other trees. There is never a period during the year in California that I do not have some fruit on some tree. I have observed that fruit is produced by the tree, not by self-effort. As far as I can tell, the branches never get together and say, “Let’s all work hard and see what we can do for this fellow, McGee, because he likes fruit.” I do enjoy fruit but, as far as I can tell, these branches that bear fruit just open up themselves to the sunshine and to the rain. Bloom appears, then the little green fruit forms, grows, and then ripens.
Another thing that I have noticed is that the limbs never leave the trunk of the tree—they don’t get down and run around. Our Lord said, “… As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me” (John 15:4). Our problem is that we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, but when the altar gets hot, we crawl off. We are to abide in Christ if we are to produce fruit.
Paul is stating the principle of fruit-bearing so that we can understand it. The fruit is produced by yielding—by yielding to the sweet influences that are about us. I am not talking about the world and neither is Paul. We are to yield to the Holy Spirit who indwells us. The Holy Spirit wants to produce fruit—it is called the fruit of the Spirit.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.” Notice it is singular: is, not are. You can argue about the grammar used here, but it happens to be singular in the Greek. This indicates that love is the fruit, and from it stems all other fruits. Love is primary.
Paul says that without love we “… become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). First Corinthians 13 was never intended to be removed from the Bible, beautifully framed, and hung on the wall. It belongs to the gifts of the Spirit, and the gifts are not to be exercised except by the fruit of the Spirit, which is love. You cannot exercise a gift without doing it by the fruit of the Spirit. Love is all-important. Paul continues to say in 1 Corinthians 13 that if you give your body to be burned and give everything that you have, but don’t have love, you are a nothing. We need to recognize the importance of what Paul is saying.
Another thing that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 is that “love never seeks its own.” Love is always doing something for others. A gift is always to be exercised in the church. It is a manifestation of the Spirit to all believers. All believers have a gift, and it is to be exercised for the profit of the body of believers. My eyes operate for the benefit of the rest of my body. They guide my body in the right direction. They are important. I cannot imagine my eyes walking out on the rest of my body and saying, “We like looking around, and your feet get tired, so we are going to leave you for awhile.” They never do that. We need to recognize that no gift apart from the fruit of the Spirit is to be exercised—and that fruit is love. This is the kind of fruit the Lord Jesus was talking about in John 15. The fruit is the fruit of the Spirit.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (vv. 22–23).
There is “no law” against them, and no law which will produce them. You cannot produce any of these by your own effort. Have you ever tried being meek, for instance? If you tried being meek, and accomplished it, you would be proud that you became meek, and then you would lose your meekness and humility.
For a moment let us look at the fruit of the Spirit. It should characterize the lives of believers. I used to hear the late Dr. Jim McGinley say, “I am not to judge you, but I am a fruit inspector, and I have a right to look at the fruit you are producing.” The question is, are you producing any fruit in your life?
Now love ought to be in your heart and life if you are a believer. But, friend, if there are sensual sins in your life, you will never know what real love is. There are many young people today who know a great deal about sex, but they know nothing about love. Love is a fruit of the Spirit, and God will give this love to a husband for his wife, and to the wife for her husband. I don’t think anyone can love like two Christians can love. My, how they can love each other!
I shall never forget the night I proposed to my wife. She did not accept me that night, but when she did, we had prayer and dedicated our lives to the Lord. I told her, “I am a preacher who speaks out plainly. I may get into trouble some day. We may find ourselves out on the street.” I shall never forget what she said to me: “Well, I’ll just beat the drum for you if you have to get out on the street!” That is love on a higher plane.
When we lost our first little girl, I did not want the doctor to tell my wife—I wanted to tell her. When I gave her the news, we wept together and then we prayed. Love like that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Joy is a fruit that the Lord Jesus wants you to have in your life. He came that we might have joy—that we might have fun. I wish we had more fun times in our churches today. The world has what they call the “happy hour” in cocktail parlors all across our land. People don’t look too happy when they go in, and they sure don’t look happy when they come out! They are a bunch of sots, if you please. That’s not joy. John says, “And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full” (1 John 1:4). These things were written that you might really enjoy life. Are you really living it up today, friend? I hope you are as a believer.
The third fruit is peace, the peace of God. Religion can never give this to you. Only Christ can give you deep-down peace—“… being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).
There are some other fruits. Are you longsuffering—that is, patient and long tempered? This is an area where I need some help, and only the Spirit of God can do it. I found out that I cannot do it.
Then there is the fruit of gentleness, which means kindness; there is goodness, which means kind but firm.
Faith, in this list, means faithfulness. If you are a child of God, you will be faithful. If you are married, you will be faithful to your husband or wife. If you are an employee, you are going to be faithful to your job and to your boss. If you are a church member, you are going to be faithful to your church. You are going to be faithful wherever you are and in whatever you do.
Next comes meekness, and that does not mean mildness. Two men who were truly meek were Moses and the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps you don’t think Moses was meek when he came down from the Mount, found the people were worshiping a golden calf, and administered disciplinary judgment (see Exod. 32). But he was meek. Was Jesus meek when He ran the money-changers out of the temple? Meekness is not mildness and it is not weakness. Meekness means that you will do God’s will, that you are willing to yield your will to the will of God. Finally, there is temperance, which is self-control—Christian poise is so needed today.


And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts [Gal. 5:24].

When was the flesh crucified? When they reckon that when Christ died, they died, they will yield themselves on that basis. In Romans 6:13 Paul says, “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). In all of these passages the thought is that when Christ was crucified, the believer was crucified at the same time. The believer is now joined to the living Christ, and the victory is not by struggling but by surrendering to Christ. The scriptural word is yield; it is an act of the will.
This is the key to it all:


If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit [Gal. 5:25].

A professor in a theological seminary called my attention to the word walk in this verse several years ago, and it has meant a great deal to me. As you recall, back in verse 16 a “walk in the Spirit” is parapateoµ, but here “walk” is a different Greek word. It is stoichomen, which is basic and elemental, meaning “to proceed or step in order.” In verse 16 we were given the principle of walk; here in verse 25 it means to learn to walk. Just as we learned to walk physically by the trial and error method, so are we to begin to walk by the Spirit—it is a learning process.
Let me illustrate this principle with a ridiculous illustration. What is walking? Walking is putting one foot in front of the other. You may have heard about the knock-kneed girl. One knee said to the other, “If you let me by this time, I will let you by next time.” That is walking, putting one foot in front of the other. This means to learn to walk. How did you learn to walk? Were you given a lecture on the subject? Did you go to a school and take a course in learning to walk? One summer my grandson, who was about twelve months old at the time, stayed with us for a time. He was just standing and wobbling along. I did not put him in his high chair and tell him about the physical mechanism of the foot. I did not give him a lecture on the psychology of walking or the sociological implications of walking. If I had explained all of these things to my grandson, could he have lifted the tray of his high chair and walked off? No, my friend, that is not the way you learn to walk. You learn to walk by trial and error. One time my grandson fell down hard, and he had a big knot on his forehead. He fell many times, but before long he was walking and running andclimbing as surefooted as a mountain goat. He learned to do it by just doing it, by trial and error.
This is the way we are to learn to walk in the Spirit—by trial and error. I know people who have attended Keswick conferences, spiritual life conferences, and Bible conferences; they have their notebooks filled with notes on how to live the Christian life. Still they are not living it. What is the problem?
You have to learn to walk in the Spirit, which means you are to start out. Why not start now? Say, “I am going to walk in the Spirit. I am going to depend upon the Holy Spirit to produce the fruits in my life.” Perhaps you are thinking that you might fall down. I have news for you—you are going to fall. It will hurt. You say, “How many times will I fall?” I don’t know. I am still falling. But that is the way you are going to walk in the Spirit, and that’s the only way. My friend, you need to step out today and begin leaning upon the Spirit of God. Yield yourself to Him; it is an act of the will.
Every day I start my day by saying, “Lord, I can’t live today in a way that pleases You, and I want You to do it through me.” I find there are times when I don’t get but a few blocks from home when something happens. One morning a woman in a Volkswagen cut in front of me. I had been so nice and sweet up to then, but I drove up beside her car and I told her what she had done. And she told me a thing or two right back. When she drove off, I thought, My, I sure fell on my face! When I do that, I just get up and start over again.


Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another [Gal. 5:26].

“Let us not be desirous of vain glory”—you and I are never going to be wonderful saints of God. He is wonderful. Oh, how wonderful He is! He is worthy of our worship. Let’s start walking, depending on Him like little children. That’s what He wants us to do.
“Provoking one another” is challenging one another. We are not to challenge and envy one another. We are to get down from our high chairs and start walking in the Spirit. The Christian life is not a balloon ascension with some great overpowering experience of soaring to the heights. Rather it is a daily walk; it is a matter of putting one foot ahead of the other, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

CHAPTER 6

Theme: Saved by faith and fruit of the Spirit presents Christian character; autographed conclusion; Paul’s testimony

This final chapter of Galatians brings us to the third step in this practical section of sanctification by the Spirit. We have seen that being saved by faith and living by law perpetrates falling from grace. Also we have seen that being saved by faith and walking in the Spirit produces fruit of the Spirit. In other words, we have seen what it means to walk in the Spirit. It is something we are to begin, and though we fail, we are to keep at it. Now we will see how the fruit of the Spirit will work out in our lives. Here is where we see it put in shoe leather where it can hit the pavement of our hometown.

SAVED BY FAITH AND FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT PRESENTS CHRISTIAN CHARACTER


Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted [Gal. 6:1].


Who is the “man” mentioned in this verse? lt is a generic term and refers to any man or woman who is a Christian. The word fault, taken from the Greek paraptoµma, means “a falling aside or mishap.” It means “to stumble.” It may not refer to a great sin but to an awful blunder.
Now what is to be done to a person who is overtaken in a fault? Well, the “spiritual” folk, and many think they are spiritual, interpret this as meaning they are to beat him on the head with a baseball bat because he has done something wrong. There is a danger of not really wanting to restore him. We would much rather criticize and condemn him. However, the believer does not lose his salvation when he sins. If a Christian is overtaken in a fault, a spiritual Christian is to restore that one in the spirit of meekness. Meekness is one of the fruits of the Spirit.
The word used for “fault” in this verse is the same word used to describe the Lord Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane when He fell on His face and prayed (see Matt. 26:39). It means “to stumble.” If a man be overtaken in a fault, he stumbles. He may commit a small sin or an awful blunder.
One of the wonderful things said about the Lord Jesus in prophecy is found in Isaiah 63:9, “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.” Now the better manuscripts say, “In all their affliction He was not afflicted.” I like that much better. The Lord Jesus goes along with me through life, and when I stumble and fall down, He does not fall. He is not afflicted. He is there beside me and He picks me up, brushes me off, and tells me to start out again. It is a comforting thing to know that I have One near me who is not afflicted in my affliction.
The word used for “restore” in this verse is a verb which means “to set a broken bone.” If a fellow falls down and breaks his leg, what are you going to do? Are you going to walk off and leave him in pain? God says, “You who are spiritual set the broken bone. Get him back on his feet again.” It is to be done in the spirit of meekness.
One of the great preachers of the South was marvelously converted when he was a drunkard. His ministry was quite demanding and after a great deal of pressure and temptation he got drunk one night. He was so ashamed that the very next day he called in his board of deacons and turned in his resignation. He told them, “I want to resign.” They were amazed. They asked why. He frankly told them, “I got drunk last night. A preacher should not get drunk, and I want to resign.” It was obvious that he was ashamed, and do you know what those wonderful deacons did? They put their arms around him and said, “Let’s all pray.” They would not accept his resignation. A man who was present in the congregation that next Sunday said, “I never heard a greater sermon in my life than that man preached.” Those deacons were real surgeons—they set a broken bone; they restored him. There are some people who would have put him out of the ministry, but these deacons put that preacher back on his feet, and God marvelously used him after that.
“Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.” Notice that you are to restore him in the spirit of meekness. A spiritual man will have the fruit of the Spirit in his life: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and meekness. You are to restore him in meekness.
“Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” Don’t think that you are immune to what you are pointing your finger and blaming another brother for doing. You could do the same thing. So restore him in the spirit of meekness.


Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ [Gal. 6:2].

This is a verse that caused me as a boy to wonder about the accuracy of the Bible.
Most little towns of a bygone day had a character known as the town atheist, a freethinker, generally a ne’er-do-well, although sometimes he was one of the leading citizens of the community. The little town in which I lived as a boy lacked many things. It didn’t have street lights. In fact, we didn’t have electric lights in our home, and I can remember using the lamp to study by in those days. Our little town didn’t have sidewalks; it didn’t have paved streets. It didn’t have running water—except what you ran out to the well to get; and we didn’t have inside plumbing. There were many things our little town lacked, but we did have a town atheist. He called himself a socialist. Each Sunday morning, weather permitting, he was down at the street corner on the town square, speaking. Generally he had about a dozen listeners, who were also loafers. On my way to Sunday school—I killed as much time as possible—I always stopped to listen to him. The thing that impressed me about this atheist was that his mouth was cut on a bias, and as he chewed tobacco an amazing thing took place. He not only defied the Word of God, he also defied the law of gravitation. You would think, according to the law of gravitation, that the tobacco juice would run out of the lower corner of his mouth. But it didn’t. It ran out of the upper corner. I used to stand there as a boy and wonder how he did it.
This man, I remember, always ridiculed the Bible, and he pointed out supposed contradictions. His favorites were these two verses in the sixth chapter of Galatians: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (v. 2). Then he would read, “For every man shall bear his own burden” (v. 5). He would read both verses, then lift his head and leer at the crowd and say, “You see, there is a contradiction in the Bible. One place it says that you’re to bear one another’s burdens, and then it says you are to bear your own burdens.” None of us in the little town knew how to answer him, so we just stood there with our mouths open and listened to him. Actually, the answer was very simple, but we didn’t know it in those days.
There are in the Scriptures eleven different words that are translated by our one English word burden. This means there are different kinds of burdens. There are some burdens that you can share; there are burdens that you must bear and you cannot share them with anyone. That is a very simple but a very satisfactory answer.
Now burdens are those things that we all have in common. All of us have burdens. Not all of us have wealth, but we have burdens. Not all of us have health, but we have burdens. Not all of us have talents, but we have burdens. Some of us lack even physical members—not all of us can see, not all of us can hear, not all of us have arms and legs, and certainly not all of us have good looks. We say that we all have the same blood, but it is not the same; it comes in different types. We do not have very much in common, but we all have burdens.
There is a Spanish proverb that goes something like this: “No home is there anywhere that does not sooner or later have its hush.” Also the French have a proverb: “Everyone thinks his own burden is heaviest.” A woman in Southern California who has done a great deal of work with children said, “Even children have burdens.” Burdens are common to the human family. We all have burdens.
However, not all of us have the same burdens. We have many different burdens. What Paul is doing in this sixth chapter of Galatians is dividing burdens into two classes: burdens which we can share, and burdens which we must bear, and cannot share. Those of us in our little town didn’t know there were two different words used in the Greek. In verse 2 you could translate it like this: “The burdens of each other, keep bearing.” The Greek word for burden is baros, meaning “something heavy.” Our Lord used it when He spoke about the burden and the heat of the day (see Matt. 20:12). And for the early church, when it met in its first council in Jerusalem, made this decision: “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things” (Acts 15:28, italics mine), speaking of a burden they were to share with the church in Jerusalem. Someone has said that a load is only half a load when two are carrying it. There are burdens today that we can share.
A woman boarded a bus with a very heavy basket. She sat down beside a man and put the basket on her lap. After noticing her discomfort he said, “Lady, if you would put that heavy basket down on the floor you would find that the bus would carry both you and your load!” May I say to you, there are burdens that you can let someone else bear with you.
Now burden (baros) means “fault”—“If a man be overtaken in a fault.” That’s his burden. You could help him bear it. It also means infirmity, a weakness, an ignorance, a pressure, a tension, a grief.
I think everybody has a fault. A man speaking to a group asked the question, “Is there anyone here who does not have a fault or do you know someone who does not have a fault?” No one raised his hand. After he had repeated the question several times, a little fellow in the back, a Mr. Milquetoast type, raised his hand. The speaker asked him to stand. “Are you the one who has no faults?” “Oh, no,” he said, “I’m not the one.” “Then do you know someone who does not have any faults?” “Well,” he said, “I don’t exactly know him, but I have heard of him.” The man who was lecturing said, “Tell me, who is he?” The little fellow said, “He’s my wife’s first husband.” And I have a notion that he had heard of him quite a few times, by the way.
All of us have faults, and that’s a burden. Many times we fall down, and many times we see a brother fall down. “Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one.”
Then there is another burden that you and I can share: tensions. Now you can take a tranquilizer, but, my friend, that really won’t solve your problems. We are living today in a time of tension such as the human family has never before experienced. I don’t know about you, but I live in “Tension Town.” Many of us in these great metropolitan areas are under pressure and tension today. This is certainly a burden we need to bear with one another.
Let me illustrate. A very dear man, in one of the churches I pastored, came to me and said, “Do you have something against me?” “No,” I said, “why do you say that?” “Well, I met you down on the street and you didn’t even speak to me.” I was amazed. “I didn’t?” “No. You just passed me right by. You looked right at me.” I said, “I didn’t see you.” “You must have—you looked right at me.” So I asked him what day that was, and realized it was the day the airlines got my tickets mixed up, and I was going down there to straighten them out. My friend, we are under tension at a time like that. And my friend was also under tension for assuming I had snubbed him. Well, I never shall forget, he put his arm around me and said, “I’m glad to know that.” You see, he was helping me bear the burden of tension. That’s something we can share with each other.
Now I come to the third burden you and I can share. That is the burden known as grief. The burden of tragedy, the burden of sorrow, the burden of disappointment is inevitable in the human family. If it hasn’t come to you, it will come. And when it comes we need somebody, a friend, to stand with us. The three friends of Job—we criticize them because they began a talking marathon, but actually they first spent seven days sitting with Job and sorrowing with him.
In a book of natural history there is a statement that reads: “Man is the only one that knows nothing, and that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak, nor walk, nor eat. In short, he can do nothing at the prompting of nature but weep.” All that you and I know to do when we come into this world is weep. We come into this world with a cry, and we need comfort. From the very beginning and all through life we need comfort because of the fact that we have been born into this world of woe.
Ruth could say to Boaz, “Thou hast comforted me” (see Ruth 2:13). She was a stranger, an outcast, who had come from a foreign country and expected to be kept on the outside, but into her life came someone who showed an interest in her and extended to her certain courtesies. With appreciation she said, “Thou hast comforted me.”
Mary broke an alabaster box of ointment upon our Lord. She did this shortly before His crucifixion because she knew what was going to take place. No one else seemed to realize what was happening, but she knew. Jesus said, “Let her alone; for the day of my burial hath she kept this” (see Matt. 26:12). She alone entered into His sufferings. And He said, “Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her” (Matt. 26:13). And the fragrance of that ointment has filled the world. Grief is a burden that you can share. There will be those who will come to you in your sorrow.
Our faults, our tensions, our griefs are some of the burdens that you and I can share.

Is thy cruse of comfort failing?
Raise and share it with a friend,
And thro’ all the years of famine
It shall serve thee to the end.

Love Divine will fill thy storehouse,
Or thy handful still renew;
Scanty fare for one will often
Make a royal feast for two.

Lost and weary on the mountains,
Wouldst thou sleep amidst the snow?
Chafe that frozen form beside thee,
And together both shall glow.

Art thou wounded in life’s battle?
Many stricken round thee moan;
Give to them thy precious ointment,
And that balm shall heal thine own.
—Author unknown

There are burdens that we can share.
Now let’s look at the other verse that tells us there are burdens which we cannot share.


But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another [Gal. 6:4].

I think he means that we are not to run around getting everybody to carry our burdens.


For every man shall bear his own burden [Gal. 6:5].

The word burden here is the Greek phortion, meaning “a load to be borne.” This word is used to speak of a ship’s cargo. Actually, it is used to speak of a child in the womb—only the mother could bear it, you see. This is a load that is impossible to share. While I never recommend J. B. Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English as a translation (it should not be called a translation), it is a most excellent explanation. Many times it throws light on a passage of Scripture. He gives this paraphrase of Galatians 6:5: “For every man must ‘shoulder his own pack.’” That’s it. Each man must shoulder his own pack. There is an old bromide: “To every man his work.” And another, a rather crude one, “Every tub must sit on its own bottom.” In other words, there are burdens today that you and I cannot share.
Every life, in one sense, is separated, it is isolated, it is segregated, it is quarantined from every other life. Dr. Funk, of the Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary, has compiled a list of words in which the saddest word in the English language is alone. There are certain burdens that you and I will have to bear alone. I will mention just a few of them here—you will think of others.
The first one I want to mention is suffering. You will have to suffer alone. No one can suffer for you. You are born into this world alone—and it’s a world of woe; you will suffer alone. You will have to face certain problems alone. There will be physical suffering that will come to you. You will get sick, and no one can take your place.
When my daughter was a very little thing, we were coming back from Texas, and she started running a high fever. We took her to the hospital at Globe, Arizona. A doctor gave her certain medication and told us, “You give her this and the fever will go down. It is getting late in the afternoon so keep driving to California and get out of this heat.” So we started out. In Phoenix we stopped for gasoline, and my wife took her temperature. It registered 104°—her temperature hadn’t gone down. We were frightened. We went to a motel, called a doctor, and told him the situation. He said to continue the medication and to bring her to the hospital in the morning. Never shall I forget my feelings as I carried her to the hospital and laid her down. Never in my life had I had that experience. I would have gladly taken that fever in my own body—gladly would I have done it. But, my friend, I could not do it. We have to suffer alone. You cannot get someone to substitute for you. Suffering is one thing that we cannot share. Mental anguish is another type of suffering that you cannot share. Oh, the number of folk who are disappointed. They are even bitter today because of some great disappointment. Suffering is a burden that we have to bear alone.
There is another burden that you and I cannot share with anyone else. It is death. We cannot share this with another. There will come a time when each of us will go down through the valley of the shadow of death, and we will go alone. Thomas Hobbes, an agnostic all of his life, a very brilliant man, said when he came to his death, “I am taking a fearful leap into the dark!” And then he cried out, “Oh, God, it is lonely!” Yes, it is. Death is a burden you cannot share. John Haye, at one time Secretary of State, was quite a writer. He wrote a poem portraying death entitled “The Stirrup Cup,” having in mind the cavalrymen who used to drink when they mounted their steeds. This is the way he began:

My short and happy day is done,
The long and lonely night comes on:
And at my door the pale horse stands
To bear me forth to unknown lands.

And, my friend, when death comes, you and I will be riding alone. Death is a burden that you will have to bear alone.
We come now to the third and last burden that I shall mention. It bears an unusual name, by the way. It is the Beµma. The Beµma is the judgment seat of Christ. It is not for the unsaved; it is for Christians. Oh, yes, there is a judgment for the unbeliever, the Great White Throne Judgment described in the twentieth chapter of Revelation. But the Beµma Seat is for the Christian. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). Everything that we have done in the flesh as a Christian is to be judged to see whether or not we receive a reward. Salvation is not in question—that was settled for the believer at the cross of Christ. It is the works of the believer that are to be judged at the Beµma Seat. “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12).
Then Paul puts down a principle which is applicable to every avenue of life but is specifically given to believers: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (v. 7). This principle is true in the realm of nature. You sow cotton; you reap cotton. You sow wheat; you reap wheat. And as a Christian you will reap what you sow. We like to sing “The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago.” In a believer’s life this is true—but what about the new account? What about the account since you were saved? What has your life been since you accepted Christ? Do you have sin in your life? Have you confessed it? We are all to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
Somebody will say, “I’m a Christian. I don’t have any sin.” You don’t? Then you are not in the light. If you will get in the light you will see the sin that is in your life. The light—which is the Word of God—reveals what is there. Try this one on for size: “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). Does that fit you today? I think it will fit all of us. He that knows to do good, and does it not, sins. Your life as a child of God is a burden that you carry, and you will have to bring it before Him some day.
Now there is another type of burden which you can neither bear nor share. It is a burden the Scriptures speak of: the burden of sin. Paul speaks of it in the first part of Romans. David in the Psalms says: “For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me” (Ps. 38:4). Sin is a burden you cannot share with anyone else. And sin is a burden you cannot bear, my friend. “My iniquities,” David says, “are gone over my head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.” Also from the Psalms comes this longing: “And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest” (Ps. 55:6). Have you ever felt like that? Sometimes the doctor recommends that we get away from it all. The psalmist says, “If I could only run away from it.” But you and I cannot run away from it because we have a guilt complex. A psychologist out here at the University of Southern California tells me that the guilt complex is as much a part of us as our right arm. The psychologists have tried to get rid of it. They have not succeeded. Everyone has it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of detective stories, and creator of Sherlock Holmes, liked to play practical jokes. At one time he sent a telegram to twelve famous people in London whom he knew. The telegram read, “Flee at once. All is discovered.” All twelve of them left the country—yet all of them were upright citizens. May I say to you, my beloved, we all have a guilt complex. Sin is that burden which we can neither share nor bear. It is too heavy for us.
There is only one place you can get rid of it, and that is at the cross of Christ. “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved” (Ps. 55:22). The Lord Jesus said: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). He alone can lift the heavy burden of sin today, and it is because He paid the penalty for it. He alone can lift it; He alone can take it from you.
There are two famous pieces of sculpture that depict this. One is “The Dying Gaul” and the other is “The Laocöon,” which is in Rome at the Vatican. “The Dying Gaul” depicts a man who has been brought down as a captive and slave to Rome, then put into the arena as a gladiator and mortally wounded. He is lying there, his life blood flowing from him, and he is looking up for help. He is in a strange land, and there is nobody, nobody there to help him. A dying gladiator. May I say to you that this is a picture of any man today without Christ. Christ alone can help us, for that is the reason He came into the world. He said: “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He also said: “… the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Christ paid the penalty for your sin and my sin. Like the dying gladiator, we can look to Him and be saved.
The other piece of sculpture is “The Laocoön.” A priest of Troy looked out and saw two sea serpents come and coil themselves about his two sons. He went to their aid, but he could not help them because the sea serpents also enmeshed him in their coils. There they are—all three of them going down to death. To me this illustrates the fact that personal sin is a burden that we cannot cope with. It will take us down to death—eternal death.
What do you do with your burdens?
There are some burdens that you can share. There are others that you must bear alone. But the burden of personal sin is a burden too heavy for you; it is the burden you cannot bear. Over nineteen hundred years ago Christ took the burden of your sin, and He bore it on the cross. Today your burden is either on you, or by faith you have received Christ as your Savior and it is on Him. It cannot be both places—your sin is either on you or it is on Christ. And Christ does not share it—He bore it all.

Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things [Gal. 6:6].
This is probably the bluntest verse in the Bible. Paul is really putting it on the line. The Greek word koinoµneoµ, translated “communicate,” means sharing, taking part—sharing the things of Christ together. Paul is bluntly saying this: “Pay your preacher. If someone ministers to your spiritual benefits, minister to him with material benefits.” If God has blessed you materially and you are being blessed by someone spiritually, then you ought to minister to that person with material benefits. This is put on a grace basis of sharing, but believe me, friend, if you go into a grocery store and buy bread and meat and go by the checkout stand without paying for it, you are in trouble. There are many people who are ministered to spiritually, but when they go by the checkout counter, they don’t share. No one thinks anything about it. The Word of God says that you are to share with those who minister to you.


Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap [Gal. 6:7].

This is one of those remarkable verses in Scripture. This is an immutable law that operates in every sphere of life. In agriculture and horticulture if you sow corn, you get corn; if you sow cotton, you reap cotton. In the moral sphere you also reap what you sow. In the Book of Matthew, chapter 13, the Lord Jesus Christ told about a sower that went forth to sow. He also told us about a reaper that went forth to reap.
One day a visitor in a penitentiary passed by a cell where a man was patching his prison garb with needle and thread. The visitor, wanting to begin a conversation with the prisoner, said, “What are you doing? Sewing?” The prisoner looked up and replied, “No, reaping!” That is the point of this verse. The principle stated here is immutable, invariable, unalterable, and cannot be revoked. It cannot be changed one iota, and it is applicable to every sphere and field of life. When you sow wheat, you will get wheat. You will never pick a squash off of a walnut tree. Sometimes a watermelon vine extends out twenty feet in one direction, but it has never been known to make the mistake of putting a pumpkin on the end of it. It always puts a watermelon out there. There is wheat being found in tombs in Egypt that was put there five thousand years ago. They planted it and it came up wheat. In five thousand years the seed did not forget that it was wheat. What you sow you will reap and that will never change.
There are many men in the Bible who illustrate this principle. One of them is Jacob, whose story is told in Genesis 27–29. Jacob deceived his father, Isaac. He put on a goatskin and pretended to be his brother Esau, who was a hairy outdoorsman, in order to receive the blessing given to the oldest son. After deceiving his father, Jacob ran away and lived with his Uncle Laban for several years. He thought he had gotten away with deceiving his father. But remember, God says that what you sow you will reap. You won’t reap something similar; you will reap the identical thing that you sow. What happened to Jacob? He fell in love with Rachel, Laban’s youngest daughter. He served seven years for her. They had the wedding, and when he lifted the veil, what did he have? He did not have Rachel, the younger daughter; he had Leah, the older daughter. I have a notion that Jacob learned a real lesson on his honeymoon. He had deceived his father by pretending to be the older son when he was actually the younger son. Now his uncle gave him the older daughter when he thought he was getting the younger daughter. Believe me, chickens do come home to roost!
In 1 Kings 21 we find the story of Ahab and Jezebel and their murderous plot to take Naboth’s vineyard. Ahab coveted Naboth’s vineyard, but Naboth did not want to sell his land. But since Ahab and Jezebel were king and queen, they usually took what they wanted. Jezebel had Naboth killed and Ahab took possession of the vineyard. They thought they would get away with their evil deed, but God sent Elijah to them with a message: “… Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine” (1 Kings 21:19). Later Ahab was wounded in battle. He told his chariot driver to take him out of the battle, and the blood from his wound ran out into his chariot. After the battle, he was brought back to Samaria, and there in the pool of Samaria they washed the chariot, and the dogs licked up the blood.
Another example is the apostle Paul. He was a leader in the stoning of Stephen, and after his conversion, when he was over in the Galatian country, he was stoned. You may think that, because he was converted and his sins were forgiven, he would not reap what he had sowed. But it is a law of God that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
I remember well hearing Mel Trotter, the evangelist who was a drunkard before his conversion. I had invited him to Nashville, Tennessee, to hold evangelistic meetings. One night after a meeting we went to a place called Candyland and everybody ordered a great big sloppy banana split, or a milkshake, or a malt. All Mel Trotter ordered was a little bitty glass of carbonated water. Everyone began to rib him about it, and asked him for the reason. I shall never forget his answer, “When the Lord gave me a new heart at my conversion, He did not give me a new stomach. I am paying for the years I spent drinking.” May I say again, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked. You won’t get by with it.
I wish young people would realize the truth of this principle. Many of them are taking drugs. Many are trying to satisfy themselves by indulging in easy sex, free love. Some of them are already beginning to reap the results of what they have sown. Venereal disease has reached epidemic proportions in many states in America, and there is an alarming rise in mental disorders. Why? God says that you will not get by with sin—regardless of how many pills you take. God says you will reap what you sow. God will not be mocked. When you sow corn, you reap corn. When you sow sin, that is what you will reap. Someone may say, “I got converted.” That is wonderful, but you are still going to have a payday someday. You will still reap what you have sown.


For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting [Gal. 6:8].

Reaping “life everlasting” includes the fruit of the Spirit in this life and the glorious prospect of the future.
I think many Christians really ought to be fearful of the return of Christ for His own, because it is then that we shall go before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the things done in the flesh. My friend, you may be saved, but it may still be very embarrassing for you in that day when you give an account of your life to Him. John mentions the fact that it is possible to be ashamed at His appearing (see 1 John 2:28). If you are going to live in the flesh, you will produce the things of the flesh. That does not, however, mean that you will lose your salvation, but it does mean that you will lose your reward, which will make it a day of shame and regret when you stand before Him.
God has put up a red light; now He puts up a green light. Here are words for your comfort and encouragement.

And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not [Gal. 6:9].
A father said to me some time ago, “I’m concerned about my boys.” He is a doctor, and he said, “The tide is against me. The schools are against me. Other parents seem to be against me, and even some friends are against me. But I want to raise my boys right.” If that is your concern, my friend, let me encourage you to sow the right seed. Be patient, and you will reap what you have sown. In Kansas you can’t go out and cut grain in January. You have to wait until the time of reaping comes. So just keep sowing. You may have problems and difficulties today, but just keep sowing the Word of God. The Lord has promised: “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa. 55:10–11).
Remember that Abraham believed God and walked with Him in the land of Canaan. At that time the Canaanite—wicked and idolatrous—was in the land. A son, Isaac, was born to Abraham. When Isaac became a young man, Abraham took him to the top of Mount Moriah. In obedience to God’s command, Abraham prepared to offer his son as a sacrifice. God, however, did not let him go through with it. Abraham sowed to the Spirit and he reaped life everlasting.
Jochebed was the mother of Moses. Because of the terrible times in which they lived, she devised a plan to save his life, and he was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. By God’s wonderful arrangement, Jochebed was able to be his nursemaid while he was young. Undoubtedly she taught Moses about God and His call to Abraham and about His purpose for Israel. Then she saw her boy grow up like an Egyptian. All Egypt was against her—the culture of Egypt, the pleasures of Egypt, the philosophy of Egypt, and the religion of Egypt. But there came a day when Moses forsook the pleasures and sins of Egypt and went out to take his place with God’s people. Jochebed reaped what she had sown.
We also have an illustration of this principle in the life of David. His sin was glaring, and many folk think of him as being a cruel, sinful man. But sin did not characterize David’s life. It is interesting that a drop of black ink on a white tablecloth can be seen from a long distance, but a drop of black ink on a black suit would never be noticed. Other kings during that period of time were so bad that, when they committed a sin such as David did, it would not be noticed. But in David’s life it stands out like a horrible blot. David had a heart for God. Even in his confession, he reveals his hunger and thirst for God. But David sowed sin and reaped a terrible harvest in the lives of his own children.
We reap what we sow, my friend. “And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”


As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith [Gal. 6:10].

Now Paul moves on. He says that we ought to be do-gooders. Now I recognize that the entire religion of liberalism is one of “doing good.” I believe in doing good, but you have to have the right foundation under the good deeds. The right foundation is the gospel of the grace of God and walking in the Spirit of God. When you walk in the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is produced. Then, my friend, you are going to do good. You will do good for all men, especially for other believers.

AUTOGRAPHED CONCLUSION


This brings us to the last major division of the epistle to the Galatians. Three handwritings are mentioned in this final section. The first is Paul’s own handwriting.


Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand [Gal. 6:11].

“How large a letter” doesn’t mean a long letter. This Epistle to the Galatians is only six chapters, while his Epistle to the Romans (which deals with practically the same subject) is sixteen chapters. This could not be called a long letter. But Paul is saying that he has written with large letters, which is characteristic with folk who have poor vision. This, I believe, bears out the theory that Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was eye trouble (see 2 Cor. 12:7). As you recall, he had said to them earlier, “… I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me” (Gal. 4:15). I am sure that Paul had a serious visual problem.
When Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans, he dictated it to a secretary. And at the conclusion of the letter, Paul said to the secretary, “Now if you want to put in your greetings, go ahead and do it.” So in Romans 16:22 we have the secretary’s salutation: “I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.”
However, when Paul wrote to the Galatians, he was angry. He had heard that they were mixing the gospel with law—and when that is done, the gospel of the grace of God is absolutely destroyed. He couldn’t wait for a secretary to arrive—he just sat down and wrote to them himself. Because he didn’t see clearly, he wrote with large letters.
I studied Shakespeare under a very skillful scholar who was partially blind. During class he would put the book right up to his nose and move it back and forth as he read. When he graded our papers, he would write his comments in large letters in the margin. His comments were brief because the words he wrote were so large. Apparently, Paul’s writing was like that.

PAUL’S TESTIMONY


As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ [Gal. 6:12].


By exerting pressure and stressing circumcision among the Gentiles, the Judaizers hoped to escape the anger and wrath of Jews who were not believers. The Judaizers were the legalists of the day. Actually, you never get in trouble preaching legalism. It appeals to the natural man because law is given to curb him. A great many of us certainly feel that the old nature of the other man should be curbed.
I was talking to a man in a public place the other day when a boy drove about seventy-five miles an hour right through a dangerous intersection. This man wanted that boy arrested and put in jail. He wanted the boy to be forced to obey the law. This man rejects the grace of God—he is an unsaved man—but he certainly is for legalism. Every man wants the other man to obey the law.
Frankly, we also like a law we can obey. When I was a boy in school, I did some high jumping. In those days we started off with a three and one-half foot jump. When I jumped four feet, I had some difficulty. So when I practiced jumping, I always kept the bar at the four foot level. That is the way most people are about legalism. They want to be able to clear the hurdle, but they don’t want it to be too high for them. Legalism is popular. The grace of God is unpopular. The human heart finds it repulsive. It is the offense of the Cross.


For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh [Gal. 6:13].

By forcing the Gentiles to be circumcised the Judaizers would gain the credit for bringing them under the Law.
It is interesting that those who claim they live under the Law are not actually living by the Law. Many people who say that they live by the Sermon on the Mount are hypocrites. I know that to be true because of the experiences I have had in my ministry.
Let me cite an experience I had many years ago at a luncheon at the Chamber of Commerce in Nashville, Tennessee. When I was a pastor in that city, one of the elders in my church, who was a banker, was president of the Chamber of Commerce that year and invited me to speak to the group. I was a young pastor then—in fact, I was not yet married; it was my first pastorate. I arrived early and one of the officials was already at the speaker’s table. He began talking with me, and I have never heard a man swear more than he did—and I’ve heard some who are experts at it. I didn’t rebuke him, I just let him talk. Finally, in our conversation he asked me, “By the way, what’s your racket?” I told him I was a preacher. He looked at me in amazement and asked, “Are you the speaker today?” When I said I was, he immediately began to tread water fast! He said, “Well, we’re glad to have you, and I want you to know that I’m a Christian.” That was certainly news, because I would never have suspected it by the way he was talking. Then he enlarged upon it. He told me he was an officer of a very fashionable church in Nashville. He told me about all the wonderful things that he did, then he concluded by saying, “The Sermon on the Mount is my religion.” I said, “Fine. That’s great!” I shook hands with him, then asked, “How are you coming with it?” He looked rather puzzled and asked, “What do you mean ‘how am I coming with it?’” So I explained, “Well, you say the Sermon on the Mount is your religion, and I’d just like to know if you are living by it.” He said he tried to. “But that is not what the Sermon on the Mount is all about. It puts down a pretty severe standard and it hasn’t anything in there about trying. You either do it or you don’t do it. Now you say it’s your religion so I assume you do it.” He told me that he certainly tried. Then I began to push him a little, “Do you keep it?” He said, “I guess I do.” “Well, let’s see if you do. The Lord Jesus said that if you are angry with your brother you are guilty of murder. How do you make out on that one?” He hesitated, “Well, I might have a little trouble there, but I think I get by.” “All right, let’s try another commandment that the Lord Jesus lifted to the nth degree. He said if you so much as look upon a woman to lust after her, you’re guilty of adultery. How about that one?” “Oh,” he said, “that one would get me.” I thought it would. I said, “Look, you’re not keeping the Sermon on the Mount. If I were you I’d change my religion and get one I could keep.” Do you see what he was? That man was a hypocrite. He went around telling others that he was living by the Sermon on the Mount and he was breaking it at every turn. He needed the grace of God. And there are multitudes of people just like him in many churches today. Paul mentions that with this tremendous statement:


But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world [Gal. 6:14].

Between Paul and the world there was a cross. That should be the position of every believer today. That will have more to do with shaping your conduct than anything else. You will not boast about the fact that you are keeping the Sermon on the Mount, or that you belong to a certain church, or that you are a church officer, or a preacher, or a Sunday school teacher. You will not be able to boast of anything. You will just glory in the Cross and the One who died there.


For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature [Gal. 6:15].

This brings us to the second kind of handwriting mentioned in these final verses.
Circumcision was the handwriting of religion and the Law. It was sort of a handwriting on the body. It served as a badge signifying that you belonged under the Abrahamic covenant. It never availed anything. Wearing a button or a pin, signifying that you belong to a lodge or a fraternity can become almost meaningless. “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision”—uncircumcision is of no value either. These things carry no value whatsoever. There are folk today who like to boast of what great sinners they were before their conversion. Well, whether or not you have been circumcised—whatever was your state—is of no importance. The essential thing is: Has the Spirit of God come into your life and made you a new creature in Christ Jesus? This can come about only through faith in Christ.
You see, Paul would never have had any difficulty with the legalism of his day if he had presented the gospel as only a competitor in the field. Let me illustrate what I mean. We have an abundance of soaps on the market. Those who promote them tell us they will make you smell good or make you feel good or are kind to your skin. So let’s you and me get out a new brand of soap, and we’ll call it Clean, since getting you clean is the purpose of soap, and that seems to be the one thing the advertisers have forgotten. We’ll start advertising it by claiming that it is the only soap that will make you clean. Our slogan will be “Buy Clean and get clean.” Now that will get us in trouble immediately when we claim that it is the only soap that will get you clean. Manufacturers of other soaps will really begin to howl. But this is what Paul was claiming for the gospel. If he had said, “Judaism is good but Christianity is better,” he wouldn’t have been in trouble, because that’s what advertisers say today—our product is better than other soaps on the market. That’s competition. No one would dare say that their soap is the only soap that would do the job. Notice that Paul is not claiming that his soap is only a little better than the soap of Judaism; he is saying that Judaism is nothing, that circumcision is nothing, that whether you are circumcised or not circumcised is nothing. He is saying that only the writing of the Holy Spirit in your life, giving you a new nature, is essential. My friend, that is putting it on the line!
Now we come to the third and final handwriting presented to us in this section.


And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus [Gal. 6:16–17].

Notice the word marks. Paul is saying, “I bear in my body the ‘marks’”—the Greek word is stigmata—meaning ‘scar marks.’ If you want to see the handwriting of Jesus, look upon Paul’s body. In 2 Corinthians 11:23–27 he tells us, “Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” The stigmata were the sufferings of Paul which he endured for the sake of the Lord Jesus.
In Paul’s day stigmata was used in three ways. When a runaway slave was found and brought back to his master, he was branded on the forehead. Also soldiers who belonged to famous companies had the names of their commanders tatooed on their foreheads. Then, too, devotees of a pagan goddess (and there was much of this in Asia Minor and throughout the Roman Empire in Paul’s day) had her name branded on their foreheads. Paul says, “I have on my body the stigmata of the Lord Jesus.” He is saying this in effect, “I have written to you out of deep emotion and with great conviction. If you want to know if I truly believe what I have written and if these things are real in my own life, read my body—look at my scars.”
I lived as a boy in west Texas before there were many fences, and we used to identify cattle by the brand of their owner. My friend, circumcision costs you nothing. It is only an outward sign. Paul says it is nothing, although he himself had been circumcised. But he bore the brand marks of the Lord Jesus upon his body and upon his life. I believe that in our day the Lord Jesus still stoops to write, not upon the shifting sands of the temple floor, but he writes upon the lives of those who are His own. His branding iron is on our hearts for eternity. Do we proudly wear His stigmata, willing to bear reproach for Jesus’ sake?


Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen [Gal. 6:18].

Paul concludes this marvelous epistle by commending the brethren to the grace of God.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Recommended for Further Study)


Cole, R. Alan. The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965.

DeHaan, M. R. Galatians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Radio Bible Class, 1960.

Gromacki, Robert G. Galatians: Stand Fast in Liberty. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1979.

Hendriksen, William. Exposition of Galatians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1968. (Comprehensive.)

Hogg, C. F. and Vine, W. E. The Epistle to the Galatians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1922. (Excellent.)

Ironside, H. A. Expository Messages on the Epistle to the Galatians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1940. (All of his books are especially fine for young Christians.)

Kelly, William. Lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians. Addison, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, n.d.

Kent, Homer A., Jr. The Freedom of God’s Sons: Studies in Galatians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1976. (Excellent for personal or group study.)

Luther, Martin. Commentary on Galatians. 1525. Reprint. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, n.d. (Abridged.)

Ridderbos, Herman N. The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1953.

Strauss, Lehman. Devotional Studies in Galatians and Ephesians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1957.

Tenney, Merrill C. Galatians: The Charter of Christian Liberty. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1954. (Excellent illustration of ten methods of Bible study.)

Vaughan, Curtis. Galatians: A Study Guide Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1972.

Vos, Howard F. Galatians—A Call to Christian Liberty. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1971. (An excellent, inexpensive survey.)

Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Free (Galatians). Wheaton, Illinois: Scripture Press (Victor Books), n.d.
Wuest, Kenneth S. Galatians in the Greek New Testament for English Readers. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1944.

The Epistle to the
Ephesians

INTRODUCTION

A quartet of men left Rome in the year a.d. 62 bound for the province of Asia which was located in what was designated as Asia Minor and is currently called Turkey. These men had on their persons four of the most sublime compositions of the Christian faith. These precious documents would be invaluable if they were in existence today. Rome did not comprehend the significance of the writings of an unknown prisoner. If she had, these men would have been apprehended and the documents seized.
When these men bade farewell to the apostle Paul, each was given an epistle to bear to his particular constituency. These four letters are in the Word of God, and they are designated the “Prison Epistles of Paul,” since he wrote them while he was imprisoned in Rome. He was awaiting a hearing before Nero who was the Caesar at that time. Paul as a Roman citizen had appealed his case to the emperor, and he was waiting to be heard.
This quartet of men and their respective places of abode can be identified:
(1) Epaphroditus was from Philippi, and he had the Epistle to the Philippians (see Phil. 4:18); (2) Tychicus was from Ephesus, and he had the Epistle to the Ephesians (see Eph. 6:21); (3) Epaphras was from Colosse, and he had the Epistle to the Colossians (see Col. 4:12); and (4) Onesimus was a runaway slave from Colosse, and he had the Epistle to Philemon who was his master (see Philem. 10).
These epistles present a composite picture of Christ, the church, the Christian life, and the interrelationship and functioning of them all. These different facets present the Christian life on the highest plane.
Ephesians presents the church which is Christ’s body. This is the invisible church of which Christ is the Head.
Colossians presents Christ as the Head of the body, the church. The emphasis is upon Christ rather than on the church. In Ephesians the emphasis is on the body, and in Colossians the emphasis is on the Head.
Philippians presents Christian living with Christ as the dynamic. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13).
Philemon presents Christian living in action in a pagan society. Paul wrote to Philemon, who was the master of Onesimus and a Christian: “If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account” (Philem. 17–18).
The gospel walked in shoe leather in the first century, and it worked. This is the thing that we are going to see in this Epistle to the Ephesians.
Ephesians reveals the church as God’s masterpiece, a mystery not revealed in the Old Testament (see Eph. 2:10). It is more wonderful than any temple made with hands, constructed of living stones, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is the body of Christ in the world to walk as He would walk and to wrestle against the wiles of the Devil. Someday the church will leave the world and be presented to Christ as a bride.
Dr. Arthur T. Pierson called Ephesians, “Paul’s third-heaven epistle.” Another has called it “the Alps of the New Testament.” It is the Mount Whitney of the High Sierras of all Scripture. This is the church epistle. Many expositors consider this the highest peak of scriptural truth, the very apex of Bible revelation. That may well be true. Some have even suggested that Ephesians is so profound that none but the very elect (in other words, the chosen few) can understand it. I have always noticed that the folk who say this include themselves in that inner circle. To be candid with you, I do not even pretend to be able to probe or plumb the depths of this epistle nor to ascend to its heights. This epistle is lofty and it is heady. It is difficult to breathe the rarefied air of this epistle—you will find this to be true when we get into it. We will do the very best we can, with the aid of the Holy Spirit who is our guide, to understand it.
On several occasions I have had the privilege of visiting Turkey, and I have visited the sites of all seven churches of Asia Minor. Ephesus is where I spent the most time. I reveled in the opportunity of visiting Ephesus which was the leading church of the seven churches and was in a great city.
The Holy Spirit would not permit Paul on his second missionary journey to enter the province of Asia where Ephesus was the prominent center: “Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). The Holy Spirit put up a roadblock and said to Paul, “You can’t go down there now.” We are not told the reason, but we know God’s timing is perfect. He would send him there later. So Paul traveled west into Macedonia—to Philippi, down to Berea, down to Athens, over to Corinth, and then, on the way back, he came by Ephesus. Oh, what a tremendous opportunity he saw there! “And he came to Ephesus, and left them there: but he himself entered into the synagogue, and reasoned with the Jews” (Acts 18:19).
Paul was so favorably impressed by the opportunities for missionary work that he promised to return, which he did on his third missionary journey. He discovered that another missionary by the name of Apollos had been there in the interval between his second and third missionary journeys. Apollos had preached only the baptism of John and not the gospel of grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. At that time Apollos didn’t know about the Lord Jesus, but later on he himself became a great preacher of the gospel.
Paul began a far-reaching ministry in Ephesus. For two years he spoke in the school of Tyrannus, and the gospel penetrated into every center of the province of Asia. Evidently it was at this time that the churches addressed in the second and third chapters of Revelation were founded by this ministry of Paul.
It is my firm conviction, after having visited Turkey and seen that area and having read a great deal on the excavations that have been made there, that the greatest ministry the gospel has ever had was in what is today modern Turkey. In that day there were millions of people living there. It was the very heart of the Roman Empire. The culture of Greece was no longer in Greece; it was along this coast, the western coast of Turkey, where Ephesus was the leading city. It was a great cultural center and a great religious center. The climate was pleasing, and it was a wonderful place to visit. The Roman emperors came to this area for a vacation. This is where the gospel had its greatest entrance.
Ephesus was the principal city of Asia Minor and probably of the entire eastern section of the Roman Empire. It was second only to Rome. The city had been founded around 2000 b.c. by the Hittites. It was what we call an oriental city, an Asian city, until about 1000 b.c. when the Greeks entered. There one would find a mixture of east and west. Kipling was wrong as far as Ephesus was concerned. He said, “East is east and West is west and ne’er the twain shall meet,” but they did meet in Ephesus.
Over this long period of about twenty-five hundred years, Ephesus was one of the great cities of the world. It was on a harbor that is now all filled up, silted in. It is not a harbor anymore; in fact, it is about six miles from the ocean today. At the time Paul went there, he sailed right up to that beautiful white marble freeway. It was a very wide street, and the marble for it was supplied from the quarries of Mount Prion.
The Temple of Diana in Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was the largest Greek temple ever constructed, 418 by 239 feet, four times larger than the Parthenon but very similar to it. It was built over a marsh on an artificial foundation of skins and charcoal so that it was not affected by earthquakes. The art and wealth of the Ephesian citizens contributed to its adornment. It had 127 graceful columns, some of them richly carved and colored. It contained works of art, such as the picture painted by Apelles of Alexander the Great hurling the thunderbolt.
Inside this beautiful temple was the idol of Diana. This was not the beautiful Diana of Greek mythology. It was the oriental, actually the Anatolian, conception of the goddess of fertility. It was not the goddess of the moon, but the goddess of fertility, a vulgar, many-breasted idol of wood. All sorts of gross immorality took place in the shadow of this temple.
A flourishing trade was carried on in the manufacture of silver shrines or models of the temple. These are often referred to by ancient writers. Few strangers seem to have left Ephesus without such a memorial of their visit, and this artistic business brought no small gain to the craftsmen.
It was to such a city that Paul came. He went first to the synagogue and spoke boldly for the space of three months. Then he went into the school of Tyrannus and continued there for two years “… so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:10). This was probably the high water mark in the missionary labors of Paul. He considered Ephesus his great opportunity and stayed there longer than in any other place. The people of Ephesus heard more Bible teaching from Paul than did any other people, which is the reason he could write to them the deep truths contained in this epistle.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Cor. 16:8–9). Because Paul’s preaching was putting the silversmiths out of business, there was great opposition, and as a result there was a riot in the city. Paul was preaching the gospel of the living God and life through Jesus Christ. God marvelously preserved him, which encouraged him to continue (see Acts 19:23–41). Paul loved this church in Ephesus. His last meeting with the Ephesian elders was a tender farewell (see Acts 20:17–38).
A great company of believers turned to Christ. I think the gospel was more effective in this area than in any place and at any time in the history of the world. I believe the Ephesian church was the highest church spiritually. It is an amazing thing to me that there were people living in that pagan city who understood this epistle—Paul wouldn’t have written it to them if they couldn’t have understood it. Furthermore, in the Book of Revelation we find that Ephesus is the first one of the seven churches of Asia mentioned in a series of churches that gives the entire history of the church. Ephesus was the church at its best, the church at the highest spiritual level.
You and I today cannot conceive the high spiritual level that the Spirit of God had produced in these Ephesian believers. They loved the person of the Lord Jesus and were drawn to Him. I have been a pastor for many years and I love to minister in our churches today. I must confess, however, that we are far from the person of Christ today. We are so enamored with programs, with church work, with an office in the church, that we get farther and farther from the person of Christ. The essential question is how much we love Him. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. Do we return that love? Do we respond to Him? Can we say, “I love Him because He first loved me”? This letter to the Ephesians ought to bring us very close to Christ.
Two books of the Bible which the critic says cannot be understood are Ephesians and Revelation. Liberalism says that Revelation is just a conglomerate of symbols that no one can decipher. Liberalism also says that Ephesians is so high it is beyond us.
Let me say that the two books of the Bible which can be arranged mathematically and logically are Ephesians and Revelation. There are no books more logical than they are. Years ago I got tired of hearing folk say, “I believe the Bible from cover to cover,” when they didn’t even know what was between the covers. They were just making a pious statement. If one really believes it is God’s Word, he will try to find out what it says. We need to get off this gimmick of methods and how to communicate to the younger generation and how to better organize the church and instead really learn what is in the Book. To help folk learn what the Bible is all about, I wrote a book called Briefing the Bible in which I attempted to give a helpful outline of every book in the Bible. As I was doing this, I found that Ephesians and Revelation were the two easiest books in the Bible to outline. Do you know why? Because they are logical. I don’t pretend to understand everything that is in these books, but I do say that they are logical and they are easily outlined.
Paul is logical in Ephesians and John is logical in Revelation. John was told to write of the things he had seen, of things that are, and of things that will be. There is a clear threefold division. And the book is arranged according to sevens. You couldn’t find anything better than that. The Epistle to the Ephesians is very logical. Of the six chapters, the first three are about the heavenly calling of the church and are doctrinal. The last three are about the earthly conduct of the church which is very practical. You see, the church has a Head. The Head of the church is Christ, and He is in heaven. We are identified with Him. But the feet of the church are down here on the earth. Paul won’t leave us sitting up there in the heavenlies; he says, “Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Eph. 4:1). In other words, Christian, it’s nice to sit up there in the heavenlies and boast of your position in Christ, but, for goodness’ sake, get down out of your high chair and start walking. We need to remember that in Paul’s day believers were walking in a pagan society in the Roman world. The first half is doctrinal and the last half is practical, which makes a very logical division in the book. We need both. We are not to live in the first three chapters only. They are wonderful, but the message must get down here where we live, down where the rubber meets the road.
The doctrinal section is also very logical. In chapter 1 the church is a body. In chapter 2 the church is a temple. In chapter 3 the church is a mystery.
When we get to the practical section, we find in chapter 4 that the church is a new man. The church is to exhibit something new in the world: walking through the world as a new man. In chapter 5 the church will be a bride. Don’t get the idea that the church is a bride now; the church is not a bride today. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 11:2, “… for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” In effect he says, “I’m getting you engaged to Christ today, and someday the church will be His bride.” In chapter 6 the church is a soldier. A wag who heard me give this outline said to me, “That’s interesting. The church will be a bride, you say, and the church is a soldier. In a lot of marriages down here, they get married and then the fighting starts.” Well, that is not the way Paul meant it. He was being very practical. The church is a soldier, and there is an enemy to be fought. There is a battle going on in this world. The bugle has sounded. We need to stand for God today.

OUTLINE

I. Doctrinal, the Heavenly Calling of the Church (Vocalization), Chapters 1–3
A. The Church Is a Body, Chapter 1
1. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–2
2. God the Father Planned the Church, Chapter 1:3–6(“A body hast thou prepared me”)
3. God the Son Paid the Price for the Church, Chapter 1:7–12(“Redemption through His blood”)
4. God the Holy Spirit Protects the Church, Chapter 1:13–14(“By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body”)
5. Prayer for Knowledge and Power, Chapter 1:15–23
B. The Church Is a Temple, Chapter 2
1. The Material for Construction, Chapter 2:1–10(The “dead in trespasses” are made into a living temple)
2. The Method of Construction, Chapter 2:11–18
3. The Meaning of the Construction (quo animo), Chapter 2:19–22(“Groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord”)
C. The Church Is a Mystery, Chapter 3
1. The Explanation of the Mystery, Chapter 3:1–4(Not revealed in the Old Testament)
2. The Definition of the Mystery, Chapter 3:5–13(Jews and Gentiles are partakers of the same Body—the Church)
3. Prayer for Power and Knowledge, Chapter 3:14–21(“Strengthened with might” and “to know the love of Christ”)
II. Practical, the Earthly Conduct of the Church (Vocation), Chapters 4–6
A. The Church Is a New Man, Chapter 4
1. The Exhibition of the New Man, Chapter 4:1–6(“Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit”)
2. The Inhibition of the New Man, Chapter 4:7–16(“No more children”—“grow up into Him”—“perfect man”)
3. The Prohibition of the New Man, Chapter 4:17–32(“Walk not as other Gentiles walk”—“be ye kind one to another”)
B. The Church Will Be a Bride, Chapter 5
1. The Engagement of the Church, Chapter 5:1–17(“For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”)
2. The Experience of the Church, Chapter 5:18–24(“Be filled with the Spirit”)
3. The Expectation of the Church, Chapter 5:25–33(“That he might present it to himself a glorious church”)
C. The Church Is a Soldier, Chapter 6
1. The Soldier’s Relationships, Chapter 6:1–9(“No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life”)
2. The Soldier’s Enemy, Chapter 6:10–12(“The wiles of the devil”)
3. The Soldier’s Protection, Chapter 6:13–18(“The whole armour of God”)
4. The Soldier’s Example—Paul, a Good Soldier of Jesus Christ, Chapter 6:19–22
5. The Soldier’s Benediction, Chapter 6:23–24

CHAPTER 1

Theme: The church is a body; Introduction; God the Father planned the church; God the Son paid the price for the church; God the Holy Spirit protects the church; prayer of Paul for knowledge and power for the Ephesians

Ephesians begins with the doctrinal section concerning the heavenly calling of the church, the vocalization.

INTRODUCTION


Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:

Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ [Eph. 1:1–2].


This is the briefest of all the introductions to Paul’s epistles. It’s brief because, very frankly, this epistle was sent to the church in Ephesus but was intended to be for all the churches. In some of the better manuscripts en Epheso is left out—it’s not there. Ephesians was apparently the epistle that Paul referred to when he said in Colossians to read the epistle to the Laodiceans. In other words, this was a circular letter for the churches in that day. He’s not writing here to the local church as much as he is to the church in general, that is, the invisible body of believers.
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ” should be changed to Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. I hope you’ll not think I’m splitting hairs here, but all the way through this epistle and in many other places it should be Christ Jesus. The word Christ is His title. That’s who He is: “… Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). Jesus was His human name. Paul could say that “We know Him no longer after the flesh” (see 2 Cor. 5:16). Paul didn’t know Him as the Jesus of the three-years’ ministry but rather as the glorified Christ he met on the Damascus road. Paul always emphasized the name of Christ first—Christ Jesus.
Paul states that he is “an apostle.” What is an apostle? It is the highest office the church has ever had. No one today is an apostle in the church for the simple reason that they cannot meet the requirements of an apostle. Here are the requirements: (1) The apostles received their commission directly from the living lips of Jesus. Paul made that claim for himself. He wrote, “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)” (Gal. 1:1). This is the reason I believe Paul took the place of Judas. The disciples had selected Matthias, but I don’t find anywhere that Jesus Christ made him an apostle. Apparently all the apostles received their commission directly from the Lord Jesus. (2) The apostles saw the Savior after His resurrection. Paul could meet that requirement. (3) The apostles exercised a special inspiration. They expounded and wrote Scripture (see John 14:26; 16:13; Gal. 1:11–12). Certainly Paul measures up to that more than any other apostle. (4) They exercised supreme authority (see John 20:22–23; 2 Cor. 10:8). (5) The badge of their authority was the power to work miracles (see Mark 6:13; Luke 9:1–2; Acts 2:43). I do not believe such power is invested in men today. That was the badge of an apostle. John wrote at the end of the first century, “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed” (2 John 10). The badge was no longer the ability to work miracles but having the right doctrine. (6) They were given a universal commission to found churches (see 2 Cor. 11:28). Paul expressly met these six requirements for apostleship.
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” Paul rested his apostleship upon the will of God rather than any personal ambition or will of man or request of a church. He wrote to the Galatians: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen …” (Gal. 1:15–16, italics mine). Paul said to Timothy: “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim. 1:12–13). Paul made constant reference to the will of God as the foundation of his apostleship. You can check 1 Corinthians 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Colossians 1:1; 2 Timothy 1:1. He says it in all these places.
“To the saints … at Ephesus.” The word for saint is hagios which means “holy” or “separated.” The primary intent of the word is “set aside for the sole use of God, that which belongs to God.” The pots and pans in the tabernacle were called holy vessels. Why? Because they were especially holy and very fine and nice? No. I think they were all beat up and battered after that long wilderness journey. They were holy because they were for the use of God. A saint, my friend, is one who has trusted Christ and is set aside for the sole use of God. There are only two kinds of people today: the saints and the ain’ts. If you are a saint, then you are not an ain’t. If you ain’t an ain’t, then you are a saint. Now there are some saints who are not being used of God. That is their fault. They are set aside for the use of God and for His service. Saints should act saintly, it’s true. But they’re not saints because of the way they act. They are saints because of their position in Christ. They belong to Him to be used of Him.
“At Ephesus.” We have already referred to that. You can put in the name of your town here. For me it could be “at Pasadena.”
“And to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” These are the believers. The believers and the saints are the same, you see. A saint should be saintly and a believer should be faithful. A believer is one who has trusted Christ and a saint is the same one. The term saint is the Godward aspect of the Christian. The term believer is the manward aspect of the Christian.
“In Christ Jesus.” This is the most wonderful thing of all. This epistle is going to amplify that so much, that I will be dwelling on that in more detail later on. To me the most important word in the New Testament is the little preposition in. Theologians have come up with some “lulus” trying to tell us what it means to be saved. How do you define our salvation? There are words like redemption, atonement, justification, reconciliation, propitiation, and the vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. All of these words are good; they are wonderful, but each one of them merely gives one aspect of our salvation. What does it really mean to be saved? It means to be in Christ. We are irrevocably and organically joined to Christ by the baptism of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Cor. 12:12–13). We are put into the body of believers. We are told, “… he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17). We belong to Him, and there’s nothing as wonderful as that. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus …” (Rom. 8:1). Can you improve on that? Being in Christ Jesus is the great accomplishment of salvation. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer found that the word in occurred one hundred and thirty times in the New Testament. The Lord Jesus said, “Ye in me and I in you” (see John 15:4). How wonderful! We are in Christ. I can’t explain it; it’s so profound. Analogies may help us here:

The bird is in the air; the air is in the bird.
The fish is in the water; the water is in the fish.
The iron is in the fire; the fire is in the iron.

The believer is in Christ and Christ is in the believer. We are joined to Him. The head is in the body and the body is in the head. My body can’t move without the head directing it. The church, which is “the body of Christ” is in Christ, the Head. All the truths of Ephesians revolve around this fact.
Take time to look carefully at this epistle. I feel very keenly that along with Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians, Ephesians should be given top priority among the epistles. I feel that these epistles have a throbbing, personal, living message for you and me today, probably as no other portion of Scripture does. They are the great doctrinal epistles. When God said to Joshua, “… arise, go over this Jordan” (Josh 1:2), I know He’s not talking to me; but He is giving instructions to Joshua. Yet, to me it has an application. The Epistle to the Ephesians is the Book of Joshua of the New Testament, and it speaks directly to me in a personal way.
“Grace be to you” Grace was the form of greeting of the gentile world in Paul’s day. The Greek word was charis. Two men met on the street and one would say to the other, “Charis” I walked down the streets of Athens with a Greek friend of mine who is a missionary. He spoke to several people as we went by, and I said to him, “It sounds to me like you greet them with the word charis” He laughed and said, “Well, it’s similar to it.” Apparently it’s still a form of greeting today.
“And peace.” The greeting in the religious world was “Peace” That is the word you hear in Jerusalem: “Shalom!”
Paul takes these two words which were the common greeting of the day and gives both of them a wonderful meaning and lifts them to the heights. The grace of God is the means by which He saves us. You must know the grace of God before you can experience the peace of God. Paul always puts them in that order—grace before peace. You must have grace before you can experience peace. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).
You see the word peace everywhere today. Generally it refers to peace in some section of the world, or world peace. But the world can never know peace until it knows the grace of God. The interesting thing is, you don’t see the word grace around very much. You see the word love and the word peace. They are very familiar words, and they are supposed to be taken from the Bible, but often they don’t mean what they mean in the Word of God. Peace is peace with God because our sins are forgiven. Our sins can never be forgiven until we know something of the grace of God.
“From God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” The grace and peace are from God our Father. In fact, He becomes our Father when we experience the grace of God and are regenerated by the Spirit of God. Grace and peace also come from the Lord Jesus Christ. Why didn’t Paul say they also came from the Holy Spirit? Doesn’t Paul believe in the Trinity? Oh, yes, but the Holy Spirit was already in Ephesus indwelling believers. The Lord Jesus was seated at God’s right hand in the heavens. We need to keep our geography straight when we study the Bible. A great many people get their theology warped because they don’t have their geography right; and when we get that straightened out, it even helps our theology.

GOD THE FATHER PLANNED THE CHURCH


We come now to the second major division of the first chapter. It begins with a most marvelous verse.


Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ [Eph. 1:3].

We notice something that is very important here. He has blessed us. We praise Him with our lips because He first made us blessed. Our blessing is a declaration. His blessings are deeds. We pronounce Him blessed. He makes us blessed. The word blessed has in it the thought of happiness and joy. God is rejoicing today. He is happy because He has a way of saving you and He can bless you. It says He hath blessed us. I can’t think of anything more wonderful than this. He is not speaking here of something that may be ours when we get to heaven but of something that is ours right now. Somebody says to me, “Have you had the second blessing?” Second blessing! My friend, I’m working way up in the hundreds—in fact, up in the thousands. I’ve not only had a second blessing; I’ve had a thousand blessings. He’s blessed us, and He’s done it in Christ.
“In heavenly places in Christ.” You will notice that “places” is in italics in the text. It literally states, “in the heavenlies in Christ.” Here we are, blessed with all spiritual blessings, and it is in the heavenlies. I don’t know exactly where the heavenlies are, but I do know where the Lord Jesus is. He is at God’s right hand, and we are told here that these blessings are in Christ. May I say to you that we need to be careful with this. It does not say here that these blessings are with Christ (there are those who read it like that). Right now you and I are seated in Christ. When somebody asks, “Are you going to heaven some day?” the answer generally given is, “Well, I hope so.” Let me say this to you: if you’re going to heaven, you’re already there in Christ. He has blessed you in the heavenlies in Christ, and you are there regardless of what your position is down here. Your practice down here may not be good, but if you are a child of God, you are already in Christ. Some people even misunderstand it in another way. I was teaching Ephesians at a conference once, and they called on a brother at the end of the service to lead the prayer. He started by saying, “Lord, we just thank you that this morning we’ve been sitting in the heavenly places in Christ.” Well, he missed the point. We don’t have to come to a Bible study (as important as that is) and have our hearts thrilled with these great spiritual truths to be sitting in the heavenlies. The fact of the matter is, you are in the heavenlies in Christ even when you are down in the dumps. Everyone who is in Christ is seated in the heavenlies in Him. That is the position which He has given to us.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We praise Him. Why? Because He has blessed us. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. The parallel here is Joshua in the Old Testament. We saw in the study of that book that Canaan was given to the children of Israel by God. Canaan is not a picture of heaven. Canaan is a picture of where we live today. It could never be heaven because there were enemies to be fought and battles to be won. Down here is where the battle is being fought. When we get to heaven, there will be no more battles. The interesting point here is that God gave them Canaan. All they had to do was lay hold of their possession. God told Joshua, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses” (Josh. 1:3). Joshua could say, “Well, Lord, you’ve already given it to us. You let us walk in and take it.”
My friend, God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. We are in Christ. Have you ever stopped to think of what we have in Christ? Christ has been made unto us justification and sanctification. When I started out in church as a boy, I was working for my salvation. I didn’t do very well with that. Then I learned that Christ is my justification. I tried to work to be good after I was saved, and I didn’t do very well at that either. Then I learned that Christ has been made unto me sanctification. You see, I have everything in Christ; I have been blessed with all spiritual blessings. You can’t improve on that, can you? When you come to Christ, you have everything in Him. Don’t come and tell me today that I have to wait until later on, that I have to tarry for the Holy Spirit to give me something special—for example, a baptism. I have it all in Christ. When you tell me that I did not get everything in Christ, you are denying what Christ did for me. I got everything when I came to Him.
Now there are two ways to treat these blessings, which are actually your spiritual possessions: either to lay hold of them or not to lay hold of them. Two stories illustrate what I mean, and both of them are true. When I was in Chicago many years ago, picked up the evening paper during the week and read a little article and clipped it out. It was way down at the bottom of the front page and wasn’t apt to be noticed. It read “The flophouses and saloons of Chicago’s Skid Row were searched today for one Stanley William McKenna Walker, 50, an Oxford graduate and heir to half of an $8,000,000 English estate. The missing persons detail hoped that somewhere among the down-and-outers who line the curbs and sleep off wine binges in the cheap hotels they would find Walker, son of a wealthy British shipbuilder.” I thought how tragic it was. Imagine being an heir to half of $8,000,000 and being a wino who’s sleeping in two-bit hotels. I felt like sitting down and weeping for that poor fellow. Then I began thinking of the children of God today who are living in cheap hotels, living off the little “wine” of this world. I don’t mean that literally, but that they engage in cheap entertainment down here. They are wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus and are blessed with all spiritual blessings, but they live like paupers down here. There are a lot of folk in our churches who live like that today, and it’s tragic. I was telling this story when I was a pastor in Los Angeles, and a lady who was visiting from Chicago came up afterward and asked, “Dr. McGee, do you know the end of that story?” I said, “No, I never heard.” She said, “Well, they found him.” “Oh,” I replied, “that was wonderful.” “No,” she said, “they found him dead in a doorway on a cold night later on that fall.” How tragic to die like that man died. Many Christians live and die like that, and yet they are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ.
The second true story happened out West here, years ago. An heir to a British nobleman was living in poverty and barely eking out an existence. After the nobleman died, they began to look for his heir and when they found him, they told him about his inheritance. A great deal of publicity was made of it. Do you know what that fellow did? He immediately went down to the clothing store and ordered their best suit and then bought a first class ticket to return to England in style. Do you know why? He believed the inheritance was his, and he acted upon it. My friend, you can go either route. You can travel your Christian life in first class or in steerage. You can go second, third, or fourth class, and there are a lot of Christians doing that today. God wants you to know that you’ve been blessed with all spiritual blessings. He hasn’t promised us physical blessings, but He has promised spiritual ones, and these are in the heavenlies in Christ. My friend, you’re not going to have any spiritual blessing in this life that doesn’t come to you through Jesus Christ. That’s just how important He is. He not only has saved us, but He is also the One who blesses us. How we need to lay hold of Him today and to start living as a child of God should live!
We come now to a very important section. We are in that division of the outline which states that God the Father planned the church. You would not build a house today without a blueprint. What is God’s blueprint? What did God do in planning for the church? We find in this section that He did three things: (1) He chose us in Christ; (2) He pre-destinated us to the place of sonship; and (3) He made us accepted in the Beloved.
Now I know that we have come to a passage of Scripture that is difficult. You’ll have to gird up the loins of your mind because this is a very strong passage in the Word of God. We are going to talk about election and about pre-destination. These are two words that are frightening. Many people run for cover when they hear these words mentioned. But they are Bible words, and they have a meaning which is important for us to see.


According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love [Eph. 1:4].

This verse and the verses that follow are essentially the most difficult verses in Scripture to grasp. They are repulsive to the natural man, and the average believer finds them difficult to accept at face value. Although the statements are clear, the truth they contain is hard to receive. These verses are like a walnut—hard to crack but with a lot of goodies on the inside.
“According as” is a connective which modifies the preceding statement in verse three. The spiritual blessings which you and I are given are in accord with the divine will. All is done in perfect unison with God’s purpose. This world and this universe will operate according to the plan and purpose of Almighty God. “According as” looks back to the three-in-one blessing of the last verse. There are actually and ought to be three ins in verse three. There is, first of all, “in all spiritual blessings,” which are then wrapped “in the heavenlies,” and finally put in the larger package of “in Christ.” The whole thought is: Open your gift and see what God has done for you, and then move out in faith and lay hold of it and live today on the high plane to which God has brought you. He’s made you a son and blessed you with all spiritual blessings. We need to live like that in the world today.
Now all this was according to His plan. God the Father planned the church, God the Son paid for the church, and God the Holy Spirit protects the church. The source of all our blessings is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He carries our mind back to eternity past to make us realize that salvation is altogether of God and not at all of ourselves. You and I are not the originators or the promoters or the consummators of our salvation. God did it all. An old hymn puts it like this:

’Tis not that I did choose Thee
For, Lord, that could not be.
This heart would still refuse Thee
But Thou hast chosen me.

A favorite hymn of today says:

Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God.
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” God planned our salvation way back yonder in eternity before you and I were even in this world at all. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who came down in time, and He wrought out our salvation upon the cross when the fullness of time had come. God the Holy Spirit is the One who convicts us today. He brings us to the place of faith in Christ and to a saving knowledge of the grace of God that is revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I heard this story many years ago. A boy in Memphis, Tennessee, wanted to join a conservative, fundamental church, and the deacons were examining him. They asked him, “How did you get saved?” He answered, “I did my part, and God did His part” The deacons thought they had him, so they asked him what was his part and what was God’s part. He said, “My part was the sinning. I ran from God as fast as these rebellious legs would take me and my sinful heart would lead me. I ran from Him. But you know, He done took out after me ’til He done run me down.” My friend, there is nothing in a theology book that tells it as well as that. God is the One who did the saving. Our part was the sinning.
The late Dr. Harry A. Ironside told this story. A little boy was asked, “Have you found Jesus?” The little fellow answered, “Sir, I didn’t know He was lost. But I was lost and He found me.” My friend, you don’t find Jesus. He finds you. He is the One who went out after the lost sheep, and He is the One who found that sheep.
God chose believers in Christ before the foundation of the world, way back in eternity past. That means that you and I didn’t do the choosing. He did not choose us because we were good or because we would do some good, but He did choose us so that we could do some good. The entire choice is thrown back upon the sovereignty of the wisdom and goodness of God alone. It was Charles Spurgeon who once said, “God chose me before I came into the world, because if He’d waited until I got here, He never would have chosen me.” It is God who has chosen us—we have not chosen Him. The Lord Jesus said to His own in the Upper Room, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you …” (John 15:16). Dr. G. Campbell Morgan commented, “That puts the responsibility on Him. If He did the choosing, then He’s responsible.” That makes it quite wonderful!
Israel furnishes us an example of this divine choosing. “Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:1–2). God chose Israel in time; He chose the church in eternity. Since God made the choice in eternity, there has not arisen anything unforeseen to Him which has caused Him to revamp His program or change His mind. He knew the end from the beginning (see Acts 15:18).
God did all this for a purpose: “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” God chose us in order to sanctify us. He saves us and He sanctifies us that we might be holy. That’s the positive side of His purpose. It has to do with the inner life of the believer. A holy life is demanded by God’s election. Now don’t tell me that you can say, “Well, I’m one of the elected. I have been saved by grace, and now I can do as I please.” Paul answered that kind of reasoning. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Rom. 6:1–2). You can’t use grace as a license to sin, my friend. If you go on living in sin, it is because you are a sinner who hasn’t been saved. A sinner who has been saved will show a change in his way of living.
Not only did God elect us in order that we should be holy but also that we should be “without blame.” Now this is the negative side. The believer in Christ is seen before God as without blame. Again we see an example of this in Israel. God would not permit Balaam to curse Israel or to find fault with His people. “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Num. 23:21). Yes, but if you had gone down there into the camp of Israel, you would have found that God did find fault with them and He judged them—He was sanctifying and purifying that camp.
God has chosen you in order that He might make you holy and in order that He might make you without blame. It means that your life has been changed. If there is no evidence of change, then you are not one of the elect. God wants his children to live lives which are not marked or spotted with sin. He has made every provision to absolve them from all blame. “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1–2).
By the way, that answers once and for all the question of a limited atonement, that is, that Christ died only for the elect. This verse in 1 John makes it clear that He died for the world. I don’t care who you are, there is a legitimate offer that has been sent out to you today from God, and that offer is that Jesus Christ has died for you. You can’t hide and say, “I am not one of the elect.” You are of the elect if you hear His voice. You also have free will not to hear His voice. It is a glorious and wonderful thing that the God of heaven would elect some of us down here and save us. I don’t propose to understand all that—I just believe it.
The Lord gave us a picture of a great big, wide highway and off that highway is a little, narrow entrance. Over the entrance it says, “… I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6), and “I am the door …” (John 10:9). Now the interesting thing is that the broad highway on which most of the people are traveling leads down and gets narrower and narrower until finally it leads to destruction. You can keep on that broad highway if you wish, but you can also turn off if you want to. You can turn off at the invitation, “… him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). You can enter in at that narrow way, and the interesting thing is that the entrance is narrow, but then the road widens out. “… I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). You talk about the broad way! The broad way comes after you get through the narrow gate. But, you see, you must make the choice. Whosoever will may come—that includes you. It is a legitimate invitation.
D. L. Moody put it in his quaint way. He said, “The whosoeverwills are the elect and the whosoeverwon’ts are the nonelect.” It is up to you. The Lord has extended the invitation. Whosoever will may come. Don’t try to say that you are left out. God so loved the world. Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish. That “whosoever” means J. Vernon McGee. It means you—you can put your name right in there. Just because there are the elect, it does not mean we know who they are. You have no right to say that you are of the nonelect. If you will open your heart, you can come. That is all you have to do. I don’t believe in the idea today that you can have “mental reservations.” The problem is that you have sin in your life, and the Bible condemns it. If you come to Christ, it means you’ll have to turn from that sin, and some folk just don’t want to turn from their sin.
“Chosen us in him.” Again and again the Word of God emphasizes God’s sovereign choice. Paul states, “But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13–14). Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:2, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.…” The interesting thing is that election and sanctification seem to go together and they are both in the Lord Jesus Christ. If God has saved you, He hasn’t saved you because you are good but because you are not good. Paul puts it in such a marvelous way: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:14–16). Moses had gone to God in prayer, and God had answered, “Moses, I am going to hear and answer your prayer, but it is not because you are Moses and the deliverer. It is because I will show mercy on whom I will and I’ll show compassion on whom I will. It is not to him that wills nor to him that works but it is I who shows compassion.” Now, do you want to experience the compassion of God? Then you will have to turn to Him.
I think the best illustration of this is over in Acts 27. You remember that Paul was in a ship and there was a terrific storm so that the ship was listing and about ready to go down. They had already cast some of the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. Then Paul went to the captain and said, “And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee” (Acts 27:22–24). Now that was God’s foreknowledge. That is election. God had elected that nobody on that ship would be lost. Just a little later, Paul found a group of the sailors about to let down a lifeboat into the sea. They intended to go overboard, hoping to get to land in that way. Then Paul said to the captain, “… Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved” (Acts 27:31). The captain could have said, “Wait a minute. You already told me that none would perish,” and he would have been right. That is what Paul had said. That was God’s side of it—none would perish. But the condition was, “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” That was man’s side of it—they had to stay in the ship.
Now God knows who the elect are. I don’t. Someone came to Spurgeon one time and said, “Mr. Spurgeon, if I believed as you do, I would not preach like you do. You say you believe that there are the elect, and yet you preach as if everybody can be saved.” Spurgeon’s answer was, “They can all be saved. If God had put a yellow streak up and down the backs of the elect, I’d go up and down the streets lifting up shirt tails to find out who had the yellow streak up and down his back. Then I’d give that person the gospel. But God didn’t do that. He told me to preach the gospel to every creature and that whosoever will may come.” That is our marching order, and as far as I am concerned, until God gives me the roll call of the elect, I am going to preach the “whosoever will” gospel. That is the gospel we are to preach today.
Someone else has put it like this. On the door to heaven, from our side, it says, “Whosoever will may enter. I am the door: by Me if any man.…” Any man—that means you. You can come in and find pasture and find life. When you get on the other side of the door someday in heaven, you’re going to look back, and on that door you will find written, “Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.” I haven’t seen that side of the door yet; therefore, I give God (since He is God) the right to plan His church.
A friend of mine down in Florida once showed me the blueprint of a home he was going to build. He had planned it and had it all marked out in the blueprint. They had only laid the foundation, but he and his wife showed me where everything was going to be. Later on when we were in that home to visit them, it was just like they planned it. They didn’t have supernatural knowledge, but as far as I know, no one has questioned whether they had the right to do that or not. They did have the right, and they did it according to their plan. God has planned the church. After all, this is His universe, and the church is His church. What is His plan? “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”
Now the words in love are not connected with verse four, but actually with verse five. “In love,”


Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will [Eph. 1:5].

Somebody says, “Oooh, there’s that word predestination, and that’s another frightful term!” Friend, that’s one of the most wonderful words we have in Scripture, and this a glorious section. It is something we don’t hear too much about today. If I were not going through the Bible, I would have probably avoided this and would have chosen something else. I would have talked about the comfort there is for the saints, which is the big theme of even most fundamental preachers today. We’re all talking about comfort, but what we have here is strong medicine. Some folk won’t be able to take the medicine; but if you take it, it’ll do you good. We need something pretty strong in this flabby age in which we live. We need to know that we’ve been chosen in Him in order to stand for God today. It will make a world of difference in your life.
We are treading on the mountain tops in Ephesians. We’re in eternity past when God planned the church. I wasn’t back there to give Him any suggestions or tell Him how I wanted it done, but He’s telling me how He did it. In essence, God says to you and me, “You either take it or leave it. This is the way I did it. Maybe you don’t like it, but this is the way I did it, and I’m the One who is running this universe, you see.” God hasn’t turned it over to any political party yet. Thank God for that! He hasn’t turned it over to any individual either. We can thank Him for that. He certainly hasn’t turned it over to me, and I tell you, all of us can shout a hearty “Amen” to that and thank Him He didn’t do it that way. God has done three things for us, however, in planning the church. First of all, we’ve seen that He chose us—and that’s a pretty hard pill for us to swallow. Secondly, the Father predestinated us to the place of sonship. Thirdly, the Father made us accepted in the Beloved.
I cannot repeat often enough that election is God’s choosing us in Christ. I emphasize again that men are not lost because they have not been elected. They are lost because they are sinners and that is the way they want it and that is the way they have chosen. The free will of man is never violated because of the election of God. The lost man makes his own choice. Augustine expressed it like this: “If there be not free will grace in God, how can He save the world? And if there be not free will in man, how can the world by God be judged?” Here again is Paul’s strong statement, “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid” (Rom. 9:14). Now if you think that there is some unrighteousness with God, you had better change your mind.
I get the impression in some of the evangelistic campaigns today that people are asked to come forward and even that coming forward is doing something. May I say to you that God says He is not saving any of us because we came forward, or because we are nice little boys or nice little girls, or because we have joined a church, or even because we have an inclination to turn to Him. God says that it is because He extends mercy. He had to say that even to Moses. Moses could have gone to the Lord and said, “Look, I’m Moses. I’m leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. I’m really up there at the top. You’d have a problem getting along without me. Therefore, I want You to hear my prayer.” If you read his prayers, Moses never prayed like that. It was God who said, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and compassion on whom I will have compassion.” He told Moses that He was going to hear and answer his prayer, but not because he was Moses, but because “… it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16).
My friend, I’m going to be in heaven someday, and I’m not going to be there because Vernon McGee is a nice little boy. He’s not. You don’t know me like I know myself. If you knew me, you would tune me out right now. But wait a minute—don’t tune me out, because if I knew you like you know yourself, I wouldn’t even speak to you. So let’s stay together, shall we? We are both in the same boat—we are all lost sinners. I will not be in heaven because I am a preacher or because I joined a church. It will not be because I was baptized. I have been sprinkled and immersed. My wife belonged to a Southern Baptist church and she has always prided herself on being immersed. I tease her and say it sure will be funny if we get to heaven and find out the Lord really meant sprinkling after all. I tell her that that would leave her out, but I’m safe because I’ve been baptized both ways. You see, that is ridiculous—none of those things will put a person into heaven. The only reason I am going to be in heaven is because of the mercy of God. I am a lost sinner. Until you and I are willing to come to God as a nobody and then let Him make us a somebody, you and I will never be saved.

Your best resolutions must totally be waived,
Your highest ambitions be crossed.
You need never think that you will ever be saved,
Until first you have learned that you’re lost.

It is to the lost sinner that God is prepared to extend His mercy.
Don’t tell me you have “intellectual problems”—hurdles to get over. The problem with you and the problem with me was not that we had trouble with Jonah, or with Noah and the ark. Our problem today is that the Bible condemns the sin in our lives. God will save you when your heart is willing to turn to Him. He’s planned it like this in order that He might bring you and me into heaven someday; and when we get there, we are going to find out that He’s the One who did it.
Now in verse five we come to the next thing God did for us. “In love having predestinated us.” Some are going to say that they never knew you could get predestination and love together even in the same county, let alone in the same verse. But here they are. God’s love is involved in this word which has been frightful to a great many people. The word predestination comes from the Greek proorisos, and it literally means “to define, to mark out, to set apart.” It means “to horizon.” If you go outside and look around (especially if you’re in flat country), you only can see to the horizon. You’re “horizoned”; you’re put in that area. When it refers to God, predestination has to do with God’s purpose with those He chooses.
Predestination is never used in reference to unsaved people. God has never predestinated anybody to be lost. If you are lost, it is because you have rejected God’s remedy. It is like a dying man to whom the doctor offers curing medicine. “If you take this, it’ll heal you.” The man looks at the doctor in amazement and says, “I don’t believe you.” Now the man dies and the doctor’s report says he died of a certain disease, and that’s accurate. But may I say to you, there was a remedy, and he actually died because he didn’t take the remedy. God has provided a remedy. Let me repeat, God has never predestined anybody to be lost. That’s where your free will comes in, and you have to determine for yourself what your choice will be.
Predestination refers only to those who are saved. What it actually means is that when God starts out with one hundred sheep, He is going to come through with one hundred sheep. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:28–29). Dr. R. A. Torrey used to say that this is a wonderful pillow for a tired heart. Those who are called according to His purpose are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son. We’re talking now about saved people. Romans goes on to explain how this is done. “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). When God starts out with one hundred sheep, He will come through with one hundred sheep. You must admit that that is a good percentage.
Years ago I was told by a sheep rancher in San Angelo, Texas, that he would appreciate coming out with 65 percent. He said, “We can make money if we get to market 65 percent of the sheep that we start out with.” That makes you feel that it wouldn’t hurt too much if one little sheep got lost.
The Lord Jesus told a parable about a man who had one hundred sheep, and one little sheep got lost. You know, most of us get lost even after we have been saved. That doesn’t mean we lose our salvation, but we surely get out of fellowship with Him. Some people can get lost so far that they actually fear they have lost their salvation. But the little lost sheep is still a sheep even though he is way out yonder and lost. “All we like sheep have gone astray …” (Isa. 53:6). That’s our propensity; that’s our tendency; that’s the direction we go. We don’t go toward God, but we go away from Him. So what does the Shepherd do? He goes out to look for that one lost sheep! I’m confident that the man who raised sheep in Texas wouldn’t get up and go out into a cold, blustery, stormy night to get one little sheep. I think he would say, “Let him go.” Thank God, we have a Shepherd who never says that! He says, “I started out with one hundred sheep and I’m going to come through with that one hundred sheep.” Now, suppose the day comes when He is counting His sheep up in heaven, way out there somewhere in the future. He starts out, “One, two, three four, five … ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, ninety-nine, ninety-nine—what in the world happened to Vernon McGee? Well, We’ve just lost one, so We’ll let it go at that. A lot of folk didn’t think Vernon McGee was going to make it anyway.” Thank God, He will not do it that way. If I am not there when He counts in His sheep, He is going to go out and look for me, and He is going to bring me in. That is what predestination means. I love that word. It is God’s guarantee. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28). Always remember that if sheep are saved, it is not because they were smart little sheep. They are stupid little fellows. If they are safe, it is because they have a wonderful Shepherd. That is the glorious truth.
We are predestinated “unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.” Adoption means that we are brought into the place of full-grown sons. We have dealt with that in the Epistle to the Galatians. It implies two very important things. Adoption into sonship means regeneration. We have been regenerated by the Spirit of God. The child of God has been born again “… not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23). He is born again into a new relationship. That is what the Lord Jesus meant when He told Nicodemus that he must be born again. Adoption also means a place of position and privilege. When we are saved, we are born into the family of God as a babe in Christ; but, in addition, we are given the position of an adult son. We are in a position where we can understand the Word of the Father because He has given us the Holy Spirit as our Teacher.
When my little grandson was almost two years old, he talked constantly, but I could understand only a few words that he said. Yet I could pretty well tell what he wanted and needed. He was just a little, bitty fellow and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t know what he was saying. He didn’t always understand me either, by the way. The wonderful thing is that I have a Heavenly Father today—and I’ve been a babe a long time—and He’s told me that He’s put me in a position where I can understand Him. How wonderful it’s going to be as my grandson grows up and we can really understand one another. God, however, communicates to us now. Paul tells us how: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Cor. 2:12). All of this is done in Christ Jesus. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus!” (1 Tim. 2:5).


To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved [Eph. 1:6].

Since all is for the glory of God, Paul sings this glorious doxology, this wonderful psalm of praise. All is done on the basis of His grace and the end is the glory of God. The inception is grace; the conception is adoption; the reception is for His glory.
“Wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” Who is the Beloved? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Lord Jesus who said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). God sees the believer in Christ and He accepts the believer just as He receives His own Son. That is wonderful. That is the only basis on which I will be in heaven. I cannot stand there on the merit of Vernon McGee. I am accepted only in the Beloved. God loves me just as He loves Christ, because I am in Christ. Jesus said, “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:23).
There has been, therefore, a threefold work performed by God the Father. He chose us in Christ. He predestinated us to the place of sonship. He has made us accepted in the Beloved. It is all to the praise of the glory of His grace. He is the One who gets the praise. He is the One who did it all.
All of this is for your good and my good. I just like to revel in this, I like to rejoice in this, and I talk about this because it is worth talking about. It is so much more valuable than a lot of the chitchat that I hear today that goes under the name of religion. How we need to see the grace of God as it is revealed in Christ!
GOD THE SON PAID THE PRICE FOR THE CHURCH

In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace [Eph. 1:7].


Back in eternity past God chose us, predestinated us, and made us accepted in the Beloved. Now we move out of eternity into time, where the plans of God the Father are placed into the hands of Christ, who moves into space and time to construct the church.
It is an historical fact that Jesus was born into this world over nineteen hundred years ago. God intruded into humanity and after being on this earth for thirty-three years, He died upon a cross, was buried, rose again bodily, and ascended into heaven. Those are the historical facts that the Word of God gives us. While He was here, He redeemed us, and that redemption is through His blood. This is something which is not popular today. Most people want a beautiful religion, one that appeals to their esthetic nature. The cross of Christ does not appeal to the esthetic part of man; it doesn’t appeal to the pride of man. Unfortunately, the liberal churches and even a few so-called Bible churches make an appeal to the old nature of man and, therefore, there is no emphasis on the blood of Christ—it is considered repulsive.
Years ago a lady came up to the late Dr. G. Campbell Morgan. She was one of these dowagers who had a lorgnette (a lorgnette is a sneer on the end of a stick). She looked at him through her lorgnette and said, “Dr. Morgan, I don’t like to hear about the blood. It is repulsive to me and offends my esthetic nature.” Dr. Morgan replied, “I agree with you that it is repulsive, but the only thing repulsive about it is your sin and mine.” Sin is the thing that is repulsive about the blood redemption, my friend.
A new pastor came to a great church in Washington, D.C., and a couple came to him and said, “We trust that you will not put too much emphasis on the blood. The former pastor we had talked a great deal about the blood, and we hope that you will not emphasize it too much.” He answered, “You can be assured that I won’t emphasize it too much.” They looked pleased and thanked him for it. He said, “Wait a minute. It is not possible to emphasize it too much.” And he continued to stress the blood. It is repulsive to man, but it is through His blood that we have redemption.
After God the Father had drawn the blueprint, the Son came to this earth to form the church with nail-pierced hands. The entire context of the Old Testament sets forth the expiation of sins by the blood of an animal sacrifice. Yet this could not take away sins—only Christ could execute that. The writer to the Hebrews says it this way: “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool” (Heb. 10:6–13).
“In whom we have redemption.” “In whom” refers to the Beloved, who is Christ. We are accepted in the Beloved, in Christ. Redemption is the primary work of Christ. The literal here is “In whom we have the redemption.” The word the gives it prominence, and the fact that it is named first gives it top priority. This is the reason Christ came to earth. “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). He came to pay a price for your redemption and mine. We were slaves in sin, and He came to deliver us and give us liberty by paying a price for us.
There are three Greek words in the New Testament which are translated by the one English word redemption. The Greek word agorazo means “to buy at the marketplace.” Here is the picture of a housewife out in the morning shopping for the day. She sees some vegetables and a roast and puts down cash on the barrelhead. She pays the price and now they belong to her, of course. The only thought in this word agorazo, then, is to buy and take out. This is the word Paul used in 1 Corinthians 6:20: “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
The Greek word exagorazo means “to buy out of the market,” and it has the thought of buying something for one’s own use. You see, somebody could go into the marketplace and buy that roast and those vegetables and go down to the next town, where they are short of those items, and put them up for sale at a profit. Exagorazo means, however, to take goods out of the market place and never to sell them again, but rather to keep them for one’s own use. This is the word which is used in Galatians 3:13: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” This means that Christ redeemed us so that we would not be exposed for sale again. He has paid the price, and He has taken us off the market. We belong to Him.
The third Greek word for redemption is apolutrosis which is the word used here in verse seven. It means “to liberate by the paying of a ransom in order to set a person free.” It carries this same meaning in Luke 21:28: “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Redemption is a marvelous word. It means not only to go into the marketplace and put cash on the barrelhead; it means not only to take it out of the market for your own private use, never to sell it to anyone else; but it also means to set free or to liberate after paying the price. The last applies to buying a slave out of slavery in order to set him free, and this is the word for redemption we have here in this verse. Man has been sold under sin and is in the bondage of sin. All one needs to do is look around to see that this is true. Man is a rotten, corrupt sinner and he cannot do anything else but sin—he is a slave to sin. Christ came to pay the price of man’s freedom. That is what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).
This redemption is “through his blood”—that was the price which He paid. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). The blood of Christ is more valuable than silver and gold. For one thing, there is not much of it. A limited supply increases the value of a substance, but that really is not the reason for its value. One drop of the blood of the holy Son of God can save every sinner on topside of this earth, if that sinner will put his trust in the Savior. We have redemption through His blood, and the reason He saves us in that way is because “… without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). This is an Old Testament principle which is applicable to the entire human race from Adam down to the last man. We have been redeemed now, not with the blood of bulls and goats—that can’t redeem you—but with the precious blood of Christ.
“The forgiveness of sins.” Forgiveness is not the act of an indulgent deity who is moved by sentiment to the exclusion of justice, righteousness, and holiness. Forgiveness depends on the shedding of blood: it demands and depends on the payment of the penalty for sin. Christ’s death and the shedding of His blood is the foundation for forgiveness and, without that, there could be no forgiveness.
I think here we need to learn the distinction between human forgiveness and divine forgiveness—they are not the same. Human forgiveness is always based on the fact that a penalty is deserved and that the penalty is not imposed. It simply means that one wipes out the account. God is holy and righteous. Therefore divine forgiveness is always based on the fact that there has been the execution of the penalty and the price has been paid. Human forgiveness comes before the penalty is executed. Divine forgiveness depends upon the penalty being executed. It is really too bad that this is something which has bogged down our entire legal system today. That is why we are living in a lawless nation where it is not even safe to be on the streets of our cities at night. There has been a confusion between human forgiveness and the righteousness of the law. We are in trouble because of the leniency on the part of certain judges throughout our land. They sit on the bench and think they are being bighearted by letting the criminal go free. My friend, the righteousness of the law demands that a penalty must be paid. I once heard a judge say, “If God can forgive, then I can forgive.” But God paid the penalty and then He forgave. Is the judge on the bench willing to go and pay the penalty? I don’t think you have any right to take men out of death row unless you are willing to take their place, because a penalty must be executed.
A righteous God forgives on the basis that a penalty has been executed. When was it executed? When Jesus Christ shed His blood over nineteen hundred years ago. Sure, that’s not esthetic. It doesn’t appeal to the refined nature of civilized man today. Of course it doesn’t—man thinks his sin doesn’t really seem so bad. He tries to be sophisticated; he thinks he is suave and very clever. Friend, we are lost, hell-doomed sinners, and God cannot forgive us until the penalty has been executed. The good news is that the penalty has been executed. That is the reason that in the Word of God you will find forgiveness back to back with the blood of Jesus Christ. Forgiveness depends on the blood of Christ. That is how valuable His blood is. I have said it before, and I will say it again: you come to God as a nobody and let Him make you a somebody. He can forgive you your sins because He paid the penalty for your sins. This is the only way that you and I can have forgiveness for our sins.
The Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “… Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46–47). Paul says the same thing in Colossians 1:14: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” When Jesus met Paul on the Damascus road, He told him to go to the Gentiles, “to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:18). The shedding of the blood of Christ and His death on the cross is the foundation for forgiveness—sine qua non or without this there is nothing. God cannot forgive until the penalty has been paid.
The word for sins is paraptoma which means “an offense or a falling aside.” Paul describes the first sin of man as an offense in Romans 5:15. He uses the same word in Romans 4:25, “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” “Sins” includes the entire list of sins which is chargeable to man. Augustine stated it succinctly: “Christ bought the church foul that He might make it fair.” He bought it with His own blood and paid the penalty for our sin.
“According to the riches of his grace.” That is an interesting expression. It doesn’t say out of the riches of His grace but according to the riches of His grace. Let me illustrate the difference. I read many years ago that when the late John D. Rockefeller played golf in Florida he always gave the caddy a dime. I always felt that that must have almost broke the man to pay out such a handsome sum. You see, he didn’t give according to his riches—he gave out of his riches. I think he could have done a little better than that, and if he had paid according to his riches, the caddy would have been rich. God has redeemed us according to the riches of His grace. God is rich in grace, and He is willing to give according to His riches of grace. He has had to bestow so much on me, but He has enough left for you who are reading this way up in Alaska. It may be cold up there, but God’s grace is rich up there. Some of you across the Pacific may read this, and He has grace for you. God can save you, and He can keep you, and it is due to His grace.
We are dealing with the work of God the Son on behalf of the church. That work is threefold: (1) Christ redeemed us through His blood; (2) He has revealed the mystery of His will; and (3) He rewards us with an inheritance.
We looked at the Greek words for redemption and saw that it involved the paying of a price which was the blood of Christ: we can have forgiveness because He paid the price. We know that God went into the marketplace where we were sold on the slave block of sin and He bought us, all of us. He is going to use us for Himself—He establishes a personal relationship. We saw also that He bought us in order to set us free. Now somebody will ask, “Doesn’t that upset the hymn that says, ‘I gave, I gave My life for thee. What hast thou done for Me?’?” My friend, it surely does. The very word for redemption in verse seven, apolutrosis, means that God never asks you what you have done for Him. That is the glorious thing about grace: when God saves you by grace, it doesn’t put you in debt to Him. He bought you in order to set you free.
Someone else will ask, “But aren’t we supposed to serve Him?” Certainly. But it is on another basis, a new relationship—the relationship now is love. The Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). He didn’t say, “Because I’m dying for you, you are to keep My commandments.” He said, “If you love Me.” Today, if you love Him, He wants your service. If you don’t love Him, then forget about this business of service. One hears so much today about commitment to Christ. Friend, you and I have very little to commit to Him. We are to respond in love to Him, and that is a different basis altogether. We love Him because He first loved us.
I heard this story many years ago, and it’s the kind of story that you are not supposed to tell today, but I still tell it. I guess I’m still a square. It illustrates a great truth. In the South—and I hate to say, in the days of slavery—there was a beautiful girl who was put on the slave block to be sold. There was a very cruel slave owner, a brutal fellow, who began to bid for her. Every time he would bid, the girl would cringe and a look of fear would come over her face. A plantation owner who was kind to his slaves was there, and he began to bid for the girl. He outbid the other fellow and purchased her. He put down the price and started to walk away. The girl followed him, but he turned to her and said, “You misunderstand. I didn’t buy you because I needed a slave. I bought you to set you free.” She simply stood there, stunned for just a moment. Then she suddenly fell to her knees. “Why,” she said, “I will serve you forever!” Now that illustrates the basis on which the Lord Jesus wants us to serve Him. He loved you. He paid a price for you. He gave Himself and shed His blood so that you could have forgiveness of sins. This is all yours if you are willing to come to Him and accept Him as your Savior.
Now what if someone says, “But I don’t love Him.” Then He is not asking you to serve Him. But if you do love Him, then He wants you to serve Him. That is what it is all about. Never forget, your redemption and your forgiveness are “according to the riches of his grace.”
Now we are ready for the second work of God the Son on behalf of the church: Christ revealed the mystery of His will.


Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:

That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him [Eph. 1:8–10].

What is a mystery in Scripture? It is not a whodunit or a mystery story, and it is not something you wonder about, like, Was it the butler who committed the crime? It is not something Agatha Christie wrote or a Sherlock Holmes story, by any means. A mystery in Scripture means that God is revealing something that, up to that time, He had not revealed. There are two elements which always enter into a New Testament mystery: (1) It cannot be discovered by human agencies, for it is always a revelation from God; and (2) it is revealed at the proper time and not concealed, and enough is revealed to establish the fact without all the details being disclosed.
The Scofield Reference Bible (p. 1014) lists eleven mysteries in the New Testament:

The greater mysteries are: (1) the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 13:3–50); (2) the mystery of Israel’s blindness during this age (Rom. 11:25, with context); (3) the mystery of the translation of living saints at the end of this age (1 Cor. 15:51–52; 1 Th. 4:13–17); (4) the mystery of the N.T. Church as one body composed of Jews and Gentiles (Eph. 3:1–12; Rom. 16:25; Eph. 6:19; Col. 4:3); (5) the mystery of the Church as the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:23–32); (6) the mystery of the in-living Christ (Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:26–27); (7) the “mystery of God even Christ,” i.e., Christ as the incarnate fullness of the Godhead embodied, in whom all the divine wisdom for man subsists (1 Cor. 2:7; Col. 2:2, 9); (8) the mystery of the processes by which godlikeness is restored to man (1 Tim. 3:16); (9) the mystery of iniquity (2 Th. 2:7; cp. Mt. 13:33); (10) the mystery of the seven stars (Rev. 1:20); and (11) the mystery of Babylon (Rev. 17:5, 7).

Yet, even with all these, did you know that God hasn’t told us everything? There are a lot of things God hasn’t told us. There are many questions that I would like to ask God myself. A great many people send us questions, and we attempt to answer them. I have questions, too, but I don’t know who to ask because nobody down here knows the answers. Someday He will reveal them to us.
A mystery then is something God hasn’t previously revealed but now reveals to us. Now in these verses is a wonderful mystery that was not revealed in the Old Testament. First let me restate verses eight and nine to amplify their meaning somewhat: “Which He caused (made) to abound toward us: having made known [aorist tense] unto us in all wisdom and prudence the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him (Christ).” Notice that “in all wisdom and prudence” properly belongs with verse nine. What is the mystery of His will? First of all, it is something which is revealed according to wisdom and prudence. It is not some simple little “a-b-c” something. I very frankly rejoice that there are so many agencies and individuals who try to get out what they call the “simple gospel.” I thank the Lord that people write and tell us that we are making the gospel simple and they can understand it. I appreciate that because that is what we must do. Dr. H. A. Ironside used to say, “Put the cookies on the bottom shelf where the kiddies can get to them.” There is a “simple gospel” but, may I say to you, there are the depths and the wisdom of God that you and I can’t easily probe—sometimes not at all. We need to use all the mental acumen that we have in order to try to understand something of the great purposes of God, the plan of God. God wants us to know these things because now this mystery has been revealed.
“That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ.” Dispensation is another word like mystery. It is often misunderstood, and a great many people today think it is a dirty word. It is a great word! Some Bible teachers won’t even use the word because it is a word that is hated. There are a lot of words in the Bible that are hated—words like blood, and redemption, and the Cross. Paul says the Cross is an offense, but that cannot keep us from preaching about it. The Bible teaches dispensations, and so we will not avoid the subject at all.
Let me say first of all that a dispensation is not a period of time. That is where dispensation differs from the word age. We hear of the “age of grace”—that is a period of time. Dispensation is an altogether different word that is translated in several different ways. It can mean “a stewardship,” “an order,” or “an administration.” An English transliteration of the Greek word would be “economy.” It is an order or a system that is put into effect; it is the way of doing things.
For example, young people in school may take a course called home economics or domestic economy. They learn how to run a household. When a woman has her own home, she may decide to have baked beans one night and a roast the next night. She sets up the order of meals and that is the way she organizes her schedule. Down the street the mother in another family decides they won’t have a roast that night, but they will have fish. That is the way she runs her house, and she has a right to run it like that. There is also a political economy—a subject that is taught in our colleges today. A lot of students go into that field, and they learn how to run the government, the way to run a nation. England runs her government differently from the way we do in the United States. Each has a right to its own system and I wouldn’t say that either place has the right system. Russia has an entirely different system; we certainly wouldn’t better ours by taking theirs. Countries even have different systems of running traffic. In England they drive down the left side of the street. I enjoyed kidding our driver when we were in England, “Look out, there comes a car on the wrong side of the street!” “That’s all right,” he would say, “I’m going on the wrong side myself” In England, the right side is the left side. Now that is confusing to a poor American visiting over there.
A dispensation may fit into a certain period of time, but it actually means the way God runs something at a particular time: it is the way God does things. It is evident that God had Adam on a different arrangement than He has for you and me. I think even the most ardent antidispensationalist can understand that the Garden of Eden was different from Southern California today. And God dealt with Adam in a different way than He deals with us. (Now, I will admit that when people first moved out to Southern California, they thought it was the Garden of Eden. I thought so, too, when I first came here, but now it is filled with smog and traffic!)
Now God has never had but one method of saving folk; everything rests upon one method of salvation. The approach and the man under the system have been different, however. For example, Abel offered a lamb to God, and so did Abraham. The Old Testament priests offered lambs to God. God had said that was the right way. But I hope you didn’t bring a lamb to church last Sunday! That is not the way God tells us to approach Him today. We are under a different economy.
“Of the fulness of times.” What is the “fulness of times”? I can’t go into all phases of that, but God is moving everything forward to the time when Christ will rule over all things in heaven and earth. This is the fullness, the pleroma, when everything is going to be brought under the rulership of Jesus Christ. The pleroma is like a vast receptacle into which centuries and millenniums have been falling. All that is past, present, and future is moving toward the time when every knee must bow and every tongue must confess that Jesus is Lord. This is the mystery that is revealed to us, “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.” We learn this about Christ, that God “… hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him” (Heb. 2:8). This states very clearly that we have not yet come to that time. We are under a different dispensation today; we live under a different economy. But God has revealed this to us that is to come to pass, something that had not been revealed in the past.
Heaven and earth are not in tune today—we are playing our own little tune. We have our rock music going down here, while the only Rock up there is the Lord Jesus. He is the Rock: He is that precious Stone that is the foundation upon which the church rests today. And the day will come when heaven and earth will be in tune and all things will be gathered together in Christ.
Now we come to the third work of God the Son on behalf of the church: Christ rewards us with an inheritance.


In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ [Eph. 1:11–12].

Here is another marvelous truth. He gives us an inheritance—He rewards us for something we have not done. It is the overall purpose and plan of God that believers should have a part in Christ’s inheritance. They are going to inherit with Christ because they are in Christ. Paul writes, “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Rom. 8:17). “Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21–23). I really don’t grasp at all this tremendous statement God makes to us, but it causes me to be lifted from the seat in which I’m sitting and carries me right into the sky. Everything is mine! Christ belongs to me. Paul belongs to me. Even death may belong to me. All is mine. It is mine because He has given it to me. Christ is mine. God is mine. What an experience for us!
I feel like shouting because this is so wonderful. God has predestinated this; He has determined it. This refers to the saved—remember that God never predestinated anybody to be lost. He predestinated us to receive an inheritance. If He hadn’t predestinated it to me, I would never get one. It is something I do not deserve. It is a reward out of His grace and not out of my merit. This is God’s will, and that is the only basis on which it is done. It is good, and it is right, and it is the best. Why? Because God has purposed it. You just can’t have it any better than that.
Oh, these are the three marvelous things Christ has done for us: He’s redeemed us with His blood; He’s revealed the mystery of His will; and He rewards us with an inheritance. How wonderful it is—I can’t lose! He paid for the church, and I belong to Him because He paid a price.
May I say that the church is very important to Him today. The little plans of men down here—they’re not important. We think they are. Men are running around with a blueprint for the world today, but they won’t even be around here in the next one hundred years—that crowd will all be gone. But God’s great plans will be carried out. Thank God for that!
Verse twelve is one of those glorious doxologies that we find throughout the epistles. You will notice that Paul stops and “sings” the doxology after he tells what each person of the Godhead has done. He has just finished telling us about the work of the Son. Then he writes, “That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.” God does not exist to satisfy the whim and wish of the believer. The believer exists for the glory of God. When the believer is in the center of the will of God, he is living a life of fullness and of satisfaction and of joy. That will deliver you from the hands of psychologists, friend. But when you are not in the will of God, there is trouble brewing for you. Living in God’s will adds purpose and meaning to life: we are going to be for the praise of His glory. God will be able throughout the endless ages of eternity future to point to you and me and say, “Look there, they weren’t worth saving but I loved them and I saved them.” That is the thing which gives worth and standing and dignity and purpose and joy and glory to life. We exist today to the praise of His glory and that is enough.
This doxology looks forward, of course, to the coming of Christ. The third doxology, we shall see, concerns the work of the Holy Spirit.

GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT PROTECTS THE CHURCH

When we look at the work of the Holy Spirit, we see that (1) He regenerates us, (2) He is a refuge for us, and (3) He gives reality to our lives. We come first to regeneration.

In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise [Eph. 1:13].

This section, I believe, is one of the most wonderful in Scripture. “Well,” somebody says, “he doesn’t mention regeneration here.” Actually he does, and in a marvelous way, because now we’re passing from God’s work for us to the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The work of God in planning the church and the work of the Lord Jesus in redeeming the church and paying for it were objective. The work of the Holy Spirit in protecting the church is different because it is subjective; it is in us.
In this work of regeneration and renewing, the Holy Spirit causes a sinner to hear and believe in his heart, and that makes him a child of God. The Lord Jesus said, “… Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). How are we to be born again? John explains, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12). We need simply to believe on His name.
“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth” Hearing means to hear not just the sound of words but to hear with understanding. Paul wrote, “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23–24). Who are the called? Are they the ones who just heard the sound of words? No, it means those who heard with understanding. God called them. It was not just a call of hearing words, but a call where the Holy Spirit made those words real. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, according to Romans 10:17. Those who are called hear the Word of God and they respond to it. Then what happens? Peter puts it this way: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23). The Word of God goes out as it is going out even through this printed page. We are saying that the Son of God died for you and if you trust Him, you will be saved. “Well,” someone may say, “I read these words, but they mean nothing to me.” Someone else, however, will read or hear this message, and the Spirit of God will apply it to his heart so that he believes—he trusts—and the moment he trusts in Christ, he is regenerated. Believing is the logical step after hearing. It may not be the next chronological step, but it is the logical step. “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth.” This is the best explanation of what it means to be born again that I know of in the Word of God. You hear the word of truth—the gospel of your salvation, the good news of your deliverance—and you put your trust in Christ.
“In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.” I would like to remove the word after from this verse because these are not time clauses. They are what is known in the Greek as genitive absolutes, and they are all the same tense as the main verb. It means that when you heard and you believed, you were also sealed: it all took place at the same time. A truer translation would be, “In whom also you, upon hearing [aorist tense] the word of truth, the good news of your salvation, in whom also on believing [aorist tense] you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” This is, by the way, when the baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs. You are baptized the moment that you trust Christ. You are also sealed the moment that you trust Christ. The Holy Spirit first opens the ear to hear, and then He implants faith. His next logical step, you see, is to seal the believer.
There are people today who argue whether God the Father or God the Son seals with the Holy Spirit, or whether the Holy Spirit Himself does the sealing. That type of argument wearies me. They tried to split hairs in that way in the Middle Ages and would argue how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. You toss that around for a little while, and it will get you nowhere. I understand this verse to mean that the Holy Spirit is the seal. God the Father gave the Son to die on the cross, but the Son offered up Himself willingly. So both the Father and the Son gave. God the Father and God the Son both sent the Holy Spirit to perform a definite work, but it is the Spirit who does the work. He regenerates the sinner and He seals the sinner at the same time, and I think that the Spirit Himself is that seal.
There is a twofold purpose in the sealing work of the Holy Spirit. He implants the image of God upon the heart to give reality to the believer. You know that a seal is put down on a document and that seal has an image on it. I think that is exactly what the Spirit of God does to the believer. “He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true” (John 3:33). Apparently, this is the thought here—God has put His implant upon the believer.
The second purpose of the sealing is to denote rightful ownership. “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). The fact that He makes you secure does not mean that you can live in sin. If you name the name of Christ, you are going to depart from iniquity. If there is not this evidence, then you were not regenerated or sealed.
The Holy Spirit is the seal, and that guarantees that God is going to deliver us. We are sealed until the day of redemption. The day will come when the Holy Spirit will deliver us to Christ. It’s nice to be sealed like that—we are just like a letter that is insured. In the old days they would put a seal on it. Today they just stamp it with a special stamp, but it still means that the post office guarantees to deliver that letter.
Now we come to the third and final work of the Holy Spirit in protecting the church.


Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory [Eph. 1:14].

Earnest money is the money that is put forth as a down payment and pledge on a piece of property. It means you want them to hold the property for you. It also means that you promise there is more money to follow. The Holy Spirit is our earnest money. He has been given as a pledge and token that there is more to follow in the way of spiritual blessings. We have already seen that we have an inheritance—there is more to follow. The Holy Spirit is that earnest, that guarantee.
All of this is to “the praise of his glory.” This is now the third doxology in this chapter. As we have seen, Paul gives a doxology after he considers the work of each member of the Trinity. Here it is to the praise of the glory of God that the Holy Spirit regenerates us, becomes our refuge and seal, and gives us reality. All these glorious truths now move Paul to prayer.

PRAYER OF PAUL FOR KNOWLEDGE AND POWER FOR THE EPHESIANS


Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints,

Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers [Eph. 1:15–16].


