A word from our dear brother in Christ in the 1800s, J.C. Ryle:
"A special faith in our Lord Jesus Christ's person, work, and office is the life, heart, and mainspring of the Christian soldier's character.
He sees by faith an unseen Savior, who loved him, gave Himself for him, paid his debts for him, bore his sins, carried his transgressions, rose again for him, and appears in heaven for him as his Advocate at the right hand of God. He sees Jesus, and clings to Him. Seeing this Savior and trusting in Him, he feels peace and hope, and willingly does battle against the foes of his soul.
He sees his own many sins, his weak heart, a tempting world, a busy devil; and if he looked only at them, he might well despair. But he sees also a mighty Savior, and interceding Savior, a sympathizing Savior-- His blood, His righteousness, His everlasting priesthood-- and he believes that all this is his own. He sees Jesus, and casts his whole weight on Him. Seeing Him, he cheerfully fights on, with a full confidence that he will prove "more than conqueror through Him that loved him" (Rom. 8:37)
Habitual lively faith in Christ's presence and readiness to help is the secret of the Christian soldier fighting successfully.
He that has most faith will always be the happiest and most comfortable soldier. Nothing makes the anxieties of warfare sit so lightly on a man as the assurance of Christ's love and continual protection. Nothing enables him to bear the fatigue of watching, struggling, and wrestling against sin, like the indwelling confidence that Christ is on his side and success is sure. It is the "shield of faith" which quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked one. It is the man who can say, "I know whom I have believed," who can say in time of suffering, "I am not ashamed." He who wrote those glowing words, "We faint not... for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." was the man who wrote with the same pen, "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." It is the man who said, "I live by the faith of the Son of God." who said, in the same epistle, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content... I can do all things through Christ." The more faith, the more victory! The more faith, the more inward peace!"
(Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots. J.C. Ryle)
Have faith my brothers and sisters... This is not our home. Fight the good fight. Your reward is waiting for you in heaven.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Do Not Be Deceived
One absolute, undeniable step in the transformation and salvation of a believer is the conviction that they are a sinner. Scripture tells us that, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Therefore, When the Word of Truth that is sharper than any two edged sword (Heb. 4:12) pierces our heart of stone, immediately our hard hearts begin the comprehend the true nature of our soul outside of Christ. It is a lost and damnable thing. Dead in sin (Eph. 2:1) enslaved to sin through debt (Romans 6:23), and that debt can only be paid by death because God is a Holy and good God, and will not let sin go unpunished.
This situation creates a serious problem when we observe our soul in the mirror of truth (God's Word). Through scripture we know that outside of Christ our hearts are full of evil deeds and rebellion against the Creator. It tells us that our heart is deceitfully wicked above all things, and questions who can even trust it. (Jeremiah 17:9) But we can know the Way, the Truth, and the Life only by Faith in Christ Jesus. He provided the payment for the sin of Believers by living a perfect life that we could never live, and dying the death that we deserve. By faith in Christ, we are justified before a Holy God, and freed from the bondage of sin. "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ." (Romans 8:1)
But as the Saints continue to pursue Christlikeness, they will surely come to understand more and more the deceit that their heart is capable of. This comes through reliance upon the Word of God to feed them daily so that they might become more like Christ.
D. Martyn Lloyd Jones wrote the following in light of the seriousness of using our discernment to follow the Truth:
Man today, as we have been saying, and as we know full well, not only believes he is being led by his mind; he rejects God because of his mind and understanding. He laughs at religion, he laughs at those who denounce this worldly view of life. He lives for the present; it is the one thing that counts. And he believes that to be a rational point of view to take. He proves it to his own satisfaction and is convinced that he is led by his mind. He does not realize that the light that is in him has become dark. He does not see that his faculties have become upset because of sin. He does not see that various forces are controlling and drugging his mind which is therefore no longer operating freely and rationally. But at the end he will come to see it; at the end he will come to himself like the Prodigal Son of old. Suddenly he will see that the things in which he trusted were dark, and have misled him, and that he has lost everything—the light in him is darkness and how great is that darkness! There is nothing worse than that, to discover at the end that the very thing to which you pinned your faith is the one thing that has let you down.
All this can be seen in that picture of Dives and Lazarus in Luke 16. That man, I am sure, justified himself day by day and said, 'It is all right.' But after he died and found himself there in hell, he suddenly saw it. He saw that he had been a fool all his life. He had done it all deliberately, and it had led him to this. He saw what a fool he had been, and he pleaded with Abraham to send somebody to his brethren who were doing the same thing. He discovered that the light that was in him was darkness and that it was great darkness. That is one of the most subtle deeds of Satan. He persuades a man that by denying God he is being rational; but, as we have seen already several times, what is really happening is that he makes him a creature of lust and desire whose mind is blinded and whose eye is no longer single. The greatest faculty of all has become perverted.
