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Antinomianism By Paul Seiler

 So that's Matthew chapter 5 and reading verses 1 through 12.
These are of course the beatitudes and the beatitudes are actually a description of what it means to be a citizen of Christ's kingdom.
So these are a description and all of the beatitudes apply to every believer.
So we read Matthew chapter 5 verse 1.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil things against you falsely for my sake.
Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
And now reading from Psalm 119 and just reading the first 16 verses.
Psalm 119 we read.
And incidentally, for those who are not aware of this, Psalm 119, each section actually in the Hebrew, it goes right through the Hebrew alphabet.
And so each section in Psalm 119 and it's broken up into, I think there's 24 letters, if I'm not wrong, in the Hebrew alphabet.
And each part of the Psalms, every single letter in each section starts.
So the first one is Aleph and then in the following one it all begins with the second letter of the Hebrew.
It's an amazing Psalm. But let me read it to you from Psalm 119 and read him from verse 1.
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.
Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with a whole heart.
They also do no iniquity, they walk in his ways.
You have commanded us to keep your precepts diligently.
O that my ways might be directed to keep your statutes.
Then I would not be ashamed, when I look into all your commandments, I will praise you with the uprightness of heart.
When I learn your righteous judgments, I will keep your statutes.
O do not forsake me utterly.
How can a young man cleanse his ways?
By taking heed according to your word.
With my whole heart I have sought you.
O let me not wander from your commandments.
Your word have I hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes.
With my lips I have declared all the judgments of your mouth.
I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies, as much as in all riches.
I will meditate on your precepts and contemplate your ways.
I will delight myself in your statutes.
I will not forget your word.
Okay, well reading now from Romans chapter 6,
I'm actually, this is the sermon that I preached at Annerley this morning.
We've been going through Romans, and Romans 6 is one of the most,
well it, I mean none of the book of Romans is easy.
And Romans chapter 6 is a particularly difficult chapter.
But we shall endeavour to throw some light on what Paul says in this chapter.
Now the issue that he is concerned with is actually spelt out in verse 1.
This is what he says.
What shall we say then?
Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
Certainly not.
How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
Or do you not know that as many of us were baptised into Christ Jesus,
were baptised into His death?
Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death,
that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,
even so we also should walk in the newness of life.
For if we have been united in lightness,
if we have been united together in the lightness of His death,
certainly we also shall be in the lightness of His resurrection,
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be done away with,
and that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.
Death no longer has dominion over Him.
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all.
But the life that He lives, He lives to God.
Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin,
but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body,
that you should obey its lusts, or you should obey it in its lusts.
And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin,
but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead,
and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
For sin shall not have dominion over you,
for you are not under law, but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace?
Certainly not.
Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey,
you are that one's slave whom you obey,
whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?
But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin,
yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.
And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.
For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness,
and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness,
so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed?
For the end of those things is death.
But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God,
you have your fruit to holiness, and the end everlasting life.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Well how can I be sure that I am a genuine Christian?
Or how can I be sure that someone else who actually claims to be a Christian
is in fact indeed a Christian?
How can we determine the genuineness of faith?
Well that's the actual question that I take up here.
Now just let me draw your attention to what Jesus says about recognizing what a false prophet is.
Because I think that this bears on that question.
This is what Jesus said about knowing a false prophet.
He says you will know them by their fruits.
Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles are they.
Even so every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So then you will know them by their fruits.
So the question is how can you be sure that a person who claims to be a Christian is a genuine Christian?
Well I think that you can certainly apply what Jesus says here about false prophets.
That a tree, a good tree is known by the fruit that it bears.
And that a genuine Christian is to be recognized by his or her behavior.
That if you are genuinely converted that will be evidenced in the way that you live in the world.
Where is that from?
That is actually from Matthew chapter 7 verses 15 through 20.
And I bring that quote from Matthew 7 because in essence that really is the fundamental point that Paul is making in this passage.
Now the question that Paul is concerned to answer in Romans chapter 6 is this question that he poses right at the beginning of Romans chapter 6.
He says this.
What shall we say then?
Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?
He is concerned with what in the church has become known as antinomianism.
I don't know whether you know or have ever come across the word antinomian.