The Ephesian church was noted for its faith and love. Love wasn’t just a motto, not just a bumper sticker, for these people. There was real love expressed by the saints. It was based on their faith in the Lord Jesus. This was the church at its highest. In the Book of Revelation the Ephesian church represents the early church at its very best. Because of their faith and love, Paul thanks God for the Ephesians.
It seems that the circumstances that motivate us to pray are trouble, sickness, distress, or a crisis. People asked me to pray for a church recently because it was in trouble: there was no love for the brethren, it was filled with gossip, and Bible study no longer held the highest priority. I love this church and I do pray for them, but it is sad that there are so many negative things that always seem to motivate us to pray. Paul was often motivated by the good things. When you hear something good about a child of God, are you motivated to say, “Oh God, I thank You for this brother and the way You are using him”? When you hear of a wonderful Bible church where God is blessing the preacher, and the Word of God is going out, do you get down on your knees and thank God for it? My friend, isn’t it true that too often we turn in a kind of grocery list to God? “I want this, I want that, I want the other thing.” “Lord, will You do this, will You do that?” God is not a messenger boy. Why don’t we thank Him sometimes? We need more thanksgiving services. I think He would appreciate all of us having a time of thanksgiving regularly—not just once a year.
A preacher friend of mine told me that their prayer meeting got so stale and so dull and so small that they tried something new. They decided that at the prayer meeting they would do nothing but praise God and thank Him. He declared, “We sure had some brief prayers, but we had a good prayer meeting that night. Nobody asked God for anything. They just thanked Him for what He had done.”
Paul says, when he heard the good news and wonderful reports about the Ephesian church, “I…. cease not to give thanks for you.” It’s interesting that we don’t too often think of Paul as an oustanding man of prayer. We would put him at the top of the list as a great missionary of the cross. We can’t think of any greater example of apostleship than Paul. If you were to make a list of ten of the greatest preachers of the church, you would certainly put Paul as number one. He was also one of the greatest teachers. The Lord Jesus was, of course, the greatest of all—“… Never man spake like this man” (John 7:46)—and Paul certainly followed in that tradition. He is also an example of a good pastor. According to Dr. Luke, Paul wept with the believers at Ephesus when he took leave of them. He loved them, and they loved him.
I always judge the spiritual life of a church by the way they love their pastor, providing he stands for the Word of God. One can pretty well judge the attitude of the people by the way they love their pastor. Today we need to judge folk by their attitude toward the Word of God rather than how big a Bible they carry under their arms. The Ephesians not only loved Paul, but they loved God’s Word.
When you think of anyone excelling in any field of service in the early church, Paul the apostle must be up toward the top. How about being representative of a great man of prayer—would you put Paul in that list? We think of Moses as the great intercessor on the top of the mountain. We think of David with his psalms and his confession of his awful sin. We think of Elijah who stood alone before an altar drenched with water at Mount Carmel. Then there was Daniel who opened his window toward Jerusalem and prayed even though he lived in a hostile land under a hostile power. The Lord Jesus was the Man of prayer, so much so that one of His disciples asked Him, “… Lord, teach us to pray …” (Luke 11:1). Did you know that Paul was also a great man of prayer? When I was teaching in the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, I would ask the students during their study of the epistles of Paul to make a list of all the prayers of the apostle Paul. They were to put down every time he said he was praying for someone. Lo and behold, student after student would come to me and say, “I had no idea that Paul had such a prayer list. I didn’t know he prayed for so many people!” Paul was a great man of prayer.
There are two of the prayers of Paul in this epistle. We are looking at the first one. Having set before us the church as the body of Christ, Paul falls to his knees and begins to pray. The other prayer is at the end of the third chapter. These two prayers in this epistle indicate Paul’s concern as a child of God for other believers. One of the ways one can judge whether or not a person is a child of God is by his prayer life. How much does he feel a dependence on God? If he has a need, he will go to God in prayer for himself. He will also go to God in intercession for others. Many people who have written from all over this country, and from other countries as well, have told me when I’ve met them, “I remember you in prayer.” Well, that to me is an indication of their faith. Remember that Ananias in the city of Damascus was disturbed when the angel told him to go to Saul of Tarsus. He objected because Saul was the man who was persecuting the church, but the angel said to him, “… behold, he prayeth” (Acts 9:11). That was an indication to Ananias that something had happened to Saul of Tarsus.
“Cease not to give thanks for you.” Paul first of all gives thanks to God for the Ephesians. They were on his prayer list, and I guess all the churches were.
“Making mention of you in my prayers.” That means he called them all by name. I was with a great preacher one time, and some folk came up and spoke to him and shook hands with us. One man said to him, “I’m praying for you.” I shall never forget what the preacher asked him, “Thank you very much, but do you mention me by name? I don’t want the Lord to get me mixed up with somebody else.” Call people by name when you pray for them.
We have seen that the motive for Paul’s prayer was good news. Now we will see that he does not pray for material things but for spiritual blessings. These are the blessings that are all-important.


That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him [Eph. 1:17].

Paul, having written that the church is the body of Christ, and that God the Father planned it, God the Son paid for it, and God the Holy Spirit protects it, recognized that the Ephesians wouldn’t be able to understand all this unless the Spirit of God was their teacher and opened the Word of God to them. Only the Holy Spirit of God could reveal the knowledge of God.
When Dr. H. A. Ironside lived in Southern California as a young man and was preaching in this area, he would sometimes visit a wonderful man of God who had come from Northern Ireland because of his health. This man had what was called in those days “galloping consumption,” and he was living his last days in a little tent out back of the home of Dr. Ironside’s parents. He had been greatly used of God in teaching the Word. While Dr. Ironside would sit with him, he would open up the Scriptures in such an amazing way that Dr. Ironside one day asked him, “Where did you learn that?” “Well,” this man said, “I didn’t get it by going to seminary because I never went to seminary. I never learned it by going to college. No one particularly taught me. Rather I learned these things on my knees on the mud floor of a little sod cottage in the north of Ireland. There with my open Bible before me, I used to kneel for hours at a time and ask the Spirit of God to reveal Christ to my soul, and open the Word to my heart. He taught me more on my knees on that mud floor than I could have learned in all the seminaries and colleges of the world.”
Having known Dr. Ironside personally, I can say that he too practiced a dependence on the Holy Spirit in his own ministry. I remember when he was teaching us the Song of Solomon, he said that he was never satisfied with what he found in the commentaries, and he just got down on his knees and asked God to reveal to him the message of that book. Well, he wrote a commentary on the Song of Solomon and, very frankly, his interpretation of it is the only one that has ever satisfied my own heart.
What a wonderful, glorious thing it is to have the Spirit of God be the One to teach us. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ … may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.” How will that take place? It will take place by the Spirit of God—the only One who can open our eyes—teaching us God’s Word.


The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints [Eph. 1:18].

More literally it reads, “the eyes of your heart being enlightened.” It is not the eyes of your mind but the eyes of your heart that must understand. One can be very brilliant intellectually, but that is no guarantee that there will be an understanding of spiritual truth. Scripture puts more emphasis on the understanding of the heart than of the head. Paul writes, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10:9–10).
I have no understanding of music whatsoever. I can’t sing and I can’t carry a tune. I recognize very few tunes, and I do not know what a pitch is. It is all a foreign field to me. One time a music director made the statement publicly that he could teach anybody to sing. I stood up immediately and said, “Brother, you have a pupil. Nobody has ever been able to teach me to sing.” The congregation laughed, and we made an engagement. I met with him every Thursday afternoon for a month, and at the end of the month he gave up. He said, “I believe you are right. You’ll never be able to learn music.” I asked, “How could I ever learn?” He said, “The only way in the world would be for you to be born again.” He didn’t mean spiritually; he meant born another person. My friend, as far as spiritual knowledge is concerned, no person can understand it apart from the Spirit of God. This is what we are told in 1 Corinthians 2:9–10: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”
I knew a dear lady in Sherman, Texas. We all called her “Grandma,” and she was a wonderful lady, but she could neither read nor write. I was just a first-year seminary student and I thought I had the answer to everything, so I went to visit her. I started out by trying to explain John 14 to her. I thought I’d make it simple for Grandma. She listened about five minutes and then said, “Young man, have you ever noticed this in that chapter?”—and then she went on to point out something from that Scripture. Well, to be honest, I hadn’t noticed it. I couldn’t understand how she could have such insight when she couldn’t read or write. She knew things I couldn’t find in the commentaries. How did she know? The eyes of her heart were opened by the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God wants to teach us today. One of the reasons that God’s people are not in the Word of God is because they are not willing for the Spirit of God to teach them. They depend on a poor preacher like me or on a home Bible class. These all have their place but, Christian friend, why don’t you let the Spirit of God teach you? Spend time in the Scriptures. When you come to a particular passage of Scripture, you may think it to be a barren place. If you don’t understand it and you read it many times and don’t seem to see much of anything in it, then get down on your knees before the Lord and say to the Lord, “I missed the point and You will have to teach me.” This is what I do. He teaches me, and I know He will teach you.
“That ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” We have learned that we have an inheritance in the Lord. We are also to know that He has an inheritance in us. I think an illustration of this would be the land of Canaan. The land belonged to God, but He gave it to the children of Israel as their possession. The children of Israel are tied into that land; yet the day will come when God will take possession of this entire universe and will reclaim Israel as well as the land as His own. Today you and I, as believers, are His church and God operates through us, but the time is coming when we shall rule and reign with Him. He will claim us as His inheritance. I have wondered about that—this is an area that is just too deep for me to apprehend. I need the Spirit of God to make this real to me.
Paul continues his petition:


And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power [Eph. 1:19].

Let me amplify this: What is the exceeding (intense) greatness of His power (dunameos—dynamite power) to usward who believe, according to the working (energeian—the energizing) of the strength of His might.
How great is that dynamite power, that energizing strength?


Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places [Eph. 1:20].

It is power enough to raise Christ from the dead—a tremendous power. Not only is it resurrection power, but it is the power that set Christ at God’s right hand, and that is ascension power. We don’t make much of the Ascension in our Bible churches today; we emphasize Christmas and Easter, but we seem to forget the events after that. Have you ever stopped to think of the power that took Him back to the right hand of God? That, my friend, is power. We are beginning to see a little of it. Think of the power it takes to lift a missile off its base and take it out into space, and the power it took to take men to the moon and bring them back. That is power in the physical realm. The power that took Christ to the right hand of God is the same power that is available to believers today. That is why Paul prays that believers may know the greatness of that power. He writes, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection …” (Phil. 3:10).


Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:

And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,

Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all [Eph. 1:21–23].

Paul concludes on a tremendously high note. The church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the head of the church. Someday everything is going to be under Him. The writer to the Hebrews makes it clear, “Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him” (Heb. 2:8).
At the present time the only thing that is under Him is the church. By this I mean the true church, the real believers. There are many organized groups that call themselves churches but are not listening to the Lord Jesus. These churches are paralyzed. You see, the most tragic sight is a child of God lying on a bed, helpless, as if his brain is detached from his body. I’ve been in many churches that have been like that and there are many individual Christians today who act as if they are detached from Christ, the Head of the body. He says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). In other words, I can wiggle my little finger because my head is in charge of it; and when He wants you to “wiggle”—that is, exercise whatever gift He has given you—down here, you do it because of love, or else you’re not attached to Him. How important this is today! Paul pictures the church and our relationship to it in this way: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12–13). The thing we need to see is that Christ is the Head of the body, His church, and we are under Him.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: The church is a temple; the material for temple construction; the method of construction; the meaning of the construction


This chapter begins with the little conjunction and; so it is actually a continuation of the thought of the first chapter. Paul has been talking about that tremendous power that raised Jesus from the dead. We shall see that this power is the same power that makes us, when we were dead in trespasses and sins, alive in Christ. That takes power! It takes resurrection power. It is this power that so many of God’s children want to experience. Frances Ridley Havergal expresses it in as lovely and fine a way as it could be, and I’m sure it is a prayer in the hearts of many Christians today.

Oh, let me know
The power of the resurrection;
Oh, let me show
Thy risen life in calm and clear reflection;
Oh, let me give
Out of the gifts thou freely gavest;
Oh, let me live
With life abundantly because thou livest.
—Frances Ridley Havergal

Now it seems that God is rather reluctant about letting man have power. I think we can see why. God let centuries go by with man knowing nothing of atomic power. Then man discovered atomic power, and it changed the world. What did it do to the world? Did it make it a wonderful place in which to live? You know that it made the world a frightful place in which to live because it gave man the power to destroy the world. Man is dangerous today. We live like an ostrich with our head in the sand if we think to ourselves that no nation dares to release that atomic power. There are men in positions of power today who would turn it loose tomorrow, or even today, if they thought they could get by with it. Man is dangerous with the use of physical power. I think God is reluctant to give man power.
However, the power of God which the epistle speaks of is the power that God will release in the life of one who will turn to Jesus Christ. He will lift that person out of spiritual death into spiritual life. This power will be exhibited by the church because the church is the body of Christ in the world. The Lord Jesus expresses Himself in the world today through His church.
In many ways the church as a temple corresponds to the temple of the Old Testament which was, in turn, preceded by the tabernacle of the wilderness. The comparison is self-evident. The contrasts are sharp and striking. The tabernacle and the temple, for instance, were made of living trees of acacia wood that were hewn into dead boards. In order to form the church, God takes dead material and makes it into a living temple. The temple and tabernacle were dwelling places for the glory of God. The church is a dwelling place for the person of the Holy Spirit. The tabernacle and temple were for the performance of a ritual and the repetition of a sacrifice for sin. The church is built upon the one sacrifice of Christ in the historical past, a sacrifice which is not repeated. “Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:25–26). Nor does the church have a ritual. It is a functional organism in which the Holy Spirit moves through the living stones.
Let me emphasize here that God has not given a ritual to the church as there was a ritual in the temple. Some folk think that they have had a church service by opening with the doxology, saying a prayer, singing hymns, and then sitting down to listen to the Scripture being expounded. Yet to them it was only a meaningless ritual—and the church has not been given a ritual. Someone may ask, “Then we’re not to do that?” Well, the point is that just going through the exercise of mouthing words has become a meaningless ritual to a lot of folk today. These things should have meaning. They are proper, of course, when meaning is expressed.
Now the church is not only minus a temple ritual; it is also not a temple “made with hands.” The impressive fact of the church age is that God is indwelling individual believers. Notice the following verses: “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:24–25). “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).
I want to emphasize here that Israel never did believe that God was confined to the temple. When Solomon was dedicating the temple, he prayed, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?” (1 Kings 8:27). Every instructed Israelite understood that God did not live in a temple—a little box. The liberals try to give the impression that they had such a conception. I heard a Vanderbilt University professor say that the Israelites had a primitive viewpoint of God; they thought He could dwell in a little box. I’d like to say that the professor had a primitive view of the Bible. If he had just read his Old Testament, he would have known that Israel did not believe that. God had told them that the temple was the place where He would meet with them. That is why they came to the temple with a sacrifice and a ritual. The church has none of that today.
Another sharp contrast to the Old Testament temple is the position of Gentiles. You will recall that the Gentiles had to come as proselytes and were confined to the court of the Gentiles. In Jerusalem today at the Holy City Hotel is a replica of the city of Jerusalem as it looked in the days of Herod, which were, or course, the days of Christ. The court of the Gentiles was way off to the left as you look into the temple. The Gentiles didn’t get very close. That is why Paul says in this chapter, “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (v. 13). You see, we who are Gentiles have been brought in pretty close. In fact, we are seated in the heavenlies in Christ! You just can’t improve on that.

THE MATERIAL FOR TEMPLE CONSTRUCTION


And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience [Eph. 2:1–2].


Now let me quote my own translation of these verses. (My translation is published only in my book, Exploring Through Ephesians. I have made no attempt to produce a polished translation. I simply pull the original Greek words over into English so that you might be able to get a little different view-point. I have done this for years—in Southern California it is known as The McGee-icus Ad Absurdum Translation.) Now here is a literal translation of the verse: And you being dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age (spirit of the age, secularism, course, principle) of this world (cosmos, society, civilization), according to the prince of the power (authority) of the air (haze, smog), of the spirit that now worketh (energizes) in the sons (children) of disobedience.
“And you being dead in your trespasses and sins.” Perhaps you notice that I left out “hath he quickened,” which in your Bible is printed in italics. This means it was not in the original text but was inserted to smooth out the translation. I am perfectly willing to admit that something belongs there to give explanation, and “hath he quickened” is all right, but I am trying to pull out the original and give you the meaning without smoothing out the translation.
“You being dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the age”—the spirit of the age. That is, according to secularism, according to the way of the world, or according to the principle of this world. The “world” does not mean the physical universe. It means the cosmos, society, civilization, life-pattern, or life-style of the world today.
“According to the prince of the power [authority] of the air, the spirit that now worketh (that is, energizes) in the children [sons] of disobedience.” The Devil takes this dead material (we are dead in trespasses and sins) and he energizes us. That is the reason the cults are as busy as termites, and with the same results. False religionists put us to shame in their zeal. Satan is energizing them. People ask me whether I am aware that miracles are being performed in the cults. I won’t argue that. Maybe they are. I know some things are exaggerated in our day, but maybe some of them are true. Then who is doing the miracles? Satan is able to duplicate a great many of the miracles that are scriptural miracles. After all, weren’t the magicians of Egypt able to duplicate the first miracles performed by Moses? Of course the later miracles they could not duplicate. When man gets into the realm of the New Birth and closeness to God, Satan is powerless against him, but he is potent today to delude and to deceive and to lead people astray. He is potent today in the cults and false “isms” of the world.


Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others [Eph. 2:3].

To better understand verses 1–7, we need to recognize that they comprise a single periodic sentence in the Greek language. Classical Greek is filled with periodic sentences, all kinds of genitive absolutes, phrases, and tenses—it is difficult to read. Koine Greek is generally easy to read, but here is a periodic sentence which reveals that Paul was capable of writing better Greek than the Koine of his day. The Authorized Version, by the way, breaks this into a sentence that ends at verse three. That is permissible and entirely right because verse four is a contrasting statement joined by the conjunction but.
We have already noted that the chapter begins with and, which connects it to the preceding chapter. In chapter 1 Paul had been talking about salvation and picked up the theme of the mighty greatness of His power in verse 19. This is the power that quickens dead sinners. Now here in chapter 2, verse 1, he says that we were dead in trespasses and sins. That speaks of the death of Adam which is imputed to us. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Adam’s sin made us the sons of a fallen man, and we all have the same nature that Adam had. It is a fallen nature with no capacity or inclination to God.
When I look back upon my own conversion, I really think it was a miracle. How in the world could God save a boy who had been brought up as I had been? My father had high moral principles and was known as an honest man, but he was not a Christian and was antagonistic to the church. He never darkened the door of a church, but he made me go to Sunday school as a boy—and I always protested about going. Then my dad died when I was fourteen, and I found myself adrift in the world. I ran all the way to Detroit, Michigan, to get away from every authority. I turned down work for Ford Motor Company and took a job with Cadillac. There I got into awful sin. I associated with a group of men, particularly a man from Hungary who thought I looked like his son who had died. He took me under his wing. But he was a sinful man and took me places where a sixteen-year-old boy ought not to go. I got homesick and went back home, and when I think back to it now, I realize that it was God who made me homesick. If I hadn’t gone back home, the Devil would have won the day. I was dead to God and to the things of God. Then a man told me I could have peace with God through Jesus Christ. How wonderful that was! I say it was a miracle. I wasn’t looking for God. I was running from Him as fast as I could because I was dead in trespasses and sins.
Adam died spiritually the day he disbelieved and disobeyed God. He ran away from God and tried to hide. He wasn’t looking for God. That is the position of natural man today. This idea that men have a little spark of the divine and are looking for God is as false as can be. On the day Adam disobeyed, he died to God and to the things of God, although he didn’t die physically until nine hundred years after he had eaten the fruit. But he had lost his capacity and longing for God. He was separated from God. After all, death is separation. All death is a separation. Physical death is separation of the spirit and the soul from the body. When someone dies, we don’t see the separation of the spirit and the soul; we see only the dead body. Spiritual death is a separation from God. After man sinned, he could go on living physically and mentally, but he was spiritually dead, separated from God. He passed that same dead nature on to all his offspring. It is only the convicting work of the Holy Spirit that can prick the conscience of any man in this world today. You can’t do it and I can’t do it. Only the Spirit of God can do it.
I had the privilege of being pastor of a great church in downtown Los Angeles. I followed great preachers including the first pastor of that church, Dr. R. A. Torrey. I wanted to do a creditable job, and I wanted to bring glory to God. I would always pray as I left the radio room to go to the pulpit platform to preach, “Lord God, I recognize that I am helpless and hopeless. I will be speaking into a graveyard—many sitting out there are dead in trespasses and sins. Oh God, I can be powerful if the Spirit of God will move.” Only the Spirit of God can speak so that dead men will hear. Thank God, the Spirit of God did move and continues to move so that dead men are able to hear! The Lord Jesus told His disciples that He would send the Comforter to them, “And when he is come, he will reprove [convict] the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8). Do you know that you and I who live in this world are living in a cemetery? Men are dead.
A famous judge traveled around this country years ago giving a lecture entitled: “Millions Now Living Will Never Die.” A great preacher followed him on his speaking circuit with this message. “Millions Now Living Are Already Dead.” He was more accurate than the judge had been. Millions, actually billions, are dead in trespasses and sins.
An old Irishman was asked to define a cemetery. He said, “A cemetery is a place where the dead live.” That describes our world.
A trespass is what Adam did. He stepped over God’s bounds. Sin means to miss the mark. We just don’t come up to God’s standard at all. That is our condition: dead in trespasses and sins and energized by Satan. That is the description of us before we were saved, and every unsaved man is walking around in this world like a spiritual zombie.
The description of our past is not very pretty. We walked according to the spirit of the age. We conformed to the society and the civilization and the life-style of the world. We were walking according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that energizes the sons of disobedience. That is Satan and he takes folks and leads them around.
Today, when Christians talk about being separated from the world, they think of that which is fleshly or carnal or godless. The characteristic sins of the lost world are the mental and spiritual sins; and these are, actually, I think, in God’s sight, worse than the physical sins.
Listen to James 4:1–4: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
A great many folk come to church on Sunday, pious as a church mouse (however pious that may be), and think they are separated from the world. On Monday morning they start out in this rough, workaday world just as mean and hard and after the almighty dollar as everyone else. They want it to consume it on their own selves, for their own selfish desires. That is what James is talking about. The believer has been saved from that.
John puts it in these words: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:15–17).
There are a great many people today who say they do not live in gross sin. They say, “No, I would not commit these sins. I wouldn’t live and act like certain people do.” Dr. G. Campbell Morgan used to ask the question, “Would you like to live as they do?” Do you like to watch people sinning on the TV screen because that way you do those same things vicariously? I’ve always felt that the reason the story of the prodigal son is so popular with some is because of the way it is sometimes preached. You notice that the Lord Jesus never mentioned any of the sins that boy committed when he was in the far country, but I’ve heard sermons in which you were taken along with him from one night club to another, from one barroom to another, from one brothel to another. Some saints really enjoyed those sermons because they could enjoy the sin vicariously. That’s what John is talking about when he says love not the world. Do you really love it? How do you feel about it?
I remember when Mrs. McGee and I first came to California. We were just fresh out of Texas. In fact, I had never seen a body of water that I couldn’t throw a stone across. We were amazed at the ocean. We drove from San Diego to San Francisco. At that time Treasure Island was there with bright lights and colored walls and soft music. It was beautiful. We had a wonderful day. When my wife and I left that night, we boarded the ferry and we went up to the top deck. We were country—we wanted to see the whole thing. As we watched, Treasure Island began to fade away into the fog, and the music died out. I said to my wife, “I have had one of the most pleasant days of my life. I enjoyed every bit of it. But if right now Treasure Island disappeared and went down under into the bay, I wouldn’t shed a tear because I don’t love anything that is over there.” Then I added, “I hope I can always have that kind of an attitude toward the world.”
Christian friend, do you really long for the coming of the Lord for the rapture of the church? It is a wonderful thing to talk about, but I would like to ask you some questions: Will you weep when you leave this world because you are so wrapped up in it? Are you all wrapped up in a job or in a business, in a home or in some club, or in a worldly church? Would you be reluctant to go because everything will be changed? This is the way Simon Peter described the lost world: “Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet” (2 Pet. 2:15–16). This is a picture of the lost world. Do you as a child of God fit into this picture?
Before we knew Christ we walked “according to the prince of the power of the air,” who is Satan. He was the energizer. We cannot serve both God and mammon. The one to whom we yield is our master. Even the Christian must choose whom he will serve. Some folk think that serving God means that you refrain from worldly dress and amusements and refuse associations with people who are liberal in their theology. That’s not separation, yet that’s what I hear today. It’s absurd to talk like that when your own life is filled with bitterness and hatred and selfishness, which are the gross sins, by the way.
“Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh.” Notice Paul now says “we.” He includes himself; it is the first person, plural pronoun that he adopts. He puts himself right with this crowd, and you and I need to do this also. This verse could be amplified to read: “Among whom also we all had our conversation (our activities, our life-style) in times past in the desires of the flesh (that is, our old nature), doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts (our old nature and our mind), and we were by nature children of wrath even as others.” Unfortunately, there are Christians who live for that old carnal nature. They live just like the man of the world is living today. Their life-style is prompted and motivated by a godless philosophy and is controlled by satanic principles.
I visited the home of a man who is supposed to be an outstanding Christian businessman. He showed me his lovely home and told me about his children. Then he told me about his business and about the honors that had been conferred upon him. He never once referred to his relationship with Jesus Christ. You see, there is something wrong with a life-style that includes everything in the world but leaves Christ out of it.
In this section of the second chapter of Ephesians Paul is giving a description of the past, present, and future of the church and of all believers. It is a common experience to see a sign up by a house that reads, “Your Future Told.” Generally they have it figured out that soon you will come into a great fortune. The thing that always amuses me is that those places are usually in the poor section of town. They are not able to make a good living for themselves; yet they tell others that they will have a fortune coming to them. The Christian does not need to turn to such persons. God has already revealed to us our future as well as our past and present.


But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus [Eph. 2:4–6].

This little conjunction but is so important. But God, being rich in mercy, on account of His great love with which He loved us made us alive together with Christ. God is rich in mercy. He had mercy on me. He has had mercy on you. This is such a radical change from the first three verses, which are as black and hopeless as anything can be. Man is a complete failure. He is incapable of saving himself. God comes on this scene of death with His mercy. He does not have too little, too late. He has a surplus, for He is an infinite God who is rich in infinite mercy. He has what man needs. He has what you need. The only requirement is that you believe Him.
A poor woman from the slums of London was invited to go with a group of people for a holiday at the ocean. She had never seen the ocean before, and when she saw it, she burst into tears. Those around her thought it was strange that she should cry when such a lovely holiday had been given her. They asked her, “Why in the world are you crying?” Pointing to the ocean she answered, “This is the only thing I have ever seen that there was enough of.” My friend, God has oceans of mercy. There is enough of it. He saves us by His grace.
What does it mean to be saved by the grace of God? We were dead in trespasses and sins of and completely incapable of saving ourselves. God comes on the scene and by grace He reaches down to us. Why does He do it? He it does not find the reason in us; He finds it in Himself. When God came down to deliver Israel, it wasn’t because they were good and beautiful and were serving Him. They were not. They were a stiff-necked people. And they were idolaters—they worshiped a golden calf out there in the wilderness. But God says that He heard their cry. Why did that appeal to Him? Because He loved them. He loves you and He loves me. However, He doesn’t save us by His love. He saves us by His grace.
For years I had a Bible class in San Diego County. During that period Christian groups of young folk had worked on the beaches down there and had led quite a few of those young people to Christ. Some of them belonged to what we called the hippie group, but I want to say that I found many of them to be genuine I believers. I have come to the place that I do not judge a man by his dress any more than I would judge a book by its cover. They had listened to our radio program and to our tapes and had used our books—but I didn’t know that at that time. When I went down there for my first class one year, sitting on the first two rows were a bunch of these young people. I want to tell you, some of them were dressed in a very unusual manner! They had long hair and all that was associated with that culture. Very frankly, they shocked me at first, but I found out that they had their Bibles and notebooks, and some spiritual life, which you don’t always find in our churches today. These young people were actually showing real life.
One young fellow who had been attending came up to me. He had on a funny hat with “Love, love, love” written all over it. He had on a funny coat with “Love, love, love” written all over it. He had “Love, love” on his trousers and even on his shoes. I asked, “Why in the world do you have ‘love’ written all over you?” “Man,” he said, “God is love.” “Well,” I said, “I agree with you. Nothing could be truer than that.” Then he added, “God saves us by His love.” I answered, “I don’t agree with that. God doesn’t save us by His love. Can you give me a verse that says He does?” He scratched his head and thought a while and then admitted he couldn’t think of one. “Well,” he said, “if God doesn’t save us by love, then how does He save us?” I answered, “Very frankly, I’m glad you asked me that question because the Bible says, ‘By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.’ God saves us by His grace.” Then the boy wanted to know the difference. This is how I explained it to him: “God does love you. Don’t lose sight of that. God loves all of us. But God cannot, on the basis of His love, open the back door of heaven and slip us in under cover of darkness. He can’t let down the bars of heaven at the front door and bring us in because of His love. God is also light. God is the moral ruler of this universe. God is righteous. He is holy and He is good. That adds up to one thing: God cannot do things that are wrong—that is, wrong according to His own standard. So God couldn’t save us by love. Love had God strapped—we could say it put Him in a bind. He could love without being able to save. I thought you would quote John 3:16 to me. Let’s look at what that verse says: ‘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.’ Does it say God so loved the world that He saved the world? No, that’s exactly what it doesn’t say. God so loved this world that He gave His only begotten Son. You see, God couldn’t save the world by love because He goes on to say, ‘that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.’ You and I are going to perish. We’re lost sinners, and God still loves us, but the love of God can’t bring us into heaven. God had to provide a salvation, and He paid the penalty for our sins. Now a God of love can reach out His hands to a lost world and say, ‘If you will believe in My Son, because He died for you—if you will come on that basis—I can save you.’ God doesn’t save us by His love. God saves us by His grace.”
Frankly, it is more wonderful this way. When I was a boy, I would get out of favor with my parents because of something I did wrong. But I can never get out of the favor of God. I can lose my fellowship with Him, because sin breaks fellowship, but I can never get out of His favor. I can grieve the Spirit of God, but I can always come back to Him. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness!” (1 John 1:9). If we walk in darkness and say that we have fellowship with Him, we are lying. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). If I walk in the light of the Word of God and I see that I have come short, the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, just keeps on cleansing me from all sin. Why? God does it by His grace. He is rich in mercy and grace.
God has His arms outstretched to a lost world and He says, “You may come if you will come My way.” Let me remind you that this is God’s universe, and He is doing things His way. You may think you have a better way, but you don’t have a universe to rule. He makes the rules in His universe and you’re going to have to come His way. He loves you; you can’t keep Him from loving you. Neither can you keep the sun from shining, but you can get out of the sunshine. Sin, being out of the will of God, turning your back on Him, all these will keep you from experiencing the love of God. If you will come to Him through Christ, He will save you and you will experience His love. God is rich in mercy.
God has lifted us out of a spiritual graveyard. Our present position is that He has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” What is our future?


That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus [Eph. 2:7].

I translate it this way: “In order that He might show forth in the ages which are coming the exceeding (overflowing, intense) riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ.” Someday I am going to be on exhibit. Angels will go by and say, “See that fellow McGee. He was lost and wasn’t worth saving, but he’s here in heaven today. It is only through the grace and kindness of God that he was saved and brought here.” That is going to be for the praise of God throughout eternity. I am not going to get any credit at all, but I’m going to be there, and that’s good enough for me. I’m going to join that angelic host in singing praises to God because He saved me. This is the most wonderful expectation that we have—as far as I know. It is through grace. It is the “amazing grace,” as the hymn writer John Newton put it, “that saved a wretch like me.”


For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Not of works, lest any man should boast [Eph. 2:8–9].

These are the great verses that consummate this section on the believer’s past, present, and future. We were dead in trespasses and sin, God saved us by His grace, raising us now to heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and we will someday be in heaven displaying the grace of God. None of this depends on our own works or merit, “for by grace ye have been saved.” Notice I have changed it to the literal phrase “the grace.” The article points out that it is something special. The great emphasis is upon the grace of God. It is favor bestowed on the unworthy and undeserving.
Now don’t come along and say, “I hope to be saved.” If you have put your trust in Christ, you can say, “I am saved.” Someone may say, “Oh, I wouldn’t dare make a statement like that because I don’t know what the future holds.” Friend, your salvation rests upon the grace of God—not upon your faithfulness. You can be confident of this very thing, “… that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). If you are a child of God, you may wander from Him, but He will always make a way back for you because it is by His grace and that alone that you are saved. You have a finished salvation. On the basis of what Christ has done for you and on the fact that the Holy Spirit has inclined you toward Christ and you have believed the Word of God and have trusted Him, you can say, “I am saved” It’s not an “I hope so” salvation or an “I’ll try” salvation. It is a salvation that is by the grace of God, by means of faith, and it is not of yourself. It is a gift of God.
The grace of God has been defined theologically as “unmerited favor.” I like to speak of it as “love in action.” Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, the man who taught me theology, made this important statement about God’s grace and God’s love in his book, The Ephesian Letter, Doctrinally Considered.
A sharp distinction is properly drawn between the compassionate love of God for sinners, and His grace which is now offered to them in Jesus Christ. Divine love and divine grace are not one and the same. God might love sinners with an unutterable compassion and yet, because of the demands of outraged divine justice and holiness, be unable to rescue them from a righteous doom. However, as has been before stated, if love shall graciously provide for the sinner all that outraged justice and holiness could ever demand, the love of God would then be free to act without restraint in behalf of those for whom the perfect substitutionary sacrifice was made. This is Christ’s achievement on the cross. On the other hand, divine grace in salvation is the unrestrained compassion of God acting toward the sinner on the basis of that freedom already secured through the righteous judgment against sin—secured by Christ in His sacrificial death. Divine love might desire to save, yet be unable righteously to do so; but divine grace is free to act since Christ has died. It is to be observed, then, that the eternal purpose of God is not the manifestation of His love alone, though His love and His mercy are, like His grace, mentioned in this context and expressed in Christ’s death; but it is rather the manifestation of His grace.

Out of God’s infinite treasure chest He lavishes His grace upon sinners without restraint or hindrance.
Now faith is the instrumental cause of salvation. It is the only element that the sinner brings to the great transaction of salvation. Yet it too is the gift of God. I know someone will say to me, “Since faith is the gift of God and God hasn’t given it to me, then I guess I’m not to blame if I don’t believe.” The answer is this: God has made it very clear that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. If you want to trust Christ, you will have to listen to the Word of God. God will give faith to all who give heed to the message of the gospel.
We find this taught in 2 Corinthians. Moses had a veil over his face, not because he was blinding everybody like a headlight, but so that the people could not view the glory that was fading away. It was the glory that belonged to the Mosaic system and that belonged to the Law. “But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in Christ” (2 Cor. 3:14). There is no need for a veil today because He is the unveiled Christ; the gospel is freely declared. But we are told, “But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away” (2 Cor. 3:15–16). What is “it”? It is the heart. When the heart shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. Anytime that you are ready to turn to Christ, you can turn to Christ.
Someone else objects, “Maybe I’m not given the gift of faith.” That’s not your problem. Your problem is that you don’t want to give up your sins which the Bible condemns. Whenever you get sick of your sins, when you want to turn from yourself, from the things of the world, from religion, from everything the Bible condemns, and turn to Christ, then you will be given faith. You can trust Him.
I am weary of hearing folk say they don’t believe because they have intellectual problems. Actually they have moral rather than intellectual problems if only they would face up to them. Sin is the real problem in the hearts of a great many folk today. Even many of the saints don’t enjoy their salvation for that very reason. Psychologists at Duke University made a study and found that the second most frequent reason people are emotionally disturbed and mentally unstable is because they live in the past. They are preoccupied with past mistakes and failures, and they look to themselves instead of looking to Christ and trusting Him.
Faith is that instrument of salvation. Spurgeon says, “It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee; it is Christ. It is not thy hope in Christ that saves thee; it is Christ. It is not even thy faith in Christ, though that be the instrument; it is Christ’s blood and merit.” That is where the power is, and that is where the salvation is.
Paul is not talking about faith when he says, “And that not of yourselves.” He is talking about salvation. Salvation is a gift that eliminates boasting. It is all of God and not of us. It is God’s gift.


For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them [Eph. 2:10].

“We are his workmanship.” The Greek word is poiema from which we get our word poem. The church is His poem and His new creation. Paul is not talking about the local church here, but rather about that body of believers from the day of Pentecost to the Rapture, the real believers (and most of them are members of local churches). That body of believers is His workmanship and His new creation in Christ Jesus.
For what are we created? For good works. When we get to the last part of this epistle, we will be told how we are to walk in a way that is creditable and acceptable to God. While we are seated in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, we are to walk down here in a way that will bring glory to His name.

THE METHOD OF CONSTRUCTION

Now we come to the method of the construction of the church as a temple of God.


Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;

That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world [Eph. 2:11–12].

The church in Ephesus was made up largely of Gentiles. There was just a small colony of Jews there. Gentiles are further identified as the “Uncircumcision.” This label was put on them by the so-called “Circumcision,” the Jews.
God made a real distinction between Jew and Gentile, beginning with Abraham and advancing to the advent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Israel occupied a unique position among the nations. A Gentile could come in only as a proselyte. In time, this valid distinction caused friction because Israel became proud of her position. Israelites came to look down on Gentiles, and hatred crept into the hearts of both groups.
In these verses there is a description of the sad lot and hopeless plight of the Gentile. It is also an accurate picture of any lost man. This is what it means to be lost:
1. “Without Christ.” That is the best definition of a lost man. It is the opposite of being in Christ.
2. “Aliens from the commonwealth of Israel” or, alienated from the citizenship of Israel. That is the accurate definition of a Gentile. The Gentile had no God-given religion as had Israel. They had no right to go back in the Old Testament and take the promises which God made to Israel and then appropriate them for themselves. We don’t have that right either. God didn’t make those promises to us.
3. “Strangers from the covenants of promise.” God had made certain promises to the nation Israel. The covenants which God made with Israel are still valid, but no Gentile has any right to appropriate them. God has promised the children of Israel the land of Israel—all of it. They will get it someday, but it will be on God’s terms, not their terms.
When I was in Israel, I didn’t attempt to homestead or stake out a claim on the basis that God had promised it in the Old Testament. I understood that He was talking to Israel and not to me. The promise He has given to me is, “… I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2–3).
4. “Having no hope.” Look at the religions of the world. They have no hope. They cannot promise resurrection and are pretty hazy about what happens after death. The cults offer no hope at all. They put up a hurdle that no honest human being could get over. Having no hope was the tragic plight of the Gentiles. To the lost man the present life is all-important, and if he misses out on the fun here, then he is doubly hopeless.
When Paul wrote this, my ancestors from one side of the family were walking through the forests of Germany, as heathen and pagan as they could be. The others were over in Scotland, and I am told their paganism and heathenism were even worse. That was our condition.
5. “And without God in the world.” This does not mean that God has removed Himself from man, but rather that man has removed himself from God. A man is godless because of choice. He is in the darkness, wandering about with the rest of lost humanity. Frankly, if I were in the position of the lost man today, I would crawl up on a bar stool and try to drink and forget it all. What else would a person do? I would have no hope. The only hope I could have here in this world would be to squeeze this life like an orange and get all the juice out of it that I could. There would be nothing to look forward to over there. That is what it would be like to be without hope and without God.
This is a terrible, awful condition that Paul describes. But now notice that something has happened.


But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ [Eph. 2:13].

In the temple was the court of the Gentiles way off to the side. Gentiles were permitted to come, but they were away far off. But now—for the Gentiles who are in Christ—all has changed. They were without Christ; now they are in Christ. The distance and barriers which separated them from God have been removed. They have been made nigh, not by their efforts or merits, but by the blood of Christ.

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;

Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;

And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:

And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh [Eph. 2:14–17].

When you come to Jesus Christ, you are not only brought into a body, but you are also brought into a place where you stand before God on a par with anybody. I stand with you and you stand with me on equal footing. So today there should never be a point of separation for believers on any basis at all. We have been made one in Christ. If you are a believer in Christ—it makes no difference who you are—you and I are going to be together throughout eternity. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to speak to each other every now and then down here, would it?
The contrast in the passage is really between the Jew and Gentile. The Lord Jesus Christ is the peace that has been made between them. The middle wall, the fence, or partition, the enmity between the two, has been broken down. He has made a new man. We have been put together in Christ, and He has made peace. It means that we now have peace with God, and we should also have peace with each other.
God’s reconciliation is already complete. He is ready to receive you if you are ready to come. Therefore, the message that goes out is “… be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). If you will be reconciled, you will be brought into a new body, a body of believers, and it doesn’t make any difference whether you are Jew or Gentile. The color of your skin makes no difference. White, brown, red, black—all are one in Christ. We have been made one new man, and we should have peace.
The emphasis in this passage is upon the glorious person of Christ. He not only made peace by the Cross, but those who trust Him are placed in Him and become new men. God had made a difference originally by separating the Jew from the nations. The Jew eventually developed a spiritual pride, and this led to the ultimate hatred between Jew and Gentile. When a Jew and a Gentile are placed in Christ, there is peace. There is peace not only because of the new position, but also because something new has come into existence. Paul identifies this as a new man. That is why Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:32). That “church” is the new man.
It is not that the Gentile has been elevated to the status of the Jew. God has elevated both to a higher plane. Chrysostom has stated it this way: “He does not mean that He has elevated us to that high dignity of theirs, but He has raised both us and them to one still higher…. I will give you an illustration. Let us imagine that there are two statues, one of silver and the other of lead, and then that both shall be melted down, and the two shall come out gold. So thus He has made the two one.” This is a marvelous illustration of how we have been brought together in Christ.
I do not believe in the universal brotherhood of man and the universal Fatherhood of God. To me that is a damnable heresy. I believe a true brotherhood is composed of those who are in Christ. A man may have skin as white as the driven snow, but if he is not a child of God, he is not my brother. A man may have skin as black as midnight, and if he is a child of God, he is my brother. We are something new. We are in Christ—a new man. This is the building, the temple, God is building today.
Rather than say the Gentile was elevated to the status of the Jew, one might say the Jew was brought down to the level of the Gentile because both Jew and Gentile are in the same state of sin. Actually we are all brothers as sinners, all sons of Adam. “What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin” (Rom. 3:9). That is the state we were all in. The peace referred to is between the Jew and the Gentile. When the Jew and Gentile come to the Cross as sinners, they are made into a new creation. They become a new man, the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The Old Testament temple which succeeded the Mosaic tabernacle was marked by partitions. There were three entrances into the three departments: the outer court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Then there were sections partitioned off for priests, Israel, women, and Gentiles. Christ, by His death, took out the veil, and He became the Way (the outer court), the Truth (the Holy Place), and the Life (the Holy of Holies). Now we come through Christ directly into the presence of God the Father. Those who come to Him are removed from their little departments and are placed in Christ, the new Temple where there are no departments. The Cross dissolves the fences, and the gospel is preached to the Gentiles, those who were afar off, and to the Jews, those who were near. What a picture we have here!


For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father [Eph. 2:18].

I wonder whether you have noticed that this little verse is a big verse? It is like a little atom. It has in it the Trinity. “For through Him [Christ] we both have access in one Spirit [the Holy Spirit] unto the Father [God the Father].” Jew and Gentile are on the same footing as sinners at the foot of the cross. In addition, through Christ they both have equal access to God, which is a glorious privilege for any human being. Paul makes it clear in Romans 5 that justification by faith is a benefit available to all. We have access to God through Jesus Christ, and that is wonderful.
Now I don’t think this means we can brazenly rush into the presence of God, but it does give us the real privilege to have access to the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. Any one believer has as much access to God as any other believer. People ask me why I didn’t have a select few pray for me when I had my bout with cancer. Why did I ask everybody to pray? I did it because I believe in the priesthood of believers, that is, all believers have access to Him.

THE MEANING OF THE CONSTRUCTION


Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone [Eph. 2:19–20].


Paul reminds the gentile believers that though they were strangers and alienated from God, their present position is infinitely bettered. They are no more strangers and sojourners (foreigners). They are now fellow citizens with the saints.
“Saints” is not a reference to Old Testament saints. Gentile believers are fellow citizens with the New Testament Jewish saints, the other members of the body of Christ. They belong to a household, not as servants, but as relatives, as members of the family of God. They are His dear children. “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake” (1 John 2:12). We are little children. This is a new relationship, a relationship foreign to the Old Testament. Even David, the man after God’s own heart, is called “my servant David” in 2 Samuel 7:8; and God’s term for Moses was also “my servant” in Numbers 12:7.
Now this citizenship is not in Israel and the earthly Jerusalem, but it is in heaven. “For our conversation [citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). We are now fellow citizens. We belong to heaven at the present time. The word conversation should rightly be changed to citizenship and is translated that way in the American Standard Version. Another has well translated it, “Our city home is in heaven.”
We are “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” This is important. It does not mean that the apostles and prophets were the foundation but that they personally laid the foundation. The early church built its doctrine upon that of the apostles. “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).
Much has been written about the identity of the prophets in verse twenty. Are they Old Testament prophets or New Testament prophets? The fact that the prophets are in the same classification as apostles without the article the would seem to designate them as New Testament prophets. I think you will find this confirmed when we get into the third chapter.
“Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” reveals that Christ is the Rock on which the church is built. Paul makes this very clear: “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). Peter states it like this: “Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed” (1 Pet. 2:6–8). The important thing to note here is that Peter says that the Lord Jesus is that chief cornerstone. Therefore Peter understood what the Lord meant when He said, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). Jesus is talking about Himself. He is the Rock on which the church is built. The apostles and prophets put down the foundation, and Christ is the chief cornerstone, the Rock.


In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:

In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit [Eph. 2:21–22].

The analogy to the temple of the Old Testament is obvious; yet there is a contrast revealed in the analogy. There were several buildings in the temple at Jerusalem. However, I don’t think Paul is referring to the different buildings. He means each individual believer is fitted into the total structure. Peter expressed it in the same way when he wrote that we are stones fitted in and built into a spiritual house (see 1 Pet. 2:5).
Paul speaks of the church as a temple which is currently under construction. That is quite interesting because in Paul’s day Herod’s temple was unfinished. It had been forty years in the building already in our Lord’s day, and it was destroyed in a.d. 70. Even when it was destroyed, it had not yet been completely built. The church is under construction today, and it will be finished.
“Groweth unto an holy temple”—it is growing unto an holy temple in the Lord. This confirms the fact that it is still unfinished. The structure is also different. It is not one stone put on top of another in a cold way. This temple is growing. God is taking dead material, dead in trespasses and sins, and is giving it life. The living, born again, stones are growing into a living temple.
As Solomon’s temple was built without the sound of hammer, so the Holy Spirit silently places each dead sinner into the living temple through regeneration and baptism. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13).
It is called “an holy temple” or holy sanctuary. It is holy because the Holy Spirit indwells it. By the baptism of the Holy Spirit the saved sinner is placed “in the Lord.” The Holy Spirit indwells each believer. “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9).
The church, the body of Christ, is “an habitation,” a permanent temple, of God in the Spirit. When believers come together in a building to worship, the Holy Spirit is present. In that sense God is in that building. But when every believer has left the building, God has left it also. God is not in any church building anymore than He is in any barroom. Today God indwells believers, not buildings. We have previously stated that God has never dwelt in any building made with hands, and it is a pagan philosophy which places God in a human-made structure.
The purpose of the church as a temple is to reveal the presence and the glory of God on earth. When believers assemble together in a church, the impression should be made upon the world, even in this age, that God is in His holy temple. The world should feel that God can be found in a church service. My question is: Can He? Perhaps more people would be attracted to the church if they were sure that God was present.

CHAPTER 3

Theme: The church is a mystery; the explanation of the mystery; the definition of the mystery; prayer for power and knowledge


This is the final chapter in the doctrinal section of this epistle. We have learned that the church is a body and the church is a temple. Now we learn that the church is a mystery.
Let me give a preliminary word about what it means when we say the church is a mystery. There has been gross misunderstanding concerning the church as a mystery. The word for mystery bears no resemblance to the modern connotation of “whodunit?” In this sense, a mystery is something that had not previously been revealed but is currently made manifest. In this case it is the church which was not revealed in the Old Testament but is solely revealed in the New Testament. Moffatt translates the word mystery as “divine secret,” and Weymouth uses the word “truth.” I like the expression “divine secret.” A divine secret was something that God had not revealed up to a certain point. Now He is ready to reveal it. It has nothing to do with mystery such as those written by Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle, as I mentioned earlier when we discussed mystery in the first chapter.
There are two extreme viewpoints taken in our day concerning the mystery of the church, and I must say that these view points are a mystery to me. One extreme group ignores the clear-cut statement of Paul that the church is not a revelation of the Old Testament. They treat the church as a continuation of Israel. This is known as covenant theology. They appropriate all the promises that God made to Israel and apply them to the church.
Years ago Dr. Harry Ironside showed me a Bible used by the group holding the covenant theology viewpoint. In the books of the Old Testament prophets, they had headed some of the chapters: “Blessings for the Church.” Other chapters were headed: “Curses for Israel.” It’s quite interesting that the church took the blessings but left the curses for Israel! The truth is that both the blessings and the curses apply to Israel.
The other group places undue emphasis on Paul’s statements: “he made known unto me the mystery,” and “my knowledge in the mystery of Christ,” and they treat the mystery as the peculiar revelation to Paul. This is known as hyperdispensationalism. As a result there has been the pernicious practice of shifting the beginning of the church to some date after Pentecost. On this sliding scale several dates have been suggested, and when one becomes untenable, another is adopted. This claim to superior knowledge has ministered to spiritual pride. May I say that the church was not revealed in the Old Testament. When it was revealed, the revelation was not confined to the apostle Paul. One professor I had in a denominational seminary tried to trace the church back to the Garden of Eden! But the church is not in the Old Testament. On the other hand, one must admit something happened on the Day of Pentecost. On that day the Holy Spirit began forming the body of believers. That will continue until He takes the church out of the world. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God until the day of redemption, the day we are taken out of the world and presented to Christ. I don’t believe you can wash back and forth over the Day of Pentecost like the tide washing over the beach. Something did happen on that day—that was the birthday of the church.

THE EXPLANATION OF THE MYSTERY


For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles,

If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward [Eph. 3:1–2].

Let me give you my literal translation: “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of (the) Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, if so be (upon the supposition) that ye heard of the economy (dispensation) of the grace of God which is given me to you.”
Paul speaks of his present condition as a prisoner. He became a prisoner because he took the gospel to the Gentiles. Now the Gentiles are accorded new privileges, which he has enumerated in the preceding chapter. Those who were afar off, strangers, without hope, and without God, are now brought in through Christ. Because of all that, Paul is going to pray for them. But before he gets to his prayer, he digresses to speak of the mystery. Then he picks up his thread of thought again in verse 14. Notice the connection: “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles…. bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Everything between verses 1 and 14 is a parenthesis, a digression. Before he comes to his prayer, he is going to talk about the mystery.
“If so be” marks the beginning of the parenthesis. It is on the supposition that “ye have heard of the economy (or dispensation) of the grace of God which is given me to you.” Paul is speaking of the divine plan and arrangement by which God had called and sent him to the Gentiles. As compared to the other apostles, Paul’s ministry was different and special. “But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter” (Gal. 2:7). The message was not different, but the ones to whom the message was to be given were different folk in a different category. Paul went to the Gentiles and told them, “You have been afar off, and now you can be brought in through Christ.” Peter went to his own people (Israel) and said, “… there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Paul said to the gentile, Philippian jailor, “… Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). Both Peter and Paul had the same message, although it was to two different groups of people.
There is now a brand new thing taking place. It is a different economy or a different dispensation from what they had back in the Old Testament. When Paul had been a Pharisee and lived by the Law, he never went out to preach to the Gentiles—he was under a different economy. Now Paul is under a new economy, and he is a missionary to the Gentiles. This doesn’t mean that God’s method of salvation had changed. No man was saved by keeping the Law, but by bringing a bloody sacrifice when he saw that he had come short of the glory of God. That sacrifice pointed to Christ.
Now Paul is going to talk about this new economy.


How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in a few words,

Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) [Eph. 3:3–4].

“By revelation.” The hyperdispensationalists hold that because Paul said the mystery had been made known to him, he was the only one who knew it. However, in verse 5 Paul makes it clear that all the apostles knew it. That “revelation” began with Paul’s conversion when Christ informed him that when he persecuted the church he was actually persecuting Christ. The church is the body of Christ. Paul learned that God was doing something new. A church had come into existence on the Day of Pentecost.
I repeat that “the mystery,” the divine secret, was something not revealed in the Old Testament and therefore unknown to man. Now it is revealed in the New Testament. The word is used twenty-seven times in the New Testament, and it refers to about eleven different mysteries. Paul seems to be making a contrast with the mystery religions of the Graeco-Roman world. In my book Exploring Through Ephesians I include a thesis on those mystery religions that I wrote when I was in seminary. There were many in that day. These were secret lodges in which sadistic rites were performed. The initiate was warned not to reveal the secrets of the mystery religion. To the Greek, a mystery was a secret imparted to the initiate. To them it meant something disclosed or revealed to a candidate for admission, not something hidden or impossible to understand. To the man on the street who was not a member, these secrets would be a mystery in our sense of the word. In contrast to this, Paul says, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.” And we today are “stewards of the mysteries of God.” We are to give out the message. The gospel is not something to be kept in a secret lodge; it is the good news that is to be shouted from the housetops.
Paul uses the word mystery earlier in this epistle. In Ephesians 1:9 he says, “Having made known unto us the mystery of his will.” In Ephesians 2:14–15 he explains what the mystery is. The mystery is that Christ is risen and is the Head of a new body made up of Jews and Gentiles and of all tribes and peoples of the earth. This was not revealed in the Old Testament. Paul put it like this: “Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began” (Rom. 16:25). Paul says it again in Colossians 1:26, “Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints.”
I would say that those who insist that the church is back in the Old Testament are more or less usurping the place of the Lord. They are telling something the Lord Himself didn’t tell. They act as if they know something God didn’t know. Mystery means that it was not revealed in the Old Testament. And since He didn’t reveal it, it isn’t there.

THE DEFINITION OF THE MYSTERY


Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;

That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel [Eph. 3:5–6].


Paul certainly makes it clear here that this was not revealed to him alone.
Now he clarifies what he means by the mystery. There is a sharp contrast between the sons of men in past generations and the apostles and prophets of the church. No one in the Old Testament had a glimmer of light relative to the church. It is now revealed to His holy apostles. They are “holy” because they have been set aside for this office by God. The “prophets” are definitely New Testament prophets.
The “Spirit,” the Holy Spirit, is the teacher of this mystery. This is what the Lord Jesus promised when He told His disciples of the coming of the Holy Spirit. “All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:15).
What precisely is the mystery? It is not the fact that Gentiles would be saved. The Old Testament clearly taught that Gentiles would be saved. Let me cite several passages: “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious” (Isa. 11:10). Another: “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising” (Isa. 60:3). Isaiah also wrote: “I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles” (Isa. 42:6). Zechariah also mentions it: “And many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people: and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto thee” (Zech. 2:11). And Malachi: “For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of host” (Mal. 1:11).
If the mystery is not that the Gentiles would be saved, what is the mystery? Mark it carefully. The mystery was that the Gentiles and Israel were placed on the same basis. By faith in Christ they were both brought into a new body which is the church. Christ is the Head of that new body.
Therefore, now there is a threefold division in the human race:

All people were Gentiles from Adam to Abraham—2000 years (plus)
All people were either Jews or Gentiles from Abraham to Christ—2000 years
The threefold division is Jews, Gentiles, and the church from the Day of Pentecost to the Rapture—2000 years (plus)

Paul referred to this threefold division when he said, “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:32). Paul included the whole human family when he said that.
The church is not in the Old Testament de facto, although there are types of it in the Old Testament. Christ said, “… upon this rock I will build my church …” (Matt. 16:18, italics mine), and when He spoke that, it was still future. The church began on the Day of Pentecost, after Christ had returned to heaven. To say that the church began beyond the Day of Pentecost makes the church a pair of Siamese twins—a Jewish church and a gentile church coexisting. It is true that the church was all Jewish when it began, but there was a period of transition when Gentiles were brought into it. The church is one body, made up of both Jew and Gentile, and Christ is the Head of that body.


Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power [Eph. 3:7].

Paul assumed no place of superiority in the knowledge of the mystery by virtue of the fact that he was the Apostle to the Gentiles. He takes only the title of diakonos which is translated “minister” and means a worker or helper or deacon.
It was the gift of God’s grace which had transformed him from Saul, the proud Pharisee who persecuted the church, to Paul, the apostle who was now a prisoner for Jesus Christ. He had been taken out of one group and put into another. He is now a member of the body of Christ. All that had been accomplished was through the working of the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul had both the gift and the power of an apostle.


Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;

And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ [Eph. 3:8–9].

We are living today in the economy, or the dispensation, or the mystery of the church (the gospel of grace), which from the ages past has been hid in God who created all things. My friend, there are a lot of things God has not told us yet, which is one of the reasons I am anticipating heaven. If you think I don’t know very much now, you are right. When I get to heaven, I am really going to start learning things. Really, God hasn’t told us very much. It’s amazing to think how little He has told us. For example, He never told anybody about that little atom. Nor did He tell anybody that there were diamonds deep in the earth. He has kept a lot of things to Himself. He allows man to make discoveries, but there are some things man can never find out except by revelation. The church was a mystery in that sense.
In verse 8 Paul calls himself “less than the least of all saints”—it is a comparative superlative. Paul always took the place of humility as an apostle. “For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim. 1:12–13).
A mighty revolution took place in the life of Paul. He was chosen to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. How wonderful!
“And to make all men see”—the mystery is not to be argued or debated but is to be preached. And Paul was to make all men see the economy (the dispensation) of the mystery.


To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,

According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord [Eph. 3:10–11].

Another purpose of the mystery is revealed here. God’s created intelligences are learning something of the wisdom of God through the church. They not only see the love of God displayed and lavished upon us, but the wisdom of God is revealed to His angels.


In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him [Eph. 3:12].

We, the Gentiles, and Paul, the persecutor, have freedom of speech before God and an access or introduction to Him. This all is made possible in Christ.


Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory [Eph. 3:13].

He says, “I entreat you that you not lose heart in my troubles for you, which is your glory.” Because of the great goals of the mystery which Paul has enumerated, he is willing to suffer imprisonment as the Apostle to the Gentiles. He didn’t want the Ephesians to be discouraged, because the imprisonment of Paul was working for his good and their glory. “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1:24).

PRAYER FOR POWER AND KNOWLEDGE


For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [Eph. 3:14].


What was the cause? It was because of his deep interest in these Ephesians. He wanted them to enter into the great truth of this dispensation, this new economy in which we live, and to experience all the riches of His grace in Christ Jesus. That was the background. That is why he inserted the parenthesis between verses 1 and 14.
We have already called attention to the fact that Paul was a man of prayer. This is the second great prayer of Paul in this epistle. As he viewed the church as the poem of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the mystery of the ages, he went to God in prayer that these great truths might become realities in the lives of believers.
In this verse we have another characteristic of the prayers of Paul. It reveals his posture in prayer. I do not want to be splitting hairs, but here it is: “I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I don’t insist that we all get down on our knees in our public prayer meetings today. However, I rather wish that we did.
During my first pastorate in Nashville, Tennessee, I conducted a meeting in Stone’s River Church near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It was one of the best meetings I have ever had. It was a little country church, and when I began, I said, “Let’s bow our heads in prayer.” I shut my eyes and heard a rumbling. It sounded as if everyone was walking out; so I ventured a look. I didn’t see a soul and thought they had really walked out on me. Since I was praying to the Lord, I just continued to pray. When I said, “Amen,” I opened my eyes and these people came up between those pews just like corn coming up out of the ground! They had all been down on their knees. We had a wonderful meeting. Now don’t misunderstand me—I’m not saying we had a great meeting just because they were down on their knees, but I do want to say that I think it helped a great deal.
In the formality and ritual of our new churches with plush seats and carpeted floors we are missing something in our relationship to the Lord. My feeling is that there ought to be more easy familiarity with each other in our churches but more worship and reverence for God, especially at the time of prayer.
As creatures we ought to assume our proper place before our Creator and go down on all fours before Him. Paul prayed that way and I have always felt that was the proper posture. I must confess that since I have arthritis I don’t do it like I used to when I would get down right on my face in my study and pray there. It is amazing how such a posture helps a person to pray. I think it is something that is good for man. I don’t insist on this; I merely call your attention to it. This is the way Paul did it, and I think he is a very good example for us today. Aren’t we told that our Lord went into the Garden of Gethsemane and fell on His face? I think it would be proper for us if we would get down on our faces before God.
There is another point which I think is rather important to note. We have here that Paul prayed to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will also notice that back in chapter 1, verse 17, he prayed to the “God of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We find that this was his formula, and I think it is a rather tight formula to address all prayers to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Someone may say, “Aren’t you splitting hairs?” Listen to the Lord Jesus: “And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you” (John 16:23, italics mine).
The disciples had been with our Lord for three years. I think they were like a group of children in many ways. I think it was, “Gimme, gimme” a great deal of the time. Then our Lord told them that He would be leaving them. After that they would not ask Jesus for anything. They were to direct their requests to the Father in the name of Jesus. What does Jesus mean by that? He means simply that if you and I were to pray to the Lord Jesus directly, we would rob ourselves of an intercessor. Jesus Christ is our great Intercessor. To pray in Jesus’ name means we go to God the Father with a prayer that the Lord Jesus Himself can lift to the Father for you and me.
We need to be very careful in our prayer life. Now that I am retired, I notice things I never noticed before. I was in a service not long ago in which they called on a visiting brother to pray for the meetings at this conference. The conference had gotten off to a marvelous start. The music had been excellent, the pastor had presided well, then they called on this brother to pray. He prayed for a great many things, and I counted three times that he prayed for me. When he prayed for me the second time, my reaction was, Well, you don’t need to tell the Lord that again! Then when he said it the third time, I thought, He will turn the Lord off—He’ll get tired of hearing that repetitious prayer. Perhaps after this brother had looked me over he decided I really needed praying for three times! Nevertheless, it was vain repetition as the heathen use. The Lord heard him the first time. We need to be very careful in our prayer life.
Have you noticed that Paul’s prayers are brief? Both prayers here in Ephesians and his prayer in Philippians are brief. In fact, all the prayers of Scripture are quite brief. The Lord Jesus said that we are not to use vain repetition as the heathen do—they think they will be heard for their much speaking. Moses’ great prayer for Israel is recorded in only three verses. Elijah, on top of Mount Carmel as he stood alone for God against the prophets of Baal, prayed a great prayer which is only one verse long. Nehemiah’s great prayer is recorded in only seven verses. The prayer of our Lord in John 17 takes only three minutes to read. But the briefest prayer is that of Simon Peter, “… Lord, save me” (Matt. 14:30). He cried out this prayer when he was beginning to sink beneath the waves of the Sea of Galilee. Some people think that was not a prayer because it was so short. My friend, that was a prayer, and it was answered immediately. If Simon Peter had prayed like some of us preachers pray on Sunday morning, “Lord, Thou who art the omnipotent, the omniscient, the omnipresent One …,” he would have been twenty feet under water before he got to his request. I tell you, he got down to business. Prayer should be brief and to the point.


Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named [Eph. 3:15].

God has a wonderful family. A great many folk think that it is only me and mine—we four and no more. But it’s a little wider than that. Some folk feel that their little clique in the church is the only group the Lord is listening to. Some people think their local church constitutes the saints. Then there are others who think their denomination is the whole family of God. Then there are some who think it is just the church—that is, those saved from the Day of Pentecost to the Rapture. My friend, God saved people long before the church came into existence, and He is going to be saving people after the church leaves. Also God has other members of His family. The angels belong to His family. He has created intelligences which the apostle John saw and said cannot be numbered. All of those are the family of God.


That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God [Eph. 3:16–19].

Notice again that he prays according to the riches of His glory, not out of the riches of His glory. If He would take it out of His riches, He would be like Mr. Rockefeller who used to give his caddy a dime.
There are four definite petitions here which Paul makes on behalf of the Ephesian believers.
1. The petition is that the believers might “be strengthened with might [power] by his Spirit in the inner man.” The spiritual nature of the believer needs prayer as well as does the physical. How often the spiritual is neglected while all the attention is given to the physical side. Paul prays for the inner man because he realizes that the outward man is passing away. Power is needed to live the Christian life, to grow in grace, and to develop into full maturity—which is the work of the Holy Spirit.
We tend to pray a great deal for the outward man. It is a marvelous way to pray, praying for the physical needs of folk. Paul did, and he prayed for himself. Three times he asked God to remove the thorn in his flesh. It is wonderful to know that God does hear and does answer prayer, but we need to remember that the spiritual nature of the believer needs prayer as well as the physical. Only the Holy Spirit can supply power, living, and growth for the full maturity of the believer.
2. In the second petition Paul prays that “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” This is to think the Lord’s thoughts after Him. “Ye in me and I in you.” Paul could exclaim, “… Christ liveth in me …” (Gal. 2:20). In Christ is the high word of this epistle. The wonderful counterpart of it is that Christ is in us. In Christ—that is our position. Christ in us—that is our possession. That is the practical side of it. “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Cor. 13:5).
Christ has not come as a temporary visitor. He has come as a permanent tenant by means of the Spirit to live in our lives. “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5).
3. The third petition is a request that the believers may know the dimensions of the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ. He prays that they may be “rooted and grounded in love.” “Rooted” refers to botany, to life. “Grounded” refers to architecture, to stability. This is for all the saints.
Paul wants them to “know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” The vast expanse of the love of Christ is the love of God Himself. From this launching pad we can begin to measure that which is immeasurable and to know that which passes knowledge. This is one of the many paradoxes of the believer’s life.
The breadth. The arms of Christ reach around the world. “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved …” (John 10:9). “… him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
The length. The length of it begins with the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world and proceeds unto the endless ages of eternity.
The depth. The depth goes all the way to Christ’s death on the cross. “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8).
The height. The height reaches to the throne of God. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Phil. 2:6).
Only the Holy Spirit can lead a believer into this vast experience of the love of Christ. Since it is infinite, it is beyond human comprehension.
4. The fourth petition is a final outburst of an all-consuming fervor that believers “might be filled up to all the fulness of God.” Christ was thus filled. In proportion to our comprehension of the love of Christ, we shall be filled with all the fullness of God.


Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,

Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen [Eph. 3:20–21].

This is both a doxology and a benediction which concludes the prayer of Paul. It also concludes the first main division of this epistle. This is a mighty outburst of spiritual praise, which any comment would only tarnish. We are not able to so much as touch the hem of the garment of the spiritual gifts that God is prepared to give to His own. How wonderful this is! He wants to give to us super-abundantly. How good He is, and how small we are. We cannot even contain all of His blessings.

CHAPTER 4

Theme: The church is a new man; the exhibition of the new man; the inhibition of the new man; the prohibition of the new man


We have now come to a new section of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The subjects of these last three chapters are the conduct of the church and the vocation of the believer. We have learned of the heavenly calling of the believer, and now we come to the believer’s manner of life, his earthly walk. This is not a worldly walk, but it is an earthly walk. The true believers, which collectively we call the church, are seated in the heavenlies in Christ. Christ is the Head of the body and He is seated at God’s right hand. But the church is to live down here on this earth.
In chapters 1–3 we have considered the calling, construction, and the constitution of the church. In this last section of the epistle we shall consider the conduct of the church, the confession of the church, and the conflict of the church. The church is a new man; in the future the church will be a bride; and the church is also a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
In the first three chapters we have been on the mountain peak of the Transfiguration, probably the highest spiritual point in the New Testament. That is the reason we spent so much time in those chapters. In this last division we descend to the plane of living where we confront a demon-possessed world and a skeptical mob. It is right down where the rubber meets the road. Are we able to translate the truths of the mountain top into shoe leather? Are we able to stand and walk through the world in a way that is pleasing to God? Our Lord said that we are in the world but not of the world.
It has been stated that Ephesians occupies the same position theologically as the Book of Joshua does in the Old Testament. Now we come to the position where this truth is manifest. Joshua entered the Land of Promise on the basis of the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. It was his by right of promise, and he led the children of Israel over the Jordan into the land. Passing over Jordan is symbolic of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. We as believers have been brought into the Promised Land. That is where you and I live—at least we should be living in resurrection territory today.
Joshua had to appropriate the land by taking possession of it for the enjoyment of it and for blessing in the land. Possession is the great word in the Book of Joshua. Although enemies and other obstacles stood in his way, Joshua had to overcome and occupy.
Position was a key word in the first half of Ephesians—God has blessed us “with all spiritual blessings” (Eph. 1:3). God has given them over to us, but are we walking down here in possession of them? The children of Israel had been promised their land, but it remained a “never-never” land to them until they entered it. “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses” (Josh. 1:3). God says, “Joshua, all of it is yours, but you will enjoy only that which you lay hold of.”
Now the believer is privileged to move in and occupy “all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.” However, the unsearchable riches in Christ must be searched out with the spiritual Geiger counter, which is the Word of God. Up until now the epistle has been glorious declarations, but now there will be commands. Those who have been called to such an exalted place are now commanded to a way of life which is commensurate with the calling.
Some people dwell on the first part of the epistle and become rather super-duper saints, very spiritual. I remember a family like this when I first came to Southern California. They attended the church which I pastored but were not members. They were lovely, active people. I asked them one day why they didn’t join the church. They looked up to the ceiling and said, “We’re members of the invisible church,” and fluttered their eyelids. I have learned that a lot of these folk who are members of the “invisible” church are really invisible—invisible on Sunday night and invisible on Wednesday night. In fact, they are invisible when you need help from them. Now, my friend, let’s be practical about this: the invisible church is to make itself visible down here in a local assembly.
We have come to the practical side of Ephesians, the earthly conduct of the church; and in this chapter the church is portrayed as a new man. The new man is to exhibit himself down here. The members of the invisible church are to make themselves visible. They are to be extroverts, if you please, and they are to get out the Word of God.
What follows here is restricted to those who are in Christ. The Spirit of God is talking to saved people. If you are not a Christian, God is not asking you to do the commands in this epistle. First you must become a child of His through faith in Christ; you must become a member of His body. What follows in this epistle is for those who have been redeemed and have heard the Word of truth. Dead men cannot walk no matter how insistently they are urged to walk. The dead man must first be made alive. Paul has told us that we were dead in trespasses and sins. That is the condition of all who are lost. The top sergeant doesn’t go out to the cemetery and yell, “Attention! Forward march!” If he did, there certainly wouldn’t be any marching. Nobody would move. They must first have life. It is interesting that the religions are saying to a dying world, “Do something and you will be somebody.” God says just the opposite: “Be somebody and then you can do something.” If you are not a Christian, you just stay on the sidelines and listen. You will learn what God would ask of you if you are going to become a believer; and when you look around you, you will know whether or not the saints are living as God wants them to live.

THE EXHIBITION OF THE NEW MAN


I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called [Eph. 4:1].


“Therefore” is a connective, a transitional word. It is in view of all that God has done for the believer, which we have seen in the first three chapters of this epistle.
Paul is a “prisoner of the Lord.” He is a prisoner because of his position in Christ. Isn’t it interesting that Paul can be seated in the heavenlies in Christ and can also be seated in a prison because he was a witness for Christ to the Gentiles?
I “beseech [or beg] you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.” This word for beseech or beg is the same word that we find in Romans 12:1. It is not the command of Sinai with fire and thunder; it is the gentle wooing of love: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God …” (Rom. 12:1).
We are to “walk worthy” of our calling. It is a call to walk on a plane commensurate with the position we have in Christ. “Only let your conversation [that is, your manner of life or your life-style] be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil 1:27). Again Paul writes, “That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10). Paul points to his own life as an example of the Christian’s walk: “Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe” (1 Thess. 2:10).
Paul begs us to walk worthy of the gospel. People may not be telling you this, but they are evaluating whether you are a real child of God through faith in Christ. The only way they can tell is by your walk. It’s not so much how you walk as it is where you walk. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Walking in “the light” is in the light of the Word of God. How much time do you really spend in the Word of God? Your children know how much time you spend in the Bible. Also your neighbors know, and the people in the church know. If we wish to walk in fellowship with God, we must walk in the light of the Word of God.
We have previously told the incident of a man handing out tracts, a ministry, by the way, that takes much prayer and intelligence. A black man who could neither read nor write was handed a tract. He asked, “What is this?” When he was told it was a tract, he said, “Well I can’t read it; so I’ll watch your tracks.” That was the greatest short sermon this Christian could ever have had preached to him. Someone was watching his tracks.
Paul does his beseeching on the basis of their calling. He has just explained to the Ephesians that they live in the economy of the grace of God. They live under that dispensation.


With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;

Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace [Eph. 4:2–3].

“Lowliness” means a mind brought low. Paul practiced what he preached. Lowliness means the opposite of pride. I wish our seminaries today would stop trying to make intellectual preachers and teach the young men to walk in lowliness of mind.
Years ago I heard the story of a very fashionable church in Edinburgh that wanted a pulpit-supply; so the seminary sent out to them a very fine young man who was brilliant in the classroom at the school. He had never had any experience, and he was filled with pride at ministering in this great church. When he got up before that group of people, he was struck with stage fright. He forgot everything he ever knew. He had memorized his sermon, but he forgot it. He stumbled through it and left the pulpit in humiliation, because he knew how miserably he had failed. A dear little Scottish lady went up to him and said, “Young man, I was watching you this morning, and I’d like to say to you that if you had gone up into that pulpit like you came down out of that pulpit, then you would have come down out of that pulpit like you went up into that pulpit.” He had gone up with pride, but he had come down with lowliness and meekness.
Lowliness is the flagship of all Christian virtues. “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (Phil. 2:3). Lowliness characterized our Lord. He said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart …” (Matt. 11:29). There are too many Christians today who have a pride of race, a pride of place, a pride of face, and even a pride of grace—they are even proud that they have been saved by grace! Oh, how we need to walk in lowliness of mind!
The story is told of a group of people who went in to see Beethoven’s home in Germany. After the tour guide had showed them Beethoven’s piano and had finished his lecture, he asked if any of them would like to come up and sit at the piano for a moment and play a chord or two. There was a sudden rush to the piano by all the people except a gray-haired gentleman with long, flowing hair. The guide finally asked him, “Wouldn’t you like to sit down at the piano and play a few notes?” He answered, “No, I don’t feel worthy.” That man was Paderewski, the great Polish statesman and pianist and the only man in the group who was really worthy to play the piano of Beethoven.
How often the saints rush in and do things when they have no gift for doing them. We say we have difficulty in finding folk who will do the work of the church, but there is another extreme—folk who attempt to do things for which they have no gift. We need to walk in lowliness of mind.
“With all lowliness and meekness.” Meekness means mildness but it does not mean weakness. To be meek does not mean to be a Mr. Milquetoast. There are two men in Scripture who are noted for being meek. In the Old Testament it was Moses, and in the New Testament it was the Lord Jesus. When you see Moses come down from the mount and break the Ten Commandments written on the stone tablets and when you hear what he said to his brother Aaron and to the children of Israel, would you call that meekness? God called it that. When the Lord Jesus went in and drove the money changers out of the temple, was that meekness? It certainly was. The world has a definition of meekness and that makes it synonymous with weakness. The Bible calls meekness a willingness to stand and do the will of God regardless of the cost. Meekness is bowing yourself to the will of God.
“With longsuffering.” Longsuffering means a long temper. This is a fruit of the Spirit (see Gal. 5:22). In other words, we should not have a short fuse. That is longsuffering.
“Forbearing one another in love” means to hold one’s self back in the spirit of love. “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Col. 3:13).
“Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit.” The Lord Jesus prayed that we might be one: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21). The Spirit of God has baptized us into one body. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). Now believers are to keep the unity which the Holy Spirit has made. We cannot make that unity. We cannot join into an ecumenical movement to force a kind of unity. Only the Holy Spirit makes the unity, but we are to maintain it. All true believers in Christ Jesus belong to one body, and we should realize that we are one in Christ.
Now he goes on to list seven of those unities:


There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;

One Lord, one faith, one baptism,

One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all [Eph. 4:4–6].

1. “One body” refers to the total number of believers from Pentecost to the Rapture. This one body is also called the invisible church, but this is not wholly accurate. All true believers should also be visible.
2. “One Spirit” refers to the Holy Spirit who baptizes each believer into the body of Christ. The work of the Holy Spirit is to unify believers in Christ. This is the unity that the believer is instructed to keep.
3. “One hope of your calling” refers to the goal set before all believers. They will be taken out of this world into the presence of Christ. This is the blessed hope (see Titus 2:13).
4. “One Lord” refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. His lordship over believers brings into existence the unity of the church.
5. “One faith” refers to the body of truth called the apostles’ doctrine (see Acts 2:42). When this is denied, there are divisions. There must be substance to form an adhesion of believers. This substance is correct doctrine.
6. “One baptism” has reference to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is real baptism. Ritual baptism is by water. Water baptism is a symbol of the real baptism of the Holy Spirit by which believers are actually made one.
7. “One God and Father of all” refers to God’s fatherhood of believers. Since there is only one Father, He is not the Father of unbelievers. Sonship can come only through Christ. The unity of believers produces a sharp distinction between believers and unbelievers. He is Father of all who are His by regeneration.
Paul has been talking about the church, the body of Christ, joined to Him who is in heaven at the right hand of the Father. The church is a new man. It is a mystery. This is all true because it is in Christ. Now some people can be so involved in these truths who are—as the saying goes—so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good. Paul is trying to show that we still walk down here in a very evil, very sinful world.
In his discussion of this walk of the believer, Paul speaks first to the individual. The individual is to walk in lowliness and meekness. Then he widens out to the entire church, which is one body and one spirit. Finally, he brings this passage to a great, tremendous crescendo, which pictures the eminence and transcendence of God.
God is “above all, and through all, and in you all.” This means that God is transcendent. He is above His creation. He is not dependent upon His creation. He doesn’t depend upon oxygen to breathe. He doesn’t have to bring up some supplies from the rear or go Saturday shopping in order to have food for the weekend. He is transcendent. He is not only transcendent, He is also eminent. He is not only above all, but He is through all and in you all. That means He is in this universe in which you and I live. He is motivating it and He is moving it according to His plan and purpose. That is what adds meaning to life. That is what makes life worthwhile.
Life gets a little humdrum now and then, doesn’t it? There is a monotony to it. Although I love taping broadcasts for my radio program, sometimes when I’m in my study every day for a couple of weeks, it gets monotonous, and I get weary. But then I come to this great thought: all of this is in the plan and purpose of God. Then I feel like singing the doxology or the Hallelujah chorus, and when I do, everybody moves out of earshot. But I can sing unto the Lord with a song that comes from my heart. The Bible says, “… making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Eph. 5:19), and that is where mine certainly comes from—not from my mouth, but from my heart.
This chapter reminds me of a great symphony orchestra. When I first went to Nashville as pastor, some friends asked me to go to the symphony with them. They thought they were doing me a favor, but there are other things I would rather do than go to a symphony concert. Although I’m not musically educated, and I don’t understand music at all, I got a message at that concert. We had arrived early and I noticed all the instruments. It looked like over a hundred men came out from all the different wings and each went to his own instrument. My friends told me that they were “tuning up.” Each one played his own little tune and, I give you my word, there was no melody in it. It was terrible! They quit after a few moments, for which I was thankful. Then they disappeared into the wings. Soon they all appeared again. This time they were in full dress with white shirts and bow ties. Each man came to his instrument, but no man dared play it. Then the spotlight went to the side of the stage and caught the conductor as he walked out. He bowed several times and there was thunderous applause. Then he picked up a little stick and turned his back to the audience. When he lifted that baton, you could have heard a pin drop in that auditorium, then when he lowered it—oh, what music came out of that great orchestra! I had never heard anything that was more thrilling. It made goose pimples come over me and made my hair stand on end.
After that first tremendous number, I got a little bored; I began comparing it with life on this earth. Out in the world every person is playing his own little tune. Everyone is trying to be heard above the clamor of voices or carrying his own little placard of protest. Everyone seems to be out of tune, out of harmony, with everyone else. It doesn’t look very hopeful in the world today, and we look to the future with pessimism. Like Simon Peter walking on the lake, we see huge threatening waves. But one of these days there is going to step out from the wings of this universe, from God’s right hand, the Conductor. He is called the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He will lift that baton, that scepter, with nail-pierced hands. When He does that, the whole world will be in tune. He is eminent and He is transcendent. He is “above all, through all, and in you all” So don’t give up—the Conductor is coming. He will get us all in tune.
The church is to walk as a new man in this world. There is to be an exhibition. The church is to be an extrovert, to witness, to manifest life.

THE INHIBITION OF THE NEW MAN


Now we find that the church also has inhibitions and these are also important.
A little child doesn’t have inhibitions. I think of a time when I visited some people who were church members. They put on quite a performance of how pious and how religious they were. When we sat down at the table, they called on me to return thanks for the meal. Their little three-year-old was sitting in his high chair at the table with us. When I finished, he turned to his mother and said, “What did that man do?” Obviously, they didn’t very often give thanks for their meal. The little fellow was completely uninhibited in what he said.
Now a child may be uninhibited, but the church is not to manifest itself as a baby all the time. It is to grow up and develop some inhibitions. There are certain things an adult doesn’t say that a little child may say. The church is not to remain in babyhood but is to mature, and God has given to each child of His grace in which to grow.


But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ [Eph. 4:7].

God has given gifts to believers, as we see in Romans 12 and again in 1 Corinthians, chapters 12–14. Although believers are to give diligence to maintain the unity of the Spirit, this does not mean that each is a carbon copy of the other. Each believer is given a gift so that he may function in the body of believers in a particular way. Paul writes, “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal” (1 Cor. 12:7). This means that a gift is the Spirit of God doing something through the believer for the purpose of building up the body of believers. It is for the profit of the whole body of believers. No gift is given to you to develop you spiritually. A gift is given to you in order that you might function in the body of believers to benefit and bless the church.
Many folks say, “Dr. McGee, we do not speak in tongues in the church. We do it for our private devotions.” I can say to them categorically from the Word of God that they are wrong. Gifts are given to profit the church. No gift is to be used selfishly for personal profit. In fact, it is not a gift if it is being used that way. A gift is given to every member of the body to enable him to function for a very definite reason in his position in the body.
Suppose my eyes would tell me that they are sleepy and will not get up with me. Suppose my legs say they won’t carry me downstairs to my study. I need both my eyes and my legs, and I hope my brain cooperates too. In fact, all the members of my body need to work together, each member doing the job it’s supposed to do.
Each believer is given a gift so that he may function in the body of believers in a particular way. When he does this, the body functions. That is where we find the unity of the Spirit. Along with the gift it says every one of us is given grace to exercise that gift in the power and fullness of the Spirit of God. When each believer functions in his peculiar gift, it produces a harmony, as does each member of the human body. However, when one member of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. This means, my friend, that if you do not exercise your gift in the body, you throw us all out of tune.


Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men [Eph. 4:8].

You will notice that this is a quotation from Psalm 68:18: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” Someone may point out that apparently there is a discrepancy here. Ephesians says, “He gave gifts unto men” and the psalm says, “He received gifts for men.” Is this a misquote from the Old Testament?
Please note that an author has a right to change his own writings, but nobody else has that right. I was misquoted in an article and the publisher had to apologize for misquoting me. However, I have a right to misquote my own writing if I want to do so, and if it serves my purpose.
In the verse before us the Holy Spirit changes the words, and He does it for a purpose. Back in the Book of Psalms we are told that the Lord Jesus had received gifts for men. He had all the gifts ready. Then He came to earth. Now that He has been here and has gone back to the Father, He is distributing the gifts among men. He is giving them to us through the Holy Spirit. Actually this passage shows again how very accurate the Bible is and that this is not a misquote.
“When he ascended up on high” refers to the ascension of Christ. At that time He did two things: (1) He led captivity captive, which refers, I believe, to the redeemed of the Old Testament who went to paradise when they died. Christ took these believers with Him out of paradise into the very presence of God when He ascended. Today when a believer dies, we are not told that he goes to paradise, but rather he is absent from the body and present with the Lord (see 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23). (2) When Christ ascended He also gave gifts to men. This means that He conferred gifts upon living believers in the church so that they might witness to the world. In His ascension, Christ not only brought the Old Testament saints into God’s presence, but He also, through the Holy Spirit, bestowed His gifts. At the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit baptized believers into the body of Christ and then endowed them with certain gifts, enabling them to function as members of the body. The Holy Spirit put each of them in a certain place in the body, and He has been doing the same with each new believer ever since.

(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) [Eph. 4:9–10].

The logical explanation of these verses is that since Christ ascended, He must have of necessity descended at some previous period. Some see only the Incarnation in this. The early church fathers saw in it the work of Christ in bringing the Old Testament saints out of paradise up to the throne of God. Although the Apostles’ Creed states that He descended into hell, it means hades, the place where the dead were, and it is not necessary to assume that He entered into some form of suffering after His death. His incarnation and death were His humiliation and descent, and they were adequate to bring the redeemed of the Old Testament into the presence of God. I recognize, however, that there are other interpretations.


And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;

For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ [Eph. 4:11–13].

I translate it this way: “He Himself gave some [as] apostles, and some [as] prophets and some [as] evangelists, and some [as] pastors and teachers.” This verse does not refer to the gifts He has given to men, although it is true that it is He who has given the gifts. What Paul is saying here is that Christ takes certain men who have been given certain gifts and He gives them to the church.
Now notice the purpose for which these men are given to the church: “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” These gifted men are given to the church that it might be brought to full maturity.
“Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” This may sound selfish, but I trust it is understood. What is the purpose of the church in the world? It is to complete itself that it might grow up.
“He Himself”—this is very emphatic—it is the Lord Jesus Himself who gives gifted men to perfect the church. The Lord Jesus is the One who has the authority and is the One who bestows gifts.
He gave “some, apostles” to the church. An apostle was a man who had not only seen the resurrected Christ but had also been directly and personally commissioned by Him to be an apostle. He enjoyed a special inspiration. This is why Paul could state: “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)…. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:1, 12). This office, by virtue of its very nature, has long since disappeared from the church.
He gave “some, prophets.” Here, as in other epistles, this has reference to New Testament prophets. They were men who were given, as were the apostles, particular insight into the doctrines of the faith (see Eph. 3:5). They were under the immediate influence and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which distinguishes them from teachers (see 1 Cor. 12:10). There is no one around today with the office of apostle or prophet in that sense. They themselves passed off the scene long ago, but they are still members of His church. His church exists not only on earth; part of the church is up in heaven with Him. They are part of that host which is in the presence of God. In another sense they are still with us today. Aren’t we studying the Epistle to the Ephesians right now? And who wrote it? The apostle Paul, and he is still with us even though he is up in heaven with Christ. He is absent from the body but present with Christ. Yet he is still a member of the church and he is still an apostle to us.
“Some, evangelists.” The evangelists were traveling missionaries. Paul was an evangelist. They were not evangelists as we think of them today. There was no committee or organization to set up a campaign. They went into new territory, and they did it all alone with the Spirit of God who went before them.
He also gave “some, pastors.” These men were the shepherds of the flock.
He gave some, “teachers,” the men who were to instruct the flock. This is the gift which is mentioned in Romans 12:7; 1 Corinthians 12:28–29; and 1 Timothy 3:2.
God has given all these men to the church so that the church might be brought to full maturation where there will be inhibitions. You see, the church is not to make a “nut” of herself before the world; she is not to appear ignorant before the world. All these men are to prepare the church so that the believers might do the work of ministering and building up the body of Christ.
We call the pastor of a church a minister, but if you are a Christian, you are as much a minister as he is. You don’t have to be ordained to be a minister. The pastor has a special gift, a gift of teaching the Word of God so that his members, those who are under him, might do the work of the ministry—they are the ones to go out and do the visitation and the witnessing. I am afraid we have the church in reverse today.
At one time Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer led his own singing and also did the preaching when he started out as an evangelist. A dear lady came to him one night and said, “Dr. Chafer, you’re doing too much. You ought not to lead the singing and do the preaching both. Why don’t you get someone else to do the preaching?” Well, he was a musician, but he was primarily a great teacher. Teaching was his great gift, and he used it to equip others for the ministry.
At this point let me say that probably no man in the church has all the gifts; so do not expect your pastor or your minister to be all things. Don’t take the viewpoint that he has many gifts. His business is to build the members of the church for the work of the ministry.
Here is a little article that appeared in the bulletin of a small church in the East:

For centuries the principal responsibility for evangelism has been borne by the clergy. The laity were neither called to evangelistic activity nor believed it to be their responsibility. One of the most significant developments in the church (possibly the single most important development in recent centuries) is the revival of lay activity and the growing recognition that the layman is called to a ministry no less important than that of the minister. Elton Trueblood has said, “The Reformation has opened up the Bible to the common man; a new Reformation will open up the ministry to the common man.”

I agree with this article wholeheartedly, and I rejoice that today we are seeing laymen becoming more involved. So many young people today, young Christians, are getting involved in doing the witnessing. Now they need teaching. I think the only reason in the world that they listen to me is because they feel that I can teach them. Believers need teaching so that they can do the work of the ministry.
Sometimes folk get excited when they hear another using my materials. I had a call from a lady in Ohio. Apparently a preacher there was doing a pretty good job of imitating me. He was teaching from my book on Ruth and was even using my illustrations. She said, “I think it is terrible, and you ought to stop him.” I asked her if he was doing a good job, and she said he was. So I said, “Praise the Lord. I always felt someone would come along who would do it much better than I do it.” You see, my business is to try to prepare others to do the work of the ministry.
One minister wrote and said that he wanted to preach a sermon of mine and asked if he could have permission to do that. I replied, “There is only one thing I ask of you. Do it better than I did, brother.” Use the material. We are to build up the body of Christ.
I am going to talk to you very frankly. Don’t expect your pastor to do it all. He is there to train you that you might do the work of the ministry and that the church might become mature. We are not to act like a bunch of nitwits today. We are to give a good, clear-cut, intelligent witness to the world. I think the greatest sin in the local church today is the ignorance of the man sitting in the pew; he doesn’t know the Word of God, and that is a tragedy. I would hate to get into an airplane if the pilot didn’t know any more about flying than the average church member knows about Christianity and the Word of God. The plane wouldn’t make it—I think it would crash before it got ten feet into the air. That is the condition of the church today. All believers need to be trained in the Word of God so they can do the work of the ministry.


That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive [Eph. 4:14].

“That we henceforth be no more children.” We are to have inhibitions. We are not to run around like a bunch of crying babies. You remember that Paul told the church in Corinth that they were carnal and that they were babies in Christ and a disgrace.
We are not (to use my translation) to be “tossed up and down and driven about with every wind of doctrine (teaching).” Notice that Paul does some mixing of metaphors here. He is trying to bring out vividly the danger of a believer continuing as a babe. You wouldn’t, for example, put a baby in a plane to pilot it. My little grandson is a smart boy, but he is not that smart. I wouldn’t allow him up there; he would crash. If children were in command of a ship, they would be tossed up and down, driven here and there without direction over the vast expanse of sea. They would become discouraged and seasick. They would lose their way. This is a frightful picture of the possible fate of a child of God.
The figure of speech changes again. “By the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” If you sent babes into the gambling den, the sharpies would take them in with their system of error. I wouldn’t think of sending my grandson to Las Vegas to play the slot machines! In fact, I wouldn’t want him there even if he lived to be a hundred years old.
Christ’s purpose in giving men with different gifts to the church is to develop believers from babyhood to full maturity. Teachers are to be pediatricians. I sometimes use the expression that I am primarily a pediatrician, not an obstetrician. The obstetrician brings the baby into the world. I know he has to get up sometimes at one o’clock in the morning to deliver a baby and that he spends many nights at his work, but he is through with the little angel after he is born. He turns him over to the pediatrician, who makes sure he has everything he needs for normal growth. I have been a pediatrician in my ministry and, only secondly, an obstetrician. I feel that I am called to be the pediatrician—that is, to give the saints the Word of God so they can grow.


But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love [Eph. 4:15–16].

Believers are not to remain children, but rather that in “speaking the truth in love, [they] may grow up into him in all things.” The believer is to follow the truth in love; that is, he is to love truth, live it, and speak it. Christ is the truth and the believer must sail his little bark of life with everything pointed toward Christ. Christ is his compass and his magnetic pole.
“Which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted.” The body of believers is compared to the physical body and is called the body of Christ.
The body not only receives orders from the Head, who is Christ, but also spiritual nutriment. This produces a harmony where each member is functioning in his place as he receives spiritual supplies from the Head. Also the body has an inward dynamic whereby it renews itself. Likewise the spiritual body is to renew itself in love.

THE PROHIBITION OF THE NEW MAN


This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,

Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:

Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness [Eph. 4:17–19].


We have seen the exhibition of the new man and the inhibition of the new man. Now we come to the prohibition of the new man. There is the negative side of the believer’s life, which I think is important for us to see. There is not enough emphasis on it. We talk about “new morality” which is nothing in the world but old sin. There is a liberty in Christ, but it is not a license to sin.
Scriptural prohibitions for the new man are different from some of the prohibitions that people set up. I can’t find, for example, where it says that women should not wear makeup. I know a group who for years judged the spirituality of women by the amount of makeup they wore. I’ve also seen young girls who thought they were spiritual because they had disheveled hair and no makeup on, and actually they looked like walking zombies. Christians should do the best they can with what they have. That doesn’t mean, of course, that they should be painted up like a barber pole. However, some Christians insist upon a number of these man-made prohibitions which are not found in Scripture.
God’s prohibitions for the new man are the negatives of His Word. We have had too much on the power of positive thinking today. We need a little of the power of negative thinking. Have you ever thought that in the Garden of Eden the primary command was a negative command? “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Then you come to the Ten Commandments. They are very negative but also very good. Now here in Ephesians we see some negative thinking, some prohibitions for the child of God. We are not to walk “as other Gentiles walk.” This is the negative side.
Paul returns at this juncture to the practical aspect of the believer’s walk. He had introduced it in verses 1–3, but he was detoured by the introduction of the subject of the unity of the church. Now he gives a picture of the lives of Gentiles and the lives of the Ephesians before their conversion. Remember in chapter 2, verses 11–12, he told how they had been far off, strangers without hope and without God, living in sin. That was their picture.
This is still a graphic picture of the lost man today. Paul gives four aspects of the walk of the Gentiles which illustrate the absolute futility and insane purpose of the life of the lost man.
“In the vanity of their mind” means the empty illusion of the life that thinks there is satisfaction in sin. Oh, how many people walk that way! I feel so sorry for these young people who have been taken in by the promoters of immorality as a life style. A girl told me that she had had two abortions—murdered two babies, and was not married—what a life! That is not the life of happiness that God has planned for His children, my friend. It is the walk of a lost person, walking in the vanity of the mind. It is an empty illusion of life.
Drinking cocktails is another illusion. Alcoholism takes its toll. An alcoholic woman has started listening to our Bible teaching program and is now fighting a battle to be delivered from alcohol. She says, “Oh, it seemed so smart, so sophisticated to drink cocktails!” How tragic.
“Having the understanding darkened” means that the lost man has lost his perception of moral values. That is exactly what is being promoted in our day—a loss of perception of moral values.
“Being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them” is a picture of all mankind without Christ. It is the rebellion of Adam which is inherited by all his children. What a picture it is of a man today. He thinks he is living. One man told me he spent a week’s wages for one evening in a nightclub. What for? To try to have a good time. That’s an expensive way to try to have fun. He was alienated from the life of God; he had no communication with God: he was dead in trespasses and sin. Such a man is ignorant of the inestimable advantage of a relationship with God. The result is a hardening of the heart.
“Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness [which is uncleanness], to work all uncleanness with greediness [or covetousness].” Their continuance in this state of moral ineptitude brings them down to the level where they have no feeling of wrongdoing. There are a lot of folk like that today. They are apathetic. The resultant condition is to plunge further into immorality and lasciviousness. This vicious cycle leads to a desire to go even deeper into sin. If you paint the town red tonight, you have to have a bigger bucket and a bigger brush for tomorrow night. The meaning here is to covet the very depths of immorality. Men in sin are never satisfied with sin. They become abandoned to sin. This is what it means in chapter 1 of Romans that God gave them up to all uncleanness through their own lusts. You can reach the place, my friend, where you are an abandoned sinner.


But ye have not so learned Christ;

If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus [Eph. 4:20–21].

Here is the contrast with the life of the Gentiles. If anyone is not listening to Jesus, then Jesus must not be his Savior. The Lord Jesus is the Shepherd and His sheep hear His voice. If you haven’t heard His voice, then you are not one of His sheep.
What will change the Gentiles from their old nature? What are they to do? They are to listen to Christ. They are to hear Him. They are to be taught by Him. Those who are not His sheep will not hear Him.
When an unsaved man writes to me and says that he disagrees with me, I am not upset. I think, Fine. I hope you don’t agree with me. Something would be wrong if he did agree. The saved person looks to the Lord Jesus as his Shepherd. He listens to the Shepherd and he follows Him. The unsaved person goes his own way.
“The truth is in Jesus.” Although His life on earth cannot be imitated by anyone, the very life of Jesus is an example to the believer. Jesus is the One who has been the pioneer; He is the example of life here on earth. He is the One who also went through the doorway of death for us. There is no reason for any believer to be in the dark today or to be ignorant or to be blind.


That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness [Eph. 4:22–24].

“That ye put off concerning … the old man … and that ye put on the new man.” We are to put off the old man and put on the new man in the same manner that we change our clothes. It is like putting off an old and unclean garment and then putting on a garment that is new and clean. The putting off the old man and putting on the new man cannot be done by self-effort, nor can it be done by striving to imitate Christ’s conduct. It has been done for the believing sinner by the death of Christ. We are like babes who cannot dress themselves. I have learned with my little grandson that a child doesn’t do very well when he tries to dress himself. As Christians we never reach the place where we can do that, and we don’t need to try. It already has been done for us. We are told in the Epistle to the Romans that the old man has already been crucified in the death of Christ. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:6). In view of the truth that the old man has already been crucified with Christ, we are to put it off in the power of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that the flesh, the old nature, is ever eliminated in this life. We do not get rid of the old nature, but we are not to live in it; that is, we are not to allow it to control our lives.
On the other hand, we do have a new nature. This is the result of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Any man in Christ is a new creature. We are to live in that new nature, that new man. This is a repetition of the great message of Romans.
“Which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” This shows that this is the imputed righteousness of Christ, and that all is to be done consistent with the holy character of God. Since we have been declared righteous and we are in Christ seated in the heavenlies, our walk down here should be commensurate with our position.


Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

Neither give place to the devil [Eph. 4:25–27].

Paul returns to the prohibitions which he began in verse 17. The believer is told to walk no longer as the Gentiles walk. These injunctions continue through the remainder of the epistle.
“Speak every man truth” is the injunction that leads all the rest. When the old man was put off in the crucifixion of Christ, the lying tongue and deceitful heart were put on the cross. One of the reasons Jesus had to die for us was because you and I are liars. We ought always speak the truth. David said, “I said in my haste, All men are liars” (Ps. 116:11). I remember hearing Dr. W. I. Carroll quote this years ago. He pointed out that David said he thought this “in his haste.” Dr. Carroll remarked, “I’ve had a long time to think it over, and I still agree with David.”
Speaking the truth would resolve most of the problems in the average church. Long ago I gave up the idea of trying to straighten out all of the lies that I hear in Christian circles. I found out that I could spend all my time doing that. Since believers are members of one body, speaking the truth is imperative.
Chrysostom drew this ridiculous analogy but it does illustrate the truth:

Let not the eye lie to the foot, nor the foot to the eye. If there be a deep pit and its mouth covered with reeds shall present to the eye the appearance of solid ground, will not the eye use the foot to ascertain whether it is hollow underneath, or whether it is firm and resists? Will the foot tell a lie, and not the truth as it is? And what, again, if the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot?

The feet wouldn’t deceive the eyes because they are members of the same body. Neither would the eye deceive the feet. So in the church there ought to be honesty and truth among the members.
“Be ye angry, and sin not.” The believer is commanded to be angered with certain conditions and with certain people. There seems to be an idea today that a Christian is one who is a “blah,” that he is sweet under all circumstances and conditions. Will you hear me carefully? No believer can be neutral in the battle of truth. He should hate the lying and gossiping tongue, especially of another Christian. However, we should not hate or loathe the person with an innate hatred or malice, as Peter calls it. Malice is something that should not be in the life of the believer. “Wherefore laying aside all malice …” (1 Pet. 2:1). Malice has been described as congealed anger. When the wrong is corrected, there should be no animosity. Forgive and forget is the principle. Harboring hatred and sinful feelings gives the Devil an advantage in our lives. Many people have certain hang-ups. They hate certain people—they can’t get over it and can’t forgive. My friend, we should forgive and forget if the person is willing to give up his lying.
The Lord Jesus showed anger. He went into the synagogue, and there was a man with a withered hand. What angered Him was that the Pharisees had planted that man there just to see what He would do. “And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other” (Mark 3:5). Our Lord was angry at the Pharisees for doing such a thing. Also we are told that God is angry all day long with the wicked, but that the minute they give up their wickedness and turn to Him, He will save them. That should be the attitude of the believer.
I heard of a custodian who had remained in a church which had had lots of problems. There was trouble, bitterness, hatred, and little cliques in the church. They had had one pastor after another, but the custodian remained through the years. A visitor who knew about the church asked him how he had been able to stay so long under such circumstances. He replied, “I just get into neutral and let them push me around.” A great many people think that that is being a Christian. May I say to you that no Christian can be neutral. We are in a great battle, as we shall see later in this epistle.


Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers [Eph. 4:28–29].

“Let him that stole steal no more.” Man by his sinful nature is a thief as well as a liar. When I was a boy, I ran around with a mean gang of boys—I was the only good boy in the crowd, of course. During watermelon season, we stole watermelons. The farmer might have given us one out of his patch, but they tasted better if we swiped them. We also stole peaches and apples from the orchards. And in the winter-time we would steal eggs and take them down to Old Buzzard Creek and roast them. There wasn’t anything that was safe from us.
After I was converted, I still had this impulse. In fact, once I was going to visit a man who had a marvelous watermelon patch by the side of a country road. I was so tempted to take one of his watermelons that I actually stopped and got out of the car. Then I thought, “Wait a minute. I am going to see the man in a few minutes. He’ll give me one. There’s no reason for me to do this.” I got back in the car and drove off. When I told him my experience, he laughed. “You know,” he said, “I might have shot you if you had gone into that watermelon patch. I’ve had a lot of thieves in there stealing my watermelons, and they are pretty valuable today.” Stealing is in our hearts. We are just naturally that way. Paul says here that we are to steal no more, even when it may look as if it is all right.
“But rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” The believer is not to get rich for his own selfish ends. Rather, he is to help others with whatever he has that is surplus. Today there are many fine Christian ministries that lag and wilt for lack of funds. Why? Because many believers are accumulating riches for themselves and are not giving as they should give.
“Corrupt communication” means filthy speech—that which is rotten or putrid. An uncontrolled tongue in the mouth of a believer is the index of a corrupt life. Believers who use the shady or questionable story reveal a heart of wickedness. What is in the well of the heart will come up through the bucket of the mouth. The speech of the believer should be on the high plane of instructing and communicating encouragement to other believers. You can have fun and enjoy life—humor has its place—but our humor should not be dirty or filthy.

And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption [Eph. 4:30].
“Grieve not the holy Spirit of God.” The Holy Spirit is a person who can be grieved. What is it that grieves Him? It is the offenses that have been listed. When a Christian lies, it grieves the Holy Spirit. When a Christian has dirty thoughts, it grieves the Holy Spirit. What happens when any person is grieved? It breaks the fellowship. The Holy Spirit cannot work in your life when you have grieved Him, when fellowship with Him has been broken.
“Whereby ye are sealed”md;this tells us that we can grieve the Holy Spirit, but we cannot grieve Him away, because we are sealed in Him. How wonderful this is! You were sealed in the Holy Spirit at the moment of regeneration.
“Unto the day of redemption”—He seals you until the day when He will present you to the Lord Jesus Christ. A believer cannot unseal His work which continues to the day of redemption, but the believer may grieve Him. What is the great difference between Christians today? The real difference is that some Christians live with a grieved Holy Spirit and some live with an ungrieved Holy Spirit.


Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you [Eph. 4:31–32].

These last two verses are in sharp contrast one with the other. There is an additional listing of that which grieves the Holy Spirit in verse 31—these are sins of the emotional nature. Instead, the emotional responses, which God wants us to have, are given in verse 32.
“Bitterness” is an irritable state of mind which produces harsh and hard opinions of others. Someone once came up to me and told me what he thought of another Christian. A third Christian who was present later said, “Don’t put too much stress on what he said, Dr. McGee, because he is bitter.” A great many people are speaking out of bitterness, and when they do, it hurts. This grieves the Holy Spirit.
“Wrath, and anger” are outbursts of passion. Bishop Moule makes this distinction between them, “Wrath denotes rather the acute passion, and the other the chronic.”
“Clamour” means the bold assertion of supposed rights and grievances. There are people in the church who feel that the pastor isn’t paying attention to them if he doesn’t shake their hand. Sometimes they even become bitter and clamorous over a supposed slight. Who can say that the pastor must run around and shake hands with everyone simply to keep people happy? It is this kind of attitude that grieves the Holy Spirit.
“Evil speaking” is blasphemy, but it also means all kinds of slander; and “malice,” as we have noted before, is congealed hatred:
“Be put away from you.” All these sins are to be put away or, literally, taken away. In the Greek it is an aorist imperative, requiring a one-time decisive act if the Holy Spirit is not to be grieved. We must make a decision to put these sins away.
Now comes a marked contrast. “Be (become) ye” denotes the radical change that should take place in the believer so that there will be no vacuum in his life.
“Kind one to another” means Christian courtesy. “Tenderhearted” is a more intense word than kind. It means to be full of deep and mellow affection. Some believers are like that—they are wonderful friends. When they see you, they put their arms around you. I went to college and then to seminary with a fellow and then helped him in meetings for years. He is retired now. When we saw each other in Florida some time back, we just flung our arms around each other. We were tender-hearted toward one another—we love each other in the Lord.
“Forgiving one another” is a reflexive form of phrase. It is literally, “forgiving one another yourselves.” It means to give and take in relation to the faults of one another. We are to forgive rather than magnify the faults of others.
“Even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” All of this is to be done on a twofold basis. First, this conduct will not grieve the Holy Spirit. Second, the basis of forgiveness is not legal, but gracious. This is not a command under law but is on the basis of the grace of God exhibited in our forgiveness because Christ died for us. We are to forgive because we have been forgiven. It is not that we forgive in order to get forgiveness. Note the contrast: Christ was stating the legal grounds for forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14–15). Here in Ephesians we are told to forgive on the basis of the grace of God which He exhibited in our forgiveness for Christ’s sake, because Christ died for us. This is quite wonderful!

CHAPTER 5

Theme: The church will be a bride; the engagement of the church; the experience of the church; the expectation of the church


There is really a mixing of metaphors here. In chapter 4 the church is called a new man, and now the church is to be a bride. The emphasis of this chapter is on the future—the church will be a bride. The church is not a bride today. The church is a new man walking in the world, and the church is espoused (engaged) to Christ but is not yet wedded to Him. The wedding hasn’t taken place yet. The church will be a bride with Christ after the Rapture. “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband…. And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife” (Rev. 21:2, 9).
On this earth we are to walk as a future bride. We are engaged now. This is what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “… for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). When a girl is engaged and preparing for her wedding, she doesn’t have time for her old boyfriends. She won’t be going out with Tom tonight and with Dick tomorrow night and with Harry the following night. She is engaged, and she has no interest in them anymore. How can we who are engaged to Christ live as the world lives? We are going to be presented to Christ someday. We are going to live with Him throughout eternity, and He is going to be our Lord and our Master.

THE ENGAGEMENT OF THE CHURCH


Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour [Eph. 5:1–2].


“Therefore” connects this section with the preceding where the walk of the believer is under consideration and continues the injunctions for Christian conduct. These injunctions have a definite bearing upon the church which will be presented to Christ without spot or blemish. Such a high and lofty goal, which is entirely the work of Christ, is a compelling dynamic for chaste conduct here and now.
We have learned that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer and seals every believer, but that we can grieve the Holy Spirit. If we engage in those things mentioned in chapter 4, verse 31, it means we will grieve the Holy Spirit—but it does not mean that we are no longer children of God. It does mean that the unsaved world won’t believe that we are the children of God. We are, however, sealed by the Spirit of God until the day of redemption, the day when the Spirit of God will present the church to the Lord Jesus. This goal should lead us to chaste conduct.
The believer is to be an imitator of God, especially in the matter of forgiveness. However, this applies to all aspects of the Christian walk. The Gentiles who formerly walked on a very low plane are now lifted to the high level of love. They are now called “dear children” or beloved children. The plane of love to which they are lifted is the love which Christ exhibited when He loved us enough to give Himself as an offering and a sacrifice for us.
“And hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour” is a clear-cut reference to the cross. It makes the death of Christ more than the public execution of a criminal. The cross was the brazen altar where the Lamb of God was offered as the burnt sacrifice. That sacrifice takes away the sin of the world. It identifies Christ with every sacrifice that was offered in the Old Testament by God’s command. They all pointed to Him.
It is in view of the substitutionary, vicarious death of Christ upon the cross that the believer is to attain to such an exalted plane of love. The believer cannot walk with a grieved Holy Spirit, for only the Spirit can bring forth this fruit in the life. Remember that love is first on the list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22.


But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;
Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks [Eph. 5:3–4].
The sins described here are those which are prevalent among unbelievers. These are the common sins in the world today. All of them have to do with low forms of immorality. Paul is saying that the child of God cannot habitually engage in these. Even a slight indulgence brings about a revulsion and agony of soul. I have made this statement many times, and I repeat it again: If you can get into sin and not be troubled or bothered by it, you are not a child of God. I do not think there is any other alternative. But if there is conviction in your heart, you can rise and go to your Father as the Prodigal Son did. You are a son of the Father, and only sons want to go to the Father’s house. I have never heard of a pig that wanted to go there. The sins listed here are low sins which characterize the ungodly person.
When you as a believer go to God to confess your sins, you don’t just bundle them up and hand the bundle to God. It is not a wholesale affair. Rather, you spell out each sin to Him. For example, if you have a biting tongue and are a gossip who hurts people, tell Him that is your sin. When you go to God in confession and name the specific sin, it restores fellowship with Him. These sins are sins that believers drop into sometimes. When they do, they are to confess them to God. Fénelon puts it like this:

Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself as to others.
If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration, just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.

The great need of all believers is to go to God and tell Him what is really in our hearts. Someone may say, “It is just unbelievable that Christians would even commit such sins as are listed here.” Friend, if you had been a pastor as long as I have, you would know that they do fall into these sins. Many Christian people feel that they have committed an unpardonable sin, but they have not. There is a way back to God!
“Fornication” is accepted by the world as a norm of conduct. It is a sin that is looked upon as not being very bad. When the gross immorality of the hour started creeping in, it was called the new morality. Some time ago many of us were shocked when we heard that in the college dormitories the boys and girls were in the same building but on different floors. Now it has changed so that boys and girls are roommates. When I went to college, the boys could, visit in the living room of the girls’ dormitory. And I still think that is the best way to do it. I’ll stick with the Bible. Fornication is a sin. Regardless of where you are or who you are, if you are living in fornication today, you cannot be a child of God. Someone may say, “Wait a minute. You said a child of God could confess a sin and come back into fellowship with God.” That is right, but a child of God cannot confess a sin and then persist in living in that sin. That is a dead giveaway that such a person is not a child of God.
“All uncleanness” includes all forms of immorality.
“Covetousness” is a grasping desire—and not just for money or material wealth. It may be a desire to be mentally superior to someone else. It could be coveting a home or a position. Some people love to be president of something. Of course, it also includes the covetousness for money. It has been said that the miser thinks dollars are flat so he can stack them, and the prodigal thinks they are round so he can roll them. Whether one stacks them or spends them, covetousness means gaining everything for your own selfish ends.
Some people try to garner together all the honors of this world. I know ministers who would never be guilty of trying to get rich, but they surely are after position. They want a position in their denomination or in their community. Covetousness is a rotten sin that is in our old natures.
“Let it not be once named among you.” This means they are not to be spoken of with approval or desire. Obviously, I am naming these sins with neither approval nor desire.
“Filthiness” speaks of the utmost in depravity. These are the low-down, dirty things one hears today.
“Foolish talking” means to gloat or brag about sinning. Have you ever heard men or even women boast about how much they drank at a party? Have you heard them boast of their conquests in the realm of sex? That is foolish talking.
“Jesting” does not mean good, clean humor—I’d be guilty of jesting if it meant that. Jesting means to make light of sensuality and immorality. It means telling dirty stories.
“But rather giving of thanks” is to be the context of Christian conversation. I would often play golf with a very wonderful Christian layman whom I loved in the Lord. Sometimes an unsaved man would join us. He would make a few bad shots, and then he would lose his temper. He would ask God to damn the golf course, the sand traps, his golf clubs, and anything else he could think of. My friend would always say, “Praise the Lord, bless the Lord.” The unbeliever would ask, “Why do you say that?” The Christian would ask, “Why do you take God’s name in vain?” The reply would be, “It’s a habit.” “It’s also a habit with me,” my friend would say. “Every time I hear a man ask God to damn something, I praise and thank Him for something. I sort of want to balance the budget down here.” On several occasions that stopped the cussing. And it is good for us as Christians to make a habit of giving thanks.


For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God [Eph. 5:5].

It is clearly understood that the unregenerate man who practices these sins has no portion in the kingdom of Christ and God. If a professing Christian practices these sins, he immediately classifies himself. No matter what his testimony may be on Sunday or what position he may have in the church, such a person is saying to the lost world that he is not a child of God. To live in the corruption of the flesh is to place one’s self beyond the pale of a child of God.


Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

Be not ye therefore partakers with them [Eph. 5:6–7].

In view of the fact that the wrath of God will be poured out on the unregenerate because of these sins, it follows that the child of God cannot participate in them without incurring the displeasure and judgment of God. If such a person is really a child of God, God will judge him. He judged David, you may recall. When David slipped into sin, God put the lash on his back and never took it off. “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:31–32).
If you can sin and get by with it, you are not a child of God. Do you know why? Because God would have to condemn you with the world, which would mean that you are not saved. If you are a child of God and do these things, God will chasten you—He will take you to the woodshed right here and now. If God doesn’t chasten you, you are in a frightful condition. It means you are not His child, because God does not spank the Devil’s children.


For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord [Eph. 5:8–10].

Paul reminds the believers of their former state prior to conversion. They were not just in darkness, they were darkness. We speak of the unregenerate as being in darkness, but it is worse than that. When I went alone to play golf on one occasion, I was teamed up with a man who was unsaved—in fact, he was a bartender. As he talked, I realized that he was not only in darkness, he was darkness. My, what a life that man had!
“Now are ye light in the Lord,” which means we are to reflect Him who is the Light of the world. Paul identifies the fruit of light. He marks out those characteristics which always accompany light: “In all goodness,” which means kindness; “righteousness,” meaning moral rectitude; and “truth,” referring primarily to sincerity and genuineness. The believer is to prove or test his life in this manner to see if he is in the will of God and therefore well-pleasing to Him.
You will remember that 1 John 1:7 speaks of walking in the light as He is in the light. Someone asked me what it means to walk in the light of God. Here we have a description of it from the Word of God: walk in kindness, in goodness, in righteousness (moral rectitude), and in truth, which is sincerity and genuineness. And this is to be our walk seven days a week—not only on Sunday. And it means twenty-four hours of those seven days and sixty minutes of every hour.


And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light [Eph. 5:11–13].

We are to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.” A child of God simply cannot go along with the “works of darkness” as light and darkness cannot mingle in the physical world. For the things done in secret by them are even shameful to speak of. We are not even to talk about them.
Rather, we are to “reprove” or convict them. This does not mean that the believer is to become a reformer. It does mean that by the light of his life he is a rebuke to the works of darkness. Light reveals what the darkness conceals. Darkness is not driven away by preaching at it; darkness is dissipated by the presence of light.
There are too many Christians who take the critical method or the preaching method. They try to correct an unsaved person by saying, “You shouldn’t be doing that.” My friend, that is not the way to approach the darkness. You are to be light. You cannot preach to people about these things. You cannot tell them what to do and not do. I constantly get letters from people who are telling me that I should preach against certain sins. No, my business is to turn on the light of the Word of God—that which God calls right. You see, you are not able to win a person to Christ by lecturing to him and telling him what is wrong. You are not to try to get the unsaved man to change his conduct; he cannot change his conduct. He needs to be born again in order to change. You are not to shake your finger under his nose and say, “Don’t do that. Don’t be a bad boy.” You are to be light, and light will always affect darkness.
I remember a very dear lady in my congregation when I was a pastor in downtown Los Angeles. She was a dominant character, however. She came to me and told me that her husband was unsaved and asked me to remember him in prayer. I did so faithfully. Then she came to me and told me that he was coming to church but would never accept the invitation to receive Christ as his Savior. Then she told me this: “At breakfast I talk to him with tears about receiving Christ. Again at dinner I talk to him and cry.” I got to thinking what it would be like to have two meals a day with a crying woman. So I told her absolutely never to mention the subject to him again. She should fix him the nicest meals possible and be the sweetest person she knew how to be. “Oh,” she said, “that wouldn’t work. We are supposed to witness.” You see, she didn’t really understand what it meant to be a witness. Anyway, she did try the plan. She quit blubbering in his presence, and she stopped lecturing to him. In less than six months that man made a decision for Christ. He had been listening to the wrong preacher before that. She had been preaching to him when she should have been a light. Remember that darkness is not dissipated by lecturing or by preaching. Darkness is dissipated by light.


Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light [Eph. 5:14].

Here is a command which is humanly impossible to obey. How can a person awake from the dead? How can a person awake out of spiritual death? Only God can awaken us. I think what Paul means here is that the believers who have fallen into a spiritual stupor are to wake up.


