Walk Worthy

Guidelines for the Christian Faith

Peter Jeffery

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781845509859

 

1

Going On

 

To become a Christian is the greatest privilege any human being can have. Or, to put it another way, the greatest experience a human being can have is the knowledge of sins forgiven and peace with God. There is nothing to compare with this.

To see how highly the apostle Paul valued this experience, read Philippians 3:7-8. Now read on, from verse 9 to verse 14, and see that conversion is only the beginning. God intends us to have a growing and enriching experience of himself.

Salvation and the knowledge of sin forgiven is a tremendous gift, but it is not the only gift God has for us—see Romans 8:32. The ‘all things’ referred to here will only be experienced as we go on with Christ.

 

GOING ON WITH CHRIST MEANS THAT

we grow spiritually	1 Peter 2:2; 2 Peter 3:18
we run the race patiently	Hebrews 12:1
we fight the battle bravely	1 Timothy 6:12

 

‘Growing’, ‘running’, ‘fighting’, is picture language which the New Testament uses to show that if we are to go on with Christ and become better and stronger Christians, then there has to be effort and discipline in our lives. We cannot grow unless we eat; we cannot run the race effectively unless we train; we cannot fight the battle with any hope of success unless we obey the commander’s orders. Read again 1 Timothy 6:12, starting this time at verse 11 and reading through to verse 14.

Going on with Christ does not mean primarily that you start doing lots of things for God. There are many Christians who suffer from a disease called ‘activism’. The symptom of this spiritual illness is that a person measures how spiritual he is by how busy he is for God. The more meetings he attends in the week, the more spiritual he thinks he is. Let us make it clear that a true Christian will love to go to church. The Sunday services and mid-week prayer meeting will be priorities for him. But running around all over the place, and being out every evening, is no necessary mark of going on with Christ.

 

KNOWING AND LOVING HIM

Going on with Christ is, first and foremost, to realise what God has done and is doing for you, and then to go on to experience this. You will never go on with Christ unless you get to know him more and more.

Your understanding of what God has done for you will grow deeper as you grasp more of the doctrine and teaching of the Bible, and this will only come as a result of earnest and diligent study of the Scriptures. Sitting under a good and faithful Bible ministry is also invaluable to understanding. As you seek to grapple with the Word of God, doctrines like election, justification and atonement, which may now confuse you, will gradually, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, come to thrill your soul. If doctrines like these do not warm your heart and thrill your soul, then you have not properly understood them. The purpose of biblical doctrine is not merely to fill our heads with knowledge, but primarily to fill our hearts with love and make us worshippers. One flows out of the other. Correct understanding leads to true worship.

You will understand more of what God is doing for you as you more and more experience and feel his love in every aspect of your life. The more you know of him, the more you will love and trust him, and then the more you will see his power at work in your life.

The essential ingredients of spiritual growth are understanding, love, trust and experience.

 

The Christian is strong or weak depending upon how closely he has cultivated the knowledge of God. Progress in the Christian life is exactly equal to the growing knowledge we gain of the Triune God in personal experience. And such experience requires plenty of time spent at the holy task of cultivating God. God can be known satisfactorily only as we devote time to Him.

A. W. Tozer

 

You need to believe now, as a young Christian, that the Lord Jesus Christ wants to make himself very real and precious to you. The following is the experience of a fifteen-year-old Christian who became one of the greatest preachers and soul-winners that England has ever known:

 

There is one verse of Scripture which, as a young believer, I used often to repeat, for it was very dear to me; it is this: ‘Bind the sacrifice with cords even unto the horns of the altar.’ I did feel then that I was wholly Christ’s. In the marriage covenant of which the Lord speaks, when the Husband put the ring upon His bride’s finger, He said to her, ‘Thou hast become Mine’; and I remember when I felt upon my finger the ring of infinite, everlasting, covenant love that Christ put there. Oh, it was a joyful day, a blessed day! Happy day, happy day, when His choice was known to me, and He fixed my choice on Him! That blessed rest of soul, which comes of a sure possession of Christ, is not to be imitated, but it is greatly to be desired. I know that some good people who I believe will be saved, nevertheless do not attain to this sweet rest. They keep on thinking that it is something that they may get when they are very old, or when they are about to die, but they look upon the full assurance of faith, and the personal grasping of Christ, and saying, ‘My Beloved is mine’, as something very dangerous. I began my Christian life in this happy fashion as a boy fifteen years of age.