But it is derived from the Greek word law, nomos.
And an antinomos or an antinomian is someone who is against God's law.
And Paul in Romans 6 is dealing with those people who would take his doctrine of justification.
And that they would twist it around and say well look if that is what you are saying Paul then what it means is that we might as well go out and sin all that we like.
Because all it will do is just magnify the grace of God.
Now you might say well was he raising a hypothetical question here?
And the answer is no.
The unfortunate fact is that there have been many antinomians in the church.
Let me just give you one classic example.
Some of you may be aware of a man by the name of Grigory Rasputin.
Probably didn't know his first name but you may well have heard the name Rasputin.
Well Rasputin was a Russian monk.
And he lived in the latter part of the 19th century, in the early part of the 20th century in Russia.
Just before, in the time of the last Tsar, the last emperor of Russia.
Just before Russia, actually before the revolution.
And of course later it became communist.
So he lived in that period of time.
And the reason that we know about him is he became very very friendly with the family, with Tsar Nicholas and particularly his wife.
And that friendship was based on the fact that this Rasputin actually had or at least claimed to have the ability to heal people.
And the heir to the throne, that is Nicholas' son, was a hemophiliac.
And Rasputin was actually claiming to be able to help the son.
Whether he did or not I've got no idea.
But that is where the friendship sort of built up.
He had a bit of a reputation for being a healer.
But he didn't only have a reputation as a healer, he also had a reputation as being an extremely immoral person.
And was constantly committing sexual immorality.
And was well known for a very wicked and an evil life.
So on the one hand he was claiming to be a man of God but he was actually practicing very evil practices.
And in fact he actually claimed that it was a good thing to act, to do sin and then to repent.
Really he was a classic antinomian.
He was saying well look you can sin all you like and all you've got to do is repent and that's a good thing.
And so you go along, it's almost like the person you know that thinks,
well you know I can go and do whatever I like through the week.
I go and see the priest on Sunday, say a few Haumeres or so forth and write back to it in the next week.
That is antinomianism.
And what I would say to you is this.
I don't think that you will find in the church, at least in the church that I belong to, the Presbyterian Church of Australia,
you don't find many people saying that sort of thing.
I mean you don't often get people who are as bold as to say well look you know we can go and sin all we like.
But what you do get is you do get more subtle forms of antinomianism.
You get people that so emphasize the doctrine of justification that they have no room for the doctrine of sanctification.
Now you understand the difference between justification and sanctification.
Justification is when God pronounces us in a right relationship to Himself.
That is an instantaneous thing that happens.
Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in our life progressively making us more and more conforming to the image of Christ.
And what is plainly evident in this chapter is that Paul is wanting to emphasize that if a person is justified,
that is if a person is declared to be in a right relationship with God,
that they will also be in the process of sanctification.
That is it will necessarily follow on.
You can't have justification without sanctification.
These two things dovetailed together, they come in a package.
You can't have one without the other.
That is what he is really saying.
His main thesis in this chapter is to say that the Christian is a person who has died to sin.
It is particularly important to note the actual tense that he uses in Greek.
He doesn't say that the Christian is dying to sin.
He says the Christian has died to sin.
That is it is something that has happened in the past.
It happened the moment that you and I became a Christian.
The moment that we became a Christian is the moment that we died to sin.
So it is a past action completed in the past.
So what we can say is and what Paul does say, and he repeatedly says in this chapter,
is that our old self is completely gone.
It is no longer there, dead and buried.
He actually speaks about being baptised into Christ's death.
So united with Christ that Christ's death becomes our death, Christ's burial becomes our burial.
Now when you bury someone, that is really the ultimate proof that they have ceased to exist.
And so that is what we can say about our old self.
The moment that we become a Christian is the moment that old self, the person who we used to be,
not only has died but has been buried and that old self is never to be raised up again.
We have actually been raised up again but as new creatures walking now in the light of God's power.
That is, God is at work in us.
Look at what Paul says in verses 6 and 7.
He says, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him,
that our body of sin might be done away with,
that we should no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is freed from sin.
So what Paul says here is, look, you used to be, before you were a Christian,
you used to be a slave to sin, you were under the tyranny of sin.
You couldn't help yourself then, because sin reigned over you.