See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is [Eph. 5:15–17].
My own translation is: “Look carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but be as wise men, buying up the time, because the days are evil. On this account become not senseless (foolish) but understanding (being prudent) what the will of the Lord is.” This is another injunction regarding the walk of the believer. He is to walk wisely. His walk is to reveal the urgency of the hour and the importance of living for God. The entire objective in his walk is to stay in the will of God. He walks in the will of God as a train runs on the track. His walk in this world demonstrates that he belongs to Christ.
When you walk into a place of business, you will find the salesman in there on his toes: he is dynamic. If a man is a child of God, how does he act when he is not in his place of business trying to make a dollar? Is he on his toes? Is he dynamic? Is he living for God? The believer is to walk in this world as though he belonged to Christ.
There is a saying that you never ask a Texan if he is a Texan. If he is a Texan, he’ll let you know it without your asking. If he is not a Texan, you wouldn’t want to embarrass him! My friend, a Christian ought to walk in such a way that you know he is a child of God without asking him. We all need to look carefully how we walk.

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE CHURCH


Each real believer should have an experience—I believe in experience. Now notice what is to be his experience:


And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord [Eph. 5:18–19].

My translation puts it like this: “Be not made drunk with wine in which is riot (dissoluteness), but be filled with the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” This is not just a dry discourse against the evils of drunkenness, even though drunkenness was the besetting sin of the ancient world—and is still the besetting sin of the hour. It may actually be the sin that will destroy America. But this is not a lecture on drunkenness. Actually, Paul is making a comparison. Don’t be drunk with wine. Why not? because it will stimulate temporarily: it will energize the flesh, but then it will let you down and lead you in the direction of profligacy and dissoluteness and will finally eventuate in desperation and despair and delirium tremens. That is not what you need. Now it is true that people today feel a need for something, which I think explains the cocktail hour and the barroom. They turn to hard liquor to fill that need. If they are not children of God, they have no other resource or recourse. However, the child of God is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is to be the experience of the believer.
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? We can find the analogy in the man who is drinking, which is the reason Paul uses it here. The man who is drinking is possessed by the wine. You can tell that a man is drunk. In contrast, it is the Holy Spirit who should be the One to possess the believer. It is a divine intoxication that is to fill that need. This is not an excessive emotionalism but that which furnishes the dynamic for living and for accomplishing something for God. When we are filled by the Holy Spirit, it means that we are controlled by the Holy Spirit.
The walk of the believer and his being filled with the Spirit are closely related. Paul says a believer is to walk carefully and “circumspectly” and “be filled with the Spirit.” These are commands which are given to the believer. This filling is a constant renewal of the believer’s life for strength and action, which is indicated here by the use of the present tense. The Spirit-filled believer not only walks wisely, but his Christian character is evidenced by the fruit of the Spirit (see Gal. 5:22–23).
A believer is never commanded to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, but we are told that we are baptized into one body …” (1 Cor. 12:13). Did we do that by some effort on our part? No, it was by our faith in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit regenerates and indwells us. The Holy Spirit seals us, and the Holy Spirit baptizes us and puts us into the body of believers.
However, the believer needs the filling of the Spirit to serve Christ. The disciples were gathered on the Day of Pentecost. They needed to go out into the world for Christ, and they were filled with the Spirit. They had that experience which enabled them to witness on that day.
To be filled with the Spirit is, I think, as simple as driving to a filling station and saying, “Fill it up.” As I start out in the morning with the Lord I say, “Lord, I want to walk today in the Spirit. I cannot do it myself. I need Your power. I need Your help.” We as believers need to start the day by asking for an infilling of the Holy Spirit. This is something which is desperately needed by believers.
You may have been filled with the Spirit yesterday or last week, but that won’t suffice for today. I buy gasoline from a friend of mine who runs the station. I got my tank filled up one morning, and the next morning I was back again and said, “Fill ’er up.” He asked, “Where in the world have you been?” So I told him that I had been down to Yucca Valley, where I had spoken at a sunrise service and then a church service. You see, friend, when you are filled with the Spirit, you will do something for God; you will be walking in the Spirit. But that doesn’t mean you will have enough for tomorrow. You need another infilling for tomorrow. The old gas tank needs another fill up.
This is the reason some people can be so mightily used of God one day and feel so empty the next. I have had that feeling, and I’m sure you have. We need a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit. This will enable us to walk in the Spirit. We may stumble and fall at times. My little grandson is learning to walk and right now he has a bruised spot on his forehead and on his nose. But he gets up and tries again and someday he will be a good walker. God wants you and me to learn to walk in the Spirit. He wants us to be filled with the Spirit.
Now what is one of the evidences of being filled with the Holy Spirit? It is “speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” It is a good thing that the Spirit of God said it was speaking one to another. If He had said singing, it would have left me out. I think “psalms” refers to the Book of Psalms, as probably all of them had been set to music. “Hymns” were composed by men to glorify God. They were on a very high plane. The “spiritual songs” were less formal than either psalms or hymns. Probably some of them were composed as the person was singing. This is the manifestation of the infilling of the Spirit because He brings joy into the life of the believer.
I’d like to mention one more thing about the comparison of being drunk with wine and being filled with the Spirit. I notice in motels and hotels where we stay as we go across the country that they have what they call the “happy hour” or the “attitude adjustment hour” or something else. Around five o’clock people go in, sit on a bar stool and drink so they will be sociable by six or seven and fit to live with for awhile. I have watched people go into those places, and they didn’t look happy when they went in, but neither did they look happy when they came out.
Now, believers need an attitude adjustment, but they don’t need the spirits that come from a bottle; they need to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that they might radiate the joy of the Lord. The apostle John says that one of the reasons he wrote his epistle was so that “your joy may be full” (see John 15:11). This fullness of joy is to be through our fellowship with the Father and with Jesus Christ (see 1 John 1:3–4). We ought to have a good time and we ought to have fun in the church—I don’t mean a period of silliness—but the joy of the Lord should be there. That kind of joy comes through the filling of the Holy Spirit.


Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ [Eph. 5:20].

Another evidence of being filled with the Spirit is an attitude of thankfulness. We note in the Book of Psalms a great amount of thanksgiving and praise to God. And it is on a high level. We don’t have enough of that among believers today. We should all say, “Praise the Lord, and thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.” Can you say that from the heart? It is no good unless it comes from the heart. The filling of the Spirit produces a life of thankfulness so that we can honestly thank God for all things.
As I write this, there is a great deal of nonsense being promoted which I call sloppy, agape. I heard recently, “Just say to everybody, ‘I love you.’” My friend, if you don’t love them, don’t say it. If you do love them, show it.
Dr. Howard Kelly was a great surgeon and a great obstetrician. He wrote in the field of obstetrics, and his works were classic among doctors for a long time. He was also a great Christian, a wonderful man of God. The story is told of his taking a walk in the country outside the city of Baltimore in one of those lovely rural areas. He became thirsty and stopped at a farmhouse to ask for a drink of water. A little girl answered the door. She said that her parents had gone to town and there was no water in the house but there was cold milk down at the spring. Would he like a glass of milk? He said “I surely would.” So he sat on the porch while she got a glass of milk and brought it to him. My, it was delicious! She asked, “Would you like another glass?” He said, “I surely would.” So she brought him another glass. He thanked her, then went on his way down the road, thinking what a lovely little girl she was. Not many days later the little girl became sick. She had a pain in her side and was taken to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Who do you suppose was the doctor who came in and examined her? It was Dr. Kelly, and he recognized her as the little girl who had given him the glasses of milk. He performed the necessary surgery and took special care of her. When it was time for her to go home, her parents came for her and waited anxiously for the bill because they didn’t have the money to pay for the operation and the hospital costs. When the bill was presented to them, they opened it with trembling hands. Under the total balance was written, “Paid in full with two glasses of milk,” signed “Dr. Howard Kelly.” This was love in action, and the love he expressed was the fruit of the Spirit, because Dr. Kelly was a wonderful Christian.
My friend, you don’t have to run around telling everyone you love them—show them that you love them. Be filled with the Spirit so there will be love and joy and thanksgiving in your life. This is very practical. This is down where the rubber meets the road.
Why don’t you “drive into the filling station” and ask God to fill you up? The old gas tank is empty. You and I don’t have anything worthwhile in ourselves. We need to go to Him and tell Him that we are empty and that we need the filling of the Holy Spirit so we can live for Him. We need to see that it is an impossibility by ourselves but that He can do it through us.
Let me repeat this because it is so important: we are told to be filled with the Holy Spirit—this is the only command given to the believer relative to the Holy Spirit. The other ministries of the Holy Spirit are accomplished in us when we receive Christ. Every believer is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God …” (John 1:12). The believer is also indwelt by the Spirit. “… Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9). And the believer is sealed by the Holy Spirit “… in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13). Also the believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body …” (1 Cor. 12:13). These four ministries of the Holy Spirit take place the moment the believer puts his trust in Christ. It is all accomplished for us. The only thing which is left up to us is to obey His command to be filled with the Holy Spirit (see v. 18).


Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God [Eph. 5:21].

“Submit” is a very interesting word. It does not mean obey. Paul is not saying that the child of God is a buck private in the rear rank taking orders from somebody in the church who thinks he is a sergeant or a captain. We do take orders, but they are from the Captain of our salvation.
Joshua thought he was a general of the children of Israel. He saw a Man with His sword drawn standing at the edge of the camp. He asked, “… Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” If I may put it in good old Americana, he said, “Who told you to draw a sword? I’m the general here!” It was actually a rebuke. Then that One (who was the preincarnate Christ) turned and said, “… Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come …” (Josh. 5:13–4). Joshua went down on his face and even took off his shoes because he was on holy ground. He learned that he had a Captain.
You and I are under a Captain, but the relationship is not military but on the basis of love. Our Lord said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). I think there is an alternative there: “If you don’t love me, forget the commandments.”
Now we see here that you and I are to submit ourselves “one to another in the fear of God.” That doesn’t mean we are to salute and fall down before some human being who outranks us. It does mean that in the fear of Christ we are to walk with one another in lowliness of mind.
If you will turn back to chapter 4, verses 1–2, you will see that Paul begins this section by saying that our walk should be in lowliness and meekness. That is the same thing that we have here. But notice in chapter 4 it begins with “I…beseech you.” This is not a command. It is the language of love. The fires of Sinai have died down, and now it is based on what has been done by Christ at Calvary. It is based on the grace of God. “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness….”
“Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” This means that you do not try to run the church. Pastors, officers in the church, members of the church, all of us are to submit ourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. It cannot be a “my way” proposition. No one can say, “I want you to know that I’ll do as I please. If I want to do it this way, I will do it this way.” Such an attitude is not a mark of a Spirit-filled believer. Submitting ourselves one to another in the fear of God is another mark of being Spirit-filled.


Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing [Eph. 5:22–24].

I have been doing some research on that word submit, and I have some rather startling things to tell you. The word submit relative to wives needs to be understood a little differently from the way it has been so often interpreted in the past. It is not, “Wives, obey your husbands. Submit is a very mild word. It is a loving word. It means to respond to your own husband as unto the Lord. The way we respond to the Lord is that we love Him because He first loved us. And notice that it says “unto your own husbands.” A very personal, loving relationship is the ground for submission. Paul is definitely speaking to believers about Christian marriage.
In this relationship of husband and wife, the man is the aggressor. He is the aggressor physically. He is the one who makes love. He is the aggressor in the home. He should be the breadwinner, the one who goes out with the lunch pail each day. And that doesn’t give him the authority to be a top sergeant in the home either, by the way. The wife is to respond to him as the believer is to respond to Christ—in a love relationship.
A rough old boy came to my office one day with a request. He said, “Dr. McGee, I want you to talk to my wife. She’s very cold, and she’s not acting as a wife should.” He didn’t know it, but that was a dead giveaway—he was admitting failure as a husband. He showed what kind of a husband he was to draw that kind of response. I asked him, “Have you told her lately that you love her?” He said, “No. She knows I love her. I don’t need to tell her that.” I said to him, “I think you do. She does not need to tell you that she loves you until you say it first.”
Woman is the responder, and man is the aggressor. The man is to say, “I love you,” and he is the one who does the proposing. She is the one to say, “Yes.” No woman is asked to say “I love you” to a man until he has said “I love you.” When a man says he has a cold wife, it is because she has a cold husband. He is not being the husband that he should be. It is not her business to be the aggressor. Her role is the sweet submission of love.
“The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.” In what way? It is a love relationship, and the husband is to be the head for the sake of order. You will find in this section of Ephesians that there are four different areas in which there is headship for the sake of order. Wives are to be subject to their husbands. Husbands are to be subject to Christ. Children are to be subject to parents. Servants are to be subject to masters. It is to be a sweet subjection, a willing subjection to someone who loves you. It is to be that kind of relationship. If there is no love in it, the idea of submission isn’t worth a snap of the finger.
I have done a great deal of marriage counseling in my day, and I would say that 75 percent of the fault in marriages is on the side of the men. It is the man who is to keep the lovelight burning. In the beautiful Song of Solomon, the bridegroom says to the bride, “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair …” (Song 1:15), and she responds, “My beloved is mine, and I am his …” (Song 2:16). He expresses his love first, and then she responds.
I know someone will say I am very idealistic and romantic about all this. Well, back in the Garden of Eden God made them that way. God started off with a romantic pair, Adam and Eve. Probably He didn’t give that woman to Adam until Adam realized that he needed someone. She was given as a helpmeet. A helpmeet is just the other half of man. Man is half a man without a wife. God joined them together and called them Adam—not the Adams.
Some young man will say, “Preacher, I’m not that kind of person. I’m no hero.” May I say to you that God never said that every girl would fall in love with you. Ninety-nine women may pass you by and see in you only the uninteresting boy next door. But one day there will come a woman who will see in you the knight in shining armor. It is God who gives that highly charged chemistry between a certain man and a certain woman.
My wife told me she thought I was the knight in shining armor. I want to tell you how it ended. Perhaps you have seen the television commercial of a knight in armor riding across the screen holding a can of cleanser. Do you know where he ended up? In that kitchen! Now that I am retired, that is where I have ended up. A friend of mine told me, “Now that you are retired, do things with your wife. When she washes the dishes, you wash the dishes with her. When she mops the floor, you mop the floor with her!” Well, I’m not about to do that, but I surely do wash dishes more than I ever did before.
Now let me say a word to you if you are a young woman. Perhaps you are not beautiful of face or figure. God never said you would attract every male—only animals do that. Ninety-nine men will pass you by and see no more in you than what Kipling described as a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair. But one day there will come by a man who will love you if you are the right kind of person. You will become his inspiration. You may inspire him to greatness—perhaps to write a book or to compose a masterpiece. If you are his inspiration, do not ignore him, do not run from him. God may have put you together for that very purpose.
You may be saying, “Preacher, you’re in the realm of theory. What you are talking about is idealistic. It sounds good in a storybook, but it doesn’t happen in real life.” You are wrong. It does happen.
Matthew Henry wrote the driest commentary I have ever read in my life, but, I want to tell you, he had a wonderful, romantic life as a young preacher. You would never think in reading his commentary that he was ever a romantic, but he was. In London he met a girl who belonged to the nobility. He was just a poor boy, but he fell in love with her and she loved him. Finally she went to her father to tell him about it, and her father tried to discourage her. He said, “That young man has no background. You don’t even know where he came from.” She answered, “You are right. I don’t know where he came from, but I know where he is going, and I want to go with him!” And she did.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a clerk. He worked in a government customs office in New York City, and he was fired for inefficiency. He came home and sat down discouraged and defeated. His wife came up and put her arm around him and said, “Now, Nathaniel, you can do what you always wanted to do: you can write.” He wrote The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, “The Great Stone Face”, and other great works. So, you see, it does work out in life. It has worked out in the lives of multitudes of folk.
Paul’s instructions regarding the home teach that the Christian home is to be a mirror of the relation between Christ and the church. Christ’s relationship to the church is different from the relationship of husband and wife in that “Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.” The husband is not the savior of the wife. But in the realm of submission the wife should be subject to the husband and to the Lord Jesus Christ.

THE EXPECTATION OF THE CHURCH


Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it [Eph. 5:25].


God never asked a woman to submit to any man who doesn’t love her and love her like this. Oh, this is Christian love on a high plane. Today young people are finding out about sex, and there are innumerable books on the subject of marriage. I may sound to you like an antiquated preacher when I say that they are nonsense. Only the Christian can know what is real love in marriage, because it is carried to the high plane of the relationship between Christ and the church. There is nothing else like that, my friend.


That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word [Eph. 5:26].

“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it”—that is in the past. In the present He is sanctifying the church with the water of the Word of God. The cleanser, which is the Bible, is better than any cleanser advertised on radio or television. The Word of God will not only take out the soiled spots, it will keep you from getting further spots in your life.


That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish [Eph. 5:27].

In the future He will present it to Himself a glorious church, without a spot or wrinkle but holy and without blemish. We will see the church presented to Christ as a bride adorned for her husband when we study the Book of Revelation. May I say that every woman is beautiful on her wedding day. I have officiated at many weddings during my lifetime, and I have never seen an ugly bride. I have seen them before and after their wedding day, and I can’t honestly say that all of them are beautiful. But on the day of their marriage they are beautiful.
No young man engaged to a young lady thinks that she ought to be put through the fires of persecution or the Great Tribulation before he marries her. That is unheard of. So imagine anyone saying that the church must go through the Great Tribulation! She is engaged to Him, and He is cleansing the church by the washing of the Word of God. Keep in mind that when we use the word church we are not talking about an organization with a steeple, a pulpit, and an organ. We are talking about the body of true believers. This verse means that He is washing each believer, preparing each one for that great event. I believe that is something which is really taking place in our day.
So we have seen the past, present, and future. Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. He is sanctifying the church with the washing of water by the Word. In the future the church will be presented to Him as a radiant bride with all sin removed. Then the church will be holy and unblamable.


So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church [Eph. 5:28–32].

I have quoted this entire passage so you can see how Paul draws on these two themes and goes back and forth, husband and wife, Christ and the church. After talking about Christ and the church, the subject goes back to husband and wife: “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.”
The thing a couple needs for their marriage ceremony is not a champagne supper. They both need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They will have the greatest honeymoon that any couple ever had. Those sophisticated boys and girls who talk about sex and extramarital relationships today don’t even know what real love is. They know a lot about sex, but they do not know anything at all about the beauty and the ecstasy and the sweetness of a real Christian marriage.
The husband is to love his wife because the marriage relationship makes the wife a part of his own body. It is like the church is the body of Christ and Christ is the head of that body. On this basis the husband is the head of the wife. It is unnatural for a man to hate his own flesh, so the husband is to love his wife because she is his own flesh.
Christ, knowing the weakness of the church, nourishes and cherishes her. Husbands are to do the same.
Verse 31 is a quotation from Genesis 2:24. Paul here refers to the relationship that existed in the Garden of Eden between Adam and Eve. That first couple is a figure of the future union of Christ and the church as Bridegroom and bride. Eve was created to be a helpmeet for Adam. She was taken from his side, not molded from the ground as were the animals. Adam was incomplete until they were together. God fashioned her, and I think she was the loveliest thing in creation when God brought her to Adam. One wag has said that she had to be better looking than man because God had practiced on man but He had experience when He made woman. She was a helpmeet for Adam. She compensated for what he lacked. She was made for him and they became one. In the Hebrew the word for “man” is ish and for “woman” it is isha. The word is almost the same—she was taken out of man.
I have two illustrations, taken from history, of this wonderful relationship between man and woman. That kind of thing is often lost today. The “new” morality and sexual freedom are putting a lot of young people in slavery. It simply will not work. God meant for Christians to have this relationship on a much higher plane.
The first illustration is the story of Abelard and Heloïse. When John Lord wrote his Great Women, he used Heloïse as the example of love, marital love. The story concerns a young ecclesiastic by the name of Abelard. He was a brilliant young teacher and preacher in what became the University of Paris. The canon had a niece by the name of Heloïse whom he sent to be under Abelard’s instruction. She was a remarkable person; he was a remarkable man. You know the story—they fell madly in love. But according to the awful practice of that day the marriage of a priest was deemed a lasting disgrace. When John Lord wrote their story, he gave this introduction which I would like to share with you. It is almost too beautiful to read in this day. It is like a dew-drenched breeze blowing from a flower-strewn mountain meadow over the slop bucket and pigsty of our contemporary literature. Here is what he wrote:
When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, they yet found one flower, wherever they wandered, blooming in perpetual beauty. This flower represents a great certitude, without which few would be happy,—subtle, mysterious, inexplicable,—a great boon recognized alike by poets and moralists, Pagan and Christian; yea, identified not only with happiness, but human existence, and pertaining to the soul in its highest aspirations. Allied with the transient and the mortal, even with the weak and corrupt, it is yet immortal in its nature and lofty in its aims,—at once a passion, a sentiment, and an inspiration.
To attempt to describe woman without this element of our complex nature, which constitutes her peculiar fascination, is like trying to act the tragedy of Hamlet without Hamlet himself,—an absurdity; a picture without a central figure, a novel without a heroine, a religion without a sacrifice. My subject is not without its difficulties. The passion or sentiment is degrading when perverted, it is exalting when pure. Yet it is not vice I would paint, but virtue; not weakness, but strength; not the transient, but the permanent; not the mortal, but the immortal,—all that is ennobling in the aspiring soul.

Abelard and Heloïse, having fallen in love, were not permitted by the church to marry. Therefore they were married secretly by a friend of Abelard. He continued to teach. But the secret came out when a servant betrayed them, and she was forced into a nunnery. Abelard was probably the boldest thinker whom the Middle Ages produced. At the beginning of the twelfth century he began to preach and teach that the Word of God was man’s authority, not the church. This man, a great man, became bitter and sarcastic in his teaching because of what had been denied him. When he was on his deathbed, for he died a great while before Heloïse, being twenty years her senior, he asked that she be permitted to come to see him. The church did the cruelest thing of all—they would not allow her to come. Therefore he penned her a letter. To me it is the most pathetic thing I have ever read. He concludes it with this prayer: “When it pleased Thee, O Lord, and as it pleased Thee, Thou didst join us, and Thou didst separate us. Now, what Thou hast so mercifully begun, mercifully complete; and after separating us in this world, join us together eternally in heaven.” And I believe in God’s heaven they are together.
John Wesley’s story is not told in England; it is told in this country, in Georgia. When John Wesley came as a young missionary to Georgia, the crown had already sent a nobleman out there—I think they wanted to get rid of him at court because he was an insipid fellow, devoid of personality and masculinity. Yet due to the terrible custom of that day, the nobility was entitled to marry the finest, and he had married a woman not only of striking beauty and strong personality, but one who was an outstanding Christian. Then there came into their colony this fiery young missionary. Again you know the story—they fell in love. And that happens to be John Wesley’s love story. He begged her to flee with him and go live among the Indians. She said, “No, John, God has called you to go back to England, and He has called you to do some great service for Him.” It was she who sent John Wesley back to England. The night came for his ship to sail; they had to wait for the tide and the wind, and she came down to bid him good-bye. Oh, yes, she held him that night and he held her, but even the worst critics of Wesley say that nothing took place that was wrong. He still begged her to go with him among the Indians and live. The biographer of Wesley says that he came down that gangplank twice, but she sent him back, back to England—to marry the Methodist church. He returned to England a brokenhearted man; yet she had become his inspiration.
It is God who gives this kind of love to believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit. May I say to the young people today: Don’t accept anything that is second-rate. Don’t take anything but the very best that God has to offer you.


Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband [Eph. 5:33].

“Nevertheless” brings us down to earth with a jolt. This is the practical part about marriage. Oh, how sin has marred this glorious relationship—as it has marred everything else—but this relationship can be yours if you want it to be the best.
Paul brings the reader back to the ordinary routine of Christian living in the home. “Let each love his wife as himself.” This shows the kind of husband to whom the wife is to be in subjection. The husband and the wife in the home are to set forth in simplicity the mystery of the coming glory. This is a very practical application of that which is highly idealistic. He brings the romantic into the realm of reality.

CHAPTER 6

Theme: The church is a soldier; the soldier’s relationships; the soldier’s enemy; the soldier’s protection; the soldier’s example—Paul was a good soldier of Christ; benediction


In the preceding chapter the church was designated as the bride of Christ. Now in this chapter it is to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. I have told you that my humorous friend says this sequence is to be expected—after a couple gets married, the war begins. Therefore, the church should be a good soldier. He was being facetious, of course. In the future the church is to be presented as the bride of Christ. This is the expectation of the church. Today is the period of the engagement and exhibition of the church before the world.
Now the chapter before us presents another side of the life of a believer. In the world today the church is to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. In Ephesus there stood the great temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It stood for all that was pagan and heathen; it was grossly immoral. It was time for the believers in Ephesus to recognize that they had an enemy. Not only did the Christians in Ephesus have an enemy, but we have an enemy today. Our enemy is not the worship at the temple of Diana. I think we have something infinitely worse than that. We are seeing immorality and heathenism not only in the name of religion but actually in the name of Christianity—when it is not Christian at all!
The first part of the chapter opens with instructions to children, parents, servants, and masters. This may seem foreign to the life of a soldier. However, a soldier’s training does not start in boot camp; it begins when he is a child in the home.
In World War II they had a saying in the Navy that in the early days of our nation we had wooden ships and iron men, but now we have iron ships and paper-doll men. That is probably not entirely accurate, but a report from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station tells us that a shocking percentage of all young men in the United States attaining the age of Navy enlistment years must be rejected because of previous criminal records and because of personality, psychological, or health problems; also an alarming number of all enlistees fail to measure up to recruit training. Severe problems are faced in the training of young men who must be trained in the simple things that should have been learned at home. At seventeen a young man ought to be ready to launch into the training program. The Navy finds that they can easily put a uniform on the man. It is putting a man into the uniform that is causing such problems.
This same type of breakdown is attested to by foreign mission boards. A survey reveals that a very small percentage of students graduating from Christian Bible schools and colleges go into foreign missions, and a startling number return after the first term as casualities. Training is essential if the soldier is to fight properly and be victorious over the enemy.
The preparation of a soldier must begin in the home when he is a child—not in the church or in the Sunday school but in the home. Every child who doesn’t get that first lesson is handicapped. One of the great problems of our young people today, and some older ones too, is that they were not properly trained in the home. Proper training means discipline.

THE SOLDIER’S RELATIONSHIPS


Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right [Eph. 6:1].


It is right because it is according to the will of God. It is actually more than right; it is just. It is a righteous thing to do because it is God’s way.
The first lesson that a soldier must learn is obedience to those in authority. He must follow orders. This basic training is learned in the home. After the soldier has learned to obey, then he is in a position to be promoted to the rank of an officer where he gives commands to others. To know how to give orders depends largely on how the soldier learned to obey. This basic training is found in the home with the parent-child relationship, and then with the master-servant relationship. The victories of the Christian life are won in the home and in the place of business.
You will remember that it is said of the Lord Jesus that as a boy He went down to Nazareth, and He was subject to Joseph and Mary.
There are two essential factors which must be taken into account in this verse and in this section:
1. It is assumed that Paul is talking about a Christian home, a home such as he had been discussing in chapter 5 regarding the marriage relationship. Obedience of children to parents is confined to the circumference of “in the Lord.” Christian parents have the privilege of claiming their children for the Lord. I think we all should do that. Even where only one parent is a believer, he may claim his children for God. “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy” (1 Cor. 7:14). This, of course, does not mean that the child is a believer just because he has a Christian parent. It does mean that the parent has a right to claim that child.
Notice that it says, “Obey your parents in the Lord.” I have great sympathy for a child who accepts the Lord and has an unsaved father or mother. There may be times when such a child must obey God rather than men.
2. The word for “obey” here is different from the word found in verse 22 of chapter 5. The wife is to submit. The wife occupies a place of equality with the husband, and submission is merely a question of headship. Here the child is to obey as the servant is to obey—the same word is used in verse 5.
Disobedience to parents is the last and lowest form of lawlessness to occur on this earth. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy” (2 Tim. 3:1–2). Disobedience to parents is one of the characteristics of the last days. Today we hear of many cases of children rejecting parental authority and even killing their parents! This is indicative of the times in which we live.
Of course there will come a time in a boy’s life when he begins to rebel against his parents because it is time for him to move out and get married and start a home of his own. God has given him a nature that rebels against being a mama’s boy, tied to his mama’s apron strings for the rest of his life. God wants him to stand on his own two feet. This kind of rebellion, this struggle for independence, is different from disobedience.
When I was a pastor, I remember visiting in a home in which the father and I couldn’t even carry on a conversation because his little boy occupied the center ring of the circus. He was a little circus himself, and if you ask me, the dear little fellow was a brat. The father said, “I just can’t make that child obey me.” The father weighed about two hundred pounds, and the boy weighed about thirty pounds. Yet the father said, “I just can’t make him obey me.” Well, I think he could have, and I think he should have. God intended for the father to make him obey at that age.


Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;

That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth [Eph. 6:2–3].

We have learned that the Ten Commandments are not the norm for Christian living—but that doesn’t mean you can break them. A youngster in the home is to honor father and mother, and as we grow older we are to continue to honor them by the life that we live. (It is interesting that all the Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament with the exception of the commandment concerning the Sabbath day.) Honoring your father and mother carries with it a promise of long life to those who keep it ( see Exod. 20:12), and that promise is repeated here. It is the first commandment with promise. The other commandments promised something if they were not kept, but they didn’t promise anything if they were kept.
Samson and Absalom are two examples in Scripture of boys who did not follow this commandment, and their lives were short. Samson, a judge, died when he was a young man. Absalom rebelled against his father David, and he was killed when he was a young man.


And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord [Eph. 6:4].

“Nurture” means discipline, and “admonition” means instruction. Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. No such commandment was given to parents under the Law. Under grace there are always mutual responsiblities and interactive duties. The parent is not to vent a bad disposition on a child or punish him in a fit of rage. It is the parents’ duty to teach the child the truths of the Scriptures and then to live them before the child. Don’t provoke your children to wrath. As a believer, you are to live at home like a believer.
“Fathers” includes the mothers also. However, the emphasis, I think, is on the father because the disciplining and training of the child is actually his responsibility, but it does include the mother also.
Children are not to be provoked to anger. This doesn’t mean that they are to be treated as if they were a cross between an orchid and a piece of Dresden china. I think that the board of education should be applied to the seat of learning whenever it is needed. The writer of Proverbs had a great deal to say about this: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Prov. 13:24). “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying” (Prov. 19:18). “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell” (Prov. 23:13–14). “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame…. Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul” (Prov. 29:15, 17).
There is the story of the father whipping the little boy and saying, “Son, this hurts me more than it hurts you.” The boy replied, “Yeah, but not in the same place!”
These little ones who simply will not obey need to be spanked. They need a trip to the woodshed. A child should never be whipped while the parent is angry; this is stated very clearly. We are never to provoke our children to wrath, which will happen if they see that we are simply venting a mean disposition on them. They should be disciplined.
In Proverbs 23 we are told that when we spank our children they won’t die. I can remember that my mother whipped me a great deal more than my father did. She was the one at home with us, so she would get a switch and she could make it hurt. I was such a good boy I don’t know why it was that I got such a number of switchings! I did learn that if I would yell at the top of my voice, “You’re killing me, you’re killing me,” she would always let up because she didn’t want the neighbors to hear and say, “My, that poor boy’s mother is killing him!” I found out it sort of softened the punishment. Of course, she wasn’t trying to kill me. She was giving me the punishment I needed.
“Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest … [and] delight unto thy soul”—a child in a Christian home should be given Christian instruction so that he might come to a vital relationship with Christ and be fortified when he comes in contact with the world. Every parent ought to have the privilege of leading his child to a saving knowledge of Christ.
My wife was never my assistant pastor—I insisted on that. I never let her become president of the missionary society or hold any office in any women’s organization in any church that I served. When I accepted a pastorate, I told my board, “My wife is my wife. She is not the assistant pastor. Her business is to take care of the home and the child.” I think that is important. My wife had the privilege that I’m afraid very few parents have today. I was out on a trip and my wife was visiting with her mother. Our daughter was about seven or eight years old at the time. She came in and said, “Mama, I want to accept Jesus.” My wife took her into the bedroom and got down on her knees with her and had the privilege of leading her own little girl to the Lord. I always felt that this was much more important than to try to be a personal worker in the church. I know a great number of personal workers in the church who have lost their own children. My friend, your first responsibility is to your own child. You had better concentrate on that child—do that instead of tending to everyone else’s business and trying to raise everyone else’s children. I realize it won’t make me popular to make such a statement, but God’s Word makes it clear that He gives us the responsibility for our own children.
“Bring them up in the nurture [discipline] … of the Lord.” Notice again that the discipline is to be of the Lord. The discipline and instruction are to be administered in the name of the Lord. That is important. Paul has taken the subject of submission first into the home with the husband and wife relationship, then with the parent-child relationship. Now he moves out of the home into the street, the workshop, the marts of trade. It is a different situation here, for there are no bonds of love such as are found in a home; yet children of God who are filled with the Holy Spirit will be submissive one to another.


Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;

Not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;

With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:
Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free [Eph. 6:5–8].
Servants (lit., slaves) are to be obedient to masters according to the flesh, meaning the masters down here on earth. Servants are not to serve with eyeservice—with one eye on the clock or working only when the boss is looking. They are not to serve as “men-pleasers.” In other words, they are not to butter up the boss. Service is to be done as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul.
There is a responsibility put upon a believer who is a laborer and also a responsibility put upon one who is a capitalist or an employer. This is the employer-employee relationship. In Paul’s day it was an even sharper division than it is now—it was really master and slave. Remember that this entire section began in chapter 5, verse 21, which says, “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” That sounds all right for Sunday, for the church service, but what about Monday morning when we go to work? Christian workers working for Christian owners of the factory will not need a labor boss to go to the capitalist and tell him what to do. I know of several businesses run by dedicated Christians. They have chapel service on company time, and they pay their workers while they are attending chapel. They are prosperous—God has blessed them. They don’t need a union. An employee in one of these companies told me, “If we were under a union, we wouldn’t be making what we are making right here!” We are talking about Christians, Christian workers and Christian owners. There are both sides to the coin. This gets right down to the nitty-gritty.
It is estimated that half of the 120 millions of people living in the Roman Empire were slaves. Christianity never attacked the evil of slavery. Rather it reached down to the slave in his degradation and lifted him up, assuring him of his liberty in Christ. The very nature of the gospel condemned slavery. It eventually broke the shackles of slavery from the bodies of men and cut the fetters from their minds and souls. Multitudes of slaves came to Christ, as we learn in Romans 16—many of those named there were slaves or members of the Praetorian guard.
In the United States of America the South had to lose the Civil War. I am a southerner, but I recognize the South had to lose because slavery was wrong. That doesn’t mean that the North was right in the method used, but it does mean that the principle of slavery was wrong.
“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters.” Notice the Word of God says to “be obedient.” This reveals that Christianity did not instigate revolution against the evil practice of slavery. It preached a gospel which was more revolutionary than revolution has ever been. Revolution has always had bad side effects, leaving bitterness and hatred which has lasted through the centuries. The gospel of Christ will break down the middle wall of partition—which in our day is prejudice and discrimination of one race against another—and will replace it with real brotherly love.
If the Word of God were preached as it was in the early days of these United States, and if those who profess to be Christian were obedient and loyal to those to whom they owe obedience and loyalty, it would change the entire complexion of American life today. A man is not a Christian just because he has made a profession of Christianity and calls himself a child of God on Sunday. Whether or not he is a genuine Christian is revealed by his loyalty to his employer, to his family, to his home, to his church, and to his pastor. When a professing Christian is disloyal in these areas of his life, the chances are he will also be disloyal to Christ. He certainly has no effective witness for Christ.
“Servants, be obedient to … your masters according to the flesh” makes it clear that slavery applied only to the bodies of men and not to their souls. This obedience was to be with “fear and trembling.” This does not mean abject and base cringing before a master, but it does mean treating him with respect and dignity.
“In singleness of your heart” means there should not be any taint of duplicity. There should be no two-facedness. There should not be the licking of the boots of the employer when he is around and then stabbing him in the back when he is away. Such action should never be in the life of a Christian.
The servant’s obedience is to be done “as unto Christ.” This shows that the slave has been lifted from the base position of degradation where he sullenly worked as little as possible and only when his master was watching. Now he is the slave of Christ, and Christ has made him free. He is to look above the earthly master in his attempt to please his Master in heaven. An earthly master could control only the bodies of the slaves. The slaves of Christ have yielded their souls to Him, even their total personalities. Remember that Paul called himself the bondslave of Jesus Christ.
“With good will doing service” shows that their attitudes should reflect their Christian service. When a child of God—whether a slave or a master, employer or employee—gets to the place where the motive of his life is to please Christ, then the hurdles posed by capital and labor are easily passed over.
In our day there is a new kind of slavery, and it is sweeping over the nations of the world. In our own land there is a slavery that is not only of the body but of the mind. Such slavery is far more pernicious and deadly than that of the Roman Empire. Multiplied thousands are willing to make any sacrifice today to foreign ideology, and you can call it any name you choose.
I had the privilege of speaking to a group of university students from Berkeley, California. These young men, who are majoring in political economy, have turned to the Lord. There was a time when they were slaves to a particular system of political economy, but now they are delivered from that. One young man told me, “One time I thought we could manipulate the economy and that we could make everyone prosperous and happy. I see now that only Christ will be able to bring in that kind of a society. That doesn’t mean we are not going to work for it, but it does mean that we know our goal is limited and only Christ can do it.”
What can break a man’s shackles? Only the power of the gospel of Christ. He will make you free. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). It is Christ who offers freedom. Think of the thousands today who are trapped by drugs and by alcohol. There is slavery on every side of us.
We should be slaves to Christ and to no one or nothing else. Saul of Tarsus was a slave to an ideology. He was a Pharisee. When he came to Christ, he was made free. However, immediately he yielded to a new Master and said, “… Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? …” (Acts 9:6). He had become a bondslave to Jesus Christ.
The Lord has lifted the employee to a high position; He has dignified labor. It doesn’t make any difference whether a man is working at a bench or digging a ditch or working in an office or mining down in the bowels of the earth or farming the land on the top of the earth. If he is a child of God, he can say, “I serve the Lord Christ.”
William Carey was a shoemaker who applied to go as a foreign missionary. Someone asked him, “What is your business?” meaning to humiliate him, because he was not an ordained minister. Carey answered, “My business is serving the Lord, and I make shoes to pay expenses.” He was a servant of Christ. Oh, that men were that kind of workers today—it would change the whole labor scene.


And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him [Eph. 6:9].

Something is also said to the masters. If you are an employer, before Christ you are just another man. God is no respecter of persons. What He has said to labor also applies to you. You come under the same category since you also have a Master, and your Master is Christ. This is the Christian relationship of capital and labor. The responsibilities are mutual. Masters are not to take advantage of their position as master. They are not to abuse their power. They are not to threaten. In the presence of Christ, the master and the servant stand on the same footing. They are brothers in Christ.
We find a very practical demonstration of this in the Epistle to Philemon. Philemon was a master who had a slave named Onesimus. Onesimus ran away from his master, and according to the law of that day, his master could have put him to death. However, after Onesimus trusted Christ, Paul sent him back to his master with the letter to Philemon. This is what Paul wrote: “For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever; Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?” (Philem. 15–16). When both capital and labor are believers, they are brothers.
Don’t tell me Christianity is not practical. It is practical, and it will work. A great Chinese Christian, who had attended college here in the United States and knew America pretty well, said, “It is not that in America Christianity has been tried and found wanting. The problem over there is it never has been tried.” That is still the problem today—we have kept it behind stained glass windows. My friend, if Christianity cannot move out of the sanctuary and get down into the secular, there is something radically wrong. It will work if it is tried. It will work in this capital-labor relationship.
THE SOLDIER’S ENEMY

Now we come to the theme of this chapter, which is “the church is a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” We have seen the Christian in his relationships: God begins with him in the home. Then God has something to say to him as he moves out into the world where he is either an employee or an employer—he has to be one or the other, and as a child of God he has to contribute to the welfare of contemporary society. He needs to be a producer one way or the other.
Now we learn of the soldier’s enemy. There is a battle to be fought. One of the things that is commonly misunderstood today is that the child of God is in a battle, and the battle is being fought along spiritual lines.
If the duties which relate to the commonplace are not faithfully followed, there can be no great spiritual victories in the high realm of Christian attainments. It is pretty well known that I represent the fundamental position. I am premillennial, pretribulational, and a dispensationalist in my belief. I get a little weary and a little bored with folk who so insistently hold these same views, yet whose lives are lived in a very careless manner, not commensurate with this exalted, high position that we have. We are seated in the heavenlies! How wonderful. My friend, we are walking right down here on this earth, and our theology has to walk in shoeleather. If you are not living a life that pleases Christ, you are wasting your time attending Keswick conferences and Bible classes. Often in Christian circles we see a display of bitterness, vitriol, and hatred, which hurts the cause of Christ a great deal. Why is it that we can have so much exalted teaching and such low living? There are too many who are fundamental in their heads but liberal in their feet. There is a great danger in thinking that all we need is a head knowledge and a vocabulary so that we can spout out our position lucidly and fluently but can lead careless Christian lives. To do this is to misunderstand where the battle is being fought.
I do not think the Devil is concentrating in the nightclubs or on skid row or in the underworld or in the Mafia. I think he is concentrating on the church on Sunday morning. He is working on the spiritual front, and too many sleepy Christians seem to be totally unaware of that. Too many Christians are concerned about closing up the cocktail parlors when they need to be closing their mouths from gossiping and criticizing. The Devil is working in an area where we least expect to find him. He is not out on the town on Saturday night. He has gone to bed early so he can get up and go to church on Sunday morning. The spiritual battle is being fought wherever a man is giving out the Word of God, where a church is standing for the Word of God. That is the place the Devil wants to destroy, and that is the place of the spiritual battle.
Sometimes the most dangerous place you can be is in church on Sunday morning. Where was the most dangerous place in Jerusalem the night Jesus was arrested? Was it with the Pharisees? Was it with the cutthroats of the underworld? No. The most dangerous place was in the Upper Room with Jesus. Do you know why? That is where the Devil was that night. It is said that he entered into Judas Iscariot to betray Him. The Devil was there. I believe both Judas Iscariot and Simon Peter would testify to the fact that that was the most dangerous place to have been that night in Jerusalem. We need to recognize where the battle is being fought.
You may remember that at the beginning of our study in this Epistle to the Ephesians I compared it to the Book of Joshua. What Joshua is to the Old Testament, Ephesians is to the New Testament. Joshua led the children of Israel across the Jordan River into the land of Canaan, and there were enemies in the land. There were battles to be fought, and there were victories to be won.
The Jordan River is not a picture of our death, and the Promised Land is not a picture of heaven. If you want to sing “On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wistful eye,” you may, but that does not speak of our death. It actually speaks of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and you and I cross over—through the death and resurrection of Christ—out of the wilderness of this world into Canaan. The child of God should be living today in Canaan. Remember that Canaan does not represent heaven—it could not because there were enemies in Canaan and battles to be fought. You and I as believers are in the place of soldier service. The soldier’s enemy is identified, and the battle is before us.
When Joshua entered the Promised Land, there were three enemies that confronted him. First there was the city of Jericho, standing right in the way. Jericho represents the world today. What Jericho was to Joshua, the world is to the Christian. Joshua was told to march around the city—not fight it. We cannot overcome the world by fighting the world. It is a mistake if we try that method. “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4–5). The only way we can overcome the world is by our faith and trust in God. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). The things of the world are passing away, and the child of God is not to love them. Our experience here is to be a Canaan experience.
The second enemy confronted by Joshua was the little town of Ai. Ai represents the flesh. Joshua thought it would be easy to overcome Ai, so he sent up a small detachment, and they were really whipped. When they came back, Joshua got down on his face and began to whimper and cry before God. God told him, “… Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Israel hath sinned …” (Josh 7:10–11). And that sin had to be confessed and put away before God would give Israel the victory. And this is what you and I must do if we are to overcome the flesh.
Many Christians have a victory over the world; they are marching around Jericho, tooting a horn as the children of Israel blew their trumpets, saying, “I don’t do this and I don’t do that.” But they are being defeated by the flesh. They are overcome by temper. They are overcome by gossiping. One Christian man came to me and said, “Why in the world is it that I just continue to lie about everything?” Well, that’s what the flesh will do. The flesh is getting the victory over many of us, my friend. Ai represents the flesh.
Then thirdly, Joshua had to contend with the Gibeonites. They were clever, sly rascals. They lived just over the hill, but they took old, moldy bread and wore worn-out shoes and made everything look as if they had come on a long journey. They came into the camp where Joshua was and said, “Brother, we have heard about you. My, we’ve heard how God delivered you from Egypt and gave you victories over Sihon and Og, and we want to make a treaty with you. We want to be your friends” (see Josh. 9:4–11). That is the way the Devil approaches us. He is the deceiver, and he makes his ministers seem like angels of light.
Someone described a leader of a cult by saying, “I listen to that man. He is so attractive, so personable. He is really wonderful, and what he says thrills me.” Now listen to this and remember it: “… for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Cor. 11:14–15). Do you think that the Devil is going to knock at your door and say, “Look, I’m the Devil; I’m here to take you in; I’m here to fool you”? Obviously, that is not the way the Devil will approach you. He will use every possible way to deceive you. He may send someone to knock at your door and offer you literature that will “explain” the Bible. Or, he may approach you this way if you are in a church that is going liberal: “Remember, grandpa had a pew in the church and that window over there is named for grandma. You can’t afford to leave this church because you have so much invested here.” The Word of God says, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord …” (2 Cor. 6:17). And the Devil says, “But we really need you here, so why don’t you just stick around?” You see, he is subtle.
The Gibeonites represent the Devil. They fooled Joshua, and he made a treaty with them. They were the ones who got him into trouble. At Ai the sin had to be confessed and dealt with severely before God would give them the victory, and that is the way we overcome the flesh. But what about the Gibeonites? Joshua made an alliance with them, and they gave him trouble. If we line up with Satan, we will find ourselves defeated. What can we do? Listen: We cannot overcome him ourselves. You and I are no match for the Devil. We are not even told to fight the Devil. We are told that God will fight for us.


Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might [Eph. 6:10].

Allow me to again use my translation: “Finally (in conclusion) be strengthened in the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the armor (panoplia) of God in order that ye may be able to stand against the strategems (methodia) of the devil. For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of evil in the heavenly (places and things).”

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil [Eph. 6:11].
What in the world is Paul talking about? He is talking about spiritual wickedness, about that which is satanic. Notice that he is coming to the end of the epistle and says, “In conclusion be strengthened in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” You cannot overcome the devil in your own strength and your own power. Paul is definitely making a play upon two Greek words: The panoplia of God is needed and available to meet the methodia of the Devil. “Be strengthened in the Lord”—that is the only place you and I get power.


For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places [Eph. 6:12].

The enemy whom the Christian is to fight is not flesh and blood. The enemy is spiritual, and the warfare is spiritual. That is why we need spiritual power. It is well to note that the flesh of the believer is not the enemy to be fought. The believer is to reckon the flesh dead and to yield to God. The way of victory over the flesh is outlined in Romans 6. Fighting the old nature will lead to defeat, and Paul records such an experience in Romans 7.
It is only God’s armor which can withstand the strategy and onslaught of Satan who has all kinds of weapons (spiritual missiles). We need an antimissile system if we are going to overcome him. That is why it is so important for the Christian soldier to recognize that he does not fight an enemy who is flesh and blood. We are not to fight other men. The enemy is spiritual, and the warfare is spiritual. The Devil is the enemy of every believer and the one here whom we are told we fight. The way to victory over the Devil is to obey the commands to “put on the whole armour of God” and “to stand” (v. 11).
We are in a spiritual battle. The Devil has in battle array his minions arranged by ranks. It says that we wrestle against them. This speaks of the hand-to-hand encounter with the spiritual forces of wickedness. The translation of verse twelve is not as strong as it should be. It should actually read, “For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of this darkness [and these are all spiritual], against the spiritual hosts of evil in the heavenly places.” This is our warfare, and it’s in progress now.
There is a demonic world around us and it is manifesting itself at the present hour. If I had said this when I was a young preacher, many would not have believed it. Or they would have said as did one dear lady, “Dr. McGee, you sound positively spooky.” Today, however, demonism is a popular subject and is plainly exhibited. We have the Church of Satan in many of our cities. There are strange things happening to certain of these weird, way-out groups. A man said to me recently, “Dr. McGee, this thing is real today.” Who said it wasn’t real? If you are an unbeliever in this area, open your eyes and see what is happening about us. People are being ensnared and led into all kinds of demonism. There are spiritual forces working in the world, evil forces working against the church. They are working against the believer, against God, against Christ. Don’t try to pooh-pooh these things. It is happening, and you and I alone are no match for it.
The fact that there is a spiritual enemy to overcome is well illustrated in the tenth chapter of the Book of Daniel. Daniel had been praying, and he didn’t get any answer. He had been praying for three weeks. “In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled” (Dan. 10:2–3). Finally, an angel came and touched him and said, “… O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling. Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words” (Dan. 10:11–12). If that was true, then Daniel had every right to ask, “Then where in the world have you been for three weeks?” Listen to the angel continue, “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia” (Dan. 10:13). He was in conflict with a demon, and he had to go back for reinforcement. This was a spiritual battle that was going on, and we likewise have one today.
We have said that these powers are organized. Principalities are the demons who have the oversight of nations. They would correspond to the rank of generals. Powers are the privates who are the demons wanting to possess human beings. The rulers of the darkness of this world are those demons who have charge of Satan’s worldly business. Spiritual wickedness in high places are the demons in the heavenlies who have charge of religion.
Satan has a well-organized group, and his organization is manipulating in this world right now. The heartbreak, the heartache, the suffering, the tragedies of life are the work of Satan in the background. He is the cause of the great problems that are in the world today.
We have the enemy located and identified. That enemy is spiritual. It is Satan who heads up his demonic forces. Now we need to recognize where the battle is. I think the church has largely lost sight of the spiritual battle. We feel that if we have a lovely church building and are attracting crowds and if the finances are coming in, everything is going nicely. The financial condition of a church, however, is not where the battle is. I will grant that, if a church which has been supporting itself begins to get into debt, it is an indication that something is wrong: actually, it means the battle is being lost in the spiritual realm. There should be questions such as: Are the members of the church being built up in Christ? Is the Word of God being taught? Is there a spirit of love and cooperation among the members? Is gossip reduced to a minimum? There must not be an exercise in legalism but an exercise in right relationships among those who are the brethren in Christ. Where there is a spirit of criticism and of bitterness and of hatred, the Spirit of God cannot work.
Churches like to talk about the numbers who come to Christ. They like to talk about how many decisions they have had. Yet when the facts are really boiled down and examined and you look for the so-called converts two years later, you often find that they have disappeared. We don’t seem to realize that there is a spiritual warfare being carried on today and that people need to be grounded in the Word of God. It is a manifestation of demonic power that people are being blinded and carried away into all kinds of cults and religions and “isms” with false beliefs. As a result of all this, the Word of God sinks into insignificance in such churches and organizations. This is the work of the enemy, Satan and his demonic hosts.

THE SOLDIER’S PROTECTION


Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand [Eph. 6:13].


We have identified the enemy. Now Paul begins to identify the arsenal which is available for defense. Nowhere is the believer urged to attack and advance. The key to this entire section is the phrase to stand.
The Bible speaks of believers as pilgrims. As pilgrims we are to walk through the world. The Bible speaks of us as witnesses, and we are to go to the ends of the earth. As athletes we are to run. We are to run with our eyes fixed upon the Lord Jesus Christ: “… and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith …” (Heb. 12:1–2). However, when the Bible speaks of us as fighters, it says we are to stand. Very frankly, I would rather do a great deal of old-fashioned standing than fighting.
Many years ago Billy Sunday, the evangelist, attracted a great deal of attention by saying that up on the speaker’s platform he was fighting the Devil. I think that there was a great element of truth in that, because it was a spiritual battle. The battle is carried on wherever the Word of God is preached and the gospel is given out. That’s the battle line today. That is where the enemy is working. The enemy is not working down on skid row or partying it up on Saturday night.
Years ago when I was active in Youth for Christ as a young preacher, I was out every Saturday night. We used to say at that time that Saturday night was the Devil’s night and we were making it the Lord’s night. Well, now that I have had many more years to observe the situation, I think the Devil was at home in bed. I think he was resting up so he could come to church the next morning. Why should he want to fight his own crowd? They belong to him. I’m not sure he’s proud of them. In fact, I think he’s ashamed of a lot of these alcoholics and these down-and-outers and these up-and-outers. He could take no pride in them. He would rather be out fighting where the spiritual battle is.
Personally, I never felt that I should carry on that battle. That is, I never felt I should make the attack. The command is to stand. It is the Devil who will make the attack. Our command is, “Having done all, to stand.”
I have never been enthusiastic about a group of defeated Christians singing, “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.” I think it is more scriptural for the believer to sing, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross.” Just to be able to stand in an evil day is a victory for the believer.
This is an hour when my heart is sad as I look at a great many churches. I love the local church and the local pastors. There are a great number of wonderful pastors fighting the battle. They are the men who are really on the battlefront today. I go to so many Bible conferences as a speaker because I want to help them. I have been a pastor long enough to know how wonderful it felt and how I always appreciated it when others came to me and stood shoulder to shoulder with me. My heart is sick when I see the attendance way down and the interest gone in churches that at one time were great churches. The members were blind to the fact that a battle was being fought there, a spiritual battle.
Do you pray for your pastor on Saturday night? Don’t criticize him, but rather pray for him. He needs your prayers. The Devil gives him enough opposition. You don’t need to join the crowd that crucifies the man who is preaching the Word of God. You ought to uphold his hands as Aaron and Hur upheld the hands of Moses on behalf of Israel. My heart goes out to pastors who are in need of congregations who will stand with them.


Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace [Eph. 6:14–15].

“Stand therefore.” This is the fourth time he gives this exhortation to the believer. This is the only place that I find Paul laying it on the line and speaking like a sergeant. Earlier he said, “I beseech you,” but now he gives the command to stand. Not only are we to be in a standing position, but we are also to have on certain armor to protect ourselves. We are not to be outwitted by the wiles of the Devil; we are to be ready for his attacks.
“Having your loins girt about with truth.” In the ancient garment of that day, the girdle about the loins held in place every other part of the uniform of the soldier. It was essential. To tell you the truth, if the girdle was lost, you lost everything. The garments would fly open and the pants would fall down. We see this routine in comedies, and the people laugh to see a man trying to run or fight with his trousers drooping down. It looks funny in a comedy routine, but it is not funny in a battle. A great battle in the past, we are told, was won by a clever general who told his men to cut the belts of their enemy while they were sleeping. The next morning the enemy troops were so busy holding up their trousers that they weren’t able to shoot their guns and, therefore, they lost the battle. We are told to be girded with truth in the face of the enemy. Truth is that which holds everything together. What is that truth? It is the Word of God.
We need people to give out the Word of God and to give it out just as it is written. Today we have many people giving testimonies. We have football players, baseball players, movie stars, television stars, all giving testimonies. Many of them do not know any more Bible than does a goat grazing grass on a hillside. We need people whose loins are girt about with truth. They need to know the Word of God. (I could give you the names of a dozen personalities who have gone off on all sorts of tangents, into cults and “isms.”) I admit that some testimonies are thrilling to hear, but they are coming from folk who are standing there about to lose all their spiritual garments! They are not girded about with truth, which is the Word of God.
Every piece of this armor really speaks of Christ. We are in Christ in the heavenlies, and we should put on Christ down here in our earthly walk. Paul has already told us to put on Christ. He is the One who is the truth, and we should put Him on in our lives.
Any testimony that does not glorify Jesus Christ should not be given. There are too many testimonies that glorify the individual, such as, “I was a great athlete,” or, “I was a great performer, and now I am turning over my wonderful talent to Jesus.” The implication is: Believe me, He is lucky to have me in His crowd! Friend, you are lucky if you have Him. He didn’t get very much when He got you, and He didn’t get very much when He got me. This is a day when the little fellow really doesn’t have very much to say. We get the impression that we need to be someone great in the eyes of the world. No, what we need is to have our loins girt about with truth so that we can give a testimony that glorifies Christ. Christ is the truth. Truth alone can meet error.
“Having on the breastplate of righteousness.” Christ is the righteousness of the believer. I do think, however, that it includes the practical righteousness of the believer. Let’s be clear that the filthy rags of self-righteousness are useless as a breastplate, but I do think that underneath there should be a heart and a conscience that is right with God. Only the righteousness of Christ can enable the believer to stand before men and before God, but the heart that is to be protected should be a heart that is not condemning the believer. It is an awful condition to have sin in the life while we are trying to carry on the battle. We can never win it that way.
“Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” Shoes are necessary for standing. They speak of the foundation. We need a good, solid foundation, and preparation is foundational. I remember in hand-to-hand combat we were taught to make sure our feet were anchored. Are your feet anchored on the Rock? Christ is your foundation in this world. No other foundation can any man lay but the one that is laid, Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor. 3:11). We are to put on Christ. Oh, how we need Him today as we face a gainsaying world and also spiritual wickedness in the darkness of this world!


Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints [Eph. 6:16–18].

The armor of the believer is a spiritual armor because we fight against a spiritual enemy. We are to stand in that armor, and that armor is Christ, the living Christ. Satan himself, in the Book of Job, describes how God protects His own. He said, “Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? …” (Job 1:10). God has provided protection for us today in the armor He supplies.
“Above all, taking the shield of faith.” The shield covered all of the armor. The shield referred to is a large shield the size of a door. It was the shield of the heavy infantry. A soldier stood behind it and was fully protected. Christ is both the door to salvation and the door that protects the believer from the enemy without. This is the picture in John, chapter 10. Christ is both salvation and security.
“Faith” enables us to enter the door: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture” (John 10:9). That is salvation. What about security? Faith places us securely in His hands: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28). Faith enables us to lay hold of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith also enables us to stand behind that shield which will quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
“The fiery darts of the wicked.” He is shooting them fast and furiously. I remember that when I was in college, I had a brilliant philosophy professor who had studied in Germany. I respected his intellect, although I didn’t realize at the time that he was intellectually dishonest. I looked up to him but, very frankly, he was taking my feet out from under me. I would try to answer him in class when I probably should have kept my mouth shut. But we became friends, and we used to walk together across the campus after class and discuss the questions I had raised. I came to the place where I went to the Lord in prayer and said, “Lord, if I can’t believe Your Word, I don’t want to go into the ministry.” Then the Lord in a very miraculous way sent me to hear a man who was the most brilliant man, I think, whom I have ever heard. He gave me the answer to my questions. Then I began to learn that when a fiery dart comes my way and I don’t have the answer, I am to put up the shield of faith. And this is what I have been doing ever since. I have found that the shield of faith has batted down the fiery darts of the wicked one.
I remember that I was upset about questions concerning the Genesis record of creation. I was ready to get out of the ministry because I couldn’t accept certain things. The problem was not with my pygmy intellect, although I thought it was at the time; I just didn’t know enough. So I put up the shield of faith.
Someone was walking with me in Israel as we were observing some excavations. He asked me, “Suppose they dig up something down there that looks like it disproves the Bible. What position would you take?” I answered, “I would put up the shield of faith, and that would bat down the fiery darts of the wicked one. I have learned that when a fiery dart is batted down, I will get the correct answer later on.” I remember a time when the authorship of John was being questioned—was the Gospel of John written by John? Today it is pretty well established that John was the writer, but at one time I had questions about it.
The fiery darts of the wicked one come fast and furiously, and they are going to continue to come. The only thing that will bat them down is this shield of faith. It is like a big door. The hoplites, the heavily armed soldiers in the Greek infantry, could move with those tremendous shields, put them out in front of them, and stand protected shoulder to shoulder, while the enemy shot everything they had at them. When the enemy was out of ammunition, they would move in, certain of victory. That is the way to stand against the fiery darts of the evil one.
“And take the helmet of salvation.” The helmet protects the head, and God does appeal to the mind of man. I recognize that He appeals to the heart, but God also appeals to the intellect. Throughout the Scriptures God uses reason with man. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa. 1:18). “And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee” (Acts 24:25). Paul reasoned with Felix; he appealed to the mind of the man as well as to his heart. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17).
A theology professor who was a liberal said many years ago when I was a student, “Faith is a leap in the dark.” That is not true. God does not ask you to take a leap into the dark. In fact, God says if it is a leap in the dark, don’t take it. God wants you to leap into the light. God has a solid foundation for you, and how wonderful it is!
Christ is the salvation of the sinner. He is the One to receive the glory in it all. That plume on the top of the helmet is Christ. He has been made unto us salvation. “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Even before His birth in Bethlehem He was marked out as the Savior.
Paul mentions this helmet in connection with salvation again in another epistle. “But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8).
All the parts of the armor mentioned so far have been for defense. Have you noticed that? Everything is for the front of the individual. There is no protection for his back; nothing is provided for retreat. Believe me, a retreating Christian is certainly open season for the enemy; the enemy can get through to him.
Now we have two weapons for offense. The first one is the Word of God, called the sword of the Spirit. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). Christ is the living Word of God. He used the Word of God to meet Satan in the hour of His temptation. Out of His mouth goeth a sharp two-edged sword in the battle of Armageddon (see Rev. 1:16; 19:21). He gains the victory with that sword. What is it? It is the Word of God. We need that sharp sword going out of our mouths today. The Word of God is a powerful weapon of offense. You and I are to use it.
Our second weapon of offense is prayer—“praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.” Praying in the Holy Spirit is not turning in a grocery list to God. It means that you and I recognize our enemy and that we lay hold of God for spiritual resources. We lay hold of God for that which is spiritual that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul here distinguishes between prayer and supplication. Prayer is general; supplication is specific. All effective prayer must be in the Spirit.

THE SOLDIER’S EXAMPLE—PAUL WAS A GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST


Here is Paul’s example for us from his own experience:


And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak [Eph. 6:19–20].

“And for me.” Paul now asks for prayer on behalf of himself. As he comes to the conclusion of this epistle, he moves into the area of the personal. He was a prisoner in Rome, and he suffered from a thorn in the flesh. Yet he does not ask for prayer that these physical handicaps be removed, but that he might proclaim courageously the mystery of the gospel.
“To make known the mystery of the gospel.” The gospel is a mystery that was not revealed in the Old Testament as it is now. The New Testament reveals that Christ died for all sins, was buried, rose again on the third day. This is the gospel and the message Paul was preaching.
“I am an ambassador in bonds.” Paul had just written about the spiritual warfare, and now we see that he was experiencing the onslaught of the enemy at the very moment he was writing.
“That therein I may speak boldly.” Paul asks for prayer that he may speak the gospel with boldness. We need that same prayer. We need a boldness to declare the Word of God.

But that ye also may know my affairs, and how I do, Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known to you all things:

Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that ye might know our affairs, and that he might comfort your hearts [Eph. 6:21–22].

Tychicus not only carried the epistle to the Ephesian believers, but he also gave a personal account of the conditions of and the prospects for the apostle Paul. Tychicus, the pastor of the Ephesian church, is an example of the many faithful servants of Christ in the early church. The apostle Paul had great confidence in him.
“That he might comfort your hearts.” Tychicus would allay any fears that the Ephesians might have about the condition of the apostle Paul. The brotherly love exhibited in the early church is the undertone of all of Paul’s epistles. Paul had a real concern for the brethren.

BENEDICTION


General Douglas MacArthur said that old soldiers do not die; they just fade away. Listen to Paul’s farewell.


Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen [Eph. 6:23–24].

Paul’s own swan song is found in 2 Timothy 4:6–8: “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” Paul reflected what a good soldier of Christ should be and what rewards awaited him.
He closes with a twofold benediction. Most of the great words of the gospel are contained in it: peace, love, faith, grace. Hope is absent, for the believer is in the heavenly places where all is realized.
“Peace” was the form of greeting of the Jewish world. A sinner must know the grace of God before he can experience the peace of God. This is the peace of God which passes all understanding.
“Love” in verse 23 means love for the other believers. This is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
In verse 24 the “love” is of the believer for the Lord Jesus Christ, and this love is in incorruptness (a better translation than “in sincerity”).
“Faith” means faith in Christ which produces active love. These flow from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Grace” is the key word of the epistle. It opened the epistle (Eph. 1:2) and is the subject of the epistle (Eph. 2:7–8). It now concludes the epistle. It is a fitting word because it is God’s grace which saved us and which sustains us today.

BIBLIOGRAPHY


Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Ephesians. Westwood, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1961.

Chafer, Lewis Sperry. The Ephesian Letter, Doctrinally Considered. New York: Loizeaux Brothers, c. 1935.

Foulkes, Francis. The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1963.

Hendriksen, William. Exposition of Ephesians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1967.

Hodge, Charles. An Exposition of Ephesians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1856.

Ironside, H. A. In the Heavenlies. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1937. (Especially good for young Christians)

Kelly, William. Lectures on Ephesians. Oak Park, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, n.d.

Kent, Homer A., Jr. Ephesians: The Glory of the Church. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1971. (An excellent, inexpensive survey)
McGee, J. Vernon. Exploring Through Ephesians. Pasadena, California: Thru the Bible Books, 1961.

Meyer, F. B. Ephesians—Key Words of the Inner Life. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Christian Literature Crusade, n.d. (Devotional.)

Moule, Handley C. G. Studies in Ephesians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1893. (Excellent. Romans, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon in the same series; 2 Timothy apart from this series.)

Paxson, Ruth. Wealth, Walk, and Warfare of the Christian. Westwood, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1939. (Excellent devotional emphasis.)

Strauss, Lehman. Devotional Studies in Galatians and Ephesians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1957.

Vaughan, W. Curtis. Ephesians: A Study Guide Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, n.d.

Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Rich. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, n.d.
Wuest, Kenneth S. Ephesians and Colossians in the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1953.

The Epistle to the
Philippians

INTRODUCTION

The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians is one of the Prison Epistles. Paul wrote four epistles when he was in prison, and we have labeled them Prison Epistles. They are Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the little Epistle to Philemon.
The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians was written to the believers in Europe in the city of Philippi. This letter came out of a wonderful relationship that Paul had with the Philippian church. It seems that this church was closer to Paul than was any other church. Their love for him and his love for them are mirrored in this epistle. This epistle deals with Christian experience at the level on which all believers should be living. It is not a level on which all of us are, but it is where God wants us to be.
Paul visited Philippi on his second missionary journey. You will recall that he and Barnabas went on their first missionary journey to the Galatian country, where they had a wonderful ministry and founded many churches in spite of the persecution they encountered. Paul wanted to visit these churches on his second missionary journey. He wanted to take Barnabas with him again, but Barnabas insisted on taking his nephew, John Mark, who had been with them at the beginning of the first missionary journey. This young fellow, John Mark, you may remember, turned chicken and ran home to mama when they had landed on the coast of Asia Minor. Therefore, Paul did not want to take him the second time. So this split the team of Paul and Barnabas. Barnabas took John Mark and went in another direction. Paul, with Silas for a companion, retraced his steps into the Galatian country, visiting the churches which they had established on the first missionary journey.
It would seem that Paul intended to widen his circle of missionary activity in that area, because a great population was there, and it was highly civilized. Actually, Greek culture and Greek learning were centered there at this particular time. Dr. Luke in recording it says that Paul attempted to go south into Asia, meaning the province of Asia, of which Ephesus was the leading city. But when he attempted to go south, the Spirit of God put up a roadblock. Since he wasn’t to go south, Paul thought he would go north (where Turkey is today), but when “… they assayed to go into Bithynia … the Spirit suffered them not” (Acts. 16:7).
Now he can’t go south, he can’t go north, he has come from the east, there is but one direction to go. So Paul went west as far as Troas. That was the end of the line. To go west of Troas he would have to go by boat. So Paul was waiting for instructions from God.
Sometimes we feel that God must lead us immediately, but God can let us wait. I think He lets us cool our heels many times, waiting for Him to lead us. If you are one who is fretting today, “Oh, what shall I do? Which way shall I turn?” Wait, just wait. If you are really walking with the Lord, He will lead you in His own good time.
So Paul continued to wait in the city of Troas (we know it as Troy) for orders, and he got them finally. He was given the vision of the man of Macedonia, recorded in Acts 16:9–10.
Paul and his companions boarded a ship that took them to the continent of Europe. To me this is the greatest crossing that ever has taken place because it took the gospel to Europe. I am thankful for that because at this particular time my ancestors were in Europe. One family was in the forests of Germany. I am told that they were as pagan and heathen as they possibly could have been. Another branch of the family was over in Scotland. And they, I am told, were the filthiest savages that ever have been on topside of this earth. Now don’t you look askance at me, because your ancestors were probably in the cave right next to my ancestors and they were just as dirty as mine were. I thank God today that the gospel went in that direction, because somewhere down the line some of these ancestors heard the Word of God, responded to it, and handed down to us a high type of civilization.
So Paul crossed over into Europe, and his first stop was Philippi. “And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us” (Acts 16:13–15).
Paul, you see, found out that the man of Macedonia was a woman by the name of Lydia, holding a prayer meeting down by the river. That prayer meeting probably had a lot to do with bringing Paul to Europe. I’m of the opinion there were many people in Philippi who saw that group of women down there by the river praying and thought it wasn’t very important. But it just happened to be responsible for the greatest crossing that ever took place! And Lydia was the first convert in Europe.
Now Lydia was a member of the Philippian church to which Paul wrote this epistle. We know something about some of the other members of this church also. There was a girl who was delivered from demon possession. “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour” (Acts 16:16–18).
Also the Philippian jailer and his family were members of this church. You recall that Paul and Silas were thrown into jail at the instigation of the masters of the demon-possessed girl who had been deprived of their income. God intervened for Paul and Silas in such a miraculous way that their jailer came to know Christ. “And [the jailer] brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house…. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house” (Acts 16:30–31, 34).
There were, of course, other members of this Philippian church whose stories we do not know. They were a people very close to the apostle Paul. They followed him in his journeys and ministered to him time and time again. But when Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, they lost sight of him for two years. They did not know where he was. Finally they heard that he was in Rome in prison. The hearts of these people went out to him, and immediately they dispatched their pastor, Epaphroditus, with a gift that would minister to Paul’s needs.
So Paul wrote this epistle to thank the church and to express his love for them. He had no doctrine to correct as he did in his Epistle to the Galatians. Neither did he have to correct their conduct, as he did in his Epistle to the Corinthians. There was only one small ripple in the fellowship of the church between two women, Euodias and Syntyche, and Paul gave them a word of admonishment near the end of his letter. He didn’t seem to treat the matter as being serious.
His letter to the Philippian believers is the great epistle of Christian experience. This is Paul’s subject in his epistle to the Philippians.

OUTLINE

I. Philosophy of Christian Living, Chapter 1
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–2
B. Paul’s Tender Feeling for the Philippians, Chapter 1:3–11
C. Bonds and Afflictions Further the Gospel, Chapter 1:12–20
D. In Life or Death—Christ, Chapter 1:21–30
II. Pattern for Christian Living, Chapter 2
A. Others, Chapter 2:1–4
B. Mind of Christ—Humble, Chapter 2:5–8
C. Mind of God—Exaltation of Christ, Chapter 2:9–11
D. Mind of Paul—Things of Christ, Chapter 2:12–18
E. Mind of Timothy—Like-minded with Paul, Chapter 2:19–24
F. Mind of Epaphroditus—the Work of Christ, Chapter 2:25–30
III. Prize for Christian Living, Chapter 3
A. Paul Changed His Bookkeeping System of the Past, Chapter 3:1–9
B. Paul Changed His Purpose for the Present, Chapter 3:10–19
C. Paul Changed His Hope for the Future, Chapter 3:20–21
IV. Power for Christian Living, Chapter 4
A. Joy—the Source of Power, Chapter 4:1–4
B. Prayer—the Secret of Power, Chapter 4:5–7
C. Contemplation of Christ—the Sanctuary of Power, Chapter 4:8–9
D. In Christ—the Satisfaction of Power, Chapter 4:10–23

CHAPTER 1

Theme: Philosophy of Christian living—Introduction; Paul’s tender feeling for the Philippians; bonds and afflictions further the gospel; in life or death—Christ

Paul’s letter to the Philippians is practical. It gets right down where we live. As we study this epistle, we won’t be seated in the heavenlies as we were in his letter to the Ephesians, but we will be right down where the rubber meets the road. It is a wonderful little epistle, and we will be enriched by the sweetness of it.

INTRODUCTION


Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons [Phil. 1:1].


“Paul and Timotheus”—Paul associates Timothy with himself. Paul brings this young preacher and puts him right beside himself, encouraging him. Paul loved this young man Timothy. He was Paul’s son in the Lord, that is, he had won him to Christ; and Paul was very interested in him. Paul is constantly identifying certain young preachers with himself.
Now that I am getting old, I receive letters from former students and from many folk who in my ministry over the years have come to a knowledge of Christ. I feel that all of these are my children. I have a lot of children scattered around over this world, and I love them in the Lord. I understand how Paul felt about Timothy. Paul’s name has come down through the centuries, and everywhere you hear about Paul, you will hear about Timothy—Paul was responsible for that. How wonderful!
“The servants of Jesus Christ.” Paul identifies himself and Timothy as the servants of Jesus Christ. The word servants actually means “bondslaves.” This is in contrast to his epistle to the Galatians where he was defending his apostleship. He began with, “Paul, an apostle” He did the same thing to the Corinthians. He had to declare and defend his apostleship and wanted them to know he was apostle not of men, neither by man. He didn’t need to defend himself with these Philippians. They loved him, and they accepted his apostleship. They had all been led to the Lord by him. So Paul takes a humble place, his rightful position: “Paul and Timotheus, we both are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“To all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi.” Paul is not writing to one little clique in the Philippian church; he is writing to all the saints, and every believer is a saint. The human family is divided into two groups: the saints and the ain’ts. Saints are believers in Christ. They are saints, not because of their conduct, but because of their position in Christ. Saint means “holy,” set apart for God. Anything that is holy is separated for the use of God. Even the old pots and pans in the tabernacle were called “holy vessels,” and they were probably beaten and battered after forty years in the wilderness. They may not have looked holy, but they were. Why? Because they had been set aside for the use of God. Now that should be the position of every child of God. We are set aside for the use of God. Now, friend, if you ain’t a saint, then you are an ain’t.
The saints are “in Christ Jesus.” What does it mean to be saved? It means to be in Christ Jesus. When you put your trust in the Lord Jesus, the Spirit of God comes to dwell in you. The Holy Spirit baptizes you into the body of Christ. You are put in Christ by the Spirit of God.
Now these saints were in Christ, but they were at Philippi. You see, it doesn’t make any difference where you are at—that may not be grammatically correct, but it is a true statement. You may be at Los Angeles or Duluth or Moscow or Philippi. It won’t make any difference where you are at; the important matter is being in Christ Jesus.
I believe the little phrase in Christ comprises the most important words that we have in the New Testament. What does it mean to be saved? I asked a theology professor that question, and he gave me quite a lecture on the subject. I was a little dizzy when he finished. He explained words like propitiation and reconciliation and redemption. These are all marvelous words, and they are all Bible words, but not one of them covers the entire spectrum of salvation. The Spirit of God chose just one little word, the preposition in, to explain what salvation is. It is to be in Christ. How do you get in Christ? You get in Christ when you accept Him as your Savior.
“With the bishops and deacons.” Notice he is addressing a local church with officers. “Bishop” means overseer or shepherd. The word bishop actually refers to the office, while the word elder refers to the individual who is in that office, and they should be men who are mature spiritually. “Deacons” refers to spiritual men who are performing a secular service (see Acts 6).


Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ [Phil. 1:2].

“Grace be unto you, and peace.” You will find this form of address in all of Paul’s epistles, and grace and peace will always be in that sequence. Grace and peace were both commonplace words of Paul’s day.
Grace was the word of greeting in the Greek world. In the Greek language it is charis. If you had walked down the street in that day, you would have heard folk greeting each other with, “Charis.” In fact, this greeting is still used in modern Greece. It means grace. They say it as we say, “Have a good day.” And God is saying to you, “Have a good eternity.” When folk say to me, “Have a good day,” they don’t contribute anything to make it a good day other than just saying that. But God has made the arrangement whereby you can have a good eternity, and it is by the grace of God.
“Peace” always follows grace; it never precedes it. While charis comes out of the Greek world, “peace” (shalom) comes out of the religious world; it is the Hebrew form of greeting. Actually, the name Jerusalem means “the city of peace.” Jeru-shalom—city of peace. It has never been that; it has been a city of war. Right now it is a thorn in the flesh of the world. No one knows what to do with it. There will never be peace in Jerusalem or in the world until the Prince of Peace comes to rule.
There is, however, a peace that comes to the believer through the grace of God. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). This is the peace that a sinner can have with a holy God because Christ died for us, paid our penalty, and now God in His grace can save us. It is not that we bring God something for our salvation. Very frankly, we have nothing to bring to Him. I have never brought anything to Him—except sin. Christ paid the penalty for that sin so that a holy God can receive me. And He can receive you. In a world of turmoil, a world of tension, a world of trial, a world that is filled with things that are wrong, we can know the peace of God in our hearts. This is the peace of God that He gives to those who trust Jesus Christ as their own personal Savior. We must know the grace of God before we can experience the peace of God.
This grace and peace is “from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” Let me ask this theological question: Isn’t Paul a trinitarian? Doesn’t he believe in the Trinity? Then why doesn’t he include the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son? The reason is that the Holy Spirit is already over there in Philippi, indwelling the believers. Certainly Paul believed in the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and he is being very accurate here.

PAUL’S TENDER FEELING FOR THE PHILIPPIANS


I thank my God upon every remembrance of you [Phil. 1:3].


He begins the body of his letter in this very lovely manner, which reveals the sweet relationship between Paul and the Philippian believers. That is the way it ought to be today among believers, especially between pastor and congregation. The literal translation would be, “All my remembrance of you causes me to thank God.” Every time anybody would mention Philippi, Paul would just thank God for the believers there. That is something really quite wonderful.
Every now and then I get a letter from some organization that wants me to do something for them. That is perfectly legitimate for them to make such a request, but they begin the letter with, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.” Sometimes I’m not so sure they really feel that way about me, but they are preparing me for the request that is coming. But how wonderful it would be to have a church like the Philippian church. And how wonderful to be the kind of person about which it can be said, “All my remembrance of you causes me to thank God.” If Paul hadn’t said anything else about his relationship to this church, this would have been enough to reveal how special it was. You can check the other epistles—he didn’t say this to the other churches, certainly not about the Galatians or the Corinthians.


Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy [Phil. 1:4].

“Always”—not just sometimes. Always in every prayer Paul remembered the Philippian believers.
The phrase “for you all” makes it very clear that Paul was speaking to all the saints that were in that church, the corporate body in the local church. When we reach the final chapter of this epistle, we will find that there was a little ripple of discord between two women in the Philippian church: Syntyche and Euodias. So Paul at the very beginning was careful to include all the saints in order that one group couldn’t say to the other, “He is writing to us and not to you.”
“Making request with joy.” Bengel said that the sum of this epistle is: “I rejoice; rejoice ye.” We realize what a remarkable expression this is when we consider where Paul was when he wrote. He was over in Rome in prison! He probably was not in the Mamertine prison at this time, but he was in a place equally as disagreeable.
Although the word joy appears nineteen times in this epistle, I have never felt that it should be called the “joy epistle.” If we are going to pick out the word that occurs more than any other word, we must take the name of Jesus Christ. His name appears over forty times in this epistle. He is the center of the epistle. He is the One who is the very source of joy. Therefore, the emphasis should be put upon Him rather than upon the joy. As we shall see, the philosophy of Christian living has to do with Him; the pattern has to do with Him. The price of Christian living has to do with Him, and the power has to do with Him. Actually, it is a personal relationship with Christ that brings joy to a believer’s life.
We try to produce joy in the church by external means. We have a program and tell folks, “Come and you will enjoy it.” We have a banquet—people enjoy a banquet—so we have joy, we say. Actually, joy does not depend upon outward circumstances. Real joy depends upon the inward condition of the individual. It depends on the proper attitude toward life. If you are complaining and whining about your lot in life, certainly you will not be experiencing joy. You may be able to go to a church banquet and have a little fun, but that will not be joy. When you and I get to the place where we find ourselves in the center of the will of God and know we are in His will regardless of our circumstances, then there will be joy in our lives.
Paul said, “Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy.” The time of prayer was not an ordeal for Paul. He didn’t say Oh, I’ve got to go through the ordeal of praying for those folk again! No. He said, “As I am here in jail, it is a lot of fun to pray for you Philippians; it brings joy to my heart.”
Now, having told them he thanked God for them, he gives a reason.


For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now [Phil. 1:5].

“For your fellowship in the gospel.” Now we have come to a very important word in this epistle. We do not want to pass over this word fellowship. This word is used widely in the church and outside the church. I don’t think that most people really know what the word means, and therefore they don’t use it properly.
Years ago I was invited down to Huntington Beach about once a year to give a message at a Rotary Club luncheon. A Christian doctor was chairman of the program committee down there, and he would invite me to come at Christmastime or Eastertime and give them the gospel—both barrels, which is what I always tried to do.
Over the speaker’s table they had a slogan: “Food, Fun, Fellowship.” Those three things belonged to the early church, and I didn’t feel that the Rotary Club should have bragged about having any one of the three. For food there would be embalmed chicken with peas as hard as bullets. For fun they had corny jokes. The fellowship consisted of patting someone on the back and saying, “Hello, Bill. How’s business?”
Now that is not fellowship in the biblical sense of the word. The Greek word is koinoµnia, and it means that which believers can share of the things of Christ. There are three elements that must enter into it: spiritual communication, sympathetic cooperation, and sweet communion. (1) Spiritual communication is sharing the things of Christ. This would be sharing the great truths concerning Christ. (2) Sympathetic cooperation means working together for Christ. That is why, when Paul used the word fellowship, he could be talking about Bible reading or Bible study together or prayer or celebrating the Lord’s Supper or taking up an offering. Paul called all of these koinoµnia—fellowship. The result would be (3) sweet communion. It makes us partners with Christ. This is true koinoµnia.
Paul wrote that this church was having fellowship with him. He had communicated to them the gospel. They had shared with Paul in a sympathetic cooperation. They had sent a gift to him and had ministered to his physical needs again and again. Then when they were together, they had sweet communion.
“From the first day until now”—Paul had enjoyed wonderful fellowship with them from the first day, that day he had met Lydia and her group praying by the riverside.


Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ [Phil. 1:6].

Because this is my life verse and therefore very meaningful to me, I hope you won’t mind if I tell you about it. I was a very poor boy when I went away to college. My dad had been killed in an accident in a cotton gin when I was fourteen years old. My mother took my sister and me to Nashville, Tennessee. I had to get a permit that allowed a boy of fourteen to go to work, and I worked for a wholesale hardware concern. I had to be up by five o’clock in the morning to pick up the mail and have it sorted and on the desks of all the officials in each department. I should have been in school, and I wanted to go to school. Later I had the privilege of going back to school because a wonderful friend acted as a father to me. He had a son who was a drunkard. He had wanted his son to get a college education, but he didn’t; so the man helped me get a job, and I was able to go to college. Every year I thought it would be my last year. I never thought God would see me through—I had very little faith. The last year I was in college was during the depression; 1928 and 1929 were bad years. I couldn’t get a job and had no money.
On graduation day, after receiving my degree, I returned to my room in the dormitory, still in my cap and gown, and sat dejectedly on the edge of my bed. My roommate came and asked, “What in the world—did somebody die?” I said, “Just as well to. I thought God had called me to the ministry. I’m through college, the depression has hit, and I don’t even have a job for this summer. I haven’t a dime to go to seminary next year.” While we were still talking, the phone rang. It was for me. On the other end of the line was a dear little lady who asked me to stop by her home where she lived with her sister. They were both widows, and they looked as if they had come out of the antebellum days. They attended the church where I taught a class of intermediate boys, and I herded the boys into the church service every Sunday morning. The sisters sat in the pew behind us, and I always thought they disapproved. But in their home that day each handed me an envelope in memory of her husband. I left as soon as it was polite to go, hurried around the corner, and opened the envelopes. The first contained a check for $250; I hurriedly opened the other envelope and found another check for $250. Do you know what $500 was like during the depression? I felt like a millionaire!
That night the Sunday school had a banquet for me, a farewell banquet, and they gave me a check for $100. So now I had $600! That is the money with which I went to seminary the next year. That night at the banquet someone gave me this verse: “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” That has been my life verse ever since that night.
Now let’s consider this verse for a moment.
“Being confident” is causative and could be translated, “Since I am confident of this very thing”—Paul knew what he was talking about.
“He which hath begun … will perform.” The word for “perform” means to carry through. He will consummate what He began.
“Until the day of Jesus Christ.” You and I today are not living in the Day of the Lord; we are not living in the day of the Old Testament; we are not living in the day of the Millennium; we are not living in the day of eternity; we are living in the day of Jesus Christ. That day will be consummated when He comes to take His own out of this world. And the Holy Spirit has sealed you and me until the day of redemption. Paul wrote to the Ephesian believers, “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). And until then, you can count upon God to consummate whatever He intends for you. He is going to see it through. How wonderful!
Now, my friend, let me ask you this: Is this practical for you and me? I don’t know what your circumstances are, but if you are a child of God, I am sure you can testify that God has brought you up to the present moment, hasn’t He? Can’t you look back over your life and see how He has led you and provided for you? Then why should you be concerned about tomorrow? Do you think He is going to let you down now? I confess that this was my thinking when I finished college.
You see, I went through college, but I didn’t enjoy it as I should have. I never had joy because I always was afraid I couldn’t go on. I just didn’t believe God would see me through. So many times we Christians act like unbelievers. In fact, we live and act like practical atheists. The graduation was a happy experience for my classmates. I could see those rich kids being hugged by their parents. No one was there to throw their arms around me, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if there had been a whole delegation of well-wishers, because I thought I was through. I felt called to the ministry, but there was no possible way for me to go on to seminary. However, I had a wonderful heavenly Father who, through Philippians 1:6, put His arms around me and said, “I’ll see you through.”
And I want to testify today that He is still keeping His promise. It has been a comfort to me since I have had several bouts with cancer to know that my heavenly Father said, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” He is a good Doctor also; in fact, He is the Great Physician, and He has said, “Whatever I have in store for you, I’m going to see you through until the day of Jesus Christ.” So I am in His hands.
This is a great verse of Scripture. Oh, I have held onto this during many a dark night when the storm outside was beating against my little bark. My, how wonderful to have a heavenly Father like this!


Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace [Phil. 1:7].

“Even as it is meet”—meet is an old Elizabethan word that means “right.” Even as it is right for me to think this of you all.
“Because I have you in my heart.” Isn’t that a wonderful place to carry your Christian friends?
“Partakers of my grace” brings us back to the word fellowship. It is koinoµnia with a preposition that intensifies it: suqkoinoµnous, meaning “being all wrapped up together.” You may remember that lovely Abigail used these words when she talked to David: “… but the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God …” (1 Sam. 25:29). Paul is saying that he and the Philippians are all wrapped up together as partners in the gospel.
This is what I mean when I say that there were tender feelings of the apostle Paul for this church at Philippi. He was closer to them than to any other church. It is so wonderful to have Christian friends like this who are sharing in the great enterprise of getting out the Word of God. There is that sympathetic cooperation, besides the spiritual communication, and it always produces sweet communion.


For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ [Phil. 1:8].

That word bowels is offensive to some folk. One sweet little lady, who I’m sure had never used a bad word in her life, came to me and said, “Dr. McGee, don’t read it like that. That’s crude.” I answered, “That’s the way it is in the Bible, and that’s the way I think it should be read—just as it is.” Bowels really means tender feelings. This is really a marvelous statement. Paul says that he longs for all of them in the tender feelings of Jesus Christ. Actually, it is quite accurate to use the word bowels for tender feelings.
I was teaching this one night at Bible study, and at that time a psychologist from the University of Southern California attended the classes. I was teaching that bowels meant tender feelings. He said, “The ancients were right. They were accurate when they talked about our feelings being in the region of the bowels.” He said, “The average person thinks that everything he does is because he has thought it over and that he is very smart.” Then he touched me on the head and said, “Very little really takes place up here.” I really felt that he knew me when he said that.
He went on to explain that the brain is really a very marvelous telephone exchange. A message comes up through the sensory nervous system, up through the synaptic connections from the hand to the brain. Immediately there is a transfer made over to a motor neuron, and the message goes down over a different set of synaptic connections. For example, when you touch a hot stove, immediately the message goes up to the brain, and the brain returns the message, “Take your finger off that—you’ll get burned.” You react instantly. You do it without thinking, but there was a connection made up in the brain. By the way, many people drive an automobile like that—without thinking, which is quite obvious. Then he asked me, “How did you feel the first time you saw your wife? Where did that take place? Was it in the brain?” The psychologist points to my tummy and said, “There is where you live and move and have your being.” So Paul is expressing his most tender feelings, “I long after you.” It is not because they have given him something. His reaction is not mental but emotional. This is a wonderful expression.

And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment [Phil. 1:9].
There is a lot of silly thinking about this word love. I often get letters such as this one: “You gave me the surprise of my life when you said that there are certain preachers who spread damnable heresies. Doesn’t Jesus say in His Holy Word that we are to love our enemies and do good to those who hate you?” Of course He said that, but we need to notice to whom He said it. The Lord Jesus had some very harsh things to say about the religious rulers of His day. He said “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do …” (John 8:44). Also He said, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matt. 23:33). He called the Devil their father and a snake their mother! I don’t think any person could be more extreme.
Paul prays that your “love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment [or discernment].” We are to love all believers in Christ. Some of the believers are a little difficult to love. Some of our friends are even difficult to love. We are to love the unlovely, but we are to love with knowledge and with discernment. That does not mean we just let our love slop over on every side. It is to abound with discernment. Let me give you an illustration out of my own experience.
When I first went to downtown Los Angeles as a pastor, I soon found that there are certain groups that move through that downtown area and prey on church people and new preachers especially. One Sunday morning one of the personal workers came to me and said, “There’s a man here who has come forward and wants to talk to you about his salvation.” Well, I felt complimented. This man wants to talk to me; he won’t talk to anybody else. So I went over to talk to him, and by that time practically everybody had left the church. I began to explain the plan of salvation. I never saw a fellow so interested. He took my Bible and read the verses I indicated. Oh, he had it down to a system! Finally I asked him if he wanted to accept Christ. Tears came to his eyes and ran down his face. He said yes, he did. We got down on our knees, and he prayed. When we stood up, I made a mistake. I asked him how he was getting along. And he told me, “I hate to tell you this, but my suitcase is down here in a certain hotel. They won’t let me have it because I owe them seven dollars.” Well, what would you do? You had just led a man to the Lord, supposedly; you’re a Christian; you’re a preacher; you ought to love the brother. Well, I gave him the seven dollars, and I felt expansive. I told my wife about it and felt very good inside that I had been so generous. About six weeks after that I was going through the daily paper, and there was a picture of this man. I thought, How in the world did he get into the paper? And I read that he’d been arrested. He had spent the previous six months in Los Angeles living off the preachers, and his comment was, “They are the biggest saps in the world.” And I was one of them! I called up the late Dr. Bob Schuler, who was pastoring in downtown Los Angeles at Trinity Methodist Church, and asked, “Did this fellow come down to you?” “Yes,” he said. “Did you let him have seven dollars?” He said, “No. That’s what he wanted, but I’ve been down here a long time, Vernon. After you’ve been down here awhile, you’ll find there are some you can’t love.”
Paul says to let your love abound more and more, but let it abound in judgment, let it abound in being able to discern. Over the years when I would drive to my study in Los Angeles, I used to say to the Lord, “I’m going to meet new people today, and I don’t know them. Some of them I’ll be able to help. Others of them will put a knife in my back. Lord, help me to be able to distinguish between the two. Show me which I should help.” Actually this verse rescues a Christian from being naive and gullible. His love is to abound in knowledge and discernment.


That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ [Phil. 1:10].

Here is another important verse that needs some explanation. When Paul says, “That ye may approve things that are excellent,” he means that you need to try the things that differ. This has to do, I believe, with the Lord’s will for your life. There are times when we must come to a decision when there are two or more routes that we could go. What one shall we take? Frankly, there are times when we don’t know. The Lord will not send an angel to tell us, nor will He turn on red or green lights to give us signals. He expects us to use a little consecrated and concentrated gumption. Therefore we need to try the things that differ.
A man was telling me about his business. He had two routes open to him, and he prayed about his decision. He tried one of them, and it didn’t work. He told me that when he saw it wouldn’t work, he came back to the crossroads and tried the other route. He said, “Then I was sure of the Lord’s will. The one route didn’t work, so there was only one other way open for me. I followed that one, and it was the right one.” God says we are to try the things that differ. Actually, that is the way He leads us.
“That ye may be sincere”—“sincere” is an interesting word which comes from the Latin sincerus, which means without wax. When the Romans became a world power, they were a very strong and rather brutal people. They destroyed a great many of the art treasures of Greece in many places. In the cities of Asia Minor, we can still see evidence of that. I was interested in looking at several of the temples over there; the temple of Diana must have been a beautiful thing from the architectural standpoint. But many of the art troves of Greece were broken up. When the Romans reached the point of development in their culture that they appreciated these things, they began to gather them up. Many of them were broken. When there was a crack in a statue or a vase, a dishonest dealer would fill it in with wax so that one couldn’t tell that it had been broken. Then he would sell it as a genuine, perfect piece. An unsuspecting man would buy it, take it to his villa, and display it in his garden. The next hot day he would walk out and, lo and behold, the wax would be running out of a crack in that lovely art treasure! Finally the reputable art dealers began to put on their material the word sincerus, meaning without wax. In other words, they guaranteed it was a perfect piece.
Paul is saying, “Don’t be a phony. Be real, be genuine, be sincere.” Applying this to the previous verse, don’t go around patting everyone on the back with a “Praise the Lord, Hallelujah” and telling them how much you love them, if you are going to stick a knife in their backs the minute they leave your presence. That is what he is saying here. Be sincere.
“Without offence” means blameless, which would be a better translation, because we cannot live the Christian life or preach the Word of God without offense to somebody. Remember that people were offended at Paul and his preaching. That is the reason believers should pray for their pastor if he is preaching the Bible. If he is really giving out the Word of God, there will be offense. He needs your support, your defense of him, your prayers for him.
I officiated at a funeral service for a movie star several years ago. I preached the Word of God, and the crowd attending the service didn’t appreciate what I said. They were antagonistic. I even got some telephone calls from some of the people. One of the television newscasters gave the report of the funeral and said, “Hollywood heard something today that they have never heard before”—I understand he was a Christian. But my message was an offense to most of that crowd. So you see, the Christian life and the preaching of the Word of God will not be without offense to someone, but Paul is saying that believers should be blameless.
When I first became pastor in downtown Los Angeles, I met Dr. Jim McGinnis who was in Chicago at that time. He asked me how I liked being a pastor in downtown Los Angeles. I said, “Well, I certainly am enjoying it. It is a marvelous opportunity, and the crowds are coming to church, but I find I can’t defend myself. I hear reports about me that are terrible.” He answered, “That’s all right. Just be sure that none of them is true.” We can be blameless, but we cannot be without offense.
“Till the day of Christ” has reference to His coming for His own. This is the second time the Rapture is mentioned in this epistle. A child of God should walk in the light of the imminent return of Christ all the time.


Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God [Phil. 1:11].

The “fruits of righteousness” are the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is producing fruit in the lives of the believers. “… The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance …” (Gal. 5:22–23).

BONDS AND AFFLICTIONS FURTHER THE GOSPEL


But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel [Phil. 1:12].


Paul is speaking very emphatically to them. When the believers in Philippi heard that Paul was in prison, they sent a message to him by their pastor, Epaphroditus, and it probably went something like this: “Oh, poor brother Paul, we feel so sorry for you. Now your great missionary journeys are curtailed; you are in prison, and the gospel is not going out!” Paul said, “Look, I want you to know that the gospel is going out, and the things that have happened to me have not curtailed but have actually furthered the gospel.”
Now he will make clear what he means by this.


So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places [Phil. 1:13].

The palace was actually Caesar’s court. Acts 28:16 tells us, “And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him.” Paul was chained to a member of the Praetorian Guard, and these men were the Roman patricians, members of Caesar’s household.
When Paul was converted, the Lord Jesus said that Paul would “… bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15). Well, up to this time Paul had taken the gospel largely to the common, vegetable variety of citizens in the Roman Empire. But now he has members of the royalty chained to him! Every four hours, at the change of the guard, one guard would leave and be replaced by a new guard who would be chained to Paul. What do you think Paul talked about during those four hours? Can you imagine having your congregation chained to you? My guess is that some of them were happy to see their relief guard come. They would say, “Boy, am I glad to see you! This man Paul is trying to make a Christian out of me.” Many of them did come to know Christ. The gospel penetrated Caesar’s household. Later Tertullian wrote that the Roman government became disturbed when it was discovered that Christians were in positions of authority. Many of these men later died for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the first evidence Paul gave that his imprisonment had not hindered the furtherance of the gospel but that it had enabled him to bring the gospel right into Caesar’s household.
Not only did Paul’s imprisonment enable him to reach into Caesar’s household with the gospel, but it also accomplished something else:


And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear [Phil. 1:14].

In the early church there were many men who were willing to go out as witnesses for Christ, but after hearing Paul speak, they would say something like this, “Man, I’d like to witness for the Lord, but I can’t tell it like Paul tells it.” So long as Paul was out preaching the gospel, others would feel unworthy, not competent or sufficiently trained. They considered Paul so much more effective than they could be. But then one day the word went down the Roman roads to all those centers where churches had been established that Paul was in prison in Rome. In many of those churches men would say, “Look, Paul’s in prison. He can’t go out anymore. I’ll go.” As a result many men started to preach the gospel. I am confident that hundreds and maybe even thousands of men hit the Roman roads and moved out from door to door to tell people about Christ. So Paul says, “Many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.”
Now I believe there is a third effect of Paul’s imprisonment which he does not mention. We can only get this from the perspective of history. Paul may not have realized the importance of his writing, but if he had not been put into prison, we would not have the Prison Epistles: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon. They are all marvelous epistles, and we would not have them today if Paul had not been in prison. I’m sure the Lord could have gotten this teaching to us some other way, but this was the way He chose. So Paul could say about his imprisonment that it had “fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.”
There was, however, a tragic difficulty in Paul’s day. We have the same thing happening in this day, and it is still tragic.


Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will [Phil. 1:15].

When I first began to study the Bible, it was unbelievable to me that the preaching of the gospel of Christ could be done in envy and strife. But now that I’ve been in the ministry for a long time—I was ordained in 1933—I know that one of the things that hurts the preaching of the gospel probably more than any other single thing is the envy and the strife. Paul will mention envy and strife several times in this epistle. There must have been quite a few who were preaching the gospel in that way, envious of the apostle Paul, jealous because they didn’t have the results that Paul had.
One of the solutions to this problem of envy is for every Christian to recognize that he has a gift. We do not all have the same gift. The body could not function if we did. The problem is that some men who have one gift are envious of a man who has a different gift. You will remember that Paul told the Corinthians that the gifts are to be exercised in love. Every gift is to be exercised in love. My friend, if you will exercise your gift in love, you will not envy someone else. “… Love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up” (1 Cor. 13:4). Envy says, “I don’t think much of you,” and pride says, “What do you think of me?” That is the difference between envy and pride, and the believer is warned against both of them. Paul put it very bluntly when he wrote, “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Cor. 4:7).
Strife is an interesting word. It is the Greek word eris, which means “to stir up”—referring to demons, the spirits, that stir up strife. Envy and strife! Those two still hurt the church. Alcohol and drugs on the outside of the church cannot hurt it nearly as much as the envy and strife on the inside of the church.
Notice, however, that there were some who preached Christ of good will.


The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds [Phil. 1:16].

Those motivated by envy and strife preached Christ, but not sincerely. They actually did it to try to belittle Paul. They were envious of the apostle Paul, but they had not been able to say anything against him. Now that he was in prison and unable to defend himself, these men would go out and preach the gospel, but they also would have a few little things to say against Paul.


But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel [Phil. 1:17].

These are the two groups. What is Paul’s attitude toward them?


What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice [Phil. 1:18].

The important thing to Paul was that Christ be preached, no matter whether it was done in pretense or by true motives. It is tragic that at times Christ is preached in envy and strife. He is still preached in that way today, but we can always rejoice whenever Christ is preached.
I am a little rough on female preachers because I believe they are unscriptural, but, as I have said on several occasions, some women are preaching Christ better than the average male preacher. What is my position? I rejoice and thank God that Christ is being preached.
Dr. Ironside told the story of walking through a park in Oakland, California. A woman was preaching there, and his friend said to him, “Isn’t it a shame that this woman is here preaching?” Dr. Ironside said, “It’s a shame that there is not some man to take her place.” That is the problem. Thank God, Christ is being preached. That is the important thing. We can rejoice today whenever the Word of God is given out.
At the time I am writing, a great many folk are getting concerned about home Bible classes. I am rejoicing over them. I know sometimes they go off on a tangent, but not any more than some churches go off on tangents. We can rejoice that the Word of God is being taught.
It is interesting and also comforting to know that Christ can be preached insincerely, and yet people can still be saved. God honors His Word, not the man or the organization. We need to recognize that today. The Spirit of God is the only One who can bring blessings, and He can bless only when the Word of God is given out.


For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ [Phil. 1:19].

By the word salvation Paul means his deliverance from prison.
“Through your prayer.” People have asked me why I asked everyone to pray for me when I had cancer. They said, “Didn’t you know that God would heal you if you go to Him in prayer?” May I say that the Bible makes it clear that God hears and answers the prayers of His people. We need to ask God’s people to pray for us. Paul says that through their prayers he hopes to be set free.
“Through … the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” The only way you and I can get that supply that we need is through prayer.

According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death [Phil. 1:20].
Paul said he did not want to be ashamed of his witness while in this life, and he did not want to be ashamed when he came into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle John mentions the fact that when Christ comes to take His church with Him, it is possible for believers to be ashamed at His appearing (see 1 John 2:28). We need to bear that in mind. All Christians ought to be concerned about that.
Years ago I began a prophetic congress in downtown Los Angeles which has spread over this entire area and has given a tremendous emphasis to prophecy. This has been carried out across our country today. I probably have spoken in more prophetic congresses than any one individual. So I want to say this: there are too many people who are talking about the coming of the Lord but are not ready for the coming of the Lord. You may ask, “Aren’t they saved?” Yes, they are saved. But I’m afraid they will be ashamed at His appearing. Their lives do not commend the gospel. Paul says that he doesn’t want to be ashamed before Christ at His coming.
You will recall that this chapter gives the philosophy of Christian living. You will find that Paul will sum up the theme of each of these four chapters in one verse, and sometimes in one sentence. The next verse puts this chapter in a nutshell.

IN LIFE OR DEATH—CHRIST


For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain [Phil. 1:21].


Notice in your Bible that the verb is is in italics. That means it is not in the original but had been added to make the meaning clearer. The verse is actually, “For to me to live Christ, and to die gain.”
This is the philosophy of Christian living: To live Christ; to die gain. Dr. William L. Pettingill used to say that gain is always more of the same thing. If to live is Christ, then to die would be more of Christ. It means to go and be with Him.
Although it has taken me a long time to arrive at this conclusion, I am convinced that the most important thing in my life as a Christian is to have the reality of Jesus Christ in my life. This is not too popular today. People would rather talk about being dedicated, wanting to serve Him, or doing this and that. But the most important thing is to have fellowship with Him so that your joy might be full. Then we will have a powerful witness. The problem is that most people want the end but forget all about the means. The means, in this case, is fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else is the fruitage of this fellowship. For to me to live Christ; to die is to be with Him.
Now we know why Paul was undisturbed by the criticism being leveled at him. You can’t hurt a man who is in fellowship with Jesus Christ. What could anyone do to such a man? “For to me to live Christ, and to die gain” is a high plane on which to live. I wish I could say I have reached that plane. I’m on my way, and I haven’t arrived, but that is my goal. What a glorious one it is!


But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not [Phil. 1:22].

Paul didn’t know about his future, just as you and I don’t know about our future. We don’t know what any single day will bring forth.


For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:

Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you [Phil. 1:23–24].

Paul says he was torn between wanting to go to be with the Lord, which is the better of the two, or to stay with the Philippian believers because they needed him.
The first time I had cancer surgery, a letter came from a lady that said, “I know that everybody is praying that you will get well, but I am praying that the Lord will take you home because to be with Christ is far better.” I wrote back and said, “Would you mind letting the Lord decide about this? I want to stay.” I want to stay a while longer to give out the Word of God. I’ve just now gotten to the best part of my ministry, and I don’t want to leave it. I’m asking God to let me stay with it. I think that is a normal feeling for a child of God.
It reminds me of a story of an incident that took place in my southland in a black church. The preacher asked one night, “How many of you want to go to heaven?” Everyone put up his hand except one little boy. The preacher asked him, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?” He answered, “I sure do, but I thought you were getting up a load for tonight.”
We all want to go to heaven, but not right now!

And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith;

That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again [Phil. 1:25–26].

Paul is practical. He still has work to do. These folk need his ministry. He wanted to get out of prison and go to be with them again.
People who are always saying, “Oh, if the Lord would only come,” should get busy. This is the only place where we can do any work that is going to count for a reward for Him. This is the stage on which you and I play our part. I want to stay as long as possible, and I have promised the Lord I will teach the Word as long as He lets me stay.


Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel [Phil. 1:27].

The word conversation means your way of life. Not only our speech but our entire way of life should be a credit to the gospel of Christ.
“Stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel”—oh, how God’s people need to stand together for the furtherance of the gospel! If the church were what it should be in the world today, the world would listen to the message it proclaims.
Here Paul uses the word strive which is so different from the word strife about which he wrote earlier in the chapter. In the word strive is the thought of agonizing. We are to agonize together for the faith of the gospel.


And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God.

For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake [Phil. 1:28–29].

When you get to the place where He lets you suffer for Him, you have arrived—that is the high calling of Christ Jesus.


Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me [Phil. 1:30].

Paul certainly knew what it was to suffer for Christ. Suffering for Christ is a token of blessing, not a sign that God has turned His face away.
This concludes chapter 1 in which we have seen the philosophy of Christian living. The chapter is summed up in one verse: “For to me to live Christ, and to die gain.”

CHAPTER 2

Theme: Pattern for Christian living—others; mind of Christ—humble; mind of God—exaltation of Christ; mind of Paul—things of Christ; mind of Timothy—like-minded with Paul; mind of Epaphroditus—the work of Christ


In the first chapter we saw the philosophy of Christian living summed up in one verse: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Christ was the very center of Paul’s life. Now in this chapter we come to the pattern for Christian living, which is the mind of Christ, as we shall see.
It cannot be by imitation. I hear people talking today about following Jesus. I sometimes would like to ask these folk what they mean by that—specially when their lives do not conform to what they are saying. Are they trying to imitate Jesus? When Paul says here that Christ is the pattern for Christian living, he is not talking about imitation. He is talking about impartation. That is, the mind of Christ should be in us, and it can be there only by the power of the Spirit of God.
I learned a long time ago that when Vernon McGee does things, they are not only not done well, they are done wrong—always. I am accused of being rather strong-willed, and I have a tendency to move ahead on my own volition. But when I do that, I stub my toe. Then I say, “Lord, I’m ready now for You to take over.” It has been wonderful to see how the Lord does take over.
We need to learn to sit back and watch the Spirit of God move. That doesn’t mean that we simply sit and twiddle our thumbs. Of course we carry on the program that God has given us to carry on, but the power and the dynamic come from the Spirit of God.
In this chapter is one of the greatest theological statements made in Scripture concerning the person of Christ. Down through the centuries one of the most controversial issues has come out of that theological statement. In fact, it is the thing that probably divided Europe—it had more to do with it than anything else. The theory promoted was the kenosis theory, which is that at Christ’s incarnation He emptied Himself of His deity. This chapter will make it clear that He did not empty Himself of His deity.

THE PATTERN FOR CHRISTIAN LIVING—OTHERS


Before we get into the controversial issue, let’s notice the practical side—this is a practical epistle.


If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies [Phil. 2:1].

The “if” which begins this verse is not the if of condition—this is not a conditional clause. You will find that many times Paul uses if as an argument rather than a condition. Paul is a logical thinker. It has been said that if you do not find Paul logical, you are not reading him aright. It would be more accurate to translate it: “Since there is consolation in Christ, and since there is comfort of love, and since there is the fellowship of the Spirit, and since there are bowels [tenderness] and mercy.”
Now in view of all this, Paul says:


Fulfil ye my joy, that ye he like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind [Phil. 2:2].

Even though he is in prison, he is rejoicing in the Lord, but he says that he would rejoice even more if he knew the gospel was working in the lives of the Philippian believers.
“That ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.” You see, there had been a little difficulty, as we noted before, in the Philippian church—not much, but a little. Paul wants them to be of one mind.
He is not asking them to be carbon copies of each other. In most churches there are two groups of people: one group for the pastor and one group against the pastor. The folk that comprise these groups are not thinking for themselves but are carbon copies of the group leaders.
To be of one mind is to let the mind of Christ be in you. That permits differences of expressions, differences in gifts, differences in methods of service, even differences in minor doctrines. We won’t be beating each other on the head because we disagree on these things. If we have the mind of Christ, we will agree on the major tenets of the faith.


Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves [Phil. 2:3].

You remember that Paul has mentioned this before. He said that there were some people, who were preaching Christ out of envy and strife. Now he says, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory.” I would say most of the difficulties in the church today are not due to doctrinal differences. They are due to strife and envy. Some people just naturally cause trouble. If we could follow this injunction, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory,” I think it would solve 90 percent or maybe even 100 percent of the problems in churches today.
If you are doing something through strife in the church, you had better not do it at all. The same is true if you do things because you expect to be recognized. One of the reasons I don’t like to go to organizational meetings is that I get tired of people having to thank Mrs. So-and-so because she brought a bouquet of petunias or Mr. So-and-so because he brought in an extra chair—and you don’t dare leave out anyone because if you do, you will be in trouble. Do Christians need to be recognized and complimented and commanded for things they do? “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory”—trying to make a name for yourself.
“But in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” Perhaps this was the problem between Euodias and Syntyche. It may be that each felt she was being put down by the other.
If this verse were obeyed, I believe it would solve the problems in most of the music departments in our churches. It would eliminate this attitude: “Why don’t they call on me to sing? I have a much better voice than So-and-so.” The same could be said for problems on boards and on committees. It would eliminate the “power struggle” that goes on in some churches among the church officers.


Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others [Phil. 2:4].

Others! That is an important word.
I was absolutely overwhelmed to get a letter from another broadcaster with a gift for our broadcast enclosed. It came from a man whose broadcast is carried on one of the same stations as our broadcast in the state of Florida. He wrote, “What a blessing your broadcast is.” I don’t know anything about this man’s broadcast, but I can tell you something about his person. He was exhibiting the mind of Christ. He was carrying out the admonition of this verse: “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” His letter was a very humbling experience for me.
“Others?” is the key to this passage. It is the Christian faith which first made that word others important. Why did Christ come from heaven’s glory to this earth? It was for others. Why should we carry the gospel? For others. To think of others rather than ourselves is having the mind of Christ.

MIND OF CHRIST—HUMBLE


Now Paul is going to tell us about the mind of Christ.


Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus [Phil. 2:5].

The mind of Christ—what is the one thing that characterized it? Humility. You may recall that in Ephesians 4 we were told, “… walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.” Then it goes on to describe this, “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” (Eph. 4:1–2). That is the mind of Christ.
You and I can’t be humble. We can’t be meek. We are not made that way. We want to stand on our own two feet and have our little say. All of us are like that. Don’t say you are not, because you really are. None of us wants to be offended. None of us wants to be ignored. We develop hang-ups if we are brought up in such a way that we have been trampled on.
I heard about the son of a very fine minister who had become a vagrant. Why? It was because he had an older brother who was a brilliant fellow. This boy was always hearing about the brilliant things his older brother was doing. So he just went in the opposite direction, rebelling against it. That is the natural reaction of the natural man. It wouldn’t even help matters to go to the boy and say, “Now listen, son, you just ignore all that.” He is not going to ignore it. A man who is not born again is not even in the territory of being willing to take a humble place.
We come now to one of the great theological statements in the Scripture. Some consider it the greatest doctrinal statement in the New Testament relative to the person of Christ, and it is known as the kenosis, the “emptying.” This passage will make it clear that He did not empty Himself of His deity. It will give us the seven steps of humiliation which Christ took. I wish I were capable of sketching for you the magnitude of what is being said in these next few verses. I wish we could grasp how high He was and how low He came. The billions of light years across known space are nothing compared to the distance He came.
We find here seven steps downward. Then we have listed for us seven steps upward, the exaltation of Christ. First, then, in humiliation, we see the mind of Christ. Then we will see the mind of God. It is in the mind of God the Father to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to know what you can do that will put you in the will of God—I don’t know where you are to go or what you do—but I can tell you this: Since it is the purpose of God the Father to exalt Jesus Christ, I believe that is the will of God for every one of us. We are to exalt Jesus Christ, wherever we are and in whatever we do. We are to be one with the Father in this ultimate purpose of the exaltation of Jesus Christ.
The first step downward was when He left heaven’s glory. He came down and down and down to this earth, all the way to where we are. You and I cannot even conceive of what a big step it was from heaven’s glory all the way down to this earth. Absolutely, it is beyond human comprehension to understand what our Lord really did for us.

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God [Phil. 2:6].
This is, I confess, a rather stilted translation. When Christ was at the right hand of God the Father, He wasn’t hanging on to His position. There was no danger of His losing His place in the Godhead because of any lack on His part or because of the ability and ambition of a contender. He hadn’t gone to school to learn to become God; He had not advanced from another position. He was God. It wasn’t as if the Lord Jesus had to say to God the Father, “Now You be sure to keep My position for Me while I’m gone for thirty-three years. Keep a sharp eye out for Gabriel—I think he would like to have My place.” I am not being irreverent; I am trying to show you that this was not something that He had to hold on to. The position belonged to Him. He was God.
Nor did He leave heaven reluctantly. At no time did He say, “Oh, I just hate to leave heaven. I don’t want to go down on that trip.” He came joyfully. “… for the joy that was set before him …” (Heb. 12:2, italics mine) He endured the cross. He said, “… Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:7). He came to this earth with joy. He was not releasing something that He wanted to hold on to when He came to this earth.
Now we see the second step down.


But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men [Phil. 2:7].

“Made himself of no reputation” means to empty—the Greek word is kenooµ. The kenosis theory derives its name from the word kenooµ. Christ emptied Himself. The question is: Of what did He empty Himself? There are those who say He emptied Himself of His deity. All of the Gnostics in the early church propounded the first heresy that He emptied Himself of His deity, that the deity entered into Him at the time of His baptism and left Him at the cross. Well, this theory is not substantiated anywhere in the Word of God. He emptied Himself of something, but it was not of His deity. He was 100 percent God when He was a baby reclining helplessly on the bosom of Mary. Even at that time He could have spoken this universe out of existence because He was God. There was never a moment when He was not God. The apostle John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made…. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us …” (John 1:1–3, 14).
Well, then, of what did the Lord Jesus empty Himself when He came to this earth? I believe that He emptied Himself of the prerogatives of deity. He lived on this earth with certain limitations, but they were self-limitations. There was never a moment when He wasn’t God. And He was not less God because He was man, yet He emptied Himself of His prerogatives of deity.
The few shepherds and wise men, and even the multitude of angels, were a sorry turnout for the Son of God when He came to this earth. Not only should that crowd have been there, but the whole universe should have been there. All of God’s created intelligences should have been there. The hierarchy of Rome should have been there. There should not have been just a few wise men from the East. They should have come from the West, and the North, and the South. And the temple in Jerusalem should have been empty that day—they should all have gone down to Bethlehem. But they didn’t.
Why didn’t He force them to come? Because He had laid aside His prerogatives of deity. He was willing to be born in a dirty, filthy place—not the pretty, clean stable of Christmas pageants and Christmas cards. He was willing to grow to manhood in a miserable town named Nazareth. He was willing to be an unknown carpenter. He could have had the shekinah glory with Him all the time, but He didn’t. He didn’t have a halo around His head as we see in so many paintings of Him. Judas had to kiss Him the night He was betrayed so that the crowd would know which was the man they were to capture. He didn’t stand out from other men by some kind of inner light or glory around Him. He was a human being, but He was God manifest in the flesh. He laid aside the prerogatives of His deity.
Can we be sure of that? I think we can. After He had finished His ministry, He gathered His own about Him on His last night on earth, and He prayed a very wonderful prayer to His heavenly Father. One thing He said in that prayer was this: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). Notice this carefully: He prayed to have His glory restored. He did not pray to have His deity restored, because He had never given up His deity. But now that He is returning to heaven, He is asking that His glory, the glory light, a prerogative of deity, be restored. Obviously He had laid that aside. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation.”
The third step downward in the humiliation of Christ is this: “And took upon him the form of a servant.”
Jesus came to this earth as a servant. He worked as a carpenter. I suppose if you had lived in Nazareth in that day, you could have gone by the shop where Jesus worked and told Him you needed some repair work done at your house—“I have a door that is coming off the hinges; I wonder if You would come and fix it?” I think He would have said, “I’ll be right: over.” You see, He took upon Himself the form of a servant. He could have been born in Caesar’s palace. He was a king, but He never made that claim during those early years—in fact, He didn’t make it until He rode into Jerusalem in the so-called Triumphal Entry.
He came into this world as a working man, a humble man, a little man. Not only did He humiliate Himself to become a human being, but He came among the majority where most of us are today. He was one of the little people.
The prophet Isaiah wrote that Christ would come as a “root of Jesse” (see Isa. 11:10). As a young preacher I often wondered why Isaiah didn’t call Him a root out of David. Well, I have discovered the reason. When Jesus was born, Mary, who was in the line of David (and Joseph, who was also in the Davidic line by another route), was a peasant. They were working folk living in that little, miserable, gentile town called Nazareth. Then wasn’t Jesus in the line of David? Oh, yes. David was anointed king, but his father Jesse was a farmer in Bethlehem, and his line had dropped back to the place of a peasant. Our Lord was born into a peasant family.
“He took upon him the form of a servant.”
The fourth step in His humiliation is this: “And was made in the likeness of men.”
For years this did not impress me at all, because I am a man and I like being a man. I couldn’t see that being a man was a humiliation. I think there is a dignity about being a human being that is quite wonderful. How can it be humbling?
Let me give you a very homely illustration that I trust might be as helpful to you as it is to me. I confess it is rather ridiculous, but it will illustrate the humiliation of Christ in His incarnation.
When we first came to California in 1940, we had the experience of living in a place where the bugs and the ants are not killed off in the wintertime. We got here the first of November and had not been here long until I found in the kitchen one morning a freeway of ants coming into the sink. They were coming down one side and going back on the other side. Also I found they had discovered the sugar bowl, and they had a freeway in and out of it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want ants in the sink and I don’t want ants in the sugar bowl. So I began to investigate and learned that the thing we had to do was to kill them. Now I’m just not sadistic; I’m not brutal; I don’t like to kill things. But I began to kill ants. I got ant poison, and we got rid of ants. Then when we moved over to our own home, here were ants. They had found out where we’d moved. I have a wonderful Christian friend who is in the bug-killing business. He comes to my place twice a year, sprays everything—under the house, under the eaves, the trees—everything, and you can’t find an ant on my place.
Now I do not know this to be a fact, but I have a notion that the ants had a protest meeting around my lot. Maybe they carried banners that read, “Down with McGee. He hates ants!” But, frankly, I don’t hate ants. That’s not my hang-up at all. If I had some way of communicating with those ants and getting a message to them, I’d say, “Look here. I don’t hate you. Just stay out of the sugar bowl, and stay out of the sink. I’ll put sugar and water outside for you—I’d be glad to do that if you’d just stay outside.” But I do not know how to get that message over to the ants—except by becoming an ant. Now suppose that I had the power to become an ant. (If I could do it, I would not do it because I know some folk who would step on me if I were an ant!) But listen, if I could become an ant—from where I am now down to the position of an ant—that would be humiliation, wouldn’t it? I’d hate to become an ant. But, my friend, that is nothing compared to what my Lord did when He left heaven’s glory and became a man, when He took upon Himself our humanity, when He was made in the likeness of men.


