Some Problems No.7 Feeling Forgiven

I don't understand myself at all. For I really want to do what is right, but I can't. I do what I don't want to, what I hate.

I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong. And my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. But I can't help myself because I'm no longer doing it.

It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things. I know I am rotten through and through, so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can't make myself do right.

I want to, but I can't. When I want to do good, I don't, and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. Now, if I am doing what I don't want to, it is plain where the trouble is.

Sin still has me in its evil grasp. It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love to do God's will, so far as my new nature is concerned.

But there is something else deep within me in my lower nature that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God's willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin. So you see how it is.

My new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I am in. Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Thank God.

It has been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free. So there is now no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus for the power of the life-giving Spirit, and this power is mine through Christ Jesus, has freed me from the vicious circle of sin and death.

Verse 33. Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for His own? Will God? No, He is the One who has forgiven us and given us rights standing with Himself. Who then will condemn us? Will Christ? No, for He is the One who died for us and came back to life again for us and is sitting at the place of highest honor next to God, pleading for us there in heaven.

Who then can ever keep Christ's love from us? When we have trouble or calamity, when we are hunted down or destroyed, is it because He doesn't love us anymore? And if we are hungry or penniless or in danger or threatened with death, has God deserted us? Verse 38. For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from His love. Death can't and life can't, the angels won't and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God's love away.

Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow or where we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when He died for us. You may care to have your Bibles open at Paul's epistle to the Romans. And the 8th chapter.

I want to bring to you at least a couple of messages during this Sunday and the following Sunday morning, which will be complementary to meditations that I shared with you on the problem of guilt. I made, and perhaps you'll allow me a moment or two just to set the context for those who were not present a couple of Sundays ago. I made the observation from this pulpit that the concern of the gospel is not primarily to create guilt within the heart of the hearer.

That of course is one of the objectives, but it is not the finishing post. It may be a milestone along the way, for you cannot trust Jesus as Lord and Master until you're sorry for your sin. The objective of gospel proclamation is not so to measure on human inadequacy that one always feels absolutely disqualified to live out life on this earth.

Rather it is to point one from guilt to forgiveness. From the inadequacy within the human breast to the all-sufficiency that there is in Jesus Christ. Now I cited two case histories, if you like, to demonstrate this point during those last two Sunday mornings.

We looked into the experience of David and also that of Peter. In many ways they were very similar indeed. Both these remarkable men, remarkable in their own right, had let the Lord down.

And they had to be confronted with the enormity of their sinfulness. Do you remember how we get something of an insight into David's psychological state, his guilt-ridden condition in Psalm 32 and 38 and also 51? Do you recall how God sent Nathan, his spokesman, his pastor, to David and how this man was dealt with in a very wonderful way? To the extent that David, having come out of his period of spiritual despondency, having known the great balm of the love of God cleansing him from his sin, is able to say, Psalm 32, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

Now similarly Peter, he has to be accosted by that denial, that terrible betrayal of all his convictions when he disassociated himself from the Christ of God. Do you remember how Jesus makes an appointment with Peter on the seashores of Galilee? This guilt-sodden man is encountered by the Lord Jesus. This man who had more darkness in his heart at the night of the betrayal, the night of the denial, than there was in the natural atmosphere.

Jesus deals with Peter and he is forgiven. And when he comes to write his letters, those two mighty epistles tucked away at the end of the New Testament, Peter mages on the fact of the forgiveness of the great shepherd of the sheep, the one who brought Peter, who ensured Peter that he was still in the fold. So then, here were these two case histories of men, absolutely guilt-ridden, but God did not leave them there.

It is never, I repeat, and I will continue to repeat, it is never God's purpose to leave men in a guilty condition, in a state of wondering whether or not they are forgiven or reconciled to Him. What then is the major objective of the Gospel for the glory of God? I say it is succinctly put, it is well summarized, it is majestically expressed in Romans chapter 8 and verse 1. If you haven't these words written across your memory and you claim to be a Christian, then shame on you. This is one of the pinnacles of God's revelation of saving grace to the sinner.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. That's the goal of the Gospel. That's the target to which Gospel preaching is moving.