But the moment that you become a Christian, your old self was dead and buried,
and that is no longer the case. Sin cannot reign over the true Christian.
Now look at verse 14, particularly important, the first phrase in Romans 6, 14.
Paul says, for sin shall not be master over you.
Now he's not giving a commandment here.
What Paul is doing in verse 14 is stating a fact.
The fact is that sin cannot, indeed it is impossible for sin to be the master over a genuine Christian.
Now he's actually using here an idea that's taken from slavery.
You know that in, like for example, in the situation that Paul was in,
slavery was a very, very common thing.
Now you just imagine that here is this master and his slave dies,
falls down dead on the job.
And the master says to his slave, he says, all right, get up and go and do such and such.
Well, the slave is not going to do anything. Why?
Well, he's not a slave anymore, is he? He's dead.
And that slave master can order him to do whatever he likes, but the slave is dead.
And so therefore that slave master has no more control over him.
And that is exactly what Paul is saying is our relationship in Christ.
When we become Christians, we are no longer enslaved to sin.
Now that doesn't mean that we don't sin anymore,
but it does mean that our old slave master, namely sin, is dead and he can't control us anymore.
He does bob up his head many times, as we well know, and give us a hard time.
But he can never, ever control us anymore because we are new creatures.
That's the point that Paul is making.
And what he also points out, and he does this a little bit later in this chapter in verse 16,
is that a slave can only have one master.
In other words, what Paul is saying is this.
Look, if you're living like Rasputin, serving the devil, then you prove only one thing.
You prove that you are serving your one master sin.
But if, on the other hand, you're living in a manner that is bringing glory to God,
you prove otherwise that you're serving another master.
So your conduct proves which master you're serving.
And you can only serve one master. Let me read verse 16.
This is from the version that I've been using.
Paul says,
Now, under our system, of course, you can have more than one employer.
You could actually have two employers.
You could be working a day job and a night job.
You could have two employers.
But a slave could not do that.
A slave could only have one master, because that master owned all of his time.
See, so you could only, and that's the point that Paul is making.
You're either under the master, namely sin,
or you're under another master, namely Christ and righteousness.
Jesus made the same point.
You remember over in Matthew chapter 6, verse 24.
He said,
Or he will hold to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
And so Paul argues that you're either a slave to sin,
or, on the other hand, you're a slave to Christ,
or a slave to righteousness.
Although he's not entirely happy, if you read this chapter,
he's not entirely happy with speaking about a Christian being a slave to righteousness,
because slavery gets the idea that you might have to do something unwillingly,
whereas a Christian never, ever does good unwillingly.
A genuine Christian actually wants to be good.
I mean, the genuine Christian doesn't say,
Oh, look, I've got to be good today.
I really want to be evil today.
A Christian shouldn't and doesn't.
Well, it's not that a Christian shouldn't think that way.
A Christian simply doesn't think that way.
That's what Paul is saying.
Well, I want to begin by demonstrating
why Paul's doctrine of justification can actually so easily be misrepresented.
There's a certain logic that you could apply to Paul's doctrine of justification
that can lead you down the road of antinomianism.
I'm not saying it does,
but I'm saying that there is a certain way in which to take what Paul says
that does tend to lead in that direction
unless you take other things into consideration.
Paul certainly says some things about the law of God
that could easily be misapplied.
Let me draw your attention to the second phrase in verse 14.
Now, I want to say to you that Romans 6, 14 is a particular text
that has very often been misunderstood by people,
but notice what he says in the second part of Romans 6, 14.
Paul says,
For you are not under law, but under grace.
You are not under law, but you are under grace.
Now, you ask yourself, what precisely does he mean
when he says that you are not under law?
Well, what I would put to you is this.
What he means is that you are no longer answerable to the law.
The law has no more. If you are a Christian,
you are not in a relationship to the law,
you are in a relationship to Christ,
and the law has no call upon you.
It can't condemn you anymore.
You are not under the law.
You are not bound by the law anymore.
Well, let me try to explain it in another way.
You know that in Romans chapter 5,
Paul speaks about being either in Adam or being in Christ.
So there are two types of people in the world.
We are all by nature, when we are born into this world, we are in Adam.