And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross [Phil. 2:8].

The fifth step in our Lord’s humiliation is that He humbled Himself. “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself.” You and I have been humbled by someone doing or saying something which has been humiliating to us. But notice that Christ “humbled himself.” This is a most difficult thing to do.
One of the finest things I ever heard about John Wesley was concerning an incident when he was about to cross a brook over which was a very narrow bridge, just wide enough for one person. As he was starting over, he met a liberal preacher of that day. This preacher swelled up and said, “I never give way to a fool.” John Wesley looked at him for a moment, smiled, and began to back off, saying, “I always do.” My friend, it is difficult to take that humble place, but it has made me think a great deal more of John Wesley. We find it difficult to humble ourselves, but our Lord humbled Himself.
Many of us have had humbling experiences. I am reminded of a summer conference at which I was speaking years ago. One of the speakers at this conference was a most dignified Englishman. He was a gifted speaker and very dignified. He was shocked when I wore a sport shirt even on the platform. To him that was the unpardonable sin. He wore a white shirt, collar, and tie; in fact, he wore a frock coat for the evening services! Well, one afternoon it rained, and in the auditorium a window glass had been broken out so that it had rained in on the platform. In those early days all the speakers in any week would march onto the platform every night, regardless of who was bringing the message. On that particular night I walked behind this dignified, formally dressed Englishman, and when he hit that wet spot on the platform, his feet went out from under him. Oh, how he sprawled! And, you know, everybody laughed. I laughed so hard I had to leave the platform. After I went back and sat down on the platform, I thought I never could quit laughing. The next night we started in as usual, and he was right ahead of me again. I reached over and said, “Say, it’d be nice to have a repeat performance tonight.” “Oh,” he said, “wasn’t that humbling!” Yes, he was humbled, but he did not humble himself. Many times we are humbled, are we not? But we do not humble ourselves.
The Lord Jesus humbled Himself, and that is altogether different.
We come now to the sixth step in His humiliation: “and [He] became obedient unto death.” Death is a very humiliating sort of thing. It is not natural. Sometimes at funerals I hear people say, “Doesn’t he look natural?” It is generally said by some well-meaning friend who wants to comfort the loved ones. I don’t know why it would be a source of comfort to think that Grandpa looks natural in death. I bite my lip to keep from saying, “No, he doesn’t look natural.” Death is not natural. God didn’t create man to die. Man dies because of sin, because of his transgression. Death came by the transgression of one man, and that man was Adam, and death has passed down to all men. Death is not natural. God did not create man to die.
Now when the Lord Jesus came to this earth, He was a little different from the rest of us. You and I came to live. I honestly don’t want to die. I want to live. I have come to the most fruitful part of my ministry, and I want to live as long as the Lord will let me. But the Lord Jesus was born to die. He came to this earth to die. He didn’t have to die, but He “became obedient unto death” and gave Himself up willingly. I have to die, but I don’t want to. He didn’t have to die, but He wanted to. Why? In order that He might save you and me if we will put our trust in Him. This is what He said, “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep…. Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again …” (John 10:15, 17–18).
The seventh and last step in the humiliation of Christ is “even the death of the cross.” Not only did He become obedient unto death, but to the death of the cross. This would make a greater impact on our consciousness if we said that Christ died in the electric chair or the gas chamber or by the hangman’s noose. It was that kind of disgraceful death. He came from the highest glory to the lowest place of humiliation. Why did He do it? Let’s go back to the word others. “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” He left all the glory of heaven and came down to this earth, became a man, and suffered the death of a criminal for others—for you and me. Thank God for that! This is the mind of Christ.

MIND OF GOD—EXALTATION OF CHRIST


Now the mind of God the Father is to glorify Christ. We have seen the seven steps downward; now we will see the seven steps upward. The mind of God is the exaltation of Christ.


Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name [Phil. 2:9].

Here is the first step up: “God also hath highly exalted him.” The supreme purpose of God the Father in this universe today is that Jesus Christ be glorified in the universe which He created and that He be glorified on the earth where man dwells, where man rebelled against God.
The thing that makes this little earth significant and important is the death of Christ down here—nothing else. Astronomers tell us that we are a little speck in space, and if our little world were to be blotted out, it wouldn’t make any difference to the universe. And that is absolutely true. Someone else has said that man is a “disease on the epidermis of a minor planet.” That is what we are! The thing that has lent dignity to man and has caused him to look up into the heavens and sing the doxology is the fact that Jesus Christ came to this earth and died on the cross for him. “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him.”
Now the second step: “and given him a name which is above every name.” The next time you take His name in vain, think of this. God intends to exalt that name that you use as a curse word and drag in the mud. The other day a pilot who stepped off a plane on which a bomb had exploded—and it was almost a miracle that he was able to land the plane—just stood over at the side of the crowd and said, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ!” I don’t know if he was saying it as profanity—God have mercy on him if he did it that way. I hope that it was a prayer. The name of Jesus Christ will be exalted above the names of all the great men of this world and above the names of all the angels in glory.


That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth [Phil. 2:10].

In this verse we find the next three steps of Christ’s exaltation.
The third step: “That at the name of Jesus”—Jesus means “Savior.” Before His birth in Bethlehem, the angel said, “… thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Now notice the reference to prophecy: “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (Matt. 1:22–23).
Can you show me anyplace in the Bible where He was called Emmanuel? When I entered the ministry, I had no problem with “Behold a virgin shall conceive.” Since He is God, how else could He get into the human family except by a miraculous birth? But the thing that did cause a problem in this verse was, “He shall be called Emmanuel” because I couldn’t find any place where they called Him Emmanuel. “Well, then,” you may say, “that prophecy was not fulfilled.”
Oh, my friend, this is one of the most wonderful fulfillments of prophecy you can imagine. The angel said, “Call Him Jesus because He’ll save His people from their sins.” Now think through this. You couldn’t call me Jesus—I can’t even save myself Neither would it be accurate to call you Jesus because you can’t save yourself. You see, all of us are in the same ship today. The human family is on a sinking ship, and it’s going down. If there is to be a Savior, He’s got to come from the outside. There are those who want to throw out a lifeline. But to do that is like being on a ship that is sinking, and somebody on the top deck says to those down in the steerage, “Let me throw you a lifeline.” But the top deck is going down too! You see, the rope has to come from some other place than the human ship. No human being can be a Savior. “You shall call His name Jesus because He is going to save His people from their sins.” How can He save His people from their sins? Because He will be Emmanuel, God with us. That little Baby who came yonder to Bethlehem is God with us. He took upon Himself, not the likeness of angels, but our humanity. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And because He is that, He can be called Jesus. And friend, nobody else can properly be called Jesus.
Now God says, “I’m going to exalt the name which was given to Him when He came to earth above every other name.”
Now notice the fourth step of His exaltation: “Of things in heaven.”
And the fifth step: “And things in earth.”
And the sixth step: “And things under the earth.” This verse is used by the Restitutionalists to support their theory that ultimately everybody will be saved. We had a spokesman of this cult in Los Angeles for many years. He made the statement that Judas Iscariot and the Devil would be walking down the streets of heaven together because ultimately all would be saved. of course it was unfortunate that he used this verse because when you compare it with Colossians 1:20, you see its true meaning. The subject in the Philippians passage is the lordship of Jesus. God has highly exalted Him, that at the name of Jesus every knee must bow, in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. That is, even hell will have to bow to Him because He is the Lord. He is God. But merely bowing does not imply salvation. Colossians 1:20 is not talking about lordship, but about Christ’s reconciling work, His redemptive work. And what was reconciled? What was redeemed? Was hell included? No. The things under the earth are not mentioned here. Why? Because this verse is talking about redemption, and there is no redemption in hell. By putting these two verses together it is clear that those in hell who bow to Jesus are merely acknowledging His lordship. “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.”
Here now is the seventh and final step of Christ’s exaltation:


And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father [Phil. 2:11].

Every tongue shall “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” That doesn’t mean that every tongue will confess Him as Savior. It is interesting that even in hell they must recognize the lordship of Jesus, which will, I think, increase their anguish.
I want to give a word of caution here. Be very careful about calling Jesus your Lord if He is not your Lord. He made the statement that many would call Him Lord, Lord, and even perform miracles in His name, yet He will say, “I never knew you” (see Matt. 7:21–23). My friend, you had better know Him as your Savior before you say He is your Lord. If He is your Savior, then you can become obedient to Him as your Lord.
I don’t even like to hear people sing, “What a Friend we have in Jesus.” We have a friend in Him all right, but listen to the words of Jesus: “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:14, italics mine). We can call Him our friend if we do what He commands us to do. He is not our Lord unless we obey Him.

MIND OF PAUL—THINGS OF CHRIST


We have been learning about the mind of Christ. We have seen it is not something which can be imitated. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” can only happen by impartation. It is the work of the Spirit of God within us which will produce the fruit of meekness or humility in our lives.
Now we are going to see the mind of Christ as it walked down the Roman roads. We will see it lived in Roman homes and in a Roman jail. We will see three examples given to us: the mind of Paul, the mind of Timothy, and the mind of Epaphroditus (pastor of the church at Philippi). In this heathen empire there were these three men who exhibited the mind of Christ and there may have been three million more, but these are the ones who are presented to us in this epistle.


Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling [Phil. 2:12].

“Salvation” in this verse is used, I believe, in a general sense. Paul is talking about working out their problems which they had in the church and working out the problems in their own Christian lives. He is not there to help them and is not sure that he ever will be there again because he is in a Roman prison. So he tells them to work out their “own salvation with fear and trembling.”
A preacher was reading this verse of Scripture in the morning service. A little girl whispered to her mother, “Mother, you can’t work out salvation unless it has first been worked in, can you?” Now that is a very good question. The next verse answers it.


For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure [Phil. 2:13].

So God works out that which He had worked in. If God has saved you, He has saved you by faith—plus nothing. God is not accepting any kind of good works for salvation. But after you are saved, God talks to you about your works. The salvation that He worked in by faith is a salvation He will work out also.
Calvin expressed it this way: “Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.” James states it like this: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (James 2:17–18). Only God can see the heart; He knows our true condition. He knows if I have saving faith; He knows if you have saving faith. But your neighbor can’t see your faith. The only thing he can see is the works of faith. True faith will work itself out so that the people around us will be able to tell that we are different, that we are Christians. We don’t need to wear a placard or some sort of symbol to identify ourselves as Christians.
Paul will talk about that faith which will work itself out in the lives of the Philippian believers.

Do all things without murmurings and disputings [Phil. 2:14].
Don’t accept an office in the church or in the Sunday school if you have to grumble about doing it. That absolutely wrecks more Christian work than anything else. Do all things without grumbling or disputing.


That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world [Phil. 2:15].

Be like a light. When we go out at night we see the stars up there. When God looks down on this dark world, He sees those who are His own as little lights down here. The children sing “This Little Light of Mine.” Well, my friend, that’s exactly what it is. Paul says, “Among whom ye shine as lights in the world.” As the stars are up there, we are down here.


Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain [Phil. 2:16].

Life and light are related. When we hold forth the Word of Life, we are lights in the world. Paul rejoices when he hears that the Philippian believers are manifesting their faith in good works. These believers were very close to the heart of Paul because they were his converts.


Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all [Phil. 2:17].

Here is one of the most wonderful verses in the entire Word of God. It pictures what the Christian life really should be. He is referring to one of the earliest offerings in the Old Testament. When we go back to Genesis 35:14, we find that Jacob set up a pillar at Beth-el, “and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.” Then in the books of Leviticus and Numbers the sacrifices are described. We learn that there was a drink offering which was to be added to the burnt offering and the meal offering. It was never added to the sin offering or the trespass offering. It was a most unusual offering in that it had nothing to do with redemption; it had nothing to do with the person of Christ. They would bring in a skin of wine and just pour it on the sacrifice which was being consumed by fire. What happened to it? It would go up in steam and disappear.
Paul is saying, “I want my life to be poured out like a drink offering on the offering of Christ.” Paul knows that the Lord Jesus Christ made the supreme sacrifice. He wanted his life to be a drink offering—just poured out to go up in steam. He wanted to be so consumed and obscured that all that is seen is just Jesus Christ. He wanted Christ to receive all the honor and the glory. This was the mind of Paul. I can think of no higher wish for the Christian life.


For the same cause also do ye joy, and rejoice with me [Phil. 2:18].

In other words, “If your life commends the gospel, my life is just poured out as a drink offering. Together we’ll rejoice over this.” It is a walk in humility. Only a person with the mind of Christ could be so poured out as a drink offering. How gloriously wonderful that is.
Paul ends on a note of joy and rejoicing. Today we often rejoice over the wrong things. We need to rejoice over the fact that Jesus died for us and that we can serve Him. When we hear of someone whom God is using or hear of a wonderful church where people are being saved and built up in the faith, we ought to rejoice. If we are walking in humility, we will rejoice at the success of others. We have too much strife and vainglory. That was hurting the cause of Christ in Paul’s day, and it still hurts the cause of Christ. The mind of Christ in the believer will bring joy and will bring glory to God.

MIND OF TIMOTHY—LIKE-MINDED WITH PAUL


But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I also may be of good comfort, when I know your state [Phil. 2:19].


Timothy was Paul’s spiritual son. Paul had great confidence in him. He could trust Timothy to care for the state of the Philippian believers.


For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state [Phil. 2:20].

Here we have described the mind of Timothy, and we find that he is like-minded with Paul. Since he was like-minded with Paul, it means that he had the mind of Christ, and he was characterized by humility. We don’t need a National Council or World Council of Churches to bring men together. In fact, we don’t need any organization to bring them together. If they both have the mind of Christ, they are together.
Timothy had been faithful to Paul. Sometimes a convert later turns against the person who led him to the Lord. This is like a child turning against a parent. Paul had had that happen to him, but Timothy was faithful to him. Paul was sending him to the Philippian believers because he could trust him. It is wonderful to have men like-minded with Christ so they can work together.


For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s [Phil. 2:21].

There were many others who were seeking their own glory. They wanted to make a name for themselves. Because they were seeking their own glory, they were willing to belittle Paul.
How do you respect others who are standing for the Word of God today? When I hear a man of God being criticized, I recognize that somewhere there is strife and vainglory. The mind of Christ will not allow you to criticize another man who stands for Christ. Paul says, “I can’t trust these other men.”


But ye know the proof of him, that, as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel [Phil. 2:22].

People speak a lot about togetherness in our day. There can be no more togetherness than for two people to have the mind of Christ. They are together even though they may be miles apart. That is why there is such a bond between fellow Christians who have the mind of Christ.
When a Christian young man and a Christian young lady fall in love, there is a togetherness that you cannot have in just a sexual marriage. A relationship that is simply physical can be bought on any street corner. But when a husband and wife have the mind of Christ, they are really together. There is no human ceremony that can bring two people together in that way. It is a glorious, wonderful relationship.


Him therefore I hope to send presently, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me.

But I trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly [Phil. 2:23–24].

Paul wanted Timothy to be the one who would bring them the message about what was going to happen to him there in the prison. Paul had hopes that he would be released from prison. Tradition says that he was released from prison and had quite an itinerant ministry after this, although this is not recorded in Scripture. When the Christians were persecuted under Nero, naturally Paul, the leader, was brought back and executed.

MIND OF EPAPHRODITUS—THE WORK OF CHRIST


Epaphroditus was another who had the mind of Christ. He and Paul and Timothy were all together, brethren in the Lord, serving the Lord. Remember that he is the pastor of the church in Philippi.


Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellowsoldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants [Phil. 2:25].

Paul had founded the church at Philippi, but Epaphroditus was not jealous of Paul. Paul loved Epaphroditus because he had the mind of Christ and Paul could trust him. He calls him “my brother, and my companion in labour, and my fellowsoldier.” Paul says, “He is my fellowsoldier—he fights with me. He doesn’t stick a knife in my back when I’m away. He doesn’t side with my enemies. He stands shoulder to shoulder with me for the faith.”
“But your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants.” He was of practical help to Paul who is confined there in chains.


For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick [Phil. 2:26].

This is almost humorous here. Epaphroditus got sick, and word was sent back to the church at Philippi that their own pastor was sick. He longed for them—he probably was a little homesick also. Then when he heard that the church back there was mourning for him because he was sick, he had a relapse because it hurt him that they were hurt because he was sick! There was sort of a vicious circle set in motion here. But it was good because it revealed the marvelous relationship between the church at Philippi and their pastor.
In my conference ministry I speak in many churches, and I have learned that I can judge a church by its attitude toward a pastor who preaches and teaches the Word of God. When a deacon takes me aside and says, “Dr. McGee, we have a fine young pastor, and he is preaching the Word of God,” this rejoices my heart. But sometimes a deacon takes me aside and says, “Say, how do we get rid of a pastor like we have? He is too opinionated, too dogmatic, and he wants to run things.” I ask him, “Is he teaching and preaching the Word?” When the deacon’s answer is, “Oh, yes, but we have had that all along,” I can see that the Word has had no effect upon that man. If his feeling is shared by the church in general, that church is doomed. The rejection of a Bible-teaching preacher is the death knell of many churches across this land of ours. You see, the Devil has been very clever. He has shifted his attack from the Word of God itself to the man who teaches the Word of God. I find this is true across the length and breadth of our nation. The real test of a church is its attitude toward its pastor.
Epaphroditus was greatly loved by his church, and that speaks well for the church in Philippi.


For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow [Phil. 2:27].

Let me point out something here that you may not notice. Many sincere believers today hold the theory that Christians should not be sick, that they should trust God to heal them. Let me ask a question: Why didn’t Paul heal Epaphroditus? He was so sick he almost died! You see, Paul and the other apostles had “sign gifts?” because they did not have what we have today, a New Testament. When Paul started out with the gospel message, nothing of the New Testament had been written. Paul himself wrote 1 Thessalonians, the second book of the New Testament to be penned. When he went into a new territory with his message, what was his authority? He had no authority except sign gifts, which included the gift of healing. But now Paul is nearing the conclusion of his ministry. You will remember that Paul had a thorn in the flesh which the Lord Jesus would not remove. Instead, He gave Paul the grace to bear it. Then you remember that Timothy had stomach trouble. If Paul had been a faith healer, why hadn’t he healed Timothy? Actually, he told him to take a little wine for his stomach’s sake. And in 2 Timothy 4:20 he said that he had left Trophimus in Miletum sick. Why hadn’t he healed him? And now Paul says he has this young preacher, Epaphroditus, with him, and he was so sick he almost died. Paul didn’t heal him. Rather, he gives all the credit to God; he says that God had mercy on him. His healing came about in a natural sort of way. Paul made it a matter of prayer, and God heard and answered prayer. Why hadn’t Paul used his gift of healing? Because at this late stage, even before the apostles disappeared from the scene, the emphasis was moving back to the Great Physician.
You see, this epistle is emphasizing the mind of Christ, a humble mind. If I were a faith healer, I would be in the limelight; I would be somebody very great and very famous. But I’m not. The Lord Jesus is the Great Physician. When it was first discovered that I had cancer, I received a great number of letters advising me to go to this healer and that healer. No, I didn’t go to anyone, my friend, except a very fine cancer specialist and the Great Physician. I had an appointment with Him and I told Him I wanted to live. I turned over my case to Him. And He gets the credit for what happened to me.
So here is Paul the apostle toward the end of his ministry putting no emphasis on healing whatsoever. He has a sick preacher with him, but he does not exercise the gift of healing that he had. Why? Because Paul is shifting the emphasis where it should be, upon the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now Paul is sending Epaphroditus back to them.


I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful [Phil. 2:28].

Paul wants them to rejoice, not sorrow. “And that I may be the less sorrowful”—he was disturbed about the church in Philippi because it had been mourning instead of rejoicing.


Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation [Phil. 2:29].

How gracious Paul was with this preacher from Philippi! A man like Epaphroditus should be respected and loved.
And, my friend, we should respect the one who is teaching the Word of God. If he has a gift of teaching which God is using, both the gift and the individual should be respected. Our attention should be focused upon the Word of God. I just don’t participate anymore in conventions and seminars that focus attention on problems—the drug problem, the alcohol problem, the sex problem, the youth problems, and the senior citizen problems—and offer psychological solutions for them. My friend, the problem is that we don’t get back to the Word of God. It is the Word of God that reveals Christ and the mind of Christ.

Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me [Phil. 2:30].

Epaphroditus was doing the work of Christ. He had to have the mind of Christ to do that.
It sends chills up and down my spine to read about these men. This is in the first century, at the time of the Roman Empire. The empire of Caesar Augustus moved out and took over the world. The law of Rome became supreme everywhere. There was no mercy shown to anyone, but there was law and order everywhere. There was not a power in that day that could protest against Rome. Then there went out this little man, Paul the apostle, and those who were like-minded with him, and they preached a gospel that there is a God of the universe who, through a redemption that He had wrought on a Roman cross, had provided mercy for mankind. Multitudes turned to the Lord Jesus in that day.
Now I see this little man, Paul the apostle, chained to a Roman soldier. What is he doing? Well, he is witnessing for Christ, and he is rejoicing in the Lord. He has the mind of Christ. Also I see a fine young man, Timothy, walking in that pagan city. You say you cannot live for Christ in a godless society? Look at Timothy. He did pretty well. He had the mind of Christ. And then I take a look at Ephaphroditus, a faithful pastor way up yonder in the city of Philippi—it was a Roman colony, but it was a pagan, heathen city. Epaphroditus had the mind of Christ.
Then I look at Vernon McGee, and I say to him, Stop offering excuses in this day in which you are living! If these men could have the mind of Christ in the first century, today in the twentieth century right where we are now, you and I can have the mind of Christ. Not by imitation, but by yielding to Him the Spirit of God can produce in our own lives the mind of Christ. Oh, how desperately this is needed in our day!

CHAPTER 3

Theme: Prize for Christian living; Paul changed his bookkeeping system of the past; Paul changed his purpose for the present; Paul changed his hope for the future


We have seen the philosophy of Christian living: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). We have seen the pattern for Christian living: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). Now we come to the prize for Christian living which is summarized in Paul’s personal testimony: “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (v. 14).
We will see in this chapter that Paul changed his bookkeeping system of the past, he changed his purpose for the present, and he changed his hope for the future. Paul believed that God was going to establish a kingdom on this earth; he never changed his view on that. But he did see that there is a marvelous, wonderful hope for believers in Christ—both Jew and Gentile—the day when Christ will take His own out of the world.

PAUL CHANGED HIS BOOKKEEPING SYSTEM OF THE PAST


Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe [Phil. 3:1].


“Finally, my brethren” gives us the impression that Paul is coming to the conclusion of this epistle. He must have intended this to be a very brief thank-you note to the Philippian believers. But we are just midway in the epistle; so obviously the Spirit of God prompted him to go on.
My wife reminded me in a conference some time ago that when I was speaking I said, “Let me say this to you in the final analysis, and then I’ll be through”—then I went on talking for another fifteen minutes. She said, “You weren’t through at all.” So I told her I was just being scriptural, that I was doing it the way Paul did it.
His final message was going to be, “Rejoice in the Lord.” I think that would still be his final message if he were here today. He has shown how three men, himself, Timothy, and Epaphroditus, all had the mind of Christ. They were able to rejoice even in sickness and imprisonment. The early church could rejoice amid the fires of persecution.
Besides, Paul is saying that it has been no burden to him to write this letter. He has no burden on his heart such as there had been when he wrote to the Galatians and the Corinthians. The Philippians have been a great joy to him. Now he wants them to rejoice, too. Notice that it is actually a command: “Rejoice in the Lord.”
“To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe.” It is safe for him to write to the Philippians. They were spiritually mature. They loved Paul, and he loved them. He felt close to them. So he says it is not grievous, or irksome, to write to them. It is safe for him to write to them because he knows they will understand.


Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision [Phil. 3:2].

“Beware of dogs.” This is not a word of warning to the mailmen. I once had a dog that hated mailmen, and I don’t know why. We changed mailmen several times during the period we had him, and he had the same attitude toward each of them. But Paul is not referring to animals in this verse. We will get some insight into his thinking by turning back to the prophecy of Isaiah who warned against the false prophets of his day: “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber” (Isa. 56:10). Isaiah was warning the people against the false prophets who were attempting to comfort the people and were telling them that everything was fine instead of warning them of coming disaster. The northern kingdom had already gone into captivity because the false prophets had given them a false sense of security. God was warning the southern kingdom not to do the same thing. He was calling the false prophets “dumb dogs.” They won’t speak out. They won’t tell it as it is. Dogs are those who are not declaring the full counsel of God.
We have the same grave danger in our affluent society. Comfort is the word of the day. We look for comfortable places to stay when we are traveling. We enjoy all the creature comforts that we can afford. The desire for comfort has carried over into the church. There is a danger of just comforting the people of the congregation because that is what they would like to have coming from the pulpit.
A prominent member of a congregation which I served left the church because he said I never gave him any comforting messages. I found out later that in his business he was not always ethical. In fact, some considered him very unethical. Frankly, he didn’t need messages of comfort. He needed messages of warning. I think that was what he didn’t like. It may be that he thought I knew something of his business dealings, which I absolutely did not know at the time. In fact, I have never preached a sermon at any individual in my life. I have tried to preach what the Word of God says. Often that is not a comforting message.
When I went to see my doctor, I tried my best to be evasive with him. I told him that I knew someone who had the same trouble I did and he was given medicine and recovered. As he examined me, he said, “Dr. McGee, if you need medication, I will give it to you, but I don’t think you need medication. You are in trouble.” Well, that was not a comforting message! He told me candidly, “I’m going to tell you the truth, because if I don’t, you will not have confidence in me. You have cancer.” I have thanked him for that ever since. I wanted to hear the truth. Don’t you want to hear the truth?
In Isaiah’s day there were a great many false prophets who were comforting the people when they should have been warning them. Isaiah likens the false prophets to dumb dogs. You see, a good sheep dog is constantly alert to danger. If a lion or a bear makes a foray into the flock, that dog will bark like mad and run it away if he can. He gives warning of the approach of any kind of danger. But the false prophets gave no warning at all. Therefore the southern kingdom had been lulled to sleep and resented Isaiah’s effort to arouse them.
America today is in the same position. We are going to sleep, my friend, under the comfortable blanket of affluence. We like the idea of comfort, of getting something for nothing, of taking it easy, of having a good day. My feeling is that somebody ought to do a little barking.
So Paul warned, “Beware of dogs”—beware of men who are constantly comforting you and are not giving you the Word of God.
“Beware of evil workers.” This is another group that would actually abuse and use believers. They are not honest.
“Beware of the concision”—he slurred the word circumcision and said concision. He is saying that they are no longer of the true circumcision, referring to the legalizers, those who were attempting to force Christians to keep the law of Moses for salvation and sanctification.


For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh [Phil. 3:3].

“We are the circumcision.” What does Paul mean by that? He makes it very clear at the end of the Epistle to the Galatians: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (Gal. 6:15). The old circumcision is out. God is not looking for a mere external observance. True circumcision is of the heart. It is the new birth, a new heart attitude toward God. True circumcision is being in Christ.
“And have no confidence in the flesh.” We do not have confidence in our old nature. We trust Christ alone. We do not look to ourselves for salvation, nor can we live the Christian life in our old nature. It must be Christ in us.
These legalizers would follow Paul in his missionary journeys. After he was gone, they would meet with the believers and say something like this: “Well, we know that brother Paul says we are to have no confidence in the flesh, that we are not to trust the rituals nor the sacrifices, and that the Law won’t save us. He does well to say that, because he doesn’t have very much to rest upon. He doesn’t have the background in Judaism that we do. He says that because of his ignorance and the failure of his life to measure up to the requirements of the Law. So of course he has no confidence in the flesh.”
Now Paul is going to answer that.


Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more [Phil. 3:4].

Paul says, “If there is any person who could have confidence in the flesh, then I could have even more confidence.” He is willing to stack his religious life against that of any man, and he knows that he could measure up to him and surpass him—“I more.”
Now he is going to list seven things in which he trusted at one time. This is religion. If anyone could have been saved by religion, Saul of Tarsus would have been the man.


Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;

Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless [Phil. 3:5–6].

These are still things that people boast about today, but none of them can save you.
1. “Circumcised the eighth day.” This is a basic rite of the Mosaic system. Well, of course he didn’t get up out of the crib on the eighth day and go down to the temple or synagogue to have circumcision performed. It means that his parents took him on his eighth day to be circumcised. He is making it clear that he had godly parents. They reared him according to the Mosaic Law. You will remember that the Lord Jesus also had godly parents who brought Him to the temple to be circumcised.
One of the things that hurt me and held me back in my early ministry was the fact that I had not been brought up in a Christian home. My dad was a heavy drinker who would not darken the door of a church. He was very bitter and very prejudiced. He did make me go to Sunday school, and I thank God for that. But I never saw a Bible or heard a prayer in my home. When I went away to seminary, I did not know even the books of the Bible. I would meet other fellows who had been brought up in Christian homes. They seemed to know so much. I always felt deprived, felt that I had missed something. Well, Paul did not have this handicap. He could say, “I was circumcised on the eighth day,” which means he had godly parents.
2. “Of the stock of Israel.” Probably many of the Judaizers were half-breeds; Paul was not. He was of the stock of Israel. I think you could have checked Paul’s genealogy in the temple in that day. Paul had a genealogy, a background, and he knew he belonged.
3. “Of the tribe of Benjamin.” This is like saying that he belonged to the best family. Benjamin had been the favorite son of old Jacob. Rachel had given birth to Benjamin when she died, and she had called him “son of my sorrow,” but Jacob had named him “son of my right hand.” Rachel had been the bright spot in his life before Peniel, and when he had looked in the crib at little Benjamin, he had seen him as Rachel’s son. Benjamin became his right hand, his walking stick, the one on whom he leaned. Also the first king of Israel came from the tribe of Benjamin. His name was Saul, and I have a notion that Saul of Tarsus was named after him. So Paul could say with pride that he came from the tribe of Benjamin.
It is an advantage to be able to say, “My father was a minister of the Word of God,” or, “My father was a layman who stood for the Word of God.” On the other hand, sometimes it can work for a hindrance. I find people who say, “Dr. McGee, I was brought up in such-and-such a church; my grandfather was a founder of the church. There is even a window in the church dedicated to him. So I’ll never leave that church.” That can be a hindrance if the church has become liberal and the Word of God is no longer preached there. But for Paul, being of the tribe of Benjamin was a definite asset.
4. “An Hebrew of the Hebrews.” This means he was a leader. He was in the highest stratum of the religious circle. He was up at the top.
5 .“As touching the law, a Pharisee.” The Pharisees represented the very best in Israel. They were a religious-political party, and their aim was to establish the kingdom. They had arisen sometime after or during the Captivity. They were fundamental. They believed in the integrity of the Scriptures; they believed in angels; they believed in the resurrection and in miracles. They were also extremely nationalistic in their politics.
I think the reason they sent Nicodemus to see Jesus was because they thought, Here is a prophet come out of Galilee. If he will just let us hitch our wagon to his star, we’ll go places because we know how to manipulate Rome. The Pharisees thought they could bring the kingdom by political manipulation. They wanted to establish the kingdom of God here upon this earth. Paul could say that he was a Pharisee.
6. “Concerning zeal, persecuting the church.” Paul thought he was doing God’s will when he persecuted the church. The other Pharisees were willing to relax when they had run the Christians out of Jerusalem, but Paul was determined to ferret them out all over the world. That was his purpose on his way to Damascus at the time of his conversion.
7. “Touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” Notice that he does not say he was sinless or perfect; he says he was blameless. In Romans 7:7 Paul tells us his story: “… I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Paul does not claim sinless perfection. This commandment showed him his sin.
Now if you break the commandment, Thou shalt not steal, you’ll have the evidence or you may leave your fingerprints back at the scene of the crime. The same thing could be said about murder—you would have a corpus delicti on your hands. It is impossible to commit adultery without somebody else knowing about it. But you can covet and nobody would be the wiser. If Paul had kept quiet, we might think he had reached the place of sinless perfection, but he very frankly said he had not. He says that the Law “slew him.”
What he means by “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” is that he had brought the proper sacrifice for his sin to make things right before God. Paul was sincere. Regarding the Law, Paul was a super-saint. He had every right to say, “If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more.”
These were the things that Paul had on the credit side of the ledger. It was such a big total that he felt all of these things commended him to God. He thought they were all credits to him.
On the debit side of his ledger was a Person he hated. That was Jesus Christ. Out of his hatred Paul was trying to eliminate the followers of Jesus Christ.
Then one day the Lord Jesus met Paul on the road to Damascus, and Paul changed his whole bookkeeping system. What had been a debit became a credit, and what he had considered a credit became a debit. It was a complete revolution.


But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ [Phil. 3:7].

On the credit side of the ledger Paul had been adding up his background and his character and his religion. It seemed like an impressive list—and it was, on the human plane. Suddenly it all became a debit—he no longer trusted in those things because he met Jesus Christ. He had hated Him before and was on the way to Damascus to persecute His followers, but now the One on the debit side was moved to the credit side. He put his entire trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, my friend, if the bookkeeping system of this country were transformed like that, it would upset the economy of the world. It would be a revolution. Actually, any conversion is a revolution because what things are gain become a loss, and loss becomes gain. It turns you upside down and right side up. It gets you in an altogether different position. That is what conversion is.
Now there is a time lapse between verses 7 and 8. I don’t know the length of time, but I think it extends all the way through Paul’s life from his conversion to the time he was writing this epistle. He had gone on his missionary journeys, and now he was in a prison in Rome.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ [Phil. 3:8].

Paul’s conversion was not just an experience of a moment. Conversion is not a balloon ascension. A great many people think that you can go down to some altar and have an experience, see a vision, and be carried to the heights—and that’s it. Oh, my friend, conversion is something that stays with you. It is not for just a moment. Although it happens in a moment of time, it continues for a lifetime. And sanctification is not a great emotional experience; it is a daily walk in dependence upon God.
Paul says that since that moment of his conversion he lives for Christ. He has suffered the loss of all things. Jesus Christ is uppermost in his thinking. The things that he used to consider most precious he now considers to be dung—that is strong language! He says he flushes his religion down the drain. He flushes away all the things he used to trust. Now he trusts the Lord Jesus and Him only for his salvation.
I remember hearing Dr. Carroll say, “When I was converted, I lost my religion.” A great many people need to lose their religion and find Jesus Christ as Paul did. He was so revolutionized that what had been his prized possession is now relegated to the garbage can!
Paul goes on with a theological statement of what happened to him.


And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith [Phil. 3:9].

This is the verse that came to John Bunyan as he walked through the cornfields one night, wondering how he could stand before God. He said that suddenly he saw himself—not just as a sinner, but as sin from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He realized that he had nothing, and that Christ had everything.
“Not having mine own righteousness”—his own righteousness, as he has made clear, is of the Law; that is, it is law-keeping. For example, he could boast of the fact that he kept the Sabbath day. But Paul now says to let no man judge you in respect of the Sabbath days (see Col. 2:16). My friend, I could boast of the fact that I preach so many times during the year and that I have a daily radio program, but these things count nothing for salvation. “Mine own righteousness” is a legal righteousness, and God has already declared that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in His sight (see Isa. 64:6), and God is just not taking in dirty laundry. However, He will take in dirty sinners, and He is the One who will clean them up.
Paul had given up his claim to all of his own righteousness.
When speaking at the Hollywood Christian group years ago, I recall a young couple who had been converted. They were talented kids and were really beautiful people. On the human side they had everything. They were called on to give a testimony before my message. They said that now that they had been converted they were going to use their wonderful talent for the Lord. So after I had finished teaching that night, I met with them over a cup of coffee. I said, “I have a question I would like to ask you that sort of bothers me. You made the statement that you have a wonderful talent to use for Jesus. I would like to know what it is. You danced in nightclubs, you sang in nightclubs, and you told stories in nightclubs. Do you think Jesus could use that?” Well, they said they hadn’t thought of it like that. I said, “Look, when you come to Christ, you come as bankrupt sinners. You don’t offer Him anything. You come with nothing. You are beggars. You have nothing; He has everything, and He offers it to you.”
Oh, my friend, let’s get this verse into our thinking! “Be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”
“By faith” is the important word. That is the only way in the world you can get it. You can’t work for it; you can’t buy it; you can’t steal it. You just trust Him.
“The righteousness which is of God” came about because, when Christ died on the cross, He subtracted your sins, and He rose again from the dead for your justification, your righteousness. My friend, God can’t even stand us in our unregenerate state. We are not attractive to Him! The very fact that He loved us and gave His Son for us is the most amazing statement ever made. We are accepted in the Beloved.
PAUL CHANGED HIS PURPOSE FOR THE PRESENT

Paul is no longer going to try to build up legal righteousness. He isn’t going to see how religious and pious he can be or how much he can persecute the church. Since he has changed his bookkkeeping system of the past, he is also going to change his purpose for the present. Listen to what he is going to do:


That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead [Phil. 3:10–11].

Some people get the impression that being saved by faith means there is no motivation for conduct and works. They think that if a person is saved by grace it must mean he just sits around and twiddles his thumbs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Saving faith is a faith that moves you. James said (and he is not talking about law-works but faith-works), “… shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (James 2:18). My friend, if you have been saved, I want to see your works. If you don’t have works, you are not saved! That is exactly what Paul is saying. If you have been saved by faith you have a new motivation, a new life purpose, a new life-style. If your faith in Christ hasn’t changed you, you haven’t been saved. You are still the same old man producing the same old life. Paul dissipates any notion that being saved by faith means you can sit in a rocking chair and rock yourself all the way to heaven.
Paul exhibits an effort and an energy that is derived from the Holy Spirit, which is far greater than any legal effort. Under the Law, this man was willing to go to Damascus to stamp out the followers of Christ. Under the grace-faith system, he will go to the end of the earth to make followers of Christ and to witness for Him. Faith produces something. Let us be perfectly clear about this. Your works have nothing to do with your salvation. You are shut up to a cross for salvation. God has only one question for the lost sinner to answer: “What will you do with Jesus who died for you?” If you will accept Him as your Savior, you are saved by faith. That is the righteousness that comes only by faith. Even your life after salvation doesn’t build up a righteousness that has anything to do with your salvation. Your faith in Christ is a motivation for you to live for God. That is the reason Paul went on to live as he did.
I just do not understand people who are doing nothing for God. Some people say that they can’t do anything. Well, to be very candid with you, you can help me or other Bible teachers get out the Word of God. I’m an old man, but I am not going to quit. I’m going to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God. I have told God that if He would let me live, I’d get out His Word as long as I live. Oh, my friend, our faith in Christ gives a real motivation to work for Him!
“That I may know him”—Paul at the end of his life still had the ambition to know Christ. Today some saints give me the impression that they have complete knowledge and they only need to polish their halo every morning and are ready to take off at any moment. Yet Paul, the greatest missionary the world has ever seen, said at the end of his life, “My ambition is still to know Christ—His person and the power of His resurrection.”
The greatest comfort in my life is the reality of Christ. I need the reality of Christ in my life—now don’t point an accusing finger at me, because that’s what you need also.
“And the fellowship of his sufferings”—oh, how we need to know the fellowship of His sufferings! I was moved to tears by a letter from someone who, after reading our message on Psalm 22, wrote, “Oh, I never knew how much Christ suffered for me!” My friend, I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings, I want to enter into them. To know Christ and His work of redemption will engage our attention for eternity. We are going to spend all eternity praising Him for that. If you are bored with it now, if you don’t enjoy praising Christ now, I don’t know why you should want to go to heaven.
“If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” When Paul uses the word if he is not expressing a doubt about his participation in the Rapture. Rather, he is affirming that he will have part in it with great joy. Paul did not expect to attain perfection in this life; therefore, he wanted to have full participation in the coming Rapture. When someone tells me that he does not believe in the Rapture, I wonder about his relationship to the person of Christ. Paul is saying, “My ambition, the thing I’m moving toward, is not only that I might know Him but that I might have a meaningful, joyous part in the ‘out-resurrection,’ which is the rapture of the church.” The Old Testament saints are not to be raised until the end of the Great Tribulation Period (see Dan. 12:1–3). The rest of the dead will not be raised until the end of the Millennium.
Have you ever stopped to think what the coming of Christ really means? Most of us think, “Boy, it will get us out of this old world.” Paul says, “It will get me into His presence.”


Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus [Phil. 3:12].

The knowledge that he will not attain perfection does not deter Paul from moving in that direction. Perfection means complete maturity. Paul knew he had not arrived. He certainly agreed with Peter that we should “… grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ …” (2 Pet. 3:18).
Now the next verse will give us the modus operandi of the life of Paul:


Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before [Phil. 3:13].

“I count not myself to have apprehended”—Paul is saying that he hadn’t arrived. Oh, so many saints feel comfortable in their ignorance. They think they know it all.
“This one thing I do.” Talk about the simple life—if we could get the Christian life down to where we should have it, it would really be an uncomplicated life. Paul had whittled his life down to one point.
“Forgetting those things which are behind.” He is leaving the past behind with all his mistakes, not letting it handicap him for the future. The future—he lives in the present in the anticipation of the future when he will grow and develop. (Someone has well said that today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.)


I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus [Phil. 3:14].

“I press toward the mark for the prize.” Paul likens himself to a track star, running for a prize. We must remember that Paul had witnessed the Olympic Games—at least, he had every opportunity to do so. There was a great amphitheater in Ephesus which seated one hundred thousand people, and the Olympic Games were held there at times. Paul was living in Ephesus for three years, and it is difficult for me to believe that he hadn’t seen the games, especially since he used so many figures of speech that were taken from those athletic events.
“The prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”—the prize is not some earthly reward but is to be caught up and be in the presence of Christ. “The high calling of God” is sometimes translated “the upward call of God.” We are going to be in His presence. We are going to be like Him. These are things that Paul says are out yonder in the future for him.
Now let’s be clear on one thing: we don’t run for salvation. Salvation is not the prize. Either we have Christ or we don’t have Him. We either trust Him or we don’t trust Him. The only way we can have salvation is through faith in Christ. It is a gift. A gift is different from a prize. The wonderful folk on our radio staff presented me with a birthday gift. Somebody said, “We have a gift for you, Dr. McGee,” and handed a box to me. I believed them and I took it. I didn’t put my hands behind my back and say, “Well, I’m not sure you really mean business. I am not sure that you intend to do this for me.” I just accepted it and thanked them for it. I didn’t have to run a race to win it; I didn’t have to work for it. It was a gift. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). Salvation is not won at a race. Salvation is a gift which is accepted.
Now Paul, after receiving eternal life, is out running for a prize. Christ became everything to him, and he is running a race that he might win Christ. In what way? Well, someday he is going to appear in His presence. His whole thought is: “When I come into His presence, I don’t want to be ashamed.” John said that it is possible to be ashamed at His appearing: “And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming” (1 John 2:28). There are a great many Christians today talking about wishing Christ would come, who, if they really knew what it will mean to them, would probably like to postpone it for awhile. If you think that you can live a careless Christian life and not have to answer for it, you are entirely wrong. One of these days you will have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the way you lived your life. I suggest that you get down on the racecourse and start living for Him.

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you [Phil. 3:15].
“As many as be perfect”—what does he mean by that? I think I can illustrate this by my orange trees. My three orange trees are loaded with fruit this year. Some of the oranges are still green, but for this particular time of year, they are perfect. They are perfect oranges. But if you come and see me in a month, they will not be perfect oranges if they stay just like they are now. You see, when Paul says “perfect,” he means arriving where one should be in maturation. Another illustration would be that of a baby. Suppose we have a baby here seventeen months old. My, what a wonderful baby he is—he wins a blue ribbon. But if you see him seventeen years later and he is still saying, “Da-da,” there is something radically wrong. Maturation is the thought Paul has in mind. He is saying this: “Let us, therefore, as many as are complete in Christ, who are growing normally in Christ, let us be thus minded.” In other words, have the same mind as Paul. Get out on the racetrack with Paul and press on toward the same goal.
“And if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.” Maybe you have some other idea, and maybe God does have something else for you to do. If you are willing to do it, He will show it to you. God is able to lead a willing believer. You may remember that the psalmist told us not to be like the horse and the mule that must have a bridle in his mouth in order to be led. If God must lead you around like that, it will hurt. Why not let Him lead you by His eye? That is the way He would like to do it. This is what Paul is talking about—“God shall reveal even this unto you.” God will reveal His will to you if you want to be led. I hear Christians say, “If only I knew the will of God.” It’s a matter of being in touch with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a matter of drawing close to Him. It is a willingness to do His will when He shows it to you. There is no little formula for discovering the will of God. One cannot live a careless life and expect a vision or an angel or some green light to appear to show the way to go in a crisis. Knowing the will of God comes through a day-by-day walk with Him and a willingness to be led by Him. This will keep you on the right route through life, and it will be a great joy to your heart.


Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing [Phil. 3:16].

Paul is encouraging the Philippian believers to get out on the racetrack. He wants them to press on for the prize—the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Then he goes on to give himself as an example.


Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample [Phil. 3:17].

I wish I could say that. I can’t, but Paul could. He says, “If you want to know how to do it, watch me.” This is not to be an imitation. What he means is that you learn to share the power of Christ in the body of Christ, the church.
I believe it is proper for a believer to function within a Christian organization, a church. It doesn’t have to be a building with a tall steeple on it. Many folk think they must go to a certain type of building. That is not necessary. You can function within a Christian organization. My feeling is that if there is a good Bible church in your community where the Word of God is given out, you are out of the will of God if you are not identified with it. If there is a good Christian organization in your town through which God is working, and you are not supporting it, I think you are out of the will of God. This, I believe, is what Paul means here and what he says elsewhere.
Now Paul discusses the negative side.


(For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:

Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) [Phil. 3:18–19].

This is as severe a condemnation as you can find of those who profess to be Christians. They claim to be Christian, yet they contradict their profession by their lives. Their God is their belly—that’s an awful thing! This means that they are led by their appetites. Some professing Christians have an appetite for money. They will do most anything for the almighty dollar. Others have such an appetite for sex that it becomes actually their god. Others covet—that is the cause of much of the strife and vainglory. The basic cause of it is that they have their hearts and minds on earthly things. They live for self and self only, and they actually glory in this. They are proud of what they should be ashamed.
Paul is saying that if you have trusted Christ, if you have had that kind of revolution that happened to him on the Damascus road, if Christ is the all-absorbing thinking of your mind and your time and your talent and your possessions, then this will tell in your life. James put it like this: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (James 2:17–18). In other words, my friend, if you haven’t any works you are not going to convince your neighbor. He will judge your faith by your works. As Calvin said, “Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.” Some folk feel that the statement “whose God is their belly” is crude. Well, the statement is not crude, but the condition it speaks of is certainly crude. How tragic it is to see Christians who are given over to the passing things of this world, who “mind earthly things.”

PAUL CHANGED HIS HOPE FOR THE FUTURE


For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ [Phil. 3:20].


A better translation for “conversation” is citizenship. It means the total way of life; it means a new life-style. An even better translation is that made by Mrs. Montgomery: “For our city home is in heaven.” Probably that is closer to what Paul is saying. The Greek word for “conversation” is politeuoµ, meaning “to act as a citizen.” The city of Philippi was a Roman colony. In Philippi the laws of Rome were enforced. The people wore the same kind of styles that were worn in Rome. They spoke Latin. Everything in Philippi was like Rome because it was a colonial city.
Today, believers, collectively called the church, should be a colony of heaven, and they ought to act like they act in heaven and speak the language of heaven. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, but it should be our goal. Paul is saying that we are ambassadors of Christ here on this earth; we are to represent heaven and heaven’s message here upon earth today, because “our citizenship is in heaven.”
“From whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul expresses the hope of the believer on the high plane of praise to God. It is the joyful anticipation of His return.
The hope of the believer in the New Testament is never the Great Tribulation Period. After he says our citizenship is in heaven, he says that from there “we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” He doesn’t say anything about going through the Great Tribulation Period, which will be a time of judgment, and the church is delivered from judgment. Believers will not go through the Great Tribulation any more than Enoch went through the Flood. Many folk maintain that the Lord can preserve the church through the Great Tribulation. Yes, He can; God kept Noah in a boat through the Flood, but He took Enoch out of the world. There will be two groups of people who will be His during the Great Tribulation Period. One will be taken out, as He says to the church in Philadelphia: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Rev. 3:10). The other group will be going through the Great Tribulation. There will be a great company of Gentiles and there will be 144,000 of Israel who will go through the Great Tribulation Period because they are to be sealed by God.
Let me digress to say that the teaching that the church is to go through the Great Tribulation is becoming increasingly absurd to me. The advocates of this theory maintain that there is not a verse in Scripture that says the church will not go through the Great Tribulation. While it is true that it doesn’t say it in those words, neither is there a verse in Scripture that has anything to say about the church not doing other things. For instance, I am confident that we are all going to have a position, a job to do, throughout eternity, but Scripture does not go into detail on that sort of thing. However, Scripture is very clear on the fact that the church has a glorious, wonderful hope for the future. It seems to many of us that it is tissue-thin between where we are now and the Rapture of the church. However, Scripture does not tell us when Christ will come. Apparently Paul felt that during his lifetime the Lord could come, and there is no record of Paul’s expecting to first go through the Great Tribulation. He experienced a lot of trouble during his life, but he never interpreted that as the Great Tribulation. With a note of glad expectancy Paul says, “For our conversation [citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ”—after we go through the real Tribulation? It doesn’t say that in my Bible. Nowhere does it say the church is going through the Great Tribulation, my friend. Paul’s joyful expectancy makes it very clear that he was looking for Christ’s return, not for the Great Tribulation.

Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself [Phil. 3:21].
“Our vile body” might be better translated “body of humiliation” or “body of corruption.” It means that He shall change our earthly body. This body that we have is an earthly body, subject to all kinds of limitations. It is adapted to this earth. We are not naturally equipped to go up into space. Our bodies are earthly bodies.
“That it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” These bodies are corruptible bodies. One of these days you and I will move out of these bodies. We will leave them because they are corruptible. They are going to be changed—I’d like to trade mine in right now—“fashioned like unto his glorious body.” It will be a body like the one the Lord Jesus had after His resurrection. It will be a glorified body. Paul speaks of it in his letter to the Corinthians: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump …” (1 Cor. 15:51–52). The point is that it will be sudden—when the trumpet shall sound.
While I am dealing with misinterpretations of this passage, let me say that some folk assume that one of the angels spoken of in the Book of Revelation is to blow this trumpet. However, the one blowing the trumpet is not indicated here. The Book of Revelation deals with Israel. In the Old Testament we read that Israel was moved on the wilderness march by the blowing of two silver trumpets. Israel is accustomed to trumpets; we are not. Perhaps you are remembering that the “last trump” is mentioned in connection with the Rapture in 1 Thessalonians: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God …” (1 Thess. 4:16). Notice it is the trump of God. Whoever turned it over to Gabriel and said Gabriel will blow his horn? I question if Gabriel even owns a horn. It is the Lord who will descend with the voice of an archangel and the trump of God. Both speak of the dignity and the majesty of that shout of His. His voice will be penetrating and awe-inspiring. Listen to the way John describes the voice of the glorified Christ: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet” (Rev. 1:10). And when he turned to see who was speaking, he saw the glorified Christ. It was His voice that John heard. There are no trumpets connected with the church.
Today Christ’s word to us is this: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). It is His invitation to the evening meal—the last call for dinner. It is an invitation to come to Him before the night of the Great Tribulation falls. When the door is opened, there will go from this earth a group of people who have been put on the launching pad of faith—and they won’t go through the Great Tribulation Period. May I say to you that those who expect the church to go through the Tribulation have, in my judgment, the flimsiest theory that is abroad, yet there are many intelligent men who hold this view. However, I find that these men spend more time with philosophy and psychology and history and related subjects than they do with the study of the Word of God.
“Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” This is exactly the same thought that John had: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Christ hasn’t appeared yet, but when He appears, we shall be like Him. Notice the high hope, the expectancy and excitement, the great anticipation of Christ’s return. (There is not the slightest suggestion that either Paul or John expected to first go through the Great Tribulation Period.)
Paul had a hope for the future. What is your hope for the future? The Great Tribulation Period? My friend, if that is your prospect, you are about as hopeless as the man who has no hope!
Taking a trip recently to the Hawaiian Islands, instead of flying the direct route, we came in from the north. The reason the pilot gave us was that there was a storm front on the southern route, and he skirted it, although it made us about thirty minutes late. I appreciated the fact that he went around the storm. It used to be that a pilot would say, “There is a storm front ahead of us, and we are going to have turbulence for the next thirty minutes.” I didn’t look forward to that—it was no blessed hope for me! But it surely is nice to have him say we are taking another route so we will miss the storm. And the Lord says to the church, “We’re going to miss the storm, the Great Tribulation.” My friend, you can twist it around to suit your own theory, but that is what He says. “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” That was Paul’s hope for the future, and it is our hope.

CHAPTER 4

Theme: Power for Christian living; joy—the source of power; prayer—the secret of power; contemplation of Christ—the sanctuary of power; in Christ—the satisfaction of power


We have seen the philosophy of Christian living, the pattern for Christian living, the prize for Christian living, and now we shall see the power for Christian living. All the others would be meaningless and useless if there were no power for them. A philosophy of life is no good unless there is power to carry it out. A pattern is no good unless there is power supplied to have that pattern in our own lives. A prize is no good if we cannot achieve the goal. Therefore, power is all important.
I would think one of the reasons that the Spirit of God did not let Paul end this epistle when he wrote in 3:1, “Finally, my brethren,” was because He wanted to let us know today that there is power for Christian living. We need to know that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
We will find in this chapter that joy is the source of power; prayer is the secret of power; and contemplation of Christ is the sanctuary of power.

JOY—THE SOURCE OF POWER


Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved [Phil. 4:1].


“My joy and crown”—you see, they were going to be in the presence of Christ someday, and Paul expected to receive a crown for winning these folk to the Lord. Also they were his joy down here. Oh, how he loved these believers in Philippi!
“So stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.” And, as Paul said to the Ephesian believers, “… take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Eph. 6:13). The Christian faith will produce stability of life.


I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord [Phil. 4:2].

Now he comes to the only problem in the Philippian church. There was a ripple on the surface, but it was not serious. Paul doesn’t even mention it until near the end of his letter. Apparently these two ladies were not speaking to each other. We have already seen this when he admonished the Philippian believers to be of the same mind in the Lord. He did not mean they must be carbon copies of each other. They may have differences of opinion about many different things, but that will not separate two people who have the mind of Christ. It is one of the glorious truths about the body of Christ that each member can be different and yet all are one in Christ.


And I entreat thee also, true yoke-fellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of life [Phil. 4:3].

It is apparent that women occupied a prominent place in the early church, and for a woman to be prominent was unusual in that day.
Now that I am no longer a pastor I can say this (I always said it reluctantly or very carefully before): I believe that the reason women become preachers is because women have not been given their proper place in the church. The office of deaconess, even if it exists in the church, is treated very lightly. I believe that is an important office and should be recognized as such. The more I study the Word of God, the more I am convinced of this. Paul plainly said that “those women … laboured with me in the gospel.”
“With Clement also”—here is a believer over in Philippi whom we haven’t met before.
“With other my fellow-labourers”—apparently there was a great company of believers in Philippi “whose names are in the book of life.” That was the important thing: their names are in the Book of Life.


Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice [Phil. 4:4].

This is a commandment to a Christian, a believer. Rejoice in the Lord always. That means regardless of the day, whether it is dark or bright, whether it is difficult or easy, whether it brings problems and temptations or clear sailing on cloud nine. We are commanded to rejoice. He repeats it, in case we missed it the first time: “again I say, Rejoice.” Joy is something we cannot produce ourselves; it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
There is no power in a Christian’s life if he has no joy. One who does not experience the joy of the Lord has no power at all.
After Nehemiah had finished building the wall of Jerusalem, they set up a pulpit at the Water Gate, and there Ezra read from the Scriptures from morning until midday. These people had come out of captivity in Babylon. Most of them had never in their lives heard the Word of God. It overwhelmed them. They began to mourn and to weep. So Nehemiah said, “Wait a minute—you’re not to weep! This is a great day. You are to share in the blessings, the physical blessings, that God has given to you, and God wants you to enjoy them.” God has given to us richly all things to enjoy, and to enjoy means to rejoice. That’s your strength, that’s your power. You can’t be a Christian with power without joy—that’s what gets up the steam. Joy is the source of power.
Let me illustrate this because it is something that the world has taken over. In fact, the commercial world has made it rather hypocritical. A successful salesman is a very happy fellow. You have never gone into a store to buy something and had the salesperson weep on your shoulder when you asked about a certain product! Of course not. He begins to smile and say how wonderful the item is. How far would the Fuller brush man get if he were a sad little fellow who went around weeping at every door? Believe me, he doesn’t use that approach.
The Fuller brush man calls at our house on Saturdays. He is not a sorrowful fellow by any means. I don’t know whether he is having trouble at home or not, but he sure radiates joy. One Saturday morning my wife had gone to the market, and from my study window I saw him coming. I thought, I’ll ignore him because I’m busy, and I’m not going to fool with brushes today. So he came and pushed the doorbell. I let him push it. He pushed it two or three times. I thought, He’ll leave now. But he didn’t leave. He knew somebody was in the house, so he just put his thumb down on the doorbell and held it. Finally in self-defense I had to go to the door. When I opened the door, I expected him to be a little irritated because I had made him wait. But no, he was happy about it. Everything pleased him. He greeted me joyfully, “Dr. McGee, I didn’t expect to see you today!” With a scowl I said, “My wife has gone to the market. She’ll see you the next time you are around.” But that wasn’t enough for him. I do not know how he did it, but in the next ten seconds he was in the living room and I was holding a little brush in my hand. Then I couldn’t order him out—he’d given me a little brush. And so I stood there listening to his sales pitch. When he had finished, I said, “Now look, I don’t buy brushes and I don’t need one. My wife generally buys from you, and she’ll probably buy next time, but I haven’t time to look at them. I’m busy this morning.” So he thanked me and started down the walkway whistling! You would have thought I had bought every brush he had! I met a man who trains Fuller brush salesmen, and I told him about this experience. He said that they were so instructed; they are trained to radiate joy.
Now I do not know if that Fuller brush man was happy or not, but a child of God ought to have real joy, the joy of the Lord, in his life.
The world spends a great deal of money trying to produce joy, which they call happiness. Comedians are millionaires because they tell a few funny stories. People shell out the money to hear them. Why? Because they want to laugh. They are trying to find a little happiness as they go through life. The child of God who goes through life with a sour look and a jaundiced approach to this world, will never have any power in his life. “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.”
The world tries to work up joy in another way. They call it the happy hour or attitude adjustment hour. They spend a couple of hours drinking and hope it will help them overcome the problems of life and give them a little happiness. I have watched the folk who go in there, and none of them look happy when they go in. In an hour or two when they come out, I can’t see that there has been any improvement. But they have had a “happy hour.” A great many people are trying to compensate for the inadequacies in their own lives in that manner.
I have thought it would be nice if churches could have an attitude adjustment hour. Here comes Mrs. Brown. She has just heard some choice gossip during the week, and she can hardly wait to spread it around in the church. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to take her into an attractive room and have a cup of coffee with her and get her into a sweet mood and rejoicing in the Lord so she would not go around spreading her gossip? Here comes Deacon Jones, breathing fire like a dragon because something doesn’t suit him. It would be nice to take him to that room and help him recover his cool so he could go in and enjoy the sermon. We need an attitude adjustment hour, a happy hour, in the church. Frankly, the Devil has gotten in his licks—he has made folk believe they can’t have fun going to church, and I think they can. I think it ought to be a joyful place and a place of power.
Sometimes prayer meetings are called the hour of power. Well, that is nice, but we need to get back to the source of the power which is joy. In our prayer meetings, before we ask God for something else, let’s pray that He’ll give us joy in our lives. There was a little song we used to sing at summer Bible schools (which I used to conduct as a young preacher) with these words:

Down in the dumps I’ll never go;
That’s where the Devil keeps me low.

That song has a sound theological message, because this is exactly what the Devil tries to do. He attempts to take away our joy because it is the source of power.

PRAYER—THE SECRET OF POWER


Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand [Phil. 4:5].


Matthew Arnold, in one of his delightful essays, interprets it this way: “Let your sweet reasonableness be known unto all men.” I like that. We need to be reasonable believers, not bigots in our faith. Of course we ought to have deep convictions, but we should not be given to bigotry or riding a hobbyhorse—always emphasizing some little point. What we need to do is emphasize the big point—we do have one—the big point is the person of Christ. If we are going to ride a hobbyhorse, let Him be the hobbyhorse. “Let your sweet reasonableness be known unto all men.”
“The Lord is at hand.” Paul believed that the Lord Jesus would come at any moment. He was not expecting to enter the Great Tribulation; he says, “The Lord is at hand.” That’s quite wonderful!


Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests he made known unto God [Phil. 4:6].

“Be careful for nothing” is sometimes translated: Be anxious for nothing, or not overly anxious. The fact of the matter is that Paul seems to be making a play upon two indefinite pronouns: nothing and everything. Let me give you my translation, which I call the McGee-icus Ad Absurdum. It goes like this: “Worry about nothing; pray about everything.” Prayer is the secret of power.
“Worry about nothing.” In verse 4 we were given one of the new commandments God has given us: Rejoice. Now here is another commandment. Worry about nothing; pray about everything.
Nothing is a very interesting word. If you have something, it’s not nothing—that is not correct grammar, but it is an accurate statement. Nothing is nothing, and you are to worry about nothing. Does this mean we are to look at life through rose-colored glasses, that we are not to face reality? Are we to believe that sin is not real, that sickness is not real, that problems are not real? Are we to ignore these things? No. Paul says that we are to worry about nothing because we are to pray about everything. Nothing is the most exclusive word in the English language. It leaves out everything. “Worry about nothing.” I confess that this is a commandment I sometimes break—I worry.
But the reason we are to worry about nothing is because we are to pray about everything. This means that we are to talk to the Lord about everything in our lives. Nothing should be left out. Some years ago, I am told, a dowager in Philadelphia came to Dr. G. Campbell Morgan with this question, “Dr. Morgan, do you think we should pray about the little things in our lives?” Dr. Morgan in his characteristically British manner said, “Madam, can you mention anything in your life that is big to God?” When we say that we take our big problems to God, what do we mean? They are all little stuff to Him. And what we call little He wants us to bring to Him also. As believers we need to get in the habit of bringing everything to Him in prayer—nothing excluded. When I go on a trip in my car and it involves several hours of driving, I invite the Lord Jesus to go along with me. I talk to Him and tell Him everything about Vernon McGee, things I wouldn’t tell you or anyone else. I tell Him everything. I think we ought to learn to do that. We ought to pray about everything.
Let me share with you an admonition by Fenelon, one of the mystics of the Middle Ages, which seems to encompass what Paul meant when he said, “Pray about everything.”
Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself as to others.
If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want subjects of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be held back; neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration, just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God.

For many years I have carried this quotation in my Bible, and every now and then I take it out and read it.
Maybe you think it sounds very pious when I am willing to testify that I take my burdens to the Lord in prayer. I must confess that after I spread everything out before Him, when I finish praying, I pick it all right back up, put the problems back on my shoulders, and start out with the burden again. That is my problem. The Lord wants us to trust Him so that we worry about nothing, pray about everything. I wish I could say to you that I’m as free as the bird in the trees, free as the bees gathering honey. That’s the way He wants us to be.
We have a mockingbird in our yard. He gets my fruit, but I feel it is right for me to pay him something for the song he sings for me in the night. Now, actually, he isn’t singing for me. I don’t think he cares much whether I hear him or not. But he has a mate sitting on some eggs, and it would be a pretty boring job to sit on a bunch of eggs. So this mockingbird sings to his wife all during the night. The other morning I awakened around two o’clock, and, my, how he was singing to her! How lovely. While sitting outside on my patio I noticed this mockingbird. He looked at me with disdain, flew right over to my apricot tree and started to eat apricots. He never asked me for permission to eat. He is free. He doesn’t worry about finding something to eat. He knows those apricots will be there for him. My friend, do we really trust God like that? Worry about nothing and pray about everything.
“With thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Paul never lets prayer become a leap in the dark. It rests on a foundation. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Prayer rests on faith, and faith rests on the Word of God. Now he says that when you go to God with a request, thank Him. Thank Him right then and there.
I know some commentators who interpret this to mean that when you get your answer to your prayer, you are to go back and thank God. Well, that’s not what Paul said. Paul was able to express himself in the most versatile language which has ever been in the world, the Greek language, and he was able to say what he wanted to say. What he says is that when you make your requests, right there and then you are to thank God for hearing and answering your prayer.
Now perhaps you are thinking, But maybe God won’t answer my prayer. I have many unanswered prayers. My Christian friend, I do not believe that you have unanswered prayers, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying that you have a heavenly Father who won’t hear and answer your prayers. You may have prayed for a certain thing and didn’t get it, but you did get an answer to your prayer.
Let me illustrate this with a very homely illustration. My dad was not a Christian, but he was a good dad. He ran a cotton gin, and the machine would always be running. I would go in there when I was a little fellow and ask for a nickel for candy. He would reach down in his pocket and give me a nickel. One time I asked him for a bicycle. He said he couldn’t afford it, and the answer was “No.” I can tell you today that I never made a request of him that he didn’t hear and answer. Most of the time the answer was no. Actually, my dad’s no was more positive than his yes. His no ended the discussion. In fact, I have never understood young folk today who keep on arguing with their parents after the parents have handed down a decision. When my dad said, “No,” that was the end of the discussion. I have learned now that the wise reply to most of my requests was no, although I did not think so at the time. But the fact is that he gave an answer to my every request.
God has a lot of spoiled children. When He says no to them, they pout and say, “I have unanswered prayers.” You don’t have unanswered prayers. God always hears and answers your prayers.
You can take anything to God in prayer, the big things and the little things. How can you sort them out? They are all little things to God. Let me give you another homely illustration. At the time of the building of the Panama Canal, after two or three failures, when the successful project was under way they wanted to go right through with it, and so the crew had no vacations. To compensate for it, the workers’ families were sent down to be with them. So a certain young engineer, his wife and little son were sent down. Because of the danger of malaria, they were put out on a houseboat. Every afternoon that young engineer could be seen rowing himself out to the houseboat. One evening he had those long blueprints all spread out while his little son with his toy wagon was playing at his feet. Suddenly the child began to cry. A wheel had come off his wagon. The little fellow had worked with it and tried his best to put it back, but it was a hopeless project for him. Now would you think that the dad would shush him and put him out of the room—maybe tell the mother to come and get him because he was disturbing his work? No. He just laid aside the blueprints of that great canal, picked up his little boy and asked him what was the matter. The youngster held up his wagon in one hand and the wheel in the other. The father took the wheel and put it on the wagon with just one twist of the wrist. He kissed away the little fellow’s fears and put him back on the floor where he played happily. He was a good father.
Now, my friend, it is God who put that father instinct deep down in the human heart of man because He is a compassionate Father. When a wheel comes off your wagon, it may look like an impossible problem to you, but He will hear and answer your cry. If He says no, it is because that is the best answer you could have. After I lost my human father, I lived several years before I turned to God and found that I had a heavenly Father. I learned that I can go to Him with my requests, and He answers me, as my human father used to do. And many times His answers are no.
When I was a young pastor in Texas, just married, I went to a certain city to candidate in a church. It was considered a strategic, outstanding church. After I’d preached twice that Sunday, I was given a call by the church. Then later they had to come back and tell me that the denomination would not permit them to call me. As I said, it was a strategic church and they needed a church politician there—which I was not. I didn’t go into the ministry for that purpose. But I felt that the Lord had made a great mistake by not letting me go to that church as pastor. Several years ago Mrs. McGee and I went by that church just to see it. It had gone into liberalism. Things have happened there that I’ll not mention. I said to her, “Do you remember years ago when I thought I should have had the call for that church?” She said, “Yes.” Then I said, “I thank God that He heard and answered my prayer the right way—not the way I prayed it.” I can look back and remember how I had cried to the Lord. I told Him how He had failed me and caused me to miss the greatest opportunity I ever had. Oh, I blamed Him, and I found fault with Him, and I actually scolded Him because He didn’t seem to know what was the best for me! He had shut that door so tight that the resounding slam was in my ears for several years after that. My friend, my heavenly Father had answered my prayer, and, I am ashamed of the fact that I did not thank Him at the time. My advice to you is this: Instead of saying that God has not answered your prayers, say, “My heavenly Father heard my prayer, but He told me no, which was the right answer.” We are to let our “requests be made known unto God with thanksgiving.”

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus [Phil. 4:7].
The Scripture speaks of other kinds of peace which we can understand. There is world peace. We have the assurance that someday peace will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. It will come through the person of Christ, the Prince of Peace. Also there is the peace that comes when sins are forgiven. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Then there is the peace that is tranquility. The Lord Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you …” (John 14:27). That is a marvelous peace, but it is not “the peace … which passeth all understanding.” I do not know how to tell you this, but I do know it is a peace in which we do not live at all times. I think it is a peace that sweeps over our souls at certain times. I stood on the big island of Hawaii and looked out at a sunset with Mauna Kea, that great snowcapped mountain out there in the tropics, in the foreground. As I looked at the majesty of God’s creation, what a peace came to me. I can’t tell you what it was—it “passeth all understanding.” And that same peace came when my heavenly Father let me have cancer. I went to the hospital frightened to death, and then the night I committed it all to him and told Him I wanted to know He was real, He made Himself real and that peace that “passeth all understanding” flooded my soul. I don’t know how to tell you what it is; I can only say that it is wonderful.
This peace “shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” There are those who say that prayer changes things. I can’t argue with that; prayer does change things. But that is not the primary purpose of prayer.
Notice that we entered this passage in anxiety, with worry, and we come out of the passage with peace. Between the two was prayer. Have things changed? Not really. The storm may still be raging, the waves still rolling high, the thunder still resounding. Although the storm has not abated, something has happened in the individual. Something has happened to the human soul and the human mind. In our anxiety we want God to change everything around us. “Give us this.” “Don’t let this happen.” “Open up this door.” We should be praying, “Oh, God, change me.” Prayer is the secret of power. We enter with worry, we can come out in peace.
Joy is the source of power; prayer is the secret of power.

CONTEMPLATION OF CHRIST—THE SANCTUARY OF POWER


Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things [Phil. 4:8].


“Finally, brethren”—remember that he said, “Finally, my brethren” at the beginning of chapter 3, when he was just halfway through? Well, now he is nearly through and is giving his last admonitions.
This has been called the briefest biography of Christ. He is the One who is “true.” He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. “Whatsoever things are honest”—He is honest. “Whatsoever things are just”—He is called the Just One. “Pure”—the only pure individual who ever walked this earth was the Lord Jesus. He asked the question, “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” No one did. He also said, “… the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30). Satan always finds something he can hook onto in me. How about you? But there was nothing in the Lord Jesus. He was “… holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners …” (Heb. 7:26). He was lovely which means “gracious.” Virtue has to do with strength and courage. He was the One of courage, a real man. He took upon Himself our humanity. “If … any praise”—He is the One you can praise and worship today.
You and I live in a dirty world. You cannot walk on the streets of any city without getting dirty. Your mind gets dirty; your eyes get dirty. Do you ever get tired of the filth of it?
Hollywood ran out of ideas years ago, which is the reason Hollywood has dried up. Television is boring; it cannot help but repeat the same old thing. So what have they done? They have substituted filth for genius. Someone has called it the great wasteland. It is like looking at an arid desert, and yet millions keep their eyes glued to it. Their minds are filled with dirt and filth and violence.
If a Christian is going to spend his time with the dirt and filth and questionable things of this world, there will not be power in his life. The reason we have so many weak Christians is that they spend their time with the things of the world, filling their minds and hearts and tummies with the things of this world. Then they wonder why there is no power in their lives.
We need a sanctuary. We need something to think upon that will clean up our minds. Here are some questions to think about: How much time do you spend with the Word of God? How much time do you spend contemplating Christ? “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). The Word of God is a mirror, and in it we behold the glory of the Lord. The only way you can behold the living Christ is in the Word of God. As you behold Him, there is a liberty, a freedom, and a growth that He gives you. You cannot come by it in any other way.
Oh, how puerile, how inconsequential is the impact of believers’ lives! I am amazed at how easily Christians are taken in by every wind of doctrine that comes along. They are not able to discern truth and error. The one explanation, as I have pondered it in my mind, is ignorance of the Word of God. To have power in our lives we must contemplate the person of Jesus Christ, contemplating Him in the Word of God.
Too often people come to the church to be entertained. Someone has said that people come to church to eye the clothes or to close the eyes. Many seem to sit in a daze for an hour just to feel religious or pious. My friend, only the Word of God can bring strength to you. You need physical food when you are weak; you need bread and meat to give you strength. The Word of God is your spiritual bread and meat. The only way to grow spiritually is to spend time in the Word of God. It is the Word that reveals Jesus Christ. I believe He is on every page of Scripture if only we have eyes to see Him. We need to see Him. We need to have the reality of Christ in our lives. This is made possible as we, with an open face, behold the glory of the Lord.
I think one of the things that will cause believers to be ashamed at the appearing of Christ will be their ignorance of the Scriptures when they stand in His presence. I’m of the opinion He will say to many of us, “I gave you all the information you needed in the Scriptures. You didn’t listen to Me; you didn’t hear Me.” We say that one of the problems with our children is that they don’t listen to their parents. The problem with the children of God is that they don’t listen to their heavenly Father. Contemplation of Christ—that is the sanctuary of power. Many of us need to leave the busyness and dirtiness of this world and go aside with the Word of God where we can contemplate Him, worship Him, and praise Him.


Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God peace shall be with you [Phil. 4:9].

A better word for “do” is practice. Paul could say something that would be audacious if you or I said it: “Do what I do.” I don’t want my little grandson to follow down the pathway that I went. I don’t want him to have his grandpa for an example. But Paul could make his life an example to other believers. Paul lived in that sanctuary of power because He had made Christ the very center and periphery of his life.

IN CHRIST—THE SATISFACTION OF POWER


But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity [Phil. 4:10].


At the beginning I said that the Epistle to the Philippians is primarily a thank-you note. Before Paul got down to the thank-you part, he dealt with Christian experience. He has been talking about Christian experience throughout the epistle. Now he is thanking them for their gift.
For two years the church in Philippi had lost touch with Paul. They did not know where he was after he had been arrested in Jerusalem and then put in prison for two years. The next time they heard about him, he had been transferred to a prison in Rome. They apologized to him for not having contact with him and for not communicating their gifts to him during those years. Paul is excusing them in a most gracious manner. He says, “I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity.” In other words, “You had lost contact with me so that you didn’t have the opportunity to be helpful to me.” How gracious Paul was!


Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content [Phil. 4:11].

Paul said that he never made an appeal to them. He never sent out an SOS for help. Paul had learned to be content in whatsoever state he was. It didn’t matter whether he was in prison or out of prison. Many of us think that if things are going right and if we are in the right place, then we will be contented. That means that we depend on the circumstances of life for our contentment. I have asked the Lord to give me contentment. I have prayed for Him to make me just as content tape-recording in my office as I am out in Hawaii enjoying the beautiful scenery. Our circumstances have a great deal to do with our contentment, don’t they? But Paul had learned to be content regardless of his state.


I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need [Phil. 4:12].

Paul says, “Though I appreciate your sympathy, I know how to live on the lowest plane economically, and I know how to live on the highest plane. I have done both.” There were times when he had nothing, and he was content. There were times when God had given him an abundance, and he had learned how to abound.
When I retired from the pastorate, I told my wife that there would be a terrible letdown in income and in our standard of living. I knew it would be hard for us. Paul knew how to abound and how to be abased, but we’re not very good at that. I guess the Lord knew all about it, because due to the generosity of some very wonderful folk our standard hasn’t come down. We have been able to live just like we did before. We were prepared to come down, but the Lord didn’t bring us down, and we do thank Him and praise His name for it.
It was the custom of Dr. Harry Ironside to go every year to Grand Rapids for a Bible conference at Mel Trotter’s mission. Mel Trotter had been an alcoholic, and after he had come to Christ, he opened a mission to reach other men who were in his former condition. The owner of a hotel which had just been built in Grand Rapids had been an alcoholic and had been led to Christ by Mel Trotter. He told Mel, “When you have a speaker or visitor come to your mission, you send him over to the hotel. We will keep him here free of charge.” When Dr. Ironside arrived at that hotel, the man ushered him up to the presidential suite. He had the best apartment in the hotel. Dr. Ironside had never been in a place like that before. He called Mel on the phone and said, “Listen, Mel, you don’t have to put me up like this. I don’t need all this luxury. All I want is a room with a comfortable bed, and a desk and a lamp where I can study.” Mel assured him that the room was not costing him or the mission anything; it was being provided free of charge. He said, “Harry, Paul said he knew how to abound and he knew how to be abased. Now you learn to abound this week, will you?”
Now we come to a verse that is often quoted, but I think there are only certain circumstances in which it should be quoted. This verse is geared to life. It gets down where the rubber meets the road. This verse needs to be worked out in life.


I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me [Phil. 4:13].

This really should be translated the way Paul wrote it: “I can do all things in Christ which strengtheneth me.”
When Paul says all things, does he literally mean all things? Does it mean you can go outside and jump over your house? Of course not. Paul says, “I can do all things in Christ”—that is, in the context of the will of Christ for your life. Whatever Christ has for you to do, He will supply the power. Whatever gift He gives you, He will give the power to exercise that gift. A gift is a manifestation of the Spirit of God in the life of the believer. As long as you function in Christ, you will have power.
Let me give you an illustration. My favorite mode of travel is by train. I fly only because I must. The train has lots more romance connected with it, and it is much more enjoyable. It gets you there later, but it gets you there. The Santa Fe Railroad used to have a train called the Super Chief which ran between Los Angeles and Chicago. That was a wonderful train, and I enjoyed traveling on it. It traveled with tremendous power. That Super Chief could say, “I can do all things a Super Chief is supposed to do on the tracks between Chicago and Los Angeles. I can pull up the Cajon Pass, the highest pass for any railroad in this country. I slow down a little bit, but I do not hesitate. I go right up to the top and down the other side. I can do all things!”
Now suppose the Super Chief had said, “For years I have been taking people back and forth from Chicago to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Chicago, and it gets a little monotonous. I noticed a little group of people got off at Williams, Arizona, to go to the Grand Canyon. I’ve been coming by here for years, and I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon. I think I’ll just take off across the desert here and look at the canyon for myself.” Now I don’t know that the train actually ever said that, but I do know that it left the tracks one day over on the side toward the Grand Canyon. I’m here to tell you that it never did make it to the Grand Canyon. The minute it left the tracks, it was a wreck. The train was helpless and hopeless the moment it left the tracks. As long as the Super Chief was on the tracks, as long as it was doing the thing it was supposed to do, it could do all the things a Super Chief should do. It could go up and down over those mountains, back and forth from Chicago to Los Angeles. But it was absolutely helpless when it left the tracks.
This is what Paul is saying about himself—“I can do all things in Christ.” Now, friend, if you are a member of Christ’s body, He is the Head, and you are to function in the context of His will for your life. His will is the track on which you are to run.
Now Paul is not saying that we can do all things. I can’t jump like a grasshopper can jump. When I was in school I was the high jumper, but I can’t jump anymore. You see, I can’t do all things, but I can do all things which God has for me to do from the time He saved me to the time He will take me out of this world.
“Through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Christ is the One who will strengthen you and enable you to do all that is in His will for you. He certainly does not mean that He is putting into your hands unlimited power to do anything you want to do. Rather, He will give you the enablement to do all things in the context of His will for you. When you and I are in Christ, and we are moving in Christ on those tracks, we are irresistible. There is no stopping us. But the minute you and I step out of that glorious position, step out of God’s will either by sinning, by our own willfulness, or by lack of fellowship, we are as much a wreck as that Santa Fe Super Chief was, and we are not going anywhere. But if we stay on that track, we can do all things in Christ. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7). We had better make sure where we are before we start asking. It is essential to be in His will.
My friend, let me emphasize this: It is essential to be in God’s will, and His will is determined by a knowledge of His Bible. So many folk feel that if they can take a little course, it will solve all their problems. Well, it won’t solve them. I asked a fellow who paid out quite a sum of money to take a certain course, and he told me how it had helped him and his family—he said it had revolutionized them. Several months later I asked, “How is it going for you now?” He said, “We’re just about back where we were before we took the course.” Apparently it was not the problem-solver he thought it was. Then I asked him a direct question, “How much time do you really spend in the Word of God?” My friend, the Word of God is the answer; and it’s so simple I’m not able to charge for it! Why not forget the little courses that are being offered and get down to a serious study of the Word of God? Don’t stop with the Gospel of John, wonderful as it is. There are sixty-five other books in the Bible. If you get the total Word of God, you will get the total will of God for this life, and you will have a basis on which you can operate. There is joy, there is satisfaction and sheer delight in being in the will of God and doing what God wants you to do.


Notwithstanding ye have well done, that ye did communicate with my affliction [Phil. 4:14].

Paul wants them to know that he appreciates their gift—“Ye have done well, that ye did communicate with my affliction.” This is his personal thank-you.


Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only [Phil. 4:15].

This church was a jewel. There are churches like it across this country today. They have a wonderful fellowship and a heart for the things of God. God is blessing them in marvelous, wonderful ways. The Philippian church was close to the apostle Paul. They were the ones who sent support to him—Paul was their missionary. Wouldn’t you have loved to have had Paul as your missionary and to have had a part in his support?


For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity [Phil. 4:16].

We know from the account in Acts 16 and 17 that Paul had to leave Philippi by the request of the authorities. He went on to Thessalonica where those who opposed the gospel he was preaching set the city in an uproar. No one was helping Paul but the Philippian believers—“For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity.”


Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account [Phil. 4:17].

That church in Philippi has been getting dividends on their contribution right down to the present time. Paul wrote them this epistle to thank them. We are studying the epistle today, and we are profiting from this study. This is a part of the dividends of their contribution. They have stock in the apostle Paul, if you please. They still have a part in getting out the Word of God!


But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God [Phil. 4:18].

The priest in the Old Testament went into the holy place to put incense on the altar, and it ascended with a sweet smell. A Christian in his giving is like a priest making an offering to God. When it is made in the right spirit, it is, as Paul is saying to the Philippian believers, more than just making a donation or taking up a collection. It is an offering, an odor of a sweet smell to God. And that is what your gift is when it is given in the right spirit.


But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus [Phil. 4:19].

Thinking of their sacrifice to supply his need, Paul assures them that God would supply all their needs. He doesn’t say all their wants—he doesn’t include luxury items—but all their needs. However, He does supply luxury items many times. When He does, it is surplus. He does it out of His loving-kindness.


Now unto God and our Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen [Phil. 4:20].

God gets all the glory. He will not share His glory with another.


Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren which are with me greet you.

All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar’s household [Phil. 4:21–22].

He greets each believer personally. The believers who are with Paul also send their greetings. Again we are told that some were patricians, nobility, members of the household of Caesar. They now belong to Christ, and they want to be remembered to the Christians in Philippi.


The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen [Phil. 4:23].

Paul closes with a benediction, and I will close with a benediction. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Recommended for Further Study)


Boice, James Montgomery. Philippians, an Expository Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1971.

Getz, Gene A. A Profile of Christian Maturity: A Study of Philippians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1976.

Gromacki, Robert G. Stand United in Joy: An Exposition of Philippians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1980.

Hendriksen, William. A Commentary on Philippians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1963.

Ironside, H. A. Notes on Philippians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, n.d.

Johnstone, Robert. Lectures on Philippians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1875. (An excellent, comprehensive treatment.)

Kelly, William. Lectures on Philippians and Colossians. Addison, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, n.d.

King, Guy H. The Joy Way. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Christian Literature Crusade, 1952. (A splendid devotional study in Philippians.)

McGee, J. Vernon. Probing Through Philippians. Pasadena, California: Thru the Bible Books, 1971.

Meyer, F. B. The Epistle to the Philippians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications. (Devotional.)

Moule, Handley C. G. Studies in Philippians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1893. (This is a reprint from The Cambridge University Bible for Schools and Colleges and covers Romans, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. Very helpful.)

Muller, Jac. J. The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians and to Philemon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1955.

Pentecost, J. Dwight. The Joy of Living. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1973. (A practical study of Philippians.)
Robertson, A. T. Epochs in the Life of Paul. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1909.

Robertson, A. T. Paul’s Joy in Christ: Studies in Philippians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1917. (Excellent.)

Strauss, Lehman. Devotional Studies in Philippians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1959.

Vine, W. E. Philippians and Colossians. London: Oliphants, 1955. (Excellent treatment by a Greek scholar.)

Vos, Howard. Philippians—A Study Guide. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975. (Excellent for individual or group study.)

Walvoord, John F. Philippians: Triumph in Christ. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1971. (Excellent, inexpensive survey.)

Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Joyful. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1974
Wuest, Kenneth S. Philippians in the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1942.

The Epistle to the
Colossians

INTRODUCTION

The author of this epistle is the apostle Paul as stated in Colossians 1:1.
The Epistle to the Colossians is one of the Prison Epistles which are so called because they were written by Paul while he was in prison in Rome. The Prison Epistles include Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the very personal Epistle to Philemon.
The year was about a.d. 62. Four messengers left Rome unobserved, but they each carried a very valuable document. Tychicus was carrying the Epistle to the Ephesians over to Ephesus where he was the pastor or the leader of that church. Epaphroditus was carrying the Epistle to the Philippians as he was the pastor in Philippi. Epaphras was carrying the Epistle to the Colossians; apparently he was the leader of the church in Colosse. Onesimus was carrying the Epistle to Philemon. Philemon was his master, and Onesimus, who had run away, was returning to him.
These four are companion epistles and together have been called the anatomy of Christianity, or the anatomy of the church. We can see that the subjects of these epistles cover all aspects of the Christian faith:
Ephesians is about the body of believers called the church, of which Christ is the head.
Colossians directs our attention to the head of the body who is Christ. The body itself is secondary. Christ is the theme. He is the center of the circle around which all Christian living revolves. Colossians emphasizes the pleµroµma; Christ is the fullness of God.
Philippians shows the church walking here on earth. Christian living is the theme; it is the periphery of the circle of which Christ is the center. Philippians emphasizes the kenoµsis, Christ becoming a servant.
Philemon gives us Christianity in action. We would say it is where the rubber meets the road, or in that day it was where the sandals touched the Roman road. It demonstrates Christianity worked out in a pagan society.
We can see why these four documents have been called the anatomy of the church—they belong together to make a whole.
I don’t think any armored car ever carried four more valuable documents. Do you realize that if today you possessed those four original documents as they came from the hand of Paul, you could probably get any price you wanted for them—you would have the wealth of a king! Well, we measure it in terms other than the dollar sign; their spiritual value cannot be estimated in human terms at all.
I have never been to Colosse although I have been in sight of it—I have seen it from a distance. The ruins of it stand there in the gates of Phrygia. It is over in the same area where Laodicea and Hierapolis are. There are some ruins of the city; there are no ruins of any church. The church at Colosse met in the home of Philemon. I doubt that there ever was a church building there.
A great civilization and a great population were in that area. It was more or less a door to the Orient, to the East; it was called the gates of Phrygia. Here the East and the West met. Here is where the Roman Empire attempted to tame the East and to bring it under Roman subjugation.
Colosse was a great fortress city as were Laodicea, Philadelphia, Sardis, Thyatira, and Pergamum. All of these had been great cities of defense against invasion from the East. But by the time of Paul the apostle the danger had been relieved because the Roman Empire was pretty much in charge of the world by then. As a result, the people had lapsed into paganism and gross immorality at the time of Paul. And Colosse was typical of the great cities of that day.
As far as the record is concerned, Paul never visited the city of Colosse. After I visited the Bible lands I could understand many things in Scripture that I had not understood before. Why didn’t Paul visit Colosse? It seems that he did not come in through the gates of Phrygia, but instead he came in to the north of Colosse over at Sardis. Apparently he took that Roman road to Ephesus and bypassed Colosse.
Even though Paul was never in the city of Colosse, he was the founder of the church there. Epaphras was the leader of the church, and he may have been the direct founder, but Paul founded the church at Colosse. He was the founder in very much the same way as he was the founder of the church at Rome: he touched multitudes of people in the Roman Empire who later gravitated to Rome and formed the church there. Paul may have visited Laodicea (although I doubt that very seriously), and believers may have come from there to Colosse. But converts from Paul’s ministry in Ephesus very definitely could have come to Colosse to form the nucleus of that church. Colosse is located just seventy-five to one hundred miles east of Ephesus.
Paul spent three years of ministry in Ephesus, two of them teaching in the school of Tyrannus. There was a tremendous civilization in that area—the culture of the Roman Empire was centered there. It was no longer centered in Greece which had pretty much deteriorated along with her philosophy and culture. But the Greek culture was virile in Asia Minor, the area known as Turkey today. It was in this area that Paul did his greatest work along with his co-workers. There were with him John Mark, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and apparently some of the other apostles. We know that the apostle John became the pastor at Ephesus later on.
Asia Minor was a great cultural center, but it was also a center for heathenism, paganism, and the mystery religions. There was already abroad that which is known as Gnosticism, the first heresy of the church. There were many forms of Gnosticism, and in Colosse there were the Essenes. There are three points of identification for this group:
1. They had an exclusive spirit. They were the aristocrats in wisdom. They felt that they were the people—they had knowledge in a jug and held the stopper in their hands. They felt they had the monopoly of it all. As a result, they considered themselves super-duper in knowledge and thought they knew more than any of the apostles. Paul will issue them a warning in the first chapter: “Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:28). Perfection is not to be found in any cult or any heresy, but in Christ Jesus. All wisdom is found in Him.
2. They held speculative tenets on creation. They taught that God did not create the universe directly, but created a creature who in turn created another creature, until one finally created the physical universe. Christ was considered a creature in this long series of creations. This was known in pantheistic Greek philosophy as the demiurge. Paul refutes this in Colossians 1:15–19 and 2:18.
3. Another identifying mark of this group was their ethical practice of asceticism and unrestrained licentiousness. They got the asceticism from the influence of Greek Stoicism and the unrestrained licentiousness from the influence of Greek Epicureanism. Paul refutes this in Colossians 2:16, 23 and 3:5–9.
Colossians is the chart and compass which enables the believer to sail between the ever present Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand there is always the danger of Christianity freezing into a form, into a ritual. It has done that in many areas and in many churches so that Christianity involves nothing more than going through a routine. On the other hand is the danger that Christianity will evaporate into a philosophy. I had an example of that when a man who was liberal in his theology asked me, “What theory of inspiration do you hold?” I answered him, “I don’t hold a theory of inspiration. I believe that the Word of God is the revelation of God as it says it is. That is not a theory.” We find people talking about theories of inspiration and theories of atonement—that is the evaporation of Christianity into a philosophy.
So there are two dangers. One is to freeze into form and become nothing but a ritualistic church; the other is to evaporate into steam, and be lost in liberalism and false philosophy. You will remember that the Lord Jesus said that He was the Water of Life. He didn’t say, “I am the ice of life”; neither did he say, “I am the steam of life.” He is the Water of Life—water at the temperature of life, neither freezing nor boiling.
The Water of Life is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). Christ is to live in you. He is to walk down the street where you live. Christianity is Christ down where we live, Christ in the nitty-gritty of life, down where the rubber meets the road.
There has always been the danger of adding something to or subtracting something from Christ—the oldest heresy is also the newest heresy, by the way. Christianity is not a mathematical problem of adding or subtracting: Christianity is Christ. This is what Paul teaches in this epistle: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9)—in Him dwelleth all the pleµromacr;ma. All you need is to be found in Christ Jesus.
Here is a quotation from William Sanday: “In the Ephesian Epistle the church is the primary object, and the thought passes upward to Christ as the head of the church. In the Colossian Epistle Christ is the primary object, and the thought passes downward to the church as the body of Christ.”
The dominating thought in this epistle is: Christ is all. He is all I need; He is everything. Charles Wesley put it like this in his lovely hymn, “Thou, O Christ, art all I want; more than all in Thee I find.”
Charles Spurgeon said, “Look on thine own nothingness; be humble, but look at Jesus, thy great representative, and be glad. It will save thee many pangs if thou will learn to think of thyself as being in Him”—accepted in the Beloved, finding Him our all in all.
I received a letter from a dear lady here in Pasadena. She is eighty years old and doesn’t expect to live much longer, but she is resting in Christ’s loving forgiveness. My friend, you cannot find a better place to rest.
If you are resting in Him, you will find that you don’t need to go through a ritual. You won’t need to do a lot of gyrations and genuflections. You won’t be discussing the theories of inspiration. You either believe that the Bible is the Word of God, or you don’t believe it is the Word of God.
Let us stop this so-called intellectual approach that we find in our churches today. It’s no good. When I started out as a pastor, I tried to be intellectual. An elder in the church in which I served came to me and talked to me about it, and he said, “We would rather have a genuine Vernon McGee than an imitation of anybody else.” You see, I was trying to imitate intellectual men whom I admired. We don’t need to do that kind of thing—we need to be ourselves. We need to get down off our high horses. Remember that the Lord Jesus is feeding sheep, not giraffes.
The practical section of this epistle shows us Christ, the fullness of God, poured out in the lives of the believers. The alabaster box of ointment needs to be broken today. The world not only needs to see something, but it needs to smell something. The pollution of this world is giving a very bad odor in these days. We need something of the fragrance and loveliness of Jesus Christ, and only the church is permitted to break that alabaster box of ointment and let out the fragrance.

OUTLINE

I. Doctrinal: Christ, the Fullness (pleµroµma) of God; in Christ We Are Made Full, Chapters 1–2
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–8
B. Paul’s Prayer, Chapter 1:9–14
C. Person of Christ, Chapter 1:15–19
D. Objective Work of Christ for Sinners, Chapter 1:20–23
E. Subjective Work of Christ for Saints, Chapter 1:24–29
F. Christ, the Answer to Philosophy (For the Head), Chapter 2:1–15
G. Christ, the Answer to Ritual (For the Heart), Chapter 2:16–23
II. Practical: Christ, the Fullness of God, Poured out in Life through Believers, Chapters 3–4
A. Thoughts and Affections of Believers Are Heavenly, Chapter 3:1–4
B. Living of Believers Is Holy, Chapters 3:5–4:6
C. Fellowship of Believers Is Hearty, Chapter 4:7–18

CHAPTER 1

Theme: Christ, the fullness of God—in Christ we are made full; Introduction; Paul’s prayer; person of Christ; objective work of Christ for sinners; subjective work of Christ for saints

INTRODUCTION


The four Prison Epistles of Paul which include the Epistle to the Colossians have been called the anatomy of the Church because their subjects cover all aspects of the Christian faith. In Colossians our attention is directed to the head of the body who is Christ. The body, the church, is secondary. Instead, Christ is the theme, and Christian living is centered in Him.


Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus our brother,

To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [Col. 1:1–2].

Paul calls himself “an apostle of Jesus Christ,” and he always says it is “by the will of God.” Paul was in the will of God when he was an apostle. God made him an apostle.
Are you in the will of God today? Are you serving Christ? Are you sure you are in the proper place? Are you sure you are doing the proper thing? I believe that every believer is called to function in the body of believers, but it is important to be functioning in the right way. There are too many people who are active, doing something that they are not supposed to be doing. Too often we try to imitate other people. We think, “I’ll get busy doing what brother so-and-so is doing.” We need to remember that our gifts are different, and we are each going to function a little differently. But we ought to be functioning. God made Paul an apostle. Did God put you where you are? When you know you are in the will of God, there is a deep satisfaction in life, by the way.
“To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse.” He is not talking about two groups of people. The saints and the believing brethren are the same. Faithful brethren are believing brethren, and they are saints. We are not saints because of what we do. We are saints by our position. The Greek word for saints means “to be set apart for God.” Those who are set apart for God and the believing brethren are the same group of people.
Notice that they are “in Christ” but they are “at Colosse.” The most important question is not, Where are you at? but Who are you in? That may not be good grammar, but it sure is good Bible. The saints are at Colosse—it is important that we have an address down here. But we ought to have an address up yonder also: in Christ.
“Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” We must know the grace of God in order to experience the peace of God.
In the better manuscripts “and the Lord Jesus Christ” is not added. It says simply, “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father.” It is important to remember that Paul is writing to counteract Gnosticism which was the first heresy in the church. This was the Essene branch of Gnosticism. They relegated God to a place far removed from man and taught that one had to go through emanations to get to God. Have you ever noticed that all heathen religions and cults have some sort of an “open sesame” before you can get in to God? Paul makes it very clear here that grace and peace come directly “from God our Father.” We can come directly to Him through Christ.


We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you [Col. 1:3].

We can go directly to God. We do not need to go through any form of emanation at all. Anyone who is in Christ Jesus has access to God the Father. One of the benefits of being justified by faith is access to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Praying always for you.” You would find it very challenging to compile a list of the folk Paul said he was praying for, and add the Colossian believers to the list. He always prayed for them; they were on his prayer list.


Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints,
For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel [Col. 1:4–5].
Here Paul links the trinity of graces for believers: (1) faith—past; (2) love—present; and (3) hope—future.
Paul is going to talk about the good points of these believers. They had faith toward God. Faith rests upon historical facts; it is based on the past. It was based on what they had heard before “in the word of the truth of the gospel.” This refers to the content of the gospel, the great truths that pertain to the gospel of the grace of God. God has us shut up to a cross, and He asks us to believe Him. You haven’t really heard the gospel until you have heard something to believe. The gospel is not something for us to do. It tells what He did for you and for me over nineteen hundred years ago. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Faith is not a leap in the dark. It rests upon historical facts; it is believing God.
“And of the love which ye have to all the saints”—faith is based upon the past, but love is for the present.
It is nonsense today to boast of the fundamentalism of our doctrine and then to spend our time crucifying our brethren and attempting to find fault with them. There are too many “wonderful saints” looking down on their fellow believers who have not measured up to their high standard and who are not separated like they are separated. My friend, the world is not interested in that kind of approach. The world is looking to see whether Christians love each other or not. It is hypocrisy to consider oneself a Christian and then not to demonstrate love for the brethren. If we have disagreements with our brethren, we are to bear with them, we are to pray for them, and we are to love them. Remember that a Christian is a sinner saved by grace. None of us will ever be perfect in this life.
A man came to me to criticize a certain Christian leader—and I don’t agree with everything that leader does either—but the Spirit of God is using that man in a mighty way. So I asked the man who was complaining, “Do you ever pray for him?” He answered, “No, I don’t.” I replied, “I think that you ought to pray for him. You may not agree with him on every point, but the Spirit of God is using him.”
These Colossian believers had their good points. They were sound in the faith toward God. They were fundamental in their belief, and they also had love for the brethren. And Paul says that they had hope for the future—“For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.”
In 1 Corinthians also Paul lists these three graces, but he lists them a little differently: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Cor. 13:13). He puts hope in second position and love is listed last. Why? Because love is the only thing that is going to abide. Love is for the present, it is true, but it is also going to make it into eternity. It is very important that we begin to exhibit love down here upon this earth, don’t you agree?
That “hope which is laid up for you in heaven” is the blessed hope. We are to look for the coming of Christ; we are to love His appearing.
“Whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth [content] of the gospel.” The gospel is a simple message which God simply asks you to believe. You are asked to believe on the basis of certain facts: Jesus Christ was virgin born. He performed miracles. He is the God-man. He died on a cross, was buried, and rose again. He ascended back into heaven. He sent the Holy Spirit into the world on the Day of Pentecost to form the church. And He is sitting at God’s right hand today; His position there indicates that our redemption is complete. We are asked to enter into the rest which He offers to those who will come to Him. He has a present ministry of intercession for us. I think He has other ministries, too. And finally, He is going to return to this earth again. These are all part of the glorious gospel. This is the “content” of the gospel, as Paul expresses it here.

Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth [Col. 1:6].
Paul says the gospel has come to the Colossians as it has come to “all the world.” Dr. Marvin R. Vincent, a great expositor of the Epistle to the Colossians, as well as other expositors, believes this is hyperbole. I’ll be honest with you, I also had difficulty accepting this statement. Is Paul trying to say that at this particular time when he was in prison in Rome the gospel had reached the world? That is what he says. I have come to the position that I believe he meant what he said literally; it is not hyperbole. When I visited Asia Minor, I stood in Turkey at the city of Sardis and saw part of a Roman road that had been uncovered by excavation. That is the road that Paul traveled when he came down out of the Galatian country on the way to Ephesus. For three years he preached the gospel in Ephesus to people who were there from all over the Roman Empire. As a result, the gospel had gone ahead to Rome long before Paul was taken there as a prisoner.
The word for “world” here is kosmos, and it simply means the Roman Empire of that day. The gospel at that time had penetrated into the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. It may have even crossed over to Great Britain. Every part of the Roman world had heard the gospel. I tell you, my friend, those early apostles were on the move! I am reluctant to criticize anything they did. Paul says here that the gospel had gone into all the Roman world.
“And bringeth forth fruit.” Wherever the gospel is preached it will bring forth fruit. Paul says that, and it is true.
I must confess my faith was weak when we began our radio program. I determined to give out the Word of God, but I’ll be honest with you, I expected to fall on my face and see great failure. The biggest surprise of my life was that God blessed His Word. Was I surprised! I thought He would let me down, but He didn’t. He said He would bless His Word, and we can count on Him to do that. It “bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth.” I am overwhelmed today by the letters and by the people I meet who say they were brought to Christ through our radio ministry. It started out so weakly. It was just a Mickey Mouse operation if there ever was one. But God blesses His Word. I don’t only believe that; I know it. I won’t even argue with anybody about that. Some fellow comes to me and says, “Dr. McGee, I don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God.” And I say, “You don’t?” He says, “No. Aren’t you going to argue with me to persuade me?” I say, “Well, no.” And he asks “Why not?” I have to say, “Because I know it is the Word of God. I don’t only believe it; I know it.”
It would be just as if someone came to me and said, “Dr. McGee, I want to argue with you about whether you love your wife or not. I can give you several philosophical arguments that will show that you don’t love your wife.” Do you know, that fellow might out-argue me and whip me down intellectually. He might show me by logic and all types of argument that I don’t love my wife. Do you know what I would say? I’d say, “Brother, I don’t know about those arguments, but I want you to know one thing: I love my wife.” You see, that is something I know. I know I love her. I don’t need all those cogent, sophisticated, astute, esoteric arguments. There are some things we simply know.
And we should not let what we don’t know upset what we do know. That is important for us to see. Paul says that the gospel will bring forth fruit. That is the wonderful confidence that we can have.


As ye also learned of Epaphras our dear fellow-servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ [Col. 1:7].

Apparently Epaphras was the leader or the pastor of the church in Colosse. (Epaphras sounds like the name of a medicine to me, but nevertheless, that was the name of the fellow.) Paul calls him “our dear fellow-servant.” Have you noticed how graciously Paul could talk about other servants of God? Paul had something good to say about those who were preaching the Word of God. But when he found a rascal, he was just like our Lord in that he would really reprimand evil when he saw it.
The Lord Jesus was so merciful to sinners. The woman taken in adultery should have been stoned to death, but notice how gracious our Lord was to her (see John 8:1–11). Then there was that arrogant Pharisee, Nicodemus, who came to the Lord Jesus and attempted to pay Him a compliment: “… Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God” (John 3:2). In effect, “We Pharisees know. And, brother, when we know something, that’s it!” The Lord Jesus so gently and so graciously pulled him down off his high horse. When the Lord got through with him, he was just plain, little old Nicky. Little old Nicodemus was trying to be somebody, but he was nothing in the world but a religious robot going through rituals. The Lord Jesus brought him down to the place where he could humbly ask, “How can these things be?” Then the Lord Jesus led him to see the Cross. How gracious He was in dealing with folk like that!

Who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit [Col. 1:8].
We will not find a great emphasis on the Holy Spirit in this epistle, but Paul does make it clear to the Colossian believers that they would not have been able to exhibit this love unless it were by the Holy Spirit. It was to the Galatians that Paul wrote that the fruit of the Spirit is love. In this epistle he will not dwell on that aspect. He is going to dwell on the person of Christ. As he does that, the Spirit of God will take the things of Christ and will show them unto us. That is the important work of the Holy Spirit.

PAUL’S PRAYER


In this next section we have Paul’s prayer for the Colossians. This is one of the most wonderful prayers in Scripture. It is a prayer that I think touches all the bases, and it will be very helpful for us to notice what Paul prays for.
It is very interesting that today we find people who are praying for these things. Paul makes it clear that we already have these things. Dr. H. A. Ironside speaks of the prayers that we hear people say which go something like this: “We pray Thee, forgive us our sins and wash us in the blood of Jesus. Receive us into Thy kingdom. Give us of Thy Holy Spirit, and save us at last for Christ’s sake. Amen.” Did you know that God has already answered every one of those petitions? God has forgiven us all our trespasses. We are cleansed by the blood of Christ. He has already translated us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love. He has sealed us with His Holy Spirit. “… if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9). He has saved us eternally from the very moment we first believed the gospel. Therefore it would be more fitting to thank and praise Him for all these things than to be petitioning Him for what we already have. Instead of praying, “We ask this of Thee,” the prayer should be, “We thank Thee for all that You have already done.”
Now we come to this wonderful prayer that Paul prayed. First he will make several petitions, and then he will thank the Lord for the things He has already done for us.


For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding [Col. 1:9].

The first thing for which Paul prayed was that they might be filled with knowledge. The Greek word is epignoµsis which means “superknowledge” The Gnostics, the heretics there in Colosse, boasted that they had superknowledge. Paul says here, “I pray that you might be filled with knowledge, that you might have superknowledge.” But Paul confines this knowledge to knowledge of the will of God—this knowledge must be “in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”
Let me merely call attention to the fact that the word wisdom occurs six times in this short epistle.


That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God [Col. 1:10].

His second petition is that they might be pleasing to God. That means that these Christians will not be bowing down to men or attempting to please them.
His third request is that they might be “fruitful in every good work.” The Christian is a fruit-bearing branch. Christ is the vine, and we should bring forth fruit.
“Increasing in the knowledge of God.” A Christian should not be static but alive and growing in the Word of God. So their increase in the knowledge of God is Paul’s fourth request.


Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness [Col. 1:11].

Here is his fifth request. Strength and power can come only from God; they are produced by the Holy Spirit. These believers are to be strengthened with all might “unto all patience and longsuffering.” And this patience and longsuffering is to be “with joyfulness.”


Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light [Col. 1:12].

Here is the beginning of the list of things for which Paul is thankful. All our prayers should be filled with thanksgiving. Paul is thankful that God by His grace has given us an inheritance with the saints in light. We ought to lay hold of that today. We should believe God and believe that His promise is true.


Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son [Col. 1:13].

Paul is thankful that we have been delivered from the kingdom of Satan. We were dead in trespasses and sins, going the way of the world. Now we have been translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love. This is the present aspect of the kingdom of God here on earth today. You can’t build the kingdom of God. The only way you can be a part of it is to open your heart and receive Christ as your Savior. That translates you into the kingdom of His dear Son.


In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins [Col. 1:14].

Not only have we been translated into His kingdom, but we also have forgiveness of sins in Him. This is always associated with the blood of Christ. God does not arbitrarily and sentimentally forgive sins. We have redemption through His blood—“redemption” is apolutroµsis which means “to set free an enslaved people.” He paid a price to deliver us out of slavery.
Paul has given thanks for five wonderful truths. If we are trusting Christ, God has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. God has redeemed us through Christ and has forgiven us our sins through His blood. Yet there are a great many Christian people today who pray for all five of these things. My believing friend, they are yours. Why don’t you thank Him for them?

PERSON OF CHRIST


We spoke of the person of Jesus Christ in our study of the Song of Solomon. In Colossians we come in close on the subject and learn the theology of it. This is a very lofty, very exalted, and very grand section of this epistle. The subject here is the person of Jesus Christ. We cannot say too much about Him, and we will never in this life be able to comprehend Him in all of His wonder and in all of His glory.
This section provides an answer to those who would deny the deity of Jesus Christ. To understand these verses is to realize how wonderful He really is. Paul is specifically attempting to answer one of the oldest heresies in the church, Gnosticism. Another of the first heresies was Arianism. Arius of Alexandria said that the Lord Jesus Christ was a creature, a created being. The Council of Nicaea in a.d. 325 answered this heresy saying, “The Son is very Man of very man, and very God of very God.” Later on in the history of the church, Socinus propagated the heresy that Jesus was not God and that mankind did not need a Savior from sin. He taught that we were not totally depraved. Today this is the basis of Unitarianism and some of the cults, including Jehovah’s Witnesses.
There are given here nine marks of identification of Christ which make Him different from and superior to any other person who has ever lived.


Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature [Col. 1:15].

1. He is the “image of the invisible God.” “Image” is eikoµn. How could He be the image of the invisible God? You cannot take a photograph or an image of that which is invisible. How could He be that? John makes this clear in the prologue to his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.” That is a beginning that has no beginning—Christ has no beginning. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1). And then John says, “And the Word was made [born] flesh …” (John 1:14). If you want the Christmas story in John’s gospel, that is it: He was born flesh. This is the way that He became the image of the invisible God. How could He be that? Because He is God. If He were not God, He could not have been the image of the invisible God.
2. He is “the first born of every creature.” This reveals His relationship to the Father and His position in the Trinity. God is the everlasting Father; the Son is the everlasting Son. His position in the Trinity is that of Son.
“Firstborn” indicates His priority before all creation. His headship of all creation does not mean that He was born first. We need to understand what the Scriptures mean by “first born.”
Nowhere does Scripture teach that Jesus Christ had His beginning at Bethlehem. We are told in the great prophecy of Micah 5:2 that He would be born in Bethlehem, but that He came forth from everlasting. Isaiah 9:6 tells us, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given….” The child is born, but the Son is given. He came out of eternity and took upon Himself our humanity.
Paul is dealing with one of the philosophies of that day, one of the mystery religions. It is called the demiurge, and it held that God created a creature just beneath Him; then that creature created a creature beneath him; then that creature created a creature beneath him. You can just keep on going down that ladder until finally you come to a creature that created this universe. These were emanations from God. Gnosticism taught that Jesus was one of these creatures, an emanation from God. Now Paul is answering that. He says that Jesus Christ is the Firstborn of all creation, He is back of all creation. The Greek word is proµtotokos meaning “before all creation.” He was not born in creation. He is the One who came down over nineteen hundred years ago and became flesh. He existed before any creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). God the Father is the everlasting Father. God the Son is the everlasting Son. There never was a time when Christ was begotten.
There are several places in Scripture where the Lord Jesus is called the Firstborn. He is called the Firstborn of all creation; He is called the Firstborn from the dead; and He is called the only begotten.
He is called the Firstborn from the dead later in this first chapter, verse 18. This is what the psalmist spoke of. “I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” (Ps. 2:7). Paul explained this idea further in that great sermon that he preached at Antioch of Pisidia in the Galatian country. Paul said there that the psalmist meant that Christ was begotten from the dead: “And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee” (Acts 13:32–33).
When Jesus Christ is called the Firstborn of all creation, it is not referring to His birth at Bethlehem. This is no Christmas verse. It means that He has top priority of position. It has nothing to do with His origin at all. The psalmist wrote, “Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth” (Ps. 89:27). This makes it very clear that Christ as the eternal Son holds the position of top priority to all creation. In other words, He is the Creator. There is no demiurge, no series of creatures being created one after another. He Himself created all things.
Let me mention some other verses of Scripture that speak of the person of Christ. In Hebrews 1:3 we read: “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” That doesn’t sound very much like He is a mere creature, does it? He is the Second Person of the Godhead. “And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” Now the Lord Jesus is not one of these creatures: “But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom” (Heb. 1:7–8).
So, my friend, what we are talking about here is not that the Lord Jesus was born a creature; we are talking about the fact that He is God. When He came into the world, a child was born but the Son was given and He had come out of eternity. The angel’s announcement to Mary was “… that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Why? Because that is who He is. He was the Son of God before He came into this world. “… Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).
Now we come to the next two great statements concerning the Lord Jesus:


For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him [Col. 1:16].

3. “By him were all things created.” If all things were created by Him, that clears up the question of His being a creature or the Creator. The statement that He is the Firstborn of all creation does not mean that He was created, but rather He is the One who did the creating.
There are two kinds of creation, the “visible and invisible.” It is very interesting here to note that he mentions different gradations of rank in spiritual intelligences: thrones, dominions, principalities, powers. There are gradations in the angelic hosts. Other verses in Scripture tell us that there are seraphim and cherubim, and also the archangels. And then there are just the common, everyday, vegetable variety of angels.
In Ephesians we note the fact that our enemy is a spiritual enemy. Satan has a spiritual host that rebelled with him. So there are different gradations of rank among our spiritual enemies, too.
4. It is wonderful to know that all things were created by Him. But there is another truth given to us here: All things were created “for him.”
If you were to go out tonight and look up at the heavens, you would see a number of stars. Have you ever wondered why each star is in its own special position? Why is that star in that part of the heavens? It is in that part of the heavens because that is where Jesus wanted it. Not only did He create all things, but they were created for Him.
One of the most wonderful truths in this connection is that we are told that we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a big hunk of real estate coming to us someday. Maybe He will turn over a whole star to us. I don’t know; I have often wondered. I think we will be very busy in eternity. We will not be earthlings then, but we will be given a new body which is free from gravitation. We will be living in a city called the New Jerusalem. We will be able to travel through God’s vast universe. I don’t know how much of that universe He is going to turn over to us. He made it all, created it out of nothing, and He is going to run it to suit Himself. This is His universe. If you have wondered why a certain tree has a certain kind of leaf, it is because that is the way He wanted it. It was made by Him, and it was made for Him. We are going to enter into that someday: there is an inheritance prepared for us. I have never dwelt upon that very much because I feel that it is rather speculative. But I am sure that all of us wonder what it will be like when we are with Him in eternity. We do know it will be wonderful.
You and I are living down here in tents. Paul calls these bodies of ours just that—tents. He says, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved …” (2 Cor. 5:1). A tabernacle is a tent. This tent will go right back to the ground because the body is to be put into the ground at death. We will have moved out of our tent. He says, “… willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). When we are absent from these old bodies down here, we will be present with the Lord. We will be at home with Him.
You may be living in a home that cost $500,000. I have news for you: you are actually living in a flabby, old, frail tent—all of us are. But one of these days we will have our glorified bodies, and then we will receive our inheritance! You can have your $500,000 house—you won’t be in it long, anyway. Our new body is for eternity, and we will be at home with Him forever. This is the prospect ahead for the child of God. I’m rather looking forward to it. “All things were created by him, and for him.”


