The Christian And The Non-Christian # 2

The Christian And The Non-Christian # 2

The Gospel always comes as a contrast. It is not an extension of human philosophy, it is not just a bit of an appendix to the book of life, or merely an addition to something that men have been able to evolve for themselves. No! It is altogether from God, it is from above, it is from heaven, it is supernatural, miraculous, divine. It is this thing which comes in as light into the midst of darkness and hopelessness and unutterable despair. But it does come like that; and thank God, I say again, that it does.

The position we are confronted with is this. We are looking at the modern world in terms of this accurate description of it, and we see that everything that man has ever been able to think of has failed to cope with it. Is political action dealing with the moral situation? Is it dealing with the international situation? Can education deal with it? Read your newspapers and you have your answer. Hooliganism is not confined to the uneducated. Take all your social agencies, everything man has ever been able to think of. How can it possibly deal with a situation such as that which we have been considering in verse 17, 18 and 19? (Ephesians 4:20). When you are dealing with a darkened mind, with a hardened heart, with a principle of lasciviousness controlled the most powerful factors in man, all opposed to God, all vile and foul, what is the value of a little moral talk and uplift? What is the power of any legislation? You cannot change men's nature by passing man's laws, by giving them new houses, or by anything you may do for them. There is only one thing that can meet such a situation; and thank God it can! "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," says the great Apostle, as he looks forward to a visit to the city of Rome with all its grandeur and its greatness, as well as sins and its foulness. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," he says, and for this reason,"it is the power of God unto salvation." And because it is the power of God it holds out a hope even for men and women who have given themselves over, abandoned themselves to the working of all uncleanness with greediness.

I have often said that there is nothing so romantic as the preaching of the gospel. You never know what is going to happen. I have this absolute confidence that if the vilest and the blackest character in this city of London today hears this message, even if he is the most abandoned wretch in the foulest gutter, I see hope for him, because of the gospel, this but that comes in, this power of God! The gospel comes into the midst of despair and hopelessness; it comes in looking at the life with a realistic eye. There is nothing, apart from the gospel, that can afford to be realistic; everything else has to try to persuade itself like a kind of self-hypnotism. Here is the only thing that can look at man as he is, at his very worst and blackest and at his most hopeless, and still address him. Why? Because the power of God is in it. And this is a power that can make men anew and refashion them after the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Apostle is about to tell us. It is the work of the Creator. So the Gospel comes in this way, and the words "But you" remind us of the whole thing.

But even more, and this is the point in particular that the Apostle himself is addressing here - these two words. But you at once provide us with a perfect and a comprehensive description of the Christian. Paul has described the "other Gentiles;" he is now describing the Christian. What does he tell us about him? Obviously, in the first place, he tells us that the Christian is one who by definition has been separated from and taken out of that evil world. The "other Gentiles?" - that is how they are living. "But you!" There has been a separation, the Christian has been laid hold of, he has been dragged out of that, and he has been put into another position. He was once like others, but he is no longer like them. Clearly, becoming a Christian is the profoundest change in the world. That is where, I suppose, the final enemy of the Christian faith is morality. And that is why I sometimes feel that Thomas Arnold, of Rugby fame, was perhaps of all men in the last century the one who did the greatest harm. His teaching, and the teaching of his followers has obliterated this particular point, this complete change, this translation, this movement. But it is this truth that is emphasized everywhere in the Bible about God's salvation. You find the Psalmist speaking of it, he talks about being lifted up out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and his feet being established upon the rock. He has had to be hauled up out of the slime, the horrible pit! taken hold of, lifted up, and set upon a rock, while his goings have been established on a different level. Now that is Christianity, and it is only as the Church comes back to the realization of it that there is any hope for revival at all.

To establish the point I am making, let us hear Paul at the beginning of his Epistle to the Galatians. He is thanking God for His wonderful grace in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he puts it like this: "Who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present world" (!:4). That is why Christ died. The first object of His dying on the Cross was that He might deliver His people from this present world; He takes hold of them and pulls them out of it. Listen to the Apostle again as he writes to the Colossians: "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son." When you become a Christian you change your realm, you are no longer in the kingdom of satan, you belong to the kingdom of God and of His Christ; you are no longer in the kingdom of darkness, but you are in the kingdom of light. These are Paul's terms and every one of them emphasizes this movement, this translation. You are not simply improved a little bit just where you are; that is never the business of Christianity; it never does that. It is something new. And it is going to end in a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

~Martyn Lloyd-Jones~

(continued with # 3)