Guarding the faith

1 Timothy 6:20 & 21 Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn
away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called
knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the
faith. Grace be with you.
Aberystwyth castle is over 700 years old. It is one of the less imposing castles of
Wales. Cromwells soldiers did too good a job on its demolition 300 years ago. But it
has a magnificent prospect, its walls are six feet thick, and one tower still stands
around the entrance gate. There is a ditch in front of it across which a drawbridge
would have been let down. That would have been taken up at night to protect the
doorway, but if enemies had lowered it there were other defences. One can see the
channels down which came the portcullises. A castles thick walls surround the
central tower, the keep. Here the governor of the castle lived and all that was
valuable would have been stored there. Keeps were impressively strong. If there
were a well, and a good supply of food, its residents could sit tight for a year while
the invaders, far from home, had to forage in the surrounding countryside, survive
the winters and avoid being picked off by guerrillas in the darkness. The keep was
the place of safety.
In this text Paul is telling Timothy to guard and keep what had been entrusted to
him. The apostle is referring to the essence of the gospel, and the heart of all that is
distinctive in the Christian religion. It has been summarised like this: We believe in
the inspiration, inerrancy and authority of Scripture; in God as Creator, as one God
yet three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; in Jesus Christ, conceived
by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, one person yet both human and divine;
in the fall of man into sin, and of salvation from sin by God through the atonement
of his Son and by his Spirit; in death, the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, in
the resurrection, the final judgment, in everlasting joy in heaven and everlasting
misery in hell. Such a summary of the Christian faith is by Bob Sheehan found in
his booklet, What is an Evangelical? Do we Understand? which beliefs he listed as
part of the Evangelical Library lecture in Bath in 1994.)
These Christian beliefs were coming under attack even in the apostles day. There
were false teachers and Paul disdains their godless chatter and the opposing ideas
of what is falsely called knowledge (v.20). There were some people who once had
shown an interest in the gospel but who had come under the influence of these men
and in so doing [they] have wandered from the faith (v.21). That is the solemn
note on which this letter actually ends. Yesterdays blessings on the Ephesian
church are a day late for today. Timothy, we are under assault. Dont presume on
anything that has happened in the past to keep you in the present. Guard what has
been entrusted to your care' (v.20).
Guard them! But them alone! The truths that have been entrusted to you in the
Scriptures. Dont run ahead of God, probing, inquiring, speculating where God has
not revealed. There are certain areas concerning Gods ways which are, and forever
must be, mysterious. Timothy, learn to control your curiosity and dont get dragged
into unprofitable debates about myths and endless genealogies. These promote
controversies rather than Gods work (I Tim. 1:4). But keep up with God. Dont put
on the so-called contemporary mask and discard what God has said. Dont neglect
anything God has revealed. Guard what has been entrusted to your care.

It challenges every Christian with the duty of never letting go of what God has given
us. We think of someone drawing up a will and appointing an executor to ensure
that all the terms of the will are faithfully implemented. How important is that?
Justice demands it. Or think of a trust being established with millions set aside to
further certain specific aims of the benefactor. How important is it that those causes
which he has left his fortune to support are actually being helped and not totally
different causes? It is all important, and those who are appointed as trustees have
to ensure that that end is being fulfilled. Or consider that contract which you have
signed with a builder in which he has promised to build you a house of certain
specifications for a certain price. How important is it that he keep to the terms of a
contract? It is crucial. If such things are a matter of simple honesty in the world,
how much more important it is to guard that which the living God has entrusted to
our care!
Of course we are to do more than guard the divine revelation. We are to go into all
the world and make disciples of all nations. Then the Lord Jesus told us that we
should be teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matt.
28:20). So we are to declare what has been entrusted to our care. Also we are to
teach one another and our children what God has given to us. The divine revelation
is like fertiliser, it is most useful when it is spread abroad. There was an oft-quoted
remark of Spurgeons made at the Annual Meetings of the British and Foreign Bible
Society on May 5th, 1875. He was talking about a certain mentality that looked on
Scripture as something one had to defend. He imagined a number of people
hurrying together and discussing how best to defend a caged lion from a group of
men who were armed with sticks and were intent upon attacking it. Spurgeon says,
Many suggestions are made and much advice is offered. This weapon is
recommended, and the other. Pardon me if I offer a quiet suggestion. Open the door
and let the lion out; he will take care of himself. Why, they are gone! He no sooner
goes forth in his strength than his assailants flee. The way to meet infidelity is to
spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible
(Speeches at Home and Abroad, The Bible, reprinted Pilgrim Publications, 1974
p.17). That is a famous statement, and we agree with it. We are not interested in
setting up a National Society for the Protection of the Bible! Live the Bible. Learn the
Bible. Love the Bible. Preach the Bible. That is our priority in the defence of Biblical
truth. But we recognise also that we live in an age of high-velocity rifles and
ruthless poachers so that there have to be game-wardens whose task is even to
defend lions. Do not forget to guard the Bibles truths from its attackers.
1. Why Must We Guard What has been Entrusted to Our Care?
i] The very men of the Bible itself do so. Think of the prophets. They are
implementing the teaching of the five books of Moses. They are applying its truths
to the people of God who are being charmed into Baal worship and are being
seduced by the gods of the surrounding nations. The covenant people have broken
their trust, and God raises up a Hosea and an Amos and an Isaiah to defend the
truth and call the nation back to the old paths.
Consider the Lord Jesus himself. What was he doing in the Sermon on the Mount? He
says, You have heard this it is all right to swear by these objects it is all right to
love your neighbours and hate your enemies it is all right to insist on an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth it is all right to have a divorce as long as you give
your wife a certificate of divorce. What was happening? They were turning away

from what God had given to them. So Jesus speaks, But I say unto you I say unto
you I say unto you, and he corrects them and he summons the people back to
the truths he is guarding.
Consider the apostles of Christ. Peter at Pentecost guarded what David had written
in the psalms, and what Joel had written in his prophecy. He would not let the
people forget those truths. This is that, he said to them. This event is the
fulfilment of that prophecy. He is applying the word of God to the events of
crucifixion, and resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit which they had been
witnessing.
Or take the epistles of the New Testament. Paul is guarding the historicity of Adam
and the fall of man, the fact that woman was created after man and for him, that
God is the Sovereign Potter and man is the clay, that Gods purpose had ever been
to incorporate the Gentiles into the Covenant of Grace, and so on. He is guarding
the great truths God had entrusted to the writers of the Old Testament. The writers
of the Bible all guard what had been entrusted to their care.
ii] The men God has raised up through the history of the church have done so. At
the beginning no one was admitted into the church without making a confession of
faith: Jesus is Lord. Then the false teachers arose just as Christ has warned,
wolves in sheeps clothing. The truth about the deity of Christ, or the truth about
the Trinity, or the truth about the depravity of man, or the truth about the
sufficiency of Scripture, or the truth about the basis of a free justification were
stolen by the heretics. The church grew careless about guarding what God had
entrusted to it, and some men saw this. They were holy men, courageous men.
Their lives were moulded by the Bible. All of them were persecuted for what they
taught, and many were martyred for guarding what was entrusted to their care. But
they would never stop obeying what God said Guard what has been entrusted to
you care.
Those men gathered the church into great councils and assemblies and they
produced statements of what they knew the Bible was teaching, like the Apostles
Creed and the formula of Chalcedon, the 39 Articles and the 1689 London
Confession of Faith. Those creeds are like diamonds mined from the Bible. As long
as a diamond is in the dark womb of the earth is does not seem to be made for the
light. You could easily fail to see its value, but once it is extracted and polished, how
it sparkles. So too when a Christian takes up a verse from Scripture, polishes it in
the right way, puts it in a certain setting and lets the light of the rest of the Bible
shine upon it. Then it can become the most beautiful truth you have ever seen.
The creeds are like hymns. Their purpose is to glorify God. Doxology is too great for
us to speak. It needs to be sung. In Psalm 116 the psalmist asks, What shall I
render unto the Lord? Psalm 111 gives the answer, I will praise the Lord with my
whole heart in the assembly of the upright. When we answer the first question of
the Westminster Shorter Catechism, with the words, Mans chief end is to glorify
God and to enjoy him for ever, there is something of extraordinary beauty about
that sentence. In the year 451 the church was being attacked by error about the
Person of Christ. False teachers were trying to rob Christ the God-man of his twofold nature. So the leaders of the church met near Istanbul in Turkey in a place
called Chalcedon and they came up with a magnificent, thoughtful summary of the
two-fold nature of Christ, the heart of which stated that the divine and human
natures were without confusion, without change, without division, without