 

Why was Charles Spurgeon so mightily used by God in Christian service? It was because he knew God and loved his Saviour in a most real and intense way. There is no substitute for this in the Christian life.

These words of Spurgeon can encourage you to see that, even though you may be quite a young Christian, you can have a ‘full assurance of faith, and the personal grasping of Christ’. There is no growth in Christ without these.

The rest of the book seeks to deal with some of the obstacles that prevent the Christian from experiencing this fullness of salvation.

2

Justification and Sanctification

As you go on with Christ you will realise that the Lord has done far more for you in salvation than you ever imagined or hoped for. You came to Christ because of a conviction of sin and a need for forgiveness. When you repented and received Christ in faith as your Saviour, you were forgiven and reconciled to the Lord. You were made acceptable to God in the Lord Jesus Christ. You were justified by faith and now have peace with God.

This is glorious and thrilling, but there is more. Now that we have been justified, God begins in us the wondrous work of sanctification.

You may think that justification and sanctification are two rather heavy theological words that have very little to do with someone beginning the Christian life. If so, you could not be more wrong. You cannot be a Christian unless you have been justified, and the moment you have been justified the process of sanctification begins.

JUSTIFICATION

Justification is the sovereign work of God, whereby he declares the guilty sinner to be righteous and the rightful demands of the law satisfied.

Let us examine this definition:

• sovereign work of God—God does it all; the sinner plays no part at all (Rom. 3:24; 4:4-5)
• declares—the judge pronouncing a legal verdict
• guilty sinner—guilty by nature (Eph. 2:1-3) and guilty by action (Rom. 3:10-23)
• righteous—right with God (Rom. 5:1)
• demands of the law—God’s law demands eternal death for the sinner (Rom. 6:23)
• satisfied—legally and justly satisfied by the atoning death of Jesus (Rom. 5:18-21; 3:26)

What does justification by faith mean? This is the doctrine which tells us that God has contrived a way whereby men and women can be saved and reconciled unto Himself. It is all of His doing. It tells us that God, on the basis of what He has done in His Son, our blessed Lord and Saviour, freely forgives, and absolves from all their sin, all who believe the gospel. But it does not stop at that; they are furthermore ‘clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ’ and declared to be just and righteous in God’s sight. It is not only negative, there is this positive aspect also. We are clothed with the righteousness of Christ which is ‘imputed’ to us, ‘put to our account’, and so we stand accepted in the sight of God. As Romans 5 verse 19 puts it, we are ‘constituted’ righteous people in the presence of this holy and righteous God.

D. M. Lloyd-Jones

Justification has to do with our standing before the holy God. It does not make the sinner any different. It is crucial that you understand this. Listen again to Dr Lloyd-Jones:

It does not mean that we are made righteous, but rather that God regards us as righteous and declares us to be righteous. This has often been a difficulty to many people. They say that because they are conscious of sin within they cannot be in a justified state; but anyone who speaks like that shows immediately that he has no understanding of this great and crucial doctrine of justification. Justification makes no actual change in us; it is a declaration by God concerning us. It is not something that results from what we do but rather something that is done for us. We have only been made righteous in the sense that God regards us as righteous, and pronounces us to be righteous.

Someone may ask: if justification does not make me any better, what is the point of it? The point is this: immediately on being justified you are right with God! You could go to heaven there and then. You are accepted in Christ (Eph. 1:6).

But God does not stop there. He immediately begins in you the process of change, called sanctification, that will make you a different person. Justification frees you from the guilt of sin and its condemnation. It is a once-for-all declaration by God. Then, the moment you are justified, the process of sanctification begins which frees from the power of sin.

SANCTIFICATION

The word sanctification is used in several different ways in the Bible, but in the New Testament it is used primarily to describe that process by which the Christian is purified in heart and mind.