For a man having been guilty, having recognized the enormity of his sin, having looked to his past and being disgusted by it, to have encountered Jesus Christ, the forgiveness that He offers, and to move into that glorious, delightful, exquisite experience of sins forgiven, well does the hymn writer enjoin us to sing about a full salvation. And it seems to me it's more and more necessary, not just for us to work it in, but to work it out in terms of our lifestyle, in terms of our mental attitudes, in terms of wholesome personalities. There is therefore now no condemnation.

I care not if you listen to nothing else that I have to share this morning. If you forget everything else that I offer for the attention of other people, provided you go away with this one fact burning in your heart, that in Christ Jesus, having been forgiven, you can then enter into the glorious state of no condemnation. There is not one sin in your life, there is not one misdemeanor, there is not one unhealthy thing in which you engaged that God, the eternal God, now remembers.

If it be the case that you have trusted Jesus as Lord, no condemnation. Listen to Wesley as he puts it, no condemnation now I dread. Jesus and all in him is mine, alive in him my living head, and clothed in righteousness divine, bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own.

My dear friend, I tell you that there is nothing more vital today than for Christian people to recognize who they are, what they have become, what they have received, because they belong to Jesus Christ. All things passed away, all things become new, all things that would haunt, all things that would create problems, they have been dealt with by the blood of Jesus Christ, to the extent that we can forget those things which are behind, no longer allowing them to plague us, because we are new in Christ. Now, all this, I argue, can be concluded not only from this first verse of Romans 8, but by the chapter that preceded it, Romans 7. However you understand the Apostle Paul in this piece of argumentation, I'm not really concerned.

Whether you think this is biographical, or as Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones does, that this is hypothetical, it really does not in any way interfere with what I am pointing to this morning for your attention. Here in the seventh chapter of Romans is the situation of a man who hates his past. Here is the condition of one who feels absolutely helpless to cope with the demands of his conscience over against the deficiencies of his weak base nature.

It's summed up perhaps more clearly than the words I've just used. In the 18th verse of Romans 7, 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. And he goes on to talk about this great problem of always feeling that he can never cope with the past, he can never rise to the challenge of the present, and the future is a forbidding prospect.

He loses himself in a sea of self-pity, he feels absolutely inadequate, there is the life that he ought to attain to, and the life that he's living, and he sees no possibility of reconciliation, no bridge at all. And in the 24th verse he cries out in a soul agony, O wretched man that I am! What a predicament I find myself locked into! What an irresolvable problem! What can I do? I know that I'm base. I have memories that haunt me and I can't cope with them.

Who can come to my aid? Dare you send this man to Sigmund Freud? Dare you send him to the humanists? They'll say, you're saying it's unreal, you're only doing what other people have done. Get rid of your complexes, be blase about your lifestyle. They'll stir up his emotions and when they've settled he'll be in exactly the same condition.

O wretched man that I am! But thank God this wretched man isn't left in a morass of despair and despondency. Like David, like Peter, he's going to be pointed to someone who can deal with his problem, even God. And so hard on the heels of that terrible cry, O wretched man that I am, is that tremendous affirmation, I thank God, if you like, for Jesus Christ the Lord.

Here is my problem, there is the solution. Here is my dilemma, there is the medicine that will cope with my problem. Here is my guilt, there is my antidote.

And so, gathering all of Romans 7 together, it's brought to its final conclusion in the first verse of the following chapter. There is therefore now no condemnation to those which are in Christ Jesus. Of myself I cannot cope.

My own endeavors I can't get rid of, that which is unpleasant. I will never be able to rise to what I believe is a nobler way of life. Of myself, no.

But in Christ Jesus, yes. I move from the category of the one who is condemned to the category of the one who is renewed, who is made again. There is therefore now no condemnation.

That word, no, is one of the biggest in the Bible. And that sounds absurd. It's only got two letters to constitute the word.

But sometimes a two-lettered word in the Bible has a whole dictionary encased within it. There is therefore now no condemnation. Never.

This is an absolute statement. The man, the woman, who has been incorporated into the body of Christ, who shares in the victory of Christ, will never again be condemned. No condemnation, not now, not in the past, nor in the future, because Jesus has died.