separation. Over thirteen centuries later lived the most famous Welsh woman
hymn-writer, Ann Griffiths. She has a hymn in which she has turned those words of
the Chalcedon Confession into doxology. The hymn is O am gael ffydd i edrych O
to have faith to see Christ as he is, is its theme. She declares in the first verse that
she wants to see this:Two natures in one Person,
Conjoined inseparably,
Distinct and not confounded,
In perfect unity.
That is pure Chalcedonian theology, and it was the stuff of Ann Griffiths meditation
and her longing. Whether it was the ordinary Christian people of the fifth century
with few of our educational advantages, or the 18th century Christians in Wales, a
farmers daughter from Powys, they all expected to be taught the theology of the
Bible, and learn it, and love God with all their hearts. What were they doing? They
were guarding what had been entrusted to their care in worship.
The confessions and catechisms of earlier generations are our heritage, left to us by
our fathers in which they tell the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and
his strength, and his wonderful works that he has done (Ps. 78:4). But the
confessions are also a weapon by which we guard what has been entrusted to us
against numerous enemies. Should I see across the road on a Friday night in
Aberystwyth two half-drunk young men trying to fight one another egged on by
their friends, I am tempted to think, More fool them, and not cross the road and
intervene. But if I see someone I love being attacked I would hope to be there like a
shot. The more we love them the more we will fight in their defence. Christians are
called to earnestly contend for the faith (Jude 3). Dont let the gospel suffer
because you were silent. One reads of arrogant surgeons who walk about hospitals
like dictators, whose butchery cripples the lives of scores of women, but who are
such intimidating personalities that none dares to challenge their incompetence. So
it has been with the modernists who dominate large denominations and cry to
simple Bible believing men and women that they should stay out of church politics,
that they do not understand theology, and that they are going to split the church if
they challenge their religious butchery. So the glory is taken from Christ, and
Christians fail to guard what has been entrusted to their care. The consequence of
that is the churches become irrelevant and go into rapid decline. What
denomination dominated by liberal ideas is growing anywhere in the world? Not a
single one. God has taken his light from them.
2. How Must We Guard What has been Entrusted to Our Care?
Think of this letter and all that the apostle has been telling Timothy as to how he
should behave each day hold on to faith and a good conscience the overseer
must be above reproach temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able
to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle set an example to for
the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity watch your life and
doctrine closely pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and
gentleness. Here is this absolute obsession, that runs through the letter, with how
Timothy lives his life.

We know that men can read a booklet on the doctrines of grace, and if God
illuminates their minds as they read those pages, in an hour their total biblical
understanding is changed and they have grasped that God is sovereign. A man
once came on to me after reading my little booklet on Reading the Bible and he
said to me that it had changed his life. I doubt it, but it had helped him. But you
cannot pick up sanctification in an hour. Christlikeness is something to be pursued
throughout the pilgrimage of our walk with the Lord to heaven. There is no secret to
getting it other than what we find written in every chapter of the Bible, look to God
in faith seeking his grace, and turn each day from your sins. Only such people can
guard what has been entrusted to their care.
A man with a mere intellectual grasp of orthodoxy is useless in guarding
Christianity. That is the faith which King Agrippa had. The apostle said to him, King
Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do. (Acts 26:27). But the king,
though he believed the Bible, had no interest in guarding its truths. He continued to
serve himself and the desires of his heart and mind. He had the same faith that
demons have: You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe
that and shudder (James 2:19). One who lives in the fellowship of demons cannot
defend the truths of Christ. The grace of the doctrine is essential to guard the
doctrines of grace. The living waters of the word may not be served in rusty cups.
Let us remember the lesson of church history, that there has not been a single great
epoch in the history of the church characterised by mighty confessions of faith
being formulated without the following years being marked by decline. That was
true of the Protestant Reformation, the Puritan period and the years in Wales
following the 1823 Confession. What happened? A number of things. Too little stress
was placed on the implications of sound doctrine for the Christian life of holiness.
The idea caught root that any kind of earnest spirituality could create godliness. So
there was the unquestioned and unresisted rise of pietism and Finneyism and
revivalism. These were reactions against the total satisfaction with orthodoxy which
characterised too many of their grandfathers. Guarding the faith had been stressed
to the practical exclusion of how we are daily to live, and so concerned Christians
from this barren generation came away and started to meet in little groups and
emphasise quietism, practising the presence of God and mysticism. Or there was a
neglect of evangelism because simply guarding the faith was absolutised and the
congregations shrank.
But there is another danger too, and that is present in our circles, and that is that
guarding the gospel results in doctrinal complacency or static orthodoxy. What is
that a picture of? A church resting on its oars, or a church retiring on its laurels. We
have the faith. Yes. It is stated wonderfully in our confessions. Yes. Now we have
to protect it. No. A church must never suppose it has exhausted the Word of God.
The Lord Jesus said that out of that treasure we are to be bringing forth old things,
to be sure, but also new (Matt. 13:52). The church must be conservative, that is, it
must conserve all that is true, all that our fathers have bought by the insights and
their very lives, but a church must also be progressive. The enemy will require it.
There are new attacks from what the apostle calls here, the opposing ideas of what
is falsely called knowledge (v.21). They must be answered. There are new
understandings and clarifications which God himself opens up from his word. I am
thinking of John Murrays contribution of the Bibles teaching of definitive
sanctification. Thank God for such insights. So, we are exhorting one another to
abide in the Word, and we also have to build on that Word, and keep building.