God’s will for you is sanctification	1 Thessalonians 4:3
This means holiness	1 Thessalonians 4:7
This God works in and through you	1 Thessalonians 5:23

Sanctification is that gracious and continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, by which He delivers the justified sinner from the pollution of sin, renews his whole nature in the image of God, and enables him to perform good works.

L. Berkhof

There is no such thing as instant sanctification. There is no easy formula to achieve holiness. Phrases like ‘Let go and let God’ may sound fine, but they are not quite what the Bible teaches.

God is the author of sanctification, not man. Nevertheless we are called upon to co-operate with God and are held responsible to strive for an ever-increasing sanctification by using the means that God has provided for us. Read 2 Corinthians 7:1; Colossians 3:5-14; 1 Peter 1:22.

No one attains to complete sanctification in this life (1 Kings 8:46; 1 John 1:8). Yet the Scripture tells us that the saints in heaven are completely free from the power of sin (Heb. 12:23; Rev. 14:5). This means that our sanctification is completed either at death or immediately after.

So far as we are concerned now, sanctification means that the power of sin is being overcome in us. The dominion or reigning power of sin has already been broken. Read Romans 6. This great chapter reminds us that whereas we were once the slaves of sin (it dominated us, controlled us and dictated the pattern of our life), that has now changed. We are in Christ. We are dead to sin (v. 11). That is, the person that I was before, I no longer am. Before, I was under sin. Now that I am a new creature in Christ Jesus, sin has no authority over me. It has no power to make me obey it.

This does not mean that sin does not bother the Christian. Of course it does, but because its absolute authority and reign have ceased, we can now triumph over it. We are no longer slaves of sin, under its heel and dominion. We are enemies of sin, fighting and resisting its evil influences. We do not obey it (v. 12). We do not yield to it (v. 13). We mortify (put to death) sin’s advances in us (Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5).

All this is not easy. It involves effort and determination, and it is only possible because ‘we know that our old self was crucified with him [Christ] so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin’ (Rom. 6:6).

Even though we are Christians, there remains much of the old sinful nature in us. This must not be pandered to. It must be resisted and fought, and our new nature must be allowed to rule (Eph. 4:20-32). It is as we do this that our lives are made better, holier, and more Christlike, because sanctification affects every part of us:

understanding	Jeremiah 31:33-34
will	Ezekiel 36:25-27
passions	Galatians 5:24
conscience	Hebrews 9:14

God delights to see ‘good works’ in His people—not as a means of salvation (Eph. 2:8-9), but as the product of salvation that brings glory to God our Saviour (Matt. 5:16).

‘Good works’ are the necessary evidence of faith. This is what James pressed for in his epistle in chapter 2. Look, for example, at verse 17: ‘Faith’, he says ‘if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.’ In the next verse he says, ‘I will show thee my faith by my works.’ Again in verse 20 he says, ‘Faith without works is dead.’ ‘Good works’, then, are the necessary evidence that a man is a true believer. The old commentator on the Bible, Matthew Henry, wrote, ‘If religion has done nothing for your tempers, it has done nothing for your souls.’ In Ephesians 2, verse 10, Paul says ‘For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.’

E. F. Kevan

DIFFERENCES

The differences between justification and sanctification can be summed up as follows:

• Justification is all of God. Man plays no part. Bu...

Table of contents

• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Introduction
• Preface
• 1. Going On
• 2. Justification and Sanctification
• 3. Obedience
• 4. The Christian and the Local Church
• 5. Worship
• 6. Witnessing
• 7. Prayer
• 8. The Bible: Which Version?
• 9. Valuing the Bible
• 10. Using the Bible
• 11. Right and Wrong
• 12. Doubts
• 13. Assurance
• 14. Failure
• 15. Backsliding
• 16. Guidance
• 17. Self-discipline
• 18. Work
• 19. The lord's Day
• 20. Marriage
• 21. Relationships
• 22. Parents and Home Life
• 23. Money
• 24. Abortion
• 25. Drugs
• 26. Peer-group Pressure
• 27. Further Reading
• Acknowledgements
• Christian Focus