And he is before all things, and by him all things consist [Col. 1:17].

5. “He is before all things.” All fullness dwells in the preincarnate Christ, and all fullness dwells in the incarnate Christ. “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). We are made complete in Him. He was before all things. He is the preincarnate Christ.
6. “By him all things consist.” He holds everything together. He maintains creation. He directs it. “Consist” is sunisteµmi which means to hold together. He is the super glue of the universe.
A few years ago in our lifetime, man did a very daring, and I think now, a very dastardly deed: he untied the atom. The Lord Jesus tied each one of those little fellows together when He created the atom. Man did what he called splitting the atom. Believe me, did he release power! Have you ever stopped to think of the tremendous power that there is in the atoms of this universe? If one bomb that we can hold in our hand can blow a whole area to smithereens, then how much power is tied up on this vast physical universe? Who is holding all that together? We are told that Christ not only created it but that He holds it together. I would say that holding it all together is a pretty big job. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who is able to do that.
We have this same truth repeated for us in Hebrews: “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). He’s a wonderful person, isn’t He? He’s a glorious person!


And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence [Col. 1:18].

7. “He is the head of the body, the church.” I believe this is the key to the Epistle to the Colossians, which is really a companion epistle to the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Philippians. In Ephesians we had the emphasis on the fact that the church is the body of Christ down here in the world. The emphasis was upon the body. In Colossians the emphasis is upon the head of the body, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Ephesians we read, “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:22). And finally, in Philippians we see the church with feet, walking through the world—we see the experience of the church, the experience of the believer. These are companion epistles.
“The firstborn from the dead.” Did you know that there is only one Man who has been raised in a glorified body today? He is the firstfruits of them that sleep. When a loved one who is in Christ dies and you put that body into the grave, you are just putting it into a motel. It is like putting it into a hotel for a few days, because there is a bright morning coming. The body is put to sleep, but the individual has gone to be with the Lord. When Christ comes to take His church out of this world, then that body is going to be raised on the basis of His resurrection. It is sown in corruption, but it will be raised in incorruption (see 1 Cor. 15:42). We shall be just as He is. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
8. “That in all things he might have the preeminence.” You cannot think of anything more wonderful than this. The will of Christ must prevail throughout all of God’s creation. That is God’s intention. Even in spite of the rebellion of man down here on earth, God says, “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (Ps. 2:6). God is moving forward today undeviatingly, unhesitatingly, uncompromisingly toward one goal. That goal is to put Jesus on the throne of this world which today is in rebellion against God. That is the objective of God.


For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell [Col. 1:19].

9. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” The fullness is the pleµroµma. That is one of the most important words in this epistle. Over in Philippians it was the kenoµsis. That is, it emphasized that Christ emptied Himself and became a servant; He emptied Himself of the glory that He had with the Father. He didn’t empty Himself of His deity—He was God when He came to this earth. The pleµroµma, the full fullness of God, dwells in Him.
When He was down here on this earth, the pleµroµma was at home in Jesus. He was 100 percent God—not 99.44 percent, but 100 percent. That little baby that was lying on the bosom of Mary over nineteen hundred years ago seemed so helpless, but He could have spoken this universe out of existence. He is Man of very man; He is God of very God. That is who He is.
We can outline these verses from another perspective. I would like to do this for you in order to add to our understanding of this portion of Scripture.

1. Christ’s relationship to the Father—verse 15
2. Christ’s relationship to creation—verses 16–17
3. Christ’s relationship to the church—verses 18–19
4. Christ’s relationship to the cross—verse 20

OBJECTIVE WORK OF CHRIST FOR SINNERS


We are going to see here the things Christ has done for us.


And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven [Col. 1:20].

“Having made peace through the blood of his cross” means that by His paying the penalty on the cross for your sin and my sin, peace has been made between God and the sinner. God does not approach man today and say to him, “Look here, fellow, I’m against you. You have been rebelling against Me. You are a sinner, and I am forced to punish you for that.” No, God is saying something entirely different to the lost sinner today. He says to you and to me, “I have already borne the punishment, I have already paid the penalty for all your sin. I want you to know that you can come to Me. Peace has already been made in Christ Jesus, if you will just turn and come to Me.”
This is what Paul meant when he wrote, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Peace has been made through the blood of His cross. Paul puts forgiveness of sin right along with the blood of the cross. God can forgive because the penalty has already been paid. Jesus paid that penalty through the blood of His cross; therefore a righteous God can forgive you. God is not a disagreeable neighbor who is waiting around the corner to pounce on the sinner and to find fault with him. God has His arms outstretched and is saying, “Come, and I will give you redemption rest.”
“By him to reconcile all things unto himself.” Reconciliation is toward man; redemption is toward God. God is saying to all men today, “I am reconciled to you. Now will you be reconciled to Me?” That is the decision a man must make.
Paul explains this very clearly in his letter to the Corinthians. “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:18–20).
A great many people have the idea that a man must do something to win God over to him. My friend, God is trying to win you over—the shoe is on the other foot. God is reconciled. He is asking man to be reconciled to Him.
“Reconcile all things”—some people take this statement and get the foolish notion that everybody is going to be saved. To understand this we need to pay a little attention to the grammar that is here. What are the “all things”? We will see that it is limited to all things that are to be reconciled, those which are appointed for reconciliation.
Maybe it would help us if we look at Philippians 3:8 where Paul says, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord….” What are the “all things” here? Does Paul include everything in the whole world? No, it refers to all the things that Paul had to lose. In the verses just previous Paul had enumerated all the religious pluses which he had had in his life. It is all these things which Paul counted for loss. Paul couldn’t lose something that he didn’t have.
“Whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” You will notice that Paul limits the “all things” that are appointed to reconciliation—he doesn’t mention things under the earth. In Ephesians 1:22 it says, “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church.” What are the “all things” that are going to be put under His feet? Well, in Philippians Paul wrote, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth” (Phil. 2:10). Notice that all things are going to acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ—all things in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. That doesn’t mean that they are all reconciled. Paul makes no mention of things under the earth being reconciled to God.
My friend, don’t listen to the deception, the siren song, that all is going to work out well. Don’t think you can depend on God being nice and sweet and pleasant like a little old lady. Things in heaven and in earth are reconciled to God, but not the things under the earth. The things under the earth will have to bow to Him, but they are not reconciled to Him at all. This is the place and this is the life in which we need to be reconciled to God.
“Things in heaven”—not only must we be made ready for heaven, but heaven must be made ready to receive us. The Lord Jesus said, “… I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). By the Incarnation God came down to man; by the blood of Jesus man is brought up to God. This blood also purifies things in heaven according to Hebrews 9:23–24. Heaven must also be reconciled.


And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled [Col. 1:21].

God did not wait until we promised to scrub our faces, put on our Sunday clothes, and go to Sunday school before He agreed to do this work of reconciliation. It was while you and I were in rebellion against Him, while we were doing wicked works, that He reconciled us to Himself. No man can say, “I’m lost because God has not made adequate provision for me.” A man is lost because he wants to be lost, because he is in rebellion against God.
“That were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind.” This reminds us that there is a mental alienation from God as well as a moral alienation. A great many people think that men are lost because they have committed some terrible sin. The reason people are lost is that their minds are alienated from God. I think this explains the fierce antagonism toward God on the part of the so-called intellectuals of our day. There is an open hatred and hostility toward God.
Some time ago I had the funeral of a certain movie star out here in California. The Hollywood crowd came to the funeral. One of the television newscasters commented on the funeral, and I appreciated what he had to say about it. He said, “Today Hollywood heard something that it had never heard before.” But I also saw something there at that funeral that I had never seen before. I had never seen so much hatred in the eyes of men and women as I saw when I attempted to present Jesus Christ and to explain how wonderful He is and how He wants to save people. There is an alienation in the mind and heart of man.

In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight [Col. 1:22].

“The body of his flesh”—here is an explicit declaration that Christ suffered—not just in appearance—but He suffered in a real body. This directly countered one of the heresies of Gnosticism in Paul’s day.
“To present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight.” Unblameable means “without blemish.” That was the requirement of the sacrificial animal in the Old Testament. You and I cannot present perfection to God, and God cannot accept anything short of perfection. That is the reason we cannot be saved by our works or by our character. We simply cannot meet the demands of a righteous God. But He is able to present us unblameable. Why? Because He took our place. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Unreproveable means “unaccusable or unchargeable.” God is the One who justified us. If God declares us to be justified, who can bring any kind of a charge against us? He is the One who has cleared us of all guilt.


If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister [Col. 1:23].

This is not a conditional clause that is based on the future. The if that Paul uses here is the if of argument. It does not mean that something shall be if something else is true; rather it means that something was if something else is true. We would say, “Since ye continue in the faith grounded and settled.” Paul’s point is that we have been reconciled—it is an accomplished fact. So if you are a child of God today, you will continue in the faith grounded and settled. You will not be moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard.
“Whereof I Paul am made a minister.” Paul loved to look back and rest in his glorious privilege of being a minister of Jesus Christ. I consider that the greatest honor that can come to any person. I thank God every day for the privilege that He has given me of declaring His Word—there is nothing quite like that.

SUBJECTIVE WORK OF CHRIST FOR SAINTS


Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church [Col. 1:24].


Let me give you a free translation of this verse. “Now I, Paul, rejoice in the midst of my sufferings for you, and I am filling up in my flesh that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake, which is the church.” Paul is saying here that it was necessary for him to fill up in suffering that which was lacking in the suffering of Christ. Isn’t that a startling statement? Someone will say, “Doesn’t that contradict what you have been teaching all along? You say Christ suffered for us and paid the penalty and there is nothing we can do for salvation.” That is very true, and this verse does not contradict that at all.
Paul was suffering in his body for the sake of Christ’s body. The implication seems to be that there was something lacking in the sufferings of Christ. A second implication could be that it was necessary for Paul, and I think in turn for all believers, to make up that which is lacking. In other words, when Paul suffers for them, it completes the suffering of Christ.
All of this is rather startling because we have just called attention to the fact that this epistle teaches the fullness of Christ. “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). Everything is centered in Him. He is to have the preeminence in all things. Yet here it would seem that there is still something to be done.
Paul is writing this epistle from prison, and he says he has fulfilled all his sufferings. You may remember that the Lord Jesus revealed to Ananias the reason He had saved Paul and how He was going to use him. “But the Lord said unto him [Ananias], Go thy way: for he [Paul] is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake” (Acts 9:15–16). Now Paul writes from prison and says that he has fulfilled that.
In our discussion of this verse I want to make one thing very, very clear, The sufferings of Paul were not redemptive. There was no merit in his suffering for others or even for himself as concerning redemption. Paul is very careful in his selection of words here. When Paul speaks of the redemption of Christ, he does not speak of suffering but of a cross, a death, and His blood.
There are two kinds of suffering. There is ministerial suffering and there is mediatorial suffering. Christ’s suffering for us was mediatorial. Actually, we can consider the sufferings of Christ and divide them into two further classifications. There is a sharp distinction between them. We will do that to clarify this passage of Scripture.
1. There are the sufferings of Christ which He endured and in which we cannot share.
He suffered as a man. He endured human suffering. He bore the suffering that is common to humanity when He was born in Bethlehem at His incarnation over nineteen hundred years ago. When He was born, did He cry like other little babies that come into the world? I have wondered about that, and I rather think that He did. He was clad in the garment of that frail flesh that you and I have. He could get hungry. He could become thirsty. He experienced loneliness. He suffered anguish and pain and sorrow. He could go to sleep in the boat because He was weary and tired. Those are human sufferings. We all have those.
Paul wrote, “For every man shall bear his own burden” (Gal. 6:5). There are certain burdens we must each bear alone. We are born alone. So was our Lord. We feel pain alone. There are certain problems in life that each of us must face, and we face them alone. There is a sorrow that comes that no one can share with us. We become sick, and no one can take our place.
When my daughter was just a little girl I remember crossing the desert of Arizona coming back from the East. It was the hot summertime, and she had been sick. My wife took her temperature, and it was up to 104 degrees. We took her to the hospital in Phoenix. As she was lying there with that high temperature, I would have given anything in the world at that moment if I could have taken her place. I would gladly have taken that fever for her, but I couldn’t do it. We can’t share such things.
There will come a time when you and I will go down through the valley of the shadow of death. Humanly speaking, we will each die alone. That is the reason it is so wonderful to be a Christian and to know that Jesus is with us at that time when no one else can go through death with us.
Jesus Christ suffered human suffering. That is a suffering which cannot be shared.
The second suffering which He could not share was His suffering as the Son of God. He is God, yet He identified Himself with mankind. No mortal has ever had to endure what He went through. He was made like unto His brethren, and He Himself suffered; but He suffered as the Son of God.
We see this suffering in Psalm 69. It tells us in verses 11 and 12 that He was the song of the drunkards in that little town of Nazareth. And He said that He made sackcloth His garment. Oh, what He suffered because He was the Son of God! He was arrested. The soldiers of the high priest mocked Him. They put a robe on Him and a crown of thorns. They played a Roman game known as “Hot Hand” in which they blindfolded Him and then all the soldiers would hit Him with their fists. One of the soldiers would not hit Him, and when they removed the blindfold He was supposed to say which one had not. Even if He named the right one, they would never have admitted that He was right. Then they would put the blindfold on and play the game again. They all pounded Him until the Lord Jesus Christ was marred more than any man. They had beaten His face to a pulp before they ever put Him on the cross. He suffered in a way that no other man has suffered, because He suffered as the Son of God.
And then He suffered as the sacrifice for the sin of the world. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and none of us can enter into that suffering at all. We can appropriate His death for us, we can recognize the fact that He took our place, but we cannot enter into it. He alone went to the cross. He was forsaken of God and forsaken by men. His was not the blood of martyrdom; His was the blood of sacrifice.
In His first three hours on the cross, man did his worst. It was light from nine o’clock until noon; man was there at his evil worst. In the second three hours, from noon until three o’clock, it was dark; that was when God was doing His best. At that time the cross became an altar on which the Lamb of God was slain to take away the sin of the world. “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust …” (1 Pet. 3:18). That’s a suffering that you and I cannot bear; He could not share that with anyone else.
2. On the other hand, there are the sufferings Christ endured which we can share. These are the sufferings which Paul refers to verse 24.
There is the suffering for righteousness’ sake. In the synagogue in Nazareth, His own hometown, Jesus said, “But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth …” (John 8:40). He suffered for righteousness’ sake, and we are told very definitely that we will do the same: “But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye …” (1 Pet. 3:14). Paul wrote to young Timothy: “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12).
May I say to you that if you are going to live for God, if you, are going to take a stand for the right, you will find that you will be passed by. God’s men are passed by today in the distribution of earthly honors. The world will damn the man of God with faint praise, and they will praise him with faint damns. That is the way the world treats God’s men today. Athletes are lauded, people in the entertainment world are praised, politicians are praised, and professors are honored; but the man of God is not praised. If you stand for the things that are right in this world, you will suffer for righteousness’ sake. Paul understood this, and he wrote, “As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter” (Rom. 8:36). That will be the lot of anyone who stands for God.
Then there is the suffering in the measure we identify ourselves with Christ for the proclamation of the gospel. John wrote, “… because as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). The Lord Jesus made it very clear, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18–19). If you are not of the world, the world will hate you.
The popularity of the Christian with the world is in inverse ratio with his popularity with Christ. If you are popular with the world as a Christian, then you are not popular with Christ. If you are going to be popular with Christ, you are not going to be popular in this world. The child of God is to take his rightful place and identify himself with Christ. When we suffer for Christ, the Lord Jesus is also suffering through us, through His church.
You remember when the Lord Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus, He said, “… Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). That young Pharisee was startled and puzzled. Saul of Tarsus thought that he was persecuting Christians. He was shocked to learn that he was actually persecuting the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what Peter wrote about our suffering: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” (1 Pet. 4:12–13).
There is one thing for certain: If the gospel is to go forward today, someone must suffer. The late Dr. George Gill said that when a child is born into this world, some woman must travail in pain; and the reason there are not more people being born again is because there are not enough believers who are willing to travail. Suffering is not popular—but that is what Paul is talking about in this verse.
All of us would like to see revival. We talk glibly about witnesssing and about living for God and all that sort of thing. My friend, may I say to you that if the gospel is going to go forward today and if people are going to be saved, someone is going to have to pay a price. How much are you paying to get out the Word of God? What is it really costing you? Are you willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel?


Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God [Col. 1:25].

The word dispensation means economy—even by transliteration; it is a stewardship. We talk of political economy, domestic economy, business economy. God deals with the world on the basis of different economies or stewardships, but they have always been based on the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Before Jesus was born into this world, men brought a little lamb as a sacrifice, and they looked forward to the coming of Christ. They were not saved by that little lamb; but they brought the lamb in faith, and they were saved by the Christ who would some day die for them. That was the economy or the stewardship which God had set for the Jews in the Old Testament. We don’t bring a little lamb for a sacrifice today because it is now an historical fact that Christ has already come. All we have to do today is trust Him.
“The dispensation of God which is given to me for you,” Paul writes to the gentile people in Colosse. They are a part of this new dispensation. The Gentiles are to be included in the church.
“To fulfil the word of God.” This was something that had been hidden in the Old Testament, but now God has declared that the gospel must go to the Gentiles.

Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints [Col. 1:26].
A “mystery” is something that had not been revealed in the Old Testament but is now revealed. We learn in Ephesians that the mystery was not the fact that Gentiles would be saved—that was known in the Old Testament. The mystery, the new thing, was that God would now put Israel on the same basis as the Gentiles. All men are lost; all men have sinned; all men have come short of the glory of God. Now God is taking both Jews and Gentiles, men out of all races, and He is putting them into a new body which is called the church. That was never revealed in the Old Testament, but it is now being revealed.
“Now is made manifest to his saints”—Paul wasn’t the only one who understood this mystery. God was making it known to His saints in that day.


To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory [Col. 1:27].

“Christ in you, the hope of glory”—we are in Christ. The moment you put your trust in Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit baptizes you and puts you in the body of believers. You and I have been brought into something new, the church, and the church has a glorious prospect ahead of it.


Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus [Col. 1:28].

“Whom we preach.” The gospel is not what we preach, but it is whom we preach. No man has ever preached the gospel who hasn’t preached Christ. Jesus Christ is the gospel. He is eternal life. John wrote that he was going to show us eternal life, that he had seen eternal life (see 1 John 1:1–2). Whom had John seen? He’d seen Christ. And, my friend, today you either have Him or you don’t have Him. The gospel is Christ—what He has done for us in His death and resurrection and what He is going to do in the future.
“Warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom.” I believe there are two commands here for ministers today—these are two things we should be doing. We are to preach the gospel in order to win sinners to Christ and to save them from the wrath that is to come, and we are to teach every man in all wisdom. In other words, we are to seek to build up men and women so that they may grow in grace and be faithful members of the body of Christ; they are to be encouraged to serve Christ in the local assembly.
I am told that my teaching of the Bible helps the local churches, and that is the reason I have the support of so many pastors across this country. If I am not doing that, then I would have to say I am not fulfilling my ministry.
“That we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” Perfect actually means “complete or mature.” This is the goal of the teaching of the Word of God.


Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily [Col. 1:29].

Striving means “to agonize.” Paul is giving us his very personal testimony: “This is what I’m laboring, striving to do.”
“According to his working, which worketh in me mightily.” Oh, this should be the desire of everyone today who is working for Christ—that He would work in us mightily to do two things: to get out the gospel that men might be saved and then to build them up in the faith. These are the two things the church should be doing today.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: Christ, the answer to philosophy; Christ, the answer to ritual


In the first fifteen verses of this chapter we will see that Christ is the answer to philosophy. The remainder of the chapter will show that He is the answer to ritual. The answer to philosophy is for the head; the answer to ritual is for the heart.
Christianity has always been in the danger of sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. On one extreme Christianity is in danger of evaporating into a philosophy—then it becomes nothing but steam. The opposite danger is that it will freeze into a form and become nothing more than a ritual. There is a real peril on either side. But the Lord Jesus called Himself the Water of Life. He is neither steam nor ice—neither can sustain life. That is why we need to guard against following the line of philosophy or following the line of ritual. Christianity is Christ!
There were five errors that endangered the Colossian church which Paul will deal with in this chapter. They were:

1. Enticing words—verses 4–7
2. Philosophy—verses 8–13
3. Legality—verses 14–17
4. Mysticism—verses 18–19
5. Asceticism—verses 20–23

These are still dangers today. I think that most of us could sit down with this chapter and go through it to make an inventory of our spiritual lives. It would show us the direction in which we are going. A great many even so-called Bible believers have slipped into one or more of these errors.

CHRIST, THE ANSWER TO PHILOSOPHY (FOR THE HEAD)


For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh [Col. 2:1].


Laodicea was near to Colosse. I have been to Laodicea but not to Colosse. Yet I stood on the high point of Laodicea and looked across the Lycos valley. There alongside the mountains at the gates of Phrygia, which lead into the Orient, were the ruins of Colosse. It was a great city, but it was not nearly as great as Laodicea. In Laodicea was one of the seven churches of the Book of Revelation; it was the church that is described as being lukewarm.
“Conflict” is our word agony. MacPhail calls this a prayer of agony. Paul saw that there was a grave danger in Colosse and in Laodicea, and it caused great conflict in the heart of the apostle. They were in danger of going off in one of two directions. There is still such danger, and we need a lot of agonizing prayer for the church today. This explains why we find the Laodiceans’ lukewarm condition in the Book of Revelation: they had lost sight of the person of Christ. Christ is the answer to man’s head; He is also the answer to man’s heart.
“For as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” Colosse is located about 100 miles inland from ancient Ephesus. When Paul came through that area (which he did twice), he did not come down to Colosse and Laodicea. Even when he attempted to go down into Asia on his second missionary journey, the Spirit of God forbade him; so he turned and took the northern route. Then when he came on his third missionary journey, walking over the land, he again took the northern route, perhaps because he was already familiar with it. It is clear that he had not been to these cities because he writes, “and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” This might be interpreted to mean that many new believers had come into the church since he had been there and that they had not seen his face. That meaning is highly unlikely; I think it means that Paul had never been there.


That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ [Col. 2:2].

“That their hearts might be comforted.” Heart indicates the entire inner man. That means the whole propulsive nature of man. He is praying that their hearts, their humanity, their whole persons might be comforted.
“Being knit together in love” means compacted in love. Love will draw them together. After all, a church is not united by gifts or even by what we term today as spirituality. The bond that unites believers is love. It is the cement that holds us together—it is the Elmer’s glue of the church.
“Unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding.” Full assurance is an interesting expression; it literally means “to be under full sail.” It means that believers should be moving along spiritually—they should be moving along for God.
“To the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.” I grant that is a rather awkward expression, and a better translation would be: “the mystery of God, even of the Father, and of Christ.” Better and easier yet might be, “the mystery of God, even Christ.” I think that is the correct meaning of it.
What is “the mystery of God, even Christ”? The church is the mystery, for it had not been revealed in the Old Testament. God was going to save Gentiles—that had been made clear in the Old Testament, and He did save them. But on the Day of Pentecost God started a new thing. He began to call out a group of people into the body of believers, baptized by the Spirit of God into this body. This is what Paul is explaining in 1 Corinthians 12:12: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” You see, Christ had a physical body while He was here on this earth, and He has a spiritual body down here today. That body is the body of believers that have trusted Him, and the body is called Christ. That is why the Lord said to Saul of Tarsus, “Why are you persecuting me?” (see Acts 9:4). Saul was persecuting Him personally. The church is Christ—it belongs to Him. “The mystery of God, even Christ.”
In 1 Corinthians 12:13, Paul goes on to say of the church: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” We have all been baptized into Christ. We have all been made to drink into one Spirit. That is what brings the unity into the church. We are never commanded to make a unity of the church. It is impossible to join some organization and to expect that organization to bring about church unity. The Holy Spirit has already made that unity. He puts all believers into one body, and we are told to keep the unity of the Spirit. Our problem today is that we are not keeping the unity of the Spirit.


In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge [Col. 2:3].

All that we need is in Christ. If only we could learn that! He is the reservoir of all knowledge.
In the science building where I went to college there was a motto on the bulletin board. It hung there the whole time that I was in college, and it made a great impression on me. I’m afraid I remember it better than I do the sciences that I studied there. It said, “Next to knowing is knowing where to find out.” I love that. I willingly admit that I don’t know everything—I’m sure you have found that out by now. But I know where to find out, because I know Somebody who does know. Christ has been made unto us wisdom. We need to rest in that. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Him—how wonderful this is!
1. Now Paul will discuss the error of enticing words.


And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words [Col. 2:4].

He is going to deal with the matter of philosophy and enticing words. Philosophy and psychology have been substituted for the Bible, and this is the thing that is enticing to so many young preachers in our seminaries today. I am amazed to find that some of these men with a Ph.D. degree from a seminary know so little about the Bible! They know all about Bultmann and Kant and Plato, but they don’t seem to know very much about the Word of God. That is the great problem of our day.
There was that same danger in Colosse and also in Laodicea. I think that is what actually killed the church in Colosse, and it made the church in Laodicea the weakest of the seven churches in Asia Minor. It was in the worst spiritual condition, and yet the people thought that they were well off. These cities were wealthy. They boasted of their wealth and affluence and also of their knowledge, but they were blind to their true spiritual condition.
Paul says, “Don’t let any man beguile you with enticing words.” Beguile means “to victimize.” Enticing words are a lot of oratory or sweet-talk.
I heard of a theologian who uses big words and tries to be very deep in his thinking. He was talking to a group of men for about half an hour. Another man walked up to the group and asked one of the men on the outside of the circle, “What’s he talking about?” The fellow answered, “He hasn’t said yet.” That is the problem—he never would say. All he did was talk with enticing words.
I know a dear lady who attends a certain church because, as she says “I just love to go there because the preacher uses such flowery language and he makes me feel so good all over.” That is the danger today. A great many people love this pretense toward intellectuality among preachers rather than the simple Word of God.
I started preaching before I went to college, and then in college I was exposed to liberalism because I went to a liberal college. That was all I knew at that time; I was not grounded in the Word of God at all, even though I had had a wonderful pastor. I thought I wanted to be an intellectual preacher—I thought that would be great. I thank God that that was knocked out of me in my second year of college. I became concerned with teaching the Word of God.
Paul warns us to beware that they will beguile us with enticing words and will victimize us. Their words cause many people to follow a certain individual instead of the Word of God. Like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, he starts playing, and the unwary start following.


For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ [Col. 2:5].

At this time the word that was coming back to Paul was that this church was standing.
“Beholding your order.” Order is a military term, and it means “to stand shoulder to shoulder.” That is what believers ought to be doing—standing shoulder to shoulder. Instead, many today are trying to undermine or take advantage of another believer. Oh that we could stand shoulder to shoulder with one another!
Stedfastness means “to have a solid front, to be immovable.” The literal translation would be “stereotype,” or the opposite of movable type. Paul writes this same thought to the Corinthians: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58). The Colossian church had a reputation for steadfastness, and Paul wanted them to continue like that and not be led away by the oratory of some.


As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him [Col. 2:6].

What does it mean to be saved, to be a Christian? Well, I have a letter from a man who tells me that I am not saved because I have frankly admitted that I am not perfect, that I do not keep all the Ten Commandments. He says that I am not saved until I do. My friend, salvation is to receive a person, and that person is Jesus Christ—“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord.”
“So walk ye in him.” Now that you have received Him, walk in Him, walk in the Spirit. Walking is not a balloon ascension. A great many people think the Christian life is some great, overwhelming experience and you take off like a rocket going out into space. That’s not where you live the Christian life. Rather, it is in your home, in your office, in the schoolroom, on the street. The way you get around in this life is to walk. You are to walk in Christ. God grant that you and I might be joined to Him in our daily walk.


Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving [Col. 2:7].

“Rooted” means rooted like a tree, and a tree is a living thing. And we are to be “built up” as a house. A house is not a living thing, but it requires a tremendous foundation. Paul tells us in Ephesians that the foundation is Jesus Christ. Having received Christ, we are to walk in Him. Doing what? Being rooted, drawing our life from Him as a tree, and built up in Him, your faith resting upon Him.
That is why he adds, “and stablished in the faith.” A better translation would be “by your faith.” Faith is the means by which you and I lay hold of Christ.
2. Now Paul moves on to discuss the danger of philosophy.


Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ [Col. 2:8].

“Beware”—Look out! Stop, look, and listen!
“Lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.” If you were to follow the history of philosophy beginning with Plato, including many of the church fathers, and coming down to more recent times (including Kant, Locke, and Bultmann, who seems to be the craze with some theologians right now), you would find that none of them have a high view of the inspiration of the Word of God. They are looking for answers to the problems of life, but they will not be found in philosophy.
A true philosopher is a seeker after truth, but truth is not found in human wisdom. Christ is the answer, the answer to philosophy. Paul wrote, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom …” (1 Cor. 1:30, italics mine). But false philosophy is like a blind man looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there—there is no hope for its search for truth. Paul warns the Colossians to beware of this.
“After the tradition of men.” You may remember that the Lord Jesus condemned the religious rulers in His day because they taught the tradition of men rather than the Word of God. Very frankly, this is one of the reasons I have turned to the teaching of the total Word of God. It is so easy to lift out some peculiar interpretation of some particular passage and then ride that like a hobby horse. I believe in prophecy, but there is more in the Word of God than just prophecy. Some preachers dwell on the Christian life. That certainly is in the Bible, but there is more than just that. This is why I think it is so important for us to study the total Word of God.
“After the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” The Greek word for “rudiments” is stoicheion, which means “that which is basic,” the ABC’s. Some people try to build their Christian living on some worldly system that seems so simple. Our base is not philosophy or a worldly system; our base is Christ.
Now Paul will speak of Christ:


For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily [Col. 2:9].

In Him dwelleth all the pleroµma—this is a clear-cut statement of the deity of Christ. It could not be stated any stronger than it is here. In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead—not just 99.44 percent but 100 percent.


And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power [Col. 2:10].

You “are complete in him.” “Complete” is a nautical term, and it could be translated in this very vivid way: You are ready for the voyage of life in Him. Isn’t that a wonderful way of saying it? You are ready for the voyage of life in Christ, and whatever you need for the voyage of life you will find in Him. This is where we say that Christ is the answer. What is your question? What is it you need today? Are you carried away by human philosophy? Then turn to Christ. Are you carried away by enticing words? Are you carried away by the systems and traditions of men? Turn to Christ.


In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ [Col. 2:11].

Paul is telling them to get rid of that which is outward. The real circumcision is the New Birth. He explained this to the Galatians: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (Gal. 6:15). You and I become new creatures when we come to Christ and trust Him as our Savior. We rest in Him; we are identified with Him.


Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead [Col. 2:12].

Lord Lyndhurst was the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain and possessed a sharp legal mind. He made this statement: “I know pretty well what evidence is; and I tell you, such evidence as that for the Resurrection has never broken down yet.” The death and resurrection of Christ is an historical fact. When Christ died you and I died with Him; He took our place. And when He was raised, we were raised in Him, and we are now joined to a living Christ. It is so important for us to see that we are joined to a living Savior.
It is so important to keep in mind that no outward ceremony brings us to Christ. The issue is whether or not we are born again, whether we really know Christ as Savior. If we do know Him, we are identified with Him. Identification with Christ is “putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ,” which is a spiritual circumcision.
When you put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit baptizes you into the body of Christ. It is by this baptism that we are identified with Christ, and we are also “risen with him”—joined to the living Christ.
“Through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised him from the dead”—salvation is accomplished by the resurrection power of God. It’s not some philosophy; it’s not some gimmick; it’s not some little system; it’s not the taking of some course that will enable you to live for God.


And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses [Col. 2:13].

Salvation is not the improvement of the old nature; it is the impartation of a new nature.
Remember that Paul had to deal with two systems of Greek philosophy which were very popular in his day. They were diametrically opposed to each other, but they both came out at the same end of the horn. One philosophy was Stoicism, and the other was Epicureanism.
The Stoic taught that man was to live nobly and that death could not matter. The idea was to hold the appetites in cheek and to become indifferent to changing conditions. In effect they said, “Be not uplifted by good fortune nor cast down by adversity.” They believed that man is more than circumstances and that the soul is greater than the universe. It was a brave philosophy, you see. But the problem was how to live it. It was like the people who say that they are living by the Sermon on the Mount when actually they are many miles from it.
The Epicurean taught that all is uncertain. “We know not whence we came; we know not whither we go. We only know that after a brief life we disappear from this scene, and it is vain to deny ourselves any present joy in view of the possible future ill. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
The interesting thing to observe is that both these systems attempted to deal with the flesh—that is, the old nature that you and I have—not the meat on our bones. The old nature works through our old habits, old desires, old testings and temptations. How are we going to bring that under control?
There are all kinds of gimmicks and systems that are set before us today to enable us to live the Christian life. I know people who have been to Bible conferences where the Christian life is taught, and at home they have a drawer filled with notebooks. But they are not doing so well in living the Christian life. Why not? Because we need to recognize this one important thing that Paul is saying here: we are joined to the living Christ. Now, if you are joined to Him, my friend, you are going to live as if you are. How close are you to Him? Do you walk with Him? Do you turn to Him in all the emergencies of this life? Is He the One who is the very center of your life?
3. As Paul turns now to the error of legality, we will again find that the answer is to come to the Word of God and through it to come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

A glory gilds the sacred page,
Majestic like the sun.
It sheds a light on every age;
It gives but borrows none.


Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross [Col. 2:14].

“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us.” This old flesh of ours has been condemned. When Christ died, He died for you and me; He paid the penalty for our sin.
When the Lord Jesus died, Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross: “This is Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews” (see John 19:19). He was being publicly executed on the grounds that He had led in a rebellion. This was, of course, not true, but that was the charge against Him. When the people standing there read that sign they understood that He had been disloyal to Caesar in that He had made Himself to be a king. To them that was the reason He was dying on a cross.
But when God looked upon that cross, He saw an altar on which the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world was offered. God saw another inscription there high above the inscription that man had written. “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” What did God write on that cross? He wrote the ordinances—He wrote the Ten Commandments. He wrote a law which I cannot keep, ordinances which I am guilty of breaking. When Christ died there, He did not die because He broke them; He was sinless. But it was because I broke them, because I am a sinner, and because you are. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
Therefore, my friend, if God has saved you and raised you from the dead and joined you to a living Christ, why should you go back to a law that you couldn’t keep in the first place? You can’t even keep the law today in your own power and in your own strength. You see, the law was given to discipline the old nature. But now the believer is given a new nature, and the law has been removed as a way of life.
Let me give you an illustration. A man once came to me and said, “I’ll give you $100 if you will show me where the Sabbath day has been changed.” I answered, “I don’t think it has been changed. Saturday is Saturday, it is the seventh day of the week, and it is the Sabbath day. I realize our calendar has been adjusted and can be off a few days, but we won’t even consider that point. The seventh day is still Saturday and is still the Sabbath day.” He got a gleam in his eye and said, “Then why don’t you keep the Sabbath day if it hasn’t been changed?” I answered, “The day hasn’t changed, but I have been changed. I’ve been given a new creation. We celebrate the first day because that is the day He rose from the grave.” That is what it means when he says that the ordinances which were against us have been nailed to His cross.


And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it [Col. 2:15].

The spiritual victory that Christ won for the believer is of inestimable value.

CHRIST, THE ANSWER TO RITUAL (FOR THE HEART)


Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ [Col. 2:16–17].


Abeliever is not to observe ordinances that are only ritual and liturgical; they have no present value. God did give certain rituals for the people in the Old Testament. So what has changed? Paul explains that they were merely “a shadow of things to come.” We get our word photograph from the Greek word used here for “shadow.” All the rituals of the Law in the Old Testament were like a negative or a picture—they were just pictures of Christ. Now that Christ has come, we have the reality. Why should we go back and look at a picture?
I remember that, during the days of World War II, I performed the wedding ceremony of two wonderful young people here in Pasadena. (We knew a number of young men who went to war, and some of them gave their lives.) This young fellow was sent overseas, and while he was gone, his young bride carried the biggest purse I have ever seen (and I have seen some big ones). In that purse she carried a huge photograph of him. Most people carry a little bitty picture with them, but not this girl; she carried a photograph that you could have hung on the wall. She was everlastingly drawing it out and showing it to people. She’d say, “Isn’t he handsome?” (Between you and me, he wasn’t what I would call a handsome boy. He was a wonderful boy, but he was not handsome.) Then the day came when the war was over, and he was coming home. She went all the way to Seattle, Washington, to meet him. Now what do you think she did when she saw him coming down the gangplank? She hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. Do you think she took out that picture and looked at it? Do you think she looked at the picture and said, “Isn’t he wonderful?” I don’t think she even had that picture with her! She saw him and when she saw him, she didn’t need a picture—she threw her arms around him.
Many of us need to get off the merry-go-round of attending seminars, adapting gimmicks, jumping through everybody’s little hoop, and taking a shortcut to the abundant life. Have we really arrived? Some think they have. Let’s stop carrying around a faded photograph when we have the reality—“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
4. We come now to the warning against mysticism.


Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,

And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God [Col. 2:18–19].

This is another point at which people get off the track. Paul is here condemning the Gnostics who made a pretense of wisdom. And we have today in our church circles a great many folk who assume a pious superiority—they are what I call “spiritual snobs.” It has been my experience that these people generally are very ignorant of the Bible. “Intruding into those things which he hath not seen”—that’s a pretense, putting on, acting like you have something that you don’t really have.
“And not holding the Head” means that such people have a loose relationship with Christ. In other words, their head is not screwed on as it should be, by the way.
5. The final warning is against the error of asceticism.


Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,

(Touch not; taste not; handle not;
Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?

Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh [Col. 2:20–23].

Here again, when Paul says “if ye be dead with Christ,” the translation would be better as, “since ye be dead with Christ.” In other words, since you have died when Christ died, do not return to pre-cross living.
I think, very candidly, that this is a terrible problem. There are people who follow some passing fad in the church. A few years ago the fad was that women couldn’t use lipstick (and some of them sure looked pale). I remember when I was teaching in a school that wouldn’t permit the girls to wear lipstick, a girl came to me and asked, “Do you think it is all right to use lipstick?” I answered her, “There are a lot of these folk around here who would look better if they used a little lipstick. God wants us to look the best that we can. Even when we have little to work with, we ought to do the best we can with it.”
What we are dealing with here is “the pride that apes humility” that Juvenal speaks of. It is the pride that says, “I deny myself, and I don’t do these things. Just look at me. I’m really sprouting wings, and I shine my halo every morning.”
“Not in any honour” means it is not of any value. My friend, that is asceticism that is no good. God wants you to rejoice in Him; Christ wants you to be close to Him. And if you’re going to walk with Him, my friend, you are going to have a good time!

CHAPTER 3

Theme: Christ, the fullness of God, poured out in life through believers; thoughts and affections of believers are heavenly; living of believers is holy


We come now to the line of division in this little epistle, which conforms to Paul’s regular way of dividing his epistles. He always gives the doctrinal section and then the practical section. Chapters 3 and 4 comprise the practical section of Colossians.
We have seen the preeminence of Christ in chapters 1–2. We have seen Him as He is, a member of the Trinity. He is very man of very man, but He is very God of very God. He is preeminent in creation because He is the Creator. He is preeminent in redemption for He is the Redeemer. He is preeminent in the church because He is the One who gave Himself for the church.
Now we have come to the place where Paul will insist that He must be made preeminent in our lives. Today we hear a great deal of talk about dedication. Well, what is dedication? A very brief definition is: Dedication is Christ preeminent in our lives.
You cannot just say, “I am a dedicated Christian,” and then live your life as you please as a great many people are trying to do today. No, if Christ is preeminent in your life, then you are going to live out His life down here on earth. Paul has already made this clear in the doctrinal section: “For in him [in Christ] dwelleth all the fulness [pleroµma] of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him …” (Col. 2:9–10). You are made full in Him. You are ready for the voyage of life in Him. In other words, Christ is really the solution to all the problems of life.
Paul has discussed the different things that lead people away from the person of Christ. He has warned against enticing words which carry people away by great oratory. He has warned against philosophy, legality, mysticism, and asceticism. All these lead people away from the person of Christ.
The Christian life is to live out the life of Christ. You and I will find in Christ Jesus all that we need. In this practical section of the epistle, Paul will show us Christ, the fullness of God, poured out in life through believers—that is the only way He can be poured out.

THOUGHTS AND AFFECTIONS OF BELIEVERS ARE HEAVENLY

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God [Col. 3:1].

Again, this is not the if of condition; it is really the if of argument. We saw this same thing back in Colossians 1:23 where we read: “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled….” There was no question about their continuing in the faith grounded and settled. The lives of these Colossian Christians evidenced their salvation. What was the evidence? It was faith, hope, and love—the fruit of the Spirit was in their lives. “Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus”—the word had gotten around that they had a living faith in Christ Jesus; “and of the love which ye have to all the saints”—they loved the believers (Col. 1:4). Love among the believers is so important, and I do not mean this sentimental stuff that you hear so much about today. For instance, if you are a minister, you evidence your love for your congregation if you give them the Word of God, and you show your love for your pastor as a member of the church if you support his Bible-teaching ministry. My friend, love is very practical—it gets right down where the rubber meets the road. If it doesn’t, it’s no good at all. Love is that which manifests itself in reality. The Colossians had faith, and they had love. They also had hope: “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven …” (Col. 1:5). That hope is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for His church. These three—faith, hope, and love—were the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers in Colosse. Therefore, when Paul says “if,” it is the if of argument. Verse 1 here in chapter 3 would be better translated, “Since you are risen with Christ.”
“Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.” Where is Christ today? He’s sitting at the right hand of God.
What are we to do today? We are to “seek those things which are above.” Seek is an interesting word. It actually means “having an urgency and a desire and an ambition.” There should be an excitement that goes with seeking spiritual things.
When we watch the Olympic games, we see folk who are running or performing some athletic feat to win a gold medal. Believe me, those folk are seeking. I don’t see many saints looking for gold medals today, but we are to be seeking Christ with that kind of urgency.
“Those things which are above”—these are the things of Christ. I want you to note that Paul is not saying that we should seek such courses as are offered today that are a mixture of pseudopsychology with a smattering of Bible. This kind of teaching is handed out in a few night classes, and then some poor crippled Christians think they have the answers to the problems of life—all the way from a neurotic mother-in-law to a boss who is a dirty old man. They think some little course will teach them how to treat everybody and every problem. They consider it a do-it-yourself kit, a kind of an open sesame to a new life. Now I say to you, and I say it very carefully, you will only experience the new life as you “seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.”
I will get even more personal in my illustration. You cannot find the answers in anything I have produced—either a book or a tape-recorded message. Now I am stepping on some toes, including my own toes. A couple came to me this past summer at a conference and said, “Dr. McGee, we have a certain tape of yours, and we play it at least once a week and listen to it.” My reaction was that they had better burn that tape. I had the feeling they were beginning to worship that tape and that tape wasn’t getting them through to Christ.
And now I’m really going to step on toes; Paul doesn’t say here to seek out and listen to any preacher or teacher! May I say this to you very kindly and very frankly: Don’t make Dr. McGee or any man your idol. If you do, you have an idol who has feet of clay. You would be looking to a man who is just like you are. I make a lot of mistakes. I’m not near the man I’d like to be, nor the husband I’d like to be, nor the father or grandfather I’d like to be. Don’t make anything man produces a god for yourself.
The purpose of this poor preacher is to get out the Word of God to you so that you can see the living Christ and get through to Him. If the Holy Spirit doesn’t use my ministry to get you through to the living Christ, then I have failed—then I have fallen flat on my face, and I am willing to quit. I believe with all my heart that the Bible is the one Book which reveals the living Christ, and that is my purpose in teaching it.
I would like to give you an illustration of this. I went to school with a fellow who was a Canadian, and he told me about his first trip to Niagara Falls. (By the way, Mrs. McGee and I saw it for the first time this past summer. When we were looking over the falls, I said to her, “Honey, I promised you we would go to Niagara Falls on our honeymoon. I think we are still on our honeymoon, and here we are.”) Well, my classmate told me that as a boy he got on a train on the Canadian side of the falls, which is the prettiest side. He said, “When I got off the train, I could hear the roar of the falls, but I couldn’t see them. I began to move toward the sound, and I came to a big building. I went into that building, which was like a Union Station in the United States: there was the popcorn vendor, the soda pop machine, the gift shop, and candy papers, chewing gum wrappers and even chewing gum on the floor. People were sitting all around. I was really disappointed, but I could still hear the roar of the falls. Then I looked down to the end of the building, and there I saw the biggest picture I had ever seen in my life. The frame of the picture took in most of the end of that building. It was a picture of Niagara Falls. I couldn’t believe that right there at the falls they would have a picture of them. I began to walk down toward that picture, and as I drew closer to it, I began to realize that through a frame I was looking at the real, living, running Niagara Falls!”
My friend, when you read the Bible, you are not looking at a dead person. You are looking at the real, living Christ. He is the One at God’s right hand. We are to seek those things which are above—we are to seek Him. That is why I have a ministry of teaching through the Bible. There is no shortcut. Some have suggested that I cut it down to a one-year program, but that certainly is not adequate. And, really, five years is not adequate. Some have suggested that I lengthen it to ten years, but that is not feasible for me. Even if we took ten, or even twenty years, we would not know it all. At the end of his life Paul could still say: “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Phil. 3:10).
Real study of the Word of God will get you through to the living Christ. Let me illustrate this with a letter from a listener to our radio program:

When we were studying Romans and Corinthians, I began to realize just how much of a carnal Christian I really was. I began to desire much more than that. So I began to pray that I might truly know Christ as God would want me to. Nothing happened for a while, but I kept praying. And then God did answer my prayer. One day you said that God sees us in Christ, and it was as though some dark, hidden thing had been brought out into the light. I had read Ephesians many times before, but that day your message really struck home. It is a wonderful thing to know that Paul’s prayer is still being answered today. I realized that day that God no longer looked down upon me as a poor sinner struggling upon this earth, but in Christ and that I belong to Him as a child….

May I say to you from my heart, get through to Christ. “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.”


Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth [Col. 3:2].

Actually the word for “affection” is mind. Think about the things that are above. In Philippians Paul said that whatever things are true and honest and just and lovely, think on these things—the things of Christ. Life is full of its smaller problems (like whether or not you can get along with your mother-in-law), and they are very real to us, but by far the greatest need is for us to get through to Christ. That should come before everything else. “Set your affection on things above.”


For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God [Col. 3:3].

“For ye are dead” might better be translated “for ye have died.” If you have died, when did you die? Paul wrote to the Galatians, “I am crucified with Christ …” (Gal. 2:20). You died more than nineteen hundred years ago when Christ died. He took my place; He took your place. We died in Him.
“Your life is hid with Christ in God.” I have been taken out of the old Adam by baptism; that is, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I have been taken out of Adam and placed in Christ. I am now in Christ. Now that I am in Christ, I should live out His life and let His fullness be lived out through me.


When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory [Col. 3:4].

If you have any life, it is Christ’s life. John wrote in his first epistle that it was his intent to “shew unto you that eternal life.” How could he show eternal life? He was going to show us Christ; Christ is eternal life. And one of these days those who belong to Him are going to “appear with him in glory.”

LIVING OF BELIEVERS IS HOLY

If we are truly risen with Christ this will be evident in two areas of our lives: (1) our personal holiness, and (2) our fellowship with others who are about us.
It seems that Christians are frightened of this matter of holiness. When I was a young preacher, I heard the late Bishop Moore of the old Southern Methodist church make this statement: “If Methodists were as afraid of sin as they are of holiness, it would be a wonderful thing.” This isn’t true of Methodists alone; it is true of most Christians. Somehow we don’t like this term holiness. It is a very good word, and that is Paul’s subject here—personal holiness.
Christ was born as a little Babe in Bethlehem, but He is no longer in that inn. He is up yonder at God’s right hand at this very moment. He’s on a throne—not in a cradle and not in an inn but in heaven itself. And He’s there for you and me today. Now, if you are in Christ, if you have accepted Him as your Savior, then that is going to show in your life down here. Friend, if it doesn’t tell in your life down here, then maybe you are not in Him up yonder!


Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry [Col. 3:5].

Mortify means “to put to death, or put in the place of death.”
Fornication means “sexual immorality.” Is that your sin today? Let’s not kid ourselves—there are a great many folk who are covering up this sin, and yet they still talk about being dedicated Christians! Paul brings this right out into the open and tells us that we are to put our physical members in the place of death. Do your eyes cause you trouble? Do you look with the eye of covetousness, or the eye of lust? Put those eyes in the place of death, and now use them as the eyes of Christ to look upon Him. My friend, that will change things, will it not?
Uncleanness includes thoughts, words, looks, gestures, and the jokes we tell.
Inordinate affection means “uncontrolled passion or lust.” Every now and then someone will confess to me a sin in his life, and he will say “Well, I couldn’t help myself.” My friend, you ought not to get in that spot in the first place. It’s like the little boy whose mama called to him one night when she heard him in the kitchen, “Where are you?” He said, “I’m in the pantry.” He had the cookie jar open. She called, “What are you doing?” He answered, “I’m fighting temptation!” My friend, that is the wrong place to fight temptation. Don’t fight it there at the cookie jar, if you’re not to have the cookies. The same thing applies to inordinate affection.
Evil concupiscence—that means “evil desires.” Put them to death, my friend.
“Covetousness, which is idolatry” means when we always must have more. Is the almighty dollar your god today? Are you more interested in the dollar than you are in the living Christ? These questions can begin to hurt! Our bodies are the tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, and they are to be used for God.
When I drove to my office this morning there were a great many people on their way to work. Many of them were professional men and business executives. One man went by me in a Cadillac. He didn’t see me or anyone else because he was in such a hurry. I don’t know why he was hurrying, but I can guess. We see pictures of people in other lands going to heathen temples and worshiping there, and we feel sorry for them in the darkness of their idolatry. But I suspect that the fellow in the Cadillac was also in darkness, that he was on his way to worship his idol and to bow before it. His idol was the almighty dollar, and he was rushing to work to see how many he could make. A great many folk are overcome by this matter of covetousness. They covet the material things of this world—they want more money.
I would venture to say that covetousness is the root of most of the problems in our country today. “… the love of money is the root of all evil …” (1 Tim. 6:10). Money is not the problem—it can even be used for the glory of God. But there are many men, even Christians, who are working on that second million, and they don’t need it. It is because they worship an idol. If you are in Christ, He will come first and you will seek those things which are above.


For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience [Col. 3:6].

“For which things’ sake”—Paul means the things he has just been speaking of, the things which the world does.
“The wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience.” Men are not lost simply because they do these things, neither are they lost because they haven’t heard of Christ. Men are lost because they are sinners, sinners in their hearts. And, because they are sinners, they do these things.


In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them [Col. 3:7].

Those of us who now know the Lord practiced these sins in our lives at one time. I hope that we are not still doing them.
I met a young millionaire in Florida quite a few years ago. He very frankly admitted that before he was saved he worshiped the almighty dollar. He was always after the next dollar and then the next one. When he came to Christ, he decided to retire. He had already made a million dollars and any more that he made he wanted to put into the Lord’s work. He wanted to spend his time seeking the things of Christ.
Oh, my friend, do we put Him first? Or are we engaged in the very things that the world is engaged in and for which God intends to judge them? Well, how then can we expect that we shall escape the judgment of God? If you are in Christ, seek those things which are above, and you will not find yourself involved in the things of the world.

But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth [Col. 3:8].
These are the habits that we are to put off as we would put off a garment. We call a garment a habit, do we not. Many folk have a riding habit or a golfing habit. I have an old pair of slacks that I play golf in—that’s my golfing habit. (I don’t look very good, but that is what I wear.) Different people have different habits that they wear. Paul says that we are to put off these old practices as we’d put off a dirty, filthy garment. You don’t send it to the laundry—you throw it away! You put it in the garbage can. You “put off all these.”
The first is “anger.” There is a place for anger that is justified. You remember that the Lord Jesus was angry at the Pharisees because of the hardness of their hearts. That is not a sinful anger. The problem is that we become angry over the wrong things.
Anger becomes “wrath” when we develop an unforgiving spirit.
Someone has said that “malice” is congealed anger. It is an anger that has been nursed along. It is an anger that tries to take revenge and get even. Paul says that a Christian is to put that off like an old, dirty, filthy garment. That kind of behavior does not represent Christ.
“Blasphemy” can be of two kinds. There is a blasphemy against God and a blasphemy against man. The first type of blasphemy is to defame the name of God. It is not just taking His name in vain, but it is to misrepresent Him, to hate Him. I received a letter from a lady that tells about the death of her little three-year-old child and how she hated God because of that. Somebody gave her our little booklet, The Death of a Little Child, and she was brought to the Lord. She realized that she had been only a church member before and had not really been born again. You see that hating God for something that has happened is really blasphemy.
Did you know that you can also blaspheme another Christian when you make a statement about him that is not true? I remember years ago a statement that was made by a man about a preacher who was Arminian in his theology. The man who made the statement was a Calvinist, and he said that the preacher was “of Satan.” Well, my friend, when you say things like that, untrue things about a child of God, you are guilty of blasphemy.
“Filthy communication out of your mouth” means foul communication and includes both that which is abusive and that which is filthy. I can’t believe that Christians would want to indulge in that, but I am told that there are certain little groups which meet together and share dirty jokes. Some Christians use swear words. In fact, I have heard of Christian leaders doing that. I do not believe that you can be a child of God, friend, and live like that. These are things that are to be put off.


Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds [Col. 3:9].

To whom is Paul speaking? He is writing this to believers, because he says, “seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.” Is it possible for a Christian to lie? It certainly is. That doesn’t mean that you have lost your salvation when you do—otherwise many of us would have lost ours a long time ago. It does reveal that you don’t reach a place of perfection, my friend, nor do you get rid of the old nature, when you become a child of God.
I believe one of the first sins a little child commits is to lie. I heard the story about the little boy who came running into the house and said, “Mama, Mama, a lion just ran across our front lawn.” The mother said, “Willie, you know that was not a lion. That was a big dog that ran across the lawn. You go upstairs and confess to the Lord that you lied about that.” Little Willie went upstairs and after a while he came down again. His mother asked, “Did you confess your lie to the Lord?” He answered, “Yes, I did. But the Lord said when He first saw him, He thought he was a lion, too!” Lying is something that is deep-rooted in the human heart, and many Christians still indulge in it.


And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him [Col. 3:10].

“Put on the new man.” If you take off the old garment, the old man, you put on the new garment, the new man. Nature abhors a vacuum. Putting off is not enough, we must live in the new man by the power of the Holy Spirit.
You and I have an old nature which has controlled us for so long that we have set up certain habits. That is why garment is such an effective term here—it’s a habit. We have developed certain patterns in the way we say and do things. We also have within us a complex nervous system that is conditioned to respond in a set fashion. If I put my hand down on red hot stove, a message travels through the nervous system to the brain. The message gets switched over to a motor nerve which goes back down to the hand and says, “Say, you crazy fool, take your hand off that red hot stove. You’re getting burned!” And you jerk your hand off the stove. Of course, it all happens more quickly than I can tell it. It is a reflex reaction that occurs very quickly. In the same way, our habit patterns are formed.
It is psychologically true that we are able to put off old habits and form new ones. But it is especially true for the believer because he has the power of the Holy Spirit within him. We are to “put on the new man.”
“Renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” You are to put on the new man, and that new Man is Christ. In that way the church is able to represent Him on this earth.


Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all [Col. 3:11].

“Neither Greek nor Jew”—in the church, the body of believers, there is neither Greek nor Jew. This was a religious division or distinction that was made in Paul’s day.
“Circumcision nor uncircumcision.” This was also a religious division.
“Barbarian, Scythian.” Barbarians were those who were not Greeks, those whom we would call heathen today. The Scythian was the worst kind of barbarian. Scythia was north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The people who lived there were probably the most barbaric the world has known. You talk about pagan, heathen, brutal, and mean! They would take their enemies and scalp them; then they would use the skull as a cup and drink the blood of their victims out of the skull! I cannot think of anything more heathen than that! Did you know that the ancestors of many of us who have white skin came from that territory? We are called Caucasians after the area where these barbarians lived.
Even in Paul’s day, some of these people were being led to Christ. The gospel had reached out and done a tremendous work, and some of them were in the church at Colosse. Missionaries had gone north beyond the Black and Caspian Seas—Scythians had been won for Jesus Christ. Even though they were barbarians, they were brought into that one body which is the church.
“But Christ is all, and in all.” You just can’t have it any more wonderful than that, my friend. This is something that is beyond description. Christ is the catalyst who brings together individuals and groups who are separate and makes them one in Him. A catalyst is a substance that is placed with elements that are opposed to each other and brings them together into a new compound. This is exactly what Christ does. We have all been made one in Him!
Remember that we are in the practical section of Colossians. In the doctrinal section we saw Christ who is the fullness of God and the head of the church. Believers have been made full, made complete in Him. We will find all that we need in Christ, not in any man-made legal or philosophical system.
Since we have risen with Christ, we are to seek those things that are above where Christ is at the right hand of God. We have seen that this will lead to personal holiness. Beginning now with verse 12 we will find that it will also lead to holiness in our relationship to others; then verses 18–21 will deal with holiness in the home; and verses 22–25 with holiness on the job. The Christian life is living out the fullness of Christ in our walk in the home, on the job, and in our social relationships.
Paul has clearly labeled the things of the old man that are to be put off. Now he will label the specifics that are to make up the wardrobe of the new man. We are going to see the latest in fashions for Christians, by the way. In fact, I have written a message on this passage of Scripture, and I have called it, “What the Well-Dressed Christian Will Wear This Year.”

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering [Col. 3:12].
“The elect of God.” There is a great deal of discussion about this matter of election. The fact of the matter is that if you have trusted Christ, you have on this new garment, and you are one of the elect. If these things that Paul is going to list are in your life, you’re of the elect. I couldn’t begin to tell you otherwise, nor argue any further about that—you’re of the elect. The elect of God are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
You will notice that the garments Paul is mentioning here are actually the fruit of the Holy Spirit. You and I cannot produce them in our lives. The minute you and I think about the wonderful position that we have in Christ and the high calling we have in Him, we have to recognize as we look at ourselves that we are impotent. We are weak and powerless, unable to “put on” these fruits. We are in the same position as the bride in the Song of Solomon. She had been kissed with the kiss of peace. Peace has been made with God. He has kissed us, my friend, and told us that our sins are forgiven us in Christ. How wonderful that is! But as the children of God we still sin. Then we need to remember the boy who got away from his father and his home, who lived in sin and wasted his fortune in riotous living. When he came back home, his father saw him afar off and ran and fell on his neck. What did he do? He kissed his son. That is the kiss of pardon, the kiss of forgiveness which God gives to His children.
We are in the position of the bride who says in the Song of Solomon, “Draw me, draw me” (see Song. 1:4). I am not able to attain to this wonderful position that I have in Christ. I can’t do it myself. So you and I find ourselves cast upon Him. This is where the Spirit of God moves in and enables us to walk in the Spirit.
Bowels of mercies means “heart of compassion.” How heartless this world is today. How indifferent and mechanical it has become! I find that much of the time I am simply a number. In the few business transactions that I have, a computer—a machine—does business with me. I can’t tell that machine how I feel. I can’t tell that machine when it has made a mistake. I can’t tell that machine when I have made a mistake. I just do business with that machine. It sends me a bill and I pay it—that’s all. I also do business with a bank. It has as much heart as the computer. In fact, the computer is the heart of the bank. Since I have had cancer I must also do business with my doctor. I have a very wonderful doctor who takes care of me, but when I had to be taken to the emergency room and had a strange doctor, I found that he considered me just a boy with a stomachache. I wasn’t a person to him at all. He just talked in big medical terms—that’s all I was to him.
Paul is saying that as believers we should have a heart of compassion in our relationships with those around us.
Kindness is a word that Paul uses that carries with it the thought of being “profitable.” It means to be helpful to others. There is another Greek word for kindness that has an element of sternness in it. You can be kind and still be stern, as when I tell my grandson, “Don’t you do that.” When I say that, I mean to be stern with him. But there is the kindness that means gentleness, and that is the word that Paul uses here.
Humbleness is “meekness.” As I say so often, meekness does not mean weakness. Notice that here Paul’s emphasis is “humbleness of mind.”
Meekness. Here the emphasis is meekness of spirit.
Longsuffering is the Greek word makrothumia, which means “long-burning”—it burns a long time. We shouldn’t have a short fuse with our friends and Christian brethren. We shouldn’t make snap judgments.


Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye [Col. 3:13].

Quarrel actually is “complaint.” Paul is including situations where there is blame involved and the complaint is justified.
What are we to do in such circumstances? “Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” This does not mean that you become a doormat. But it does mean that when we have a complaint, we’re to go to the individual and try to work out the matter.
There are always going to be some people with whom you cannot work out things—we must realize that. When our Lord denounced the Pharisees, there was no mention of forgiveness—He just denounced them. They did not seek His forgiveness, of course.
Paul’s thought here is that Christ has forgiven us so much that it won’t hurt us to forgive somebody who has stepped on our toes. We are to forgive others in the same way that Christ has forgiven us.


And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful [Col. 3:14–15].
Charity is “love.” Put on love. We have here in these verses two fruits of the Spirit: love and peace.
Rule means “to umpire.” The peace of God should govern our hearts.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord [Col. 3:16].
There are many people who are great on doctrine and want to be fundamental in the faith. That is all-important, and I don’t think anyone emphasizes it any more than I do. These people can often be heard praising Bible study, yet they do not attend Bible study, and they know so little about the Word of God.
“The word of Christ.” The Lord Jesus said, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you” (John 15:3). The best Saturday night bath that you can take is to study the Word of God.
Dwell means “to be at home, to be given the run of the house.” We should be familiar with the Word of God. The Bible should not be a strange book to you as it is to so many people today.
“Let the peace of God rule in your hearts”—let it be an umpire. And then “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom”—let it be at home. Know Him. Be familiar with the Word of Christ; study it and know what He’s saying to you. That is where He is going to speak to you today, my friend—in His Word.
“Teaching and admonishing one another”—in what? “In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”
“Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” I can’t sing—so my singing never does get beyond that which is in the heart. The point is that we are to let the Word of God have this marvelous influence in our lives that Paul has described here.


And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him [Col. 3:17].

Do you want a norm for Christian conduct? Do you want a standard to go by? Do you want a principle rather than a lot of little rules? Paul gives us such a principle here. He does not say what we should or should not do. He simply says, “Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” My friend, whatever you do—at your place of employment, in your home, and in all relationships with others—can you say, “I’m doing this in the name of the Lord Jesus”? If you can say that, if you are doing it in His name, then go ahead and do it. This is a marvelous standard, a yardstick that we can put down on our lives.
Now Paul comes to the subject of holiness in the home. You will notice that he is dealing with the same things that he dealt with in the Epistle to the Ephesians. There he told them to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and then he gave them these same instructions. Here in Colossians he writes, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom,” and then he goes on to give instructions for living.
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It means that you will have to be filled with the Word of Christ also. The Word of God is inspired by the Spirit of God. If the Word of God dwells in you richly, then you are filled with the Spirit of God. I do not believe that you can be filled with the Holy Spirit or that you can serve Christ until you are filled with the knowledge of His Word. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”
Now, if the Word of Christ dwells in you richly, it will work itself out in your life, and it will have an effect on your home.


Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord [Col. 3:18].

This is for the purpose of order in the home. This is not for the purpose of producing a browbeating husband. I do not believe that God intends for a wife to submit to an unsaved husband who beats her or orders her to do things contrary to her walk with the Lord.
A woman wrote to me and said that her husband was an unsaved man. When he would get drunk, he would beat her. She felt as a Christian she ought to stay with him. I advised her to leave him. I do not believe that God ever asks any woman to stay with a drunken husband. She loses her own personality; she loses her own dignity, and she will find herself being brought down to his level if she submits to that. She is to submit “as it is fit in the Lord.”

Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them [Col. 3:19].
The husband who loves his wife is the one to whom the wife is to submit. She is not to be the one to take the lead in the family, but she is to urge him to take the lead. I think we have had this thing all wrong for a long time. In my entire ministry I have removed the word obey from the marriage ceremony. I don’t think it belongs in there at all.


Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord [Col. 3:20].

Children are to obey their parents. They are to honor their parents all their lives, but when they are children they are to obey them.
However, the child also needs to grow up. I don’t think this verse means that a twenty-four-year-old boy must stay tied to his mama’s apron strings. Whether he is married or single, when he has reached maturity, he is ready to get away from his parents. We see so many teenagers rebelling against their parents in our day. I believe that God may have put into the hearts of teenagers the necessity to get away. There is a period in their lives that is a weaning time, and they need to learn to be independent. I have seen some literature that tells young married couples that they are still to go to their parents and obey them. I think that is nonsense and entirely unscriptural (see Gen. 2:24). “Children, obey your parents in all things” is a verse for children, for minors.

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged [Col. 3:21].
Let me refer you to my book on Ephesians and my comment on Ephesians 6:4. The remarkable feature of this verse, as given both in Ephesians and Colossians, is that under the Mosaic Law, the commandment referred only to the children. There was no reference to parents. Had the Law developed in the parents a dictatorship rather than a directorship? No. The Book of Proverbs reveals that the responsibility to find God’s will for the child had been given to the parents: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).
Now the apostle moves on to the subject of holiness on the job, at the place of employment. He will discuss the relationships that exist on the job, the relationship of capital to labor.


Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God [Col. 3:22].

Eye-service is a word peculiar in the New Testament to the writings of Paul. He means, “Don’t keep your eye on the clock. Keep your eye on Christ. He is the One whom you are serving.” That is the way you ought to do your job.
Sometimes Christians talk about being dedicated to the Lord and wanting to serve the Lord, but they are lazy. We had one boy working here at our radio headquarters who was like that. He stood around with his hands in his pockets all the while his mouth was going, but he thought he was dedicated! May I say something very frankly? If you are lazy on the job, you are not dedicated to Jesus Christ.
Paul had reduced the Christian life to its lowest common denominator. He had one simple goal: “… forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13–14). He had his eye, his mind, his heart, and his total affections fixed upon Jesus Christ.
“In singleness of heart, fearing God.” The idea here is not to fear the boss, but to fear God.


And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men [Col. 3:23].

When Paul says to work “heartily,” he means work from your soul. We have heard a lot about a “soul brother,” but we ought to have a little more “soul work.” If you can’t do something with enthusiasm unto the Lord, regardless of what it is, it is wrong for you. Some people write in and ask me, “Is it right for me to do this?” or “Is it right for me to go to this place?” Here is your standard: “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord.” That applies to everything. Even if you cannot go to a church with enthusiasm, I would recommend you quit going to that church.
“As to the Lord, and not unto men.” Whatever we do should be done to the Lord, not to men. We are not to be men pleasers.


Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ [Col. 3:24].

Maybe you’re not going to have to report to your boss; or when his back is turned he doesn’t see that you are loafing on the job, not really giving him a full day’s work. But the Lord Jesus sees, and you are going to answer to Him. You are in Him, and you belong to Him. Therefore, you have to give an account of your life to Him.
Since we represent the Lord Jesus down here upon this earth, He is going to ask that His representatives be found faithful. There are a great many folk who are humble, little-known people that you and I know nothing about who have been faithful on the job. They have been faithful to their employer, faithful to their church, faithful to their homes, faithful to their pastor. Very few people know about them. The Lord knows. They will receive a reward. I think you and I are going to be surprised by the reward some people will get.
“For ye serve the Lord Christ.” This puts a different complexion upon Christian service down here. There are many people who are lazy in God’s work. I would say that laziness is one of the curses of the ministry. It is found in the church staff. It is so easy to loaf on the job because nobody is looking, nobody is watching. We need to remember that we serve the Lord Jesus, and we are going to give an account to Him.


But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons [Col. 3:25].

He is going to straighten out everything in your life and in my life that we don’t straighten out down here. This is exactly what this means.
It is a privilege to be in God’s service. It is a privilege to teach a Sunday school class. But don’t ever think that this makes you something special. When the Lord judges you, He will judge you on faithfulness. All will be judged alike. God is no respecter of persons.
My friend, we are joined to a living Christ. How wonderful it is! I cannot attain to it in my own strength. But He says He is going to help me. Only the Holy Spirit working in me can attain this high and holy calling. He wants me to mirror Him in every relationship I have down here. What a glorious calling you and I have! Doesn’t that give you enthusiasm today? Don’t look to the Babe in Bethlehem. Go to the living Christ who is at God’s right hand.

CHAPTER 4

Theme: Fellowship of believers is hearty


We are in the section of this epistle which is dealing with holiness on the job, at the place of employment. Chapter 3 concluded with exhortations to servants or to employees. Chapter 4 will continue with exhortations to masters or to employers.


Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven [Col. 4:1].

“Masters”—Paul has something to say not only to the servant but also to the masters, to the bosses.
“Equal” means not to level down but to level up. The master is to do right by his servant.
“Knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.” The master will stand before Christ someday. Every Christian employer, as well as employee, will stand before God. This does put the gospel in shoe leather, does it not? It gets right down where the rubber meets the road. Or, in this case, it gets right down where your foot is walking in the factory or in the office. Whatever you’re doing, you are to do it unto the Lord, because you are going to answer to Him if you are His child.
Now the next few verses present three more areas of Christian conduct which are important. They are prayer, our public walk, and speech.


Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving [Col. 4:2].

These two words go together: Pray and watch. They are very important. They remind us of the experience of Nehemiah. When the enemy tried to stop him from rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, he didn’t just throw in the towel and cry out that he couldn’t do the job. Nor did he simply say, “Well, we’ll make it a matter of prayer,” and then go on as he had been. No, this is what Nehemiah said: “Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night, because of them” (Neh. 4:9). This is what Paul tells us here: Watch and pray.
An old pastor in Georgia used to make this statement: “When a farmer prays for a corn crop, God expects him to say ‘Amen’ with a hoe.” If you are praying about a certain matter, get busy with it.
I’m afraid we hear a lot of pious nonsense about prayer. I received a letter from a preacher who has cancer. He said, “I’ve been to Mayo Clinic. They found that I have cancer, and they recommend an operation. But I have come home and decided that I would do like you did: I will just trust the Lord.” I sat down and wrote him a letter in a hurry. I said, “Brother, I did trust the Lord but that wasn’t all that I did. I went to whom I think is the finest cancer specialist out here on the West Coast. My case was brought up before the UCLA Medical Clinic and was discussed there. They recommended the best thing that medical science knew to do. I have had two operations for cancer. My Christian brother, if you want to be an intelligent Christian (and I think you are), then you go back to Mayo Clinic as quickly as you can and tell them to operate if that is what they think is best. Then you trust the Lord, and He will bring you through it. That is what I did.” Watch and pray. Be on the job. This is so practical.
“With thanksgiving.” Be sure and thank God always because He is going to hear and answer your prayer. Maybe it won’t be the answer you wanted, but He will answer. This is like breathing: inhale by prayer, exhale by thanksgiving.


Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds:

That I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak [Col. 4:3–4].

“Withal praying also for us”—Paul says, “Don’t forget to pray for us.” My friend, you can’t help Paul any longer by praying for him, but you can help your pastor and other Christian ministries.
“That God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds.” Paul was in prison when he wrote this. He wanted to be released and go out through an open door that he might preach the gospel.
I consider every aspect of my ministry to be a door, and I ask God to keep the doors open. He has promised that He would. This is the verse that I have chosen for my ministry: “… behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name” (Rev. 3:8). He has set a lot of open doors before me, and I ask Him to open even more doors.


Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time [Col. 4:5].

“Walk in wisdom.” The child of God has a responsibility before the world today. Don’t be foolish as a child of God.
We hear so much pious nonsense in our day. There are those who said the Lord would return by 1980. I don’t know where they got such information. There were probably a lot of embarrassed folk with red faces in 1980. Christians have no right to make such statements before an unsaved world. Nor should we say we are trusting the Lord when our actions show that we really are not trusting Him. We should not do foolish things before the world.
A woman in Southern California wrote me a letter and rebuked me for going to the doctor for treatment of my cancer. She said that that was not trusting the Lord. She wrote, “I have cancer and I am trusting the Lord. I don’t go to the doctor.” They buried her not long ago; she died of her cancer. I’m afraid at times we are guilty of causing our neighbors to smile and say, “This Christianity is a foolish sort of thing.” We need to learn to “walk in wisdom toward them that are without.”
“Redeeming the time.” Buy up your opportunities. When you see an opportunity, pray that the Lord will lead you. Don’t force yourself on people. Just pray and ask the Lord to open the door, and He will open it. I wish I had space to tell you how many times this has happened in my life and in the lives of others. Let Him open the door—before you make the mistake of putting your foot in your mouth. I knocked on many doors when I was a pastor, and I often stepped in and put my foot in my mouth the very first thing. Since then I have learned to do a lot more praying before I walk in.

Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man [Col. 4:6].
Some people think this verse says, “Let your speech be salt,” and they really sting you with their little sarcastic remarks! But what it says is, “alway with grace, seasoned with salt.” A child of God should have a conversation that deters evil. It should withhold evil rather than promote it. I think it also means that a Christian should not be boring. We should be enthusiastic —“That ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”

FELLOWSHIP OF BELIEVERS IS HEARTY


We come now to a remarkable list of names of people whom Paul knew. They are men and women who lived back there in the first century. They walked down the Roman roads, lived in Roman cities, and were under Roman rule. They were in the midst of paganism, but they were God’s children.
Many of these people lived in Ephesus. When I was in Ephesus, I climbed up in the theater there and from that height I could look down that great marble boulevard—I would call it Harbor Boulevard, because it leads right down to where the harbor was in that day. I thought, This is where one could have seen Paul come walking up the boulevard. There would be Tychicus coming up the way; and there’s Onesimus and Aristarchus and Epaphras—all those fellows. They were all Christians. They were God’s men back yonder in the first century.
The interesting thing is that Paul had never been to Rome nor had he been to Colosse, yet he gives a list of people that he knew, and many of them are from those two cities. This reveals that Paul had led many people to Christ who returned home to cities that he never was able to reach directly or personally. His ministry was a tremendous, far-reaching ministry.


All my state shall Tychicus declare unto you, who is a beloved brother, and a faithful minister and fellow-servant in the Lord:

Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that he might know your estate, and comfort your hearts [Col. 4:7–8].

“Tychicus” was the pastor of the church in Ephesus. He is mentioned in Ephesians 6:21, Acts 20:4, and 2 Timothy 4:12. He was a wonderful brother in the Lord.


With Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They shall make known unto you all things which are done here [Col. 4:9].

“Onesimus” was a slave of Philemon in Colosse. He had run away from his master, had been led to the Lord through the ministry of Paul, and was now being sent back to his master by him. Paul wrote a letter to Philemon when he sent Onesimus back, and he tells Philemon that Onesimus is his “beloved brother.” You can see from this that there is a new relationship in Christ. Master and slave are now brothers in Christ Jesus.


Aristarchus my fellow-prisoner saluteth you, and Marcus, sister’s son to Barnabas, (touching whom ye received commandments: if he come unto you, receive him;) [Col. 4:10].

“Aristarchus” was a fellow prisoner with Paul, and he was his friend.
“Marcus” is John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas—the son of his sister. He is the writer of the Gospel of Mark. You will remember that Mark left Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, and because of this Paul didn’t want to take him along on the second missionary journey. Paul was wrong in his judgment of John Mark. The boy made good, and Paul acknowledges that here. Paul gives the Colossians instructions, “Don’t reject him like I did. You folks receive him.” Paul mentions John Mark again in his second letter to Timothy: “… Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11).


And Jesus, which is called Justus, who are of the circumcision. These only are my fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God, which have been a comfort unto me [Col. 4:11].

“Jesus, which is called Justus” would be the name Joshua in the Hebrew language. Being “of the circumcision” indicates he was Jewish. This shows us that there were a few Israelites in the church in Colosse. However, there were not many; the Colossian church was mostly Gentile. These men were wonderful brethren, helpers of Paul, and great missionaries themselves.

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God [Col. 4:12].
“Epaphras” was the pastor in Colosse. Now he is in prison, so he has a new ministry, the ministry of prayer. I received a letter from a young preacher who is paralyzed and cannot preach any more. He wrote a most discouraged letter. I answered him like this: “I have a job for you: Pray for me.” Prayer is a ministry, too. If God takes you out of active service, pray for God’s servants. It simply means God has given you a new ministry; He has something different for you to do.


For I bear him record, that he hath a great zeal for you, and them that are in Laodicea, and them in Hierapolis [Col. 4:13].

These three cities were very close together. Hierapolis and Laodicea were about six to ten miles apart; they were both near Colosse. There were churches in all three places.


Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you [Col. 4:14].

“Luke, the beloved physician.” Isn’t that a wonderful designation for him?
When Paul first mentioned Demas, he called him a fellow worker. Here he simply says, “and Demas”; I think this may indicate that Paul isn’t really sure about him at this time. Later on Demas will forsake Paul. How tragic that is.


Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house [Col. 4:15].

These cities had great heathen temples, but the Christians met in homes. I used to hold the viewpoint and I still do—although I don’t emphasize it today as I did at one time—that as the church started in the home, it is going to come back to the home.


And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea [Col. 4:16].

“The epistle from Laodicea.” Paul does not say that he had written an epistle to the Laodiceans. Apparently the letters of Paul were circulated around, and the Laodiceans had read one of them. A great many of the scholars believe that this might be a reference to the Epistle to the Ephesians. Paul is telling the Colossians to read that epistle also and to share theirs with the Laodiceans.


And say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it [Col. 4:17].

“Archippus” is another man on Paul’s list in this letter. We do not know anything more about him than is mentioned here. He is a man who had a gift, and Paul is urging him to use that gift.

The salutation by the hand of me Paul. Remember my bonds. Grace be with you. Amen [Col. 4:18].
Paul dictated most of his letters. (The letter to the Galatians was written in his own hand.) Here he gives his signature to the letter which he has dictated.
This is the second time that Paul says, “Remember my bonds”—or, “Pray for me.”
“Grace be with you. Amen.” Isn’t this a wonderful letter that we have read? Paul wrote to a church that he had never visited, but he knew many of the people and had led them to the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Recommended for Further Study)


Gromacki, Robert G. Stand Perfect in Wisdom: An Exposition of Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1981.

Harrison, Everett F. Colossians: Christ-All-Sufficient. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1971.

Hendriksen, William, Exposition of Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1965.

Ironside, H. A. Lectures on the Epistle to the Colossians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1929.

Kelly, William. Lectures on the Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians. Oak Park, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, n.d.
Kent, Homer A., Jr. Treasures of Wisdom: Studies in Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978. (Excellent.)

King, Guy H. Crossing the Border. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Christian Literature Crusade, 1957. (Devotional.)

Moule, Handley C. G. Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1893. (This is a reprint from The Cambridge University Bible for Schools and Colleges. This helpful series also covers Romans, Ephesians, and Philippians.)

Nicholson, William. Oneness with Christ. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1903. (Devotional.)

Robertson, A. T. Paul and the Intellectuals. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1928.

Thomas, W. H. Griffith. Studies in Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1973. (Excellent.)

Vaughan, Curtis. Colossians and Philemon: A Study Guide. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1980.

Vine, W. E. Philippians and Colossians. London: Oliphants, 1955. (This is an excellent treatment.)

Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Complete. Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1981.
Wuest, Kenneth S. Ephesians and Colossians in the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1953.

The First Epistle to the
Thessalonians

INTRODUCTION

This wonderful epistle is almost at the end of Paul’s epistles as far as their arrangement in the New Testament is concerned. However, it was actually the first epistle that Paul wrote. It was written by Paul in a.d. 52 or 53.
Thessalonica was a Roman colony. Rome had a somewhat different policy with their captured people from what many other nations have had. For example, it seems that we try to Americanize all the people throughout the world, as if that would be the ideal. Rome was much wiser than that. She did not attempt to directly change the culture, the habits, the customs, or the language of the people whom she conquered. Instead, she would set up colonies which were arranged geographically in strategic spots throughout the empire. A city which was a Roman colony would gradually adopt Roman laws and customs and ways. In the local department stores you would see the latest things they were wearing in Rome itself. Thus these colonies were very much like a little Rome. Thessalonica was such a Roman colony, and it was an important city in the life of the Roman Empire.
Thessalonica was located fifty miles west of Philippi and about one hundred miles north of Athens. It was Cicero who said, “Thessalonica is in the bosom of the empire.” It was right in the center or the heart of the empire and was the chief city of Macedonia.
The city was first named Therma because of the hot springs in that area. In 316 b.c. Cassander, who was one of the four generals who divided up the empire of Alexander the Great, took Macedonia and made Thessalonica his home base. He renamed the city in memory of his wife, Thessalonike, who was a half sister of Alexander. The city is still in existence and is now known as Salonika.
The church in Thessalonica, established on Paul’s second missionary journey, was a model church. Paul mentions this in the first chapter; “So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia” (1 Thess. 1:7). This church was a testimony to the whole area that we would call Greece today. Paul also speaks of this church as being an example to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 8:1–5.
You will recall that Paul and Barnabas separated prior to the second missionary journey. Paul took Silas with him, and along the route he picked up Timothy and Dr. Luke. He revisited the churches in Galatia and then attempted to make a wider circle in the densely populated area of Asia Minor, known as Turkey today. I think he intended to carry on his missionary work there, because in his third missionary journey he did make Ephesus his headquarters and did what was probably his greatest missionary work. But on his second missionary journey, the Spirit of God put up a roadblock and would not let him go south. He attempted to go up into Bithynia, but again the Spirit of God prevented him. He couldn’t go north, and he couldn’t go south. So he moved to the west and came to Troas to await orders. He had the vision of the man of Macedonia, so he crossed over to Philippi. He found that the man of Macedonia was instead a woman by the name of Lydia, a seller of purple—she probably ran a department store there. Paul led her to the Lord along with others of the city. Thus, a church was established at Philippi.
Then Paul went to Thessalonica, and we are told in chapter 17 of Acts that he was there for three Sabbaths. So Paul was there a little less than a month, but in that period of time he did a herculean task of mission work. Paul was an effective missionary—he led multitudes to Christ there. And in that brief time he not only organized a local church, but he also taught them the great doctrines of the Christian faith.
Now Paul had to leave Thessalonica posthaste due to great opposition to the gospel. He was run out of town and went down to Berea. The enemy pursued him to Berea, and again Paul was forced to leave. Paul left Silas and Timothy at Berea, but he went on to Athens. After some time at Athens, he went on to Corinth. Apparently it was at Corinth that Timothy and Silas came to him and brought him word concerning the Thessalonians (see 1 Thess. 3:6). Timothy also brought some questions to Paul, problems troubling the believers in Thessalonica. Paul wrote this first epistle in response to their questions, to instruct them further and give them needed comfort.
Although Paul had been in Thessalonica less than a month, he had touched on many of the great doctrines of the church, including the second coming of Christ. It is interesting that Paul did not consider this subject to be above the heads of the new converts. Yet there are churches today that have been in existence for more than one hundred years whose members have but a vague understanding of the Rapture of the church and the coming of Christ to establish His kingdom here on earth. The Thessalonian church was not even a month old, and Paul was teaching them these great doctrines!
The apostle obviously had emphasized the second coming of Christ for believers and had taught that the return of Christ was imminent; for during the period of time since Paul had left, some of the saints who had come to know and believe in Christ Jesus had died, and this had naturally raised the question in the minds of the Thessalonians as to whether these saints would be in the Rapture or not. Paul presents the second coming of Christ in relationship to believers as a comfort, and this forms the theme of the epistle. This emphasis is in sharp contrast to Christ’s catastrophic and cataclysmic coming in glory to establish His kingdom by putting down all unrighteousness, as seen in Revelation 19:11–16.
The epistle has a threefold purpose: (1) To confirm young converts in the elementary truth of the gospel; (2) to condition them to go on unto holy living; and (3) to comfort them regarding the return of Christ. Paul’s message offered a marked contrast to the paganism and heathenism which were present in Thessalonica. A heathen inscription in Thessalonica read: “After death no reviving, after the grave no meeting again.”
In 1 Thessalonians the emphasis is upon the Rapture of believers, the coming of Christ to take His church out of the world. The fact that the coming of Christ is a purifying hope should lead to sanctification in our lives. There are a lot of people today who want to argue prophecy, and there is a great deal of curiosity about it. But John tells us, “And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). This hope should have a purifying effect in our lives. I am not interested in how enthusiastic and excited you get over the truth of the Rapture of the church; I want to know how you are living. Does this hope get right down to where you are living, and does it change your life?
In 2 Thessalonians the emphasis shifts to the coming of Christ to the earth to establish His kingdom. There is a great deal of difference in our being caught up to meet the Lord in the air and His coming down to the earth to establish His kingdom. I think there is a lot of upside down theology today. We need to make a distinction between our being caught up and His coming down.

OUTLINE

I. The Christian’s Attitude toward the Return of Christ, Chapter 1To serve … to wait … vv. 9–10
II. The Christian’s Reward at the Return of Christ, Chapter 2
III. The Christian’s Life and the Return of Christ, Chapters 3:1–4:12
IV. The Christian’s Death and the Return of Christ, Chapter 4:13–18
V. The Christian’s Actions in View of the Return of Christ, Chapter 5Note twenty-two specific commands to Christians, beginning at v. 11

For this book we are suggesting two outlines. Each one gives a needed emphasis that is not in the other.

I. Coming of Christ Is an Inspiring Hope, Chapter 1
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–4
B. Gospel Received in Much Assurance and Much Affliction, Chapter 1:5–7
C. Gospel Results: Turned from Idols to God; Wait for Coming of Christ, Chapter 1:8–10
II. Coming of Christ Is a Working Hope, Chapter 2
A. Motive and Method of a True Witness for Christ, Chapter 2:1–6
B. Mother Side of the Apostle’s Ministry (Comfort), Chapter 2:7–9
C. Father Side of the Apostle’s Ministry (Charge), Chapter 2:10–13
D. Brother Side of the Apostle’s Ministry (Challenge), Chapter 2:14–16
E. Reward of a True Witness for Christ, Chapter 2:17–20
III. Coming of Christ Is a Purifying Hope, Chapters 3:1–4:12Sanctification
A. Timothy Brings Good Report of Thessalonians, Chapter 3:1–8
B. Paul Urges Thessalonians to Continue to Grow in Faith, Chapter 3:9–13
C. How Believers Are to Walk, Chapter 4:1–12
IV. Coming of Christ Is a Comforting Hope, Chapter 4:13–18What death means to a Christian; what the Rapture means to the church
V. Coming of Christ Is a Rousing Hope, Chapter 5Leads to action; dead believers are asleep in Jesus; living believers are awake for Jesus
A. Call to Be Awake and Alert in View of Christ’s Coming, Chapter 5:1–10
B. Commandments for Christians, Chapter 5:11–28

CHAPTER 1

Theme: The coming of Christ is an inspiring hope

INTRODUCTION


Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ [1 Thess. 1:1].


This introduction is typical of Paul’s other epistles, but there are some differences to which we need to call attention. Paul joins Silas and Timothy with himself in his greeting. Remember that Silas and Timothy had just returned to Paul with their report from Thessalonica. By joining their names with his, the Thessalonians would know they are all in agreement concerning this letter.
Also, Paul reveals his humility when he joins these men with himself Silas and Timothy would have been unknown had not Paul associated himself with them. This is a very noble gesture on the part of Paul. He is always identifying himself with the brethren. He was not aloof, separated, and segregated above all the others who were working for the Lord Jesus.
This is something we need to remember today in regard to the ministry. Don’t put your preacher on a pedestal; let him be right down among you. Those of us who are ministers are largely responsible for trying to make a difference between the clergy and laity. When I entered the ministry, I bought a Prince Albert coat with a long coattail. I wore a wing collar and a very white shirtfront and either a white or a black necktie. When I stood up in the pulpit, I looked like one of those little mules looking over a whitewashed fence, and I felt like one when I wore that garb! One day it came to me how ridiculous it was for me to dress differently from the officers and members of my church. None of them wore a robe or a Prince Albert coat, and I was no different from any of them. I don’t think that God is asking me to live any differently either. However, when I am teaching the Word of God, I am to be very conscious of the fact that I’m giving out His Word and actually acting in His behalf, and He expects that of everyone who gives out His Word. But as far as living is concerned, God expects all of us to live on a very high plane; the life of the teacher or minister is to be no different from the life of every believer in Christ Jesus.
I wish we could eliminate this distinction between the clergy and the laity. According to the Word of God, it is a false distinction. God has a very high standard of living for all of us. I am frank to say that a paid ministry has been the curse of the church, although I don’t think it could have been done otherwise in this day of specialization. However, we need to recognize that the heresies of the church have come in through a paid ministry.
There are two situations in the church which are dangerous. One is a minister who tries to exalt himself. The other is a layman who tries to be an authority on the Bible and has not really studied the Bible but has gone off on a tangent. The greatest discipline for me has been to teach the total Word of God. If a person will teach the total Word of God, he will deal with every subject in the Bible—he will be forced to play every key on the organ and to pull out every stop. It isn’t possible to ride one hobbyhorse and emphasize one theme to the exclusion of all others if one teaches the entire Bible. I wish we had that kind of discipline in our churches today. I wish every church would go through the entire Bible.
“Unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.” They may have a little different life-style and have different problems from the church in Philippi, but, just like the church in Philippi, it is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t read that in his other epistles because this is the first epistle Paul has written. He says it only once, and this will be enough. He won’t go over this again. When the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father, He asked, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one …” (John 17:21–23). Any believer who is in Christ Jesus is also in God the Father. That is a very safe place to be, safer than any safety deposit box!
“Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ” is a formal introduction which Paul uses in all of his epistles. Grace comes first, followed by the peace of God. Both the grace and the peace come from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.


We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers [1 Thess. 1:2].

Paul prayed for all of the churches that he had founded. Paul had a tremendous prayer list, and it would make an interesting study for you to find all the people who were on that list. You would be surprised how many different churches, individuals, and groups of people Paul prayed for.
“We give thanks to God always for you all.” Paul gives thanks for this church because of many things, and one of the most important was because they were an example; it was a model church.
The next verse is one of the most remarkable in the Bible, and it follows a pattern of the apostle Paul which we find in his writing. He emphasized the number three.


Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father [1 Thess. 1:3].

“Remembering without ceasing [1] your work of faith, [2] and labour of love, [3] and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is a very important verse of Scripture and contains a wealth of meaning. Paul associates the three Christian graces: faith and love and hope. In 1 Corinthians he also brought those three graces together. “And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13).
In New Jersey several years ago I had lunch with the scientist who had designed the heat shield that was on the space capsules to protect them when they go out into space and then reenter our atmosphere. He remarked to me, “Have you ever noticed that the universe is divided into a trinity?”
“No, what do you mean by that?”
“You and I live in a physical universe that is divided into time, space, and matter. Can you think of a fourth?”
I couldn’t think of any, so he continued, “Time is divided into three parts: past, present, and future. Can you think of a fourth?”
Again I couldn’t, so he went on. “Space is divided into length and breadth and height. They speak of a ‘fourth dimension,’ but it doesn’t happen to be in this material universe.”
You can see that this universe in which you and I live bears the mark of the Trinity. The interesting thing is that the Word of God does the same thing. Paul speaks of man as a trinity. We will discuss this specifically when we get into the fifth chapter, verse 23: “… and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This tells us that man is a trinity.
There are some other interesting examples of the significance of the number three. For example, have you noticed that in Genesis only three sons of Adam are named? I am sure that Adam and Eve had more than three sons; they probably had one hundred or more—they started the human race—but only three of the sons are named: Cain, Abel, and Seth.
In this verse Paul actually gives three graces of the Christian life. The past is the work of faith. The present is a labor of love. The future is the patience of hope. That is the biography of the Christian and the abiding, permanent, and eternal features of the Christian life.
Faith, hope, and love are abstract nouns. They seem to be way up yonder, but we are way down here. How can we get them out of space and theory into the reality of life down here? How can we make them concrete instead of abstract qualities?
This is like the story of the contractor who loved children. He put down a sidewalk one day—finished it in the afternoon. He came back the next morning to find that some children had walked on the concrete and had left their footmarks in it. He was very angry and was talking very loudly. A man who was standing by said, “I thought you loved children.” The contractor said, “I love them in the abstract but not in the concrete!”
So the question here is how we are going to get these words down into something concrete. Paul takes these three words from the “beautiful isle of somewhere” and puts them into shoe leather. He gets them down to where the shoe leather meets the sidewalks of our hometown. He fleshes up these abstract qualities by taking them out of the morgue of never-never land.
Notice how he does it. From the “work of faith,” the “labour of love,” and the “patience of hope,” he cites the three steps in the lives of the Thessalonian believers: “How ye turned to God from idols”—that’s the work of faith; “to serve the living and true God,” a labor of love; “to wait for his Son from heaven” is the patience of hope.
Now the “work of faith” is a strange expression because we are told that “… by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). Yet here it is called the work of faith. I think that Paul is making it very clear that he and James do not contradict each other. James writes, “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (James 2:18). That is the work of faith. It is the way faith is demonstrated to others. (The writings of James and the writings of Paul certainly do not contradict each other—as some have suggested—because they are both writing about the same thing.)
Faith is the response of the soul of man to the Word of God. When a man responds to the Word of God, then he walks by faith. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 5:7: “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” The Lord Jesus said the same thing: “Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:28–29). He didn’t say that you can come to God with your works, but that you must come to God by faith. Then a faith that is living will make itself manifest; it will reveal itself in the life that is lived.
There is a good illustration of this in the life of the disciples, as recorded in Luke 5:4–5. The Lord Jesus said to Simon Peter, “… Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” That is a statement of fact, a declaration of naked truth: “We fished all night, and we caught nothing. We know this sea, and there is no use going back out there.” But notice what Simon Peter adds, “Nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.” He says he will go back and fish again. My friend, that is the work of faith. As believers we need to realize that the work of faith is acting upon the Word of God. What is the work of God? It is to believe on Jesus Christ—that is how the Lord Jesus defined it: “… This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29). When you act on what the Word of God says, your faith will be evident to the world. That is the work of faith.
We have the same thing illustrated in the life of Cain and Abel. What was the problem with Cain? He was a sinner by nature, but he was also a sinner by choice and act. We are told, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous …” (Heb. 11:4). How? By being a nice little Sunday school boy? No. Although he was a sinner as Cain was a sinner, Abel responded to the Word of God, and he believed God. When he believed God, he was saved. He manifested that faith by bringing the proper sacrifice. Faith is the connection between the believer and God. It communicates His Word to your heart and you respond. And that is what conversion is. Conversion is to believe God.
These Thessalonians turned to God from idols. Paul didn’t go into Thessalonica and say, “I don’t think it is proper for you people to worship idols. That’s a terrible thing to do.” He never said anything like that. When he went there he preached Christ! Idolatry wasn’t repulsive to these people, but when they heard Paul present Christ, they believed God and they turned to God. When they turned to God, they automatically turned from idols.
People often say to me, “You converted me.” I haven’t converted anyone—I can’t do that! One man said to me, “You saved me many years ago, and I’ll never forget you.” I answered him, “I appreciate your not forgetting me, but I didn’t save you. All I did was to present the Word of God. You believed the Word of God, and the Spirit of God did a work in your heart.” That is really quite wonderful, my friend.
Paul remembered without ceasing not only the work of faith of the Thessalonian believers but also their “labour of love.” Now, what is the labor of love? God does not save by love; He saves by grace, which is love in action. Labor and love don’t seem to fit together. But, you see, love will labor. And when it does, it just doesn’t seem to be labor. Let me repeat the illustration of a little girl carrying a heavy baby. A man passing by said to her, “Isn’t that baby too heavy for you?” She answered, “Oh no, he’s my brother.” Love makes all the difference in the world. Labor isn’t labor when it is a labor of love.
The Lord Jesus really put it right on the line when He said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). If you don’t love Him, you will find it nothing but tedium and labor to try to keep His commandments. I don’t think it is worthwhile trying.
Several years ago my daughter and I were riding into Los Angeles to the church which I was pastoring. She was helping us with some work at the church. We were stuck in the traffic on the freeway, and I remarked to her, “Look at all these people going to work this morning. Notice that nobody looks happy. Everyone has a tense look on his face. They are anxious and uptight. Ninety-nine out of a hundred are going to a job they hate doing.” I say it is wonderful to do what you love to do. Then it is a labor of love.
If working for the Lord is a great burden to you today, I believe the Lord Jesus would say to you, “Give it up, brother. Don’t bother with it.” He doesn’t want it to be like that. We are to love Him. Then whatever we do for Him will be a labor of love. That should characterize the life of the believer.
One time when Dwight L. Moody came home, his family said to him, “Cancel your next meeting. You look so weary and we know you are tired.” He gave this tremendous response, “I am weary in the work, but I am not weary of the work.” I tell you, it is wonderful to get weary in the work of God but not to get weary of the work of God.
Love to God is expressed in obedience. I get tired of all this talk about being a dedicated Christian. If you want to make that claim, then prove it, brother. Prove it by your love, and love manifests itself in obedience.
Now the third thing for which Paul commends the Thessalonian believers is their “patience of hope.” After they had turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, they also waited for His Son from heaven. That is the patience of hope.
Every man lives with some hope for the future. And that hope, whatever it is, will sustain him. Down through the centuries man has expressed this. Martin Luther said, “Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.” Long before him Sophocles, the pagan, had written: “It is hope which maintains most of mankind.” A modern man, O. S. Marden, says, “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.” The poet, Alexander Pope, wrote: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” A statesman, Thomas Jefferson, said, “I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.” And Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher, commented, “Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.”
What a glorious, wonderful life it is to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven. That is the “blessed hope.” Multitudes today place their hope in man, thinking that man can resolve all his problems and bring peace and prosperity to the world. Man cannot do that. If your hope is in this world, you are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp of happiness that will shatter like a bubble when you get it in your hands. You are following a Pied Piper who is playing, “I’m forever blowing bubbles.” God put man out of Paradise because man was a sinner, and man has been trying to build a paradise outside ever since. The church for years thought it was building the kingdom of heaven, and it was not. God wouldn’t even let man live forever in sin, and we can thank Him for that. Every age comes to a time of cosmic crisis and says, “Somehow we’ll work our way out.” Frederick the Great, the great emperor of Germany, said, “The time I live in is a time of turmoil. My hope is in God.” What is your hope today? Is your hope in some political party or in some man-made organization? God have mercy on anyone whose hope rests upon some little, frail bark that man is paddling! I don’t think that any man or any party or any group down here can work out the problems of this world. The sceptre of this universe is in nail-pierced hands, and He will move at the right time. This one thing I know: all things do work together for good to them who love God, to them who are the called according to His eternal and holy purpose (see Rom. 8:28).
So here Paul has brought together faith and love and hope, the three tenses of the Christian life: the work of faith, which looks back to the Cross and produces good works in the life; the labor of love, which is the present basis and motivation on which a child of God is to serve Christ; and the patience of hope, which looks into the future.
What a wonderful trinity of Christian graces! It should be the biography of every believer. It was the biography of the church in Thessalonica, and I hope it is the biography of your church, too.
Now Paul takes up another great truth—

Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God [1 Thess. 1:4].
Here we come again to that word election. I dealt with this when I taught Ephesians: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Eph. 1:4). Afterward I received some letters criticizing me for being weak in emphasizing election, claiming that I had soft-pedaled it; others wrote that I was rather extreme and had gone too far in talking about it. Since I got both reactions, I came to the conclusion it must have been about right. I knew it couldn’t have been both extremes; so it must have been somewhere in the middle, which must be close to accurate.
Paul doesn’t mind writing about election in this epistle to the Thessalonian believers. And he presents it from God’s side of the ledger. You and I do not see His side, and we have never seen it. But there are certain great axioms of truth that we must put down. When I studied plane geometry, certain axioms were stated without being proven, such as the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I have never had an occasion to dispute it, but nobody has ever attempted to prove it to me, although there is a proposition in geometry that will prove it. Nevertheless, there are certain things that we accept as fact without proof. And one of the things is the fact that there are certain things which cannot be proven to be true. Likewise Paul doesn’t attempt to argue election or to prove election; he simply states it as a fact. “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.” That is God’s side of the picture.
The Creator has His sovereign right. Dr. Albert Hyma, of the University of Michigan, said that for the past fifty years America has been under the control of men who do not know the origin and the beginning of our nation. They do not realize that the Puritans had a tremendous impact upon this nation. One of the great truths that the Puritans stood for, and which was basic to their entire life-style, was the sovereignty of God. Behind election and all of life is the sovereignty of God. The Creator has His sovereign right.
We need to recognize that God created the universe. I’m not concerned with how He did it, nor am I concerned with the account in Genesis. I simply want to emphasize the fact that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Now there are those who are willing to say He created, but they deny Him the right to direct the universe. They deny Him the right to give a purpose to it. May I say to you that we live in a universe that was created by God and exists for His glory. Even in the Sermon on the Mount the Lord Jesus Christ said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). He didn’t say your good works were to glorify yourself. Oh, no! They are to glorify the Father in heaven. May I say especially to you, my Christian friend, that God is the Creator, and this universe exists for His glory. He is God, and beside Him there is none other. He doesn’t look to anybody for advice. He is running this universe for His own purpose. He is directing it for His own glory. You and I live in a universe which is theocentric, that is, God-centered. It is not anthropocentric, man-centered; nor is it geocentric, earth-centered; but it is uranocentric, heaven-centered. This is God’s universe, and He is running it His way.
Something else needs to be said: God is no tyrant. God is righteous. God is just. God is holy. Everything that God does is right. You may not always think so, but I have news for you. If you do not think God is right in what He is doing, and if you think that God is not following the best plan, the news I have for you is that you are wrong. God is not wrong. You are wrong. You are the person who needs to get his thinking corrected, because if you don’t, you are out of step with the universe. This universe exists for God, for His glory, and for His purpose. There is nothing going to happen that will not work out to His glory. He is in charge, and He is running this universe today.
With this in mind, let’s consider something else. Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that you were born? You could have been nonexistent. I could have been nonexistent. God did not come to me and ask, “Vernon McGee, do you want to come into existence?” I wasn’t even in existence so that He could ask me! He is the One who thought of it. He is the One who is responsible for my existence. And He did not ask me whether I wanted to be male or female. He didn’t ask me whether I wanted to be born in this day and age. He didn’t ask me to choose my parents. He didn’t ask me to decide whether my parents would be godly or whether they would be wealthy—and they were neither one. God today is running this universe because it is His. You may not like it, but that just happens to be the way it is.
Now God is no tyrant—no one is chosen against his will, and no one is rejected against his will. God is right in all that He does. Paul asks, “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?” And he answers his own question with a strong negative, “God forbid” (Rom. 9:14). God is right in all that He does.
We need to get back to that place where we recognize that we are mere creatures. Not only creatures, but we are totally depraved creatures. I know it’s not popular to say this in our day. We like to scratch each other’s backs and tell each other how wonderful we are. That’s the reason they hand out loving cups, and these knife-and-fork clubs are always recognizing somebody as the outstanding something or other. The human race must do that in order to bolster us up and make us think that we are great down here. The fact is that we are in rebellion against God.
The fact that God even considers us as a nation is due to the early Puritans who founded this country. They are being downgraded in our day, but we have this great country because of them. Other men have labored, and we have entered into their labors. And one of the things that they emphasized was the liberty of each individual for private judgment. Even we as sinners have that right. Why? Because no other sinner has any right to make a decision for you and me. Today you and I enjoy the freedom that we have because of our Puritan forefathers. The present generation of politicians doesn’t even know what it’s all about, which is the reason democracy isn’t working. There is no way democracy can work unless the people understand the sovereignty of God, recognize they are His creatures, and fall down before Him.
Now let me repeat what Paul has said to the Thessalonian believers (v. 4): “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.” Maybe you don’t like this verse, but this is the way it happened. And God is running this universe. Instead of joining a protest march against Him, I suggest that you fall down on your face before Him and thank Him that He has brought you into existence, and that He has given you the opportunity as a free moral agent to make a decision for Him. His invitation still stands, “… If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). Are you thirsty? Then come to Christ. He stands ready to receive you. You say you are not thirsty? Then forget it. God offers a full and free salvation to this lost world today. He says to men and women, “Take it or leave it.” That is where our freedom comes in. We can either choose Him or reject Him. There is no middle ground. Each person has the freedom to do one or the other.

GOSPEL RECEIVED IN MUCH ASSURANCE AND MUCH AFFLICTION


Now here is another tremendous verse for us to study—


For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake [1 Thess. 1:5].

Paul is saying, “You knew that when we came among you, we were just human beings—just weak human beings with lips and tongues of clay. All we could do was say words, but we gave out the Word of God. And the Word of God came to you, not in word only, but in power and in the Holy Spirit.” My friend, this fact makes my job the most wonderful job in the world. I love it. I love to teach the Word of God. Do you know why? Because when I give out the Word of God—although they are just words as far as Vernon McGee is concerned—when the Spirit of God takes those words and uses them, they are powerful! I suppose I have about five hundred letters on my desk right now that bear this out. For example, a wife has written that the first time she turned on my radio program, her husband spent thirty minutes cussing this preacher. But she continued to tune in the program, and one day he argued back at me. Then one day she forgot to dial in the program and he reminded her of it, and he listened. Finally the day came when he knelt by the radio and received Christ as his Savior! My friend, if you think that happened because I am a super-duper salesman, you are wrong. I’m not even a salesman—I couldn’t even give away five-dollar bills, because folk would think they were phony! But the thing that is so tremendous is that the Spirit of God will use the Word of God. That is our confidence.
Now hear me carefully: I believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. And please don’t write to me and explain to me all the introductions and all the problems about text. I’ve been through seminary, and I have even taught introductory courses so that I do know a little about them. But I accept the Word of God as the inerrant Word of God, that it is God speaking to us. And I go further than that. I believe that the Spirit of God can cause the Word of God to penetrate into your heart and life and my heart and life so that we are transformed people. People are not born again by the weakness of the human flesh, not by saying a few words by radio or by the printed page. But they are “… born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23). I believe the Spirit of God can take the Word of God and make it real to you. I believe the Word of God is that kind of thing. I don’t think the Spirit of God could do much with the telephone directory or the Sears and Roebuck catalog or with popular magazines that are published today. But I do believe that the Spirit of God can and will take the Word of God and perform the greatest miracle possible—changing an unbelieving, lost sinner into a child of God!
The Word of God went into Thessalonica, that Roman colony which was pagan and heathen and was controlled by one of the greatest political and military powers this world has known, and there it reached the hearts and lives of people and transformed them. That is what happened in Thessalonica, and it can still do the same today.
Let me repeat verse 5 because it is such an important verse: “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.”
The first thing necessary is for a person to hear the Word of God. That is the factual basis. People must hear the gospel. “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). That is the natural part of the process. But that doesn’t end it, because the Word of God is a supernatural book. Without the Holy Spirit the gospel is merely words. With the Holy Spirit it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. This is exactly what the Lord Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged” (John 16:7–11).


And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost [1 Thess. 1:6].

Paul could cite Silas and Timothy and himself as examples. Personally, I would hesitate to give myself as an example; I don’t think I am a very good one. But Paul the apostle, going from place to place throughout the Roman Empire, offered himself as an example to these believers.
“Having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost.” Affliction (or suffering) and joy are two words that are actually antipodes apart—they are as far apart as the east is from the west. They don’t belong together. They are as extreme as night is from daylight, as cold is from heat. They are not things that we would associate together. If a person is suffering and in affliction, he cannot have any joy, according to our natural way of looking at it. And if he’s having joy in his life, then surely he isn’t suffering!
Yet there have been wonderful saints of God who have endured affliction and at the same time have had the joy of the Lord in their hearts. That is real triumph. We hear a lot about healing today, and I thank God that He has healed me. How wonderful it is! But I know some saints of God who are a lot more wonderful than I ever hope to be. These people are lying right now on beds of pain, beds of affliction, and they have the joy of the Lord in their hearts.
There is not a person today who is enjoying the world’s entertainment and is suffering at the same time. The world cannot put these two together. Paul says that the Word was received “in much affliction”—there was suffering, persecution, and heartache. But there was the joy of the Holy Spirit also. That is the bittersweet of life; that is like the Chinese dish they call “sweet-and-sour.” For the Christian there can be that which is sour and bitter in life, while at the same time there is sweetness in the heart and life.
A woman who was a rather famous poetess here in Southern California was a member of my church. I had the privilege of baptizing her. We baptized her in a bathtub because we couldn’t take her anywhere else. The minute I touched her she screamed, because she was in pain all the time. She gave me a copy of one of her last books of poetry. It was titled, Heart Held High. In the midst of extreme human suffering she had the joy of the Lord in her life. I always left her with the distinct feeling that I was the one who had been ministered to. I never felt that I did much ministering to her. It is wonderful to see a Christian who is suffering like that and can still rejoice in the Lord.

So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia [1 Thess. 1:7].
“In Macedonia and Achaia”—this refers to the European section of the Greco-Macedonia empire of Alexander the Great. The church at Thessalonica, a Roman colony, was an example—after just a few months—to all the other churches. What a glorious, wonderful testimony they had.
Today we often hear of individual Christians who are examples to others. However, there are actually very few churches which are known far and near as being examples of the Christian faith. I think it is strange that we do not have more local churches which are examples to all believers. It has been my privilege to travel around the country and speak in many churches across America. There are a few, but only a few, that I would name as examples.

GOSPEL RESULTS


For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing [1 Thess. 1:8].


Paul found that wherever he traveled the reputation of this church had already gone ahead of him. The believers were already talking about the church in Thessalonica; so it wasn’t necessary for Paul to tell them anything about it. This reveals something of the great reputation this church had in that day.


For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God;

And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come [1 Thess. 1:9–10].

We have already looked at these two verses in connection with verse 3. Their response gave witness to the kind of “entering in” Paul and Silas and Timothy had had with them. Paul tells what that response was: (1) Your work of faith—how ye turned to God from idols; (2) your labor of love—to serve the living and true God; and (3) your patience of hope—to wait for His Son from heaven.
Now I would like to look at these verses from a little different point of view. When Paul arrived in Thessalonica, he did not announce that he would give a series of messages denouncing idolatry or telling about the errors that were involved in the worship of Apollo, Venus, or any of the other gods and goddesses of the Roman Empire. But when Paul arrived in Thessalonica, he preached Christ. When he preached Christ, they turned to God from idols. Notice that he doesn’t say they turned from idols to God. Someone will say, “You’re splitting hairs.” I surely am. These are hairs that need to be split. We need to do some straight thinking about this.
“How ye turned to God from idols.” We hear today that repentance is essential to salvation. Repentance and believing are presented as two steps in a process. Actually, they are both wrapped up in the same package, and you have them both right here. When Paul preached Christ, they turned to God from idols. I want you to see something that is very important. When they turned to God, that is the work of faith; that is what faith did. The Lord Jesus said, “… This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29, italics mine). These people turned to God from idols; they turned from idols, too. That’s right—and that is repentance. The repentance followed the turning to God. It didn’t precede it. When they turned to God, they automatically turned from idols.
Take your hand and hold it so the palm of your hand is facing toward you. Now turn your hand around. When you turned your hand around, the back side of your hand now faces you, and the palm of your hand automatically turned away from you. Just so, you cannot turn to Christ Jesus without turning from something, my friend. That turning from something is repentance.
We need to hold up Jesus Christ as the Savior from sin. A man needs to know that he is a lost sinner. He can sit and weep about his sins until Judgment Day, and it won’t do him one bit of good. I know an alcoholic man who died an alcoholic. He could sit in my study and cry about the fact that he was an alcoholic and how terrible he was to be a drunkard. He could shed great tears and repent, but nothing changed because he never did turn to Christ!
My dad used to tell about a little boat that went up and down the Mississippi River. It had a little bitty boiler and a great big whistle. When that boat was carrying a load and was going upstream, it was in trouble when the whistle would blow, because the boat would begin to drift downstream. There are a lot of people who have a little boiler and a great big whistle. They can repent and shed tears all over the place, but that doesn’t do any good. It is only when a person turns to Christ that he will turn from something. He will turn from his sin. If a man doesn’t turn from his sin, it is because he hasn’t turned to Christ.
I am sure that when the Thessalonian believers turned from their idols, they wept over the time they had wasted in idol worship. After they had turned to God, there was a real repentance over the misspent years. The turning to God came first, then they realized that turning to God meant turning from idols.
Now I want to point out that Jesus Christ the Savior of the world is to be preached to a world of lost sinners, but the message of repentance is preached to the church. Read the messages to the seven churches of Asia as recorded in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3. The message of the Lord Jesus to the churches is to repent. Today it seems that the church is telling everyone outside the church to repent. The Bible teaches that it is the people in the church who need to repent. We need to get down on our faces before God and repent. That is not the message for us to give to the unsaved man down the street. He needs to know that he has a Savior.
“To serve the living and true God.” The Thessalonians were now serving God; it was the labor of love. You cannot serve Christ unless you love Him. The Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Suppose you don’t love Him? Then there are none of His commandments for you. You think you want to go out to preach the gospel, but you don’t love Him? Then stay home. To go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature is a command, and it is for those who love Him. If you don’t love Him, don’t do it.
When the Lord Jesus talked to Simon Peter (as recorded in John 21), He didn’t ask, “Peter, why in the world did you deny Me?” He didn’t say, “Peter, do you promise Me you will do better if I let you preach the sermon on the Day of Pentecost?” He never said anything like that. He asked, “Peter, do you love Me?” If Peter had said, “No,” I think the Lord would have told him to forget about service. Does that sound harsh to you? I didn’t say it; Jesus did: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
“And to wait for his Son from heaven.” That doesn’t mean to wait sitting down. It means you are busy. If you love Him, you will serve Him. You are busy for Him while you wait for Him.
When I first went to Cleburne, Texas, all the downtown churches had outdoor evening services on the lawn of the First Baptist Church. Since I was the new preacher in town, I was asked to preach the first night I was there. An officer of one of the churches had heard that I was a fundamentalist and a premillennialist. The next day he said to me, “I heard your sermon last night. You didn’t sound to me like one of those fellows who has his nose pressed against the window waiting for the Lord to come.” I told him that people who are waiting for the Lord to come don’t have their noses against the window. They are out, busy, working for the Lord. This was during the Depression, but I told him that while his and other denominations were calling their missionaries back from the field, the China Inland Mission, which was fundamental and premillennial, was asking for one hundred more missionaries to go to China. Who was really waiting for the Lord to come?
“To wait for his Son from heaven” does not mean to sit down. It means to be busy for the Lord. That is the patience of hope. It means to keep on serving the Lord, giving out the Word of God while you wait. The coming of Christ to take His church out of the world is not an escape mechanism. Rather, it is an incentive to serve Him and to give out the Word of God. “… Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

CHAPTER 2

Theme: The coming of Christ is a working hope

The coming of Christ for His church is called the Rapture of the church. It is not a doctrine to argue about; it is a doctrine to live. Unfortunately, there are many who believe Christ is coming after the Great Tribulation. There are those who believe He is coming before, and some believe He is coming during that period of time. Then there are others who don’t believe that He is coming at all, and yet they say that they trust Him as their Savior. For all the groups there is one important question: How does your interpretation affect your life? Does it do anything for you? If your view has no effect on your life, then you should reconsider what you believe. The expectation of the return of the Lord should be a motivating factor in the life of the believer.

MOTIVE AND METHOD OF A TRUE WITNESS FOR CHRIST


For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain [1 Thess. 2:1].


“In vain” means empty, without results. Paul says, “When we came to you, it was not just some theoretical proposition that we presented to you. We didn’t come to declare to you something that was new and novel and which had no effect on you at all. We didn’t just entertain you for a few days and then leave you.” Paul’s work was not in vain; it was not empty. When he came to Thessalonica, it rocked a great many folk, bringing many to a saving knowledge of Christ. And it brought a church into existence. Paul was not simply talking about a theory or a philosophy, but about something that worked in Thessalonica. The gospel walked down the streets of that city, and it got into the hearts and homes and lives of men and women.


But even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention [1 Thess. 2:2].