If you are not a Christian do not trust your mind; it is the most dangerous thing you can do. But when you become a Christian your mind is put back in the center and you become a rational being....Truth must be received with the mind, and the Holy Spirit enables the mind to become clear. That is conversion, that is what happens as the result of regeneration. The mind is delivered from this bias of evil and darkness; it sees the truth and loves and desires it above everything else. That is it. There is nothing more tragic than for a man to find at the end of his life that he has been entirely wrong all the time.
...Sin is a total loss. If you are not living to serve Him, then that will be your fate. You will have nothing at all, and you will dwell in that negativity, that hopeless negativity through all eternity. God forbid that that should be the fate of anyone within reach of these words. If you want to avoid it, go to God and confess to Him that you have been serving earthly things, and laying up for yourselves treasures upon earth. Confess it to Him, give yourself to Him, place yourself unreservedly in His hands and above all ask Him to fill you with His Holy Spirit who alone can enlighten the mind, clear the understanding, make the eye single and enable us to see the truth—the truth about sin, and the only way of salvation by the blood of Christ—the Holy Spirit who can show us how to be delivered from the perversion and the pollution of sin, and to become new men and women, created after the fashion and pattern of the Son of God Himself, loving the things of God and serving Him, and Him alone.
(D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, [Eerdmans: 1976], 375–377.)
This situation creates a serious problem when we observe our soul in the mirror of truth (God's Word). Through scripture we know that outside of Christ our hearts are full of evil deeds and rebellion against the Creator. It tells us that our heart is deceitfully wicked above all things, and questions who can even trust it. (Jeremiah 17:9) But we can know the Way, the Truth, and the Life only by Faith in Christ Jesus. He provided the payment for the sin of Believers by living a perfect life that we could never live, and dying the death that we deserve. By faith in Christ, we are justified before a Holy God, and freed from the bondage of sin. "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ." (Romans 8:1)
But as the Saints continue to pursue Christlikeness, they will surely come to understand more and more the deceit that their heart is capable of. This comes through reliance upon the Word of God to feed them daily so that they might become more like Christ.
D. Martyn Lloyd Jones wrote the following in light of the seriousness of using our discernment to follow the Truth:
Man today, as we have been saying, and as we know full well, not only believes he is being led by his mind; he rejects God because of his mind and understanding. He laughs at religion, he laughs at those who denounce this worldly view of life. He lives for the present; it is the one thing that counts. And he believes that to be a rational point of view to take. He proves it to his own satisfaction and is convinced that he is led by his mind. He does not realize that the light that is in him has become dark. He does not see that his faculties have become upset because of sin. He does not see that various forces are controlling and drugging his mind which is therefore no longer operating freely and rationally. But at the end he will come to see it; at the end he will come to himself like the Prodigal Son of old. Suddenly he will see that the things in which he trusted were dark, and have misled him, and that he has lost everything—the light in him is darkness and how great is that darkness! There is nothing worse than that, to discover at the end that the very thing to which you pinned your faith is the one thing that has let you down.
All this can be seen in that picture of Dives and Lazarus in Luke 16. That man, I am sure, justified himself day by day and said, 'It is all right.' But after he died and found himself there in hell, he suddenly saw it. He saw that he had been a fool all his life. He had done it all deliberately, and it had led him to this. He saw what a fool he had been, and he pleaded with Abraham to send somebody to his brethren who were doing the same thing. He discovered that the light that was in him was darkness and that it was great darkness. That is one of the most subtle deeds of Satan. He persuades a man that by denying God he is being rational; but, as we have seen already several times, what is really happening is that he makes him a creature of lust and desire whose mind is blinded and whose eye is no longer single. The greatest faculty of all has become perverted.
If you are not a Christian do not trust your mind; it is the most dangerous thing you can do. But when you become a Christian your mind is put back in the center and you become a rational being....Truth must be received with the mind, and the Holy Spirit enables the mind to become clear. That is conversion, that is what happens as the result of regeneration. The mind is delivered from this bias of evil and darkness; it sees the truth and loves and desires it above everything else. That is it. There is nothing more tragic than for a man to find at the end of his life that he has been entirely wrong all the time.
...Sin is a total loss. If you are not living to serve Him, then that will be your fate. You will have nothing at all, and you will dwell in that negativity, that hopeless negativity through all eternity. God forbid that that should be the fate of anyone within reach of these words. If you want to avoid it, go to God and confess to Him that you have been serving earthly things, and laying up for yourselves treasures upon earth. Confess it to Him, give yourself to Him, place yourself unreservedly in His hands and above all ask Him to fill you with His Holy Spirit who alone can enlighten the mind, clear the understanding, make the eye single and enable us to see the truth—the truth about sin, and the only way of salvation by the blood of Christ—the Holy Spirit who can show us how to be delivered from the perversion and the pollution of sin, and to become new men and women, created after the fashion and pattern of the Son of God Himself, loving the things of God and serving Him, and Him alone.
(D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, [Eerdmans: 1976], 375–377.)
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