Failure to abide spells destruction. Failure to keep building results in petrifaction. To

guard what has been entrusted to our care means more than being orthodox. It
means being holy and creative.
How then are we to effectively guard what has been entrusted to us? We have
cleared away how it is not to be done, but positively what are we to do to obey this
exhortation? Three things:i] With our minds. The mark of the Christian is teachableness. He was not always
like this. He once had a mind that was empty of the things of God. Maybe he was
initially put off when he entered a church like ours to see behind the smiling
deacons a book table, and he who only read a newspaper, thought, If I become a
Christian I will have to read! Impossible! But what a change has taken place. He
gradually become interested in the faith, and in the Bible, and then in reading it for
himself, and then in books that would help him enter into the Bible. The Lord opens
the understanding of the people he regenerates. That is why we are not
embarrassed about a book table in the vestibule. Grace gives a believer a
seriousness about growing in wisdom and knowledge, gaining a literal knowledge of
the Old and New Testaments by reading it day by day. When one of the Pharaohs
asked Ptolemy to teach him geometry by a short method, the sage is reported to
have replied, There is no royal road to learning. There is no royal road to heaven.
As Queen Elizabeth I lay dying the Archbishop of Canterbury, who questioned her
concerning what the basis of her hope in life and death might be and was satisfied
with all her answers, then reminded her that she might be the monarch of a realm
in England but in the world to come she must bow before the King of kings, and that
her plea could only be that the Son of God had loved her and given himself for her.
Kings and commoners must apply themselves to Christ and to his word.
Think of the change in young people when they become Christians. Mary Jones
walked miles barefoot to Bala to buy her own Bible, and she was one of thousands
of teenagers in whom the new birth registered itself in a new frame of mind. A
mighty work of God makes a nation literate. That is why there is so much more
illiteracy in Wales today at the beginning of the 21st century than there was at the
beginning of the 20th. The use of the mind is ultimately a religious matter.
R.B.Kuiper would lament the decline of interest in doctrine in his Christian Reformed
denomination. Talking of the beginning of the century he said, At that time not only
our ministers, but many of our elders as well, were wont to study the works of
Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and other Calvinistic theologians. I knew an
elder who spoke of Bavincks Philosophy of Revelation which, by the way, is not
light reading as his favourite book.
Many of our laity feasted on Kuypers practical works. In my early teens I read to
my mother, not only Uncle Toms Cabin, but also parts of a Brakels The
Christians Reasonable Service. Some of us can recall the days of the infra-supra
controversy. My brothers and I, seated behind the base-burner in the living room of
the Second Roseland parsonage, attended eagerly to many a ministerial debate on
that theme. Almost every church member was interested. Today the mention of that
issue elicits only quizzical smiles. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get our men
out for an evening of Bible study (R.B. Kuiper, To Be or Not To Be Reformed,
Zondervan, 1959, p.44). We know what he is talking about. We think of the slate
quarrymen of North Wales and their serious daily discussions in their cabins during
their lunch-time breaks. What an educated serious group of men they were.

Scarcely any in Europe were like them save for the crofters of the Highlands and
Islands of Scotland and the fishermen of Holland. Men like that would have pitied a
civilisation of old men who lust after page 3 girls.
We are saying that in order to guard the faith you have to know the faith. We sing,
Take my intellect and use Every power as Thou wouldst choose. Then let us be
sure that our intellects are growing in grasping preaching, and reading books about
the Bible and the history of the church. Go to the Christian Book Shop and select
some. Borrow some from me or from the little church library. Take notes of the
sermons and think about them afterwards. Ask other Christians for help. Write down
verses that you find have been helpful to you. Especially there is one way of
growing in the grace of guarding the faith, by getting involved in service young
people work on a beach mission or in a camp this summer and then you will have
to be growing. We have to guard the faith with our minds, by studying it and
knowing it well, so that we are not defeated by ignorance.
ii] With our souls. Think of the writer of Psalm 119. How does he go about gaining a
knowledge of the Bible? Prayerfully. Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous
things out of your law (Ps. 119:18). I am like a blind man before something
wonderful a painting, some embroidery, or a piece of jewellery. Ill never see why
people are speaking in tones of such wonder about it until I get my sight. So it is
with us, we need to address God with this problem that we are not being moved by
the Scriptures. Maybe they no longer grip us as once they did. It is not a better
preacher which is your paramount need. It is not more data about the Bible. It is the
illumination of the Holy Spirit. God give me light!
Forty-six years ago in the early spring of 1954 I would walk along the road to church
on a Sunday night and I would wonder whether that night God would speak to me in
his word and change my relationship with him, and one evening in that year it
simply happened. I had assurance that he was my God and Saviour, that my sins
were dealt with on the cross. There was once a 30 year-old man in Scotland called
Alexander Henderson who went in disguise to hear the minister Robert Bruce
preaching. Henderson despised evangelical religion, and he did not want anyone in
the congregation to recognise him, but he wanted to hear Bruce who had the
reputation of being a famous orator. So he sat incognito in the congregation, but
God knew he was there. Robert Bruce got up and announced the words of the Lord
Jesus as his text, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into
the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
Alexander was deeply convicted merely at hearing that portion of the word of God
being read. I shouldnt be here, he thought. I am in a sphere to which I do not
belong. Im a burglar who has crept in. But I want to belong to these people. I dont
want to be a thief. I want to join them in the fold of Christ by the right way. That
was the beginning of salvation, seeing the truth of the Bible, convicted by it and
understanding what it was saying to him. He then became the great champion of
the Bible for thirty more years of his life.
Or think again of the great defender of the Christian faith, a Primitive Methodist
minister called Hugh Bourne of the Potteries. He was a 27 year-old man and had
been listening to preachers every Sunday, and he was also reading some
wonderfully helpful books, such as Alleines Alarm to the Unconverted, so that he
was very near to the kingdom of God. But then, somehow, he came across a kind of
novel about a sea captain, Captain Barnaby and Old Booty, and the yarn excited

him and dulled some of his spiritual concerns. He was working in a windmill near
Werrington, and during the lunch break he talked to some of his workmates about
this story, full of excitement about this mans adventures. Then an impression came
into his mind out of the blue: It will not do to be following old Booty. Then that
refrain kept repeating itself with some force: it will not do to go after old Booty. It
will not do to go after old Booty. Thus, sovereignly and mercifully, his interest was
renewed in knowing God for himself and to pray in earnest, and one Sunday
morning in his fathers house shortly after this incident he was reading some letters
of John Fletcher of Madeley, and in one of those letters Fletcher quoted the promise
of Jesus from John 14:21, I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. That was
the verse that spoke to him, and in those words the very experience which the Lord
Jesus speaks of became his also; he knew the Lord as his own Saviour. He wrote
these grand words, The naughty was taken out of my heart, and the good put in
The Bible looked new; creation looked new, and I felt a love for all mankind. If you
are to become a defender of the faith then the naughty must be taken out of your
soul and the good put in. We have to guard the faith with our souls, by regular
habits of Christian devotion poured out prayers, persistent Bible reading, attentive
church attendance.
iii] With our bodies. One of the strongest keeps for the faith is a pattern of good
deeds. Paul tells the Romans that in the light of the grace they have received from
God they should be presenting their bodies as living sacrifices to him. In other
words, their hands and feet and tongues, their strength and energy should be spent
in service. You know how we are built, that if we start acting badly the faith which
we say we profess doesnt seem real to us. We consider ourselves hypocrites. But
as we stretch out our hands in kindness and care intelligently for others Jesus Christ
seems to have truly manifest himself to us.
Think of an athlete and how he trains. There is a diet which he sticks to. He gets to
bed the right time and he takes on the daily discipline of training. If he is the goalkicker for a rugby team he will kick hundreds of balls from all over the ground
between the posts every week. If he is a hurdler he will cross hundreds of hurdles
just trying to shave them. Certain muscle groups will be worked in thousands of
repetitions till they have mass and flexibility. Certain moves will be practised again
and again until they become second nature, a dummy, a sidestep, a backhand.
Each time he trains he gets a little better, some careless habit dies a little and a
disciplined new one begins to come to life. That is, each training session causes a
tiny conversion. But it is only after many seasons of such training that a person can
perform his skills by second nature. The mini-conversion repeated thousands of
times add up to the change of ones life. A worthy athlete becomes a disciplined
athlete. That is the way a person becomes a defender of the faith.
We have to be trained in godliness or holiness, till it becomes a second nature.
Each time we pray; every time we resist a temptation, or bring a gift to a lonely
person, or make ourselves think of the needs of others each time we do these
things our old self dies a little and our new self comes more to life. Add up all these
mini-conversions across years of training and you have a spiritual athlete. A flabby
and clumsy Christian becomes a trim and graceful one (Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., A
Sure Thing. What We Believe and Why, Bible Way CRC Publications, Grand Rapids,
1986, p.187).