The Greek word for “contention” is agoni, which means “conflict” or “agony.” There was a great deal of conflict and much inward agony when Paul came to them.
Paul says that he had been shamefully treated in Philippi. We know about that from the account in Acts 16. But when he came to Thessalonica, he came in boldness. In other words, he didn’t slow down because of his previous experience. He didn’t play down the gospel. After his terrifying experience, Paul didn’t say, “Now I’m going to change my approach. I’m going to be more tactful and less outspoken about the gospel.” No, Paul was not a secret believer. He spoke right out, just as he had done at Philippi.
You see, it would have been so easy for Paul to rationalize. He could have decided that he had better be more careful to win friends and influence people. Excessive tact and the soft sell were not Paul’s method. He boldly declared the gospel, and his experiences did not affect his approach.
Now when he entered in among them, he presented the Word of God. If you were asked to choose, what would you select as the greatest sermon of the apostle Paul? If we took a poll, I’m sure we would get many different answers. Rightly so. There was the great sermon at Damascus after his conversion. There was the sermon before Sergius Paulus on the island of Cyprus when he began his missionary work. Then there was a sermon in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia on his first missionary journey—I consider that one of the greatest of his sermons. Then there were sermons in Athens on Mars Hill, in Ephesus at the school of Tyrannus, and his defense in Corinth. I think all of these are great. Someone might choose the message he gave in Jerusalem when he was arrested, or when he was brought before Felix and Festus and Agrippa. The one given before Agrippa is a masterpiece. Then there is his farewell speech on the beach to the elders of Ephesus. In every message he always presented Christ, His death and His resurrection.
If I were to pick the greatest sermon of Paul, I would actually pick none of these. I would choose instead his life in Thessalonica. His greatest sermon was not in writing or speaking, but in walking. It was not in exposition, but in experience; not in his profession, but in his practice. He took his text from James 2:26, “…faith without works is dead….” and he made his points on the pavement of the streets of Thessalonica.
Every believer is a preacher. Maybe you don’t like me to call you a preacher, but you are one nonetheless. You can’t escape it—you are saying something to somebody by the life you live. Perhaps your life is speaking to the child in your home. I think that is one of the reasons we have so many of our young people out on the highways and byways, the streets and alleys of this world. They watched mom and dad at home, and they didn’t like what they saw; so they took to the highways. The greatest sermon you will ever preach is by the life that you live.
Paul is going to tell us about the sermon he preached at Thessalonica (vv. 3–6), and he then will describe the relationship he had with the Thessalonians. He was like a mother to them in that he comforted them (see v. 7); he was like a father to them in that he charged them (v. 11); and he was like a brother to the Thessalonians in that he challenged them (v. 14).


For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile [1 Thess. 2:3].

Deceit means “error.” The content of Paul’s exhortation was not adulterated. Paul did not water down the gospel. He never changed it to suit different groups.
One of the things that disturbs me about some ministers is that they give a good, clear-cut gospel message in one place, but then they show up in another place where they need to be equally clear in giving out the gospel, and they are fuzzy! This was not true of the apostle Paul—his “exhortation was not of deceit.”
Uncleanness means “sensuality.” Paul was not motivated by greed. He didn’t come to Thessalonica for the offering he would get or for the notoriety he would gain. He wasn’t seeking to be ministered to personally, but he came with pure motives. There was no uncleanness in that sense.
“Nor in guile”—he did not use wrong methods with them. He did not lower his standards to accommodate the prejudices and passions of the old nature. He did not use an appeal to the sinful flesh.
Many of us can learn a lesson from the apostle Paul at this point. I once knew a minister who had been a great preacher. But I lost much respect for this man because he went back to a church which he had formerly pastored, knowing that there was criticism of the present pastor. He played upon that criticism and encouraged it. Paul would never have done a thing like that. He didn’t bring the gospel to people in any form of guile at all.
Everyone who teaches the Word of God needs to ask himself whether he is doing it with any deceit or uncleanness or guile. We need to be honest with ourselves; we need to check our own motives. Do we teach in order to win friends and influence people? Or are we honestly trying to give out the Word of God? My friend, I must confess that I have made many mistakes. I have failed the Lord so many times that it is amazing that He doesn’t throw me overboard. If I were God, I would have been disgusted with Vernon McGee long ago. But I promised the Lord when I entered the ministry that I wouldn’t pull any punches. Honestly, I expected to get into real trouble, but the Lord has been good to me. I think He knew that I would start running if there were an occasion for it. I am grateful that I can look up to the Lord right now and say, “Lord, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I have failed You, but I have given out Your Word the best I know how. If I could give it better, I would, but I’m doing the best that I possibly can by Your grace.”
I love this passage. Paul could tell the Thessalonians, “When I came to you, I want you to know that I had no ulterior motives. I didn’t come for your offering. I didn’t come in order to shear your sheep. I came to give you the gospel and then to build you up in the faith. That was my motive.” With that kind of motive a person is really sailing on a marvelous sea. There may be storms, but the Lord will bring His servant through.


But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts [1 Thess. 2:4].

The word allowed means “to be tested or approved.” Paul was saying that he was no novice. He was not a manpleaser, nor had he ever sought popularity. He wasn’t trying to make a name for himself. When Paul preached, he was not preaching to find out what men would think of him, but what God would think of him. Paul used the blue litmus paper of God to put down in his life, and it stood the test. He never used any low or tricky methods.


For neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness; God is witness [1 Thess. 2:5].

Paul is speaking pretty frankly. He says that he never came into their midst to flatter anyone. He never played up to the rich people in the congregation. He didn’t try to butter up anyone.
Flattery disarms us—we really never know what to say. When people criticize me, I know what to say, but I never know what to say when someone flatters me. It disarms a person. In Twelfth-Night Shakespeare has his clown say, “Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused.” Our friends are probably more dangerous at times than our enemies!
Paul never used flattery. There is a group of wealthy laymen across this country who are literally owned by the people who flatter them. If a Christian work or program doesn’t butter them up, they are not the least bit interested in helping that program financially. God pity the church or the work that must depend on men who require flattery and compliments before they will give their support to the work. I think this is one of the curses in the Christian church today.
Paul did not use a “cloak of covetousness.” I really don’t think that money is the sin of the ministry. I have never felt that money was a great temptation for the men whom I know in the ministry. But the cloak of covetousness is a cloak of many colors. There are men who covet honor and fame and position. We need to search our hearts in order to uncover any covetousness there.
Many colleges have attempted to buy men by giving them honorary doctoral degrees. They have been given out by the score. The college then hopes for a donation or some other type of support. That is one reason it would be well if all doctoral degrees had to be earned.


Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ [1 Thess. 2:6].

Paul never sought position or honors. He never received any honorary degrees. He had pure motives.

THE MOTHER SIDE OF THE APOSTLE’S MINISTRY (COMFORT)


But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children [1 Thess. 2:7].


The word nurse here means “a nursing mother,” like a mother bird. This is Paul’s positive expression of his relationship to the Thessalonians: “I’ve been a nursing mother, a mother bird to you.” Oh, the gentleness of Paul! He was as tender as a woman in his dealings with the church at Thessalonica.
The Lord Jesus said of Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). Jesus identifies Himself in many ways in Scripture. He calls Himself the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep. He protects His sheep, and someday He is going to gather them all into a fold where they will be safe with Him. Then He also uses this idea of the mother hen with her little chicks.
I was raised in the country, and I remember that in the spring of the year we would put an old setting hen on some eggs. Soon she had a little flock of chicks. She would go all around the yard clucking. We didn’t have a special chicken yard because we lived on a great big place by a cotton gin, and these chickens would roam over an area about a quarter mile square. When the rain would come, the mother hen would cluck, cluck, cluck, calling her chicks to the hen house. Sometimes they wouldn’t quite make it; so the mother hen would get all those little chicks under her, and she would cover them with her feathers. The rain would be running down off her, but all the little ones were safe under her wings. How many times the Lord Jesus says to us, “Just come in under My wings.”
Paul was that kind of minister. He loved the Thessalonians with a mother’s love. They were dear to him. There are still ministers like that today. Maybe they aren’t all great expositors, but they believe the Word of God and preach it. Such godly and experienced pastors are able to counsel people who are in need of help. You don’t need to be afraid to sit down and open your heart to such a man and let him help you.


So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us [1 Thess. 2:8].

Dear is “beloved.” Paul had a genuine love for the Thessalonian believers, and he was willing literally to give his life for them.

For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God [1 Thess. 2:9].
“Travail … labouring night and day”—that’s a mother’s work. We are familiar with the expression: “Man’s work is from sun to sun, but a woman’s work [or a mother’s work] is never done.” A mother is not a paid nurse. Paul is saying that he wasn’t a paid nurse who worked by the hour. He wasn’t a hired baby-sitter. He did not belong to a union.
Have you ever heard of a mothers’ union which insisted a mother would work only for eight hours of the day? Have you known any mothers who punch the clock and then turn away from their crying babies because they refuse to work anymore? Maybe some mothers will work out some kind of union agreement like that, but I don’t think real mothers would want it. Mothers work a little differently—night and day.
In New England there were two girls who worked together in the cotton mills. One of them quit working, and they didn’t see each other for several years. They met on the street one day, and the girl from the mill said, “What are you doing now? Are you still working?” The other one replied, “No, I’m not working—I’m married. I not only have a husband, but I also have a little boy. I get up at three in the morning to feed the baby. Then I get up early to fix breakfast and make a lunch for my husband. I take care of the baby through the day, and then I prepare dinner for my husband.” The first girl exclaimed, “I remember when you worked at the mill how you used to watch the clock. When that five o’clock whistle blew, you were out of there!” The young mother explained: “I don’t watch the clock anymore. I’m working longer hours, but it isn’t really work.” This girl was motivated by love, and it didn’t seem like work anymore.
That is what Paul is saying here. He loved these people. He labored over them night and day because he loved them.
A member of my church once asked me to go visit someone. He said, “You’re paid to do that.” Do you know what I told him? I said, “You go to see him—because you are not paid to do it, and you will probably do a better job than I could do. We are not to do the Lord’s work on the basis of pay!” I’m afraid that put him in an awkward position. He had to make that call, and I can assure you, he never asked that of me again. We are to care for one another with the tender care of a mother. That was what Paul did.

THE FATHER SIDE OF THE APOSTLE’S MINISTRY (CHARGE)


Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe [1 Thess. 2:10].


“Ye are witnesses”—Paul is speaking of something which they know to be true. Notice the way Paul conducted himself among them.
“Holily”—he carefully discharged his duty to God. That is what holy living is. “Justly”—he also carefully discharged his duty to man. Paul had a duty to God and a duty to man; he discharged both of them.
I hear so many people talk about being “dedicated Christians.” If you hope to be a dedicated Christian, you must live a holy life before God. Watch God, and don’t watch the clock. Don’t work only when the boss is around. You should work all the time, because God is always around. Going down front in a church service, shedding a few tears, and having someone pray over you will not produce a dedicated life. What does your boss think of you? Or if you are a student, what does your teacher think of you? If you are lazy, then you are not dedicated. A dedicated life is a holy life, lived always in the presence of God.
“Unblameably.” This means that no charge could be maintained against the apostle and his companions. This doesn’t mean that his enemies didn’t accuse him—because they did—but the charges didn’t stick.
People will say ugly things about you, but the important thing is to make sure the criticisms are not true. Paul and his companions maintained a holy life. A holy life does count. It has nothing to do with obtaining your salvation, but it has everything to do with the salvation of folk around you, because they are watching you.


As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children [1 Thess. 2:11].

“Exhorted.” The Greek word is parakaleo, which means that Paul came to the side of them to help, to entreat, and to convict them. It is the same word which is used for the Holy Spirit. You remember that the Lord Jesus said He would send the Holy Spirit who would convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and judgment (see John 16:7–11).
I have always felt that the gospel is not presented in the power of the Holy Spirit unless it is presented as something that the Holy Spirit can use to convict a man. That means that He convinces a man of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Those three elements are always in the gospel message.
Comforted is not used here in the sense we use the word today. We saw that meaning on the mother side of the apostle’s ministry. Rather, the word here means “to persuade.” There was an urgency in Paul’s message to the Thessalonians. He often said, “I beseech you”—I beg you. That is the way the gospel should be presented even today.
Paul “charged” them. This has a note of severity in it—it involves discipline. It is a virile word, a robust, firm, masculine word. I’m afraid that we find a lot of sissy preaching in our pulpits today. The popular thing is to have a little sermonette given by a preacherette to Christianettes. There is so little urgency. Someone has defined the average church service in a liberal church as when a mild-mannered man gets up before a group of mild-mannered people and urges them to be more mild-mannered. Oh, that is sickening, my friend!
My wife says that I indulge my flesh at Eastertime because I just have to laugh when I look through the paper and see what the liberal preachers are going to preach for the Resurrection. They have a problem with that. And I enjoy their discomfort! One preacher’s subject was given as “Easter Is a Time of Flowers.” Oh boy, don’t you imagine that was a virile, robust sermon? No wonder there are so many sick saints when they are being fed such watered down soup. A great Methodist evangelist in the South once said, “Some sermons don’t have enough gospel in them to make soup for a sick grasshopper.” In contrast, what a glorious thing the ministry of the apostle Paul was!


That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory [1 Thess. 2:12].

“Walk worthy.” This is what Paul also wrote to the Ephesians: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Eph. 4:1).
God has called the saints unto “his kingdom,” which refers to the millennial kingdom, and unto “glory,” which refers to the eternal kingdom. In other words, get a perspective of God’s great plan and purpose. Live in the light of eternity.


For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe [1 Thess. 2:13].

Now here is the other side of the giving of the gospel. Paul has already said, “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost …” (1 Thess. 1:5). That is the way the gospel should be given out. But I hear a great many people criticize preachers, and I want to say this: If a man is presenting the gospel and it is going out in power, it should also be received as the Word of God.
How do you receive the Word of God? Do you receive it as the Word of God? Or do you get angry? Does the hair stand up on the back of your neck? Twice in all my years of ministry I was approached by a man after a sermon and asked if I had him in mind when I preached the sermon that morning. My friend, I didn’t even know those men were there! They were giving themselves an added sense of importance that wasn’t justified. But the real issue is that they weren’t receiving the Word of God as the Word of God.
The Word should go out as the Word of God, and it should be received as the Word of God. And, my friend, if you will receive it that way, then it will be able to work in you, and there’s blessing there for you. Otherwise, you are wasting your time in church.
We have seen how Paul has been giving out the Word of God. It irritated some people because God’s Word is salt, and salt stings when it gets into a fresh wound of sin in the life of an individual. The Word of God is also a light, but there are a lot of people who love darkness because their deeds are evil.
Paul is teaching in this chapter that the church of God should mirror the family of God down here on earth. He talks about a mother relationship to believers, a father relationship, and now a brother relationship. Sometimes people say, “Our church is a family church.” What they mean is that there is a nursery for the little baby, a junior church for all the little children of junior age, a teenage group, a couples’ group for dad and mom, and finally a senior citizens’ group for grandma and grandpa. That is what folk call a “family church.” I am not sure Paul would ever have divided up the church like that, and this is not what we mean when we say the church should mirror the family of God.
The church should be a revelation of God to the community just as a family should be. The relationships of husband, wife, and child in the home should reveal the threefold aspect of the love of God and Christ for the world. Paul has already spoken of the mother side of the local church. He was willing to work day and night to nurture them as a little bird is nurtured by its mother. He didn’t work an eight-hour day, but he was on the job for them all the time.
Then Paul says he was like a father to that church. A child in a home needs to experience both mother-love and father-love. It is a tragedy for children in our day when the parents are separated or divorced. The child very often fails to receive the love of the father. That father-love is expressed in discipline. Paul says he was like a father to the Thessalonian church.
There are some very fine Bible teachers who never preach anything but comfort. They are always comforting the saints. People love it, because everyone likes to be comforted. I like to have my back rubbed and my head also. That is physically comforting, and it is a joy. But we are not to have comfort alone; we also need discipline. I’m afraid that the father-side, the discipline-side, is woefully lacking, not only in our homes and in the state, but also in the church.

THE BROTHER SIDE OF THE APOSTLE’S MINISTRY (CHALLENGE)


Now the brother-side of the ministry within the church is represented by the child in the family.


For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews [1 Thess. 2:14].

“Brethren”—that is, brothers. What is it that makes men brothers? There are two things that make brothers. Regardless of race or color, it is true that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. No one escapes that category. This is the brotherhood of sinners. Since it is a brotherhood of sinners, it is not a loving brotherhood. You had better watch your brother; you can’t always trust him.
Now what is it that Paul says drew the Thessalonians together as brothers? “For ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen.” The Thessalonian church was largely a gentile church, and they were already experiencing persecution, although this was not yet the time of the great persecutions under the emperors. They were suffering in Thessalonica. Paul could say to them, “Before you began suffering, the brethren over in Jerusalem were already suffering at the hands of their racial brothers. This suffering draws you together and holds you together.” They were brothers in suffering; suffering is a cement that holds believers together.
The church is coming “unglued” in some areas of the world, and the reason for this is the same thing that was said of Israel in Deuteronomy 32:15: “Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.” That is, they entered a period of affluence, and they became critical. The church in America lives in affluence. But, frankly, I think that persecution may be just around the corner.
There are many in the church who are praying for revival. I know of a number of prayer groups which meet regularly to pray for revival. I have never heard of them praying that they might all suffer or be persecuted in order to bring in revival. I do not think that revival will come to this country under the present state of conditions. Right now there is a renewed interest in the Word of God, and some call it revival. However, I don’t call this revival. I believe that if revival came to the church, we would all know it. No one would need to ask, “Do you think this is revival?”
But I do believe that if suffering came to the church, it would draw believers together. We would cut out all this nonsense of picking at the other fellow. We would recognize that every child of God is our brother. There may be some disagreement on various points, but every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is my brother. We are in the family of God, and we should mirror this before the world. When the church really mirrors this before the world, then revival will come.
We try to make a detour and a shortcut to revival by praying for it. Why don’t we pray the conditions that produce revival? It was man’s extremity that brought revival at times in the past. The great Wesleyan movement came out of the dark days in England when they were on the verge of a revolution. It seems it takes such conditions for revival to occur. Maybe we are not far from that in our country today.

Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:

Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost [1 Thess. 2:15–16].

This I consider to be a remarkable passage of Scripture. It reveals a great principle: God permits sin to run its full course. The figure of speech which the prophets used was that the cup of iniquity must be filled up. God is permitting the cup to be filled. God won’t check it so that Satan will never be able to say, “See, I never was given a chance because God wouldn’t permit me to go all the way.” I think the time of the Great Tribulation is the time when God will allow Satan full rein.

REWARD OF A TRUE WITNESS FOR CHRIST


But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavoured the more abundantly to see your face with great desire [1 Thess. 2:17].


“Brethren”—again, this is the real brotherhood. This is the real ecumenical movement. When a person is in Christ Jesus, he is a brother to all others who are in Christ. Outside of Christ there is only the brotherhood of sinners.
“Being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart.” Isn’t this lovely of the apostle Paul? He was actually run out of Thessalonica, but his heart was still there. He hated to leave these Christians and wanted to be able to see them again. By the way, he did.


Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us [1 Thess. 2:18].

Paul had spiritual discernment to see that it was Satan’s strategy that kept him from going to Thessalonica. The word Satan actually means “adversary.”
I believe that today Satan seeks to hinder any program of getting out the Word of God. We have seen several instances of this. Many times my Bible teaching program has been on a radio station by which we were reaching an entire area, and things were going so nicely. Then a godless man would buy the station, and he would take all religious programs off the air. That is the work of the enemy, the adversary. He doesn’t want the Word of God to be given out.


For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?

For ye are our glory and joy [1 Thess. 2:19–20].

Paul says that one of the great things he anticipates when Christ comes to take His church will be the opportunity to see these people whom he has led to the Lord. The Thessalonian believers whom he had won to Christ were a joy for him here and would be hereafter.
By the way, is anyone going to be in heaven who will come up to you and thank you for having a part in giving out the Word of God? Have you given your support to missions? If you have, someone you have never known, someone from the other side of the earth, may come up to you and thank you for your support of missions. He will thank you for being interested in getting out the Word of God because the Word reached him and enabled him to be saved. That, my friend, is going to be part of the reward that we will get in heaven. We need to recognize that. It is a wonderful hope to look forward to the time when Christ Jesus takes the church out of this world. It is even more joyous to know that someone who trusted Christ because of your witness will go along with you to meet the Lord!

CHAPTER 3

Theme: The coming of Christ is a purifying hope


The great theme of 1 Thessalonians is the rapture of the church. The great theme of 2 Thessalonians is the revelation of Christ; that is, His coming to the earth to establish His kingdom. The thing that impresses me is the practicality of these doctrines which Paul taught to the Thessalonians. Today the schools of eschatology, or prophecy, have gotten this teaching way out into left field where it becomes sort of an extraneous thing. It becomes something that is nice to talk about and even to argue about, but it is not too meaningful to life. They do not teach it as something that must be geared into life and that can walk in shoe leather down here. Paul’s teaching is entirely different.
The theme of this chapter is that the coming of Christ is a purifying hope. It will change your life, affect your life-style, if you hold to the hope of the rapture of the church; that is, the imminent coming of Christ for His own. If that doesn’t affect your life, you don’t really believe it. It is just sort of a theory or a philosophy with you. This theme becomes the very heart of the epistle, and we will be dealing with it from chapter 3 through verse 12 of chapter 4.

TIMOTHY BRINGS A GOOD REPORT OF THE THESSALONIANS


Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone [1 Thess. 3:1].


Paul longs to return to the Thessalonians but remains back at Athens alone so that he could send Timothy, and perhaps Silas, Dr. Luke, and others to Thessalonica.
Wherefore—this important word ties this chapter back in with what Paul had talked about in the previous chapter: the family relationship that exists in the church. He had been a mother to the church, a father to them, and a brother. He had led them to the Lord, and he loved them. He said that they would be his glory and his joy at the coming (parousia) of Christ, at the appearance of the Lord Jesus when all believers will receive their rewards.
Now because Paul had a real affection for them, he was frustrated in not being able to return to them. He had been hindered by Satan. Paul had to leave Thessalonica so quickly that there were many unfinished teachings and doctrines that he had not been able to develop fully. He not only longed to return, but he wondered about the future of the believers there. Paul desired to comfort them. In other words, he was demonstrating the thing he mentioned at the beginning of the letter—a labor of love.
Love is not affection or just a nice, comfortable, warm feeling around your heart. Love seeks the welfare of another. That is the way love is expressed for anyone. If you love someone, you seek his welfare and you actually would jeopardize your own life for the person whom you love.


And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellow-labourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith [1 Thess. 3:2].

Because of his concern, Paul sent Timothy back to the Thessalonians. He calls Timothy “our brother, and minister of God.” The word for “minister” is the Greek diakonos from which we get our English word deacon; it literally means “servant.”
“Our fellow-labourer in the gospel of Christ.” The gospel of Christ is the sphere of service. Paul was not just a do-gooder. Sometimes fundamentalists are criticized because our main objective is to get out the Word of God. We make that primary. We are criticized for not emphasizing the social aspect of the gospel enough. May I say that there has never been any great social movement that was not anchored in the preaching of the gospel. The child labor laws came out of the great Wesley meetings. The labor movement today owes a great deal to John Wesley even though they have moved so far from the source that they don’t recognize it. Hospitals have followed the preaching of the Word of God. If people will respond to the message of the gospel of Christ, their lives will be transformed, and then these good works will flow out of that change.
We are moving more and more into a welfare program in our country. This has become one of the most corrupt things that has ever taken place in our government. I don’t think any of us can grasp the corruption that is connected with this vast program. Why does that happen? Because it is not anchored in the gospel of Christ.
The liberals who do the criticizing of us act as if they are the do-gooders. Have you ever known a do-gooder who really did something good? What are they doing? They actually encourage immorality and license. They haven’t lifted up mankind. They are not able to release the kids from drugs. In fact, when I was in Portland, Oregon, one of the liberal churches there was using the church as a place to dispense birth control pills to the girls who wanted them!
Paul says that Timothy was a servant and that his sphere of service was the gospel of Christ. That is to be our sphere also. And when the gospel of Christ is given out, my friend, there will be a whole lot of doing good that will take place. The only criticism I’ve ever had of the do-gooders is that their doing good is merely temporary assistance. They are not helping folk permanently by bringing them into a right relationship with God. Only the gospel of Christ can do that.
“To establish you … concerning your faith.” This same wonderful word was used back in the Book of Exodus when Moses went up to the mountain to hold up his hands in prayer to assure Israel’s victory: “But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun” (Exod. 17:12, italics mine). “Stayed up” is the same word as “establish.” Paul sent Timothy over to them to stay them up, to hold them up, to establish them. People still need the same thing today. They need to be established in the faith.
“To comfort you concerning your faith.” Comfort means “to encourage.” He sent Timothy to hold the Thessalonians up and to encourage them in the faith.


That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto [1 Thess. 3:3].

Here is a statement that is a little hard for any of us to swallow. He says that “no man should be moved,” which means he should not be disturbed, “by these afflictions.” Afflictions here means “pressures, tensions.”
Then Paul makes the amazing statement that “we are appointed thereunto.” We know that we are going to go through storms. They will be temporary storms, but we cannot escape them. We are going to have trouble down here. The Word of God makes that very clear. Paul wants the Thessalonians to stand for the Lord in the midst of afflictions.
There are other passages of Scripture which teach this same truth. The Lord Jesus said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Tribulation is the trouble that all of us are going to have. There is no way around it. Yet the Lord Himself tells us to be of good cheer even in the midst of trouble.
If you are a believer, you are not going to escape trouble. To accept Christ does not mean to take out an insurance policy against suffering. The fact of the matter is that you will have trouble after you become a child of God, even if you haven’t had any trouble before. He has never promised that we would miss the storm, but we will go through all the storms of life. What He does say very definitely and dogmatically is that He will go with us through the storms and that we will reach the harbor. Any boat which He is in will not go to the bottom of the Sea of Galilee but will reach the other side. You and I are in the process of going to the other side.
Paul reinforces this: “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12, italics mine). There are no “ifs,” “ands,” or “buts” about it (see 1 Pet. 4:12–19).
The time to be concerned is when there is no cloud in the sky, no ripple on the sea, and everything is smooth and nice. Then you might question your salvation. But if you are experiencing trouble down here, if the pressures and tensions of life are on you, then that is a sign that you are a child of God. This is the way God teaches us to rely on Him.


For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know [1 Thess. 3:4].

I remember hearing about a congregation in Memphis, Tennessee, where the pastor asked for some favorite verses of Scripture. One man got up and said his favorite verse was, “And it came to pass.” He sat down, and everyone looked puzzled. The pastor asked him how in the world that could be his favorite passage. He answered, “When I get in trouble, I turn to where it says, ‘It came to pass,’ and I know my troubles came to pass. They didn’t come to stay.” God will bring us through the storms. We will finally be rid of all our troubles. How wonderful that is. Our brother may have misapplied the verse, but his theology was absolutely accurate and agrees with what Paul is saying here.
Tribulation is the same word as affliction. This does not refer to the Great Tribulation. It refers to the “little tribulations.” We are all going to have a little trouble down here. Such troubles are for the purpose of bringing us closer to God. They promote sanctification in the life of the believer.


For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain [1 Thess. 3:5].

“The tempter” is none other than Satan. In chapter 2 Paul said, “Satan hindered us.” In other words, Paul is saying to the Thessalonians, “Satan is giving me a bad time, and I fear he may be giving you a bad time also.”
Another purpose of afflictions is to test the genuineness of our belief. Trouble is the acid that tests the genuineness of the coin of belief. There are true believers and there are a lot of counterfeit ones. One thing that will really reveal the genuineness of faith is the ability to endure trouble through faith in God. Afflictions reveal the genuine believer, and this is the occasion of Paul’s rejoicing.


But now when Timotheus came from you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith and charity, and that ye have good remembrance of us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to see you [1 Thess. 3:6].

It was wonderful when Paul got word from them, and that word was a good report. They were enduring their afflictions.


Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith [1 Thess. 3:7].

“In all our affliction”—Paul tells them that he has also had afflictions. The good report from them is a comfort to him.


For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord [1 Thess. 3:8].

“We live” means that as believers we enjoy life. If should really be translated “since”—“since ye stand fast in the Lord.” Even in trouble you can enjoy it—that’s not always easy to do, my friend. This is what Peter writes: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” (1 Pet. 4:12–13). You cannot lose as a Christian. Even if you have trouble, it is going to work out for your good—you can always be sure of that.

PAUL URGES CONTINUING GROWTH


For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God [1 Thess. 3:9].


Joy is associated with life, and sorrow is associated with death. However, sorrow increases the capacity of the heart for joy. Paul wants the Thessalonians to know how to rejoice. Being a Christian is a wonderful thing!


Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith? [1 Thess. 3:10].

Paul’s labor in Thessalonica was very rudely interrupted—he was run out of town—and he wanted to return to continue his teaching ministry. Paul wanted to teach the Word of God.


Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you [1 Thess. 3:11].

Oh, how Paul prayed for the opportunity to return to them!


And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:

To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints [1 Thess. 3:12–13].

“Abound in love.” Abound means “exceed,” and love is the Greek agape. In this epistle, love is seen only in action—“labor of love.” It is not affection, but an active seeking of the welfare of another.
“To the end”—love has a purpose; it is not an end in itself.
“He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness”—the desired end of their love for one another is that they would develop a character of holiness. If you were tried in court for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? We are going to appear before Him someday, and He is going to judge our works. This may terrify you, but He also is going to judge our character as believers and determine the reward we will receive. My Christian friend, what kind of a life are you living today?
“At the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” Most schools of thought would agree that this verse indicates that the saints are going to come with Christ when He comes to the earth to establish His kingdom. But this verse also seems to indicate that He doesn’t reward them until that time when He comes to the earth to establish His kingdom. Yet many of us believe that believers will come before the judgment seat of Christ before that; that is, we believe that when He takes the church out of the world, the world enters the Great Tribulation Period, and then He comes to establish His kingdom at the end of the Great Tribulation Period. So the question naturally arises: When is He going to present us “unblameable in holiness before God”? Is it when He takes the church out of the world? Or, will it be at the time He comes to the earth to establish His kingdom? The answer depends upon our understanding of this phrase, “at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”
There are different Greek words for “coming” or “appearing.” The first of these words is epiphaneia; we get our word epiphany from it. The first coming of Christ was an epiphany. It has the idea of a shining through. The King James translation uses the word appeared: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11). The Lord Jesus came in person as a little Babe in Bethlehem more than nineteen hundred years ago. It was a breaking through, a shining through of the Lord. It was His epiphany. This word can be used of His first coming or His coming to take the church out of the world or His coming to set up His kingdom. All three have the idea of a breaking through, a shining through, and the actual presence of the Lord Jesus.
A second Greek word is apokalupsis, which means a “revelation” or an “unveiling.” That is actually the name of the Book of Revelation. One could hardly call His first coming an unveiling, because actually His glory was veiled in human flesh when He was born in Bethlehem. It was like the shekinah glory in the tabernacle of the Old Testament which was back in the Holy of Holies where only the high priest was allowed to enter. There was a veil which separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the tabernacle. When the Lord Jesus was here the first time, His glory did not show forth; it was veiled in human flesh. When He comes again, His glory will shine forth. So this is a word that refers to His second coming.
The third Greek word is parousia. It literally means “presence” or “being alongside.” It is commonly translated “coming,” but it actually means “presence.” We use coming in that same way today. I have been introduced to an audience with the words, “We are thankful for the coming of Dr. McGee.” I wasn’t coming at that time: I was already there. It means that I was present, sitting on the platform, and they were happy that I had come. Sometimes in the King James translation, parousia is translated as “presence” and sometimes as “coming.” “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only …” (Phil. 2:12). In 1 Thessalonians 2:19 as well as in the verse we are considering, parousia is translated “coming.”
Therefore, “at the coming of our Lord Jesus” refers to the fact that believers are going to be present with the Lord Jesus at the very moment that we are caught up to meet the Lord in the air. He will take us home to glory, to the place that He has prepared for us. So that this “coming” does not refer to the return of the Lord with His saints to establish His kingdom, but to our coming to heaven into the presence of the Father. We have the same thought in 1 Thessalonians 2:19: “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?” We will come into the presence of the Lord Jesus and at that time will be presented “unblameable in holiness before God.”

CHAPTER 4

Theme: The coming of Christ is a purifying hope; the coming of Christ is a comforting hope

HOW BELIEVERS ARE TO WALK


Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more [1 Thess. 4:1].


This section teaches how the believers are to walk down here in light of the coming of Christ. It is bound up in that little word walk, which we find in this verse and again in the twelfth verse. This is the practical aspect of the hope of the coming of the Lord. We like to look forward to the day when we shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But, my friend, in the meantime our feet are down here on the ground and we need to do some walking. We are to walk in a way that will please God.
“As ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.” We should keep improving. We should grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him. The walk of the believer is very important. It is emphasized in many portions of Scripture, and it is the emphasis here. A believer cannot do as he pleases; he does as Christ pleases.


For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus [1 Thess. 4:2].

In regard to their walk, we will find Paul giving some commandments to the Thessalonians. You will remember that the Lord Jesus also gave commandments. Some of these commandments are new commandments.
Let me say this very carefully: The Ten Commandments have no part in a sinner’s salvation, nor are they standard for Christian conduct. The purpose of the Ten Commandments is to take us by the hand, as a pedagogue would take a little child by the hand, to bring us to the Cross and say to us, “Little fellow, you need a Savior!” The Ten Commandments are like a mirror which lets us see that we are sinners. The Ten Commandments were not given to save us; they were given to show us that we are sinners and that we need a Savior. That is their purpose.
However, there are commandments for believers, and the standard for Christian conduct which they set is on a much higher plane than the Ten Commandments. In chapter 5 we will find twenty-two commandments for believers given.
Now the question naturally arises: If man could not keep the Ten Commandments, how can he keep higher commandments? The Bible makes it very clear that man was not able to keep the Ten Commandments. The nation Israel transgressed these commandments as Simon Peter confessed: “And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe…. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they” (Acts 15:7, 10–11).
Now if we can’t keep the Ten Commandments, how are we to keep any higher commandments of Christian conduct? Man cannot do it himself. This can be attained only by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within the believer (see v. 8).
“For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.” Paul has some commandments for believers. We are not lawless. We should be disciplined, and we should be in obedience to Christ. It should be a love relationship—we should be motivated by love—the Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication [1 Thess. 4:3].
Sanctification is a very wonderful word, but I am afraid that it is greatly misunderstood. If you go through the Scriptures, you will find that sanctification has several different meanings. When it is used in reference to Christ, as it is here, it means that He has been made over to us sanctification—and you cannot improve on that! Therefore, it does not simply refer to a sinless state, but rather that we have been set apart for God. For example, Simon Peter speaks of the fact that “… holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:21). Now some of those holy men have life stories that don’t make them sound very holy! Moses, for instance, was a murderer. David, who wrote so many wonderful psalms, was also a murderer. But they were sanctified, holy, because they had been set aside for God.
Sanctification of the believer is a work of the Spirit of God. We need to review the threefold aspect of it, because this is so very important:
Positional sanctification means that Christ has been made unto us sanctification. We are accepted in the Beloved, and we will never be more saved than at the moment we put our trust in Christ. We are never accepted because of who we are, but because of what Christ has done. This positional sanctification is perfection in Christ.
Practical sanctification is the Holy Spirit working in our lives to produce a holiness in our walk. This practical sanctification will never be perfect so long as we are in these bodies with our old sinful flesh.
Total sanctification will occur in the future when we are conformed to the image of Christ Jesus. Then both the position and the practice of sanctification will be perfect.
The literal meaning of the word sanctification is to be “set apart for God.” The moment a lost sinner comes to Christ and accepts Christ as Savior, that person is set aside for God’s use. This is clearly taught in the Old Testament in the tabernacle. God taught the Old Testament believers great doctrinal truths through very simple, practical lessons. In the tabernacle there were vessels and instruments which were used in the sacrifices. After they had gone through the wilderness for forty years, those pots and pans and forks and spoons were pretty well beaten and battered. I don’t think they were very attractive. I think that any good housewife would have said, “Let’s trade them in on a new set. Let’s throw these away.” However, God called them holy vessels. They were holy because they were set aside for the use of God. That is what made them holy.
In the same way this applies to a person. When he comes to Christ, he is saved. He is redeemed; he belongs to Christ. Paul says, “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” You have been set aside for a holy purpose, for God’s use. Every child of God—not just preachers or missionaries or Christian workers, but every believer—is set aside for the use of God.
“That ye should abstain from fornication.” Don’t think it was only the Thessalonians who needed this admonition from Paul. Don’t think they were the only ones who engaged in sins, especially the sins of the flesh. Don’t think it was only in Roman times that idolatry involved sins of sex. Today we are seeing the rise of the worship of Satan and the practice of the occult. There are all kinds of amulets and rituals connected with such worship. Also there is astrology which seeks to tell people about themselves. And there is always sex involved in all of it.
The great tragedy today is to hear of some Christian worker who has become involved in sexual sin. And, unfortunately, there are even churches that will defend a minister who has been guilty of such. We are people who are supposed to be set aside for the use of God! Paul says that you cannot be involved in sexual sin and at the same time be used of God. One cannot live in sin and be a preacher or singer or Sunday school teacher or an officer in the church. I don’t care who you are, if you do, you will wreck the work of God.
Now, should a Christian strive for holiness? I think so. But you and I need to recognize that it is only in Christ that we can be acceptable to God. Paul says that we have been sanctified, brought to this high state, set apart for the use of God. Now what?—


That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;

Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God [1 Thess. 4:4–5].

All around these Thessalonian believers were the pagans who combined sex and religion. Sex was a religion among the Greeks. You could go to Corinth and find that out, but you didn’t have to go to Corinth—you could find it out right in Thessalonica.
Paul says that we are to live a life that commends the gospel. The loose living that we find among some believers today brings the gospel into disrepute. Such people are not living for God or serving God. You cannot serve God and live in sin. He doesn’t accept that.
“That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour.” The immorality that exists in our day is absolutely astounding. A very fine Christian leader who holds Bible classes on the campus of a college here in California told me that the boys’ dormitory is Sodom and the girls’ dormitory is Gomorrah. These poor kids know all about sex, but they don’t know about love. God says that the body should be saved for the marriage relationship, and this applies to men and women. There are all sorts of reasons given for the fact that there is so much unhappiness in marriage. The problem is that the marriage partners are not people who have been set apart for the use of God and who are faithful to each other in a love relationship. When a person saves his body for marriage and is faithful to his partner, he is possessing his vessel “in sanctification and honour.” Such should be the practice of every child of God. Believe me, Paul puts it on the line.


That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified [1 Thess. 4:6].

“That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter.” You have to be honest if you are going to be a child of God.
“Because that the Lord is the avenger of all such.” I’ve lived long enough as a Christian and as a pastor to see this principle worked out in the lives of many believers. I’ve observed certain believers who have been dishonest in their dealings with others, and God is an avenger—He moves in and judges them.


For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness [1 Thess. 4:7].

A child of God cannot continue in sin. The prodigal son may get in the pigpen for a time, but he won’t live in the pigpen.


He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit [1 Thess. 4:8].

A child of God is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He cannot continue to live in sin because the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. The time will come when the child of God will long for holiness in his own life.
The Holy Spirit is the only means by which we can live for God. We see in Paul’s Galatian epistle that the child of God is not to indulge in the sins of the flesh. Instead, there should be the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit in the life. In Romans 8:3, Paul makes it very clear: “For what the law could not do….” Why? Is the Law wrong? No, the Law is not wrong; the Ten Commandments are not wrong. The problem is with man, not with the Law. Man cannot attain to the level of the Ten Commandments, nor can he live by the commandments in the New Testament. It is the Holy Spirit within the believer who has been given to him to enable him to live a life for God.
God has given the Holy Spirit to every believer. He is not something to be sought after a person is saved. The moment a sinner trusts Christ, that person is indwelt by the Spirit of God. In Acts 19 we find that when Paul arrived in Ephesus, he found people who were professing to be Christians, but he saw that they were not indwelt by the Spirit of God. He asked them whether they had received the Holy Spirit when they were saved. They told him they had never even heard about such things; they had heard only of the baptism of John. So Paul preached the gospel to them, and then they were saved and received the Holy Spirit. You receive the Holy Spirit only when you are converted and come to Christ. At that point the believer receives and is baptized with the Holy Spirit and is placed into the body of believers to function in it. A person may have many infillings of the Spirit after that, and I think we need a constant infilling of the Holy Spirit. It is only the indwelling Holy Spirit that enables us to lead holy lives.


But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another [1 Thess. 4:9].

Love is the subject, and the statement he makes is rather amazing. A believer must have love for the brethren. It is a supernatural love that is taught of God: “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” It is not a theoretical kind of love, not just an abstract term. We have mentioned before that it cannot be just love in the abstract, but it must be love in the concrete. Such love can only be produced in the hearts of believers by the Holy Spirit. Notice that after Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit, brotherly love is the first thing that he mentions.
He writes, “As touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.” I believe that love is the identifying mark of a child of God.
My roommate in college and I could wrestle, fight, argue, try to get dates with the same girl, and all that sort of thing. One day really had a knock-down-drag-out fight. We had literally torn up the room. He proceeded to tell me what he thought of me, and it was not very complimentary. Then I proceeded to tell him what I thought of him and that wasn’t very complimentary either. All of a sudden it occurred to me, “Look, you are the greatest proof that I am a child of God! One of the evidences that a person is a child of God is that he loves his brother. John emphasizes it and it is in 1 Thessalonians that we are taught of God to love our brother. In spite of the fact that you are the most contemptible person I have ever met, the most unlovely person I have ever met, I love you!” He looked startled and began to laugh. “You know, I love you, and you’re lots worse than I am!”
This man is now a retired preacher, just as I am. Once in awhile we have an opportunity to see one another. He is still a very ornery individual, but I love him because he is a child of God. And I think he loves me. That is the proof that we are the children of God.


And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more [1 Thess. 4:10].

Love for the brethren is an area for growth and development. Very candidly, some of the saints are not very lovely. Someone has put that fact into this little jingle:

To dwell above with saints in love
Oh, that will be glory.
But to stay below with the saints I know—
Well, that’s another story.

These Thessalonians did love the brethren, but evidently their love had not reached the summum bonum of life. They weren’t perfect in their love, and there was still room for improvement.
There are going to be some personality conflicts among the saints. It may be better for such people not to be together too much nor to put arms around each other and walk together. That doesn’t mean we should hate them. We can still love them as the children of God. For example, I know a minister whose methods I absolutely despise, but I can truthfully say that I love him. I know of no one who gets up and presents Jesus Christ as wonderfully as this man does, and I love him for it.
The real test is our love for the brethren. If you want to put the blue litmus paper down in your life to test it and find out whether or not you are a genuine believer, this is the place to put it down: Do you love the brethren?


And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you [1 Thess. 4:11].

“That ye study to be quiet.” That is an interesting commandment for Christians. We have all kinds of schools today to teach people to speak. Every seminary has a public speaking class. Perhaps they should also have a class that would teach their students to be quiet. A lot of saints need such a course!
A lady went to a “tongues meeting,” and the leader thought she was interested in speaking in tongues. He asked her, “Madam, would you like to speak in tongues?” She answered, “No, I would like to lose about forty feet off the one I have now!” We need to study to be quiet. That is a commandment.
“And to do your own business”—that is another good commandment. It means to mind your own business. “Tend to your own knitting” is the way I used to hear it as a boy. Keep your nose out of the affairs of other people. This is good advice for Christians.
“And to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.” I believe that every Christian should have some type of activity whereby he is doing something that is tangible for God. That would be a wonderful thing.


That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing [1 Thess. 4:12].

“Walk honestly”—this is also something that the saints of God need to do today. It will gain the respect and the confidence of mankind. Our walk should be honest before God and man.
I have letters from several organizations which use methods to raise money that seem very questionable to me. Certain organizations have men out contacting people who have become senile, attempting to get them to make their wills over to their organizations. That is one reason you ought to make your will before you become senile. There are unscrupulous people who are out to get your money—there is no question about that. A child of God cannot do such questionable things because we are to “walk honestly toward them that are without.” That means that all dealings with unbelievers are to be scrupulously honest. God will judge us if we do not walk honestly.
THE COMING OF CHRIST IS A COMFORTING HOPE

We come now to the next section of this epistle, a section which has been labeled one of the most important prophetic passages in the Scriptures. It teaches the imminent and impending coming of Christ for His church. That does not mean the immediate or soon coming of Christ. Paul never uses an expression like that. He did not want people to assume it would be in their own lifetime or shortly afterward. It has been more than nineteen hundred years now. But when we say that the coming of Christ is imminent, we mean that it is approaching or that it is the next event on the agenda of God’s program.
Let me illustrate my point. One time when Mrs. McGee and I flew to Florida on a new DC-10 from the Los Angeles International Airport, we had a friendly captain who began to talk to us soon after our flight had begun: “The weather is lovely here in Southern California as you can see. The weather in Miami, Florida, is also very good, and we expect it to be nice when we arrive there. We fly over Texas, and of course nobody knows what the weather will be there, but we should have a good flight today. Our next stop is Miami.” Now there was not a single passenger who jumped up, grabbed his luggage, and rushed for the door because the captain had said, “Our next stop is Miami.” That stop was imminent. In other words, we would not make any other stop before that one. It would be five hours before we would arrive at Miami, but we were prepared for that stop because it was imminent—it was the next stop.
The difference between waiting for the stop at Miami and waiting for the coming of Christ for His church is that we knew that Miami was five hours away. We don’t know how far away the coming of Christ is. It could be five hours or five days or five weeks or five months or five years or five hundred years. We simply do not know. Still, it is imminent; it is the next event.
Paul makes it very clear that he believed in the imminent return of Christ. In verse 15 of this chapter he says, “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord.” Paul believed that the Lord Jesus Christ could come in his lifetime. He did not say or believe that He would come in his lifetime, but he said that He could come. This was the attitude he expressed as he wrote to Titus: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
There are those who accuse Paul of changing his position on the imminent coming of Christ as he himself grew older. Remember that this epistle to the Thessalonians was his earliest letter. Did Paul change his theology? When he wrote to the Philippians he was an old man, a prisoner in Rome, and he said: “For our conversation [citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). Paul, at the end of his life, was still looking for Him. In other words, Christ’s coming was imminent.
Paul labeled this coming of Christ for His church, when we are to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, the rapture of the church. There are those today who hold a different viewpoint. They say the Bible does not teach the Rapture and that one cannot find that word in the New Testament. I insist that it is there. It is found in this chapter in verse 17: “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” The Greek word translated as “caught up” is harpazoµ. It means “to catch up or grasp hastily, to snatch up, to lift, to transport, or to rapture.” Rapture is just as good a word as caught up. It is a matter of semantics, whichever word you choose to use. The fact is that the Bible teaches that believers in Christ are to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Paul taught the rapture of the church. Now if you would like, you could just say you believe in the harpazoµ—that’s the original Greek word, and it means “rapture” and it means “caught up.” Nonetheless, the point is that the rapture of the church can take place at any moment; it is the next happening in the program of God.
Now I want to make a very startling statement about this passage of Scripture. Actually, the primary consideration here is not the Rapture. The precise question Paul is answering is: What about believers who have died before the Rapture has taken place?
We need to review the background of this epistle in order to understand why this question was so important to the Thessalonian believers. Paul went to Thessalonica on his second missionary journey. “… three sabbath days [he] reasoned with them out of the scriptures” (Acts 17:2). That means that Paul was there less than a month. In that month’s time, he performed a herculean task. He did the work of a missionary. He preached the gospel, converts were made, and he established a church. Then he taught these new believers the great truths of the Christian faith. It is interesting that he even taught them of the rapture of the church.
When I was a young preacher in a denomination, they didn’t have much to say about prophecy. Very candidly, I don’t think the ministers knew very much about it. They would give an excuse, saying, “You shouldn’t preach on that. That is deep truth and should be given to mature saints. It shouldn’t be given to new believers.” Well, it’s too bad that Paul didn’t know that, because he hadn’t been with the Thessalonians for a complete month and yet he was teaching them prophecy. In fact, when we get to the second epistle we will find that he taught them about the Great Tribulation and the Man of Sin, the Antichrist who is to come. Paul ran the whole gamut of prophecy for these Thessalonians. It is nonsense to say this is not to be given to new believers. It is to be taught to them, and Paul is the demonstration of that.
It is clear that Paul taught the Thessalonians that the rapture of the church might occur at any moment, that it was imminent. Then Paul left Thessalonica; he went to Berea, established a church and was there for some time. Then he took a ship and went over to Athens. We don’t know how long he was there either. He was waiting for Timothy and Silas to bring word from Thessalonica. They didn’t come, and he went on down to Corinth. After he was there for awhile, Timothy and Silas came. They came with questions from the Thessalonians to ask of Paul. So Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians to encourage them and to answer their specific questions with regard to the rapture of the church. During this unknown interval of time after Paul had left them, some of the saints in Thessalonica had died. A question arose in the minds of the believers. Had they missed the Rapture?
Obviously Paul had taught them the imminent coming of Christ, or this question would not be pertinent at all. Paul had told them that the Lord Jesus might come at any moment. These saints had died, and the Lord hadn’t come—had they missed the Rapture? What would happen to them? Paul gives the answer to this question in this epistle.
To us the question the Thessalonians had is not meaningful in the same way as it was to them. That is because you and I live nineteen hundred years this side of 1 Thessalonians, and literally millions of believers have already gone down through the doorway of death. Therefore, most of the church has already gone ahead, and a small minority remains in the world.
Paul had taught the Thessalonians that the coming of Christ was imminent, and this is still what we believe today. Between where we are right this moment and the coming of Christ for the church it is tissue-thin, which means it could happen any moment—even before you finish reading this page—or the coming of Christ could be way down yonder in the future.
There is a grave danger today in setting dates for the coming of the Lord. Some are doing that, and it is dangerous because they do not know when He will return. The Lord said that we do not know the hour He will come. They might pick the year correctly, but they surely won’t pick the hour—I don’t think they will even hit the year. When they set dates, they are robbing believers of the opportunity of looking for Him to come.
Now the Thessalonians were concerned about the saints who had died before the Rapture had taken place. We need to keep that in mind as we go through the rest of this chapter.


But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope [1 Thess. 4:13].

“I would not have you to be ignorant.” I love the way Paul says that. We have seen it before in the Corinthian epistles. When Paul says, “I would not have you ignorant, brethren,” you can pretty well put it down that the brethren are ignorant. Paul just didn’t come out and say so in a flat-footed and crude way. He is more polite and diplomatic. I would say that he did it in a very Christian way.
“Concerning them which are asleep.” Paul is referring to the death of the body. This never refers to the soul or the spirit of man, because the spirit of man does not die. We shall note that as we move through this section, but first I want to mention several reasons that the death of the body is spoken of as being “asleep.”
1. There is a similarity between sleep and death. A dead body and a sleeping body are actually very similar. I’m sure you have been to a funeral where someone has remarked that So-and-so looks just as if he were asleep. Well, in a way it is true—the body of a believer is asleep. A sleeper does not cease to exist, and the inference is that the dead do not cease to exist just because the body is asleep. Sleep is temporary; death is also temporary. Sleep has its waking; death has its resurrection. It is not that life is existence and death is non-existence, you see.
2. The word which is translated “asleep” has its root in the Greek word keimai, which means “to lie down.” And the very interesting thing is that the word for “resurrection” is a word that refers only to the body. It is anastasis, and it comes from two Greek words: histemi which means “to stand,” and ana, the preposition, “up.” It is only the body which can stand up in resurrection.
C. S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters uses a little sarcasm to ridicule the liberals who believe that the resurrection is a resurrection of the spirit and not of the body. He asks what position the soul or the spirit takes when it lies down in death, or what position the spirit takes when it stands up in resurrection! If you want to believe in soul sleep, you must explain how a soul can lie down and then stand up. Obviously “asleep” refers to the body.
The same Greek word for “sleep” is used here as is used when referring to a natural sleep when the body lies down in bed. Let me give you two illustrations of this. “And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow” (Luke 22:45, italics mine). Imagine that Peter, James, and John went to sleep at this time of crisis! The word is the same word that is used here in 1 Thessalonians. Again, in Acts 12:6, “And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison” (italics mine). One thing we know for sure about Simon Peter is that he didn’t have insomnia! Even at times of great crisis, he was able to sleep. Again, the same word for “sleep” is used, and it is the natural sleep of the body.
3. The Bible teaches that the body returns to the dust from which it was created, but the spirit returns to God who gave it. Even the Old Testament teaches this. In Ecclesiastes 12:7 we read: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” “The dust”—that is our body. God told Adam, “… for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19). It was the body that was taken from the dust, and then God breathed into man the breath of life, or the spirit, you see. It is the body that will go to sleep until the resurrection—only the body. The spirit of a believer will return to God.
The spirit or the soul does not die, and therefore the spirit or the soul is not raised. Only the body can lie down in death, and only the body can stand up in resurrection. This is quite obvious when Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (see 2 Cor. 5:8).
The body is merely a frail tent that is laid aside temporarily in death. “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). The Greek word for “tabernacle” here is skenos, which means “a tent.” The bodies we live in are tents. I have news for you: You may live in a home that cost $250,000, but the place where you really live is in a little tent. God put every single one of us into a tent. It is not a matter of some living in a hovel and some in a mansion—we have all been given the same kind of tent. You could reduce the body to its component chemicals, and I am told the whole amount would sell for about $4.00, although inflated prices may push it a little higher. Every one of us lives in a tent that is worth about $4.00! It can be blown down at any moment. If you don’t believe that, step in front of a car and you will find that your tent will fold up and silently slip away. Our bodies are actually very frail.
“For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven” (2 Cor. 5:2). “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan…” (2 Cor. 5:4). We groan within our tents. Have you discovered that?
I met an old man at the corner bus stop many years ago. He must have been pretty close to eighty. He was swearing like a sailor. I said to him, “Brother, you won’t be here very long, and you are going to have to answer to God.”
“How do you know I won’t be here very long?” he asked.
“God is telling you so. He has put gray in your hair, a totter in your step, a stoop in your shoulder, and a shortness of breath when you walk. He is trying to tell you that you won’t be here much longer. You are living in a little tent down here, and you are going to be slipping away soon.”
I am told that when President Adams was an old man, a friend inquired about his health. He answered that he was fine, but the house he lived in was getting rickety and was not in good repair. That is the kind of body each of us is living in, my friend.
When I was a young man, I could bound up and down the steps to my study. Today it is different. I come down the steps one at a time, and there is no more bounding. My knees hurt, and I groan. My wife tells me I groan too much, but I tell her it is scriptural to groan. Paul said that we groan in these bodies.
These old bodies are going to be put into the grave, and there they are going to sleep. The spirit goes to be with the Lord.
Paul wrote, “Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)” (2 Cor. 5:6–7). Now we are at home in this body; this is where we live. People don’t really get to see us, you know—we are hidden in our bodies. Sometimes people who come to rallies or services when I speak, tell me they have heard me on the radio and they have come just to see how I look. I always feel like saying, “You really haven’t seen me. All you have seen is a head and two hands sticking out of a suit of clothes. You don’t see me—I live within this body.” This house I live in isn’t in such good repair, but that’s where I will live as long as I walk on this earth.
Paul goes on to say, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). I can’t think of anything lovelier than that. If you should attend my funeral, I wouldn’t want you to come by and say that I look so natural. Friend, I won’t even be there. You will just be looking at my tent that I have left behind. It’s my old house, that has been put to sleep. I will be gone to be with the Lord. At the resurrection our bodies will be raised up.
Many years ago in the city of New York (in fact, it was way back in the day when liberalism was called modernism, back in the 1920s) they had an argument about whether resurrection was spiritual. The liberal even today claims it’s spiritual. He doesn’t believe in bodily resurrection at all. A very famous Greek scholar from the University of Chicago read a paper on the passage from 1 Corinthians 15: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44). His paper put the emphasis on the word spiritual. He concluded by saying, “Now, brethren, you can see that resurrection is spiritual because it says it’s spiritual.” The liberals all applauded, and somebody made a motion that they print that manuscript and circulate it.
Well, a very fine conservative Greek scholar was there, and he stood up. When he stood, all the liberals were a little uneasy because he could ask very embarrassing questions. He said, “I’d like to ask the author of the paper a question.” Very reluctantly, the good doctor stood up. “Now, doctor, which is stronger, a noun or an adjective? A very simple question, but I’d like for you to answer it.” He could see the direction he was going and didn’t want to answer it, but he had to say that a noun is stronger, of course. “Now doctor, I’m amazed that you presented the paper that you did today. You put the emphasis upon an adjective, and the strong word is the noun. Now, let’s look at that again. ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.’” He said, “The only thing that is carried over in resurrection is the body. It’s one kind of body when it dies, a natural body. It’s raised a body, but a spiritual body, dominated now by the spirit—but it’s still a body.” And they never did publish that paper. They decided it would be better not to publish it. May I say to you, just a simple little exercise in grammar would have answered this great professor’s whole manuscript and his entire argument which he presented at that time.
Daniel is another writer who spoke of the death of the body as “sleep.” “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2). Dust will go back to dust—that’s the body; but the spirit goes to God who sent it.
4. The early Christians adopted a very wonderful word for the burying places of their loved ones—the Greek word koimeterion, which means “a rest house for strangers, a sleeping place.” It is the same word from which we get our English word cemetery. The same word was used in that day for inns, or what we would call a hotel or motel. A Hilton Hotel, a Ramada Inn or a Holiday Inn—they are the places where you spend the night to sleep. You expect to get up the next day and continue your journey. This is the picture of the place where you bury your believing loved ones. You don’t weep when you have a friend who goes and spends a weekend in a Hilton Hotel, do you? No, you rejoice with him. The body of the believer has just been put into a motel until the resurrection. One day the Lord is coming and that body is going to be raised up.
Now let us return to our consideration of the actual text of verse 13: “That ye sorrow not, even as others [the rest] which have no hope.” The pagan world had no hope; so for them death was a frightful thing. In Thessalonica they have found an inscription that says: “After death no reviving, after the grave no meeting again.” The Greek poet Theocritus wrote, “Hopes are among the living; the dead are without hope.” That was the belief of the ancient world. It is pretty pessimistic and doleful.
Believers are not to sorrow as the pagans. I have officiated at many funeral services during the years of my ministry, and I can always tell if the family is Christian. I can tell by the way the people weep whether they have hope or not. Christians weep, of course—there is nothing wrong with that. Paul never says that believers are not to weep. What he does say is that we are not to sorrow as the others which have no hope. A Christian has a sorrow at the death of a loved one, but he also has hope.


For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him [1 Thess. 4:14].

I want you to notice that Paul says that “Jesus died and rose again.” It doesn’t say Jesus slept—He died. How accurate this is!
There are three kinds of death in Scripture. There is physical death, which is the separation of the spirit from the body. That is what we ordinarily call death. Adam didn’t actually die physically until 930 years after the Fall.
Then there is spiritual death. Paul says that to be carnally minded is death, which is separation from God. This is what happened to man in the Garden of Eden when God said that man would die in the day he ate of the fruit. Man became separated from God. Adam hid from God; he ran from God when God came into the garden—there was now a separation between them. Adam did die the day he ate the fruit—a spiritual death. Paul describes this spiritual death in Ephesians 2:1: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.”
A famous judge toured around this country some years ago giving a lecture entitled “Millions Now Living Will Never Die.” There followed him a famous Baptist preacher whose lecture was “Millions Now Living Are Already Dead.” And they were dead—spiritually dead.
The third death is eternal death. That is eternal separation from God. This is the second death described in Revelation 20:14.


For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep [1 Thess. 4:15].

“By the word of the Lord” is Paul’s assurance that he is giving God’s answer to their question. Paul knows that they had been worrying about those who had died before the Rapture and wants them to know that the dead in Christ will have part in the Rapture.
“We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.” The word prevent is an old English word meaning “precede.” Those who are alive at the time of the Rapture will not be going ahead of them—in fact, the dead in Christ will be going first.


For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first [1 Thess. 4:16].

“The Lord himself shall descend from heaven” I love that—He won’t be sending angels. When He comes to the earth to establish His kingdom, He will send His angels to the four corners of the earth to gather the elect, who will be both Israelites and Gentiles who enter the kingdom. However, there is no angel ministry connected with the Rapture of the church. Angels announced the birth of Christ, but how was He announced? As the Son of David, the newborn King. He was announced as a King. The wise men wanted to know where they could find Him who was born King of the Jews. In contrast to this, at the establishment of the church on the Day of Pentecost, there, were no angels. The Holy Spirit Himself came down. When the Lord takes His church out of the world, the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven. There will be no angels. Angels are connected with Israel but not with the church at all.
He will descend from heaven “with a shout.” That is the voice of command. It is the same voice which He used when He stood at the tomb of Lazarus and said, “Lazarus, come forth” (see John 11:43).
“The voice of the archangel.” Now wait, isn’t that an angel connected with the Rapture? No, it is His voice that will be like the voice of an archangel. It is the quality of His voice, the majesty and the authority of it.
“The trump of God.” Will there be trumpets there? No, it is His voice that will be like a trumpet. Can we be sure of this? In Revelation 1:10, John, who was exiled to the Isle of Patmos, wrote, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.” He turned to see who it was, and he saw the glorified Christ. It is the voice of the glorified Christ that is like the sound of a trumpet.
That ought to get rid of all this foolishness about Gabriel blowing his horn or blowing a trumpet. I don’t think Gabriel even owns a trumpet, but if he has one, he won’t need to blow it. The Lord Jesus is not going to need the help of Gabriel. Do you think the Lord Jesus needed Gabriel to come and help Him raise Lazarus from the dead? Can you imagine the Lord Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus saying, “Gabriel, won’t you come over here and help Me get this man out of the grave?” How absolutely foolish! The Lord Jesus will not need anyone to help Him. When He calls His church, their bodies will come up out of the graves.


Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord [1 Thess. 4:17].

Again, “caught up” is the Greek harpazoµ, meaning “to grasp hastily, snatch up, to lift, transport, or rapture.”
It is going to be a very orderly procedure. The dead will rise first. Here comes Stephen out of the grave. It may be that he will lead the procession since he was the first martyr. Then there will be the apostles and all those millions who have laid down their lives for Jesus. They will just keep coming from right down through the centuries. Finally, if we are alive at that time, we will bring up the rear of the parade. We will be way down at the tail end of it. Most of the church has already gone in through the doorway of death.


Wherefore comfort one another with these words [1 Thess. 4:18].

Does he say, “Wherefore terrify one another with these words”? Of course not. My Bible says, “Wherefore comfort one another.” It not only means to comfort in the usual sense of the word, but also to instruct and to exhort one another and to talk about these things. My friend, Jesus is going to take His own out of this world someday! What a glorious, wonderful comfort this is! The bodies of the dead will be lifted out. Then whoever is alive at that time will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with the Lord. In fact, we shall come back with Him to the earth to reign with Him at the time He sets up His kingdom.

CHAPTER 5

Theme: The coming of Christ is a rousing hope

In this final chapter of 1 Thessalonians we see the Christian’s actions in view of the return of Christ. In chapter 1, you will recall, we considered the Christian’s attitude toward the return of Christ. Now, if the attitude does not lead to action, something is radically wrong. The coming of Christ is a rousing hope which leads to action!

CALL TO BE AWAKE AND ALERT IN VIEW OF CHRIST’S COMING


The believer in Christ is to be awake and alert in view of Christ’s coming, because the believer will not enter into that awful night of the Great Tribulation Period, which is labeled the Day of the Lord. That Day of the Lord begins with night because that is God’s way of marking time. He begins that way in Genesis where it says that the evening and the morning were the first day. God begins in night but moves to light. So the Great Tribulation leads into the glorious millennial reign of Christ when the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in His wings.
The Day of the Lord is an expression we need to examine.


But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you [1 Thess. 5:1].

“Times and seasons” are not the property of the church; they belong to this earth and to an earthly people—both Israel and the Gentiles who will be saved in that day. The church is looking for a Person, not for times and seasons. The word for “time” is the Greek chronos, from which we get our English word chronology. The times and seasons or the chronology is not for the church.

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night [1 Thess. 5:2].
The Lord Jesus does not come to the church like a thief in the night. The church is looking for and waiting for the Lord to come. You don’t wait for a thief and look for him and leave a note for him on the back door when you leave your house—“I left the back door open for you, Mr. Thief, and you’ll find the family silver in the third drawer to the right in the dining room.” I don’t imagine you have ever left such a note. The chances are that you check everything before you leave the house, making sure that your home is doubly locked. You want to keep the thief out. So the Lord Jesus does not come as a thief to the church. However, the Lord Jesus does come like a thief to the world after the church has been raptured. As I have said, the Day of the Lord will come suddenly to the earth, and it will begin with the night of the Great Tribulation Period; then finally Christ will come personally to this earth.
The Day of the Lord will come suddenly—


For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape [1 Thess. 5:3].

Do you notice the change of pronouns here? In the first two verses Paul is addressing the “brethren,” and he says that it is not necessary for him to write to them about the times and seasons, because they will have nothing to do with it—believers will be gone at that time. But here in verse 3 the pronoun changes to “they”—“when they shall say, Peace and safety.”
Again let me repeat that the Day of the Lord is a period of time which begins with the Great Tribulation and goes through the millennial reign of Christ here upon the earth. There are many passages of Scripture which speak of this. For example, in Isaiah, chapters 12–13, you can read how God moves down in judgment on society and government, on the military and commerce and art and pomp and pride and religion. “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it” (Isa. 13:9). It starts out as a day of wrath: “For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine” (Isa. 13:10). In the prophecy of Joel we are told: “Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come” (Joel 1:15). Joel goes on in chapter 2 to describe it as “a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness …” (Joel 2:2). That is the picture given to us in the Old Testament. The Day of the Lord is a period which begins with the Great Tribulation and goes through the millennial reign of Christ. That is a theme in the Old Testament.
Now the event described in chapter 4—the coming of Christ to take the church out of the world—is not even mentioned in the Old Testament. It is there by type, of course, such as the experiences of Enoch and Elijah, both of whom were taken up alive to be with the Lord. But it is not taught in the Old Testament that the Lord Jesus is going to take a company of people out of this earth to be with Himself. This is a glorious, wonderful truth which was revealed first in the Upper Room when the Lord Jesus said, “… I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2–3). As far as I know, that is the first time this truth is revealed in the Bible. And Paul developed it in 1 Thessalonians 4.
However, in the fifth chapter he is speaking of something which was well known in the Old Testament.
“When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” It is going to be a big surprise to the world. They are not going to expect it. I believe that the “big lie,” which we will see in the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians, is the promise of peace and safety. The Lord Jesus warned of that: “Take heed that no man deceive you.” The world expects to enter a great era of peace, the Millennium, but they will find themselves plunged into the Great Tribulation, which will include the greatest war the world has ever seen. It will come upon them suddenly like a thief in the night.


But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness [1 Thess. 5:4–5].

The Rapture of the church actually does two things: (1) It ends this day of grace in which we are today, this calling out a people for His name and bringing many sons home to glory. This is what God is doing in our day. The Rapture not only ends that, but (2) it begins the Day of the Lord. The Great Tribulation will get under way when the church leaves the earth. The one event of the Rapture will end the day of grace and begin the Day of the Lord. It closes one day and opens another.
“But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” Why won’t it? Well, because we won’t be here. We found in chapter 4 that “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout” and take His church out of the world.
“Ye are all the children of light.” In other words, you don’t belong to that dispensation which is coming in the future. You belong to the dispensation of grace in which we are today.
Friend, if you do not learn these distinctions which are made in the Scripture, you will be hopelessly confused. I know of no one so hopelessly confused as some theologians in seminaries today. I’ve talked to them. One man told me that he had simply given up on the study of prophecy and would have nothing to do with it. Why? Because he was not willing to sit down and study the entire Scriptures.
When the Day of the Lord comes, we are going to be with the Lord. We are not in darkness. That day will not overtake us as a thief in the night. He doesn’t come as a thief to take His church. The church is looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior.
Now Paul gives the admonition to the believers—


Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober [1 Thess. 5:6].

You see, the rapture of the church, that blessed hope, could take place at any time. Because of this, we should not be sleeping Christians.
I heard a song leader down in Georgia, who, in his very quaint way, uttered a great many wise sayings. He was right on target with his remarks. He said, “We are now going to sing ‘Standing on the Promises.’ There are a lot of folk today who are singing ‘Standing on the Promises,’ but they are just sitting on the premises!” And some of them are actually sleeping pillars in the church today.
Now Paul is saying that, in view of the fact that the Lord Jesus is going to take His church out of the world before that awful period of tribulation, “let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.”
The word sober has several meanings. It can mean “to stay sober” in the sense of not using an alcoholic stimulant, but there are also other kinds of drunkenness besides that caused by alcohol or drugs. A lot of people get drunk on power or on the making of money or on the pleasures of this world. The child of God is to stay sober and is to watch. Why? Because these tremendous events are to take place in the future.
I believe we are close to the time of the return of the Lord. I don’t know, of course, but I think we are. And I know I can say with Paul: “… for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11).


For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.

But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation [1 Thess. 5:7–8].

Again he mentions the word sober. Let’s understand that we have a duty to perform.
“Putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.” This speaks of a soldier’s duty and is a call to that kind of duty. The breastplate of faith and love is to cover the heart, the vital part of the body. The helmet is the hope of salvation. As I write this, it isn’t the style for men or women to wear hats—most people today go bareheaded—but it should be the style for every Christian to wear the helmet of the hope of salvation.
“Faith … love … hope”—this is now the third time these key words have appeared in this epistle: the labor of love, the work of faith, the patience of hope. Faith is a saving faith, and a saving faith produces works. Calvin said, “Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.” “Faith” looks to the past when we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. “Love” is for the present, which is the relationship the believer should have with those around him. The “hope of salvation” is that blessed hope of the future. We are not looking for the Great Tribulation Period. I don’t see how there could be any rejoicing in that! We are looking for that blessed hope, which is the consummation of our salvation.
John writes, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). God is not through with me, so don’t you be impatient with me. A little lady down in West Texas in a testimony meeting said, “Most Christians ought to have written on their backs, ‘This is not the best that the grace of God can do.’” I know that I ought to have that written on my back. Since He is not through with me yet, don’t be impatient with me, and I won’t be impatient with you—because I don’t think He is through with you either. Today we have “the hope of salvation,” which is that He will consummate that which He has begun in us. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).


For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Thess. 5:9].

“God hath not appointed us to wrath”—that ought to be clear even to amillennialists, but for some reason they miss the point. God hasn’t appointed us to the day of wrath, the Great Tribulation. It is a time of judgment, and the church is not going through it because Christ bore our judgment.
Perhaps you are saying, “McGee, do you think you are good enough to be taken out in the Rapture?” No, I’m not even good enough to be saved. But God saved me by His grace, and when He comes to take His church out of the world, I’m going along with all the super-duper saints—because of the grace of God.
“But to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.” God has not destined us for wrath, for the Great Tribulation, but for salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.


Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him [1 Thess. 5:10].

Whether we die first or whether we live until His coming, we shall live together with Him. Most of the church has already gone through the doorway of death. What a parade that will be someday—beginning with Stephen and the apostles, the martyrs, all those who have fallen asleep in Jesus down through the years, and then those who are still alive at His coming, and if you and I are still alive, we will bring up the rear. Thank God, we shall be there by the grace of God!
Now what will these wonderful truths do for you? The next verse tells us: “Wherefore comfort yourselves together.” What a comfort all of this is to us as believers!

COMMANDMENTS FOR CHRISTIANS


We come now to a series of twenty-two commandments for Christians. These are the commandments for believers—not just ten of them but twenty-two of them! Up to the time we are saved, God has us shut up to a cross. That is, God is not asking anything of us except this question: “What will you do with My Son who died for you?” After we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, then God talks to us about our lives. The child of God is not under the Ten Commandments as the way of life—he is way above it. He is to live on a much higher plane, as we can see by the commandments in this section. These commandments are practical—right down where the rubber meets the road. It is a wonderful, glorious thing to keep looking for the coming of Christ, but it is also very important that we keep walking down here on the sidewalks of life—at home, in the office, in the schoolroom, wherever we are called to walk.
The Lord Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). There are some Christians who have never listened to His commandments. Well, here are twenty-two of them. They are given like military orders, brief and terse. They are barked out like a second lieutenant would give them to you. We were just told to be sober and to put on the uniform of warfare (see v. 8). Now the orders are given, and they seem to be categorized—that is, certain ones are related to each other.


Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do [1 Thess. 5:11].

The first commandment is to “comfort yourselves together,” which means to encourage one another in the faith.
The second commandment is to “edify one another.” The Thessalonian believers were already doing that, Paul says. Edify means “to build up one another.” You and I should be a team working together, edifying each other with the Word of God.


And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you;
And to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves [1 Thess. 5:12–13].
Here are three commandments that seem to belong together. “Know” or understand those who teach the Word of God. It means we should recognize them. When Paul wrote this, he was speaking to the local situation in Thessalonica. He had been with them less than a month. He had won them to Christ and had taught them. A church had been started, we would say, “from scratch.” There wasn’t a believer there before Paul had arrived and presented the gospel to them (see Acts 17:2–3). So all the Thessalonian believers had come to know Christ at about the same time. Now among them certain ones would have been given the gift of teaching. Some would have the gift of preaching and some of helping. Every believer receives a gift when he is saved, and that gift is to be exercised in the body of believers to build up the body of believers. But I have a notion that among the believers in Thessalonica there could have been this attitude: So-and-so and I were saved at the same time. I knew him before he was a believer. Where did he get the idea that he could teach me? So Paul is telling them that certain men and women had been given certain gifts of leadership, and they should respect them. They should look to them for admonition.
We still have the problem today that very few people in the church pay any attention to the teachers God has given them. People say they believe the Bible is the Word of God and they believe every word of it. Then why don’t they obey it? Why don’t they listen when it is being taught? One man said to me very candidly, “I believe the Bible from cover to cover, and I am ignorant of what is between the covers.” Now that is an untenable position to hold. I think if people knew what was between the covers, they would believe it. But it is a hypocritical position to say you believe it and then be ignorant of what it says. Anyone who says he believes the Bible is the Word of God is obligated to know what it says. Therefore, those who are preaching and teaching the Word of God should have the attention of the believers.
Now the fourth commandment is “to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake.” I have always appreciated people who love the Word of God because I have found that they become my friends. One of the things I have so appreciated about my radio ministry is the number of friends that God has raised up for me across this country. Many of them have written to say their home is open to me (of course, I can’t accept all those invitations), but when I am in their town, they do nice things for me. They reveal their love. When they reveal that love to me—and I’m hard to love—it reveals that they honor the Word of God since I teach the Word of God.
Then the fifth commandment: “And be at peace among yourselves.” These all come together in one package. You can’t have everybody running the church. You can’t have everybody running any kind of organization. There must be a certain one with authority.
I think one of the great problems in many churches today is a case of the old bromide, “too many cooks spoil the broth.” There needs to be one who is the leader and who is followed. With that arrangement you can have peace. But when everybody is trying to play his own tune, you have anything but harmony and peace!
Now here are the sixth through the ninth commandments—


Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men [1 Thess. 5:14].

“Warn them that are unruly.” This would naturally follow the fifth commandment: “Be at peace among yourselves.” The “unruly” are those who are out of step. My feeling is that they are loners, and they like to do their own little thing rather than support the work which God is doing. They are to be warned.
“Comfort the feebleminded.” What does he mean by “feebleminded”? Well, a better word would be fainthearted. He is not referring to folk with mental problems. But here are folk who are fearful to move out for God, and they need encouraging. There is many a saint today who needs someone to put his arm around him and say, “Brother, you’re going to make it. I’m for you and I am praying for you.” My, what comfort and encouragement that would be to the fearful, the fainthearted—and sometimes all of us get discouraged and become fainthearted!
“Support the weak” is the eighth commandment. There are folk who are weak in the faith. They cannot get in step because they are little babies. They are not able to march with the rest; so help them. Lift them up, and carry them along.
“Be patient toward all men.” That means: Don’t lose your temper. That is so difficult! In business or in our other relationships with people, we meet ungodly, unholy, cantankerous, unsaved people who are definitely trying to trip us or to abuse us in some way, and it becomes very difficult to be patient and not to lose our tempers. But God commands us to be patient with everybody.


See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men [1 Thess. 5:15].

Now here is the tenth commandment: “See that none render evil for evil unto any man.” In other words, don’t fight one another.
The eleventh—“but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.” There are three philosophies of life or three standards of conduct. The pagan world operates on a philosophy which does evil in spite of good. In other words, you get the other fellow before he gets you. Use any kind of method. He may have treated you well, but if you can get the advantage over him, do that. That is pagan and heathen philosophy.
Then there is the standard of the so-called refined, cultured, and educated world. That is, do good to those who do good to you. The political parties in our country operate on that principle. If one person helps a man to get into political office, the politician reciprocates by offering the man a job or office. You take care of your own. That is the philosophy of the so-called civilized world. Jesus said, “And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same” (Luke 6:33).
The Christian is to live under a different standard. We are to do good to those who do evil to us. That is contrary to the natural man. The minute someone hits us, we just naturally want to hit him back. This is the philosophy that Paul is talking about—“See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good”—even to those who do evil to you.
Now the twelfth commandment—


Rejoice evermore [1 Thess. 5:16].

I think these next three commandments go together. “Rejoice” does not mean to be happy. This is not the happy hour that he is talking about—happy is not a New Testament word. This is a joy in the Lord as Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice” (Phil. 4:4). My, what a commandment! You won’t find that in the Ten Commandments! The child of God has no right to go around with a sour puss. The child of God has no right to be a cantankerous individual. If you are a child of God, you are to rejoice evermore! That, incidentally, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace. If you cannot rejoice, then begin reading the Word of God and calling on God to put joy in your heart. He will do it.


Pray without ceasing [1 Thess. 5:17].

This has to do with an attitude of prayer. I don’t think this means that one is to stay on his knees all the time. But it means to pray regularly and to be constantly in the attitude of prayer.
Associated with that is this fourteenth commandment—


In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you [1 Thess. 5:18].

This tells us to “give thanks” in all circumstances, not just once a year, but all the time.
This “is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” If you come to me and ask what is the will of God for you, I can tell you three specific things that are the will of God for you: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in everything. That is the will of God for you.
Now the fifteenth—


Quench not the Spirit [1 Thess. 5:19].

One of the figures that is used for the Holy Spirit is fire. How do you quench a fire? You dampen it down and don’t let it burn. To quench the Spirit means that you refuse to do the will of God; that is, you are not listening to the Holy Spirit. You refuse to let the Holy Spirit be your Guide to lead you. You and I quench the Holy Spirit when we take matters into our own hands.
This is the same teaching that Paul gave to the Ephesian believers: “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). You cannot grieve a thing; you grieve a Person. The Holy Spirit is a Person, and He is grieved by sin in our lives. Also, He is quenched when we step out of the will of God.


Despise not prophesyings [1 Thess. 5:20].

Do not look down upon Bible study as something that is beneath you. Do not be indifferent to the Word of God. We have a lot of folk who are in Christian service, but they are ignorant of the Bible and they look down on Bible study. Occasionally I hear such a person saying, “You just spend all your time in Bible study and you don’t do anything. What you need to do is get out and get busy.” Well, what is needed is to get busy studying the Word of God, and after you do that you will see how to get busy and really be effective.
We had a Bible study downtown in Los Angeles, averaging fifteen hundred people every Thursday night over a period of twenty-one years—what a thrill that was! What a privilege that was! But sometimes folks would make a remark like, “You need to get out and do something, not just go to sit and listen to the Bible.” The interesting thing is that those people who came to sit and listen to the Bible did go out and do something. There are several hundred of those people who are out on the mission field; there are several hundred who are witnessing for God; and there are several hundred in the ministry. I notice that the boys who do not study the Word of God run down like an eight-day clock. Their ministries don’t last too long. The sixteenth commandment which Paul gives the Thessalonians is “despise not prophesyings,” that is, the teaching of the Word of God.


Prove all things; hold fast that which is good [1 Thess. 5:21].

“Prove all things.” Don’t be taken in. To put it crudely, don’t be a sucker. Don’t be misled into supporting a project just because somebody sends you a picture of pathetic looking orphans. Don’t contribute to things you know nothing about. Don’t fall for some promotion job. Investigate. Investigate anything to which you give your support. Christians ought not to be gullible. We are to prove all things. This also means that we are not to be taken in by flattery. There are many deceivers in the world.
“Hold fast that which is good.” Hold to that which is true and genuine.


Abstain from all appearance of evil [1 Thess. 5:22].

This nineteenth commandment is the answer for questionable pastimes and amusements. If there is any question in your mind whether something is right or wrong, then it is wrong for you. Abstain from all appearance of evil.
Now notice that man is a triune being—


And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Thess. 5:23].

Man is a triune being; body, soul (mind), and spirit. “Sanctify you wholly”—not perfectly, but we are to reach a place of maturation. We should not continue to be babes in Christ; we should be growing to maturity.


Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it [1 Thess. 5:24].

You can depend upon God.


Brethren, pray for us [1 Thess. 5:25].

This twentieth command is to pray for those who give out the gospel. You can’t pray for Paul today, but you can pray for me, and I would appreciate it. You can pray for your pastor and your missionaries. I know they would appreciate it also.


Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss [1 Thess. 5:26].

This is a commandment, too. Just make sure it is a holy kiss! In our culture and with our customs, a warm handshake will do.


I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren [1 Thess. 5:27].

That is the twenty-second commandment, and I have obeyed it by quoting this entire epistle to you!


The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen [1 Thess. 5:28].

And I pray that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may be with you my beloved.
(For Bibliography to 1 Thessalonians, see Bibliography at the end of 2 Thessalonians.)

The Second Epistle to The
Thessalonians

INTRODUCTION

The second epistle followed shortly after the first epistle in a.d. 52 or 53.
The Christians in Thessalonica were still baby Christians when Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. His first letter to them had given rise to further questions, and Paul is attempting to answer them in his second letter. There was circulating in the Thessalonian church a letter or report, purported to have come from Paul, which was inclined to disturb the Christians. This false report claimed that Christ had already come and had already gathered out the church to Himself, and that the world was then living in the judgments of the “day of the Lord.” These people were being persecuted, as we saw in the first epistle. They were suffering for the gospel’s sake, and it was easy for them to believe that they had entered the Great Tribulation Period, and that all of the believers (not only the dead) had missed the Rapture. Paul attempts to allay their fears by writing this epistle and stating definitely that “our gathering together unto him” is yet future (2 Thess. 2:1), and that “the day of the Lord” has certain forerunners which must first come: the apostasy and the “man of sin” must come first. Therefore they could reasonably believe they were not in the Great Tribulation.
Paul says that the outward organization of the professing church is going to go into total apostasy. In Luke 18:8 the Lord asked, “… when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” The way the question is couched in the Greek it demands a negative answer. He will not find the faith on the earth when He comes again. The organized church will be in total apostasy. This is confirmed in the Book of Revelation. In the fourth chapter the church has been removed from the earth, and nothing is left but an empty shell of an organization that has a form of godliness but denies the power of it. That same organization is the great harlot in chapter 17 of Revelation, which is about as frightful a picture as you will find in the Word of God.
The Thessalonian believers thought they had entered the Great Tribulation Period, and ever since that time folk who have gone through persecutions and tribulations have believed that they were in the Great Tribulation Period. For example, during World War II at the time of the blitz in Britain, some of the British ministers who were conservative in their faith came to the conclusion that they had entered the Great Tribulation and that the church was going to go through it.
A good friend of mine, a preacher from England, believes that the church will go through the Tribulation. In fact, he believes the church is in it right now. Well, he is living in California now, and one day we were having lunch together with a mutual friend who was a layman, who had bought us big T-bone steaks. The subject of the church and the Tribulation came up, and he insisted that the church was in the Great Tribulation. To confirm his argument he said, “McGee, if you had been in Great Britain during the blitz, and night after night had gone down into the subways with your people, the members of your church, and practically every night one person would have a nervous breakdown because of the strain, and would have to be taken the next day to the country, you would share my belief.” I said to him, “If I had been in Great Britain, and in the blitz as you were, I am convinced that I would have thought as you did, Boy, this is the Great Tribulation! But after the war was over if I had come to the United States and was having lunch with a couple of friends and was eating a T-bone steak, I think I would pinch myself and ask myself, Is this really the Great Tribulation Period? If this is the Tribulation, let’s have more of it since it will mean more T-bone steaks.” He looked at me and said in that British disdainful voice, “McGee, you are being ridiculous!” So I told him that I didn’t think I was being ridiculous; I thought he was being ridiculous.
The description of the Tribulation in the Bible is much worse than anything that happened during World War II. This period has been so clearly identified by Christ that there is no reason for getting panicky and for being stampeded into an unwarranted position. Christ said that there is coming a small interval which will be blocked off by “… such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21). Nothing like it has taken place before, and nothing like it will ever take place afterward.
While 1 Thessalonians emphasized the return of Christ for His church in what we call the “Rapture,” 2 Thessalonians emphasizes the return of Christ to the earth the second time, when He returns in judgment and sets up His kingdom here upon this earth. This is called the revelation. You see, at the Rapture, the emphasis is not upon His coming to earth, because He doesn’t come to the earth. He makes it clear that “we shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air” (see 1 Thess. 4:17). “Caught up” is the Greek word harpazoµ, meaning “to snatch away.” We shall be snatched away or raptured to meet Christ in the air. However, the revelation of Christ is when He returns to the earth to set up His kingdom. In the time gap between these two events will be the Great Tribulation Period.
As we saw in 1 Thessalonians, the Rapture is not a subject of the Old Testament; that teaching does not appear in the Old Testament. The hope of the Old Testament saints was an earthly hope. They were looking for their Messiah to come and establish a kingdom here upon this earth—which would be heaven upon earth. The expression “kingdom of heaven” means the reign of the heavens over the earth. That is putting it as simply as I know how. Some of the theologians really have made it complicated—so complicated that I wonder if they are trying to establish some kind of a theory. But the kingdom of heaven which Jesus talked about is the reign of the heavens over the earth, because this earth is going to become a heaven when He is here.

OUTLINE

I. Persecution of Believers Now; Judgment of Unbelievers Hereafter (at Christ’s Coming), Chapter 1:1–12
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–2
B. Persecution of Believers and Fruits of It, Chapter 1:3–7
C. Judgment of Wicked at Christ’s Coming, Chapter 1:8–12
II. Program for World in Connection with Christ’s Coming, Chapter 2:1–12
A. Rapture Occurs First, Chapter 2:1
B. Day of Lord Follows; Introduced by Total Apostasy and Appearance of Man of Sin, Chapter 2:2–5
C. Mystery of Lawlessness Working Today; Lawless One Restrained by Holy Spirit, Chapter 2:6–8
D. Lawless One to Appear in Great Tribulation Period, Chapter 2:9–12
III. Practicality of Christ’s Coming, Chapters 2:13–3:18
A. Believers Should Be Established in Word, Chapter 2:13–17
B. Believers Should Be Established in Walk, Chapter 3:1–7
C. Believers Should Be Established in Work, Chapter 3:8–18

CHAPTER 1

Theme: Persecution of believers now and judgment of unbelievers hereafter (at Christ’s coming)

INTRODUCTION


Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [2 Thess. 1:1].


Paul’s greeting is his usual friendly greeting to a church which is theologically and spiritually sound. Paul includes the greetings of Silas (a contraction of the name Silvanus) and Timothy (Timotheus is the Greek form). These three men had endured a great deal for the sake of the gospel. Paul and Silas were in the prison at Philippi. Paul, Silas, and Timothy had gone to Thessalonica together, and later Paul had to leave them. He waited for them in Athens and, when they did not come, he went on to Corinth where they finally met. It was at that time Paul wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians to answer some of the questions that had come up since he had been there.
When Paul writes his second epistle, he identifies his two co-workers who are brethren with him. He would identify himself with men who, for us today, would be totally unknown had not Paul included them in these epistles. This reveals something of the character of Paul. A man who had been a proud young Pharisee has become a humble follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and a servant of His and an apostle of His.
“Unto the church of the Thessalonians.” That was the local church in Thessalonica. Paul believed in the local church, and that church in Thessalonica was “in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He probably did not mention the Holy Spirit because the Spirit was in the church in Thessalonica indwelling the believers. The indwelling Spirit enabled them to manifest the life of Christ and to walk worthy of the high calling of God. Their position, however, was in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. This means, my friend, that Paul taught the deity of Christ. There was no doubt in Paul’s mind that Jesus Christ was God the Son.
In John 10:27–29 the Lord Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” In this first verse you have the two hands of deity which belong to the Lord Jesus and God the Father. That is where the church is positionally—the Thessalonian church was there, and I hope your church is there. The important thing is not the name of your church. The important thing is that you and other true believers are in Christ Jesus, and that makes the local church very important. The Holy Spirit indwells true believers, and by His power they can manifest Christ in the local neighborhood, in the community, in the town, in the state, and in the world, showing forth the life of God. That is what Paul is saying to these believers in his introduction.


Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [2 Thess. 1:2].

Grace and peace are two important words in the gospel. Grace comes first. If you have experienced the grace of God, that means you have been saved. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). When you come to God as a lost sinner, bringing nothing, and receiving everything from Him, then you have experienced the grace of God. He offers you salvation—the gift of God is eternal life. You cannot work for a gift, and if you do, it ceases to be a gift and it becomes something you have earned. It becomes a payment. God is not patting you on the back because you are a nice Sunday school boy. Salvation is God offering you, a lost, hell-doomed sinner, eternal life if you trust Christ. That is grace.
“Peace”—if you have experienced God’s grace, then you know something about His peace. Peace is the world’s softest pillow that you can sleep on at night. It is the peace that comes when you know that your sins are forgiven. Peace comes, not from some psychological gyrations you go through, or through the counsel of a psychiatrist, but it comes from a supernatural source—from “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”; it is supernatural. If you don’t have it, you can have it, because it is the gift of God which is given to sinners who turn to Christ.

PERSECUTION OF BELIEVERS AND FRUITS OF IT


We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth [2 Thess. 1:3].


The word charity in this verse is “love.” In verse 4 Paul speaks of patience and faith. In verses 3 and 4 we have that little trinity that Paul uses: faith, love, and patience. These three words are abstract terms, but we must bring them out of the abstract into the concrete. Get them walking on the sidewalks today. This again is the “work of faith” which Paul mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 1:3. Saving faith produces works. A saving faith will produce a love in the heart for God’s children. My friend, if you are a child of God, you will have to love me whether or not you want to, and I’m going to have to love you. It is a wonderful arrangement!
In the next verse Paul picks up the third word, which he uses with “love” and “faith.” It is “patience.” This is not the patience of waiting in a traffic jam or waiting for a light to turn green. It is the patience that is willing to live for God and accept whatever He sends your way, knowing that all things do work together for good. It is the patience that has as its goal coming into God’s presence someday. This enables you to get over the rough places that come into your life. The life of a Christian reminds me of traveling over a highway. Many years ago I used to cross the country by automobile from Texas to California. There would be many places where a detour sign would put us on a rough old road. But along the way we would see a sign that read “5 miles to the double highway,” and the rough road became a little bit smoother by knowing that we would hit the asphalt or the concrete in a little while. And many of us are on a detour in this life. The road is rough, and we are called upon to suffer. Well, if you have a good view of the future, it will give you the patience of hope—a hope that looks way down yonder to the good smooth road coming up. And it may be closer than you think.
“We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet.” The word meet means “proper”—it is right and fitting for us to thank God for you.
“Because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity [love] of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth.” You cannot grow toward God without growing outward toward your brother. When you grow toward God in grace and knowledge and faith, you grow toward your brother in love.
And God must send us a little trouble because that is the discipline which produces patience in our lives. It enables us to look down into the future with hope.


So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure [2 Thess. 1:4].

“Tribulations” are afflictions. The church will not go through the Great Tribulaton, but we will go through the little tribulation. We all will have trouble down here. If you are not having any troubles, then there must be something wrong with you, because the Lord disciplines His children.
Patience is an interesting word. The Greek word translated by the English word patience has the literal meaning of “standing under.” It means to be placed under. A great many people try to get out from under the problems and difficulties. The person who is patient is able to stay under, and he keeps on carrying the load. He doesn’t throw it off; he doesn’t try to get rid of his responsibility.
These Thessalonian Christians had a real testimony in the Roman world of that day. (Thessalonica was a Roman colony, and people were going to and fro from that colony, so the word got out everywhere.) The patience and faith of these Christians were unshaken as they were enduring a great deal of trouble, persecutions, and afflictions.
Trouble is not something strange. The Word of God makes it clear that we are going to have trouble in this life. Peter expressed it like this: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you” (1 Pet. 4:12). Sometimes we hear Christians say, “I don’t know why God let this happen to me. Nobody else has ever had to go through this.” It is safe to say that such a statement is not true. Whatever you are going through, you have company. It is not a strange thing for suffering to come to us. Peter goes on to say, “But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” (1 Pet. 4:13). Peter warns that Christians sometimes get themselves into trouble. “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters” (1 Pet. 4:15). A Christian can get himself in hot water because he talks too much—talking about others. Or he can suffer persecution because he is dishonest. There is no advantage to that kind of suffering. That is not the discipline in life which will develop patience. That is simply getting what you have coming to you. Peter goes on, “Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf” (1 Pet. 4:16). There is a difference between being disciplined to learn patience and the punishment of the wicked. God disciplines His children for their development, for their growth, that they might have patience and a hope for the future. We don’t need to get too comfortable down here. When we do, we no longer have the hope before us of the Lord’s return.


Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer [2 Thess. 1:5].

Our suffering has nothing to do with salvation, but it sure prepares us for our eternal state. When you and I look back to this life on earth, maybe some of us will wish that we had had a little bit more discipline than we got!
While the judgment of the wicked begins with verse 8, this is certainly the introduction to it.


Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you [2 Thess. 1:6].

When God judges, God is righteous in it. Paul asks the question: “Is there unrighteousness with God?” The answer is, Let it not be—“God forbid” (see Rom. 9:14). Whatever God does is absolutely right. He can do no wrong. Sometimes we complain about the things that happen to us because we are ignorant; we do not understand God’s ways. But God has a very definite purpose for all that He does. And God is righteous in sending the Great Tribulation. It is a judgment of sinners.


And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels [2 Thess. 1:7].

The Lord Jesus is coming in judgment.

JUDGMENT OF WICKED AT CHRIST’S COMING


In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:

Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power [2 Thess. 1:8–9].


The Word of God actually says very little about heaven. One of the reasons is that it is so wonderful we could not comprehend it. And the Lord does not want us to get so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. He wants us to keep our eyes on our pathway down here, and I think He wants us to keep our noses to the grindstone much of the time. In other words, He has a purpose for our lives on earth, and He wants us to fulfill that purpose.
Scripture not only says very little about heaven, it says less about the condition of the lost. It is so awful that the Holy Spirit has drawn a veil over it. There is nothing given to satisfy the morbid curiosity or the lust for revenge. When God judges, He does not do it in a vindictive manner. He does it in order to vindicate His righteousness and His holiness. There is nothing in the Scriptures to satisfy our curiosity about hell, but there is enough said to give us a warning. It does not mean that it is less real because so little is said. Actually, Christ Himself said more about hell than did anyone else. Hell is an awful reality. I am not going to speculate about it; I’m just quoting what is said right here: He is coming “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”
Hell is ridiculed today, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist. Our beliefs are sometimes only wishful thinking. For example, it was the popular notion that Hitler would not plunge Europe into a war and turn Europe into a holocaust of flaming fire. But he did. Chamberlain, the man with the umbrella, went over to meet with Hitler and Mussolini, and he came back saying that we would have peace in our time. Well, we didn’t have peace, and we don’t have peace in the world today. Also, many people thought that Japan would never attack America. Our government did not believe she would, and the liberal churches at that time were teaching pacifism. Well, whether they believed it or not, there was a vicious attack at Pearl Harbor.
Friend, we might as well face the fact that there is a hell. Christ is returning to this earth some day. First He will take His own out of the earth, and then His coming will be a terror to the wicked; it will be a judgment upon those who “know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Do you want to work for your salvation? Jesus said, “… This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29). That is what the Word of God teaches.
I know that it is not popular to talk about hell and judgment. Even the Christian testimonies that we hear and read are filled with I, I, I—“I became successful in business. I saved my marriage. My personality changed.” Nothing very much is said about the Lord Jesus. How many testimonies have you heard in which it is said, “I was a hell-doomed sinner going straight to hell, I was lost, and He saved me”? The important thing to say in a testimony is not what He has given you but from what He has delivered you. That was the whole purpose for the coming of our Savior. He came to redeem us! He didn’t come to give us new personalities or to make us successful. He came to deliver us from hell! That’s not popular to say. Folk don’t like to hear it.
There are too few people today who are willing to confront folk with the fact that they are lost. Suppose you were asleep in a burning building, and a man rushed into that building to rescue you. He awakened you, picked you up, and carried you bodily out of that burning building. He liked you; so he made you his son. He brought you into his lovely home and gave you many wonderful gifts. Now if you had the opportunity to stand before a group of people and tell about this man and express your appreciation in his presence, what would you thank him for? Would you thank him for making you his son? I hope you would. But wouldn’t you really thank him most for the fact that he risked his life to save you out of a burning building? Nothing else would have mattered if he had not rescued you from a flaming death.
Now, my friend, the judgment of the lost is coming. If you want to stay in that class, you shall be judged. Somebody needs to tell you the facts, and I am telling them to you right now.
Again, who are the lost? They are those who (1) “know not God” and who (2) “obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let me repeat verse 9: “Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”


When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day [2 Thess. 1:10].

The coming of Christ to the earth in judgment will justify the believers who have put their trust in Him, and it will glorify the Savior.


Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:

That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ [2 Thess. 1:11–12].

“That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you.” If God has prospered you, made you a financial success, and you can glorify Christ, that’s fine. But somehow I am more impressed by a little woman who has been flat on her back in a hospital most of her life—yet has a radiant testimony for Christ. Certainly Christ is being glorified in her.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: The program for the world in connection with Christ’s coming

Back in 1 Thessalonians, beginning at verse 13 of chapter 4, we called attention to the Rapture of the church; we also spoke of the Day of the Lord, the Great Tribulation, and the coming of Christ in glory to this earth. In this epistle the emphasis is going to be on the Great Tribulation Period, but we are also going to find one of the finest passages on the Rapture of the church.

THE RAPTURE OCCURS FIRST


Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him [2 Thess. 2:1].

“Our gathering together unto him” is the Rapture of the church. The first aspect of Christ’s coming is in view in this verse. There is no judgment at this time.

THE DAY OF THE LORD FOLLOWS THE RAPTURE


That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand [2 Thess. 2:2].


In many good Bibles with notes you will find the note in the margin—if it has not already been changed in the text—that this should read “the day of the Lord is at hand” rather than “the day of Christ is at hand.” The Day of the Lord has no reference to the church. After the Rapture, the day of Christ, or the age of grace, comes to an end and the Day of the Lord begins. The Day of the Lord is a subject which is often mentioned in the Old Testament, whereas the Rapture is not. The Day of the Lord begins with night. Joel tells us it is darkness and not light. It is a time of judgment. It opens with night just like every Hebrew day opens: “… the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen. 1:5, italics mine).
“Nor by word, nor by letter”—apparently someone had been circulating a letter or an oral word among the Thessalonians that the Day of the Lord had come. It is interesting that there is always a group of super-duper saints who seem to think they get direct information from the Lord. They don’t think they need to study the Word of God; they imagine they get their information directly through dreams or visions or special revelations. Now, friend, I admit that it is much easier to pick up all your information in a telephone conversation than it is to go to school or take up the Bible and study it, but it won’t be coming straight from God. So there was circulating in Thessalonica a word that had come to them, and it was a special “revelation,” something that Brother Paul had not told them.
“Nor by letter” would indicate that a spurious letter had been circulating. Or perhaps someone simply said they had seen such a letter.
“Nor by letter as from us” would mean that they said the letter supposedly came from Paul, Timothy, and Silas.
The word they circulated was that “the day of the Lord is at hand.” This had caused a problem with the Thessalonian believers, and we can see why. They were enduring persecution. Because they were having trouble, it was very easy for someone to say, “Well, this is the Great Tribulation that we are in. The Day of the Lord has come, and we are already in it.”
The Day of the Lord is a technical phrase that speaks of the period beginning with the Great Tribulation and continuing through the Millennium. It is a day that begins with judgment. Joel describes the Day of the Lord in some detail in chapter 2 of his prophecy, and Peter quoted him on the Day of Pentecost. His listeners knew that there was a day coming when the Spirit of God would be poured out—but it was the coming Day of the Lord of which they knew. In Acts 2:20 Peter says, “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come.” Certainly that had not happened at Pentecost. At the crucifixion of Christ there had been an earthquake and darkness, but on the Day of Pentecost there was nothing like that at all. There was a rushing sound like a mighty wind, and it had the appearance of tongues of fire as it rested upon each of those present. There was no wind, but it sounded like a hurricane when it hit the town, and it caused everybody to rush up to the temple area to see what had happened. Peter is saying that the Day of Pentecost was similar to the day Joel described: “You think these men are drunk? They are not; they are filled with the Holy Spirit.” Because of Joel’s prophecy, the orthodox Jews in that day believed there was a day coming when God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh—but on the Day of Pentecost it was not poured out on all flesh. The Day of the Lord is yet future.
Peter refers to the Day of the Lord again in his epistle: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.” We have already seen that for the church He will not come as a thief in the night (1 Thess. 5). The church is to be awake and waiting for Him. It is to the sleepy world that He will come as a thief in the night. Peter goes on to say, “… in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:10). Again, this did not happen on the Day of Pentecost.
Another Scripture which shows that the Day of the Lord has no reference to the church is Revelation 6:17: “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” That is not for the church. The church is to look for Him—a Person—to come, because we are identified with Him.


Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition [2 Thess. 2:3].

“Let no man deceive you by any means.” If we are not to be deceived, then let’s listen to Paul.
“For that day shall not come.” Which day? The Day of the Lord—not the Rapture. The Day of the Lord shall not come except there be the fulfilling of two conditions: (1) “There come a falling away first” and (2) “that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” Both of these things must take place before the Day of the Lord can begin, and neither one of them has taken place as yet.
There must be “a falling away first.” Many have interpreted this to mean the apostasy, and I agree that it does refer to that. But I think it means more than that, as a careful examination of the word will reveal. The Greek word that is here translated as “falling away” is apostasia. The root word actually means “departure or removal from.”
Paul says that before the Day of the Lord begins there must first come a removing. There are two kinds of removing that are going to take place. First, the organized church will depart from the faith—that is what we call apostasy. But there will be total apostasy when the Lord comes, and that cannot take place until the true church is removed. The Lord asked, “… when the Son of man cometh [to the earth], shall he find [the] faith …?” (Luke 18:8). When He says “the faith,” He means that body of truth which He left here. The answer to His question is no, He will not find the faith here when He returns. There will be total apostasy because of two things: (1) the organization of the church has departed from the faith—it has apostatized and (2) there has been another departure, the departure of the true church from the earth. The departure of the true church leads into the total apostatizing of the organized church. The Day of the Lord cannot begin—nor the Great Tribulation Period—until the departure of the true church has taken place.
Paul is not going into detail about the rapture of the church because he has already written about that in his first epistle: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16–17). That is the departure, the removal, of the church.
The organized church which is left down here will totally depart from the faith. We see it pictured as the great harlot in Revelation 17. The Laodicean church, which is the seventh and last church described in the Book of Revelation, is in sad condition. I think that is the period we are in right now. When the true believers are gone, it will get even worse. It will finally end in total apostasy.
From the viewpoint of the earth the removal of believers is a departure. From the viewpoint of heaven, it is a rapture, a snatching or catching up. I think the world is going to say at that time, “Oh, boy, they are gone!” They think that fellow McGee and other Bible teachers are a nuisance, and they will be glad when they are gone. The world will rejoice. They do not realize that it will be a sad day for them. They think they will be entering into the blessing of the Millennium, not realizing they are actually entering into the Great Tribulation Period, which will be a time of trouble such as the world has never before seen.
Sometime ago Mrs. McGee and I were at the Los Angeles airport to take a morning flight to Florida. We always go early to have breakfast at the airport. While we were waiting, a big 747 was getting ready to go to the Hawaiian Islands. There was a fine-looking Marine Corps fellow there with his pretty wife and a precious little baby. But they looked so sad. A few minutes later when it came time to board the plane, they stood up. The father put his arms around them both, and they just wept. Then he picked up his bag and disappeared through the gate. It was a departure. It was an apostasia, a removal. The young wife picked up the baby and slowly walked back to the escalator, tears running down her face. My heart went out to her. Life would be hard for her now.
I couldn’t help but think that that is the way it will be for the world. When the church departs, many people will be glad to see us go. The liberals will be glad to get rid of us. There will be rejoicing. But they do not realize how hard it will be for them. They are going to enter the Great Tribulation Period.
The second thing which must happen is that the “man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” When he is revealed the Great Tribulation Period has already begun. Here he is called “the man of sin.” John calls him “the antichrist.” John is the only one who uses that term, by the way. The Antichrist has about thirty different titles in the Bible. He is a subject of the Old Testament. He is going to be Satan’s man. This is the man who will put the Roman Empire back together again, and he will finally become a world dictator. He is going to deceive the world. He could be in our midst today, but he won’t be able to appear in power or reveal who he is until after the Great Tribulation Period begins.
Paul tells us more about him—


Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God [2 Thess. 2:4].

One of his claims will be that he is God. In Revelation 13 we find that the beast out of the sea (the Antichrist) brings together western Europe, and he will put it back together again. When he does this, he will show himself as God. The world will think that he is Christ. That is the big lie.


Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? [2 Thess. 2:5].

Paul hadn’t hesitated to talk about these things. Some say that a preacher shouldn’t dwell on these topics. Well, Paul did. Paul says, “When I was with you, I told you about him.”

MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS WORKING TODAY, RESTRAINED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT


And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time [2 Thess. 2:6].


What can withhold evil in the world? The only One I know who can do that is the Holy Spirit. Governments can’t do it—they are not doing it. The Roman Empire couldn’t do it; it was an evil force itself.


For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way [2 Thess. 2:7].

Let me give you a clearer translation of this verse: “For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only he who now hinders will hinder, until he be taken out of the way.”
“The mystery of lawlessness” had begun to work already in Paul’s day, and it continues to work. The Lord Jesus gave a parable in Matthew 13 which reveals the condition of the world today. These are the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and they explain the condition of the world and of the church in the world today. The Word of God is being sown out in the field of the world, but an enemy has come in and has sown tares. The tares and the wheat are growing together—the Word of God and lawlessness grow together today. The world is getting worse, and in a sense, the world is getting better, because I think the Word of God is going out more than it ever has in the history of the world. The doors are open—the Word is growing, the wheat is growing. But the tares are growing also.
Lawlessness will continue to get worse and worse, but the Holy Spirit will not let Satan go all the way in this age. When the Holy Spirit will be removed, it will be like taking the stopper out of the bottle—the liquid of lawlessness will pour out all over the world in that day.
When will the Holy Spirit be taken out? He will be taken out with the church. Won’t the Holy Spirit be in the world during the Great Tribulation? Yes. Wasn’t He in the world before Pentecost? He surely was. He was present in the days of the Old Testament, but He was on a different mission. And He will be on a different mission after the church is removed. Now the Spirit of God is sealing us until the day of redemption when He will present us and deliver us to the Lord Jesus. If He didn’t do that, we would never make it. After He does that, I believe He will come back to the earth to resume His former mission down here. But He will not hinder evil—He will let the Devil have his day for a while. Believe me, I don’t want to be on the earth when the Devil has it! It looks bad enough to me as it is today; so I don’t want to be here when it is turned over to him.


And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming [2 Thess. 2:8].

“That Wicked”—the Antichrist, the Man of Sin—will be a world dictator. Nobody can stop him. No power on earth—only the coming of Christ will stop him. As God’s people in Egypt were helpless and hopeless until God delivered them, so the believers during the Tribulation will be helpless under the power of the Antichrist until the Lord Jesus comes to the earth to establish His kingdom. “The Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth,” that is, the Word of God which is the two-edged sword that proceeds from His mouth shall consume the Antichrist. It was the Word of God that created this universe. All God had to do was to speak. God said, “Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). The Lord Jesus Christ is the living Word of God. Today we have the Bible, which is the written Word of God. The written Word is about the living Word, and it is alive and potent. When the Lord Jesus returns, He comes as the living Word of God.
“And shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” “Brightness” is the Greek word epiphaneia or “epiphany” in English, and it refers to the shining forth of His coming. When the Lord Jesus came to Bethlehem, it was His, first epiphany. Titus 2:11 uses that word epiphaneia when it says, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men” (italics mine). That was the gracious appearing of His coming.
As George Macdonald put it:

“Thou cam’st, a little baby thing,
That made a woman cry.”

When He comes again it will be another epiphany. He will take His church out of the world, and then He is coming to the earth to establish His kingdom. His first coming had two episodes of coming, if you want to look at it that way. He came to Bethlehem as a little baby, and then later He began His ministry at the age of thirty years when He walked into the temple and cleansed it. His second coming also has two phases. He calls for His church to meet Him in the air, and then He comes down to the earth to establish His kingdom. At that time the Antichrist shall be consumed and destroyed with the brightness of His coming.

LAWLESS ONE TO APPEAR IN GREAT TRIBULATION


Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders [2 Thess. 2:9].


This is the Antichrist, Satan’s man, the Man of Sin, the lawless one. He will come “after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.”
“Power” here is dunamis in the Greek. It means a physical power whose source is supernatural. He will be quite a healer and a miracle worker. I think he will be able to walk on water. I think he might be able to control the wind. Remember that Satan at one time let a wind destroy the sons and daughters of Job. I am always afraid when anyone tells me of someone who is performing miracles today, because the next miracle worker predicted by the Bible is the one whose coming is after the working of Satan. I am always afraid that miracle workers have not come from heaven. The Devil will send this man with power and signs and lying wonders. That is the reason it is so important for us to get our eyes off men and to get them on Christ, to walk by faith in Him.
“Signs” means tokens. They have the purpose of appealing to the understanding. This man will have signs which will appeal to the scientific world of that day as well as to politicians and the religious world. I am amazed how even today people are taken in by the phoniest kinds of things. Someone has asked me, “Why do you think that happens?” I believe the answer can be expressed like this, “Those who do not stand for something will fall for anything.” People who are not rooted and grounded in the Word of God will fall for all kinds of signs.
“Lying wonders” will produce an effect upon observers. In that day, people all over the world will be talking about the Man of Sin, saying, “My, this world ruler we have is a great fellow. Look at what he can do!”
Who is it that will fall for his lying wonders? Those who would not believe the gospel—

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved [2 Thess. 2:10].
He will do this “with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.” Why?—“because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” I do believe that the gospel is going to go out to the ends of the earth. It may even be the church that accomplishes this. I think it is penetrating pretty well today by radio into areas where individuals cannot go. But there will be those who hear and refuse to receive the truth.


And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie [2 Thess. 2:11].

God will let the world believe a lie. Why does He do that? Isn’t that a little unfair? No, it is just like it was when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh wasn’t weeping for the children of Israel, longing to let them go free, being held back from his good intentions by God! If you think that, you are entirely wrong. Pharaoh did not want to let them go, and what God did was to force him to make a stand and come to a decision. God forced him into a situation which revealed what was already in his heart. We see a lot of people pussy-footing around today. They won’t take a stand for God. They won’t listen to the gospel. They are closed to it. God graciously gives them His Word, but they don’t want it. After they have heard the Word of God but have refused to accept it, God will send them “strong delusion.” Why? Because they would not receive the truth. Then they are open to believe the lie.
People who have stopped going to churches where they heard the gospel are wide open to the cults and the “isms” of our day. That is why so many of the cultists go around on Sunday morning, knocking at doors. They know that the weak people will not be in church on Sunday morning. They are not interested enough in the Word of God to be in church. The cults know that they can get those people, because if they will not receive the truth, they are open for anything else that comes along.
I have been simply amazed at some intelligent people who have sat in church, heard the gospel, rejected it, and then turned to the wildest cult imaginable. They will follow some individual who is absolutely a phony—not giving out the Word of God at all. Why? Because God says that is the way it is: When people reject the truth, they will believe the lie.
God is separating the sheep from the goats. God uses the best way in the world to do it. If people will not receive the love of the truth, then God sends them a “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” What is the “lie”? The lie of Antichrist is that Jesus Christ is not the Lord, that He is not who He says He is. He will tell people that they are really smart in not becoming religious nuts who believe in Jesus. He’ll have some good explanation for the departure of the saints from the earth at the Rapture and will congratulate the people on having waited to build a kingdom on earth with him. The people will believe him and will believe that Antichrist will bring them the Millennium. They will not realize that they are entering into the Great Tribulation. That is the lie, and people will believe it because they believed not the truth.


That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness [2 Thess. 2:12].

God is going to judge those who have rejected the truth. I have said this many times, and I am going to say it again: If you can sit and read the Word of God in this book and continue to reject Jesus Christ, then you are wide open for anything that comes along to delude and deceive you. You will never be able to go into the presence of God and say, “I never heard the gospel.” If you turn your back on the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are wide open for delusion and you are a subject for judgment. As a believer giving out the gospel, I am a savor of life to those that are saved and a savor of death to those that perish (see 2 Cor. 2:15–16). I have really put you out on a limb, because you cannot say you have never heard the gospel. You have heard it, and you have probably heard it in several different places. If you reject Jesus Christ, then I am the savor of death to you. If you accept Jesus Christ as your own Lord and Savior, then I am the savor of life to you.

PRACTICALLY OF CHRIST’S COMING

Now Paul moves into the practical side of this epistle. In the light of the knowledge of future events, the believer should live a life that demonstrates that he believes in the coming of Christ. Believing in the coming of Christ doesn’t mean to run out and look up into the sky and say, “Oh, I wish Jesus would come!” That is just pious nonsense. It will be manifest in three different ways if a person believes in the coming of Christ: it will affect his attitude toward the Word, his walk, and his work.
BELIEVERS SHOULD BE ESTABLISHED IN THE WORD

But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ [2 Thess. 2:13–14].


I believe these two verses give the total spectrum of salvation. In other words, they give you salvation “from Dan to Beer-sheba”—all the way from the past, the present, and down into the future.
1. “Chosen you to salvation.” This is so clearly taught in Romans 8: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. [Dr. R. A. Torrey used to say that this verse was a soft pillow for a tired heart. It surely is that.] For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:28–31).
That is exactly what Paul is writing here in 2 Thessalonians: “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation.” That looks back to the past. All I know is what it says, and I believe it. Do you mean to tell me that God chose us before we even got here? Spurgeon used to put it something like this: “I am glad God chose me before I got here, because if He had waited until I got here He never would have chosen me.” It simply means that you do not surprise God when you trust Christ. But there is another side of the coin: “Whosoever will may come.” The “whosoever wills” are the chosen ones, and the “whosoever won’ts” are the nonelect. Jesus said, “… If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). That is a legitimate offer of salvation—a sincere, definite offer with no complications attached. If you don’t come, the reason is not because you are not elected. Not at all. The reason you don’t come is that you’re not thirsty; that is, you don’t think you need a Savior. If you are thirsty, then come to Christ.
2. “Through sanctification of the Spirit.” “Chosen you to salvation” looked back to the past, and now sanctification by the Spirit looks to the present. You are sanctified both as to position and as to practice. When you accept Jesus Christ as your own Savior, you are in Christ—that is positional sanctification; that is the past tense of salvation. Then there is also the practical side of sanctification which concerns your life. Through the Spirit of God you are to grow in grace.
3. “Belief of the truth.” That means that a believer is going to study the Word of God. That is the way he is going to grow and develop.
4. “To the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is future. This refers to the Rapture. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Then there is the statement in Colossians 1:27, “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” That looks forward to the future. What a glorious, wonderful prospect we have before us!
We see that these two verses have given us the full spectrum of salvation: we have been saved, we are being saved, we shall be saved. It is all the work of God.


Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle [2 Thess. 2:15].

Paul is referring to what he had taught them when he was with them. It is the Word which enables the believer to stand and be stable.


Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace,

Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work [2 Thess. 2:16–17].

The Lord Jesus Christ brings comfort and consolation to our hearts. He does this through His Word. That will establish us in every good word and work. The study of the Word of God will lead to the work of the Lord.
Not only will the Word of God “comfort” us, but it will also edify us. “Stablish you” means we are to be rooted and grounded in the Word of God so that we are not carried away by every wind of doctrine. Our minds and hearts will be centered on Him. That will keep us from going out after every fad of the day and reading every new book that comes off the press. Nor will we be running to little study courses here and there to be built up for the moment. We need to be established in the faith.
It is the Word of God then that will lead you to do the work of God. In chapter 3 we will see that believers should also be established in their walk and in their work down here. You see, it is rather deceitful (to yourself and others) to talk about how much you love the coming of the Lord if you do not study His Word. Then your belief does not manifest itself in your life and it doesn’t make you work. If you really believe Christ is coming, you’re going to be busy working for Him. You are going to give account to Him someday. If He is going to be here tomorrow, we want to be busy today. We shouldn’t have our noses pressed against the window looking for Him to come, or to be always looking up into heaven for Him. Instead, we should be looking around doing the work of the Lord down here. That is the greatest proof that we believe in His coming.

CHAPTER 3

Theme: The practicality of Christ’s coming


Chapter 2 concluded with the fact that believers should be established in the Word—the Word of God. Paul spoke about God comforting our hearts and establishing us in every good word and work. This has to do with loyalty to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Also Paul spoke in chapter 2, verses 13–14, of the marvelous position we have in Christ. We are chosen—“God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit.” And we are called of God “to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is heady stuff! It is exciting and thrilling.
Now here in chapter 3 Paul says that there are certain responsibilities that we have as believers. As Paul put it to the Ephesian believers, “… walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Eph. 4:1). Now Paul is saying the same thing to the Thessalonian believers.