And it is only by being born again that we come into Christ.
So we are either in Adam or in Christ.
Now, what does it mean to be in Adam?
Well, what it means to be in Adam is that we are in a certain relationship with God,
wherein we are under law.
To be in Adam is really equivalent to being under law.
Now, you need to go back to Genesis and see what God required of Adam.
In the Garden of Eden, God required of Adam that he should obey God perfectly.
And if Adam had rendered perfect obedience to God,
he would have continued to live in the Garden of Eden.
We would still be in the Garden of Eden if Adam had done what he was capable of doing,
namely, remaining obedient to God.
So his eternal life was earned, if you like, by,
or at least he would forfeit, you could say, his eternal life, if he disobeyed.
So his eternal life was conditional upon perfect obedience to God,
something that Adam could in fact do.
And what I want to put to you is this.
Every one of us who is born into this world by nature
are under the same conditions that Adam was created.
That is, that God requires us the same thing that he required of Adam.
That is what it means to be an Adam,
that we are to render unto God perfect obedience.
Now, if you're at all in doubt that that's what the Bible says about all people,
just consider what Paul says in Galatians 3.10.
Because in Galatians chapter 3 and verse 10,
Paul actually quotes the book of Deuteronomy,
and this is what he says, Galatians 3.10.
Cursed is everyone who does not abide in all things
written in the book of the law to perform them.
Now the point surely is this,
that if you are under law, which everyone who is in Adam is,
then it means that you have got to render to God perfect obedience.
That is the only way that anyone under law could be acceptable to God,
by rendering perfect obedience.
But the trouble is that ever since Adam fell into sin,
no one, no human being has been capable
of actually rendering perfect obedience to God.
So therefore all the law can do is point its finger at us and condemn us.
That's all the law can do.
It can't save us because none of us are capable of actually keeping it.
Jesus kept it and he was the only one,
but as Paul says in Romans 3.23,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
But of course the good news that Paul is telling us here
is that we who are Christians are not under law, we're under grace.
That is, when we are joined to Christ,
it's not as though God has dropped his standards in any respect,
but because we are joined to Christ,
Christ's perfect law keeping becomes our law keeping
and Christ's substitutionary death washes away all of our sin.
So in that sense we are no longer under law
because Jesus has kept the law, he fulfilled it perfectly
and he died an atoning death for our sins.
Both by his active and passive obedience,
he has fulfilled the law's demands.
Let me put it another way.
I think that many of, and I'd like to be corrected,
you might know more about ambassadors in Australia than I do,
but as I understand, if you are an ambassador from another country in Australia,
you have what is called diplomatic immunity.
That is, let's say an ambassador from another country broke one of our laws.
What would happen is that this ambassador
could not be tried under Australian law.
For the simple reason, he is not a citizen of Australia.
He is not under our law.
He is here, but he is a representative from another country.
He is under the laws of his own country,
but he is not under the laws of Australia.
The only thing that the Australian government could do
if an ambassador committed some crime in Australia
would be to send that ambassador back to his country
to be tried by his own legal system.
He could not be tried in Australia for the simple reason
that ambassadors have diplomatic immunity.
And I would suggest to you that that is precisely
what Paul is really saying about the Christian.
There is a sense in which we have immunity from the law.
We are under grace. We are not under law.
Now, the clearest statement that Paul makes as far as this goes
is actually found in Romans 8 and verse 1,
where Paul says,
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
In other words, the law cannot touch you,
because we are not under law.
It can never, ever condemn you or I.
Now, the logic of that is to say,
Well, look, if what Paul is saying is true,
if I am not under law, but I am under grace,
then that means that I could go and commit adultery,
or I could go and steal or even murder somebody,
and not lose my salvation,
because I am not under the condemnation of the law,
or I am not under the law, it can't touch me anymore.
So surely the logic of that is to say,
Well, I could go and do any sin I like
and not come under the condemnation of the law.
Now, there is a sense in which that logic is perfectly correct.