How crucial this is. When you first defended the faith you were unwise. You were
hectoring, disrespectful to your parents, angry, a bit of a bully. You jumped in at the
deep end. You thought you were smarter than you were. People tied you up in
knots. You got embarrassed and you were an embarrassment. It happens to all of
us. Dont give up. Dont mock what once you were. Dont become cynical. Dont do
things but sullenly I suppose I have to go to Prayer Meeting tonight. Dont think
that you are not gifted for defending the faith. Dont think it is too hard or too
boring. People will sneer at the God-squad.
You are simply out of shape. The best athletes go through bad patches. A soccer
player will have a whole season when he seems to have lost it all, but he comes
back. He keeps coming back. He keeps fit because without that he will never come
back. It is trained people who have fun. It takes hard work to play well. Doing good
with your mind and body, your arms and legs, your heart and soul is the very stuff
of the Christian life. We are not saved by doing it. We are saved to do it. We are
saved to guard what has been entrusted to the care of the church by the Lord Jesus,
and we can never keep the faith unless we keep fit and work for people, just as the
Lord Jesus did, seeing the dirty feet, and seeing the basin and seeing the towel, and
noticing nobody wanted to do this work, and then doing it ourselves. That shows the
reality of the faith in us, and we also have more confidence then to guard it by our
words when we are keeping it by our lives.
3. What are the Consequences of Guarding What Has Been Entrusted to Our Care?
Grace will be with us (v.21). These are the final words of the apostle in this letter.
What is grace? It is not goodbye. It is not a farewell greeting. It is the omnipotence
of God saving and keeping his people. It is Paul reminding Timothy again that he
cannot survive without the unmerited power of God. As we keep away from error,
and guard whatever things are true and lovely that have been entrusted to us then
we will find the grace of God all sufficient. And how will that sustaining grace
manifest itself in those who guard the faith?
i] The Peace and Unity of the Church. It is error and immorality that divides the
church not evangelical Christians. King Ahab who married Jezebel and they
introduced idolatry into Israel, and very few spoke out against it. The prophet Elijah
was one and he preached against the worship of Baal, and God sent a drought on
Israel because of its sin. But when King Ahab met Elijah what did he say to him, Is
that you, you troubler of Israel? (I Kings 18:17). That is always the response of the
world. Evangelical Christians will speak again modernistic unbelief and the
tolerance of immorality within a denomination. They are immediately dubbed
trouble-makers. We reply as Elijah did, I have not made trouble for Israel, but you
You have abandoned the Lords command and have followed the Baals (I Kings
18:18). It was not Luther who caused the great separation from the unreformed
Roman church it was the doctrines and practices of Rome. Those who guard what
has been entrusted to the church bring peace and unity. It is error that splits
churches.
ii] Evangelistic Success. Think of the great area which is kept safe surrounding a
castle. Enemies will be afraid to march into that valley because the castle is a place
of strength and refuge from which an army can emerge, and to which the people
can flee for safety. So too with evangelism. There is a secure base the local
congregation free from error and magnifying the truth. Those who evangelise have
a fellowship to protect them, pray for them, a place of safety and a haven of peace

to which to retire. In the world there is no love for Jesus Christ but the Christian has
a community which refreshes, restores, revives and thus protects him. I cannot
think of a church which has been blessed evangelistically which is not agreed as to
what the gospel of grace is.
iii] Pastoral Encouragement and Wisdom. When a congregation is united in guarding
all that God has said in his word what a wise congregation that is. There are timid
members but they are always being reminded that salvation depends ultimately not
upon their efforts but upon Gods grace towards them. This God is not like a
chameleon whose moods change as ours do, but he says, I the Lord change not
(Mal.3:6). Once this all-knowing God has sovereignly and lovingly determined to
save a person he will not change when we fall into sin, as fall we do each day. He
will give us the grace of repentance and pick us up that we keep going and keep
going. What God begins, God finishes. I am persuaded of this one thing: he who
started a good work in you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus (Phil.1:6).
Those who guard the biblical faith have real encouragement to offer their
congregations. A merciful sovereign Shepherd to be our Savior. Rely on the eternal
unchanging love of God, and look to him.
Is the answer to our problems found in mans reason or in the Word of God?
Everyone in the congregation must answer that. Are you going to accept only what
makes sense to you, or what Gods word says even when it sounds contradictory?
The Bible teaches the foreordination of all things the selling of Joseph into Egypt,
and the crucifixion of Jesus. On the other hand the Bible clearly testifies that God
hates sin, that he will not listen to the prayers of the unrepentant, and that he is
Holy Holy Holy. These things seem two seemingly unreconcilable positions, yet the
Christian guards them both because God has spoken them both. So often we end up
with Pauls exclamation of worship before so great a Lord Oh, the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his
judgements and his ways past finding out (Romans 11:33). The question is, do you
believe such a God or not? If you do then guard all he has said.
3 EL USO CORRECTO DE LA LEY DE DIOS. 1:8-11 The proper use of the good law
I Timothy 1:8-11 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know
that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly
and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers and mothers,
for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurersand for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the
glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
The last Tory Prime Minister once urged people to get Back to Basics, and now the
present Labour Prime Minister, as well as the Education Secretary and the Home
Secretary are all urging that morality and family values be promoted in schools.
What values do teachers possess to tell others what is right and wrong? Are they
not as muddled as everyone else? Sometimes I think the phrase safe sex is the
most ugly phrase to have come into the nations vocabulary, yet it is heard in ten
thousand schools each week. What if the government should tell BBC radio and TV
to start promoting morality? What an additional embarrassment that would be.
How we would groan at Big Brother telling us his ideas about what is acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour: Caesar doesnt know his own right hand from his left. How
can he promote morality? We Christians pray that prominent figures would live as
modestly as they can, that the language in school staff-rooms be a bit more