BELIEVERS SHOULD BE ESTABLISHED IN THEIR WALK


Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you:

And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith [2 Thess. 3:1–2].


He is saying here that the Word of God enables the believer to walk before the wicked world. The Word establishes a believer in his walk.
“Finally, brethren”—he is coming to the conclusion of his letter.
“Pray for us.” Prayer is something that every believer can engage in. I do not think prayer is a gift of the Spirit. Prayer is something that all believers should do. Every work must have prayer behind it if it is to succeed. Every successful evangelist and preacher of the Word, every teacher of the Word who is being used of God, has people who are praying for him. Paul is asking the Thessalonians for prayer so that “the word of the Lord may have free course.” Paul had a very unique ministry. He was a missionary. He was an evangelist as we think of evangelists today. Actually that word evangelist in the New Testament means “missionary.” Also, he was a pastor and a teacher of the Word. He fulfilled all those offices, and he had fulfilled them all to the Thessalonians. He had led them to the Lord and taught them; now he is acting as their pastor in his letters. He is not only instructing them in the Word, but he is attempting to comfort them and to counsel them. One of the things he enjoins them to do is pray. “Pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you.”
You cannot pray for Paul today, but you can pray for Vernon. I would appreciate your prayers that the Word of the Lord as I give it out may have free course and be glorified. The Word of God needs to be exalted today. Pray that people will exalt the Word of God in their own lives. It troubles me and it worries me to see that even those who claim to believe the Word of God give so little attention to it. Pray that if people profess to believe the Word of God, they will get into it and find out what it says.
My friend, let me urge you to pray for your pastor. Let me say something very carefully. I know what it is to be a pastor, and I know what it is to be a Bible teacher holding conferences. I want to say to you that it is a lot easier to go around and hold conferences than it is to be a pastor. A pastor has a great responsibility because, very frankly, he deals with a great many folk who are unreasonable. Paul asks prayer that he “may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men.” Did you know that there are wicked persons in the church? A pastor needs to be delivered from such folk.
The work of an evangelist is like the work of an obstetrician. He delivers the little baby into the world, and that is quite an undertaking, of course. But then he turns over the little one to the pediatrician. He is the one who sees to it that his diet is right, that he is burped properly, that he gets his shots, and so forth. The pastor, you see, is the pediatrician. He is the one who must deal with cantankerous saints and baby Christians. That is quite a job. My heart goes out to the pastor.
When I go out to speak at conferences, I meet some wonderful pastors. The only churches I want to go to are the ones where the pastor is preaching and teaching the Word of God and stands for the things of God. On the other side of the coin, that is the only kind of man who will have me in his pulpit! Recently, as we left such a church, I said to my wife: “We have had a wonderful ministry here at this church for the week. I’ve been here just long enough—I think these people are wonderful, and they think I am wonderful! I left before they got acquainted with me and I got acquainted with them. Also I think I helped the pastor; he tells me that I did. But he is the one who is carrying the burden and the load there. He is the one who has the problems. I can simply walk away from them.” I think the work of an evangelist or of an itinerant Bible teacher, as some of us are, is easy compared to the work of the man who is the pastor.
Paul asked for prayer that he might be delivered from “unreasonable and wicked men.” I find that the spreading of the gospel is hindered more by people in the church than by anything else. No liquor industry, no bar-room, no gangster ring has ever attacked me—at least I have never known about it. But I have had so-called saints in the churches attack me. As you know, in our churches we have the saints and the “ain’ts,” and there are a lot of “ain’ts.” They can give a pastor a rough time. It’s too bad that we can’t all settle down and give out the Word of God.
Now when he says, “For all men have not faith,” that is really “the faith.” All men do not have the faith. That is, they do not hold to the doctrines as the apostles taught them. The foundation of the church rests upon the doctrine which the apostles have given to the church. That is what we should teach and preach.
It is one thing to hold the truth of the coming of Christ, to love His appearing; but it is another thing to walk worthy of that great truth. This is what Paul is writing about to the Thessalonians. If we really love His appearing, we will prove it by our relationship to the Word of God and by our walk through this life.


But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil [2 Thess. 3:3].

That is so wonderful! I have let Him down on several occasions, but He has never let me down. He is faithful. He is always faithful. Christians should hold tenaciously to this little verse. The Lord is faithful, and He will establish you.
Christians need to be established. Right now the home is in disarray, the church is in disarray, and the lives of believers are in disarray. We need to be established. How can you as a believer be established? By coming to the Word of God and letting it have its influence in your life. The Lord operates through His Word. The Word of God will keep you from evil. Someone has said, “The Bible will keep you from sin, and sin will keep you from the Bible.”


And we have confidence in the Lord touching you, that ye both do and will do the things which we command you [2 Thess. 3:4].

Christians are commanded to do certain things, and there are specific commandments for Christians. We saw that in Paul’s first epistle to the Thessalonians where he records twenty-two commandments in the fifth chapter. There are not only ten but twenty-two commandments which the believers are to do. The Lord Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments!” (see John 14:15) and these are His commandments.
Paul had “confidence in the Lord touching” them. He committed them to the Lord with the confidence that they were doing and would continue doing the things which he commanded. He believed that this Thessalonian church which had a wonderful testimony would continue to maintain that testimony.


And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ [2 Thess. 3:5].

The believer is to walk in “the love of God.” My friend, if you are walking today in the sunshine of His love, the love of God is shed abroad in your heart and you know He loves you. And you can manifest that love by the power of the Spirit, because only the Spirit of God can make God’s love real to us. Love is a fruit of the Spirit. You can’t naturally love every Tom, Dick, and Harry—and I’m of the opinion God does not expect that of us. Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians that our love is to be in judgment, which implies that we should be careful about loving those around us. There are folk who will hurt us if we open our arms to them.
“Into the patient waiting for Christ.” This does not mean that you are to argue about being premillennial or pretribulational or posttribulational or amillennial, but that you are to be patiently waiting for the coming Christ. Oh, what wonderful verses these are!


Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us [2 Thess. 3:6].

“Now we command you, brethren”—Paul doesn’t beat around the bush!
The believer is not to walk with the “disorderly.” I know men who insist that we should go into the barrooms, sit down with the drunkard and have a beer with him as we witness to him. Unfortunately, I know of a young lady who became an alcoholic by following that procedure. God says that we are to “withdraw” ourselves from the disorderly. Certainly we are to witness to them, but we are not to fraternize on their level.
God makes it very clear whom we are to follow—


For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you [2 Thess. 3:7].

Birds of a feather flock together. You will be like the crowd you run around with. Believers need to be very careful about the company they keep and the people with whom they associate.

BELIEVERS SHOULD BE ESTABLISHED IN THEIR WORK


The Thessalonians were walking in a right relationship to the Lord Jesus, and they were being persecuted for it. Paul comforted them, instructed, and encouraged them. Now he lets them know that he also is undergoing persecution and difficulty. And, friend, if you stand for the Lord, it will cost you something.
We have seen that the believer is to be established in the Word of God. Then we have noted how important the walk of the believer is, and how his walk should be grounded in the Word. Now we come to the work of the believer, which is also very practical. This involves things in which we need to be engaged—that the Word of God may have its way in our hearts and lives.


Neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you [2 Thess. 3:8].

“Neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought”—that is, for nothing; he paid for what he ate.
“But wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you.” His practice was that he would not let anyone pay him for his missionary work among them. I think this applied especially to his first missionary journey. When he arrived in town as a missionary, there was no reservation for him at the local motel. There was no stipend given to him, no love offering taken for him the first time he was there. He was very careful about paying his own way. He mentions that to the Thessalonians and also to the Corinthians. When he was establishing churches he supported himself by tentmaking.
However, after the churches were established and Paul had come back to visit them a second and a third time, he did receive an offering from them. He makes it clear to the Galatians that they should give. He thanks the Philippians for their gift. He himself took an offering on his third missionary journey to be given to the poor saints in Jerusalem. Obviously, the great truth of the coming of Christ had not caused Paul to become some sort of a fanatic or to take some unreasonable position in relation to money matters.
In every age there are fanatical people. In the last century there were those who expected the return of Christ; so they sold their homes and property, wrapped themselves in white sheets and got on the top of the roof to wait for the Lord to come! There were several actions which identified them as fanatics. For example, why get on the roof? Couldn’t the Lord draw a person into the air from the ground as easily as from a roof? If one needed to get up on a roof, then wouldn’t a mountaintop be better? And then, why in the world would one need a white sheet? I think the Lord is going to furnish us with suitable coverings when we come into His presence. And why would they sell their property and turn it into money? Did they think they could take the money with them? You see, people can do some very peculiar, senseless things because they say they believe in the soon coming of Christ. The fact is that there is no other doctrine in the Bible that will make you work harder or more sensibly for Christ. If you believe that He is coming, you will work for Him. You will be busy for the Lord in some phase of His work. You will be putting out a few seeds of the Word of God in the field of the world so that they might bring forth a harvest.


Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us [2 Thess. 3:9].

Paul is saying that as an apostle who had led them to the Lord and established a church among them, he had the right, the authority, to claim an offering. However, he did not do this because he wanted to be an example to the believers in Thessalonica that they might not be led to some fanatical position.
A young couple who had been in my classes when I taught at a Bible institute were inclined toward fanaticism. They thought they were super-duper saints, way out ahead of everyone else. But their exam papers were graded Cs or Ds, because they didn’t really know the Word, although they affected to be very spiritual. (Incidentally, I don’t think a person can be truly spiritual and be ignorant of the Word of God.) They came to me after I had become a pastor in that city and said they wanted to go to the mission field. They attended the church I served although they were not members. I asked them if they had their financial support. They said no. I asked, “Do you mean that you are going to the mission field without support?” “Oh,” they said, “we’re going to trust the Lord.” Well, I said, “It’s nice to trust the Lord, but can’t you trust Him to raise your support here? Must you wait until you get into the mission field to trust Him for support? Why don’t you get under a reputable mission board and work with them? If the Lord has called you to go to the mission field, He will raise up support for you—the Lord will lay your needs on the hearts of certain folk who will pray for you and support you financially.” No, they didn’t want to do it that way, they were just going to trust the Lord. Well, this young couple went out to the mission field, and there they became casualties. They had to be brought home with money that some friends raised to pay their passage. Since that time they have separated and are divorced. She is married again. I have heard that he has lost his faith altogether, although I doubt that he ever really had faith. Their behavior was foolish and fanatical.
Paul was making missionary work very practical. He supported himself by working with his hands, and he did it to be an example to the Thessalonian believers. He is going to make a point of this in the next verse.


For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat [2 Thess. 3:10].

A believer who is looking for the Lord to return is not a dreamer; he is a worker. No work—no food. That is the rule laid down by the apostle. “If any would not work, neither should he eat.”
It is amazing how fanatical people can get about these things. The dean of men at Moody Bible Institute told about an incident that happened about fifty years ago. Two young men roomed together who were other examples of those super-duper saints who thought they were completely sanctified. One day they didn’t appear in the dining room for breakfast or for lunch or for dinner; so the dean went up to see what was the problem. They were just sitting there, looking out into space. He asked them if they were sick. No, they weren’t sick. “Then why haven’t you come down for meals?” They said, “We’re just trusting the Lord. We are waiting for Him to tell us whether we should go down to eat.” “Are you hungry?” They admitted that they were hungry. “Don’t you think that is one of the ways the Lord has of letting you know that you ought to go down to eat?” They said, “No, we are waiting for special revelation from Him, and we are not going to move until then.” So the dean said to them, “I have news for you. You are going to move, but not down to the dining room. You are going to move out of school. You cannot stay here.” There is no place for that kind of fanaticism.
Today we are seeing a kind of fanaticism in the area of prophecy. It is quite interesting that in this epistle which deals largely in prophecy, almost half of it is given over to that which is practical. He puts the emphasis on the practical side of the great truth of the coming of Christ for His church. It is one thing to get fanatical about prophecy; it is quite another thing to believe the prophetic truth and then have it meshed and geared into our living down here so that it becomes practical and working.
We are to work while we wait. A gardener for a large estate in northern Italy was conducting a visitor through the castle and the beautiful, well-groomed grounds. As the visitor had lunch with the gardener and his wife, he commended them for the beautiful way they were keeping the gardens. He asked, “By the way, when was the last time the owner was here?” “It was about ten years ago,” the gardener said. The visitor asked, “Then why do you keep up the gardens in such an immaculate, lovely manner?” The gardener answered, “Because I’m expecting him to return.” He persisted, “Is he coming next week?” The gardener replied, “I don’t know when he is coming, but I am expecting him today.” Although he didn’t come that day, he was living in the light of the owner’s imminent return. The gardener wasn’t hanging over the gate, watching down the road to see whether his master was coming. He was in the garden, trimming, cutting, mowing, planting. He was busy. That is what Paul is talking about when he says we should be established in the work of the Lord in view of the fact that He is returning.
“If any would not work, neither should he eat.” You see, the Thessalonians had a few fanatics who simply withdrew themselves and decided that they were going to spend all their time looking for the Lord’s return. Paul writes, “Don’t feed them. They have to go to work.”


For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies [2 Thess. 3:11].

Here we are told the situation. There were some who were not working at anything constructive. They were not interested in getting out the Word of God, but they were busy—they were busybodies. They were really making a nuisance of themselves, and they were causing trouble in the church in Thessalonica. It takes just one bad apple to spoil the barrel; it takes just one little fly to spoil the ointment; and one fanatic in the church can affect the spiritual life of a great many people. That is the reason Paul had said before that they were to withdraw themselves from the ones who walk disorderly, and I’m sure he had the busybodies in mind. They were busy as termites and just as effective as termites in the church at Thessalonica.


Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread [2 Thess. 3:12].

This doesn’t sound very spiritual, does it? It doesn’t sound very theological. But it certainly is practical. It would solve a great many problems in the average church if the busybodies, the troublemakers, would work with quietness and do something constructive. It is interesting that the man who was the biggest troublemaker in any church that I served was the smallest contributor—and I found that out by accident. The treasurer of the church was talking to me about the trouble this fellow had been, and I said, “Well, he is a man of means; and I suppose a very generous giver, and he naturally is interested in how his money is being spent.” The treasurer looked at me and laughed. He said, “That man gives ten dollars a year for the Lord’s work!” Believe me, he certainly gave us more than ten dollars worth of trouble! There must have been people like that in Thessalonica. Paul says that they were to quietly go to work and mind their own business.


But ye, brethren, be not weary in well-doing [2 Thess. 3:13].

How wonderful this is! A believer who holds the blessed hope should not grow weary of working for the Lord. As Moody put it, “I get weary in the work, but not weary of the work.”


And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed [2 Thess. 3:14].

People in the church ought to withdraw from troublemakers in the church. However, many people more or less court their favor, because they don’t want those people to talk about them, knowing they have vicious tongues. But withdrawing from the gossips would be the best thing that could happen in many churches.

Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother [2 Thess. 3:15].
An attempt should be made to win the wayward member.


Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means. The Lord be with you all [2 Thess. 3:16].

Isn’t this lovely!


The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle:so I write [2 Thess. 3:17].

This is an epistle from Paul signed with his own hand.


The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen [2 Thess. 3:18].

His letter ends with a benediction. It is the conclusion of a wonderful epistle which teaches that the knowledge of prophecy, rather than leading to fanaticism or laziness, brings peace to the heart.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Recommended for Further Study)


Hiebert, D. Edmond. The Thessalonian Epistles, A Call to Readiness. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1971. (An excellent, comprehensive treatment.)

Hogg, C. F. and Vine, W. E. The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1914. (An excellent, comprehensive treatment.)

Ironside, H. A. Addresses on I and II Thessalonians. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, n.d.

Kelly, William. The Epistles to the Thessalonians. Oak Park, Illinois: Bible Truth Publishers, 1893.

MacDonald, William. Letters to the Thessalonians. Kansas City, Missouri: Walterick Publishers, 1969.

Ryrie, Charles C. First and Second Thessalonians. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1959. (Fine, inexpensive survey.)
Walvoord, John F. The Thessalonian Epistles. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1955.

The First Epistle to
Timothy

INTRODUCTION

The First Epistle to Timothy introduces us to a new set of epistles which were written by Paul. There are three of them that belong together (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), and they are called “The Pastoral Epistles,” because they have to do with local churches. You will find that these pastoral epistles are in contrast, for instance, to the Epistle to the Ephesians. There Paul speaks of the church as the body of believers who are in Christ and the glorious, wonderful position that the church has. The church which is invisible, made up of all believers who are in the body of Christ, manifests itself down here upon the earth in local assemblies, in the local churches.
Now, just to put a steeple on a building and a bell in the steeple and a pulpit down front and a choir in the loft singing the doxology doesn’t mean it is a local church in the New Testament sense of the word. There must be certain identifying features. I have written a booklet called The Spiritual Fingerprints of the Visible Church, in which I point out that a local church must manifest itself in a certain way in order to meet the requirements of a church of the Lord Jesus.
These three epistles were written to two young preachers who worked with Paul: Timothy and Titus. They were a part of his fruit; that is, they were led to Christ through the ministry of Paul. He had these men with him as helpers, and he instructed them about the local church.
In all three epistles Paul is dealing with two things: the creed of the church and the conduct of the church. For the church within, the worship must be right. For the church outside, good works must be manifested. Worship is inside; works are outside. That’s the way the church is to manifest itself.
Paul deals with these two topics in each of the three epistles. For instance, in 1 Timothy, chapter 1, is faith, the faith of the church—its doctrine. Chapter 2 is the order of the church. Chapter 3 concerns the officers of the church. Chapter 4 describes the apostasy that was coming, and chapters 5 and 6 tell of the duties of the officers.
In 2 Timothy, Paul deals with the afflictions of the church in chapter 1 and the activity of the church in chapter 2. Then the apostasy of the church and the allegiance of the church follow in chapters 3 and 4.
Titus has the same theme. Chapter 1 tells of the order of the church, chapter 2 is about the doctrine of the church, and chapter 3 is the good works of the church.
So there is creed on the inside of the church and conduct on the outside. Within is worship and without are good works.
The church today manifests itself in a local assembly. It first puts up a building. In Paul’s day, they didn’t have a building. That’s one thing they didn’t need because they were not building churches. They generally met in homes and probably in public buildings. We know in Ephesus that Paul used—probably rented—the school of Tyrannus. I suppose Paul used the auditorium during the siesta time each day. People came in from everywhere to hear him preach. That could be characterized as a local assembly, and it became a local church in Ephesus.
In order to be a local assembly, the church must have certain things to characterize it. It must have a creed, and its doctrine must be accurate. There are two verses that summarize Paul’s message in these epistles: “As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other [different] doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3). It is important that a church have correct doctrine. That’s what I mean when I say that a steeple on a building doesn’t make it a local church by any means. Then again Paul said to this young preacher: “But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). The local church is made up of believers who are members of the body of Christ. In order for them to function, they need leadership. Somebody has to be appointed to sweep the place out and somebody to build a fire in the stove—if they have one.
In the first little church that I served, I swept the church out sometimes, and on Sunday morning, because it was a little country church, the first one who got there built a fire in the stove. I always tried to be a little late, but I’d say that half the time I built the fire. Those things are essential. Also it’s nice to have a choir and a song leader. In addition to this, Paul is going to say that officers are essential for a church to be orderly. There must be officers, and they must meet certain requirements. The church should function in an orderly manner and manifest itself in the community by its good works. Unfortunately today that is idealistic in most places because the local church doesn’t always manifest what it should.
From these Pastoral Epistles have come three different types of church government which have been used by the great denominations of the church. The churches never disagreed on doctrine in the old days as much as they disagreed on this matter of church government, that is, how the local church is to function. I marvel that they could get three different forms of government out of these three Pastoral Epistles, but they did.
1. There is the episcopal form of government where there is one man, or maybe several men, who are in charge at the top. The Roman Catholic church calls that man a pope. In other churches he is called the archbishop; if there are several leaders, they are called bishops. The Church of England and other churches follow the episcopal form of government. They are controlled by men at the top who are outside the local church.
2. Another form of church government is known as the presbyterian or representative form of government. The local church elects certain men from its membership, called elders and deacons, to be officers, and the government of the local church is in their hands. Unfortunately, the churches were bound together by an organization above the level of the local church, and that organization could control the local church.
3. The third type of church government is the opposite extreme from the episcopal form, called the congregational form of government. You see it, of course, in the Congregational and Baptist churches. The people are the ones who make the decisions and who are actually in control. The entire church votes on taking in members and on everything else that concerns the local church.
Perhaps you are wondering how they could get three forms of church government from the same words in the Pastoral Epistles. Well, of course, certain words were interpreted differently. I’ll try to call attention to these various interpretations as we go through the Pastoral Epistles.
The very interesting thing is that in the early days all three forms of church government functioned and seemed to work well. But in recent years all three forms of government have fallen on evil days; they don’t seem to work as they once did. Men who are members of all three forms of government tell me that there is internal strife and disorder and dissension. What is wrong? Immediately somebody says, “Well, the system is wrong.”
This is an interesting question since we have a representative form of civil government in this country. It was patterned after the church government. You see, the early colonists didn’t want a king. That was the only form of government they had known, and they had had enough of a king. They did not want an autocratic form of government, and they were rather reluctant to let the people rule. That may seem strange to you when you listen to local politicians today who talk about “everybody having a vote.” In colonial times women didn’t vote; men who were not landowners did not vote. Only those who had property and belonged to a certain elite class voted.
The reason the colonists did not want a king to rule over them was because they couldn’t trust human nature, which means they couldn’t trust each other. We think of those men as being wonderful, political, patriotic saints. Well, they were human beings and filled with foibles. They knew they couldn’t trust each other, so they would not put power in the hands of one man. They were also afraid to put power in the people’s hands because they had no confidence in the people either.
That contradicts the concept that the politician purports when he says that the majority can’t be wrong—or “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” Frankly, that’s just not true.
Why is it, then, that our forms of church government are not working as they should? Well, I want to say—and I hope I’m not misunderstood, because I recognize my inability to express it in the way I’d like to express it to you—that I believe Paul is saying in this epistle that the form of government, important as it is, is not as important as the caliber and character of the men who are holding office.
These epistles outline certain requirements for officers, such as being sober, having one wife, etc. These requirements are essential and are the subjects of debate in the local churches. But here is something more important that I have never heard argued in my forty long years as a pastor, and that is the most basic requirement for officers. Paul is trying to convey to us that the men who are officers must be spiritual, because no system will function unless the men who are in the place and position of authority are right. If they are wrong, no system—whether it is congregational or episcopal or presbyterian—will work.
That, my friend, is the problem. It is the problem today in politics, and it is the problem today in the church. When we elect a man, he must be successful in his vocation and he should have leadership ability. I think those are good requirements, but we need to determine if he is a spiritual man.
Paul is going to emphasize two aspects of the spiritual officer: he must be a man of faith, and he must be motivated by love. Unless those two characteristics are operating in his life, the officer can’t function in the church no matter how much ability he has.
What this simply means is that the authority the officers have is actually no authority at all. Paul says that when you’ve been made an elder or a bishop or a deacon in the church, you have an office and you may feel very pompous and authoritative, but Paul says you really have no authority. Well, what does he mean? He means that Christ is the Head of the church, and the Holy Spirit is the One to give the leading and the guiding and the direction. The officer is never to assert his will in anything; he is to find out what the will of God is. That means he will have to be a man of faith.
He also will have to be motivated by love. Now that doesn’t mean that he is to go around soft-soaping everybody and scratching their backs, trying to be a man-pleaser, but he is to carry through the will of Christ in that church. It is his job to make sure that Christ is the Head of the church. Oh, how I’ve spent weary hours in board meetings talking about some little thing that had absolutely nothing to do with the spiritual welfare of the church, but had a lot to do with the will of some hardheaded, stubborn officer who thought he was a spiritual man. Such a man had no idea that he was to carry through the will of Christ because, to begin with, he had never sought the will of Christ. All he was attempting to do was to serve his own will because he thought his will was right.
Oh, my friend, Christ is the Head of the local church today. We see this in the very first verse where Paul calls Him “the Lord Jesus Christ.” He is the Lord, and, remember, that means He is Number One. The Lord Jesus said in His day, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). A lot of people call Him “Lord” today in the church, and they’re not following Him at all. To be an officer in the church means that you’re to carry through the will of Christ, His commandments, and His desires. He is the Head of the local church. That is what is needed today, is it not?
Therefore, I am not prepared to argue with anybody about the form of government in his church. If you think yours is the best form, fine! You go along with it. But it will work only if you have the right men. It won’t work—no matter what the form is—if you have the wrong men. The unspiritual officer is the monkey wrench in the machinery of the church today. Although it is the business of the church to get Him through to the world, that is the reason we don’t see much evidence of Christ.
In 1 Timothy, then, we deal with the nitty-gritty of the local church, with the emphasis that it is the character and caliber of her leaders that will determine whether the church is really a church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

OUTLINE

I. The Faith of the Church, Chapter 1
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–2
B. Warning against Unsound Doctrine, Chapter 1:3–10
C. Personal Testimony of Paul, Chapter 1:11–17
D. Charge to Timothy, Chapter 1:18–20
II. Public Prayer and Woman’s Place in the Churches, Chapter 2
A. Public Prayer for the Public and Public Officials, Chapter 2:1–7
B. How Men Are to Pray, Chapter 2:8
C. How Women Are to Pray, Chapter 2:9–15
III. Officers in the Churches, Chapter 3
A. Requirements for Elders, Chapter 3:1–7
B. Requirements for Deacons, Chapter 3:8–13
C. Report of Paul to Timothy, Chapter 3:14–16
IV. Apostasy in the Churches, Chapter 4
A. How to Recognize the Apostates, Chapter 4:1–5
B. What the “Good Minister” Can Do in Times of Apostasy, Chapter 4:6–16
V. Duties of Officers of the Churches, Chapters 5–6
A. Relationship of Ministers to Different Groups in the Local Church, Chapter 5
B. Relationship of Believers to Others, Chapter 6

CHAPTER 1

Theme: The faith of the church

Paul’s emphasis here will not be a doctrinal statement of the Christian church, but a warning against false teachers in the local church. He will stress that the gospel of the grace of God is central in doctrine and concerns the person of Christ.

INTRODUCTION


The introduction to 1 Timothy is unlike any other in Paul’s epistles. Perhaps you had come to the conclusion that they were all the same, but the introductions to the Pastoral Epistles are a little different. Dr. Marvin R. Vincent has said that the salutation on 1 Timothy as a whole has no parallel in Paul.


Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope;

Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord [1 Tim. 1:1–2].

“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God.” Paul asserts his apostleship to Timothy, and he has certainly done so before. In Ephesians he says, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God …” (Eph. 1:1, italics mine). Now what is the difference between the commandment and the will of God? The will of God and the commandment of God are the same, but yet they are not exactly synonymous. All the commandments which you find in the Bible reveal the will of God. This would include much more than the Ten Commandments. For example, we are told that it is the will of God that we pray: “Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thess. 5:17–18). There are many things which are the will of God, and they are expressed in His commandments. However, I do not think that we have revealed to us all of the will of God, even in the sum total of the commandments in Scripture. The will of God is therefore a much broader term than the commandment of God.
Remember, however, that we have revealed to us enough of the will of God to know that man is not saved by obedience to the commandments of God. This is important to reiterate as there are so many today who say the Law is essential to our salvation.
In verse 8 of this chapter, Paul writes, “But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.” How are we to use the Law? First, we need to see that the Law is good: “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Rom. 7:12). It is the very fact that the Law is good and demands absolute goodness from man (in whom there is no good thing) that the sinner cannot obey it. Paul says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing …” (Rom. 7:18). The Law or the commandments of God were given to reveal the will of God and to show that in order for a sinner to be saved it is necessary to find a way other than obedience to a perfect law; to understand this is to use the law “lawfully.”
The glory of the gospel is that God found a way that He might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. In Acts Paul preached: “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man [that is, the Lord Jesus] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38–39). Why could they not be justified by the law of Moses? Because it was a ministration of death: the Law condemned them. The Law wasn’t given to save us, but to reveal that God is holy and that you and I are not holy. The way that God found to save us is the way of the Cross, the way of the Lord Jesus. “I am the way,” He says, “the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The Law is not the way to God; Christ is the way.
When Paul wrote to the Ephesians that he was an apostle by the will of God, that was true. But when he wrote to this young preacher Timothy, he said, “I am an apostle by the commandment of God. He made me an apostle. It is not just because I am in the will of God today that I am an apostle. There was a time when He commanded me to be an apostle.” I think Paul might have been rather reluctant to become an apostle. I’m sure he could have offered excuses to the Lord as Moses did. He hadn’t been with the Lord as the other eleven apostles had been. He never knew Him in the days of His flesh; he knew Him only as the glorified Christ. He said he was unworthy to be an apostle. But the Lord Jesus had said, “I command you,” and that is the reason Paul could walk into a synagogue or go before a gainsaying audience in Athens, or a group of rotten, corrupt sinners in Corinth, and boldly declare the gospel. He was a soldier under orders, an apostle by commandment—not by commission, but by commandment. No one laid hands on Paul to make him an apostle, but the Lord Jesus personally gave him the authority.
Jeremiah had this same kind of authority. He was a shrinking violet, a retiring sort of person, the man with a broken heart. Yet he stepped out and gave some of the strongest statements that ever came from God. Why could he do that? He was a soldier under orders—under orders from God.
Any man who is going to speak for God today needs to do it with authority or he ought to keep quiet. A man who gets up in the pulpit and says, “If you believe in a fashion, I expect that maybe you’d be saved if you believe in a way on Jesus.” Such a wishy-washy man has nothing to say for God at all. Paul was an apostle who spoke with the authority of God.
“God our Saviour”—is God our Savior? He certainly is: “… God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son …” (John 3:16). God provided the sacrifice, and the Lord Jesus is the One who came to this earth and executed it.
“And the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope.” To say that Christ is our hope may seem strange to you, as it is not found often in Scripture. Actually, the only other time you will find it is in Colossians 1:27: “… Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The Lord Jesus died to save you. He lives to keep you saved. He is going to come someday to take you to be with Himself and to consummate that salvation. He is our faith when we look backwards; He is love when we look around us today; and He is our hope as we look ahead. But it is hope, actually, all the way through our lives, and that hope is anchored in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Timothy”—sometimes he is called Timothy and sometimes Timotheus. Timotheus is made up of two Greek words which mean “that which is dear to God.” Timothy was dear to God, he was dear to the apostle Paul, and he was dear to the local churches.
We read of Timothy in the books of Acts, Ephesians, and Philippians. His father was a Greek. His grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice, became Christians before him. He lived in Lystra where Paul was stoned. I feel that Paul was actually raised from the dead at that time, and this may have had a lot to do with the conversion of Timothy. As a young man he probably was rather skeptical, and this event may have helped convince him and bring him to conversion. After his conversion he became an avowed follower of Paul.
Timothy was a man who had a good reputation. We read of him in Acts 16:2–5: “Which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. Him would Paul have to go forth with him; and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters: for they knew all that his father was a Greek. And as they went through the cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem. And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.” As Timothy worked with Paul he became one in whom Paul had the utmost confidence, while others in the churches proved to be false brethren who deceived him.
It is the joy of every pastor to have wonderful friends in his church. I have lived and ministered in Pasadena, California, since 1940. I meet people everywhere, some who came to know the Lord as early as 1940 or 1941, who are still following in the Lord’s steps, and they are loyal, faithful friends of mine. That is why we keep our ministry’s headquarters here, for we have a host of wonderful, trusted friends in this area.
Paul had those whom he couldn’t trust, but Timothy was one he could trust. He wrote in Philippians: “But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I also may be of good comfort, when I know your state. For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s. But ye know the proof of him, that, as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel. Him therefore I hope to send presently, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me” (Phil. 2:19–23).
“Timothy, my own son in the faith” could be translated as “my true son in the faith” or “my genuine son in the faith.” Paul had led Timothy to the Lord, and they were very close.
“Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.” At first this may appear to be the same as the introductions to Paul’s other epistles. Yes, Paul has used grace and peace before, but we have another word here, and that is mercy. Mercy is a word that was used in the Old Testament and was equivalent to the word grace. It was the Old Testament sacrifice that made the holy and righteous and just throne of God into a mercy seat.
When you and I come to God, we don’t want justice, for we would be condemned. What we want and need from God is mercy. And God has provided mercy for all His creatures. He has all the mercy that you need. Yet His mercy is just like money in the bank which will do you no good unless you write a check, and the check you need to write is the check of faith. God is rich in mercy, but when He saves you, He saves you by His grace. God is merciful to you, and He is merciful to all sinners in the world, even those who blaspheme Him and repudiate Him and turn their back on Him. He sends rain on the just and the unjust—He doesn’t play favorites, even with His own people. Sinners today get rich and they prosper. They often seem to do better than God’s own people. He is merciful to sinners. But when you come to God, you must come by faith—write the check of faith—and then God will save you by His grace.
These three words—love, mercy, and grace—are a little trinity. Love is that in God which existed before He could care to exercise mercy or grace. God is love; it is His nature, His attribute. Mercy is that in God which provided for the need of sinful man. Grace then is that in Him which acts freely to save because all the demands of His holiness have been satisfied. Therefore, because God is merciful, you can come to Him, and by His grace He’ll save you. You don’t have to bring anything, you cannot bring anything, because it would only be filthy rags to God.
A do-gooder is one who thinks he does not need the mercy of God, that his own good works will save him. I knew a man who, although he was on his deathbed, said to me, “Preacher, you don’t need to tell me that I need Christ as a Savior and that I need the mercy and the grace of God. I don’t need it: I’m willing to stand before Him just like I am.” Then he went on to tell me all that he had done in his life. He had been deeply involved with the Community Chest and with an orphans’ home and on and on. Oh, he was a do-gooder, and he was going to stand before God on that! My friend, a do-good salvation will not do you any good when you really need it. The salvation God provides will enable you to do good, the kind of good which is acceptable to Him. The righteousness of man is filthy rags in His sight.
So we have found that Paul uses here (and throughout all of the Pastoral Epistles) expressions that we will not see elsewhere in his writings. He obviously spoke to these young preachers in an intimate and more personal way than he did in his public speaking or writing. Wouldn’t you love to have been Timothy, to have traveled with Paul and have the great apostle open his mind and heart to you? Well, my friend, the Spirit of God is here and He is talking to us through this epistle which Paul wrote to Timothy.
Although 1 Timothy is intimate and personal, it has to do with the affairs of the local church, the body of believers as it manifests itself in the community. And I want to say here—perhaps it reveals the pastor in me—that every believer should be identified with some local church.
“God our Father”—God is Paul’s Father, He is Timothy’s Father, and He is your Father if you have received Christ. He is my Father because I have received Christ and been brought into the family of God. What a privilege that is! Paul had been a Pharisee, and in Judaism he had never had the privilege of calling God his Father.
“Jesus Christ our Lord.” Anything that is done in the local church needs to be done in the name of Christ and at His command. He is the Head of the church; He is the Lord. The Lord Jesus said, “You call Me Lord, Lord, and yet you don’t do the things I say; you don’t obey Me.” Could He say the same thing to many of us today? He warned that there are going to be many at the judgment who will say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do this and that, and the other thing? We were as busy as termites for You!” And He will have to say to them, “I don’t even know you. I didn’t know you were doing that in My name, for you certainly didn’t seek My will. You didn’t seek to obey Me.” We need not only to call Him Lord but also obey Him as Lord.
WARNING AGAINST UNSOUND DOCTRINE

We have said that this epistle deals with the creed and the conduct of the local church. Your creed must be right before your conduct can be right. It is almost an impossibility to think wrong and act right. One time a man complained to me: “When a woman driver puts her hand out the window at an intersection it means nothing but that the window is open! You never know what she is going to do, because sometimes she signals left and turns right, and sometimes signals right and turns left!” It is sad that man often tries to act right even though his thinking is very wrong. It is impossible to keep that up for very long, my friend.


As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine [1 Tim. 1:3].

“That thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine”—in other words, that they teach no different doctrine. Paul wrote to the Galatians that there was no other gospel. The Judaizers there were preaching another gospel, but Paul said there was none other. There is only one gospel, and there is only one doctrine.
“Doctrine” refers to the teaching of the church. What should be the teaching of the local church? It should be what it was from the very beginning. Following the Day of Pentecost it is recorded that “they continued in the apostles’ doctrine.” This was one of the four things which characterized that church: (1) The apostles’ doctrine; (2) fellowship; (3) prayers; and (4) the breaking of bread, or the Lord’s Supper. These are the four “fingerprints” of the visible church. A church is not a true church of Christ of its doctrine is not the apostles’ doctrine.
I recognize that our varying interpretations of the Scriptures lead us to disagree on some points of doctrine. I had lunch one time with a very fine, outstanding Pentecostal preacher here in Southern California. We talked over what we agreed on and what we disagreed on, and it was not as severe a difference as some might think. As we concluded he said to me, “Dr. McGee, we agree on so much, and we agree on what is basic, therefore we ought not to fall out on the things that actually are not essential things.” I was glad he felt that way. I am sorry everybody doesn’t believe like I do, but there are some who don’t.
However, we must hold to the apostles’ doctrine, the basic truths of the faith. The apostles taught the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, the integrity and inerrancy of the Word of God. And they taught the deity of Christ. We will see in this very epistle that Paul had an exalted view of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are those who say he did not teach the deity of Christ. Well, of all things, that is one thing on which Paul is as clear as the noonday sun. He clearly taught the deity of Christ. Even here in this chapter when he says, “God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord,” he places Christ right beside God, making it clear that He is God.
“I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus.” Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus while he himself was in Macedonia. Ephesus was a very important city, and Paul had spent more time there than anywhere else and had his greatest ministry there. Timothy was to remind the Ephesians to teach no other doctrine. If the teaching of the church is not right, it is not a church. It does not matter how many deacons, elders, pastors, song leaders, choirs, or Sunday schools it might have. If the doctrine is not there, it is not a church. The doctrine must be that of the apostles.


Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do [1 Tim. 1:4].

“Neither give heed to fables,” or do not give heed to myths. Ephesus was the heartland of the mystery religions of that day. In that great center there was the temple to Hadrian, the temple to Trajan, and the great temple of Diana. All of that centered in Ephesus. These were all based on the mythology of the Greeks, and the Ephesian believers were to shun them.
Paul’s reference to “fables” or myths could possibly mean the philosophy of Philo. Philo was an outstanding and brilliant Israelite who took the Old Testament and spiritualized it. In other words, he attempted to introduce the myth viewpoint. We have some of this same teaching in our old-line denominational seminaries today. They teach, for example, that the Book of Genesis is a myth, that the stories there are myths and the men didn’t actually live. There is such an accumulation of evidence to support the Book of Genesis from the recent findings of archaeology that the liberals seem to have backed down from this teaching somewhat.
“Endless genealogies.” This could refer to the false teaching that the church is just a continuation of Judaism, that it is just one genealogy following another and not a matter of God dealing with man in different dispensations. Such teaching leads to great confusion as to the positions of Israel and the church in God’s program.
Also the Greeks were teaching at that time what was known as the demiurge, and this teaching became a part of the first heresy within the church, which was Gnosticism. They taught that there were emanations from a divine center. The original created a being, and that being created another being below him, and he created another, and then another, and so on down the line. They wanted to fit Jesus in somewhere along that line as one of the created beings.
“Which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith.” In other words, Paul tells Timothy that all these types of false teaching won’t build you up in the faith. I think we can observe today in the liberal churches the fruit of their many years of unbelief. It has produced a hard core of almost heartless individuals who absolutely lack faith. They have rejected the Word of God, and the results we see in their churches are unbelievable.


Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned [1 Tim. 1:5].

“Charity [love] out of a pure heart.” Paul again is using intimate expressions in writing to this young preacher that you will not find in his epistles to the churches. He tells Timothy that what is taught in the church should produce love out of a pure heart. A “pure heart” is in contrast to our old nature. It means a person who has been made righteous in Christ and can now manifest the fruit of the Spirit, which includes love.
There are three things that should be manifest in the church. The first is faith—faith in God and in His Word. The second is love. Love is not something you simply mouth all the time. Love is an active concern for others, which means you won’t gossip about them or in any way bring harm to them.
I know of one church that has done everything it can to wreck the ministry of its pastor. The one thing they aren’t justified in saying is that he didn’t teach the Word of God—he did teach it. Yet they had accused him of not having taught it. And at the same time they talk about love. What hypocrisy! Love is not something you just talk about; it is something that must be made manifest.
Faith should be lived out in the life of a church, and love should be lived out. You do need an organization and church officers, but whether you have an episcopal or congregational or presbyterian form of government does not make much difference. If faith and love are lacking, you have nothing more than a lodge, a religious club of some sort. But if faith and love are manifest, the form of government is not too important.
The third thing that should be manifest in the life of a church is “a good conscience.” I do not believe that conscience is a good guide even for a believer; yet a believer ought to have a good conscience. When you lie down at night, do you feel bad about something you’ve said or done during the day? Many sensitive Christians are like that. I had a call one time from a person who was weeping and said, “I said something about you that I should not have, and I hope you’ll forgive me.” I hadn’t known anything about it, by the way, but apparently he hadn’t been able to sleep that night because of it. It is good to have a sensitive conscience. Many have consciences that have been seared with a hot iron; that is, they are insensitive to right or wrong.
These three wonderful graces—love, a good conscience, and faith—are the things Paul says should be manifested by believers in a local church.


From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling [1 Tim. 1:6].

“Vain jangling” means empty chatter, beautiful words, flowery language. There are people who will butter you up and pat you on the back, but it means nothing. It’s all just talk.


Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm [1 Tim. 1:7].

Paul is really laying it on the line. He makes it clear there are those who teach error, and they do it with assurance. They reject the Word of God and actually do not understand what they are talking about.


But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully [1 Tim. 1:8].

In this section where Paul is warning believers against unsound doctrine, he has mentioned the mystery religions and the idolatry that abounded in Ephesus where young Timothy was. He has also warned against the false teaching that sought to make the Old Testament merely a mythology. Now Paul warns against legalists, those who taught that the law is a means of salvation and a means of sanctification after salvation.
The Law served a purpose, but God did not give it as a means of salvation. The Law condemns us; it reveals to man that he is a sinner in need of a Savior. Under the Law the best man in the world is absolutely condemned, but under the gospel the worst man can be justified if he will believe in Christ.
The sinner cannot be saved by good works for he is unable to perform any good works. Paul wrote in Romans, “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8). This idea that in and of yourself you can please God absolutely contradicts the Word of God. It is impossible to please Him—you cannot meet His standard.
Good works cannot produce salvation, but salvation can produce good works. We are not saved by good works, but we are saved unto good works. Paul makes this very clear in Ephesians 2:8–10 where we read: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
“We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.” The Law reveals the will of God—it is morally excellent. It is good for moral conduct but not for obtaining salvation. It cannot save a sinner, but it can correct him or reveal that he is a sinner. That is its purpose.


Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine [1 Tim. 1:9–10].

The Law was not given to the righteous man, the one who has been made righteous because of his faith in Christ. That man has been called to a much higher plane before God. The Law was given for the lawless. “Thou shalt not kill” is not given to the child of God who has no thought of murdering anyone, who does not want to hurt but wants to help. That commandment was given to the man who is a murderer at heart. It is given to control the natural man. The Law is “for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons.” Those who have come to Christ were not saved by the Law, but by the grace of God. They have been brought into the family of God and have been brought to a plane of living higher even than that given in the Law.
Let me give two illustrations of this that I trust will be helpful. Imagine a judge on a bench who has a lawbreaker brought before him. He is guilty, and he should pay a heavy fine and go to prison. However, the judge says, “I have a son who loves this prisoner although he has broken the law and I must condemn him. My son is a wealthy man and has agreed to pay his fine. He’s also agreed to go to prison on behalf of this man. Therefore, his penalty has been fully paid. I am going to take this criminal into my home, and I am going to treat him as a son of mine.” When the judge takes the criminal into his home, he no longer says things like, “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt not steal” (Exod. 20:13, 15). The man is now his son. The judge will talk to him about loving the other members of his family, how he is to conduct himself at the table, treat his wife with respect, and take part in the family chores. You see, this man is treated on an altogether different basis from what he was before. That is what God has done for the believing sinner. We are above and beyond the law. The law is for that fellow out yonder who is a lawbreaker. It is given to control the old nature, the flesh.
The other illustration is one that Dr. Harry Ironside told me years ago. After teaching at an Indian conference in Flagstaff, Arizona, Dr. Ironside took one of the Christian Indians with him to Oakland, California. Among other things, this Indian was asked to speak at a young people’s group that was mixed up on the ideas of law and grace. They were confused about the place of the law in the Christian life. The Indian told the group, “I came here from Flagstaff on the train, and we stopped over for several hours in Barstow. There in the station’s waiting room I noticed signs on the walls which said, ‘Do Not Spit on the Floor.’ That was the rule there. I looked down on the floor, and observed that nobody had paid any attention to the law. But when we got here to Oakland I was invited to stay in a lovely, Christian home. As I sat in the living room I looked around and noticed pretty pictures on the walls, but no signs which said ‘Do Not Spit on the Floor.’ I got down on my hands and knees and felt the rug and, you know, nobody had spit on the floor. In Barstow it was law, but in the home in which I’m staying it is grace.”
Under law man never kept it, he couldn’t measure up to it, and he broke it continually. Under grace a man is brought into the family of God, and he is not going to murder or lie. If he does, he is surely out of fellowship with God.
“Any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.” Paul adds this in case he had left out something. It covers any and all sin he may have omitted in his list.

PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF PAUL


According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust [1 Tim. 1:11].


Again this is one of those unique statements that Paul uses in writing to this young preacher which you will not find in his epistles to the churches. It might be translated: “According to the gospel of glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.” Isn’t that a wonderful way to speak of it!


And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry [1 Tim. 1:12].

“I thank Christ Jesus our Lord” —Paul emphasizes the Lordship of Christ.
“He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.” The idea of ministry is greatly misunderstood in our day. All believers are in the ministry; not one of us is out of the ministry if he is a child of God. The word Paul uses here for ministry is the same as the word for deacon, and every believer is a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul even calls rulers ministers—“ministers of God.” We say that we have voted for a certain man or that the people put a man into his office, but I think that sometimes God overrules who is to be put into office. Rulers are supposed to function as ministers of God.
Paul is grateful to God that He has put him into His service as a missionary. Every believer has some service to perform for the Lord.


Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief [1 Tim. 1:13].

“Who was before a blasphemer”—Paul uses this awful word and says that he was a blasphemer. He had blasphemed the Lord Jesus, and he had hated Him. I think he was present at the Crucifixion and ridiculed the Lord Jesus. Paul says that he had been a blasphemer, a persecutor, and that he had injured the church.
“But I obtained mercy.” When Paul speaks of his salvation he says he was saved by the grace of God. It was the mercy of God that put him into the ministry.
I have never really figured out why the Lord has used me in this ministry of giving out the Word of God. If you had said to me when I was a young, smart-alecky bank clerk that I was someday going to be in the ministry, I would have said it was absurd. I didn’t want it, and I didn’t have anything that would commend me to it. But God by His mercy, my friend, has put me into His service, His ministry. He is rich in mercy, and I have used quite a bit of it in my lifetime!
“Because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.” This was Paul’s condition, and it was the condition of all of us before we came to Christ.


And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus [1 Tim. 1:14].

Paul was saved by the grace of God who brought him to the place of faith and love “which is in Christ Jesus.” Again, these are the things that will be manifest in the life of a believer.


This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief [1 Tim. 1:15].

This is a very important verse of Scripture because it affirms that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” He didn’t come to be the greatest teacher the world has ever known, although He was that. He didn’t come to set a moral example, but He did do that. He came into the world to save sinners.
When you give your testimony make sure that you don’t tell people how wonderful you are or all you have accomplished. Tell them you were a sinner and that Christ saved you. That is what is important.
“Of whom I am chief.” When Paul says he was the chiefest of sinners, he is not using hyperbole. He is not using high-flung oratory. He is speaking the truth. He was the chief of sinners; he blasphemed the Lord Jesus and shot out his lip at Him.
“But,” Paul says, “I’ve been saved.” The Lord Jesus came to save sinners, and if you say, “I don’t think Christ can save me—I’m the worst,” you are wrong. Paul is the chief of sinners, and the chief of sinners has already been saved. So you will be able to be saved if you want to be. The decision rests with you. All you need do is turn to Christ, and He’ll do the rest. He is faithful—Paul says, “This is a faithful saying.”

Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting [1 Tim. 1:16].

“Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy”—you see, he needed mercy in order to become a minister, to be a missionary.
“That in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.”
Paul said that he was not only a preacher of, but also an example of, the gospel.


Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen [1 Tim. 1:17].

Paul simply couldn’t go any further without sounding out this tremendous doxology. Who is “the King eternal”? He is the Lord Jesus Christ. And who is the Lord Jesus? He is “the only wise God.” Don’t tell me that Paul did not teach that the Lord Jesus was God. Paul considered Him to be God manifest in the flesh, and here he gives this wonderful testimony to that.

CHARGE TO TIMOTHY


This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare [1 Tim. 1:18].


“This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy.” Although his letter to Timothy is very practical and has to do with the local church and Timothy’s responsibilities in it, it also reveals something of the wonderful personal relationship that must have existed between the apostle Paul and Timothy. This is Paul’s personal charge to Timothy as a young man in the ministry.
“Son Timothy”—he was Paul’s spiritual son; Paul had led him to Christ.
“According to the prophecies which went before on thee.” Paul had real spiritual discernment, and evidently God had directed him to take this young man along with him and allow him to have the position which he held in the early church.
“That thou by them mightest war a good warfare.” You ought never to fight a war unless your heart is in it, unless you are fighting for a real cause and intend to get the victory. As a Christian, Timothy had a real enemy. He was involved in a spiritual warfare. Paul wanted him to fight a good fight and not to make shipwreck of the faith—as others were doing.


Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck [1 Tim. 1:19].

Living the Christian life is not as simple as some would like us to believe. It is more complex than walking when the light is green and not walking when the light turns red. We have intricate personalities, and Paul is saying there is real danger for us in our human inconsistencies and failures. I assume you are not living in some ivory tower somewhere. Some Christians feel they are, that they are above the landscape and the smog and are way up yonder. But for those of us today who are walking on the sidewalks of our cities and rubbing shoulders with rough humanity and the problems of the world, we find that there are inconsistencies and failures in our lives. The danger we face is that of accommodating our faith to our failure.
A man I knew came home from the mission field and got a job doing something rather ordinary. He said, “The Lord led me to do this.” He had trained about nine years to be a missionary, and now he said the Lord had led him back home to take a job that just wasn’t very important. I asked him if he really felt that that was the way the Lord leads, and he insisted it was. He repeats this so frequently that I am afraid what actually happened was that he accommodated his faith to his human failure on the mission field. That is a grave danger for all of us. My friend, when you and I fail—when there is inconsistency in our lives—we ought to go to Him and tell Him that we have fallen short, that we haven’t measured up. As we will read shortly in 1 Timothy, the Lord Jesus is a wonderful mediator between God and man. We need not be afraid to go to Him.


Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme [1 Tim. 1:20].

“Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander”—Paul cites two examples of apostates in his day. He mentions them elsewhere in Scripture, and he doesn’t have much good to say about either one of them. In 2 Timothy he writes, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil …” (2 Tim. 4:14).
“Whom I have delivered unto Satan.” These men had failed, they were apostates, and Paul exercised a ministry which I feel only an apostle can exercise. He says, “I have delivered [them] unto Satan.” This is not something we could put under the name of ecclesiastical discipline or excommunication today. It is Paul exercising what was his prerogative and position as an apostle; he hands over these men to Satan.
We have another occasion of this mentioned in 1 Corinthians where Paul writes: “For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:3–5). This is an authority the apostles had which we do not have today. We have no right to deliver any man over to Satan, but the apostles did. Peter exercised it also: I imagine that if we could talk to Ananias and Sapphira they would be able to tell us something of his authority as an apostle (see Acts 5:1–11).

CHAPTER 2

Theme: Public prayer and woman’s place in the churches

PUBLIC PRAYER


Public prayer is prayer for the public and for public officials.


I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;

For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty [1 Tim. 2:1–2].

Paul says that Christians are to pray for public officials, and I take it that he meant that the prayers were to be made in the church. To bring this up-to-date, he is saying the Democrats ought to pray for the Republicans, and the Republicans ought to pray for the Democrats. Many years ago a famous chaplain of the Senate was asked by a visitor, “Do you pray for the senators?” He replied, “No, I look at the senators, and then I pray for the country!” That is exactly what Paul says we need to do. We need to pray for our country, and we need to pray for those who have authority over us. If you are a Republican and a Democrat is in office, pray for him. If you are a Democrat and a Republican is in office, pray for him.
“For kings.” Paul says we are to pray for the kings who rule. You may ask, “Yes, but are we to pray when the government is a corrupt one?” Paul is saying we are to pray even if it’s a corrupt government. We are to pray for whoever is in power. Remember that the man who was in power in Rome when Paul wrote was bloody Nero, yet he says we are to pray for kings, whoever they are.
“That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” Any government is better than no government. Some people may question that, but an evil, corrupt government, if it really governs, is better than anarchy. I agree with those who argue that politics is crooked—man has certainly corrupted and misused political power—but there does remain a semblance of law and order. Civil government is a gift from God, and we ought to give thanks for it and pray for it. Many of us fall short of praying for our government in order that we might continue to live quietly and peaceably.


For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth [1 Tim. 2:3–4].
A second reason we should pray for government is in order that the gospel might continue to go out to the lost. I believe that we are actually going to see the persecution of Christians in this country in the future. I do not mean the persecution of church members—the liberal church is so compromised today that they will go along with whatever comes along. I am saying that genuine believers in Christ may encounter persecution. Paul was beginning to experience persecution himself, and he said the believers were to pray for the leaders who were responsible for it. It was “good and acceptable in the sight of God” to pray for these men. Why? Because it is God’s will that all men might be saved.
It is not important for you and me to get a certain man elected to office. I have never in my ministry recommended a candidate for office. I am not called to do that, and I don’t believe any minister is. I am to pray for our leaders regardless of who they are in order that the gospel can go out. I want a man in office who is going to make it possible for the Word of God to continue to be given to the lost. This should be our concern and our prayer.


For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus [1 Tim. 2:5].

“For there is one God.” The Romans worshiped many gods, and today people worship many gods in a different sort of way. People are giving themselves to many things—some to pleasure, some to entertainment, and so on. The entertainment world, for example, has become a religion of sorts for many people. There are women who would sacrifice their virtue in a moment and men who would sacrifice their honor in order to become a movie or television star. People have many different gods today. But there is only one God, and He is the Creator.
“And one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” In Old Testament times the Israelite went to the temple where there were many priests. He could go to God through them. Paul is saying that now there is only one Mediator to whom we are to go. We are not to go to any human being down here; it is not necessary to go through a minister. There is a Mediator between God and man.
We need a mediator, we need a priest, and we have one, the Great High Priest. Job’s heart cry even in his day was, “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:33). In effect, Job was crying out, “Oh, if there were somebody who could take hold of God’s hand and then take hold of my hand and bring us together that there might be communication and understanding between us!”
Well, my friend, today we have a Mediator—the Lord Jesus Christ has come. He has one hand in the hand of Deity because He is God. He is able to save to the uttermost because He is God, and He has paid the price for our salvation. He is a Mediator because He has also become man. He can hold my hand; He understands me. He understands you; you can go to Him, and He is not going to be upset with you. He will not lose His temper or strike you or hurt you in any way. You may say, “Well, I’ve failed. I’ve done such-and-such, and I’ve come short of the glory of God.” My friend, He knows that, and He still loves you and wants to put His arm around you.
Isaiah wrote of the Lord: “In all their affliction he was afflicted …” (Isa. 63:9). Some scholars say that this should read, “In all their affliction he was not afflicted.” Either way you read it, it is wonderful. I think maybe God wants us to see it both ways, but I like it, “In all their affliction he was not afflicted.” God went through the wilderness with the children of Israel. When they failed and disobeyed at Kadesh-Barnea, He didn’t say, “Well, goodbye—I’m through with you, you’ve failed.” No, He went with them for forty years. But He also went on ahead: He gave Moses their instructions for living for the time when they would enter the Promised Land. But He waited for them and dealt patiently with them in their time of affliction in the wilderness. He wasn’t afflicted; He didn’t break down and fail but just stayed there with them.
He has dealt with me in the same way, and it is wonderful to have such a Mediator through whom we can go to God. And you should go through Him, because there is really no use coming and telling me your troubles. I may not be sympathetic with you; I might not really understand your case. He does. He’s human. He is a daysman, a Mediator. He has put His hand in mine. I don’t put my hand in His; He puts His hand in mine. That is the wonder of it all! He has come down and put His hand in mine and taken hold of me, but He also holds on to God because He is God, and He has brought us together.
This Mediator is the One the world needs to know because there is but one way to salvation. Peter said to the religious leaders of his day: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Christ is the only way, but the tremendous thing is that He will bring you right through to God if you will turn to Him.
One time while in Canada I was told that I needed to get onto a certain freeway to get to Detroit, Michigan, but if I missed that freeway I was in real trouble. It took a great deal of manipulating around, but once I managed to find that freeway it brought me right into Detroit. I was thankful for the man who had said, “There is only one way.” I am also thankful that I have been told there is one way to God, one Mediator. He is the only One who can bring us together: He can bring us to God because He is God and He is also a man, “the man Christ Jesus.”


Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time [1 Tim. 2:6].

“Ransom” is antilutron in the Greek, and it means a “redemption price.” Christ paid a price for our redemption. We needed to be redeemed—you and I were lost sinners, and He was the ransom.


Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity [1 Tim. 2:7].

“I am ordained” might be better translated “I am appointed.” Paul says that he was appointed a preacher and an apostle.
“Preacher” comes from the Greek word kerux, which means “a herald or a trumpet,” referring to one who gives out the gospel. He has been appointed one to declare the gospel.
“(I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not;).” It might seem strange to you that Paul would say this to a young preacher who is his personal friend. I think he is saying it to encourage him—Timothy knows it is true.
“A teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity [truth].” Again this is something that he did not write to the churches. He has always said that he is an apostle of the Gentiles; here he says that he is not only the apostle to give the gospel, but he is also the one to teach the Gentiles.

HOW MEN ARE TO PRAY


I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting [1 Tim. 2:8].


“I will”—Paul is not making this a matter of his will, but is saying, “I desire.”
“That men pray every where”—that is, in every place where believers meet. Paul is talking about public prayer, prayer in the public service.
“Lifting up holy hands.” This was a custom practiced in the early church. It revealed the dedication in the lives of those praying.
Now there are those who lift up their hands in services today, and they are sometimes criticized for it. There is nothing wrong with lifting up your hands if it is something you feel you want to do. Personally, I have always hesitated to do it because I’m not too sure about my hands, whether they are clean or not, clean physically or otherwise. Notice that Paul says, “holy hands.” This would mean that they are hands dedicated to God’s service. My friend, you ought not to poke up your hands in a meeting if those hands are not used for the service of Christ.
“Without wrath”—all sins have been confessed. You don’t come in prayer with anger in your heart, or a bitter spirit, but with all your sins confessed.
“Without … doubting.” In Hebrews 11:6 we read: “But without faith it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” When we come to God in prayer, we are to come in faith. One of the reasons I feel that our prayer meetings are not better attended today is that people lack faith. They do not believe that God is going to hear and answer prayer.
I do not mean to be irreverent, but I sometimes think that the Lord must yawn during our prayer meetings because they are so boresome. Prayer should be made in our public services by those who have their sins confessed, who come without bitterness in their hearts, and who come in faith, believing that God will hear and answer. It is this kind of prayer that will make a prayer meeting what it ought to be.

HOW WOMEN ARE TO PRAY


Paul has given the way that men ought to pray, and now he will say how women are to pray. This passage will also touch on the matter of women’s dress and their place in the local church.
We live in a day when there are two extreme positions relative to the place women should occupy in the local and visible church. Both positions use this passage of Scripture to support their stand.
One position permits women to occupy a place of prominence and leadership in all public services. They have women preachers, choir directors, and officers. No position is withheld from them and, as a result, the women are not only prominent but we find that they become dominant in the church.
When I was a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, a tent was put up across the street from my church. The Baptist preacher in town was a good friend of mine and together we went over to meet the husband and wife team who were going to hold meetings. The wife did the preaching, and the husband did all the leg work. We watched him putting up the tent and setting out the benches and all that sort of thing. He also led the singing. That’s all right if you like it that way, but I don’t. However, the Baptist preacher and I gave the meetings all the support we could, because they had good meetings and she did preach the gospel. This is an example of the fact that God has used some of these groups who have women preachers in a definite way; but I think, frankly, that He has used them in spite of, not because of, the position of women among them.
The other extreme position on this issue is taken by those who do not allow women any place at all in their public services. You never hear the voice of a woman in public in their meetings, not even in singing. I have had opportunity for good ministry among some of these folk, but believe me, they push their women to the background. I fear that they lose a great deal of talent and that the women could make a marvelous contribution if they were permitted to do so.
To illustrate this, allow me to tell you a story, and I hope you understand that I do so in a facetious manner. There is a little town in the Midwest where there lived a very prominent maiden lady. Everyone agreed that she would have made some man a wonderful wife, but she had never been asked and she died an old maid. The society editor for the local newspaper who normally would cover such a story was out of town, and the sports editor was asked to write up a little notice of this lady’s death. He concluded the article with these words:

Here lie the bones of Nancy Jones:
For her, life held no terrors.
She lived an old maid, she died an old maid:
No hits, no runs, no errors.

Churches miss something when they will not use the talent of their women. God can and will use them in His work.
The confusion that exists about this rather practical issue has been brought about by a misunderstanding of this passage of Scripture and also by an unfamiliarity with the Roman world of Paul’s day.
Let’s establish first that God has used women. In the Word of God we see Deborah, Queen Esther, Ruth, and others. In church history, we find women like Mary Fletcher and Priscilla Gurney. There are multitudes of others whom God has used in a wonderful way.
However, in the Roman world the female principle was a part of all the heathen religions, and women occupied a prominent place. The worship of Aphrodite at Corinth was probably one of the most immoral in which prostitution was actually made into a religion. The thousand vestal virgins who were in the temple of Aphrodite on top of the Acropolis there in Corinth were nothing in the world but prostitutes. They were characterized by very disheveled hair. The reason God said that a woman should have her head covered was so she would not be associated at all with religions like this. Also, in Ephesus where Timothy was at this time, women occupied a very prominent position in the worship at the temple of Diana. In all the mystery religions there were priestesses. It is because of these heathen practices that Paul is emphasizing in this passage that this matter of sex is not to enter into the public prayer in the services of the Christian churches. We need to approach this passage with these factors in mind.


In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;

But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works [1 Tim. 2:9–10].

“In like manner also”—Paul has said how men are to pray in public, and now he will say how women are to pray. Note that he is saying women are to pray. That is not the issue, but he is telling them the way in which they are to pray in public. His emphasis will be upon inner adornment rather than outward adornment. Women are to pray in public, but they should not dress up from the viewpoint of appealing to God in a sexual or physical way.
I want to make it very clear that I feel that a woman should dress as nicely as she possibly can. There is nothing wrong with a woman dressing in a way that is appealing to her husband (or, if she is single, to a man). I have made this statement before, and one lady wrote me in reaction to it:
I never thought I’d see the day when I would feel a need to take you to task over anything. Usually I agree with you on everything that you say. But on Friday morning in your last study in Proverbs, I guess you hit a raw nerve. You were admonishing young men on choosing a wife, and you said, “First of all, make sure she’s a Christian.” I agree with that. Then you said, “And if possible, choose a pretty one.” Really, Dr. McGee, do you think that’s quite fair? After all, there are far more plain, ordinary-looking girls and women than really pretty ones, and pray tell, where would they be if men chose only pretty ones? I happen to be one of those plain, ordinary-looking women, and I’m so glad my husband didn’t choose one of the pretty ones, or I’d have missed out on twenty-five years of happy married life. I’m not really angry with you. How could I be when you’ve taught me so much of the deep truths of God’s Word? I just wanted you to know that I think you ought to say a little something for us women whom the Lord did not choose to bless with physical beauty.

I want to say something to that woman and to others: Have you ever stopped to realize that when your husband fell in love with you he thought you were beautiful? Yes, he did. I shall never forget the night that I met my wife. It was a summer night in Texas, and we were invited to the home of mutual friends for dinner. Frankly, these friends were trying to bring us together. I didn’t want to go because I had an engagement in Fort Worth that night. My wife didn’t want to go because she was going with another fellow! But that night when I saw her—I never shall forget her dark hair, her brown eyes—there in the candlelight I looked at her, and I fell in love with her. I proposed to her on our second date, and the reason I didn’t propose on that first date was that I didn’t want her to think I was in a hurry! She’d never won a beauty contest, but she was beautiful. How wonderful it was!
I have a notion your husband thought you were beautiful also, and there is nothing wrong in dressing in a way to be attractive to him. But when you go to God in prayer, you don’t need that outward adornment. You need that inward adornment. When a woman is going to sing in church, to speak or to have any part in a church service, she ought to keep in mind that her appeal should in no way be on the basis of sex. She should seek to please God, and there is no way in which she can appeal to Him on the basis of sex at all. Such appeal characterized the pagan religions in the Roman world, and Paul is stressing that it should not be a part of the public services of the Christian churches.


Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence [1 Tim. 2:11–12].

These verses have to do with the learning and teaching of doctrine. Keep in mind that the women led in the mystery religions of Paul’s day, and they were sex orgies. Paul is cautioning women not to speak publicly with the idea of making an appeal on the basis of sex. Paul strictly forbade women to speak in tongues in 1 Corinthians 14:34.


For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety [1 Tim. 2:13–15].

It was the sin of Eve that brought sin into the world. Now every time a woman bears a child, she brings a sinner into the world—that is all she can bring into the world. But Mary brought the Lord Jesus, the Savior into the world. So how are women saved? By childbearing—because Mary brought the Savior into the world. Don’t ever say that woman brought sin into the world, unless you are prepared to add that woman also brought the Savior into the world. My friend, no man provided a Savior: a woman did. However, each individual woman is saved by faith, the same as each man is saved by faith. She is to grow in love and holiness just as a man is.

CHAPTER 3

Theme: Officers in the churches

REQUIREMENTS OF ELDERS


This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work [1 Tim. 3:1].


“This is a true saying” could be translated, “This is a faithful saying.” In other words, this is a saying that stands the test of time; it is one you can depend upon.
“If a man desire the office of a bishop” means if a man seeks the office of a bishop. This has in it the thought that there will be the active seeking of the office. I believe that a man who has the qualifications ought to seek the office. He ought to want a place where he can use the gift that the Spirit of God has given him. If the Spirit of God has not given him the gift and is not leading him, then it would be a tragedy indeed if a man sought the office of bishop. This also suggests that there was not just one bishop in the church, but there were several.
“The office of a bishop.” Bishop is a word that has been misinterpreted and interpreted differently by different groups. Those who practice the episcopal form of church government put great emphasis upon this word and its interpretation.
Bishop actually means “an overseer, a superintendent.” In the early church the pastor was called by several different titles: (1) he was called a presbyter, or elder; (2) he was called a pastor, or shepherd; (3) he was called a bishop, or an overseer; and (4) he was called a minister. The pastor was never called “reverend,” and I don’t think any preacher should be so called. Reverend means “terrible, that which incites terror.” It is a name which applies only to God.
I take the position that the terms elder and bishop refer to the same person. Those who hold to the episcopal form of church government will, of course, disagree with me altogether. I believe that the use of “elder” (presbuteros in the Greek) refers to the person who holds the office, and it suggests that he must be a mature Christian. On the other hand, the use of “bishop” (episkopos in the Greek) refers to the office that is held. Therefore, these two words apply to the same individual or office.
A bishop in the early church never had authority over other bishops or elders. He did not have authority over churches. You do not find such a practice presented in the Word of God. Even Paul, who founded a number of churches, never spoke of himself as the bishop of a church, or as the one who was ruling a church in any way whatsoever. Therefore, the minister is one who is to serve the church, not rule over it.
“He desireth a good work”—he is seeking a place where he can serve in the church.


A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach [1 Tim. 3:2].

We have given here the positive requirements of an elder—the things he ought to be.
“Blameless.” The thing that must be understood is that you will be blamed for things if you hold an office, any office, in the church. What is important is that the accusation must not be true. An elder must be blameless in the sense that he will not be found guilty of anything that he might be accused of.
Shortly after I had been called to a pastorate in downtown Los Angeles, I met Dr. James McGinley in Chicago. He asked me, “How do you like being pastor in that great church?” “Well,” I said, “it’s a marvelous opportunity, but I find myself in a very unique place: I am accused of many things, and I can’t defend myself. You cannot spend all your time answering everybody, so I’ve determined to just preach the Word of God and not try to answer them.” Dr. McGinley said, “Just rejoice that the things you are accused of are not true.” It is nice to be in that position, and that should be the position of a bishop—blameless: accused but not guilty.
“The husband of one wife.” This can be interpreted two ways. It could mean that he ought to be married. I feel that Paul had this in mind. You may say, “Well, Paul was not married.” I take the position that Paul had been married and his wife had died. He could not have been a member of the Sanhedrin without being married. He simply had not married again, perhaps because of his travels as an apostle.
When I first became a pastor I was not married and I was frequently kidded by a friend who said I had no right to be a pastor if I wasn’t married. Using this verse, he would say, “You should be the husband of one wife.” However, I think that the primary meaning here is that the bishop or elder should not have two wives. Polygamy was common in Paul’s day, and bigamy was certainly prevalent. The officer in the church should be the husband of one wife.
“Vigilant” means temperate. The elder should be calm and not credulous. He should be a man who knows how to keep his cool.
“Sober” means sober-minded or serious. He means business. This does not mean an elder cannot have a sense of humor, but he should be serious about the office which he holds.
“Of good behaviour.” An elder should be orderly in his conduct. He doesn’t do questionable things. I knew a minister who got himself into a great deal of difficulty because of his careless actions. The rumors were that he had had an affair with a woman in his congregation. I’m confident from all the information that came to me from several sources that he was not guilty, but he certainly had been careless in his conduct. He was a young minister, and often at church social gatherings, he would kiddingly say that he was going to take another man’s wife home. He would take her, leave her off at her door, and then go on to his home. All this was done with a great deal of kidding, but it caused some people to raise their eyebrows and start talking. My feeling is that the conduct of an officer or a minister should be absolutely above reproach. Kidding is fine, but it should not lead to questionable activity.
“Given to hospitality” means that an elder is to be a hospitable individual. He is the type of fellow who invites his preacher or others out to lunch. I’ve always liked fellows like that and have had the privilege in recent years of meeting many wonderful and hospitable laymen in my travels all over the country. One will come and put his arm around me and say, “Now can I help you in some way? Is there anything I can do?” They do things like having a bowl of fruit or a bouquet of flowers sent to my hotel room where I happen to be staying. One time in San Diego I broke off a capped tooth, and a doctor friend recommended a dentist there. That dentist is such a wonderful man I still go all the way to San Diego for my dental care. Such hospitable men can be found all across our country.
“Apt to teach.” This is something I emphasize, because I do not feel any man ought to be an elder in a church unless he can teach the Word of God. I used to say to my church officers that I wished it was possible to give a theological exam to each one of them to determine if he was qualified to be an officer. I never actually did that, but I always thought it would be a good idea.


Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous [1 Tim. 3:3].

Now we come to the negative qualifications—the things an elder should not be.
“Not given to wine”—he should not be a drunkard.
“No striker”—not violent or pugnacious.
“Not greedy of filthy lucre.” He shouldn’t have a love of money. The love of money is a root of all evil we are told in Scripture (1 Tim. 6:10). The way a church officer handles his money can lead him into a great deal of trouble—either his own money or the church’s money.
“Patient” means reasonable. He should be a reasonable man, someone you can talk to or reason with.
“Not a brawler.” He should not be a contentious person. Men who are constantly stirring up trouble in a church should never be selected as church officers.
“Not covetous” again refers to the love of money, but it also suggests an idolatry, actually the worship of money. He should not be a man who puts the pursuit of wealth above everything else.


One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity [1 Tim. 3:4].

An elder should have the authority in his own home—without being a dictator.


(For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) [1 Tim. 3:5].

A man does not know how to rule the house of God if he cannot rule his own home.


Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil [1 Tim. 3:6].

“Not a novice” means not a recent convert, not someone who has recently been saved. Sometimes a man is converted one week, and the next week he is made a church officer or asked to give his testimony. He is not ready for it. This is a caution that needs to be heeded today.
I had the privilege for several years of teaching a Bible study group of Christians in Hollywood. It was natural for them to want to push to the front some prominent personality who had recently made a decision for Christ. However, the cause of Christ is hurt when those who are young in the faith attempt to speak on matters of doctrine about which they are not knowledgeable.
“Lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.” Pride was the Devil’s great sin. Also it is often the sin of officers in the church and of preachers. It is a danger for all of us, but it is reprehensible when it is in the church.


Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil [1 Tim. 3:7].

“Them which are without” means those who are outside the church. In other words, if a man has a bad reputation on the outside—if he doesn’t pay his bills, is untrustworthy, or is a liar—he immediately is not a candidate to be an officer in the church. If he is such a man he is really a candidate of the Devil—he would better represent the Devil than he would represent the cause of Christ.

REQUIREMENTS OF DEACONS


Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre [1 Tim. 3:8].

The word that is translated “deacon” here is the same word that is sometimes translated as “minister.” Paul and Apollos are called deacons. The Lord Jesus is called a minister in Matthew 20:28. In Romans 13:4 government officials are called ministers, and in 2 Corinthians 11:15 ministers of Satan have the word applied to them. Deacon or minister, therefore, is a general term for a servant or a worker.
We think of the account in Acts 6 as giving the occasion when the office of deacon began in the early church. However, the Greek word for deacon is not even used there. But I’m confident we have scriptural grounds to say that those men were being appointed as deacons in the church.
A deacon, although he deals with the material matters of the church, should be a spiritual man. We have a problem today when we appoint a man as a deacon on the basis of physical rather than spiritual qualifications. We think that because a man is a successful businessman he will make a good deacon. There are too many men who are appointed to office on that basis.
I have attempted to emphasize in 1 Timothy that the local church is an organization that needs to make itself manifest in the community, and in doing so it gets right down where the rubber meets the road. It must deal with the problems of a building, supplying heat and light, and a lot of material issues that don’t seem very romantic. However, the important matter is still that a church is to have a spiritual ministry in the community. We often put the material qualifications first, but the men who are in office must have the spiritual qualifications for their office. Someone has put it like this: “When a church ceases to be in touch with another world, she is no longer in touch with this one.” I agree with that 100 percent. Until the spiritual aspects are emphasized, a church cannot accomplish the material and practical functions down here. The deacons, therefore, are to have certain spiritual qualifications.
“Grave”—he should be a man of dignity.
“Not double-tongued.” A deacon should not be two-faced. A man’s word should amount to something. It can be dangerous when a man tries to please everybody or doesn’t have the courage to stand on his own two feet. There is a fine balance between being a Mr. Milquetoast and being a dictator. An officer in the church needs to be somewhere between those two.
“Not given to much wine.” I take this just as it is: the Bible teaches temperance, and that is important to see. I do not think the Bible teaches total abstinence because there weren’t many medicines in those days and wine was used as a medicine. In 1 Timothy 5:23 Paul encourages Timothy to use a little wine for his stomach’s sake. Even today many of the medicines we take contain a high percentage of alcohol.
The problem we encounter with alcohol in our day is the way it is used as a beverage, and I feel that the church should teach total abstinence because the abuse of alcohol is so prevalent. I do not believe that a Christian should use alcohol as a refreshment or a drink.
“Not greedy of filthy lucre.” This means that a deacon should not have an insatiable love of money. He should be a man of integrity and should handle the money of the church in an honest way. There is nothing that can hurt a church more than the accusation that the deacons are juggling the finances. Money given to a church for a specific cause needs to be carefully allotted to the intended cause.
I have discovered in my experience in the ministry that most of the churches I know are run by men of high integrity, but it is that small minority of dishonest men who are muddying the waters and causing difficulty. If there is one thing a church ought to be able to present to the world it is the fact that it is honest and holds a place of high integrity in financial matters.


Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience [1 Tim. 3:9].

“The mystery of the faith” means the revelation of the gospel of Christ. When Paul says “the faith” he is not speaking of the abstract quality of faith, but of the doctrines of the faith. He speaks of it as a “mystery” because these doctrines were not revealed in the Old Testament but are now revealed in the New Testament. We are told in Acts that the early church “continued in the apostles’ doctrine.” The apostles’ doctrine was “the faith” of the early church. It should be the faith of the church today, and the church needs to represent that faith before the world.
There are a great many people who think the faith is outmoded and needs to be changed. An editorial in one of our national magazines a number of years ago supported this idea by suggesting an updated list of the “seven deadly sins.” Their new list included selfishness, intolerance, indifference, cruelty, violence, and destructiveness. The list replaced lust, of course, with prudery. Lust was replaced, they said, because it had become as commonplace as the neighborhood newsstand or cinema. Gluttony was not included because it was considered a cholesterol problem but not a theological one. Words like covetousness and sloth were deemed antiquated. The article noted that different segments of society have different concepts of what constitutes sin. For example, young people would have placed irrelevance and hypocrisy high on their list of sins, but destructiveness would not have been included unless it meant only destructiveness of the environment. Similarly, elderly people would want noise, hair, and incivility included on their list. Some would argue that the new list simply contained old sins under new names. For example, selfishness had merely replaced covetousness. The article contended that the old names were obsolescent and needed changing if sin was to retain any contemporary, moral force at all. It concluded by affirming that sin is a concept well worth saving!
I would emphatically agree that sin is a concept worth saving, but I must insist also that sin has in no way changed. What the Bible calls sin is still sin. Human nature is still human nature. The spiritual qualifications which the Bible lays down for church officers must still hold good today if the church is to represent the Lord Jesus Christ here on this earth. The church and its officers must hold to New Testament doctrine, calling sin the sins which are clearly labeled as such in the Word of God.
“In a pure conscience”—not with the conscience that has been seared with a hot iron (see 1 Tim. 4:2).


And let these also first be proved; then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless [1 Tim. 3:10].

A man should not be shoved into office a month after he joins a church and before he has proved that he is the type of man that Scripture has described here.
Now Paul has a word about the wives of deacons. They must measure up to certain standards also.


Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things [1 Tim. 3:11].

“Grave”—they should be serious, able to be calm and cool.
“Not slanderers” means they are not to be gossips. A gossipy deacon’s wife can cause much trouble in the church.
“Sober,” again, is sober-minded.
“Faithful in all things.” She should be faithful to her husband, to Christ Himself, and to His cause.


Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well [1 Tim. 3:12].

The deacons are to meet the same personal and family requirements that were given for the elders.


For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus [1 Tim. 3:13].

“Good degree” could be read “good standing.” In other words, a deacon who serves well will become known as a man who is to be trusted.
“Boldness” means confidence and courage in witnessing. Remember that a deacon primarily has a spiritual office. I remember the case of one man who was a deacon and was asked to take the office of an elder. Well, he didn’t think he was spiritual enough or knew the Bible well enough to be an elder. If that was true, then he should not have been a deacon either, but he had been selected a deacon because he was a successful businessman. The spiritual requirements should be met by both elders and deacons before they are allowed to represent the church of Christ.

REPORT OF PAUL TO TIMOTHY


These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly [1 Tim. 3:14].


Paul was in Macedonia, and Timothy was in Ephesus. Paul was hoping to be able to join Timothy shortly.


But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth [1 Tim. 3:15].

I have selected this as the key verse of this epistle because 1 Timothy is a book about church order. While he is away Paul writes, “I’ve written this to you so you will know how to act in the house of God.”
“The church of the living God”—Paul is speaking to the church that is the church.
“The pillar and ground of the truth.” “Pillar” means the stay, the prop, or that which is foundational. What Paul is saying is that the church is the pillar, the bedrock—it is the prop and support of the truth. If the officers do not represent the truth, the church has no foundation, no prop, and it cannot hold up the truth of God.
Some men purport to represent the truth, but they actually do not represent the truth in the way they lead their lives. I knew a deacon once who carried the biggest Bible I have ever seen. Every time you saw him he was weighed down on one side carrying that Bible. But he was a man you couldn’t depend upon—there was a question about his integrity. He hurt the church he served and brought it into disrepute. Paul is writing to tell the church how it should act so that it can represent and proclaim the truth of God to the world on the outside.


And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory [1 Tim. 3:16].

This verse probably constitutes one of the earliest creeds of the church. Some think that it was one of the songs of the early church.
“Without controversy”—means confessedly, or obviously.
“Great is the mystery of godliness.” The mystery of godliness is that God in the person of Jesus Christ entered this world in which we live, paid the penalty of sin, and is making men and women godly—that is, with Godlikeness.
“God was manifest in the flesh.” Certainly Paul is teaching the virgin birth of Christ, but he is also speaking of Christ’s existence before His incarnation. That existence was spiritual: He was “… in the form of God …” (Phil. 2:6). Hebrews speaks of Christ as “… being the brightness [effulgence] of his [God’s] glory, and the express image of his person …” (Heb. 1:3). The Lord Jesus Himself said, “God is a Spirit …” (John 4:24).
Now from this condition as God—not seen with human eyes—Christ came into manifestation—into sight—in the flesh. He became a man and entered into human conditions. And under these human conditions the attributes of His essential spiritual personality were veiled. This is the thought John gives in his gospel: “… The Word was made [became] flesh.” He was born flesh “and dwelt [pitched His tent here] among us …” (see John 1:14). Just as God was not visible in the tabernacle in the wilderness, so Jesus Christ was veiled when He tabernacled among us in human flesh. He did not appear to men what He really was; man did not recognize who He was. The One who in the beginning was God, was with God, and who made all things, became a little, helpless baby. He was the image of the invisible God and had all power in heaven and in earth, but down here He took upon Himself human flesh. Because He was not recognized by man, He was treated as an imposter, a usurper, and a blasphemer. He was hated, persecuted, and murdered. God manifest in the flesh was poor, was tempted and tried, and actually shed tears.
“Justified in the Spirit.” Yet in all that, He was not justified in the flesh, but in the Spirit. He was manifest in the flesh—that is how the world saw Him; but He was justified or vindicated in the Spirit in His resurrection. There were times when His glory broke out down here; there were revelations and expressions and witnesses of who He really was. There were angels at His virgin birth. His glory was seen at His baptism, at His transfiguration, and at the time of His arrest. The things that occurred at the time of His crucifixion caused the watching centurion to say, “Truly this was the Son of God” (see Matt. 27:54). But it was when He came back from the dead that we see Him now justified. He was manifest in the flesh, but justified in the Spirit: “sown a natural body; raised a spiritual body” (see 1 Cor. 15:44). No enemy laid a hand upon Him after He was raised from the dead. He will never be dishonored again.
However, because He came down here and has now returned to the right hand of God, we can be justified. Down here He was delivered up for our offenses—He took our place as a sinner, and now He gives us His place up yonder and we are justified. How wonderful this is!
“Seen of angels”—it doesn’t say that He saw angels; rather, they saw Him. He has gone back to heaven, and now all the created intelligences of heaven worship Him because He wrought redemption for mankind. Little man down here hasn’t caught on yet, but the song that will be sung throughout eternity is the song of redemption.
“Preached unto the Gentiles [the nations]”—this is still happening today.
“Believed on in the world.” Many today are trusting Him as their Savior.
“Received up into glory.” Today Christ is at God’s right hand. At this very moment, my friend, He is there. Have you talked to Him today? Have you told Him that you love Him, and have you thanked Him for all He has done? How wonderful He is!

CHAPTER 4

Theme: Apostasy in the churches

HOW TO RECOGNIZE THE APOSTATES


Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils [1 Tim. 4:1].


“Now” would be better translated “but.” This would set in sharp contrast the early doctrinal creed given in the final verse of the preceding chapter and the apostasy within the church that Paul is now going to discuss.
“That in the latter times.” Elsewhere in my writings on 1 Timothy I have said that this expression refers to the last days of the church on the earth, but I want to change my mind on that. I now feel that this refers to the days of the church beginning immediately after the life of Paul. The apostasy of the church had begun even at that time. You remember that when Paul was in Ephesus he warned them that there would come wolves in sheep’s clothing who would deceive the believers. John said, “Already there are many antichrists”—already error had entered the church. The first great church was the Coptic church in Africa; it was way ahead of the others. North Africa produced some of the greatest saints in the early church, including Augustine, Tertullian, and Athanasius, but that church went off into heresy and departed from the faith.
When Paul says here, “in the latter times,” he does not have the second coming of Christ in view at all. However, in 2 Timothy 3:1 where he says, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come” (italics mine), he is using a technical expression that always refers to the last days of the church on the earth before the Lord Jesus takes it out. The “latter times” mentioned here refers to our times today—Paul was speaking of what lay just ahead for the church in his day.
“Some shall depart from the faith.” Paul is warning that there will be heretical teachers who will mislead a great company of people. There will be a departure from the faith. Paul wrote also in 2 Thessalonians 2 of the apostasy to come. Actually this matter of apostasy has been in the church a long time, and it will not be new at the end of the age by any means.
It has grown and will continue to grow, however. When the church of Christ is raptured, there will be left behind a totally apostate organized church.
“Depart” is aphistemi in the Greek, and it means “to stand away from.” A departure suggests not only that you have a point to which you are going, but also a point from which you have come. Those who apostatize are ones who have professed at one time to hold to the faith, but now they have departed from it. There cannot be an apostasy in paganism because they have never professed the faith. They never professed to trust Christ as Savior. They have never heard about Him, and there can be no apostasy among them. The apostasy comes within the organized church among those who profess to the faith and then depart from it.
“Giving heed to seducing spirits.” Now when they depart from the faith, what is responsible for it? What has caused them to depart? Is it because they have become better educated, more intellectual? Is it because of scientific developments and increased knowledge which reveals that the faith can no longer be held? No, Paul says, “Some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits.”
“Seducing” actually means wandering, roving, and it comes from the word vagabond or deceiver or seducer. In fact, Satan is all those things. They shall give heed to satanic spirits.
“Doctrines of devils [demons].” People will give heed to doctrines of demons. It is alarming to a great many people that even in our very materialistic age there is a return to the things of the spirit world and a great emphasis upon it.
Christians are told to “… try the spirits whether they are of God …,” because there have gone out into the world these seducing spirits (1 John 4:1). The test that we should apply is the creed that was given in 1 Timothy 3:16: “… God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit ….” The only way of salvation is through the death of Christ, and it is by this truth we can test the doctrines of demons today.
There is a small segment of those who claim to be believers who are placing a great emphasis on demonism. They are very interested in this subject and are reading everything they can find about it. I think that we are seeing a real manifestation of the spirit world today, but the best thing you and I can do regarding the Devil is to show him a clean pair of heels. We should not be a bunch of heels, sticking around and getting ourselves involved in all of this. Paul warns us against being seduced by the doctrines of demons. We should stay clear of them, testing each spirit by its acknowledgment of the deity of Christ and by its acknowledgment that God was manifest in the flesh and that we are justified through the redemption He wrought for us on the cross.


Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron [1 Tim. 4:2].

“Speaking lies in hypocrisy;” The apostate will pretend to be very pious and very religious. I have come to be suspicious of this pious position taken by super-duper saints who claim to have something special. My friend, if you do have the truth it will make you humble, because the first thing you will find out is how little you know. I realize that I have much more to learn about the Bible. There are those today, however, who know very little about the Word of God, but they speak as if they were authorities. “Speaking lies in hypocrisy,” they pretend to be something they are not.
“Having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” In 1 Timothy 1:5 we read that the things which should characterize the visible church are faith, love, and a good conscience. We should be tenderhearted people.
There is far too much talk about sex in the church today. I have heard of things happening in some churches that make my hair curl. Things are being said and done which I do not think could be done unless your conscience has been seared with a hot iron and you have gotten away from the Word of God. It is important in the plan and purpose of God that the church have a tender conscience and not stoop to such low levels.


Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth [1 Tim. 4:3].

Even in Christ’s day there were folk who went off from Judaism into cults and “isms.” This is not something new in our day; it has been going on for a long time.
“Forbidding to marry.” In Christ’s day there was a group down by the Dead Sea known as the Essenes. It was from among them that the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. When Christianity came along, many probably joined the Palestinian church and helped to produce most of its characteristic heresies, including the regulation of not marrying.
“Commanding to abstain from meats.” There are those who make certain rules and regulations about diet that are not in the Word of God. They go off on this as if food could commend them to God. It is true that if you eat the wrong kind of food you will get a tummy ache, but it has nothing to do with your spiritual life, my friend.


For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer [1 Tim. 4:4–5].
The Word of God does not condemn food; it commends it. If you can return thanks for the food, that sanctifies it for your body. “If it be received with thanksgiving”—there are some foods I cannot be thankful for. There are certain foods that would really put me down physically if I ate them, and I cannot be thankful for them. Also, I am told that there is a place in San Antonio, Texas, that cans rattlesnake meat! It is a delicacy, they say. Well, if you served me rattlesnake meat for dinner and asked me to return thanks for it, I’m not sure that I could. But if you can receive it with thanksgiving, my friend, then go ahead and eat it, whatever it might be—it’s perfectly all right.

WHAT THE “GOOD MINISTER” CAN DO IN TIMES OF APOSTASY


If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained [1 Tim. 4:6].


“If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things.” Paul has warned Timothy of the apostasy and false teachings that were to come into the church. There will be men who profess to the faith and then come to the place where they deny it. In turn, Timothy is to warn the believers about these things.
“Thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ.” Every believer is a minister, but here Paul has in mind Timothy as a teacher of the Word of God. That is a gift that some men have and some don’t. But all believers are ministers.
“Nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine”—this is how the believer is to grow in the Word of God. We are not to go off on tangents about diet or some other aesthetic program as if it would commend us to God. Instead our diet is to be “nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine.”
“Whereunto thou hast attained.” Some interpreters think that there was a danger in Ephesus in the midst of so much false religion and work of Satan that Timothy would go off into it all, but Paul said that Timothy had attained unto the things he has mentioned and commends him for it.
Paul has warned Timothy about apostasy and false teachings, but he will mention more things that Timothy should avoid:


But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness [1 Tim. 4:7].

“But refuse profane and old wives’ fables.” As a young boy I remember there were a lot of sayings that the older people would quote to us children. I remember one dear Christian woman who had some peculiar ideas. One was that everybody should take sulphur and tartar mixed with a little honey or molasses. I was fed that because my mother listened to her. I took enough sulphur and tartar to make a small mountain! I have no idea whether it did me any good or not, but she thought it was the only thing I needed as a boy. Similarly, when it was discovered that I had cancer I was given over a hundred books on diet to help rid me of the cancer. I couldn’t have followed one of these books without contradicting another! One said to eat plenty of grapes, the other said not to eat grapes. One would say to take honey, another to keep away from it. I decided to listen to the Great Physician and to leave my case in His hands.
“And exercise thyself rather unto godliness”—Timothy is to practice godliness in his life. Too many people emphasize the don’ts more than they do the exercise of godliness.


For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come [1 Tim. 4:8].

“For bodily exercise profiteth little.” There are those who believe that Paul is downgrading physical exercise. I don’t understand it that way at all. Paul spent about three years in Ephesus where there was a great coliseum in which the Olympic Games were held at times. The coliseum seated 100,000 people, and foot races were often held there. Paul uses the figure of the race and makes a correspondence to the Christian life and walk in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27. I believe Paul knew something about exercise. I stood in the city of Sardis one time and observed the Roman road that was being excavated to the east and the west of that city. Paul walked that road nineteen hundred years ago, preaching the gospel of Christ. He didn’t travel in a bus or in an automobile. He didn’t ride a horse or even a donkey. Paul walked there, and it took a rugged individual to cover the ground that he covered throughout the Roman Empire. He may not have done much jogging, but he did a great deal of walking.
Paul’s emphasis on godliness rather than on physical exercise is because the Ephesians were a people given over to games and athletics. We are also that kind of a nation. Many of our cities have coliseums where great spectacles are conducted, and many believers put more emphasis on athletics than they do on the things of God. There are church officers who spend more time during the summer in the ball park than they spend in prayer meetings. Paul is not saying bodily exercise is wrong. He is saying, “Let’s hold things in correct perspective.”
“But godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” Bodily exercise will help you only in this life, because when you get a new body it won’t make any difference whether you’ve exercised this one or not. “But godliness is profitable unto all things.” Those who argue that a Christian can fall into sin and can always come back to God on easy terms, are right. But, my friend, a godly life pays off not only down here, it will pay off in eternity. The Prodigal Son lost a great deal by going to the far country, and any Christian who lives a careless life rather than a godly life will find that even in eternity he will pay for it. Are you as anxious about godliness as you are about physical exercise, about athletic events? The physical ends at the end of this life, but godliness is carried over into the next.


This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation [1 Tim. 4:9].

Paul is emphasizing the point he has just made. In other words, he says, “Here’s something you can count on.” You could count on it in the first century in Ephesus, and you can count on it in Los Angeles in the twentieth century. And we can count on it in the twenty-first century, if we make it that far.


For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe [1 Tim. 4:10].

“For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach.” If you stand for Jesus Christ today it will cost you something. There is no question about that.
“Who is the Saviour of all men.” We hear a great deal of discussion about what color of eyes Christ had. Was He blond or brunette? How tall was He? I talked to one man who was disturbed to see a picture of Christ painted as a black man. “Why not,” I said, “He’s the Savior of all men.” The color of His skin or of His hair is not the important thing. Scripture never gives us that kind of information about Him. Even the FBI doesn’t know. What Scripture does say is that He is the Savior of all men. Whoever you are, He’s your Savior and He’s the only Savior.
“Specially of those that believe.” He is the Savior of all men, but you can turn Him down if you want to. Let me illustrate this for you. They say that a plane leaves the Los Angeles International Airport every minute, and I could get on any one of them (if I had the courage!). All I need to do is get a ticket and get on the plane. It’s a plane for everybody, you see, but not everybody will take it. Christ is the Savior of all men, but only those who believe will be saved (see John 3:16; 1 John 2:2).


These things command and teach.

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity [1 Tim. 4:11–12].

“Let no man despise thy youth.” Paul knew that there would be those in the church who would say of Timothy, “Well, he’s just a young fellow—he doesn’t know yet.” Maybe there were some things he didn’t know, but he was not to let anyone despise his youth.
“But be thou an example of the believers.” How could Timothy keep people from despising his youth? By not acting like a young fool. When I began as a young minister, even before I was ordained, I told an old, retired minister that I felt a little embarrassed and even frightened when someone with gray hair would come into the church to hear this young preacher who was still a student. He advised me, “Don’t ever worry about that. Don’t let anyone despise your youth, but make dead sure you are an example of the believers.” The important thing is not your age, but whether you are an example.
Paul tells Timothy in what ways he is to be an example: “in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” There is nothing new about the “new morality” today, but, believe me, the morality of the Bible is brand new to some folk! This is God’s standard—six ways in which we should be an example.

Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine [1 Tim. 4:13].
The minister is to read the Scripture publicly. For what purpose? To comfort and to teach. The Word of God needs to be read, and until the church is getting people into the Word of God, it is missing its main function.
This was applicable to Timothy personally also. The minister can grow personally only by reading the Word for his exhortation and instruction. A growing minister will make a growing church. One of the greatest things ever said concerning Dwight L. Moody was said by a neighbor: “Every time Mr. Moody comes home, you can just tell how much he’s grown spiritually.” Are you further along spiritually today than you were this time last year? Are you growing in grace and the knowledge of Christ? The only way to do so is by reading the great truths of the Word of God.


Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery [1 Tim. 4:14].

“Neglect not the gift that is in thee.” The Spirit of God gives to every believer a gift, and Timothy had a gift that he was to use.
“Which was given thee by prophecy”—evidently Paul had predicted what this young man would do.
“With the laying on of the hands of the presbytery”—the laying on of the hands of the officers of the church. The laying on of hands never communicates anything, my friend. There are those who believe that something will be transferred to the person by the laying on of hands, but the only thing that will be transferred is disease germs—that’s all! Laying on of hands indicates partnership in the ministry. I always insisted that my church officers lay their hands on every missionary we commissioned. Every minister who is ordained should have hands put on him by those who are partners with him. That is what it means, and it is quite meaningful.


Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all [1 Tim. 4:15].

“Meditate upon these things”—be diligent in your study. There is no excuse for a minister not to study the Word of God, and there is no excuse for any Christian not to study the Word of God.
“Give thyself wholly to them.” I will not accept a daily devotional time as a substitute for reading and studying the Word of God. It will not work to open your Bible to read a chapter at night when you have one eye closed and both feet already in bed. Nor will it work in the morning when you are half awake, or at the breakfast table when you are about to take off for work. My friend, you couldn’t study geometry, higher mathematics, or science like that. The Word of God is worthy of all that you and I can give to it, and we can never give as much as it should have.
“That thy profiting may appear to all.” The greatest compliment you could give your preacher would be to be able to say, “You are really improving in your preaching.” That’s the best thing you could say.


Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee [1 Tim. 4:16].

May I say this kindly, but I must say it: God have mercy on the minister who is not giving out the Word of God! That is a frightful sin. It would be better to be a gangster than to be a man who is supposed to give out the Word of God and fails to do so.

CHAPTER 5

Theme: Duties of officers in the churches

Both chapters 5 and 6 will deal with this very practical matter of the duties of officers in the church. This gets right down to the nitty-gritty of church life today. There is nothing romantic in this, but it is very realistic and meaningful for us.

RELATIONSHIP OF MINISTERS TO DIFFERENT GROUPS IN THE LOCAL CHURCH


Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren [1 Tim. 5:1].


“An elder”—the first relationship discussed is Timothy’s relationship to elders. There has been some difference of opinion as to whether Paul is referring to the office of elder or to an elder person, someone who was older than Timothy. In the early church the “elder” was an office, but the word used here refers to the individual. I think Paul had both aspects in mind: he is speaking of a mature child of God, and a man who occupied a certain office. Paul means both for the simple fact that an elder was an elder—an older man.
“Rebuke not an elder, but entreat [exhort] him as a father.” Timothy was not to rebuke an elder publicly, but he was to entreat him privately. Timothy was a young man, and he needed to be very tactful in his relationship with these older men in the church. In other words, he was not to take the position of a know-it-all or of a dictator over these older men. He was to encourage them and have a word privately with them if he thought it was necessary.
“And the younger men as brethren.” A sweet relationship should exist between Timothy and the older men and also with those of his own age.


The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity [1 Tim. 5:2].

“With all purity.” A minister of a church should be very careful in his relationships with the opposite sex. Nothing hurts a church more or has more frequently wrecked the ministry of a church than sin in this area. When a minister must leave a church because of such a problem, the spiritual deadness in the church is very noticeable. Nothing can destroy the spiritual life of a church more than this kind of an experience. The “new morality” cannot and will not work in the church.
Paul has discussed Timothy’s relationship with the men in the church—older and younger, and then the women—older and younger. He comes now to his relationship with a third group—


Honour widows that are widows indeed [1 Tim. 5:3].

“Honour” is a very interesting word, and in the Greek it is the same word from which we get our English word honorarium. It has in it the thought of value being attached to something. Sometimes when I speak at a church on a Sunday or for a week of special services I receive a check that says on it, “Honorarium.” In other words, they have attached value to what I have done.
The early church took care of their widows, and they were very careful about it. The care of widows was the problem that arose in Acts 6. The Greeks (who were Jews from outside of Israel) felt that their widows were being neglected in favor of the others. The apostles had men appointed to handle the care of the widows so that they themselves could continue to concentrate on the preaching of the Word. Paul is giving instruction here as to how the care of the widows is to be carried out.
“Honour widows that are widows indeed.” The instruction given in the Word of God is very practical. It uses a whole lot of common sense and is not moved by sentimentality. Christians are known to be tenderhearted, and there are a lot of people today who have their hands out to us. We need to be very careful. The early church took care of widows, but they didn’t do it in some haphazard, sentimental way. The deacons were to make an investigation to see who were truly widows, where the need was, and how much need there was.
There are not many liberal or even conservative churches who are taking care of the widows in their midst. This is a much neglected area today.
Paul is going to go into this in very specific detail:

But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God [1 Tim. 5:4].
“Nephews” here are grandchildren. The investigation should determine whether the widow in question has children. Why aren’t they supporting her? Does she have grandchildren? They have a responsibility toward her. This was God’s method, and I think it still is God’s method.


Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day [1 Tim. 5:5].

Now this widow is “a widow indeed”—a real widow. She is “desolate,” that is, she is in need. She is a godly woman, and she prays. She not only prays for the church and the pastor, but she prays for herself and for her need. She has a right to do that. And I want to say that God uses us to help answer such prayers. He makes it clear that when we find a widow like this we are to help her. It is quite lovely when we do things God’s way.


But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth [1 Tim. 5:6].

But if you go over to a widow’s house and find that she is having a cocktail party, I would say that she is not the widow to help. It does not matter how prominent her son, or her sister, or her brother might be in the church, she is not to be helped.


And these things give in charge, that they may be blameless [1 Tim. 5:7].

Paul is saying, “Timothy, you make this very clear to the church in order that they might act in an honorable way in these matters.”


But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel [1 Tim. 5:8].

My friend, I don’t know how I could make this any stronger than it’s made right here: the widow is to be taken care of by her own flesh and blood. It does not matter what type of testimony a man may give at a businessmen’s meeting, or what kind of a testimony a woman may give to the missionary society, if they are not taking care of their own, they have no testimony for God. They are worse than infidels. Scripture is very clear here—you might miss some things in Scripture, but you cannot miss this.


Let not a widow he taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man [1 Tim. 5:9].

“Into the number” refers to the group of widows which were to be helped. Why did they have this age limit? Because if she was under that age she could still work and take care of herself.


Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work [1 Tim. 5:10].

“Well reported of for good works.” Paul is saying that it is good to consider what kind of person the widow has been in the past. Check back in her life. Don’t help everyone who comes along. But if she is the kind of person he has described and she is in need, you are to help her.
I wish that the church could get back to these very basic and simple principles and get away from the sentimental and emotional appeals that we hear instead. We respond to sentimental pleas from unworthy causes which are appealing to our soft hearts and neglect those in our very midst who have real need. We overlook the wonderful widow in our own church who is lonely and seldom visited. Her children have moved away or have died, and she may have physical need. Too often the church ignores such need. But if a church took care of its widows, its testimony would not go unnoticed by the world.
I believe that these widows who are helped by the church ought to be deaconesses in the church—they should render some service to the church. For example, several years ago I called a widow in my church and asked her to visit a lady whose husband’s funeral service I had just conducted. The death had left the lady without family or friends, and I asked the widow to visit her because she would understand the woman’s need—she had been through it herself. They became warm friends and grew in their relationship to God because of it. A widow can and should serve in some way in the church.


But the younger widows refuse: for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry;
Having damnation, because they have cast off their first faith [1 Tim. 5:11–12].
The younger widow is likely to want to remarry—and that’s all right, as I see it. But notice that there is the danger of remarrying for the wrong reasons. There is the danger that she will forget all about her faith. The church is to be very careful and test the young widows also.


And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not [1 Tim. 5:13].

In other words, they carry garbage from one place to another, and the garbage is gossip. They go about, “speaking things which they ought not.” There is the danger for the young widow, who has been relieved of the responsibility of being a wife and homemaker (perhaps having no children), that she will become a regular gadabout.


I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully [1 Tim. 5:14].

The woman is the homemaker.
In this whole section Paul is giving instructions about the behavior of men and women who are in the church. He is stressing that these relationships should be on the highest level as a testimony before the world—that they “give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”


For some are already turned aside after Satan [1 Tim. 5:15].

They were not genuine believers, of course.


If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged; that it may relieve them that are widows indeed [1 Tim. 5:16].

Each family should support its own widows, so that the church can concentrate on the widows who are without family and are in real need.


Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine [1 Tim. 5:17].

The early church paid their teachers, and a good teacher, I think, was paid a little bit more.


For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward [1 Tim. 5:18].

Paul is quoting here from Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7. I have known very few preachers who I thought were money-lovers; most men are in the ministry for a different motive, than that. You are not going to hurt the preacher if you give him a generous offering. Be generous also to a visiting Bible teacher if his ministry is a blessing to you.


Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses [1 Tim. 5:19].

If this procedure were observed it would cut down a great deal on the gossip and misunderstanding and the strife that goes on in our churches today. Paul says that the pastor and every member of the church should refuse to let anyone whisper into his ear any gossip about the pastor or a church officer. People should be able to prove their accusations before witnesses. The important thing is that you should have the facts before you talk. And if you have the facts, rather than scatter the scandal abroad, you should seek to correct the problem by going to the proper authorities. Any accusation should be given before more than one witness.


Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear [1 Tim. 5:20].

If the facts are known that a church leader has sinned, he is to be rebuked. The question arises, Is this to be done publicly? I believe that when a member of a church sins and it does not concern the congregation it should never be brought out into the open, nor should it be confessed publicly. However, when a leader of the church, an officer in the church, sins, and it has hurt the church, then I think it is time to call names. It may also be time to drop his name from the roll of membership. Great harm can be done to a church by sin in the life of its leaders, and this is the way Paul says it should be dealt with.

I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality [1 Tim. 5:21].
Timothy is to treat everyone in the church alike. There may be an officer in the church who is a wealthy man and who has been good to the pastor. Perhaps he has bought the pastor a suit of clothes or helped him buy a new car. A pastor will often brag that such a man is a member of his church, and he may not feel inclined to bring any charges against him even though it is evident the man is guilty. Paul says that we are not to show partiality in the church. James said the same thing in James 2.


Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure [1 Tim. 5:22].

We read earlier that the officers were to be installed by the laying on of hands (see 1 Tim. 4:14). We saw that the laying on of hands indicates partnership in the ministry. The thought here is that this is not to be done “suddenly,” not to a neophyte, someone who has been recently converted.
If we exalt a young Christian to the position of a teacher before he is thoroughly grounded in the Word, the theology he teaches is apt to be weird theology. The church ought to be a place of instruction where the Word of God is taught and men and women are built up in the faith. Instead, today we often develop what I call Alka-Seltzer Christians and Alka-Seltzer churches—it’s all fizz, foam, and froth, a lot of emotion, and a lot of talk about love, love, love. It is important that love be displayed in a church, but it needs to be anchored in the Word of God. Our mistake is that we often interpret some sort of experience as being the test of spiritual maturity. We’ve got the cart before the horse. The Word of God is the test, and experience can prove the truth of it. We can be certain that an experience which contradicts the clear teaching of the Bible is not from God at all.
There were many young converts in the Ephesus area, and they needed teaching. It was a serious business for young Timothy to select the teachers and appoint them to teach the Word of God.
“Neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure.” In other words, “Don’t compromise, Timothy. Don’t let someone talk you into letting a young convert teach. You will be a partner in sin if you do. Make sure the teachers are anchored in the Word of God.”


Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities [1 Tim. 5:23].

I have to smile when I read this verse. It has certainly been abused in its many interpretations. Obviously the wine is not being used as a beverage but as a medicine.


Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after [1 Tim. 5:24].

Sometimes God will judge a Christian’s sin right here and now, but if He doesn’t judge him immediately it does not mean that He is not going to judge. I have observed this over many years and have seen that eventually God will move in judgment.
Paul wrote about this to the Corinthians where there were some who were not commemorating the Lord’s Supper in the proper manner. He said, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” (1 Cor. 11:30). Paul said that some were already being judged by God. Some were actually sick; others had died as a judgment of God.
Paul went on in 1 Corinthians to say, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31). When a Christian sins, he can judge himself. That doesn’t mean he is just to feel sorry for his sin. He is to deal with it: that is, if it has hurt somebody, he’s to make it right; and he is to turn from that sin. If he doesn’t do these things, he has not judged himself.
First Corinthians continues: “But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:32). The world commits these sins, and God judges. Neither is a Christian going to get by with them: either you will judge yourself, or God will judge you. If you judge yourself, the matter is settled. If not, He will judge. Sometimes that judgment will occur here and now. If not, it will be dealt with when you appear before the judgment seat of Christ.


Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid [1 Tim. 5:25].

The same principle applies to good works. Sometimes God blesses a believer down here for something he’s done for which God can reward him. Others are going to have to wait until they are in His presence to receive their reward, which will be the case of a great many Christians.

CHAPTER 6

Theme: Duties of officers in the churches (concluded)

RELATIONSHIPS OF BELIEVERS TO OTHERS


Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.

And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort [1 Tim. 6:1–2].


“Servants”—Paul is going to deal with the relationship of capital and labor. The Christian should render a full day’s work for whomever he is working. If he agrees to work until five o’clock, he should work until five o’clock. Then sometimes workers leave with their pickaxe hanging in the air—they don’t finish up. The Christian is to turn in a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.
Now suppose a Christian has a Christian boss. That puts their relationship on a different basis; it brings it to a level above any kind of contract. I know of a manufacturing plant in Dallas, Texas, where the owners are Christians and many seminary students are employed. I have had the privilege of speaking to them in a forty-five minute chapel service they have and for which time the workers are paid. The spirit is marvelous there, and one time I commended the management for it. They replied, “Don’t commend us! We find that these Christian men are better workers than anybody else. It’s a two-way street. They are such wonderful employees that we don’t feel that we are giving them anything. They give so much to us.” What a wonderful relationship!
You see, Christianity gets out into the workshop. It gets its hands greasy. It gets its feet down in the mud sometimes—not the mud of sin, but the mud of hard work.


If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;

He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,

Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself [1 Tim. 6:3–5].

There are some proud men in the ministry, and they do cause trouble. Pride will always cause trouble, and it is unbecoming in a child of God. We ought to recognize that we are sinners saved by the grace of God. Pride is a constant danger—pride of place, pride of race, pride of face, and pride of grace. Some people are even proud that they’ve been saved by the grace of God! But, my friend, we Christians have plenty to be humble about. We have a very sorry and sordid background. We are sinners saved by the grace of God.


But godliness with contentment is great gain [1 Tim. 6:6].

It is important that the child of God find satisfaction with his position in life.


For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out [1 Tim. 6:7].

This is a true axiom. As one of our American millionaires was dying, his heirs waited outside his room. When the doctor and lawyer finally came out, they eagerly asked, “How much did he leave?” And the lawyer said, “He left everything. He didn’t take anything with him.” We come into the world empty-handed, and that is the way we leave it. This is the reason a child of God ought to be using his money for the work of God. I believe that making a will is fine, but it is often much abused. As someone has rhymed it,

Do your givin’
While you’re livin’.

Then you’re knowin’
Where it’s goin’.

A child of God should make sure that he is supporting the work of God in some way.


And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition [1 Tim. 6:8–9].
Riches will not bring satisfaction.


For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows [1 Tim. 6:10].

Money is not evil in itself—it is amoral. Notice it is the love of money that is a (rather than the) root of all evil.


But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness [1 Tim. 6:11].

These are the virtues that a man of God should pursue.


Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses [1 Tim. 6:12].

“Fight the good fight of faith.” This fight may be outward or inward, physical or spiritual.
“Lay hold on eternal life.” Let me ask you a question: If you were arrested for being a Christian and were brought into court, would there be enough evidence to convict you? This is what Paul is talking about. “Lay hold on eternal life”—make it clear by your life that you are a child of God.


I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession;

That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ [1 Tim. 6:13–14].

“God, who quickeneth all things” means God who gives life to all things.
“Keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable” means to keep the commandments Paul had given him without stain and reproach. My friend, if you are following Christ, you will act like a child of God.


Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;

Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen [1 Tim. 6:15–16].

“Who only hath immortality.” Jesus Christ is the only One who has been raised from the dead in a glorified body.


Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;

That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate;

Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life [1 Tim. 6:17–19].

“Charge them that are rich.” These verses are a warning to those who are rich.
“Ready to distribute” means ready to sympathize, ready to share.
“Lay hold on eternal life” means the life which is life indeed.


O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:

Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen [1 Tim. 6:20–21].

In other words, don’t try to be an intellectual preacher or teacher or Christian.
“Science falsely so called” should be translated the falsely named knowledge. Paul is speaking of the Gnostic heresy, but this can certainly be applied to all human philosophies.
(For Bibliography to 1 Timothy, see Bibliography at the end of 2 Timothy.)

The Second Epistle to
Timothy

INTRODUCTION

The following is an approximate calendar of events which will orient us to the position that the Second Epistle to Timothy occupied in the ministry of the apostle Paul. Paul wrote this epistle around a.d. 67.

[c. a.d. 58]—Paul was apparently arrested in Jerusalem.
[c. a.d. 61]—This is the approximate time that Paul arrived in Rome. He had spent these three years in prison, going from one trial to another before different Roman rulers.
[c. a.d. 61–63]—Paul underwent his first Roman imprisonment. We do not have this recorded in the Book of Acts, which breaks off at the very beginning of Paul’s first Roman imprisonment.
[c. a.d. 64–67]—Paul was released from prison, and during this period he covered a great deal of territory. It was during this time that he wrote 1 Timothy and Titus from Macedonia.
[c. a.d. 67]—Paul was arrested again.
[c. a.d. 68]—Paul was beheaded in Rome. Before his death he wrote 2 Timothy.

The two verses that state the theme and sound the tone of this second epistle are these: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:2).
You can, I think, emphasize one word in this epistle above other words. That word is loyalty: (1) loyalty in suffering (ch. 1); (2) loyalty in service (ch. 2); (3) loyalty in apostasy (ch. 3–4:5); and (4) Lord loyal to His servants in desertion (ch. 4:6–22).
The deathbed statement of any individual has an importance which is not attached to other remarks. This is what lends significance to 2 Timothy. It is the final communication of Paul. It has a note of sadness which is not detected in his other epistles. Nevertheless, there is the overtone of triumph: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith,” written by Paul as his own epitaph (2 Tim. 4:7). Also, because this was his last letter, Paul was very personal. In these short four chapters, there are approximately twenty-five references to individuals.
In this little book of 2 Timothy an ominous dark cloud is seen on the horizon. It is the coming apostasy. Today apostasy has broken like a storm, like a Texas tornado, on the world and in the church. What do we mean by apostasy? Webster defines apostasy as “total desertion of the principles of faith.” So apostasy is not due to ignorance; it is a heresy. Apostasy is deliberate error. It is intentional departure from the faith. An apostate is one who knows the truth of the gospel and the doctrines of the faith, but he has repudiated them.
Paul here in 2 Timothy speaks of the ultimate outcome of gospel preaching. The final fruition will not be the total conversion of mankind, nor will it usher in the Millennium. On the contrary, there will come about an apostasy which will well-nigh blot out the faith from the earth. In fact, there are two departures that will occur at the end of the age: One is the departure of the church, which we call the Rapture, translated from the Greek harpazoµ, meaning “caught up.” “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [or raptured] together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air …” (1 Thess. 4:16–17). When the believers are gone, the organization, the old shell of the church that’s left down here, will totally depart from the faith. That is the second departure, the departure from the faith. The Lord Jesus Himself gave this startling statement concerning it: “… when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). As couched in the Greek language, it demands a negative answer. So the answer must be, “No, He will not find the faith on the earth when He returns.”
This view is not in keeping with the social gospel today, which expects to transform the world by tinkering with the social system. Such vain optimists have no patience with the doleful words of 2 Timothy, and they classify me as an intellectual obscurantist! But, in spite of that, the cold and hard facts of history and the events of the present hour demonstrate the accuracy of Paul. We are now in the midst of an apostasy which is cut to the pattern of Paul’s words in remarkable detail.
The visible church has entered the orbit of an awful apostasy. The invisible church—that is, the real body of believers—is not affected. The invisible church today is still here; and, although I wish it were a little more visible than it is, it’s on its way to the epiphany of glory. It is moving toward the Rapture. That is a very comforting thought in these days in which we live.
Because of the threat of apostasy, Paul emphasizes the Word of God here more than he does in any other epistle. In fact, both Paul and Peter agree. Each of them in his “swan song” (2 Tim. and 2 Pet.) emphasizes the Word of God and the gospel.
My friend, the gospel rests upon a tremendous fact, and that fact is the total depravity of man. In other words, man is a lost sinner. A contemporary educator has put it something like this:

Where education assumes that the moral nature of man is capable of improvement, traditional Christianity assumes that the moral nature of man is corrupt and absolutely bad. Where it is assumed in education that an outside human agent may be instrumental in the moral improvement of men, in traditional Christianity it is assumed that the agent is God, and even so, the moral nature of man is not improved but exchanged for a new one.