That my condemnation shall be extinguished. Do you remember the thieves on the cross alongside our blessed Redeemer? They've been there for some hours. At the beginning of the Passion, at the beginning of the awful Crucifixion, they've been mocking Jesus along with the bystanders.

And then, influenced by the majestic presence of Jesus, that silent holiness, which had a remarkable impact on those who were sensitive, one of the criminals changed his tune. And we read in Luke 23, verse 39, these words. One of the malefactors, one of the criminals, which were hanged, mocked Jesus, saying, If you be Christ, save yourself and us.

But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, Do not fear God. Seeing thou art in the same condemnation, and we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man, this man here, he's done nothing amiss.

We are condemned, the whole human race. Every son, every daughter of Adam is condemned. They have broken God's law.

But this man has done nothing amiss. Full marks to the theological precision of that criminal's grasp of sin and the human condition. We are condemned, every one of us here.

Condemned because we have broken God's law. Wretched, miserable, vile. We may not acknowledge it, but in truth, that describes us.

Then to whom do you go when you feel guilty? To whom do you go when you feel condemned? Here's the absurdity of certain principles of modern psychiatry who accuse, or which accuses the evangelical church in its gospel of stimulating and accumulating guilt within the hearts of men and women. Why did Jesus come into the world to make us feel guilty? No! Jesus came into the world so that we might, on response to what he has done for us, know forgiveness. John chapter 3 makes it so clear.

You can't argue against my assertion, my teaching this morning. 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 Jesus 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.

Jesus came to create guilt. No! Jesus came to neutralize guilt. Jesus came to lance guilt.

Jesus came to lift us out of the old nature and to bring by the power of his indwelling Spirit us into a new nature. He came to incorporate us into himself. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Oh, my friend, I tell you not for any dramatic effect God deliver me from theatrical attempt to preach. I tell you from the depths of my heart, I wish I had the vocabulary, the persuasive ability to plant these concepts in your mind so that perhaps they will revolutionize your spiritual walk with Christ. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

We are incorporated into him if we belong to him. I am more part of Jesus Christ than I am part of any other organization or if it were possible organism in this world. For me, he died.

And my past life, those things which I regret, those experiences that are unwholesome, the times when I let him down, those things that merit and brought condemnation of God, they now no longer exist. There is therefore now no condemnation. Now no condemnation.

Not for the past, nor for present sins, nor even for future sins. He died for them all. All my iniquities on him were laid.

He nailed them all to the tree. Do you believe that? Do you believe it from the depth of your being? When you wake up on Monday, do you realize that as you wake up, you wake up as a son of God, as a daughter of God? Not for your life to be harassed by unpleasant thoughts of the past. Not for you to feel in any way that there is something that has irrevocably come between you and God.

You're made one with Jesus. You're accepted in the Beloved. You're heirs of Jesus Christ.

Joint heirs with Christ of all the Father's blessings. If I had miraculously kept to my notes, which rarely I seem to manage, I would by this stage be taking you through Romans 8, which would underpin the point on several occasions as to the position that is now yours in Jesus. Verse 9 tells us that we've received the Spirit of Christ.

That won't be taken from us. Verse 14 tells us we're sons of God. That privilege will never be lifted out of our grasp.

Verse 17 tells us that we're joint heirs with Christ. Verse 21 tells us, rather verse 23 tells us, that we're moving to a time in history when we shall know the redemption of our bodies besides the redemption of our souls. Verse 28 tells us that in the absolute purposes of God we have a part.

Verse 31 tells us, and the language here is majestic, that God has done all that He possibly can do historically to demonstrate that we belong to Him. If God be for us, who can be against us? He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us. How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? So Paul comes back to the problem that is a nightmare to the man in Romans 7, verse 34.

Who is he that condemns? Who has the cheek, who has the audacity to slide alongside the believer and condemn him? No one has that right. No one has that power. Why not, Paul? Well, because of Calvary.

It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. That Christ who took my sin. That Christ into whose mystical body I have become part.

I have been inaugurated. He is by the Father's side, interceding for me. So again the apostle says in the 35th verse, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine? No condemnation, no separation.

