Christ’s Atonement is a finished work, a complete payment for our sin that we can never need to add. We are justified by faith in His action, not by works of the law or our own efforts to live a good life. True Christian service, therefore, does not spring from a duty to atone for our failures, but from a heart of love and gratitude for the totality of His grace.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] A number of decades ago, when I was going through our college, there was, we had in the Baptist Union a fellow who was a state evangelist, and he would come and lecture to us at the college and explain to us the very art of being in evangelism. They were great classes that I enjoyed, and some of the things that came out of that class was to realise the breadth, how broad, are different concepts of what exactly is evangelism. Some people take that word to mean outreach, so anything that is going to cause outsiders to want to come in to the church would get the name evangelism. It’s not how the Bible actually would define it, but that is how many churches would have the idea of evangelism. The first occasion I met Michelle was when, attached to the Caring

[00:01:02] Bar Baptist Church, they had a busload of young people going out the country to do evangelism, but what they’re going to do is sing songs and have attractive things that might draw people coming in. It was a bit of an illustration of just that style of definition. When it comes to evangelistic methods, it’s interesting to listen in to the different attitudes people have concerning the different methods that are used, and one method that came about because of Bill Bright, who was the founder of Campus Crusades for Christ, it’s changed its name. In order to get away from the concept of crusade, they have different names, and now if you go to the university, you might have something to do with one of the organisations there for students, which actually is the same thing but with a new name.

[00:01:54] I think it is the Word of Power, is that how it goes? Say again? Yes, whatever that was, I couldn’t hear it. Anyway, but it’s an organisation that that fellow had started, and he started when he was a student, he actually jumped all the normal training mechanisms because he got so caught up with an idea of how to do evangelism amongst students. This is Bill Bright, and he really was quite a pioneer of how to work amongst students, and he was on the bus with a group of evangelist going to a conference in Holland, in Amsterdam, and they had one occasion, instead of listening to people giving talks and having seminars, we all were to go out into Amsterdam and to do a bit of evangelism, and so I was in a bus full of evangelists going out to find

[00:02:54] somewhere where we could talk to people, and Bill Bright was on the bus as well. to a park and the idea someone had that we’d all go out into the park and talk to the people we found, Michelle and I found a little cafe across the other side which we went across and we found people sitting down and talked to them but when we came back, Bill Bright had led the driver of the bus to Christ. So, whatever methods he might have had, I want to tell you, I saw in him someone for whom his methods worked in terms of people coming to Christ. Now where he did get criticised of course was that some would say that his methods were formulaistic, a formula and it’s too neat or too much, do this, do this, do this and you’ve done the job. And he did develop what was called four spiritual laws.

[00:03:47] Put your hand up if you’ve seen the little tracks that’s used, all right, my generation or somewhat, four spiritual laws. The rest of you haven’t heard it. It’s actually a little booklet that you use. And it can be used, as I would say, formulaistically, take someone through the book and lead them in a prayer and you’ve done your job. I don’t think it was ever intended by Bill Bright to be quite like that. It rather was how to have something in your hands that people could follow with their eyes as well as your explanations. But you were meant to sort of use it as a tool and whatever questions came up, you answered the questions. It wasn’t meant to be something that people would think that if you just take someone through that booklet, they’ll turn them into a Christian.

[00:04:33] Anyway, what was very interesting is that the four spiritual laws idea that Bill Bright got, he wasn’t the first one to talk about spiritual laws or to talk about a definition of the Gospel and particularly with reference to the biggest fact in the Bible that you have to handle if you’re going to define what is the Gospel has to do with the fact that there’s an Old Testament and a New Testament. And do you find the Gospel across the whole of the Scriptures or is it a New Testament phenomenon or is it a bit of a hybrid really where it’s mostly in the New Testament but when you know it from the New, you’ll spot it in the Old as well, which is my position. I think that you can find the gospel in so many places in the Old Testament, though not as overtly set out the same as what it does in the New.