restrained, less cynical about purity and self-control, and that people in public office
not rubbish Christianity. They are circumspect about an Islam which they barely
know; let them regard the Christian minority too.
This new burst of concern for morality was triggered off by a couple of 12 year-old
girls becoming pregnant. I read this week that a house somewhere in the British
Isles is being burgled every twenty seconds. We are living in days of total ethical
confusion. A young woman working in the administration of the local hospital said to
me, I dont think there is right and wrong. That ignorance is the reason for the
soaring figures for drug taking, gambling, teenage pregnancies and petty crime.
People do not think such behaviour is very wrong. Behind the statistics is a story of
millions of people living lost and hurting lives.
What contribution are we Christians to make to this situation? We believe that
Christians have had the calling from God to be the systems salt and light. How do
we function? We have two vital contributions to make, both mentioned in out text,
Gods law (v.8), and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (v.11). If now I emphasise
the former (the law) more than the latter it is because in our particular text more
attention is addressed to the law, while in the remainder of this chapter the gospel
at some length is going to be the theme of Pauls words. The law of God is an
indispensable support system to the individual, the family, the congregation and the
society in which we live. In it are not the changing standards of one civilisation and
culture but the unchanging standards of God.
1 THE LAW IS GOOD. (v.8)
There is something which you and I know to be good, says the apostle to Timothy.
We know that the law is good. He has written to the Romans in Italy far away
from Ephesus and told them the same truth, the law is holy, and the
commandment is holy, righteous and good (Roms. 7:12). He defines love for them
as the actual fulfilment of the law (Roms.13:10). He tells the Corinthian church,
Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping Gods commands
is what counts (I Cor. 7:19). So you will never find the New Testament rubbishing
the commandments of God. Rather, it is legalism regarding keeping the law as
meritorious and antinomianism opposition to law that are both evil.
A word must be said about antinomianism. I know of a Baptist minister who tried
the path of antinomianism some years ago. He was persuaded to rely on the
indwelling Christ and live his life without reference to the law of God. He found that
whole experience an increasingly selfish and frustrating bypath. He had taken as his
axiom, Love God and do as you please. He thought that as the schoolmaster had
brought him to Christ it was no longer necessary. Werent Gods laws written in his
heart? Didnt he have an inner guide to direct him as to what he should or shouldnt
do? He says, I am not proud to admit that I went to the end of that road: Sunday is
no holier than Tuesday, and Friday just as sacred as the Lords day, I said, and tried
to live in that mentality. But it was an unreal pretense, grievous to my spirit every
second. Like the liberated woman trying to deny her femininity by sneering at
homemaking and the compassion trap, I found I was flying in the face of my
Creators naturally ordained order. The Sabbath was not made just for the Old
Covenant Jew, but for man.
He goes on to say, I had enormous trouble embracing such behaviour as parental
disrespect, stealing, lying, murder, and fornication as liberating attitudes. I could

not, in good conscience, retain the tithe for my own selfish end. It didnt help
saying, It is all Gods, not just the tithe, and then do as I pleased with the whole of
it. He discovered antinomianism to be a bitter and vain delusion. He says, I have
found my rest, joy, and liberty in the right, perfect, sweet and delightful precepts of
Gods holy Word all of it. So he came to appreciate through those frustrating
years that the law is good, and antinomianism isnt. Someone said, What could be
more ridiculous than for a subject to profess obedience to his Prince, but he will not
be under any law?
The law is given by the Creator to his own creatures, whose very breath he sustains,
who live and move and have their being in him, and who one day he is going to
judge. He for a long period dealt with one nation especially in one part of the middle
east, the Jews, and they were given certain additional commands that applied just
to them at that time and to no one else. All those temporary prescriptions are
exempted from what Paul is here telling Gentile Ephesians. The law which the
apostle is speaking of here is that permanent will of God that applies to all men,
Jews and Gentiles alike.
Almighty God is the sovereign Ruler of this world, and he is wise, just, good and
gracious. As its King he rules his creation. He supplies the needs of every living
thing, blessing them richly. Their hearts of all men are in his hands and he expects
certain attitudes from them, certain duties, and a life of obedience. On the Day of
Judgment the nations will not be able to protest, But we didnt know what you
expected of us! He will say, Didnt I write the things of my law on your hearts?
And every mouth will be stopped. He has communicated to the whole world of
mankind what his requirements are, and especially he has done this in the Bible.
That is the law of Almighty God, and it is a good law which will never become
redundant. There can never be any change in its spirit, in its purposes, and the
principles of right and wrong which it sets forth, nor can there ever be.
There will never be a time when it is lawful to have a god before him who alone is
God. There will never be a time when it will be all right to lampoon the Invisible God
with the abominations of idols and image worship. There will never be a time when
it will be all right to take the name of God in vain. There will never be a time when
the principle set forth in the fourth commandment ought not to be kept, that is, that
men rest in providence and redemption, as the gospel of Christ enables them. There
will never be a time when constituted human authority may be despised without
sin. There will never be a time when murder is not sin. There will never be a time
when it is not sin for people to abuse the sexual powers of the human body whether
they are male or female. There will never be a time when men may steal from their
fellow man without sin. There will never be a time when it will be fine to bear false
witness against your neighbour. And there will never be a time when the hearts of
men ought not to be pure toward their fellow man, not coveting his possessions, nor
lusting after his wife, or daughters.
What a happy world it would be if those commandments were being internationally
honoured today. How empty the prisons would be, how safe would be the lives of
the unborn, the young as they cycle along country lanes, and the elderly as they fell
into senility. How contented would be our homes. There would be none of the wars
that have characterised this century, no drug abuse, no epidemic of AIDS destroying
many millions of Africans. We could leave our houses without burglar alarms. The
law is good.

2. THERE IS AN IMPROPER USE OF THE LAW. (v.8)

The law is good if one uses it properly (v.8). It is possible for law to be abused.
Think of those false teachers in Ephesus. What were their ambitions? Significantly,
they want to be teachers of the law (v.7). Of course this is true of every cult and
religion apart from Christianity. They all emphasise what people have to do. There
are laws you must keep: times of meditation you must observe: dietary regulations
which must be enforced: feast days you must maintain: submission to the leaders to
be unquestioningly given: forms of evangelism to be maintained in all weathers:
there are forms of dress for men but especially for women. All religions apart
from Christianity are religions of law. The way the promise blessedness and peace
is through keeping commandments. Do these things! Dont eat that! Keep this day!
Mediate on this mantra! Sell this literature! Obey your leaders!
Christianity is utterly different: it is a religion of grace. It points to what the Lord
Jesus Christ has achieved all by himself, and it tells the world that Gods great and
free salvation may come to them when sinners have faith in the Lord Jesus and his
finished work, when they cease to focus on things which they do and will look
instead to Christ. The great text which silences every other religion is Romans 3:28,
For we maintain that a man is justified by faith [alone] apart from observing the
law.
So there are many improper uses of the good law. Some have absolutised the law of
God, and made it the key to Christian living and sanctification. Their message is the
importance of the law of God. But there was no society more theonomic than Israel.
The ten commandments had been given to them as a statement of the
righteousness of God and as a rule of conduct. Every child in Israel could rattle off,
from one to ten, Gods commandments. Parents spoke knowingly to one another,
nodding their heads as if they had discovered a profound truth, How important it is
for children to know the ten commandments. Hypocrites! Rather how important
that children lived in homes where the ten commandments were lived out and
loved. It is clear that there was the same gulf then between knowing the
commandments and obeying them as used to be the case in Wales. Before the
Evangelical Awakening the populace were yet able to recite the ten
commandments. They were still in darkness. Of course today no one knows those
Ten Words. Children in Wales could once recite them in a rhyme:Thou shalt have no gods but me.
Before no idol bow the knee
Take not the name of God in vain.
Nor dare the Sabbath day profane.
Give both thy parents honour due
Take heed that you no murder do.
Abstain from words and deeds unclean.
Nor steal, though thou art poor and mean.
Nor make a wilful lie, nor love it.
What is thy neighbours do not covet.