What I would say to you is this,
is that some Christians, having committed very grievous sins,
I mean, Davey committed adultery,
I mean, he wasn't a Christian, but he was a child of God,
and he didn't lose his salvation,
so it would be possible, you see, to say,
Alright, well, the Christian is not under law,
the law can't bring condemnation upon him,
therefore doesn't this actually incite Christians
to go out and sin all the more,
because they've really got no restraints upon them,
the law is no longer upon them to restrain them.
But Paul's answer is that,
Look, no Christian ever thinks that way,
because it overlooks a much more important truth,
and that is that when you become a Christian,
an absolute change takes place in your whole disposition.
When you become a Christian, you're no longer a slave to sin anymore,
you actually become enslaved to righteousness.
That is, let me put it in Jesus' words in the Beatitude in Matthew 5 and verse 6,
Jesus says,
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.
You see, the genuine Christian actually hungers and thirsts after righteousness.
Those of us who are Christians know that yes, you may sin,
but what happens when you do sin?
You feel awful about it.
I mean, even minor sins can cause you great grief.
Let me just give you one illustration.
I remember Carol and I went into a restaurant,
one of these ones where you can help yourself,
and she took the salad bar and I didn't.
And she brought back, I forget what it was,
but I think she got extra stuff from the salad bar and gave it to me,
and I ate it.
And when I came home, I thought about it,
and I was absolutely mortified,
because I thought if I'd wanted to eat from the salad bar,
I should have paid the money for it.
And you know, like we do minor things like that,
and you don't think about it at the time,
but later you see it's the Holy Spirit at work,
basically making sure that you as a Christian
are not going to get an easy time with sin.
You might sin, but He is not going to make it easy for you.
The fact is that we have the power of God at work in us as believers.
And when He works in us, when we become Christians,
not only are we forgiven,
but we actually have the Holy Spirit come into us
who actually changes our behaviour,
changes the whole disposition of our life.
Now let me just give you one demonstration of this.
Some of you may have heard of the missionary David Brainard.
He was actually a friend of Jonathan Edwards,
and he has written a diary of his work among the American Indians.
He worked for about two years without seeing any success whatsoever,
and then he went to a place called Krosweeksang,
and he began to minister to these Indians in Krosweeksang.
And it was an amazing thing, it was nothing other than a revival.
Many of these Indians became Christians.
And what convinced David Brainard that a genuine work of God had taken place among them
was not so much the fact that they were saying,
look, we've become Christians, not so much what they were saying,
but what in fact he saw happen in that society.
These people used to get drunk, they didn't get drunk anymore.
They used to fight amongst each other, they stopped doing that.
They began to take their marriage vows seriously.
There was a complete transformation in that society.
In fact, he moved them from where they were to another place, set up a church,
and there was a very strong church,
and Christianity had a completely transforming effect upon that pagan society.
They weren't just forgiven of their sins,
but the power of the gospel actually came into their lives.
You might note that in verse 17 of Romans 6,
Paul talks about obedience from the heart.
And what he's talking about there is the fact that not only are we justified,
but when God works a work in us, God actually gives us a new heart.
So that in Ezekiel 11, this is what Ezekiel said about hard-hearted people of Israel,
people who wouldn't walk with God, people who were simply unconverted.
Ezekiel said this, and I'm quoting now from Ezekiel 11, 19 and 20.
He says,
And I shall give them one heart, and I shall put a new spirit within them,
and I shall take out the heart of stone out of their flesh,
and give them a heart of flesh,
that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances to them,
that they will be my people and I shall be their God.
Now what Ezekiel is saying is this.
Look, he's saying a time is going to come when God will pluck out your stony hearts,
and He will put in the place of those stony hearts a heart of flesh.
And when God does that, then you will walk in His statutes and you will keep His ordinances.
But God has to work in you to take out that hard heart,
the hard heart that naturally loves darkness,
and to put a new heart within us that loves righteousness.
And the whole point is this.
Whenever God justifies us, He also gives us His Holy Spirit.
He also gives us a new heart,
so that our whole disposition as Christians is not that we want to sin all the more.
And that's why we can look at a person like Rasputin,
who actually wants to say,
Well, you know, you can just keep on repenting of your sin and keep on getting forgiveness.
We would say to Rasputin,
No, you're a liar and the truth is not in you,
because your conduct betrays that you're not a servant of righteousness,
but you're serving sin.