[00:05:28] And I think that’s the truth. But what’s also interesting, that down through church history, there have been times when people have sought to distinguish the difference between the Testaments, the Old Testament and the New Testament, in terms of law and gospel. and again I think there’s a point to that because the law of Moses is very clearly the heart of the Old Testament and the gospel the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ is clearly more central in the New and after all the first four books of the New Testament are called gospels they’ve had that name for a long time and indeed some of them begin the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God that’s Mark And so to say of the New Testament it’s largely the testament of the Gospel

[00:06:18] and the Old Testament is largely the testament that has to do with the law isn’t wrong. However, different people have tried to put together how those two relate, and as I was saying, down through church history there have been different ideas, one of which was by Charles Wesley, John and Charles Wesley. there’s two brothers, John Wesley was the preacher and Charles Wesley, I think if I got it the right way around, Charles Wesley was involved with the music side and the organisation of the services. But their work in history brought about the denomination of Methodism. And the word Methodism comes from the fact that a part of what they did was to try to get initiated or worked out methodologies that would indeed get people to hear the gospel and get people to go on as Christians.

[00:07:12] And I think the strength of the Methodist denomination and the explanation as to how it arose so successfully in history has to do with that they set out a way for the church to get out there amongst people and bring them to Christ and grow a church out of doing so. And that’s how the Methodist denomination was so successful as such. but John and Charles Wesley also outlined what they would call the difference between the Old and New Testaments in terms of what was law and what was gospel and it was rather fascinating when you learned exactly what they were saying and I’ll give to you a little bit about how they said it this is John and Charles Wesley and the ideas that they had were that the gospel is basically what the New Testament has to say

[00:08:06] but in that New Testament there also is a sense of there being law and according to the Wesleys so the gospel was what the four gospels said and it’s the good news as to how you can come to God and know the forgiveness of sins but the law was how you learn to live And those parts of the Gospels, which were Jesus teaching, for example, on the Mount of Olives, Jesus giving that teaching about how we are to behave as Christians, that, they said, was the law. And it’s quite a different formula than what Bill Bright came up with with his four spiritual laws. And it’s just something that they did back then in history. And I did write down here what was their idea of the thing.

[00:08:59] So the preaching of the Gospel, according to the Wesleys, is the love of God to sinners, and it’s based in demonstration of Jesus’ life and death. Secondly, the resurrection and the intercession of Christ. Intercession is when he goes to heaven and prays for us. And this is all a part of the Gospel. So the Gospel, according to the Wesleys, was all about Jesus and his mission on earth, but also he’s going to heaven and the fact that he intercedes for us from that spot. But the New Testament also has a preaching of the law, and that is in the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus. And it’s his enforcing the commands of God as to how we are to behave as Christians.

[00:09:45] And so their formula was to put the law and the Gospel in the New Testament as a part of the new regime, not of the Old Testament, which is quite different. So let me sum up again. Wesley would say, God loves you, and that love causes you to obey him. Christ died for you, and you are called on then to die for sin. Christ is risen, and we are to rise in the image of God in terms of our behavior and finally are going to be with the Lord. And Christ lives forevermore, and we are to live to God until we get to glory. And so they sort of attached to the Gospel, good things that God has done for us, a duty that we then had, that they would call the law, coming from the New Testament.

[00:10:38] Now you can hear how that’s quite different from the usual way, at least that I have become familiar with it, in Baptist churches. However, what do you make of Bill Bright’s four spiritual laws? Now let me summarize it. I happen to think that although it could be used formulaistically, take someone through a little booklet and clap them on the back when they say a prayer and say they’re a Christian, is not exactly what I think Bill Bright meant us to do, and certainly not the practice that really is being called for by evangelism. The four specific laws run this way, if some of you weren’t able to say you’d seen it before. The law is law one, that God loves you, and he’s got a wonderful plan for your life.

[00:11:26] That little bit about having a wonderful plan for your life was the way it’s interpreted by Bill Bright, that it’s, the Gospel is about how to get into God working in you and for you, and he’s got a plan for your life. The second one was, but there’s a problem, and it is that we’re all sinners and we all have failed. and therefore we’re separated from God and being separated from God how can He get busy in our lives giving us that wonderful life the third law was that Jesus Christ is the only way to get over that the only way to be saved the only way to get peace with God is through the person of Jesus Christ and then the fourth way is that you have to approach Him by faith you have to respond to what He has done by putting your rest and trust in the efficiency of that effort of Christ