Israel too knew the commands, but did not do them. She was rarely in the position
of passing judgment on the nations that surrounded her because she herself failed
to live out those laws. Only because the Lord dealt with Israel for the sake of his
name was the nation saved from total extinction. Only for his own names sake was
the desolated land reinhabited after the Exile. By the time of the ministry of Jesus
the Jewish leaders had so worked at law-keeping that it had become a fanatical
preoccupation, and yet the gospels show us it was a rotten society amongst whom
the Lord Jesus laboured.
It would be possible for a preacher to be so upset with the moral chaos of our day
that he took the law of God and rubbed the consciences of Christians with it week
by week, continually condemning the congregation. That was the method used by
Girolamo Savonarola in Florence, Italy, in 1490. He preached judgment and
censorship, demanding all vanities be burned in a city bonfire. He changed the town
into an ascetic monastic-type community. This was but a temporary change while
he was able to keep bullying the people, but before the 1490s were over he himself
was tried for heresy and executed. Such moralistic approaches law without gospel
positively militate against the good news, reinforcing a popular misunderstanding
that a Christian is merely a very strict person, so if you are immoral there is no hope
for you.
There has never been a law given, even by God, that could save. There has never
been a good man, not even the holiest man who has ever lived on this planet, who
was saved by the way he obeyed Gods law. We sell people short by laying stress on
the law to the detriment of the gospel. We are turning their eyes away from the
Cross to their own lives.
3. THERE IS A PROPER USE OF THE LAW. (V.8)
We know that the law is good if one uses it properly (v.8). The proper use of the
law is to serve the cause of the gospel. It does that in a number of ways:
i] The law defines what sin is. Who is helped by the gospel? Sinners. Not the
righteous, Sinners Jesus came to call sings Joseph Hart. All the fitness He requireth
is to see your need of Him. Who did Jesus come to seek and to save? Those who
are lost. The good news is only good news to those who have heard the bad news.
So people must realise that they are sinners, because only then will they know that
they need a Saviour. Paul gives us examples of sinners in these verses. In fact he
supplies us with a list, not of sins, but of sinners. lawbreakers and rebels, the
ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or
mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and
perjurers and for whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine (vv.9 and 10).
It is not the only place where Paul makes a list of vices. You come across them in
Romans 1, 1st Corinthians chapter 5 and in chapter 6, Galatians 5, II Timothy 3.
Remarkably, no single sin is specifically repeated in them all. Only two sins in this
list are mentioned in one of the other lists. I like lists. Things To Do Today is a
headed piece of blank paper always on my desk and steadily filled up day after day.
Men and women make shopping lists. But there are certain Christians who dont
seem to like lists of sins. The popular American writer, Chuck Swindoll, has a book
entitled Grace Awakening in which he gets worked up about legalists, and one of
his descriptions of them are people who make lists of dos and donts. The Christian
church is so afraid of taboos. But even Swindoll has to say that if such a list is found

in the Bible it is to be obeyed without hesitation or question. Thats an inspired list

for all of us to follow, not someones personal list (p.132). That is fine: there is no
avoiding the truth that lists are important: God listed out ten commandments. There
is yet one factor never to forget, that if your hope of salvation is based upon
keeping a list any list a human or a divine list you are a lost man. The
Catechism says, No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the
commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed
(Westminster Shorter Catechism: Answer 82). But this list is useful in telling us, first
of all, what sinners are. There is right and wrong, it is saying to the little girl who
works in the hospital.
Notice two features in the apostles approach, firstly, how he follows the order of
the Ten Commandments. The first three pairs cover offences against God, and the
last five categories are violations of the second table of the law virtually in the order
they are found in the ten commandments. Secondly, note also this, that Paul seems
to have chosen extreme forms of law-breaking to emphasize just what hideous sins
abound in a world that functioned without God and his commandments. So he
begins by going through the general description of sinners. What are sinners? They
are:1] lawbreakers and rebels. A sinner is a lawbreaker. The law says, Thou shalt
not. And the sinner says, Yes, I shall. God requires that we be theonomous but
man has decided to be autonomous. Man wants to be his own law, and so he rejects
and violates the law of God. A sinner is also a rebel. We will not have this man rule
over us, cry the rebels, though Jesus is the King of love, and his throne is a throne
of grace. We will choose whom we will serve, and it wont be you, rebels yell.
Sinners are mutineers against God the Creator.
2] the ungodly and sinful. Sinners are ungodly, that is, the whole movement of
their lives is away from God. It is not that there is an occasional lapse here, and a
slip there, but they are positively and actively irreligious. They are in battle array
against God. They have set out in their lives to function without God and they defy
him to do his worst. They are also sinful. The word means missing the target. Aim
is taken, but the arrow falls short. So too their lives fall short of Gods target.
Glorify me and enjoy me for ever, says the Creator, but no one does. All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God.
3] the unholy and irreligious. Sinners are unholy that is, the very opposite of
holy. There are the great absolutes of truth and life and purity. Sinners oppose all of
that. The most sacred standards and sanctities of living in Gods creation are
despised. Sinners are also irreligious men. It means literally polluted men who
soil everything they touch. They walk over everything and make it as common as
dirt.
That is the sinner the lawbreaker, the rebel, the ungodly, the sinful, the unholy,
the irreligious. When the Bible says that all have sinned it is declaring that all men
are in that state. There is not one solitary exception. If they are people then they
are sinners in Gods sight. When Paul wants to describe the most wretched
behaviour he says that they acted like men.
Then the apostle turns from the first table of the law, sinful attitudes against God
the mighty Maker, to the second table, sins against man. He moves from the
general disposition to the specific act. He moves from the root to the fruit.