Man is in such a state that he cannot be saved by perfect obedience—because he cannot render it. Neither can he be saved by imperfect obedience—because God will not accept it.
Therefore, the only solution is the gospel of the grace of God which reaches down and saves the sinner on the basis of the death and resurrection of Christ. Faith in Christ transforms human life. We have a showcase today all over this globe of men and women who have been transformed by the gospel of the grace of God.
Liberal preaching, instead of presenting the grace of God to sinful man, goes out in three different directions. From some liberal pulpits we hear what is really popular psychology. It majors in topics such as this: “How to Overcome” or “How to Think Creatively” or “How to Think Affirmatively or Positively.” It says that we’re on the way upward and onward forever! That is popular psychology, and it doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.
A second type of liberal preaching involves ethics. It preaches a nice little sweet gospel—a sermonette preached by a preacherette to Christianettes. The message goes something like this: “Good is better than evil because it’s nicer and gets you into less trouble.” The picture of the average liberal church is that of a mild-mannered man standing before a group of mild-mannered people, urging them to be more mild-mannered! There’s nothing quite as insipid as that. No wonder the Lord Jesus said to the church of Laodicea: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15–16). That would make anybody sick to his tummy. That’s another reason I call these people Alka-Seltzer Christians. They’re not only fizz, foam, and froth, but they cause you to need an Alka-Seltzer.
Then there’s a third type of liberal preaching which is called the social gospel. They preach better race relations, pacifism, social justice, and the Christian social order. It is Christian socialism pure and simple.
In contrast, when the true gospel is preached and men come to Christ, they all become brothers. We don’t need all this talk about better race relations. You cannot create better relationships by forcing people together. Only the gospel of the grace of God will make a man into a brother of mine. When that happens the color of a man’s skin makes no difference at all.
The solution to man’s problems can come only through preaching the grace of God. We need to recognize (as Martin Luther put it) that God creates out of nothing. Until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him. The grace of God through Jesus Christ is the way to transform and save mankind. That is what this epistle teaches, and that is why it is important for us to study 2 Timothy.

OUTLINE

I. Afflictions of the Gospel, Chapter 1
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–7
B. Not Ashamed, but a Partaker of Affliction, Chapter 1:8–11
C. Not Ashamed, but Assured, Chapter 1:12–18
II. Active in Service, Chapter 2
A. A Son, Chapter 2:1–2
B. A Good Soldier, Chapter 2:3–4
C. An Athlete, Chapter 2:5
D. A Farmer, Chapter 2:6–14
E. A Workman, Chapter 2:15–19
F. A Vessel, Chapter 2:20–23
G. A Servant, Chapter 2:24–26
III. Apostasy Coming; Authority of the Scriptures, Chapters 3:1–4:5
A. Conditions in the Last Days, Chapter 3:1–9
B. Authority of Scriptures in the Last Days, Chapter 3:10–17
C. Instructions for the Last Days, Chapter 4:1–5
IV. Allegiance to the Lord and of the Lord, Chapter 4:6–22
A. Deathbed Testimony of Paul, Chapter 4:6–8
B. Last Words, Chapter 4:9–22“The Lord stood with me”.

CHAPTER 1

Theme: Afflictions of the gospel

INTRODUCTION


Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus [2 Tim. 1:1].


“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” You recall that in Paul’s first epistle to Timothy he said, “by the commandment of God” (1 Tim. 1:1), and we saw that the commandments of God revealed the will of God, but that they were not the total will of God. Here he says “by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.” How do you accept a promise? You do it by faith. That is the only way you can obtain eternal life. He offers it to you as a gift. You accept a gift because you believe the giver. You receive eternal life by believing in the Giver. The Lord Jesus gives you eternal life when you trust Him as Savior because He paid the penalty of your sin. He today can offer you heaven on the basis of your faith and trust in Him. When you believe Him and come His way, you honor Him. Therefore “the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus” makes it clear that through Christ is the only way you can get eternal life, my friend.


To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord [2 Tim. 1:2].

Paul greets Timothy as his “dearly beloved son” because Timothy was a great joy to the apostle Paul. Then he goes on to say, “Grace, mercy, and peace.” As we mentioned in studying 1 Timothy, the salutation includes the word mercy (which is not found in the greetings of Paul’s other letters). God is merciful when He does not give us what we deserve; that is, judgment and condemnation. Paul needed a great deal of mercy, and we do too. Fortunately, God is rich in mercy toward us.
“From God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” The emphasis here is upon the lordship of Jesus Christ.


I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day [2 Tim. 1:3].

Timothy was on the apostle Paul’s prayer list. When I taught at a Bible institute, I always had the students find out who was on the apostle Paul’s prayer list. They made the list by going through the letters of Paul and noting every time Paul said he prayed for somebody. By the way, how many preachers do you have on your prayer list? I hope you have your pastor.


Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy [2 Tim. 1:4].

It is quite obvious that Paul loved Timothy, and this verse tells us that Timothy also loved Paul. The fact that Paul has been arrested, is back in prison, and even faces death really affects Timothy. Paul says, “I am mindful of your tears. And if I could only see you, that would bring joy to my heart.”


When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also [2 Tim. 1:5].

Paul came out of Judaism, but this boy Timothy, apparently, was brought up in a Christian home. Both his grandmother and his mother were Christians. I’m sure that had a lot to do with this young man turning to Christ. Timothy’s father was a Greek, and it is not known whether he was in the faith.


Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands [2 Tim. 1:6].

When Paul put his hands on Timothy, that meant that Timothy was a partner with Paul; he shared with him the gift of teaching the Word of God. I am of the opinion that Paul intended for his mantle to fall upon Timothy. This young man was close to Paul, and when Paul was in prison in Rome, he said of Timothy, “… I have no man likeminded …” (Phil. 2:20). Here was a man who could carry on the teaching and preaching of Paul, and therefore Paul made him his partner. They were together in the ministry.
Now notice that Paul admonishes Timothy to “stir up the gift of God, which is in thee.” This man had a gift, and Paul urges him to stir it up. What would that indicate to you? I wonder if Paul was concerned about Timothy there in Ephesus. Ephesus housed the temple of Diana and was one of the great “sin spots” in the Roman world. Paul had spent three years in Ephesus himself, and he knew that there were many allurements and enticements in the city. I wonder if he was afraid that Timothy might be reluctant and hold back from teaching the whole counsel of God. We can see Paul’s concern for this young man whom he called “my dearly beloved son.”


For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind [2 Tim. 1:7].

The word fear is better translated “cowardice.” I think that many of us have misinterpreted this—I know I have in the past. I remember that when I first began to travel by air, I didn’t want to, but I was forced to use that mode of travel to meet my engagements. I certainly didn’t enjoy it. At first, this disturbed me a great deal. I would make a flight, and then I would rebuke myself because of my fear. I tried to fight my fear.
Well, fear is a natural thing, and it is a good thing. For example, I am afraid of a lion. If there were one loose in the street, I would find a good place to hide. It is normal and good to have a sense of fear. But many of us, for some reason, have a fear of height, which makes us fear flying. I prayed about it and wondered why God didn’t remove that from me, because I read in this verse that “God hath not given us the spirit of fear.”
However, Paul is speaking not of a good kind of fear, but of cowardice. Paul is saying, “God hath not given us the spirit of cowardice; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
“A sound mind” means discipline. In other words, God does not intend that defeat should be the norm of Christian living. We should be disciplined Christians rather than slaves to our emotions. We are all moved by our emotions. That is why people will send money to organizations that advertise with the picture of a poor, hungry, little orphan. But Christians are not to be motivated by their emotions. Our emotions are not to master us. We are to be disciplined.
How does this apply to the question of fear? Is it wrong for me to have a fear of flying? No. It would be wrong for me to stay at home. You see, if I am a disciplined Christian, I am going to grit my teeth, go down and get that ticket, and take that trip because God has called me to an itinerant teaching ministry. Overcoming emotions means not letting your emotions stop you from doing something you should be doing. When you have a fear of flying, you discipline yourself to fly anyway. But you still live with your emotions. If you do like I do, you sit there on the plane, gritting your teeth and wondering how many more hours it will be, with every hour seeming like an eternity. If the plane starts bouncing around, I have a tendency to grab the seat in front of me. I know that the seat in front of me is not any safer than the seat I’m sitting in, but somehow I feel better when I have hold of it! Paul’s admonition to Timothy is a wonderful help to me. God is telling me that I am not to be a defeated Christian; I should not let my emotions control my life.
On a tour to Bible lands I didn’t want to go with the tour to Egypt, because on a previous trip I’d had a bad experience there, and I was very emotional about it. I didn’t like Cairo, and I didn’t want to go there. But the Lord forced me to overcome my feelings. I had planned to go ahead to Jerusalem, rest there a couple of days, and wait for the tour to reach me. But every hotel was filled, and we couldn’t get a reservation. Then I thought of another way. I could stay in Athens and then just fly into Jerusalem at the same time the tour group did. But do you know what? There wasn’t any hotel space in Athens, either. The only place I could go was to Cairo! The Lord made me overcome my emotions, and I’m thankful He did, because I had a delightful visit, and I learned a great deal.

NOT ASHAMED, BUT A PARTAKER OF AFFLICTION

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God [2 Tim. 1:8].

I have labeled this chapter, “Afflictions of the gospel” because there is a feeling today that the Christian life is a life that ought to be very easy, nice and sweet, bright and breezy. A great many of us think that we have an indulgent heavenly Father who is just going to put us on a bed of roses, remove every stone out of our pathway, and not let anything serious happen to us. A retired lawyer sent me this statement which he found in a will. It read: “To my son I leave the pleasure of earning a living. For twenty-five years he thought the pleasure was mine. He was mistaken.” And a great many Christians expect their heavenly Father to make things easy for them.
The Lord Jesus made it clear that we would have trouble. He said, “… In the world ye shall have tribulation [trouble]” (John 16:33). Christians will not go through the Great Tribulation, but you and I are certainly going through our own little tribulations. Samuel Rutherford made this statement: “If you were not strangers here, the hounds of the world would not bark at you.” The Lord Jesus warned us that the world would not like Christians. He told His disciples, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). There is something wrong if you become too popular as a Christian. I am afraid that many Christians are thinking like a little boy in Sunday school whose teacher asked, “Johnny, which of the parables do you like best?” The little fellow answered, “The one where everybody loafs and fishes.” No, my friend, the Christian life is not a bed of roses. We are to be “partakers of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God”


Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began [2 Tim. 1:9].

“Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling”—not because of who we are or what we have done—“not according to our works.” But—
“According to his own purpose and grace.” God’s wonderful purpose in the gospel was hidden in ages past but is now revealed through Paul. It had been a mystery in the Old Testament, an unrevealed secret, but is now revealed in the New Testament.
“Which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began”—all along God had this plan for us.


But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel [2 Tim. 1:10].

Now this is a verse that deserves great emphasis.
“Who hath abolished death” is literally since He has made of none effect death. Death means something altogether different to the child of God—Christ made it of no effect. Now, God did not eliminate death. Remember that Paul is writing this letter from prison where the sentence of death is upon him. But Paul is not talking about physical death. He means spiritual death, eternal death, which is separation from God. Christ has indeed abolished spiritual death so that no sinner need go to a place where he’ll be eternally separated from God. Christ is our Mediator, the one Mediator between God and man. God is satisfied with what Christ has done for us. The question is: Are you satisfied? Or are you trying to save yourself by your own good works? Let me repeat what I have said before: Man cannot be saved by perfect obedience, because he is incapable of rendering it. He cannot be saved by imperfect obedience, because God will not accept it. There is only one solution to the dilemma, and that is the One who said, “… I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).


Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles [2 Tim. 1:11].

Paul says he’s a “preacher,” a herald of the Word of God. He also says that he’s “an apostle, and a teacher.” As an apostle he had several gifts. I personally doubt whether any man since the apostles has more than one gift. I’ve met preachers who thought they could sing, but my experience has been that either they couldn’t sing or they couldn’t preach—it was one or the other. I don’t believe He will give us two or more gifts, because it is difficult enough to exercise one.

NOT ASHAMED, BUT ASSURED


For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day [2 Tim. 1:12].

“I am not ashamed.” Although he was in prison and the sentence of death was upon him, he was not ashamed of the gospel. Paul had written to the Romans in 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth….” And back in verse 8 of the first chapter of 2 Timothy, Paul urges Timothy not to be ashamed either. Sometimes Christians are very reluctant to witness. We are all tongue-tied at times, but we ought not to be.
“He is able to keep that which I have committed [entrusted] unto him.” Literally, the deposit. This means that Paul deposited his faith in Christ until the day of judgment. Or it can mean that “God made a deposit with me.” God’s deposit of gifts in Paul’s life made him a debtor to the entire world.
My friend, you and I are debtors. Perhaps you are saying, “I want you to know that I pay my honest debts.” Well, you and I have not paid our honest debts until every person on topside of this earth has heard the gospel.
“He is able to keep that which I have committed.” It is a great comfort to know that all we are and all we have is in His hands.


Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus [2 Tim. 1:13].

“Sound words”—the words of Scripture are inspired. I believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of the Word of God and do not think that any other viewpoint is satisfactory, and certainly it does not satisfy the demands of Scripture.


That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us [2 Tim. 1:14].

It is important to see that the Christian life can be lived only in the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul talked about power, love, and a sound mind back in verse 7, all of which are fruit of the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote that “… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance …” (Gal. 5:22–23).


This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me; of whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes [2 Tim. 1:15].

Paul gives the actual names of those who have been unfaithful to him. Back in the first chapter of 1 Timothy Paul noted that some had fallen away, here it is all—that is, all who area now in Asia who had formerly been with him in Rome. I call your attention to this because it seems to me that apostasy is not the thing that characterizes only the last days of the church. It has occurred throughout the entire history of the church. I had a church history professor who said that the history of the church is the history of apostasy or, as he put it, the history of heresies. How true that has been.


The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain:

But, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me.

The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day: and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well [2 Tim. 1:16–18].

Here is a wonderful saint of God. I’d have loved to have been Onesiphorus (and I would have hated to have been Hermogenes). Onesiphorus, apparently from Ephesus, was in Rome on business. He was a busy man, but he had time to look up Paul who was in prison. How lovely! Probably Paul had led him to the Lord, and you can’t despise a man who has led you to Christ.

CHAPTER 2

Theme: Active in service

The second chapter of 2 Timothy is delightful. In these verses there are seven figures of speech that are used to describe the duty and the activity of a believer, which need to be impressed upon us more and more as we approach the end time.

A SON

Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus [2 Tim. 2:1].

Paul begins with the first figure of speech “Thou therefore, my son.” Timothy was not the son of Paul in a physical way. He was his spiritual son in the sense that it was under Paul’s ministry that this young man had turned to Christ. A child of God is born into God’s family by means of his faith in Christ. “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23). Timothy is in the family of God, and he is a child of God. Because of this very reason, Paul says these words to Timothy:
“Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” I love this—“be strong in grace.” My friend, if you think that you can grit your teeth and go out and live the Christian life on your own, you’re in for a great disappointment. If you feel that you can follow a few little rules or some clever gimmicks to make you a mature Christian, then you have fallen into a subtle trap of legalism. Paul gives no rules, and the Word of God has no rules to tell the child of God how to live the Christian life. We are saved by grace, and now we are to live by the grace of God and be strong in that grace.
Let me give you an example from my boyhood. My dad traveled a great deal in his work, and he always put down a few rules for me to follow while he was away. Some of them I obeyed. I had to cut the wood, and I didn’t mind that. One time we had a place with a lot of trees on it, and I really enjoyed the exercise of cutting the trees into firewood. But my father had some other rules that I frankly didn’t go for. I hate to admit this, but one of those rules was that I should attend Sunday school. The interesting thing is that he never went himself, but he always made me go. Anyway, when he was away from home, I didn’t go. One time I was fishing, and he came home suddenly and found me. I had just pulled out a fish, turned around, and there stood my dad. He said, “Son, are you having any luck?” Well, my luck ran out right at that moment! I appealed to him and admitted that I had done wrong, and by grace he was good to me. He said, “I brought home a sack of candy for you and your sister to divide. I wasn’t going to let you have it, but I think I will now.” I really took advantage of his good nature and the fact that I was his son.
My father died when I was fourteen, but now I have a heavenly Father, and I sure do appeal to His grace. When things go wrong down here, I go to Him and appeal to Him. When I fail, I don’t run from Him like I used to. I have found that when I am away from Him, the whipping He gives me hurts lots worse. I don’t want to get out at the end of that switch where it really stings. I come in close to Him, and the closer I am the less it hurts. I am a son of my heavenly Father. What a marvelous figure of speech!
When I hear Christians say, “I don’t do this, and I don’t do that, and I am following a set of rules,” I immediately recognize that they know very little about the grace of God. They are trying to live the Christian life in their own strength. Paul says, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”


And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also [2 Tim. 2:2].

Paul was greatly concerned about the future. He wondered, just as we do when we approach the end of our ministry, if other men will come along who will preach and teach the Word of God. Sometimes we develop an Elijah complex. At times when I was a pastor in Los Angeles, I cried like Elijah, “Oh, Lord, I’m the only one left!” But I found out that was not true. All over the country I’ve seen the Lord raise up fine young preachers who are standing for the things of God. It is a real concern to us older men that there be young men who will be faithful in teaching God’s Word. So Paul was admonishing Timothy to pass along the things he had been teaching him to “faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” And God will raise up men with gifts of teaching—this is the way He moves even today.
As sons of God we ought to be concerned about our Father’s business. The Lord Jesus in His humanity as a boy said, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Well, I have become a son of God—not like the Lord Jesus, but I’ve become a son of God through faith in Christ. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power [the authority] to become the sons of God, even to them that [do no more nor less than] believe on his name” (John 1:12). Now that I am a son of God I am interested in my Father’s business. By the way, are you interested in your Father’s business? And the main business is getting out the Word of God. But we need to recognize that we need the grace of God to do the business of God—as well as in every facet of our lives as His children.
Perhaps you are thinking that you are disappointed with yourself. If you are, that means you must have believed in yourself. You should not have. You are to walk by the grace of God—“We walk by faith and not by sight.” Or perhaps you are discouraged. If you are, that means you do not believe God’s Word and way of blessing. You really thought you could do it your way, and now you are discouraged. Or you may be saying, “I hope I can do better in the future.” Then you do expect to get some good out of the old nature! Oh, my friend, be strong in the grace of God.

A GOOD SOLDIER


Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier [2 Tim. 2:3–4].


The Christian is a soldier. How is the child of God a soldier? The last chapter of Ephesians tells us that the believer is fighting a spiritual battle and that he needs to put on the armor of God. Paul said to the Ephesians: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Eph. 6:12–13).
“No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life.” Imagine a soldier in the midst of battle going to his sergeant or his lieutenant and saying, “Sir, I’m sorry to have to leave, but I have to go over into the city to see about some business; and then I have a date with a local girl, and I just won’t be able to be here for the battle tonight!” A great many Christians are trying to fight like that today!
“That he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” The believer is to establish his priorities. Here he is to endure hardness, which means to suffer hardness, as Paul was suffering. There are those who interpret this verse to mean that a Christian is not to get married. Well, he is not talking about celibacy, but he is talking about being so entangled in worldiness that he is not able to live the Christian life.
Let me give you an example. A lady called me one morning while I was a pastor in Los Angeles. She said, “I was at church yesterday when you asked for those who wanted to accept Christ. Well, I did accept Christ, but I made no move to come forward for a particular reason that I want to tell you about. My husband died recently and left to me the operation of our liquor store. I am calling you now because I don’t think I can continue operating it. If you say to get a hammer and break every bottle, I’ll do it. But tell me what I should do.” What would you have said? I’ll tell you what I told her, “Don’t go in there and break bottles. You won’t stop the liquor business by breaking up a few bottles. If you could, I’d be in favor of it. But that has been your only income. I would say that you should sell the store and go out of the business.”
In that way we are not to entangle ourselves in the things of this life. The child of God is to recognize that he is a soldier. And we are to recognize that the Christian life is not a playground; it is a battlefield. It is a battlefield where battles are being won, and where battles are being lost also. There is a real spiritual battle going on.

AN ATHLETE


And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully [2 Tim. 2:5].


Here Paul is comparing the Christian to an athlete. “Strive” refers to contending in the game. He wants to win, and he is doing everything he can to be the winner. Someone has said in a very succinct manner, “The only exercise some Christians get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, sidestepping responsibility, and pushing their luck.” That is not the kind of exercise Paul is talking about. He spoke of the Christian life as being a racecourse, and he said, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). Paul also said that he wanted to keep his body under control (see 1 Cor. 9:24–27). Paul’s goal was to run the Christian race in such a way that the One who is at the end of the race—the Lord Jesus—would be able to reward him and be able to say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21). A child of God is to “strive”; God intends that he win the race. Every child of God needs to recognize this.
He is to “strive lawfully.” That is, he has to play by the rules. There is no shortcut toward living the Christian life. Forget the gimmickry today that condenses Christianity into a little course or a few rules and regulations. God gave us sixty-six books, and each one of them is very important. It takes the composite picture to give us the mind and the Word of God. We are to study the whole Bible. An athlete can’t cut the corner of a racetrack. Neither can a baseball player run by second base without touching it; he has to touch all the bases to score. A child of God has to do that, too. If you’re going to win, you can’t take any shortcuts.

A FARMER

The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits [2 Tim. 2:6].

The fourth description of a believer is a husbandman or farmer, the one who tills the field and sows the seed of the Word of God. We hear a great deal today about “laying sheaves at the feet of Jesus.” I certainly hope that we will be able to put a few there, but also there has to be the sowing and laboring in the field. After the farmer has done that, there will be a harvest. This is the reason I don’t cooperate with the great movements abroad that are going to convert the world by evangelism. My feeling is that the Word of God has to be sown, and I take the position that the total Word has to be sown before there can be a harvest.


Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things.

Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel [2 Tim. 2:7–8].

“Remember that Jesus Christ”—the word that is not in the original but was supplied by the translators. Paul just stops to say, “Remember Jesus Christ.” Isn’t that lovely! What about Him? He’s of the seed of David. That means He’s going to sit on David’s throne down here. Also, He was raised from the dead, “according to my gospel.” It is Paul’s gospel because he’s the one who preached this gospel.


Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evildoer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound.

Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory [2 Tim. 2:9–10].

“Wherein I suffer trouble.” You may get in a little trouble if you stand for the Word of God. Paul got into trouble “as an evil doer, even unto bonds.” He was in prison for teaching the Word of God.
“But the word of God is not bound.” Although Paul was in chains, he discovered that the Word of God was still going out in the Roman world. Even with a mad caesar on the throne, a dictator of dictators, who had imprisoned Paul to silence him, the Word of God was not bound. Thank God, it still is going out to the world in our day.


It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him [2 Tim. 2:11].

“It is a faithful saying” or better: “Faithful is the saying, for if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him.”
“If we be dead with him” should be “if we have died with him.” When did we die with Him? When He died over nineteen hundred years ago. When we come to Christ and receive Him as our Savior, His death becomes our death. We are identified with Him and are raised with Him in newness of life. This means that this very day He wants to live His life out through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.


If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us [2 Tim. 2:12].

“If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.” I personally believe that not all believers are going to reign with Him. I believe that this verse narrows it down to those who have suffered for Him. I’d be embarrassed if I were put on the same par with the apostle Paul in heaven, because I haven’t suffered as he did. I would be apologizing to him constantly for being placed beside him. I believe this verse is referring to a definite group of Christians who have really suffered for Christ. In the Roman world of Paul’s day there were many Christians who were martyred—five million of them, according to Fox—because they refused to deny Christ.
“If we deny him, he also will deny us.” This is very strong language. It reveals, however, that Paul believes that faith without works is dead (see James 2:17). You see, Paul and James never contradict each other. James is talking about the works of faith, and Paul is saying that genuine faith will produce works. Calvin put it like this: “Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.”


If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself [2 Tim. 2:13].

God “cannot deny himself.” He cannot accept as true one who is false. That’s the reason He gave such a scathing denunciation of the religious rulers of His day. He called them hypocrites because they were pretending to be something they were not. If Christ accepted someone who is not genuine, He actually would be denying Himself because He is true. Therefore, we should be genuine, my friend.

Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers [2 Tim. 2:14].
“Strive not about words” means disputes of words. God’s people need to stick to essentials. We don’t need to argue about empty words or philosophies or our little differences. The pastor of an Assembly of God church wrote to me saying that he appreciated our ministry and that he recommends our notes and outlines to his church, although we don’t agree on everything. And we don’t—I can’t see his point of view on some matters and he can’t see mine. Perhaps when we get to heaven, we will find it true that there are three sides to every question: your side, my side, and the right side. Maybe the Lord will have to straighten out both of us. But the important thing is that he and I ought not to argue since we agree on the essentials. And that is the way we both want it. I think we waste a lot of time in a negative approach and trying to correct other believers. Instead of doing that, let’s try to stay on the positive side and enjoy each other’s fellowship in the gospel.

A WORKMAN, A TEACHER


Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth [2 Tim. 2:15].


“Study to shew thyself approved unto God.” You are to study, eager to do your utmost, to present yourself approved unto God. The workman here is evidently a teacher, which means he is to be a diligent student of the Word of God.
“Rightly dividing the word of truth” means to handle rightly the Word of God. To rightly divide the Word the Christian is to be a skilled workman like an artisan. The student of the Word must understand that the Word of God is one great bundle of truth and that it has certain right divisions. The Bible is built according to a certain law and structure, which must be observed and obeyed as you go through the Word of God. You can’t just lift out a verse here and a verse there and choose to ignore a passage here and a passage there. It is so easy to do this, but the Bible is not that kind of Book. This is the reason I maintain that the Bible is to be taught in its entirety.
Here is a quotation that reveals the ignorance of a man who failed to recognize that the Word of God is one great unity that needs to be rightly divided to be understood. I’m quoting from an article: “In short, one way to describe the Bible, written by many different hands over a period of three thousand years and more, would be to say that it is a disorderly collection of sixty-odd books which are often tedious, barbaric, obscure, and teeming with contradictions and inconsistencies. It is a swarming compost of a book, an Irish stew of poetry and propaganda, law and legalism, myth and murk, history and hysteria.” That man really spoke a mouthful. His verbiage is quite verbose and reveals a woeful ignorance of the Bible. And he reveals the result of not rightly dividing the Word of God.
Now what is meant by rightly dividing the Word of truth? Well, there are certain dispensations in the Word of God, different methods whereby God dealt with man. The basis of salvation always remains the same. Man is saved only by believing in the atoning death of Christ. But man expresses his faith in God in different ways. For example, Abel and Abraham brought little lambs to sacrifice to the Lord. But I hope you don’t take a lamb to church next Sunday morning, because you would be entirely out of order. It’s all right for Mary to have a little lamb that follows her to school, but your little lamb should not follow you to church. The reason is that the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world has already come. That Lamb is Jesus (see John 1:29). You see, Abel and Abraham looked forward to the Lamb of God, and we look back to His death. That is an illustration of rightly dividing the Word of truth. I wish that the man who wrote the article I quoted knew a little bit about the Bible. In his article he says that the Bible is the Book nobody reads, and obviously he belongs in that class. Before any person can speak authoritatively on any subject he has to know the subject. I would certainly recommend that this man study the Word of God before he attempts to write about it!
A child of God needs to study the Word of God. When I began my study for the ministry, I attended a denominational school, and I confess that the Bible was utter confusion to me. At that point I would have agreed with the author of this article. Then there was placed in my hands a Scofield Reference Bible, and I sat under the teaching of a wonderful pastor who led me to listen to men like Dr. Harry Ironside, Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, and Dr. Arthur I. Brown. Those men blessed my soul, and the Bible became a new Book to me. It started making sense because it was being rightly divided, according to dispensations which exhibit the progressive order of God’s dealings with humanity. For instance, to recognize the distinction between law and grace is basic to the understanding of the Scriptures. And Paul is telling Timothy to study, to be diligent in his study of the Word, so that he may be a teacher who rightly divides the Word of truth.


But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness [2 Tim. 2:16].

Avoid empty chatter that has no value whatsoever.


And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus [2 Tim. 2:17].

I don’t know much about these two men Paul mentions here, but they apparently were apostates.


Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some [2 Tim. 2:18].

In that day, there were some who were teaching that the resurrection had already taken place, which meant that those still living had missed it!


Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity [2 Tim. 2:19].

“Having this seal.” The seal was a mark of authentication and ownership. “The Lord knoweth them that are his.” Back in Deuteronomy 6:8–9 God told His people to take His commandments, “And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” The Israelite was to use his house as a billboard for the Word of God. That identified him as a worshiper of God.
Now how about the believer today? How does he advertise the fact that he is a child of God? “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” That is how the people are going to know who belongs to God. This is what separation is: separation from evil and separation unto Christ. If you name the name of Christ, be sure you’re not living in sin. Unfortunately, there are some who assert fundamental doctrines and faith, and then it turns up that they have had an affair with a woman or have been proven dishonest. The Lord knows those who are His because He can discern the heart, but all that the world can look at is the outward life. My friend, the world certainly makes sin look attractive by clever advertisements on billboards. How do we as believers compare? Are our lives an attractive advertisement for Christ?

A VESSEL


But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour.

If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work [2 Tim. 2:20–21].


In these verses a believer is pictured as a vessel. If a vessel is to be usable, it must be clean. For example, imagine you are walking across a desert, and you come to an oasis. You are parched and almost dying of thirst. You find two cups there. One is made of gold and highly ornamented, but it’s dirty. The other is an old crock cup. It will just barely hold water because it is cracked, but it is clean. Which one would you use? Now give God credit for having as much intelligence as you have. He too uses clean vessels; He does not use dirty vessels. Remember in the second chapter of John’s gospel we read of the Lord Jesus making wine at a wedding. He had the servants drag out the old beat-up crocks (which the Jews used for purification) and had them filled with water. He took those old unattractive crocks and used them for His glory. And today God is looking for clean vessels to use—not beautiful, but clean.


Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart [2 Tim. 2:22].

Oh, how many times He has placed together “faith, love, and peace,” and they do sum up the Christian life. These things should not be just mouthed from the pulpit but should be lived out through the lives of those in the pew.


But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes [2 Tim. 2:23].

Some folk are continually wanting to argue with me about nonessentials. I don’t have time for that. We are living in a world that is on fire! Let’s get the Word of God to it before it is too late.

A SERVANT


And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,

In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth [2 Tim. 2:24–25].


Finally, a believer is like a servant, and he is to be gentle to all men. It may seem like we have a contradiction here. The soldier was to fight, but the servant is not to fight. Is this a contradiction? No, it is a paradox. When you are standing for the truth, you are to be definite and let people know where you stand. Don’t be a coward! Someone has put it this way, It is said that silence is golden, but sometimes it is just yellow! My friend, stand for the truth. However—
“In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.” If you are trying to win a person to Christ, don’t argue with him. If he disagrees with you, let him disagree with you. Just keep on giving him the Word of God.

And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will [2 Tim. 2:26].

CHAPTER 3

Theme: The coming apostasy and the authority of Scripture

In this chapter Paul warns of the apostasy that will come in the last days. He also gives us the antidote for that apostasy, which is the Word of God. That is why this chapter is so important and meaningful for us today.

APOSTASY IN THE LAST DAYS


This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come [2 Tim. 3:1].


“This know also.” Paul is telling Timothy something very important that he wants him to know. He is telling him what to expect and what is to be the future of the church—it is not a very bright future for the organized church.
“The last days” is a technical term used in several places in the New Testament; it speaks of the last days of the church, immediately preceding the rapture of the church. The last days of the church are not the same as the last days of the nation Israel, which is mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament the last days are called the “end of the age” or “the time of the end,” which is the Great Tribulation Period. That is quite different from the last days of the church, which precede the Rapture of the church.
The apostasy that began in the church in Paul’s day will continue. Paul warned the church at Ephesus that false leaders would enter the church after his decease. He told them in Acts 20:29–30: “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” They won’t give out the Word of God but will fleece the congregations. Believe me, false teachers shear the sheep pretty close!
“Perilous times shall come,” which means grievous or desperate times are coming. That doesn’t look like the conversion of the world, does it? It doesn’t appear that the church is going to bring in the Millennium or is going to convert the world. The Bible doesn’t teach that it will. That is the pipe dream of a great many idealists and a great many folk who have lived with their heads ostrich-like in the sand and have never faced reality.
Instead, notice what will be coming in the last days. We have nineteen different descriptions given in the next few verses. It is an ugly brood, but we want to look at them because they present the best scriptural picture of what is happening today. We are, I believe, moving into the last days of the church. My reason for saying this is that the things mentioned in these verses have appeared today. If you look back in the history of the church, you could certainly find some of these things in evidence, but I don’t think you could ever find a period in which all of them are so manifested as they are today. I believe we are now in these “perilous” days which are described in this section. I don’t know how much longer it will last, but I’m sure it’s going to get worse, not better.


For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God [2 Tim. 3:2–4].

There are nineteen words or phrases used to describe the last days.
1. “Lovers of their own selves”—self-lovers. This is very much in evidence in our culture today. An article by a newspaper correspondent who had covered Washington, D.C., for many years, noted that the one thing which has characterized Washington for the past twenty years is that those who are in position want the reporters to praise them. In fact, they insist upon it. That is not confined to Washington. Hollywood is probably one of the greatest places for scratching each other’s backs. One actor will publicly say something nice about another, then the other one will return the favor. You find this in every walk of life. Even schools have self-love. If a man boosts a school, then the school boosts him by giving him an honorary degree. Also, you can find this in the churches. Paul goes on to say, in chapter 4, verse 3, that congregations will follow teachers “having itching ears.” These teachers want their ears scratched—they want to be complimented. To be complimented, you have to compliment. So the teachers compliment their congregations and their boards of officers. They don’t tell the people that they are sinners and need a Savior; they tell them how wonderful they are. It is interesting that the love of self characterizes our contemporary society. Probably there has never been a time when it has been so common.
2. “Covetous” means lovers of money. This follows self-love, because lovers of self become lovers of money. This old nature likes to have a lot of money spent on it. Remember that Paul said in 1 Timothy 6:10, “…the love of money is the root of all evil….” Money itself is not bad. The problems come in our attitude toward our money. Covetousness reveals itself not only in the acquisition of wealth but also in the use of it.
3. “Boasters.” That word has in it the idea of swaggerers. You can sometimes tell a proud man by the way he walks. He walks like a peacock; he swaggers.
4. “Proud” means haughty.
5. “Blasphemers” is better translated railers. I remember the story of a fellow whose wife said to him, “Everyone in town is talking about the Smiths’ quarrel. Some of them are taking her part and some are taking his part.” He chimed in, “Well, I suppose a few eccentric individuals are minding their own business.” Well, railers include those who are always poking their noses into somebody else’s business.
6. “Disobedient to parents.” Certainly this is self-evident. Oh, the thousands of boys and girls and teenagers who are in complete rebellion against their parents!
7. “Unthankful.” Many people receive kindnesses from others without even thinking of thanking them. And they accept everything from God without ever returning thanks to Him.
8. “Unholy” is profane. They are actually against God in their conversation and in their manner of life.
9. “Without natural affection” means having abnormal relationships. We are living in a day when homosexuality is being accepted as normal conduct. Yet in Romans 1:24 Paul clearly states, “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves.” Humanity sinks to its lowest level when it accepts homosexuality.
10. “Trucebreakers” are people who are impossible to get along with. They are irreconcilable—they won’t let you get along with them. I recall seeing a little sign in a restaurant out in West Texas which read, “We can’t please everybody, but we try.” Well, you can’t please everybody; there are folk who are impossible to please.
11. “False accusers” certainly abound today!
12. “Incontinent” means without self-control. That, again, characterizes a large segment of our contemporary society.
13. “Fierce” means savage. In our day the city streets have become asphalt jungles. Many of them are unsafe even in the daytime.
14. “Despisers of those that are good” is better translated haters of the good. We see evidence of that abroad!
15. “Traitors” are betrayers. There are some folk whom you don’t dare trust.
16. “Heady” means reckless.
17. “Highminded” means blinded by pride or drunk with pride.
18. “Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” This actually characterizes mankind in our day. Never has there been a time when so much money has been spent in order to provide pleasure. Look at the athletic and entertainment events today. These are the things that are attracting millions of people. That is exactly the route Rome took when it went down. The mob was provided with grain and circuses, and then Rome fell. That same thing is happening today. I have always loved to participate in athletics, but I could never understand this type of athletics that just sits and beholds. I never thought that it was very exciting to go out to the coliseum and sit with 85,000 people to watch twenty-two men working for $25,000 (or more) apiece. Of course I would like to be out there myself, but I am not interested in watching them as much as I would be in watching a ditchdigger because he is not as money hungry. I don’t blame any man for making as much money as he can, but the point is that billions of dollars are being spent for entertainment because men are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.


Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away [2 Tim. 3:5].

19. “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” They go through the rituals of religion but lack life and reality.
“From such turn away” means that the believer is to avoid them. Let me ask you a question: If you are in a dead, cold, liberal church, and you are a true believer, what are you doing there when the Word of God says to avoid those things? All across this country there are wonderful pastors who are faithfully preaching the Word of God. Why aren’t you supporting and standing with these fine men?


For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,

Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth [2 Tim. 3:6–7].

“Silly women” means silly women of both sexes. There are some people who have attended Bible conferences for years, but they don’t know any more about the Word of God now than they did when they began. They have never matured. Their lives are not changed. Friend, if you find yourself in that category today, get down on your knees and ask God to forgive you!


Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith [2 Tim. 3:8].

“Jannes and Jambres” apparently were the names of the two magicians called in by Pharaoh when Moses began the miracles and the plagues came upon Egypt. We would never have known the names of these magicians if Paul hadn’t given them to us. Of course, that opens a great reservoir of speculation as to where Paul got those names. The simple answer is that the names were revealed to him by the Spirit of God. I don’t think that the specific names add much information to the account, but it does reveal that Paul knew their names and that the magicians were real individuals who did withstand Moses. You can read about them in the seventh chapter of Exodus.
The account in Exodus reveals that Satan has power, supernatural power, and also that he is a great little imitator—he imitates the things that God does. Jannes and Jambres were able to perform miracles by the power of Satan. Moses did them by the power of God. This is, I believe, the reason reference is made to them here. We need to understand in our day that Satan can imitate the power of God. John warns us in 1 John 4:1, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” Satan can imitate the power of God. In our day I’m afraid that in many places a manifestation of power is misunderstood as coming from God when it really comes from Satan.
“Men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.” Paul is saying that men on the contemporary scene, like Jannes and Jambres, have corrupt or depraved minds. “Reprobate concerning the faith” means that they have discarded the faith—rejected it totally. We have had a classic example of this within the past few years. There was a bishop of the Episcopal church out here on the West Coast, a man apparently of tremendous ability, but he and his family were delving into that which was spiritualistic, bordering on the supernatural. As nearly as I can tell, this man rejected the great truths of Scripture, and he made a trip to Palestine in an attempt to disprove some of the great truths of the Word of God. Well, rather than disproving any of them, he certainly proved some of them—and this is one of them. A very strange thing happened out there in a wilderness area for the man to die as he did. I don’t propose to offer any explanation, other than he is a noteworthy example of one who once professed to believe the Word of God but became, as the Scripture says, a reprobate, a castaway. He discarded the faith.


But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was [2 Tim. 3:9].

The experience of that Episcopal bishop should be a tremendous warning to Christians. You can dabble in spiritism if you want to, but you are toying with something that is dangerous. There is a manifestation of satanic power about us in our day. It is an anomaly that our crassly materialistic age, which had rejected the supernatural altogether, is discovering the reality of the supernatural, although much of it is satanic, of course.

AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURES IN THE LAST DAYS


But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience [2 Tim. 3:10].


Timothy knew Paul, knew him well. Paul’s life was an open book, as every Christian’s life ought to be.


Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me [2 Tim. 3:11].

Timothy knew well Paul’s suffering which he had endured in his journeys. Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, and Lystra were all places in the Galatian country where Paul had gone on his first, second, and third missionary journeys. When Paul was at Lystra, he was stoned and left for dead—I think he was dead and God raised him up from the dead. Paul said that God intervened in his behalf. “But out of them all the Lord delivered me.” Timothy knew of these things because he and his family were from that area.


Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution [2 Tim. 3:12].

I believe that we are beginning to move into a time in this country when it will cost you something to be a Christian. Melvin Laird, long before he was Secretary of Defense, made a statement in San Francisco at a Republican convention. I do not know the circumstances which prompted the statement, but he said, “In this world it is becoming more and more unpopular to be a Christian. Soon it may become dangerous.” We are seeing the accuracy of this statement. Real Christianity and real Christians are becoming very unpopular.
I am not really moved today when the press cries that there is no freedom of the press. The bleeding-heart press has played that theme for all it’s worth, but have they said anything about the fact that real Christianity is stifled by the press? When was the last time you read a sympathetic article of the biblical position? The media stifles news that presents real Christianity. If a fundamental preacher gets any publicity, it will be distorted and misrepresented. Of course, if a preacher gets on the wrong side of the law he will make the front page; but if he saves a group of people from going to hell he is ignored. Friend, we are moving into an orbit when Christians may have to pay a price to stand for the faith.


But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived [2 Tim. 3:13].

“Seducers” are sorcerers or imposters—either one. “Deceiving, and being deceived”—leading astray, then in turn led astray themselves.
Such is the picture of the last days before the Rapture of the church. Now what can a child of God do in days like these?

ANTIDOTE FOR APOSTASY


But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been as sured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus [2 Tim. 3:14–15].

The only antidote against a world of apostasy is the Word of God. The only resource and recourse for the child of God is the Word of God.
Paul tells Timothy to continue in the things he had learned. He had learned the Holy Scriptures because his grandmother and mother were Jewish women and had seen to it that Timothy grew up on the Word of God.
“Which are able to make thee wise unto salvation.” What kind of salvation is he talking about? After all, Timothy was already saved. Well, salvation occurs in three tenses. There is the past tense: I have been saved from sin. The present tense is: I am being saved from sin. The third tense is future: I shall be saved from sin. Let me elaborate. In the past tense, we have been saved. Christ bore a judgment death for us. When we believe on Him, we pass from death to life, and we are no longer under condemnation—“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus …” (Rom. 8:1). We are also being saved. He is working out a salvation in us, and we won’t even have that perfected in this life. But as we look into the future we know a day is coming when “… it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him…” (1 John 3:2). Paul is saying that the Scriptures not only give us the modus operandi of being saved (that is, passing from death to life and having eternal life and becoming a child of God), but it saves us in this present evil world—enables us to grow and gives us deliverance down here. It is my contention that the constant study of the Word of God is the only help that any of us has. It is able to make us “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” And I think it makes us wise in knowing how to live down here.


All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness [2 Tim. 3:16].

When Paul says “all scripture,” he means all of it, from Genesis to Revelation. Somebody will say, “But don’t you know that Revelation hadn’t been written at the time 2 Timothy was written?” Yes, I know that. But the important thing to know is that Revelation became Scripture, so it is covered by this word all.
The word inspiration means “God breathed.” The writers of Scripture were not just pens that the Lord picked up and wrote with. The marvel is that God used these men’s personalities, expressed things in their own thought patterns, yet got through exactly what He wanted to say. Through these men God has given us His Word. He has nothing more to say to us today. If He spoke out of heaven today, He wouldn’t add anything to what He has already said.
“Is profitable for doctrine.” Scripture is good “for doctrine,” that is, for teaching. That’s why we teach it.
It is good “for reproof,” which means conviction. Studying the Bible should bring conviction to us. In fact, that is the way you can test whether the Word of God is moving in your life. If you read this Book like any other book, then the Spirit of God is not moving in your life. But if it convicts you, then you know the Holy Spirit is at work within you.
It is “for correction,” that is, setting things right in your life—correction of error.
It is “for instruction,” which means discipline, thinking and acting in accordance with God’s will.


That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works [2 Tim. 3:17].

“Perfect” doesn’t mean that you and I will reach the kind of perfection where absolutely everything we do is right. Rather, it means we will attain full maturation. (There are a lot of baby Christians around today.) We’ll be complete, full-grown people.
“Throughly furnished” is thoroughly furnished. That is, the Word of God can fit you out for life for every good work. My friend, I am against these little programs and systems that purport to bring you to Christian maturity in a few easy lessons. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and all of it is to be used in order to meet your needs.
As we come to the conclusion of chapter 3, let me remind you that Paul has talked to Timothy in a very personal way. Timothy had been taught the Word of God, and now he is to declare the Word of God. Paul has emphasized that in the days of apostasy our resource, our recourse, is to the Word of God, and it will adequately meet our need.
This is exactly what the Word of God is doing in the lives of multitudes of folk who write to me in response to my Bible-teaching radio program. We have seen that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God—it is God breathed. It says what God wants said, and it has said everything He wants to say. For this reason it meets the needs of the human heart. Let me share one letter with you that bears testimony to this fact. It came from Nashville, Tennessee:
I do not intend to make this lengthy. In my mind I have composed page after page to tell you what your teaching of the Word has meant to me and my husband. We were in the same boat, floating along without a navigator. Some day I hope to be able to tell you how joy has been brought into our lives at a time of many family problems and unanswerable questions, how in our middle years we know more love and hope and zest for living than in our younger years, how our Father used sorrow and you and the “Thru the Bible” ministry to be a great part in bringing this about. I want to point out three things that neither of us (reared by believing parents, and ourselves lifelong church-goers) knew until two years ago when we started tuning you in. We don’t know why we didn’t see for ourselves. We had teachers who tried to tell us, and we read the Bible. I think the Lord was preparing us. I’m able to see His providence now. But we knew nothing of our sin nature or of the Holy Spirit except as mentioned in the Apostle’s Creed. We knew the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and we believed this. But we didn’t know that the Holy Spirit was within us. Nor did we know of the resurrected life. We were fighting the losing battle of trying to be good and had just about given up on it when we started listening to “Thru the Bible.” We then realized that indeed we did have to give up and that God would start us in the right direction through His grace manifested by Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The reason I have quoted this letter is to show you that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. God says that His Word is profitable, and this couple in Nashville has certainly proven that it is. When it gets into your life it does something that no other Book can do because it is the very Word of God.

CHAPTER 4

Theme: Instructions for the last days


It is with a note of sadness that we come to the final chapter of 2 Timothy. Paul will be giving Timothy instructions for the last days. Then we will have Paul’s deathbed testimony, which probably are his last written words. We will detect his feeling of loneliness. He is in Rome, alone and incarcerated in that horrible Mamertine prison. He is cold and asks Timothy to bring his cloak. I have been down in that prison—I’d hate to be imprisoned there! He is lonely and the hours are long. He asks Timothy to bring his books, especially the parchments.
But with the sadness and loneliness we will also hear a note of victory as Paul gives his final charge to his son in the faith. As we hear him, we will be hearing from God the thing He wants us to hear. This is His final word to you and me. If you are not prepared to accept this, I don’t think that He has anything more to say to you.

PAUL’S CHARGE TO TIMOTHY


I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom [2 Tim. 4:1].


This is a very solemn charge or command in the presence of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Who shall judge the quick and the dead” the living and the dead.
“At his appearing and his kingdom.” Christ’s appearing and His kingdom are not the same thing. His appearing is the epiphany, the Rapture of the church. His kingdom refers to the revelation of Christ when He returns to earth to establish His kingdom. Twice He will do some judging. He will judge His own when He takes them out of the world. Also, He will judge those who turn to God in the Great Tribulation. All of us who are believers will come before Him for judgment at one time or another. Our lives are going to be tested to see if we are to receive a reward or not.
Paul is saying, “In view of the fact that you, Timothy, are going to stand before Him to have your life judged, this is what you are to do.” These instructions to Timothy are just as pertinent in our day as at the time they were given by the mouth of Paul. This is what God is saying to you and me right now.


Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine [2 Tim. 4:2].

“Preach the word” means to proclaim the Word, to give it out, to herald it. This phrase is sort of a rallying cry, a motto that people respond to. You remember that we had such a thing during World War II: “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Back in the Spanish-American War, it was “Remember the Maine.” This is our rallying cry today: “Preach the Word.”
“Be instant [diligent] in season, out of season.” In other words, he means we should preach at any time. If someone wakes you up at two o’clock in the morning you ought to be able to give out the Word of God.
Notice that He does not say to preach about the Bible. A wiseacre student in my class at seminary often came up with some good comments. One day he said to the professor, “You could graduate from this seminary and never own a Bible.” Why did he say that? He said that because we studied about the Bible; we did very little studying of the Bible itself. Paul tells us to preach the Word, not just talk about it.
Here is another subtle point: Paul does not say to preach from the Word. He does not say to lift a verse from the Bible and then weave a sermon around it. Someone has well said that a text is a pretext that’s taken out of its context. We are not to preach about the Word of God or from the Word of God, but preach the Word of God itself!
“Be instant in season, out of season.” The word instant means “diligent,” or even better “urgent.” There is a compulsion upon us. We should be chafing at the bit, ready to give out the Word of God. “In season, out of season” means any time of the day or night, any time of the year, under any and all circumstances.
“Reprove”—it should be given with conviction.
“Rebuke” actually means to threaten! It reminds me of a black minister, a wonderful man of God, whose pulpit I have often shared. I heard him really threaten his people. He said he didn’t want any deacons who were not going to “deac.” If they didn’t intend to “deac” he didn’t want them on the board. Not many preachers have the courage to say that!
“Exhort” means comfort. There are times when believers really need comfort.
“With all longsuffering” means that all of us who give out the Word of God need to exercise a great deal of patience.
“Doctrine” means, as we have said previously, teaching. Every minister should have a teaching ministry.
All of this is included in preaching the Word of God.


For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears [2 Tim. 4:3].

“The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.” I wonder if our contemporary society has come to this place. Although we are startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the number of people today who are listening to the teaching of the Word, compared to the total population, that group is a very small percentage indeed. There are very few church members who will endure sound doctrine. They don’t want to hear it. What do they want?
“After their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” Dr. Marvin R. Vincent discusses the meaning of this sentence in his Word Studies in the New Testament, Volume IV, pages 320–321:

[They] shall invite teachers en masse. In periods of unsettled faith, skepticism, and mere curious speculation in matters of religion, teachers of all kinds swarm like the flies in Egypt. The demand creates the supply. The hearers invite and shape their own preachers. If the people desire a calf to worship, a ministerial calf-maker is readily found.

That certainly is true today. Someone has said that the modern pulpit is a sounding board that is merely saying back to the people what they want to hear.
“Having itching ears.” Again I quote Dr. Vincent, page 321:

Clement of Alexandria describes certain teachers as “scratching and tickling, in no human way, the ears of those who eagerly desire to be scratched….” Seneca says: “Some come to hear, not to learn, just as we go to the theatre, for pleasure, to delight our ears with the speaking or the voice or the plays.”
What a picture of our day! As someone has said, some people go to church to close their eyes and others to eye the clothes! In other words, they don’t go to church to hear sound (lit., healthy) doctrine! They don’t want to hear the Word of God; they want a substitute. Dr. Warren Wiersbe, former pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, has said:

They want religious entertainment from Christian performers who will tickle their ears. We have a love for novelty in the churches today: emotional movies, pageants, foot-tapping music, colored lights, etc. The man who simply opens the Bible is rejected while the shallow religious entertainer becomes a celebrity. And verse 4 indicates that itching ears soon will become deaf ears as people turn away from the truth and believe man-made fables.

That is a very excellent statement, and now let us read verse 4—


And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables [2 Tim. 4:4].

They want something novel, something that will entertain them.
When I first came to California, the late Dr. Arno C. Gaebelein, a great man of God who had been a very outstanding teacher, wintered out here in Pasadena, and I went to visit him. He asked me how I liked California, and I replied, “I love it here, but it’s very interesting that if I teach the Book of Revelation, I can fill the church (even during midweek service), but if I begin teaching the Epistle to the Romans, I can practically empty the church. I find there are people who will run all the way across this area to find out from a speaker just how many hairs are in the horse’s tail in Revelation.” He then made a statement to me that I shall never forget, “Dr. McGee, you’re going to find out in your own ministry that there are a great many people more interested in Antichrist than they are in Christ.”
There are a lot of folk with itching ears. They like to hear about these strange, weird, unusual things. They want to be entertained, but they don’t want to be given the Word of God. Many people have told me that, when they started listening to me on the radio, they not only didn’t like my accent, they didn’t like what I said. They accused me of stepping on their toes. But I didn’t even know them—I didn’t step on their toes; the Word of God did. I was just preaching the Scriptures. Then as they continued to listen, they found out that the Word of God was good for them. I’m sure there are many folk from whom I have never heard who tuned me in, then tuned me out—because they didn’t want to hear the Word of God; they preferred to be entertained.


But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry [2 Tim. 4:5].

The work of an evangelist didn’t mean what it does today. In Paul’s day an evangelist was a traveling teacher, a missionary. Paul was an evangelist in that sense. Now he says to Timothy, “You are to do the work of an evangelist,” which is what he did do when he was with the apostle Paul.
“Endure afflictions”—he warned that Timothy would suffer hardships for preaching the Word of God in the last days.

PAUL’S DEATHBED TESTIMONY


Now we come to a great passage of Scripture. Paul has written here his own epitaph.


For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing [2 Tim. 4:6–8].
“I am now ready to be offered.” If you had gone into that execution room in Rome, you would have seen a bloody spectacle. Very candidly, it would have been sickening to see him put his head on the chopping block, to watch the big, burly, brutal Roman soldier lift that tremendous blade above his head, then with one fell swoop sever the head from the body and see the head drop into a basket on one side and the body fall limp and trembling on the other side. But Paul says if that’s all you saw, you really didn’t see very much. That happened to be an altar, and his life was being poured out as a libation, a drink offering. Paul used that figure of speech before in his letter to the Philippians, when he was arrested for the first time and thought death was before him. He wrote in Philippians 2:17, “Yea, and if I be offered [poured out as a drink offering] upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all.” He wanted his life to be poured out. Now he could say at the end of his life that his life had been poured out like a drink offering.
What was the drink offering? There were no specific instructions given by God to the Israelites concerning the drink offering. However, it is mentioned again and again in Exodus and Leviticus. The wine was taken and poured over the sacrifice, which, of course, was really hot because it was on a brazen altar with fire underneath it. You know exactly what would happen. The drink offering would go up in steam. It would just evaporate and disappear. That is exactly what Paul is saying here. “I have just poured out my life as a drink offering on the sacrifice of Christ. It has been nothing for me but everything for Him.” Paul’s life would soon disappear, and all that could be seen was Christ. This is one of the most wonderful figures of speech he has used. So many Christians try to be remembered by having their names chiseled in stone or by having a building named in their memory. Paul was not interested in that type of thing. He says, “My life is a drink offering poured out; Christ—not Paul—is the One who is to be exalted.” This is a very rich passage of Scripture. Paul’s epitaph is divided into two sections. The first is retrospect, in which Paul looks back upon his earthly life—this is right before he is executed. Then the second part of the epitaph is the prospect. He looks forward to eternal life. The earthly life and the eternal life are separated by what we call death down here.
Paul sums up his life in three different ways: “I have fought a good fight.” He has been a soldier, a good soldier. There had been a battle to be fought and a victory to be won. Here at the end of his life he says, “I have been a soldier of my Savior.” My friend, all believers should take that position. There is a battle to be fought, and every Christian should be a defender of the Word of God and stand for the great truths of the Bible.
“I have finished my course.” Life is not only a battle, life is a race. Paul was a disciplined athlete who was striving to win the prize. During the race Paul was keeping his body under subjection. He was attempting to live the Christian life in such a way that he would not be disapproved. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection….” Paul also wrote in Hebrews 12:1–2 (I consider him the author of that book): “…let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith….” Now at the end of his life he could say, “I have finished my course”—he had touched all the bases; he had completed all that God had planned for Him.
“I have kept the faith.” Life had been a trust from God, and he had been a good steward. He had kept the faith. He had never veered from the great truths and doctrines in the Word of God.
What tremendous statements these are!
Now let’s return to his statement in verse 6: “my departure is at hand.” Departure is from a different Greek word than the one used in 1 Thessalonians for the departure of the church at the Rapture from this earth. Paul himself was going through a different doorway. Believers who are living when the Rapture takes place will not go through the doorway of death. “… We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…” (1 Cor. 15:51–52). The Greek word which Paul uses in speaking of his departure is analusis, an entirely different word. It is made up of two words, one of which is luo, which means “to untie or unloose.” Analusis could be used to refer to untying anything, but basically it was a nautical term used for a ship which was tied up at the harbor, ready to put out to sea.
Paul had an altogether different conception than that which is popular today. I’ve heard this so often at funeral services: “Dear Brother So-and-so. He’s come into the harbor at last. He’s been out yonder on a pretty wild sea, but the voyage is over now, and he’s come into the harbor.” Paul is really saying just the opposite of this. He’s saying, “I’ve been tied down to the harbor.” And that is what life is—we haven’t been anywhere yet; we’ve just been tied down to this little earth.
I know of only one writer from the past who has caught this meaning of Paul’s. Tennyson wrote as the first verse of his poem, “Crossing the Bar”:

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

That’s what death is for the child of God. It is a release for us.
Paul says, “Don’t look at my execution and let blood make you sick. I’m like a ship that has been tied up at the harbor. When death comes, I’m really taking off to go and be with Christ, which will be far better.”
“Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.” This brings us to the positive side. Paul is looking forward to the future. He is expecting a crown of righteousness. A crown is a reward, and he will receive his reward someday. I don’t think it has been given to him yet, but the Lord has it for him when He starts passing them out.
There are several such crowns mentioned in the New Testament. For example, 1 Corinthians 9:24–25 reads: “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.” That is the athlete’s crown for being a winner on the racetrack of life. Also there is the soulwinner’s crown, mentioned in Philippians 4:1: “…my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown….” A crown is given for having a part in leading folk to the Lord. Paul will have many crowns—there is no doubt about that.
“A crown of righteousness” is, I believe, the reward for a righteous life, and Paul will receive that.
“Unto all them also that love his appearing” does not refer to the doctrine you hold regarding His appearing. You may be a premillennialist, a postmillennialist, or an amillennialist. I have news for you: there’s no reward for holding any one of those views. The question is: Do you love His appearing? To love His appearing means that you will have to love Him. Oh, my friend, do you have a close relationship with Him? Have you ever told Him that you love Him? (I have a notion that Paul told the Lord every day that he loved Him, because he had hated and persecuted Him before.) There is a crown for those who love His appearing. I would like to have that crown. I believe it will shine brighter than all the others.

PAUL’S LAST WORDS


We have heard a triumphant note in the preceding verses, but now it’s not so triumphant. Paul faces the reality of his situation.


Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me [2 Tim. 4:9].

Why does he say this? He is lonesome. When I visited that Mamertine prison, I thought of these words.


For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia [2 Tim. 4:10].

Demas took off—he couldn’t stand the heat. So he left Paul and went to Thessalonica, which was quite a distance.
“Titus unto Dalmatia.” I don’t know if these other brethren had a legitimate excuse for leaving Paul, but I think Titus did. Paul probably sent him to Dalmatia to perform a ministry in his behalf. I don’t know enough about Crescens to defend him.


Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry [2 Tim. 4:11].

“Only Luke is with me”—good old Dr. Luke stood by Paul clear to the end.
“Take Mark, and bring him with thee.” Remember that Paul wouldn’t take John Mark with him on his second missionary journey. But Paul had been wrong about Mark, and now he was able to say that Mark was profitable to him in his ministry—and I am glad he said that here as one of his last words.


And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus [2 Tim. 4:12].

Paul sent him back to Ephesus because he was the pastor of the church there. He couldn’t stick around Rome indefinitely since he was pastoring a church.
Now notice something that is quite revealing—


The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments [2 Tim. 4:13].

Paul asks for his cloak or coat which he had left at Troas. This reveals a little of Paul’s suffering. I have been in that prison in May and June, and it was cold in there. This is a request for his physical need.
“And the books, but especially the parchments”—he needed something to read, something for his mind.


Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works [2 Tim. 4:14].

His “reward” won’t be what Alexander would consider a reward! I am sure God will judge him for what he did to Paul.

Of whom be thou ware also; for he hath greatly withstood our words [2 Tim. 4:15].
Paul warns Timothy to be on guard against him. He is one of those laymen who will soft-soap you, then put a knife in you when you turn your back. Watch out for him.


At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge [2 Tim. 4:16].

“At my first answer” was either the preliminary hearing which opened Paul’s final trial, or it was his first trial in Rome three years earlier. Paul was alone at that time.


Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion [2 Tim. 4:17].

Paul had asked Timothy for his cloak—something for his body—and his books and parchments—something for his mind; now here is something for his spirit: “The Lord stood with me.” All of us, whether in or out of prison, have needs in these three areas. It is wonderful to be able to say, “The Lord is with me.”
“I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion”—he was spared execution at that time.


And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen [2 Tim. 4:18].

Paul knew he was going to be translated to heaven.
Paul concludes this personal letter to Timothy with references to these mutual friends—


Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus.

Erastus abode at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.

Do thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren.

The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Grace be with you. Amen [2 Tim. 4:19–22].

Notice that he again urges Timothy to come, and to come before winter. This concludes the tremendous swan song of the apostle Paul.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Recommended for Further Study)


Berry, Harold J. Studies in II Timothy. Lincoln, Nebraska: Back to the Bible Broadcast, 1975.

Garrod, G. W. The Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy. Ripon, England: William Harrison, 1898. (An analysis.)

Guthrie, Donald. Pastoral Epistles. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957.

Hendriksen, William. Exposition of the Pastoral Epistles. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1957. (Comprehensive.)

Hiebert, D. Edmond. First Timothy. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1957. (Fine, inexpensive survey.)

Hiebert, D. Edmond. Second Timothy. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1958. (Fine, inexpensive survey.)

Ironside, H. A. Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, n.d.

Kelly, William. An Exposition of the Epistle to Timothy. London: C. A. Hammond, 1889.

Kent, Homer A., Jr. The Pastoral Epistles. Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1958. (Excellent.)
King, Guy H. A Leader Led. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Christian Literature Crusade, 1951. (Excellent devotional treatment of 1 Timothy.)

King, Guy H. To My Son. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: Christian Literature Crusade, 1944. (Excellent devotional treatment of 2 Timothy.)

Moule, Handley C. G. The Second Epistle of Timothy. London: Religious Tract Society, 1906. (Devotional.)

Stock, Eugene. Plain Talks on the Pastoral Epistles. London: Robert Scott, 1914.

Stott, John R. W. Guard the Gospel. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1973. (2 Timothy.)

Vine, W. E. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1965. (Excellent.)
Wuest, Kenneth S. The Pastoral Epistles in the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1952.

The Epistle to
Titus

INTRODUCTION

Apparently Paul and Titus had been together in a ministry on the island of Crete (see Titus 1:5). I do not know how long they had been there. As we go through the epistle we will learn something about the people who lived on this island—Paul didn’t think too much of them, by the way. Paul evidently left to go to another place and then wrote this epistle to Titus, giving him instructions about what he was to do as a young preacher while remaining in Crete. The date he wrote it was around a.d. 64–67.
The fact that Paul’s and Titus’ ministry on Crete is not mentioned in Acts reveals that the Book of Acts does not contain all the record of the early church. Actually, it is a very small record, and only the ministries of two of the apostles are emphasized: Peter in the first part of the book and Paul in the second part. We do not have a complete record of even these two men’s ministries.
In the two epistles to the Thessalonians Paul’s great emphasis is on the coming of Christ—it is a bright and beautiful hope for him. Critics of Paul will point out that this was his position early in his ministry but that later on he did not emphasize it. However, Titus was written about the same time as 1 Timothy, right at the end of the ministry of the apostle Paul. In Titus 2:13 Paul writes: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” My friend, Paul had not lost the blessed hope of the church. I think it was shining bright and will shine even brighter “… until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (2 Pet. 1:19).
Timothy and Titus were two young preachers whom Paul had the privilege of leading to the Lord. Paul calls both of them his sons, his genuine sons; that is, he led both of them to a saving knowledge of Christ.
Paul wrote letters to both of these brethren; we have two epistles to Timothy and one epistle to Titus. These letters are called Pastoral Epistles because in them Paul gives instruction to these young preachers concerning the local church. These letters also prove very profitable to us today. We have so much other instruction relative to the local church—I suppose we could fill a whole library with the books that have been written on how to run the local church. In Scripture we have only these three epistles, and they are very brief; yet they do give us the essential modus operandi for the church. What they do impress upon us is that if there is a lack or a need in a church, it isn’t a problem with the organization or with the system that is being used. Rather, if there is a need in a church, it is a spiritual need.
Frankly, we know very little about either of these young preachers, Timothy and Titus. Titus, however, seems to have been a stronger man, both physically and spiritually. Paul expressed less concern for Titus’ welfare than he did for Timothy’s. Titus was probably more mature, and he possessed a virile personality.
Timothy was a Jew who was circumcised by Paul, but Titus was a Gentile, and Paul refused to circumcise him. We read in Galatians that Paul took Titus with him to Jerusalem, and since he was a Gentile, Paul would not permit him to be circumcised (see Gal. 2:1–3). But when he took Timothy with him, Paul had him circumcised (see Acts 16:1–3). Paul circumcised one young preacher and refused to circumcise the other. If you must draw a rule from that, it can only be this: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (Gal. 6:15).
Paul said that he wanted to be all things to all men that he might win some to Christ—to the Jew he wanted to be a Jew, and to the Gentile he wanted to be as a Gentile. He had Timothy circumcised because they were going to go into the synagogues. But in that great council of the church in Jerusalem, the gospel was at stake, and Paul would not permit one bit of legalism to slip in (see Acts 15); therefore he refused to let Titus be circumcised.
It is a dangerous thing to put down a series of little rules that are nothing in the world but a ritual whereby you attempt to live the Christian life. My friend, unless you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ all else comes absolutely to nought.
In this epistle to Titus we have a fine picture of the New Testament church in its full-orbed realization in the community as an organization. I hear many folk today who say they are members of “a New Testament church.” I would like to ask them if they have had anybody drop dead in their church recently. I am sure that they would exclaim that they had not had that experience! Well, in the early church, the New Testament church, we read of Ananias and Sapphira who dropped dead in the church because they had lied to the Holy Spirit (see Acts 5). I think that if this principle were operating in our churches today, the average church would need to be turned into a hospital or even a mortuary!
The ideal church, according to this epistle, (1) has an orderly organization, (2) is sound in doctrine, and (3) is pure in life, ready to every good work. This is the picture of the New Testament church that this epistle to Titus presents to us. In Timothy the emphasis was upon the need for sound teaching in the church. In Titus the emphasis is put upon the importance of God’s order for the conduct of the churches. In fact, Titus 1:5 is the key to the entire epistle: “For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee.” Titus was to set things in order in the churches in Crete.
In chapter 1 Paul says that the church is to be an orderly organization (see Titus 1:5). In chapter 2 he emphasizes that the church is to teach and preach the Word of God: “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). He says that the church must be doctrinally sound in the faith. And then in chapter 3 we see that the church is to perform good works: “Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work” (Titus 3:1). In other words, the church is saved by grace, is to live by grace, and is to demonstrate her faith to the world by her good works.
I would say that it would be very difficult today to find a church that is using all three of these prongs, that is stressing all three of these tremendous emphases. Some will emphasize one, while others emphasize another. Let’s look at each one a little more closely:
First of all, the church is to be an orderly church. Everything, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, should be done decently and in order (see 1 Cor. 14:40). Sometimes you don’t find much order in a church, and often the reason is that there are a few officers who are trying to run the whole thing. Such a church is in real trouble and is a heartbreak to its pastor. The church is to be an orderly church, not run by a couple of deacons.
Secondly, in many churches you will find that there is no emphasis at all upon sound doctrine. Because of this, I always stress to young pastors that they should not focus on building a church or building an empire of any kind. I tell them just to teach and give out the Word of God. Rather than build an organization—that is, a lot of buildings—they should build into the lives of men and women. Whatever organization they have built in a church may be wrecked by others later on after they have left. That will be a real heartbreak to a pastor unless he has before him the goal of building into the lives of men and women. That should be the emphasis in any church.
Finally, a church should be ready for every good work. Sometimes we fundamentalists put such a great emphasis on doctrine (although I don’t think we overemphasize it) that we do underemphasize good works. A church should be engaged in good works. Many Christian organizations are so concerned with getting in the finances to carry on their program that they become more interested in getting people to give than in helping those people. A lot of folk need help—not just spiritual help but also physical help. We need to do things for people, to help them with their physical needs.
I am happy that I can say there are many churches which are carrying on a work of helping people. I know of one church which has people who go out and visit shut-ins; they read to them, sew for them, and do many other helpful chores. That’s a lovely thing to do. Our government is able to provide some care for the poor and needy, and that is wonderful, but we can go and sit down and talk with lonely people like this, which is a much-needed ministry today.
This is only a brief resumé of this epistle to Titus. Liberalism has attempted to emphasize the third chapter which deals with good works, forgetting the two chapters on order and doctrine which precede it. Until a church has all three of these aspects that Paul has outlined, it has no claim to be called “a New Testament church.”

OUTLINE

I. The Church Is an Organization, Chapter 1
A. Introduction, Chapter 1:1–4
B. An Orderly Church Must Have Ordained Elders Who Meet Prescribed Requirements, Chapter 1:5–9
C. The Bad Reputation of the Cretans, Chapter 1:10–16
II. The Church Is to Teach and Preach the Word of God, Chapter 2
A. The Church Must Teach Sound Doctrine, Chapter 2:1–10
B. The Church Must Preach the Grace of God, Chapter 2:11–15
III. The Church Is to Perform Good Works, Chapter 3
A. Good Works Are an Evidence of Salvation, Chapter 3:1–7 (The works of the Holy Spirit)
B. Good Works Are Profitable for the Present and Future, Chapter 3:8–15

CHAPTER 1

Theme: The church is an organization

INTRODUCTION


The introduction to Titus is characteristic of those in the Pastoral Epistles, but it is not characteristic of Paul’s other epistles.


Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness [Titus 1:1].

“A servant of God”—the word servant here actually means “bond slave.” Paul says that he is a bond slave of God. We know from the Old Testament that a bond slave was one who chose to remain a slave of his master for life.
“An apostle of Jesus Christ.” Paul is defending his apostleship. The reason that he asserts his apostleship here is that he is going to give instructions to the organized church. These instructions come from an apostle, the appointed writer of the Lord Jesus who was now communicating with His church through His apostles. The Epistle to Titus is a communication from the Lord Jesus to us also.
“According to the faith of God’s elect.” Paul does not say “for the faith,” but “according to the faith”—in other words, according to the norm or standard of faith which is set for God’s elect today. Whether you are saved or not does rest on what you believe. Tell me what you think of Jesus Christ; tell me what you believe about His death on the cross and what it means to you; tell me what you believe about His resurrection and what it means to you; tell me whether you believe the Bible to be the Word of God. With this information I think I can deduce whether you are a child of God or not. This is the norm, you see: “according to the faith of God’s elect.”
“God’s elect”—this is the way Paul speaks of saved people. He is not discussing the doctrine of election at all.
“And the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness.” This could be better translated “the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness.” The Greek preposition is kata, meaning “according to.” My friend, if the truth that you have does not lead to a godly life, there is something radically wrong with your faith.
I was told once of a preacher who drinks, cusses, and runs with the country club crowd. On Sunday he preaches the gospel, and people come forward every week. Another pastor in that community asked me, “Dr. McGee, how is it that that man is prospering?” I told him I honestly did not think the man was prospering. Maybe he is bringing a lot of numbers into the church, but he is not building the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Truth will lead to godliness, and if it doesn’t lead to godliness, it is not truth, my friend.
Paul will dwell on this theme that when the gospel is believed it will lead to godliness because the people on the island of Crete were abusing the grace of God. They said that if they had been saved by grace they were free to live in sin if they wanted to. Paul answers that right here in this first verse by saying that when the truth of God is believed it will lead to godliness. Grace saves us, but it also lays down certain disciplines for our lives and calls us to live on a high plane. You cannot use the doctrine of the grace of God to excuse sin. If you think that you can be saved by grace and live in sin—may I say this kindly, but I must say it—you are not saved by grace; you are not saved at all. Salvation by grace leads to a godly life.


In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began [Titus 1:2].

“In hope of eternal life.” The idea here is resting upon the hope of eternal life. In Titus we will see that Paul speaks of grace in three time zones. In Titus 2:11–13 we see all three: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation”—that is past; “teaching us”—that is present; and “looking for that blessed hope”—that is future. This is the hope that Paul is speaking of, and he says we are to rest upon that hope.
“Which God, that cannot lie.” This hope was promised by a God who cannot lie. In Romans 3:4 Paul wrote: “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar….”
Sometimes we believers almost make God out a liar by the lives we live. We say we believe something, but we don’t really believe, and we act as if we don’t believe. Paul says God cannot lie.
I have often wanted to preach a sermon on things that God cannot do. This is one: God cannot lie. Do you also know that you see something every day that God has never seen? You have seen your equal; God has never seen His equal. Why cannot God lie when we can? Well, you can do something God cannot do.
You see, God must be true to Himself. He is holy and He is righteous—that is His nature, and there are certain things He cannot do because of His nature. It is not because it is impossible for Him to do it; but because God is true to His nature, He cannot do it. He is righteous, He is just, and He never deceives. He is One you can depend upon.
“Promised before the world began”—this promise was made back in eternity.


But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour [Titus 1:3].

“In due times” means in His own seasons. God moves in a very orderly manner in what He does. God has made the peach tree to bud in the spring—it will not stick out those beautiful buds when the first snow falls; it waits until spring.
“Hath in due times manifested his word through preaching.” The word that is translated here as “preaching” comes from the Greek word kerux, which means “a herald” or “trumpet.” A trumpet was used in that day to make a proclamation. If a ruler had a proclamation to make, a trumpeter came out and blew a trumpet, and then the proclamation was made. That is the idea here. Paul is saying that God has in the correct seasons manifested His Word through a proclamation. He then adds that it has been committed to him to proclaim the Word “according to the commandment of God our Saviour.”


To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour [Titus 1:4].

“To Titus, mine own son” or my genuine son. Paul had led Titus to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Titus was Paul’s spiritual son.
“After the common faith”—the common faith is the faith that is shared by all, the faith that all believers must have. It is a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.” The grace of God has appeared, and, therefore, God extends mercy to us today. I don’t know about you, but I use up a whole lot of the mercy of God. I am grateful that He is good to me and does not deal with me according to my orneriness and disobedience. He has simply been good to me. Grace, mercy, and peace—peace is the present possession of the believer, but there is a peace coming when the Prince of Peace comes also. All these are “from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

AN ORDERLY CHURCH MUST HAVE ORDAINED ELDERS WHO MEET THE PRESCRIBED REQUIREMENTS


That is a pretty long title, but it belongs to a very important section of Scripture.


For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee [Titus 1:5].

Paul had left Titus in Crete to organize local churches with elders as spiritual leaders. The island of Crete is one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea. There was a great deal of mythology and tradition connected with this island as there generally was with all of the Greek islands. According to their tradition, Minos was the one who first gave laws to the Cretans. He conquered the Aegean pirates who were there, and he established a navy. After the Trojan War, the principal cities of the island formed themselves into several republics, mostly independent. Crete was annexed to the Roman Empire about 67 b.c. These chief cities were Knossos, Cydonia, and Gortyna, and apparently there were churches now in all these places. Paul seems to have done a very effective missionary work on the island, but we have no record of it in Scripture whatsoever. There is actually no absolute proof that before his voyage to Rome he ever went to the island of Crete. But from the information we are given in this little epistle, we are led to believe that he was there and left Titus to organize the churches which were founded by him and Titus.
Crete was evidently a pretty bad place, and the people were not very good people. Paul himself says that they were liars, and that is certainly the thing for which they were noted in that day. There was a Greek word, kretizein, which means to speak like a Cretan and was synonymous with being a liar. One of their own poets wrote, “Crete, which a hundred cities doth maintain, cannot deny this, though to lying given.”
Although they were known as liars, and Paul will have other uncomplimentary things to say about them, many of them turned to the Lord, and Paul writes to Titus to organize their churches.
“Set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city.” The gift of an elder is a gift of men to the church. Putting your hand on the head of some men and going through a little ritual will not make them elders. But I believe it is important to do that with men who do have the gift of elders. I think the churches in Crete had elders, but they had never been ordained, or set aside. They were men who had a gift of supervision of the churches and were exercising that gift without an authority. Titus is to “ordain elders”—appoint them, set them aside—“in every city.”
“As I had appointed thee.” Paul says, “I have appointed you, Titus, and you are to appoint elders in these cities.”
A man who holds the office of elder should have the gift of an elder. There are certain men who are made officers in the church who have no gift for it at all. That is half of our problem in many churches today, and the other half is that there are good men who have the gift and are not made officers in the church. As a result, some of our churches get into the hands of the wrong folk, and all sorts of problems arise.
Now here are the requirements for the men who are to hold this office:


If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly [Titus 1:6].

“If any be blameless”—that does not mean he must be perfect, without sin. It does mean that any accusation that is brought against him must not be found to be true. His life must be above reproach.
When someone can point a finger at an officer of the church and accurately accuse him of dishonesty, then the cause of Christ is hurt. It does not matter how naturally gifted a man may be, if someone can say that his speech does not reflect a dedication to Christ, then the cause of Christ is hurt, and that man should not be an officer of the church.
“The husband of one wife, having faithful children.” The idea here of “faithful children” means believing children. If a man cannot lead his own children to the Lord, he ought not to be an officer in the church. Please do not misunderstand me. I recognize that today in many wonderful Christian homes there is a son or daughter who is away from the Lord and who gives no evidence of godly upbringing. A man may be a fine, godly man who has wonderful Christian home, and he may not be guilty of anything that caused that boy or girl to turn from Christ, but he should not be an officer in the church. As an officer in the church, he might be called upon to make a judgment about someone else. That person in turn could point his finger and say, “What about you? What about your son, your daughter? What right have you to talk to me?” For the cause of Christ and for the sake of the office, an officer in the church must have believing, obedient children.
“Not accused of riot or unruly.” “Of riot” could be translated of profligacy. They are not to be out in a protest movement carrying placards, but instead they should be concerned with living a life glorifying to the Lord Jesus and with getting out His Word.


For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre [Titus 1:7].

This is so practical! A bishop (or elder) must not be “selfwilled” for he is a steward of God as well as a representative of the people. He is in the church to find and do God’s will.
“Not soon angry” means not touchy.
“Not given to filthy lucre,” that is, not covetous.
These are to be characteristic of “a bishop.” As we have said before, elder and bishop are synonymous terms. The word elder (presbuteros) refers to the individual, and he was to be a mature person both physically and spiritually. A bishop (episkopos) was an overseer; he ruled the church. Therefore, this word has reference to the office. But never was a church to have only one man made bishop or presbyter. There were always several.
There has been some disagreement as to whether there were elders already in the churches in Crete and Titus was to ordain them, or whether there were none and Titus was to now appoint some. If the latter was the case (which I do not think it was), then I feel that the churches would have had to agree upon the men Titus appointed. However, that is not the main issue, and it should not be the issue in churches today. Paul’s emphasis is upon a man’s personal requirements to hold such a position in a church.


But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate [Titus 1:8].

These are the requirements of the elder, and their meaning is familiar to us.

Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince gainsayers [Titus 1:9].

A better rendering of this verse would be: “Holding fast the trustworthy word according to the teaching, that he may be able to exhort in the sound teaching and to convict the gainsayers (heretics).”
There were two things that an officer should do: (1) He should be able to exhort, that is, to teach the Word of God; and (2) he must be able to confute or refute the heretics. I feel that men who hold office in a church should be Bible-trained men. During World War II we had what was called “ninety-day wonders.” The army needed more officers and so they put them through a short course in a hurry, and they came up with some rather peculiar second lieutenants in those days. Remember that Paul told Timothy to “lay hands suddenly on no man …” (1 Tim. 5:22). You are not to have a man converted one night, ask him to give his testimony the next night, make him an officer in the church on the third night, an evangelist on the fourth, and the pastor of the church on the fifth night! We sometimes do things like that today, and it is very unfortunate for the church. A church officer should be able to stand on the Word of God and to give it out.

THE BAD REPUTATION OF THE CRETANS


Paul is now going to talk about the bad reputation of the Cretans. We must remember that all men are sinners; we are all brothers in the sense that we are all sinners. All men are not in the brotherhood of God, because that comes only through the New Birth by becoming a son of God through faith in Christ. But surely we are all sons of Adam, and “in Adam all die,” because all have sinned (see 1 Cor. 15:22). However, these Cretans had a particularly bad reputation:


For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision [Titus 1:10].

“Vain talkers” means empty chatterers. There are certain Christians (perhaps you know some) who are rather frothy at the mouth; they just talk a blue streak. I rode once with a man for two hundred miles, and from the moment I got in his car until I got out, the only thing I had to do was grunt and he would keep on talking! If you had added up all he had to say, it was just a great big bag of nothing, a whole lot of hot air. There are many empty talkers. It is all right to have fun and be lighthearted, but what Paul is condemning is constant chattering with nothing but empty words.
“Deceivers, specially they of the circumcision.” Paul is referring to those who were seeking to contradict his teaching.


Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake [Titus 1:11].

“Who subvert whole houses” means to overthrow whole families. This was very serious. Wherever the Word of God is sown, the Devil gets in—he’s the enemy and he always sows tares among the wheat. I have found this to be true in my own experience. I was back East one time in an area in which our radio program is heard. We are reaching multitudes there, and many have come to Christ. But while I was there I learned that our broadcast is immediately followed by the broadcast of one of the cults. The speaker on that program attempts to “correct” my teaching of the Bible—the Devil always gets in. Similarly, a great work of Christ had been done in Crete, but the enemy was right there to sow his own seed.


One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies [Titus 1:12].

“Evil beasts” means the Cretans were rude and cruel. “Slow bellies” means lazy gluttons. Paul is not being very complimentary here, is he? But this is the reputation they had in the Roman world of Paul’s day. Paul is quoting a Cretan poet, Epimenides, who was born in Crete several centuries earlier. Another poet wrote, “Crete, which a hundred cities doth maintain, cannot deny this, though to lying given.” Paul said, “Cretians are alway liars.” This does not mean that everybody who lived in Crete was a liar anymore than when you say that all Scottish people are tightfisted—some are very generous. But the Cretans had the general reputation of being liars.
It is marvelous what the grace of God can do and did do among the people of Crete. They were liars, beastly, lazy people, who were big eaters. Many of them turned to Christ, and their lives were changed.

This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith [Titus 1:13].
Paul tells Titus that he is going to have to be a little more strict with the Cretans than he would with others because of their background and their very nature.


Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth [Titus 1:14].

“Not giving heed to Jewish fables.” Paul’s reference here is not just to legalism. There grew up around the Mosaic Law a great deal of writing, which includes the Talmud and much more. I have not read very much in these Jewish writings because they never really interested me. But I have read some, and there are some pretty wild tales in them.
“Commandments of men, that turn from the truth.” The Lord Jesus rebuked the religious rulers for adding traditions to God’s law, and that is what Paul is talking about here. The teaching of legalism is in two phases—one is that you are saved by the Law, and the other is that you are to live by the Law. Both of these teachings are very dangerous. We are saved by the grace of God and are actually called to live on a higher plane than that of the Ten Commandments. God gave the Ten Commandments to a nation, and I feel that they should be the law of the world today. When God says, “Thou shalt not kill,” that is for everyone, Christian and non-Christian—that is for the whole world. However, those who are saved by the grace of God are given instructions for living that is on an even higher plane than that.


Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled [Titus 1:15].

This is the verse that is used by the folk who say that if we are saved by grace, it doesn’t make any difference how we live; that is, if we are saved, we are pure and can live in any way we like. Certain cults, have developed this teaching, saying they can live in sin (they don’t call it sin—it’s not sin for them) because “unto the pure all things are pure.”
What Paul is talking about has nothing to do with moral issues at all. He is speaking to this issue of legalism and the eating of meats. The teaching of many legalistic cults often includes a very unusual diet. But Paul says, “Unto the pure all things are pure.” In other words, whether you eat meat or don’t eat meat makes no difference at all. All food is clean. If you want to eat rattlesnake meat, that is your business; it’s my business to keep away from it if I can! You can eat anything you want—“unto the pure all things are pure.”
If you are an unbeliever, any special diet you might concoct will make no difference in your relationship to God—it will not save you. You can eat all the vegetables you want, but if you are not right with God, they will not make you pure. The Lord Jesus said that it is not the thing that goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out of him (see Matt. 15:18–20).


They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate [Titus 1:16].

“They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him.” Many believers today can deny and do deny God by the lives that they live. And they deny the Word of God. I knew a man who was an officer in the church, and he carried the biggest Bible I have ever seen. When he put it under his arm, he leaned to that side! Everybody believed him to be very pious, but outside the church he had the reputation of not really being honest. He carried a big Bible, but he didn’t really believe it. You see, you can deny the Bible by the life you live, and you can deny God by the life you live.
“Being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.” Ceremonies and rituals cannot change the evil heart of man. Only the Word of God can change the human heart. When the heart is changed, the life will reveal the change. Paul and James were never in disagreement—they both said that faith without works is dead. Saving faith produces a godly life. As Calvin said, “Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.”

CHAPTER 2

Theme: The church is to teach and preach the Word of God

THE CHURCH MUST TEACH SOUND DOCTRINE


The church must teach sound doctrine or it is not a church. I have written a little book entitled The Spiritual Fingerprints of the Visible Church in which I go back to the Day of Pentecost where we are told that those who were added to the church on that day “… continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). These were the identification marks of the early church: the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. It really doesn’t matter how high the steeple may be or how beautifully the chimes may play, it is the message that is going out from the pulpit which will tell you whether the church is really a church, organized as Paul understood it and as the Word of God declares it.
In the first chapter we found that the elders whom Titus was to ordain were to be able to do two things: to exhort and to refute or confute the heretics. It is important not to spend your entire ministry refuting everybody. There are some men who have what I would call a negative ministry—all they do is attack the enemies of the gospel. That is important, but I believe we all need a balanced ministry. An elder should be able to exhort from the Word of God as well as be able to answer a heretic. In this second chapter Paul’s emphasis will be upon the teaching of the Word of God.


But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine [Titus 2:1].

“Sound doctrine” means the apostles’ doctrine. The number one thing of importance to the early church was the apostles! doctrine. What we read in these epistles is also a part of the apostles doctrine, by the way.
First of all, Paul has a message for the senior citizen—for the senior citizen who is male and for the senior citizen who is female.


That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience [Titus 2:2].

They are to be sound in their love and in patience. They are to be “sober,” that is, very vigilant, very serious. They should be men who are respected and self-controlled.


The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things [Titus 2:3].

“In behaviour as becometh holiness”—the aged women are to be reverent in their behavior
“Not false accusers,” that is, not gossips, and “not given to much wine,” or not drunkards.
“Teachers of good things.” The older women are to teach the younger women:


That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,

To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed [Titus 2:4–5].

“Keepers at home” means they are to be workers at home. I may get in trouble here, but I must say this: A wife’s first responsibility is in her home. The home is not a playpen; it is a serious responsibility to be a wife and to care for children in the home. It is not something to be taken lightly.
I am confident that Paul would never have approved of the women’s lib movement. I will stick my neck out even further and say that I am opposed to it—I think it’s wrong. I believe that a woman wants to be treated like a woman and not like a man. I was in a large business establishment recently where there were fifty stenographers, and from what I heard they were really promoting women’s lib in that office. I agree that women should be promoted according to their ability and paid according to their ability, but I noticed when we came to get on the elevator the ladies felt like they should get on first. I let them do that because I was taught to do so. If these women really want equality in every way, they should not be working just in offices, but they should also take work as ditchdiggers. However, I am convinced that that is not really what they want. My friend, the biggest and most important business in the world is the making of a home.
“Good” means kindly.
“Obedient to their own husbands.” The idea of obedience here is that the women should respond to their husbands. Paul uses the same Greek word in Romans 8:7 where it is translated “subject.” He says there, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (italics mine). Paul’s thought is that the natural man cannot respond to God; he cannot obey God; he has no way to respond to God. Now the wife is to respond to her husband; he is the aggressor, and she is to respond to him.
A great, big, brawny fellow once came to see me in my office, and he said, “I want you to talk to my wife and tell her to obey me!” I told him I would do nothing of the kind, and he asked me why. I said, “When’s the last time you told your wife that you loved her?” He couldn’t remember and said, “What has that got to do with it?” I told him, “That has everything in the world to do with it! Until you tell her that you love her, I don’t see why she should respond to you. Didn’t you tell her you loved her when you were courting? Well, just keep that up. The thing to do is to just keep up the courtship. You keep telling her that you love her, and she will respond to you a great deal better than she has been.” The wife is to respond to the love of her husband.


Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded [Titus 2:6].

Now Paul turns his attention to the young men, and he probably means that Titus is the one who is to teach the young men.


In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity [Titus 2:7].

Paul says to this young preacher Titus, “You be a pattern, an example, for the other young men.”
“In doctrine shewing uncorruptness.” “Uncorruptness” has the idea of uncorruptness—that is, in his teaching he is to show his complete faith in the Word of God and appreciate the seriousness of the matters he is dealing with.


Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you [Titus 2:8].

In other words, your conversation should reveal the fact that you are a child of God.


Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again [Titus 2:9].

“Exhort servants”—now Paul turns his attention to another group. In the early church there were many slaves. In fact, 90 percent of the names on the walls of the catacombs are those of slaves or ex-slaves. The gospel met a great need for this class of people in that day.
“To be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things.” Again, the idea behind obedience is that they should respond to their masters, be interested in them and in their work. Anyone, especially those in Christian work, should put their heart into their job or else get out of it. If you work for a Christian organization, you do it because you want to work for it. I hope you get a good living out of it, but that is not the point. Christian work is to be done with the heart as well as with the head and hands.
“Not answering again,” that is, not talking back to your employer.


Not purloining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things [Titus 2:10].

“Not purloining” means not stealing. Businesses lose many millions of dollars each year because employees steal from them. “Not purloining” means you should not be a thief.
“But shewing all good fidelity”—showing faithfulness.
“That they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.” The Greek word for “adorn” is the same word from which we get our English word cosmetics. I am often asked whether I feel Christian women should wear makeup. I would say yes, the kind Paul is speaking of here, and plenty of it. “Adorn the doctrine of God”—in other words, if you are sound in the faith, you should be wearing the appropriate cosmetics. I would like to see more of the lipstick of a kind tongue. Speaking kindly is a mighty fine lipstick. And then the face powder of sincerity and reality. My, there are all kinds of cosmetics that you should use today as a Christian.

THE CHURCH MUST PREACH THE GRACE OF GOD

Now Paul interrupts these admonitions to put a doctrinal foundation under the lives of these people. He states the gospel, and he states it in three time zones—the past, the present, and the future.
I grew up in the horse-and-buggy days, and I never cease to wonder at the speed of jet travel. Beside the actual speed of the planes, the crossing of time zones makes it possible to arrive at the end of a three- or four-hour flight and see that it is only an hour later than it was when you started. I understand they are working now on a plane that will travel three times the speed of sound. That means you could leave Dallas, Texas, and arrive in Los Angeles two hours before you left Dallas! That would be a wonderful thing.
However, I think the most wonderful thing in the world is that the grace of God is in three time zones. We see that in the next three verses: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared” (v. 11)—that’s the past time zone; “teaching us” (v. 12)—that’s the present time zone of grace; and “looking for that blessed hope” (v. 13)—that is the future time zone. These, then, are the three time zones of grace. Let us look at them a little more closely:


For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men [Titus 2:11].

Paul says to the Cretans, “I want to put under you the doctrine of the grace of God because you need a solid foundation.” The grace of God is the way God saves us. Years ago I heard a great preacher, Dr. Dodd, in Shreveport, Louisiana, say, “My pulpit is a place for good news; my study is the place for good advice.” The gospel is not good advice—it is good news. It is even more than that; it is the power of God unto salvation.
Paul is enjoining Titus to demand of the Cretans that they live lives that adorn the gospel, for it is the power of God. There is absolutely no excuse for any Christian to live a life of defeat and failure—“for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.”
“Hath appeared” means it shines forth—it is the epiphany. What the Lord Jesus did for us when He came more than nineteen hundred years ago is the gospel, the good news. He died for us, and He rose again. God doesn’t save us by His love, and He doesn’t save us by His mercy. Ephesians tells us: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8, italics mine). Mercy is the compassion of God that prompted Him to send a Savior to mankind. If one man could be saved by the mercy of God, all mankind would be saved. It wouldn’t have been necessary for Christ to die; the cross would have been circumvented. God loved men, but He didn’t save us by His love. Love is the divine motive, but God is not only love, He is righteous and holy and just. The holy demands of God, His just claims, and His righteous standard had to be met. The love of God may long to save us, but the immutable law of justice makes love powerless to do so. Therefore, Christ, by dying for our sins, met the holy demands of God’s justice, and He can now save us by grace. How wonderful it is to be saved by the grace of God! When we were guilty, Christ paid the penalty. Grace is not complicated or implicated with human effort. God doesn’t ask your cooperation; He doesn’t ask for your conduct or your character in order to save you. God only asks men to believe Him, to trust Him, and to accept Christ. God’s way is the best way, and it is the only way.


Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world [Titus 2:12].

God is not trying to reform this world; He is redeeming men who accept Christ. The gospel does not appeal to Christ-rejecting men to do better. When a person says, “I am going to try to do better,” I think he is a liar. If you have rejected Jesus Christ, you might as well try to get all you can out of this life, because this life is all that you are going to get. Today our government is trying to get people to stop smoking; they’re trying to educate people to the dangers of cigarettes. However, God is not asking you to do such things. You might as well eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you’ll die. God doesn’t want to reform you; He wants to redeem you.
“Teaching us”—teaching means child-training. God is calling those who are His own, who are redeemed, to live for Him and to avoid “worldly lusts.”


Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ [Titus 2:13].

“Looking for that blessed hope”—this is the next happening in the program of God: Christ is coming to take His church out of this world.
“The glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” This reveals that Paul taught the deity of Christ; he speaks of the great God who is our Savior, and who is He? He is Jesus Christ. And what did He do?—


Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works [Titus 2:14].

He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us. He paid a price for us that He might redeem us “from all iniquity.”
“And purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” “A peculiar people” would be better translated “a people for His possession.” It is true that God wants you to live for Him and wants you to do good works, but He will have to redeem you first, my friend.


These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee [Titus 2:15].

Paul says to Titus, “You are a young man. Don’t let them despise you because of the life you live.” Titus should be able to teach all these things with authority.
This has been a wonderful epistle. Every young preacher ought to study carefully the Book of Titus.

CHAPTER 3

Theme: The church is to perform good works

This epistle gives us the picture which covers the entire spectrum of what God wants for the church. We saw in the first chapter that God wants the church to be an orderly organization. Then we saw in the next chapter that the church is to be sound in doctrine. Now we shall learn that, to be all that God wants for the church, the church is to perform good works.

GOOD WORKS ARE AN EVIDENCE OF SALVATION


Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work [Titus 3:1].


The very first thing he mentions here is the fact that the church must have members who are law abiding. A believer should obey the laws of the land in which he lives unless those laws conflict or contradict his duty and relationship to God.
I always felt embarrassed when I taught evening Bible classes in downtown Los Angeles and would be requested to announce that someone had parked in a no parking place. Or sometimes I had to announce that a car was blocking a driveway so that the people who owned the driveway couldn’t get out. That kind of parking was breaking the law on the part of someone in my class who apparently didn’t pay very much attention to the fact that a Christian is to be subject to principalities and powers.
Now that brings up the question of what a believer should do when the laws of the land conflict with his duty and relationship to God. For example, should a young man who is drafted into military service go out to war when his real Christian conviction tells him otherwise? Fortunately in our country such a young man with real convictions against war can be a conscientious objector. He need not go into the armed forces to carry a gun, but he can spend the same amount of time as the other young men in the army but be assigned noncombat duties. I think any young man should be commanded for that, because I believe it takes courage and conviction for a young man under those circumstances to stand on his two feet and say, “Yes, I’ll serve; I’ll wear the uniform, but I cannot conscientiously carry a gun.” I think that sympathy and understanding should be granted to such a young man.
On the other hand, there have been many young men in this country who have run away to escape the draft. They did not run away because of religious conviction. I can’t think of any other explanation than that they were disloyal to their country. They were not obedient to this nation. These young men wanted to enjoy all the blessings and benefits of our nation but did not want to meet its responsibilities. They have broken the law and should pay the penalty.
We are to be subject to the principalities and powers over us. A church should teach this; part of the message that should be given to church members is that they should be obedient to the powers that be. That obedience is not the man but to the office that he represents. Perhaps you resent the manner in which a police officer gives you a citation for a traffic violation, but you should respect the uniform he wears. He represents the segment of our society that protects our persons and our property. Without them we would be in a bad way today.
This verse also raises the question of whether a Christian should go into politics or not. I believe that the individual Christian is free to go into politics, but I do not believe that the church should go into politics. If we would have a real moving of the Spirit of God, many, of the men from our churches would go into these different offices in government today.
A good example of this is the Wesleyan movement in England. Wesley never tried to straighten out the king of England or even the Church of England. He just went out and preached the Word of God. Men were converted, among whom were men like William Wilberforce, the great philanthropist and abolitionist. They were men who had been gamblers and drunkards, with no concern for the poor, until they came to know Christ. These men started the great labor movement associated with the Wesleyan revival in England, which was the beginning of the movement against child labor and the protection of workmen on the job. We need individuals who will enter into government and take social action, but the church as an organization is not called upon to go into politics.
“To be ready to every good work.” The church is to instruct individuals to be eager, to be anxious, and to learn to perform good works. We’ll note this as we go along.
Now there is also a negative side to the exhortation:


To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men [Titus 3:2].

“Speak evil of no man” means we are to malign no one, and we are not to repeat gossip. It has been said that you can’t believe everything you hear today, but you can repeat it! That is what he is talking about here—we are not to repeat what we hear. Many evil reports are passed from person to person without even a shred of evidence that the report is true. Another old saying is that some people will believe anything if it is whispered to them!
However, if the church has solid evidence that a member is doing something evil, that member should be named. You may remember that Paul named certain men who were evil men: Phygellus and Hermogenes, Hymenaeus and Philetus, and Alexander the coppersmith. Then he also said that Demas had forsaken him, having loved this present world.


For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another [Titus 3:3].

This is a picture of the unsaved today, and a picture of you and me before we knew Christ. We were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to lusts and pleasures, living selfishly, and hating others. That is a picture of the lost world.
You can go to visit in non-Christian homes, and you will find these things. Go into any business, any office, any factory, and you will see these things present. Unfortunately, you can see some of these same things in our churches. There can be a pretense of loving, but under it there is envying and hating and gossiping. You can find churches divided into little cliques and groups; yet they boast about how sound they are in the faith. That is a disgrace to the cause of Christ. This is a picture of the unsaved given to us here. It ought never to be a picture of you or me as believers.


But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost [Titus 3:4–5].

“Not by works of righteousness which we have done.” Verse 3 gave us a picture of how we were before we came to know Christ. It is important to understand that becoming a Christian doesn’t mean just turning over a new leaf—you will find yourself writing on the new leaf the same things that you wrote on the old leaf. Making New Year’s resolutions and promising to do better doesn’t make you a Christian. Nor are you saved on the basis of works of righteousness, good deeds, which you have done.
“But according to his mercy he saved us.” Because Christ died for us and paid the penalty for our sins, God is prepared to extend mercy to us; it is according to His mercy that He saved us. And He is rich in mercy, which means He has plenty of it. Whoever you are, He can save you today because Christ died for you. He paid the penalty and makes over to you His righteousness!
“By the washing of regeneration.” “Washing” means laver—it is the laver of regeneration. In the Old Testament the laver, which stood in the court of the tabernacle and later the temple, represented this.
This washing of regeneration is what the Lord was speaking about in the third chapter of John: “… Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). The water represents the Word of God—the Bible will wash you. It has a sanctifying power, a cleansing power. We are cleansed by the Word of God. The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God—“born of water and of the Spirit.” That is the way we are born again.
“And renewing of the Holy Ghost”—He regenerates us.


Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour [Titus 3:6].

Have you noticed that in everything God does there is a surplus? He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.


That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life [Titus 3:7].

“The hope of eternal life” is again pointing to the great hope of the believer, the coming of Christ for His church.

GOOD WORKS ARE PROFITABLE FOR THE PRESENT AND FUTURE


This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men [Titus 3:8].


The fact that the believer is saved by the grace of God does not excuse him from performing good works. The fact of the matter is, he is to “be careful to maintain good works.” Paul says that Titus should just keep affirming this constantly.
My friend, after you have been saved, God is going to talk to you about good works. Until that time, God is not even interested in your “good works” because what you call a good work, God calls dirty laundry. The righteousness of man is filthy rags in His sight (see Isa. 64:6). He doesn’t want any of that. He wants to save you. If you do come to Him just as you are, He will save you, because He has done something for you. He is not asking you to do something—what could you do for God? After you are saved, after you are a child of God, then He wants to talk to you about producing good works. He wants you to get involved in getting out the Word of God to others.
“Be careful to maintain good works.” These are things that you should think about and consider; ponder, be anxious to be producing works for God.


But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain [Titus 3:9].

We are to defend the faith, Paul says, but we are not to do it by argument or debate. That does no good; that never led anyone to the Lord. You may whip a man down intellectually by your arguments, but that does not touch his heart and win him for Christ. Stay away from foolish questions and genealogies and contentions.
That is the reason I do not develop certain subjects that are sensational. For example, during this period of time in which I am writing, demonism seems to be the topic of the hour. I have had any number of letters saying, “Dr. McGee, give a series on demonism. Write a book about it.” Let’s not get involved in that kind of thing. I would much rather tell you about the Holy Spirit who can indwell you. If He is in you, no demon could ever possess you! “… greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). That is what we need to know. It is so easy to get sidetracked.


A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject [Titus 3:10].

We have been asked to join in certain projects in which there are some heretics. I am not interested in being joined with anyone who has views that are in opposition to the Word of God. God tells us here to be separate from heretics. Just let them alone; reject them.


Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself [Titus 3:11].

The heretic is one who has turned aside from the truth.

When I shall send Artemas unto thee, or Tychicus, be diligent to come unto me to Nicopolis: for I have determined there to winter.

Bring Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing be wanting unto them.

And let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful [Titus 3:12–14].

Paul gives a final admonition about good works. We must “learn” to maintain good works. It’s something that must be worked at. A great many people think it is easy; we need to know what God considers good works, and we need to learn how to do them.
Paul concludes this practical letter to Titus with a benediction.


All that are with me salute thee. Greet them that love us in the faith. Grace be with you all. Amen [Titus 3:15].

(For Bibliography to Titus, see Bibliography at the end of 2 Timothy.)

The Epistle to
Philemon

INTRODUCTION

This is one of the most remarkable epistles in the Scripture. It is only one chapter; so you may have trouble finding it. If you can find Titus, just keep on going; if you find Hebrews, you have gone too far.
The Epistles (letters) in the New Testament were a new form of revelation. Before them, God had used law, history, poetry, prophecy, and the gospel records. When God used the Epistles, He adopted a more personal and direct method. And there are different kinds of epistles. Some were directed to churches; some were directed to individuals and are rather intimate.
Frankly, I believe that Paul had no idea his letter to Philemon would be included in the canon of Scripture, and I think he would be a little embarrassed. Reading this epistle is like looking over the shoulder of Philemon and reading his personal mail. Paul wrote this letter to him personally. That does not detract from the inspiration and value of this epistle. The Holy Spirit has included it in the Scriptures for a very definite reason.
Behind this epistle there is a story, of course. Philemon lived in a place called Colossae. It was way up in the Phrygian country in the Anatolian section of what is Turkey today. No city is there today—just ruins. But it was a great city in Paul’s day. One of Paul’s epistles was written to the Colossian believers. There is no record that Paul ever visited Colossae, but since there are many things we do not know, I suspect that Paul did visit that city.
The story of this epistle was enacted on the black background of slavery. There were approximately sixty million slaves in the Roman Empire where the total population did not exceed one hundred twenty million. A slave was a chattel. He was treated worse than an enemy. He was subject to the whim of his master.
In Colossae was this very rich man who had come to a saving faith in Christ. He apparently had come down to Ephesus, as Paul was there for two years speaking in the school of Tyrannus every day, and people were coming in from all over that area to hear him. There were millions of people in Asia Minor, and Philemon was just one of the men who came to know the Lord Jesus.
Now Philemon owned slaves, and he had a slave named Onesimus. Onesimus took a chance one day, as any slave would have done, and made a run for it. He did what most runaway slaves apparently did—he moved into a great metropolis. This slave made it all the way to Rome. In that great population, he could be buried, as it were, and never be recognized.
One day, this man Onesimus, who had been a slave, found out that there was a slavery in freedom and there was a freedom in slavery. When he was a slave, he didn’t worry about where he was going to sleep or what he was going to eat. His master had to take care of that. Now he has a real problem in Rome. I think he’s homesick and maybe hungry. I can imagine him going down the street one day and seeing a group of people gathered around listening to a man. Onesimus wormed his way into the crowd, got up front, and saw that the man was in chains. Onesimus had run away from chains, and he thought he was free, but when he listened to that man—by the way, his name was Paul—he thought, That man’s free, and I’m still a slave—a slave to appetite, a slave to the economy. I’m still a slave, but that man, although he is chained, is free.
Onesimus waited until the others had drifted away and then went up to Paul. He wanted to know more about what Paul was preaching, and Paul led him to Christ; that is, he presented the gospel to him, told him how Jesus had died for him and how He had been buried but rose again on the third day. He asked Onesimus to put his trust in Christ, and he did. Onesimus became a new creation in Christ Jesus.
Then Onesimus did what any man does who has been converted; he thought back on his past life and the things which were wrong that he wanted to make right. He said to Paul, “Paul, there is something I must confess to you. I’m a runaway slave.” Paul asked him where he had come from, and Onesimus told Paul it was from Asia Minor, from the city of Colossae. Paul said, “There’s a church over there. Who was your master?”
“My master was Philemon.”
“You mean Philemon who lives on Main Street?”
“Yes.”
“Why, he is one of my converts also. He owes me a great deal.”
“Well, Paul, do you think I should go back to him?”
“Yes, you should. Onesimus, you must go back, but you are going to go back to a different situation. I will send a letter with you.”
And we have his letter before us—the Epistle of Paul to Philemon.
In the human heart there has always been a great desire to be free. But right now there are millions of Americans who are slaves to alcohol. They are not free. They are alcoholics. Then there are those who are slaves to drugs. There are those who are slaves to the economy. There are slaves to the almighty dollar. We are living in a day when people pride themselves on being free. They think they are free, but the Lord Jesus said, “If the Son makes you free, then are you free indeed” (see John 8:36). You will not get arguments for or against slavery from this epistle. What you do learn is the freedom that is above all the slavery of this world. It is the freedom that every one of us wants to have.

OUTLINE

I. Genial Greeting to Philemon and His Family, vv. 1–3
II. Good Reputation of Philemon, vv. 4–7
III. Gracious Plea for Onesimus, vv. 8–16
IV. Guiltless Substitutes for Guilty, v. 17
V. Glorious Illustration of Imputation, v. 18
VI. General and Personal Items and Requests, vv. 19–25

Theme: Revelation of Christ’s love for us; demonstration of how brotherly love should work


The primary purpose of this epistle is to reveal Christ’s love for us in what He did for us in pleading our case before God. This is one of the finest illustrations of substitution. “If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account” (v. 18). We can hear Christ agreeing to take our place and to have all our sin imputed to Him. He took our place in death, but He gives us His place in life. “If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself” (v. 17). We have the standing of Christ before God, or we have no standing at all. Onesimus, the unprofitable runaway slave, was to be received as Paul, the great apostle, would have been received in the home of Philemon.
The practical purpose is to teach brotherly love. Paul spoke of the new relationship between master and servant in the other Prison Epistles. Here he demonstrates how it should work. These men, belonging to two different classes in the Roman Empire, hating each other and hurting each other, are now brothers in Christ, and they are to act like it. This is the only solution to the problem of capital and labor.

GENIAL GREETING TO PHILEMON AND HIS FAMILY


Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellow-labourer [Philem. 1].


Paul does not mention the fact that he is an apostle. When he was writing to the churches, he gave his official title: an apostle of Jesus Christ. But this is a personal letter to a personal friend. He doesn’t need to defend his apostleship. He intended for this to be very personal, and I think he would really be surprised to know it can be read by the whole world.
“Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ.” I have noticed that several of the commentaries try to change this and explain it away by teaching that Paul really meant that he was a prisoner because he was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that is not what Paul said, and Paul had the ability of saying exactly what he had in mind. He was using the Greek language, which is a very flexible, versatile language. He said he was a prisoner of Jesus Christ.
If we had been there we might have had a conversation with Paul like this:
“Poor Paul, it’s too bad these Romans put you in jail.”
“They didn’t put me in jail.”
“Oh, we know what you mean. Those hateful religious rulers brought a charge against you.”
“They didn’t put me in jail either.”
“Who put you in jail, then?”
“Jesus Christ. I’m His prisoner.”
“You mean to tell me that you would serve Someone who would put you in prison?”
“Yes, when it’s His will for me to be in prison, I’m in prison. When it’s His will for me to be out of prison, I’ll be out of prison. When it’s His will for me to be sick, I’m going to be sick. I belong to Him. Since I belong to Him, I have learned to be content in whatsoever state I am in. Everything is all right. Don’t worry about me.”
Obviously, the letter to Philemon is one of the Prison Epistles. It goes along with Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.
“And Timothy our brother” is really “and Timothy the brother.” That means he is not only Philemon’s brother and Paul’s brother, but he is your brother if you are a Christian. We all are brothers in Christ.
“Unto Philemon our dearly beloved.” Does that sound as if Paul is really buttering him up? I think so. But he loved this man, and he is going to make a request of him.


And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellow-soldier, and to the church in thy house [Philem. 2].

“And to our beloved Apphia.” She apparently was the wife of Philemon. While Philemon is a Greek name, and he was a citizen of Colossae, Apphia is a Phrygian name. That would suggest to me that a young businessman by the name of Philemon went into new territory. He didn’t go west as a young man; he went east—way up on the frontier. He got into business in Colossae and became a wealthy man there. He met and married a Phrygian girl named Apphia. They both now have become Christians. Isn’t that lovely?
“And Archippus our fellow-soldier.” I would assume this is their son. He is not a soldier of the Roman army, but a soldier in the army of Jesus Christ. Paul had written elsewhere that we all are to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ.
“And to the church in thy house.” Not only had they been converted, but they had a church in their house. Let’s think about this for a moment. The church building has become so all-important to people today that it is all out of relationship to the real purpose of the local church. The local church in Paul’s day wasn’t down on the corner in a separate building—they didn’t have any building. There were the great temples to the pagan gods, but the early church didn’t have buildings; they met in homes. It is estimated that for two hundred years the church met in homes.
The great cathedrals of the past were actually never meant for public meetings. Westminster Abbey in England, for example, was never intended for public services. It was built in the shape of a cross as a monument to Jesus Christ. Although I think they had the wrong idea—instead of spending all that money on a cathedral, they should have used it to send out missionaries—that was their way of expressing their devotion. The idea of putting the emphasis on a building and on a building program is a little out of line with the example of the early church.


Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [Philem. 3].

This is the usual greeting of Paul to every person and every church to which he wrote.

GOOD REPUTATION OF PHILEMON


I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers [Philem. 4].


Here is a man for whom Paul prayed. If you are writing out a prayer list of the apostle Paul, be sure to put Philemon on that list. The thought here is that every time Philemon’s name was mentioned, Paul prayed for him. This would indicate that Philemon was a rather prominent person.


Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints [Philem. 5].

The life of Philemon was a testimony. Paul describes it in a lovely way. He showed love toward the Lord Jesus and toward other believers. His faith was toward the Lord Jesus, and he was faithful to other believers. That is interesting.


That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus [Philem. 6].

His faith was shared. The life of Philemon was a testimony. “Every good thing” was the result of the fact that “… it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).


For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother [Philem. 7].

Paul had great joy and consolation in the love of Philemon for other believers and for him.
“Bowels” or heart implies the entire psychological nature. It is the inner life of the believers that had great satisfaction through him.
There are many wonderful Christians across this land whom I have had the privilege of meeting, of being in their homes, and of having fellowship with them. That has been one of the greatest joys of my ministry. Philemon was the kind of person who would have entertained evangelists and conference speakers in his home. He was a marvelous individual.

GRACIOUS PLEA FOR ONESIMUS


Wherefore, though I might be much hold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient,

Yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ [Philem. 8–9].


Paul is making a gracious plea for Onesimus. He is coming to the purpose of his letter. He approaches his subject diplomatically and cautiously and lovingly. He is going to make his request to Onesimus on a threefold basis:
“For love’s sake.” This is the love of Paul and Philemon for each other as believers in Christ Jesus.
“Being such an one as Paul the aged.” Paul was only in his sixties, but he was an old man. He had suffered and had been persecuted as a missionary for Christ. This had aged him. Paul says to Philemon, “You know that I am an old man now.”
“A prisoner of Jesus Christ.” It is evident that he could not come to Philemon in person.

I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds [Philem. 10].
Paul is pleading on behalf of his son. Paul was not married, but he had many sons. He calls Timothy and Titus his sons, and now Onesimus. These are his spiritual sons. He had led Onesimus to the Lord even though he himself was a prisoner at the time.


Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me [Philem. 11].

The name Onesimus means “profitable.” Paul really has a play on words here that is tremendous. He is good at that, by the way. Since his name literally means profitable, Paul is saying, “When you had Profitable, you didn’t have Profitable. Now that you don’t have Profitable, you do have Profitable.” You see, as a slave Onesimus wasn’t very useful. He didn’t work because he wanted to work. His heart wasn’t in it, and I guess I can’t blame him for that. But now Paul is sending him back to Philemon as a believer, and he says, “He is going to be profitable to you now. However, I don’t want him to be received as a slave.”


Whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels:

Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel [Philem. 12–13].

Paul is asking Philemon to receive Onesimus just as if he were receiving Paul. Now Paul admits that he would have liked to have kept Onesimus. I’m sure Paul would say, “My first thought was that this man knows how to serve, and I need somebody. I am here in prison, old and sick and cold. This fellow could help me. My first thought was to keep him here and just let you know that I have him here with me.” But Paul couldn’t do that. He says—


But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly [Philem. 14].

Paul is saying, “I wouldn’t keep Onesimus because that wouldn’t be right—although I thought of it. If you willingly want to send him back to me, that will be all right.” Did Philemon send Onesimus back to Paul? Again, that is something we do not know. I think he did. I would imagine that on the next boat going to Rome, there was Onesimus with a lot of things to add to Paul’s comfort.


For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever;

Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord? [Philem. 15–16].

Since Onesimus has become a believer, his status and relationship to Philemon are different. He is still a slave according to the Roman law, but he is more than that to Philemon. He is now a beloved brother.

GUILTLESS SUBSTITUTES FOR GUILTY


This verse, together with the next verse, gives us one of the grandest illustrations of full substitution and imputation. Behind Paul’s plea is Christ’s plea to the Father on behalf of the sinner who trusts Christ as the Savior. That sinner is received on the same standing that Christ is received. In other words, the saved sinner has as much right in heaven as Christ has, for he has His right to be there. We are accepted in the beloved (see Eph. 1:6).


If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself [Philem. 17].

“Since you count me as a partner, I want you to receive him just like you would receive me. You always put me up in that guest room. Don’t send him out in the cold; put him up in the guest room.”

GLORIOUS ILLUSTRATION OF IMPUTATION


If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account [Philem. 18].


We think that the credit card is something new in our day. We can buy almost anything with a credit card—from a gallon of gas to a chain of motels. Credit cards are used so much that one restaurant posted the sign: “We take money too.”
Paul also had a credit card. He had a credit card because he was a believer in Christ. Paul says, “Look, if Onesimus stole something from you or did something wrong, just put it on my account. Put it on my credit card.”
All of this is a glorious picture. When I come to God the Father for salvation, I can hear the Lord Jesus Christ say, “If Vernon McGee has wronged Thee or oweth Thee anything, put that on My account.” Christ on the cross paid the penalty for my sins. But that isn’t all. I am sure that God the Father would say, “That fellow Vernon McGee is not fit for heaven.” Then the Lord Jesus would say, “If Thou count Me therefore a partner, receive Vernon McGee as Myself.” That is what it means to be in Christ—accepted in the Beloved. Oh, what a picture this is of the way God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ accept you and accept me. That makes this a very precious epistle.

GENERAL AND PERSONAL ITEMS AND REQUESTS


I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides [Philem. 19].


“I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it.” The Lord Jesus Christ gave His life and shed His blood to pay our entire debt of sin.
“Albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.” Paul had led Philemon to the Lord. How could he ever repay Paul for that?


Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord [Philem. 20].

Paul is pleading for Onesimus.


Having confidence in thy obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say [Philem. 21].

As you can see, this is a personal letter, and in a sense we are reading it over the shoulder of Philemon. Paul expresses his confidence in him and actually feels that Philemon will do more than he requests.
It is characteristic of real believers to do more than is requested. Jesus asks us to go the second mile. Maybe the reason that some of us are so poor today is that we have been stingy with the Lord. The Lord is a generous Lord. We should be generous people.


But withal prepare me also a lodging: for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you [Philem. 22].

Paul expects to be released from prison. He requests prayers for that purpose. Since this letter was probably written during Paul’s first confinement in Rome, he was released and probably visited Philemon personally.


There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus;

Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellow-labourers.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen [Philem. 23–25].

This beautiful little letter concludes with personal greetings to mutual friends.
(For Bibliography to Philemon, see Bibliography at the end of 2 Timothy.)