Your whole conduct is all about sin and serving the master sin.
The apostle John put it this way.
He says,
And this is the message that we have heard from Him and announced to you,
that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.
If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness,
we lie and do not practice the truth.
That's 1 John chapter 1, verses 5 and 6.
That if we say that we're in the light, He says,
and yet walk in the darkness, what does that mean?
It means that we're a liar.
You can't claim to be a genuine Christian and yet live like the devil.
And when people say,
Look, I'm a Christian, but then begin to make light of sin,
laughing about their own sins,
making it clear that they don't think that being holy is an important thing,
then I think alarm bells should start ringing in our ears.
Now I don't say we should start becoming the judges of men,
but we do need to be discerning.
And we need to be aware that if God has worked in our lives
to justify us, to declare us in a right relationship with Himself,
He will also be at work in us to make us good.
Now there's one last point, and a very important point,
that is in a sense the opposite of what I've been speaking about,
and that is I've been speaking about how a Christian is under grace
and not under law.
But what we need to understand as Christians is that
all unbelievers are under law, they're not under grace.
So every unbeliever is under law,
which means that every unbeliever is actually required
to keep God's law perfectly.
That's what it means to be under law.
It means that you're in a relationship with God
that requires you to fulfill His law completely.
And as I quoted before, Galatians 3.10,
Cursed is everyone who does not abide in all things written
in the book of the law to perform them.
So if a person is under law, they are duty-bound by God
to actually fulfill the law completely.
Now that has certain implications, and very important implications.
Let's take for example the philanthropist,
that person who gives his money.
Here is this benevolent person who gives large amounts of money
to this charity, who gives his time and effort to helping the poor
and the needy, does all sorts of good work,
has no relationship to Christ, but his life is filled,
or her life is filled, with doing good things.
Now it's often supposed that a person who lives such an exemplary life,
of giving to others and being kind-hearted in this way,
would surely go to heaven.
But that is not true, because you see that person is under law.
And unless they can fulfill the law completely,
yes they have fulfilled it partially in being generous to others,
but unless they can fulfill it absolutely 100%,
they can never be saved, because they are under law.
They are not in a relationship to Christ.
So all of their good deeds in the world are not going to help them one iota.
Now let's take members of other religions.
People that belong, say, people who are Buddhists or Hindus
or Sikhs or Jews or Muslims.
Now I think that we are all aware that in those other religions
there are some good teachings.
I remember years ago reading Buddhism,
and I was very impressed by many of the things that I read in Buddhist teaching.
And I'm sure that people who follow Buddhism,
some are very good living people.
But is that going to help them?
And the answer is no.
It won't help them at all, because they are under law,
which means that they have got to keep the law of God perfectly
if they are going to earn salvation that way.
I mean I've heard people say, you know, if a person belongs to another religion
and they live up to the light that is in their religion
that they will get saved on that basis. No!
Because that person is under law.
That means that they have got to fulfill the law of God absolutely 100%
in order to earn salvation that way, and they can't do it.
Because we are all sin, all have sinned for short of the glory of God.
So to be under law is to be under the condemnation of the law.
What about the person who is in the Church
who really believes in a salvation by good works?
We get those people. I've got them, I think, in Annerley, some people.
They tend to think of Christianity this way.
I was brought up in the Church,
I've always held the Church to be an important institution,
I've always valued the standards of the Church,
the teachings of the Church, I've always been a good Christian,
always been a member of the Presbyterian Church.
And these people are really trusting in their own merit,
their own religiosity, their own good works, or whatever it is.
And they think that by that they have earned God's acceptance.
But the fact is that they are under the law.
And unless they have fulfilled God's law perfectly,
there is no salvation along that track,
which means that there is salvation in no one else
other than in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You see, Paul's whole point in Romans
is that the only way to be in a right relationship with God
is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that means really a relationship with Him.
It means being a new creature, it means that the old person is dead,
it means that we have become a new person in Christ.
It means a miracle has taken place in us,
the miracle of salvation.
And unless that gracious work has taken place in us
and we have come to a true relationship with Christ
where we actually trust in Him and not in our own merit,
then there is absolutely no hope of salvation.
Jesus said,
Jesus said,
I am the way, the truth and the life.