What will a sinner do? Paul shakes his head and tells us that there is nothing he will
not do. He will kill his own father or even his mother. He will become a murderer a
serial killer of young women. He will take away the life of a defenceless stranger. He
will become an adulterer and think nothing of it. He will become a pervert, that is a
homosexual, and still be accepted in the highest offices in the government. He will
become a slave trader (we see in the Sudan today thousands of professing
Christians taken, separated from their families and sold into a lifetime of slavery).
He will become a liar and a perjurer, that is, he will tell lies under oath, even if he be
the President of the USA. And that does not complete this little list, because Paul
would add to it whatever other actions are contrary to that health-giving teaching
God has given to us. There is much else, besides these specific actions, which in
every way is unmentionably vile.
The law of God is made for such lawbreakers. It expresses his evaluation of their
behaviour. And of course it is for lawmakers too. God looks over the shoulders of our
legislators and evaluates their own judgements. If our laws are not reflecting the
influence of the Christian religion they will be reflecting another system of morality,
from another religion. This will not be more humane and tolerant than Christianity
will it? Who will be more protective of the unborn child? Christianity or another
religion? So we have seen first of all that one proper use of the law is to define what
sin and sinners are.
ii] The law rouses the power of sin. There was a Greek statue outside the
headmasters room in our grammar school, and I never touched it. I walked past it
every day, but I never touched it, because we were not told, Dont touch the
statue. I am sure if there had been a rule announced at the beginning of each term
warning boys not to touch the statue many of us would have glanced around and
slyly handled it. Augustine describes in his Confessions how as children they lived
near an orchard full of pears and, although they disliked pears, just because they
were prohibited from trespassing, they often broke in and stole them. A censored
book at once becomes a volume everyone must read and talk about. How
provocative a rule itself can be to its breaking. Think of the second commandment
not to make any image of God or any idols and how this has provoked the Roman
church to defy it, with a display of self-justifying casuistry.
Adam and Eve enjoyed tasting all the diverse fruit from the trees of the Garden, but
how often did their eyes wander and settle upon the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil? There was that solitary little tree in the verdant Garden whose fruit God
had forbidden them to take. What a head of resentment began to build up within
them because God had discriminated and appointed this one tree as off limits for
fruit-picking. They thought, Why should he do that? What does it taste like? Is its
flavour as delicious as its appearance?
John Bunyan has depicted this situation so clearly. In The Pilgrims Progress
Christian found himself in the house of a man called the Interpreter. He took
Christian by the hand, and led him into a very large parlour that was full of dust
because never swept; the which, after he had reviewed it a little while, the
Interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now when he began to sweep, the dust
began abundantly to fly about, so that Christian had almost been choked. Then said
the Interpreter to a damsel that stood by, Bring hither water, and sprinkle the
room; the which when she had done, it was swept and cleaned with pleasure.

Then said Christian, What means this? The Interpreter answered: This parlour is
the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the Gospel: the
dust is his original sin, and inward corruptions that have defiled the whole man. He
that began to sweep at first is the law; but she that brought water, and did sprinkle
it, is the Gospel.
Now, whereas thou sawest that as soon as the first began to sweep the dust did so
fly about that the room could not be cleansed but that thou wast almost choked
therewith; this is to show thee that the law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin
doth revive, put strength into and increase it in the soul.'
John Bunyan was a great evangelist, and he is teaching that the law shows us what
sin is, but it has no power to take it away. As Milton said, Law can discover sin, but
it cannot remove sin. The prohibitions of the law actually encourage us to defy it
and take the forbidden fruit, and then, when we splutter and choke with guilt, we
know good and evil!
So a function of the law is to multiply transgressions. Someone has commented that
the Old Testament church could hardly move without falling over some legal
tripwire. When they ate their food, when they sowed their seed, when they made
their clothes, when they went to war, when they sold, when they bore children, they
were for ever falling over rules. The effect of all this was to rouse the power of sin.
iii] The law brings conviction of sin. The Lord Christ spoke of the Spirits work and
said, When he is come he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and
of judgment (Jn.16:6). The Spirits sword that strikes at sin is the Word. By the law
is the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20), says Paul. I had not known sin, except
through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt
not covet (Rom.7:7). As Al Martin says, Paul could look at the law as a code of
external conduct, and check himself out pretty well. Then he came to that tenth
commandment, Thou shalt not covet. How does one covet? Not with the hands,
feet, or mouth! You covet in the heart. And when he saw the spiritual intent of the
law, that it touched the dispositions of the heart, suddenly that cesspool of iniquity
that had been covered over with a sheet of respectability was laid bare to his own
eyes and he said, I saw in me, in me, all manner of concupiscence, evil desire, and
the law did its killing, slaying work (Banner of Truth, Issue no. 50,
September/October 1967, p.4).
The law brings sin home to us and nails guilt to the conscience. Isaac Watts
recounts his own experience like this:Lord, how secure my conscience was,
And felt no inward dread.
I was alive without the law,
And thought my sins were dead.
My guilt appeared but small before,
Till terribly I saw
How perfect, holy, just and pure,
Was Thine eternal law.
Then felt my soul the heavy load,

My sins revived again,

I had provoked a dreadful God,
And all my hopes were slain.
What a wonderful experience. Two personal revivals took place in Isaac Watts life at
the same time. His sin revived, and his need of a Deliverer from sin also revived.
The two resurrections worked in parallel because the Holy Spirit was regenerating
and convicting and giving faith. Of course Isaac Watts guilt had always been there,
but he had learned to clamp down on it. He had put some blinkers on, and he
professed never to have noticed his behaviour. Everybody does it! He was blind to
his true state. What an awful condition. Lord when did we see thee hungry and did
not feed thee? will cry the goats on the day of judgment. They were blind to their
selfishness. But when the law does its work, sin revives and mans need of a Saviour
revives.
Christians pray for unbelievers to feel their need of a Redeemer. Christ is not a
super-psychiatrist, nor a marvellous personal guru, nor the model human being, nor
a revolutionary. He is a Saviour from sin. The angel who announced his coming into
the world told Joseph, Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people
from their sin. When John Eliot began to serve the Indians of North America in
those early years he translated into their language the ten commandments, and his
first sermon to them was on the law of God. He knew that the Indians could not be
saved by the Ten Commandments but the law would show them why they needed to
be saved. When they knew they were lawbreakers he could tell them of a LawKeeper who would be their substitute. A century later John Paton, the Scottish
missionary to the New Hebrides, also began his ministry by teaching the cannibals
of the Pacific Islands the ten commandments. How basic it all was: it is wrong to
kill and eat people. But we in the western world in this new millennium are having
to go back to such elementary ethics purity before marriage and faithfulness
within it. People will never be convinced of their need of Christ until they are
convicted of their own guilt. What interest will they have in a relationship with the
Redeemer until they have felt the agony of alienation from their Creator? So the law
brings conviction of sin. The law is the slave who firmly escorts the young to the
school of Christ. You must go to school, says the law wagging its finger at us, and
it takes us even though we may be so unwilling to go to the place Christ is found.
So, the law cant justify, but it can make people feel they do need Jesus.
iv] The law does instruct the Christian. Now this seems to go completely against our
text: we know that law is made not for the righteous (v.9). But taking out this
phrase from verse 9 and making it the final word in what the Bible says about the
relationship of the Christian to the law would be as foolish as taking by itself James
words: a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone (James 2:24),
and claiming that that is the Bibles last word about justification by faith.
Gods law is indeed made for the Christian; so much of the Bible consists of Gods
directives as to how we should live. Why else did the Lord take his disciples to the
mount and preach that sermon to them in Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7? Was that
not an exposition of the law of God? And why does Paul write his letter to the
Christians in Rome and rehearse to them a number of the ten commandments in
Romans 13:9ff if the law had not been made for the righteous? Most significantly he
writes to these very Ephesians and he quotes to them the fifth commandment in