There's nothing in my life that can ever take from me the blessings I enjoy because I belong to God through Jesus. I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from His love. Death can't, life can't, the angels won't, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God's love away.

Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, or where we are, high above the sky, or in the deepest ocean, nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when He died for us. Do you really believe that? Nothing. No condemnation.

No separation. I was reading late into last night, and I came across a passage by that great man of God whose name I referred to earlier, Martin Lloyd-Jones. And he was saying in a book that he's written called Spiritual Depression.

I wasn't feeling depressed last night, I just wanted to find this particular quotation. He was saying that in all his pastoral experience, the thing that seems to dog, the thing that seems to blight the mind of so many Christians and interfere with their assurance is their inadequate grasp of what Jesus has done for them. Let me sum it up this way, says the good doctor.

You and I, and to me this is one of the greatest discoveries of the Christian life. I shall never forget what realizing this for the first time did for me. You and I must never look at our past lives.

We must never look at any sin in our past life in any way except that which leads us to praise God and to magnify His grace in Christ toward us. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ. What might have robbed Paul of his assurance? Do you remember he was the man who if he didn't put the stones in the hands of those who robbed Stephen of life, he certainly was an accomplice for the death of Stephen.

That great preacher whose story is recorded at the end of Acts chapter 7. I sometimes wonder how Paul ever coped with his conscience after that death. Paul who had been a persecutor of the church, who had brought terror into the hearts of Christian womenfolk in Jerusalem, who had their husbands incarcerated in jail. Paul who was going to set off for Damascus to eradicate the city there of any followers of Jesus.

He now becomes a Christian. But the great problem for the apostle Paul is to forget that for which Jesus died in his past, which if he constantly dotes upon it will rob him of his effectiveness in the present and also in the future. But Paul responding to the magnificent grace of God, he looks to the past and instead of allowing it to cripple him, it becomes a stimulus.

If God can lift me from that, then how great is the salvation of Christ. If Jesus could die for my guilt as an accomplice to the death of Stephen, if Jesus could die for the fact that I had been a persecutor and a blasphemer, how great is his salvation. And how I can say of a truth, and all can benefit from it because they know the life of the man who pens the words, there is therefore now no condemnation.

Not even to the apostle Paul. If I got time, which I haven't, I'd share with you a further part of my late evening studies. I went through all the Hebrew verbs in the Old Testament and all the Greek verbs in the New Testament to discover what God does with sin when it's been confessed.

And the languages of the Bible are much more eloquent than our English vernacular in describing what the Lord does with sin and how the Lord forgives. And there are some great concepts in both Testaments which speak about, well in the Old for example, as far as the East is from the West so far as God separated our iniquities from him. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, keeps on cleansing us from all sin.

Do you really believe that? Peter one day was told not to call unclean what God has cleansed. The context doesn't apply just at the moment. But there are Christian people who are looking back to the past that has been cleansed still allowing it to be thrown into the present and it might even blight the future because in effect they're doubting God's word.

It's gone. Irretrievably gone. God not only forgave it, he forgot it.

Dr. Sangster of Westminster fame. On one occasion I understood, gave an illustration. I read it about 15 years ago and I haven't checked it so don't push the details but this was it in essence.

Of what I believe were called the old sludge chips that used to leave the port of London. Some of the untreated sewage and muck of London was channeled into the holds of those ships. And when they were full they would set out on their regular daily voyage down the Thames to its mouth, then to the channel, then ultimately to the North Sea and over the continental shelf where there are fathomless depths of water.

The holds at that point were open and all the muck and all the filth of London sunk, fathoms down. I said, Sangster, that's what God in Christ has done with our past. The confessed sin and inadequacy of Christian people.

It sunk in the sea of his forgetfulness and now there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ. They're new in him and there's no separation. Once in him.

That made you jump. Once in him. In him.

Forever. The exquisite experience of being forgiven is what God wants you to enjoy. Amen.

And on the merits of our Saviour's death and resurrection we bask, O Lord, in the joys of sins forgiven. No condemnation. No separation.

May this be the platform from which we live out the remainder of our lives. May we enjoy being forgiven. Amen.