this way: Children honour your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honour your
father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise that it may
go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth' (Ephs. 6:1&2). The
apostle says, This is right. This is the first commandment with a promise. Not this
was right and was that commandment the fifth commandment still has binding
authority over and the promise of life for Gentile children of Christian parents in the
Lord in Ephesus or anywhere else. So, both the Lord and his apostles tell us that the
law is for justified believers in Christ. Someone has said, The idea that a Christian
can be completely free from the law is an absurdity, because it would mean living
without law and a life without law is a sinful life. Sin is lawlessness (I John 3:4). A life
completely without law is a life totally abandoned to sin. Let me encourage you to
read some of John Newtons letters on the right use of the law.
Notice that these words, the law is made not for the righteous are in a particular
context. The apostle is describing preachers of heresy, and he says they want to
be teachers of the law, (v.7). They dont know the gospel, and yet they think they
know what God wants. They come out of legalistic Judaism and they want to heap
loads of legal demands on Christian people: you really want to be blessed? You
really want to know God in a deeper way? Well, here are things you have to do. Do
this thing, and do that, and do the other thing which we tell you. They are
confusing believers by focusing their attention again upon the law. Here is a
Christian believer who is righteous in Christ. He is going on with Jesus as his
Saviour, and then he bumps into these religious people who are so excited about
their great insights into how they live and please God. They then give this Christian
law, and statues, and precepts, and commandments. Where must all that end? In
despair. Remember that the law demands personal, entire, exact, and perpetual
obedience (Westminster Confession, 19:1). That again the context of these words,
which, with a measure of hyperbole, are warning Christians about going back under
the law. But the law is not made for the righteous. Lay it to the consciences of
sinners until they flee to Christ for salvation.
Or we can look at this phrase like this: the Lord Jesus once said that he had not
come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matt.9:13). What did he
mean? He had not come for people who believed themselves to be perfectly OK.
The Lord was talking about men who were righteous in their own eyes the selfrighteous. Who could be more self-righteous than actual teachers and evangelists of
the law? They love regulations and rule books; such things are made for them. But
Gods law is not made to be an adornment of the righteous, to bolster their feeling
of self-worth and make them say, I think thee Lord that I am not as other men. I
fast and pray and go regularly to the Temple. If any think that the law has been
tailor-made by God just for them and they are happy to wear it then that it is a
certain evidence of damnable self-righteousness. Gods law is holy and righteous,
designed to reprove sinners of their sin so that they gave up any hope in their own
righteousness. The child of God cannot so much as lift his head and look up to God
but rather he beats his breast and cries, God be merciful to me a sinner. He has
learned of his sin from the law, and cast himself upon the grace of Christ. The selfrighteous flees to no one. Laws in his hands is simply a confirmation of his own
righteousness. That was not why it was written by the finger of God on tablets of
stone.
Again, when Paul says that the law was not made for the righteous he is speaking of
the zeal and consecration of the righteous. The teachers of the law have no

additional blessings to offer to Christians when they preach commandments to

them. The law will not motivate disciples to please God more and more. The law is
not the source of new blessings. It will not lift us up to planes of self-denial and
cross-bearing. Ralph Erskine put it like this:To run, to work, the law commands;
The gospel gives me feet and hands:
The one requires that I obey;
The other does the powr convey.
The law tells us what is right, but supplies us with neither power, nor energy, nor
strength, nor desire to do what is right. But when we survey the wondrous Cross we
cry,
` Love so amazing so divine
Demands my soul my life my all.
That is our great need, to be moved anew with the blessedness of Gods great love
to us.
Give me a sight O Saviour
Of Thy wondrous love to me.
Of the love that brought Thee down to earth
To die on Calvary.
It is that love that constrains us to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow
him, not the law, but the divine affection which has sought us and found us and
saved us. He loved me and gave himself for me, Paul says in wonder. It is the
assurance that the God who loved us loves us still that certainty moves us to keep
his commands. Jesus yoke is easy, and his burden is light. It is he who makes
obedience sweet. We respond in gratitude to a growing awareness of all that he has
done for us. It does not come from the law. It comes from a Person. We are not his
slaves who are having to keep their masters rules because the alternative is the
whip. We are his friends moved by affection for our heavenly Friend. Of course the
law of God is essential to the church the law is good if one uses it properly but
we know that the law was made principally for lawbreakers and rebels to be
informed, aroused, convicted and driven to Christ for salvation. Christian, stand firm
in the freedom with which Christ has made you free (Gals.5:1).
The last thing is this: what was Paul when he came to Ephesus? A teacher of the
law? No. A preacher of the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted
to me (v.11). I have to end with this majestic phrase, as if it were a mere
postscript. The great American preacher, Edward Payson, has a whole sermon on
this text entitled, The Gospel, Glad Tidings! He quotes these words deliberately
the glorious glad tidings of the blessed God, and he asks, What other sounds, like
these, ever vibrated upon mortal ears? What other combination of words could be
formed so full of meaning, of energy, of life and rapture, as this? Who but the
fervent Apostle, or rather, who but the Holy Spirit, by whom he was inspired, could
ever have formed such a combination? The glorious glad tidings of the blessed
God! After all these humbling thoughts about the law of God, to know there exists
the most glorious good news. I would be dishonouring such words by treating it as

the tail of this sermon, if it were not for the fact that Paul is going to open up this
gospel in the next verses. Let me conclude:Pauls message was glorious good news. The law teacher could say he had Moses.
Paul could say, I have Jesus Christ. The law teacher could say, I can tell you what
true righteousness is. Paul could say, I can tell you how to be clothed with divine
righteousness. The law teacher could say, See the beauty of the whole law.
Yes, Paul could say, but see the loveliness of Gods immeasurable grace. See
the awfulness of sin, cried the teacher of the law. Yes, cried Paul, but see the
wonder of sins forgiven. Paul had a message of good news to the chief lawbreakers
of Ephesus who would but believe in Christ. They would be given a complete pardon
for Jesus sake.
This message directly came from the blessed God. It is his glorious gospel. In its
origin and revelation it was no invention of Paul. No human being could have
conceived of such a concept God so loving the world that he was determined to
forgive men their sins, so he commissioned his own dear Son to go for us and our
salvation. The Lord Jesus willingly comes. He fulfils the law on our behalf. He takes
the curse of the broken law in his own body on the tree. We are indeed saved by the
keeping of the law, but it is Christs keeping the law, not ourselves. His entire life
was as blessed as his Fathers in all he did for us, and all we may do is to take the
gifts of mercy and righteousness which he offers us.
This message comes through men. The apostle received a commission to take this
message to the Gentile world and suffer for its spread. The message was a sacred
trust, and Paul was faithful to his heavenly calling. He was not disobedient to the
heavenly vision. This message through the apostles words is yours today. The joyful
news of sins forgiven, hell subdued and peace with heaven.
I can understand someone rejecting an unalleviated message of law, but to spurn
good and glorious news ? What folly! He who believeth not the Son shall not see
life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.
Woe to the wretch who never felt
The inward pangs of pious grief;
But adds to all his crying guilt
The stubborn sin of unbelief.
The law condemns the rebel dead;
Under the wrath of God he lies;
He seals the curse on his own head,
And with a double vengeance dies.
Dont reject good news. Once more I declare to you that this is a faithful saying, and
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Men
and women, listen! To you, to each one of you, is the word of this salvation sent.
19th September 1999 GEOFF THOMAS