[00:12:16] in order that he might be your personal saviour. The language used was the one from John’s Gospel about receiving Christ, whereas you needed to receive Christ as saviour and as Lord. And so these were the four steps. And the little booklet just had four major double pages, I think it was, where you went through and showed people that if you’ve heard about Christ and what he’s done for you, and you come to believe in him and trust in him and ask him to be saviour for you, then that is going to get you to be a part of God’s working in you, his wonderful plan for your life, which will finish up in heaven. Now, I don’t think the content of Bill Bright’s set out of the four laws is something that’s wrong at all. In fact, I think it’s quite correct. How you use it, though, as I earlier intimated,

[00:13:09] intimated that if you use it just as sort of a method to scurry through some content and get a prayer out of people, and there are some people for whom it is a personality thing, I think, that they can get people to nod their heads or get people to go along or people to say a prayer, where it might not actually be a genuine conversion because it takes the spirit of God’s conviction. It takes something more than our human persuasive methods, methods, whether it be through a booklet or whether it be some other way, for someone to actually be turned into a Christian there has to be that call of God that registers with them and there has to be a genuine trust that they have in what God has done for them through Christ in order for a proper conversion to happen.

[00:13:54] That’s the reason why lots of people who make decisions later have other moments where they discover that they actually have found the real thing at that later date. And one of our preachers that I get when I’m away or I’m not well, which is Russell Hines, his wife, Kay, is a person who used to be, Russell and Kay were in this church, he was a youth pastor at one time, and Kay used to work in the children’s, not wasn’t the children’s don’t reach the children’s after school hours care thing that ran downstairs from the hall in that period of time. And Kay was busy doing that, and I got to know them, and eventually when they moved to another church where Russell was also working, he went to college, and they put him at the Upper Mount

[00:14:46] Gravatt Church, and he wasn’t very good at English at first, and so the principal, who was my dad, got him to do a course that was held in the evening, which was like a preliminary course where the English was set at a lower level that would give him a run-up to be able to handle the college, and he asked, I was the person that my dad got to teach the course. And while teaching that course, Russell and I got our heads together and planned a crusade at his church, and so he introduced the idea to his deacons, and we had four months at the Upper Mount Gravatt Baptist Church. But what is interesting, having… And I stayed at Russell and Kay’s house. They had no children then, but I stayed as their guest. And I would have said, of the two, who was the godly person?

[00:15:34] I would have picked Kay, because Russell was a bit of a rogue, and he was full of jokes. But Kay was a very well-living person that was just someone that had a way about her that I said was gracious. But after I left there, and I went off to other things, they went to college properly, and he was a student, and they assigned him to the Wynnum Baptist Church. So Russell and Kay went down there. And one particular service, after the service, she greeted Russell and the senior pastor of the time down there and said, I’ve just come to Christ. The two men didn’t know what to say, because I think the senior pastor there, like me, took Kay to be the one we would have thought was the real Christian notion. I hope this doesn’t get back to Russell, but the truth was that she was such a generous person

[00:16:33] and someone seeking to walk with God as she knew it. But she said, I’ve just actually come to Christ. And then she carried on and said, I think I should get baptised again. Because she had been previously baptised, but it was without actually understanding that call of God to put your trust in what Jesus has done and rest in the forgiveness that he works. It’s an understanding of the atonement, that Christ has satisfied the justice of God in his life and by his paying for our injustices or our failures to live after God’s way in how he died. That’s what the atonement’s all about. It’s a solid piece of happening in history that Jesus has done and therefore doesn’t require us to do anything to make atonement for our sins, but to rest in his action. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed,

[00:17:30] if you like watching films, I have to admit that I like to learn about human nature, watching movies, especially if they’re ones that seek to bring out human actions. And there are a number of films that are called or have a name atonement in it. And there’s one that, I think it’s Kieran Knightley is one of the actresses in it and another fellow. And in this thing, it’s how one given person can make up for wrongful actions done. And a number of the films that portray our society’s understanding as to what atonement’s about is where there’s been a wrongful thing done and it’s what you do to make up for the wrong you did. And so how does a person make atonement? There’s another film, I can’t remember its name, where there were two brothers, but they were sparky sorts of brothers.

[00:18:25] This is in the days of sword fights. And they got into an argument and I think the younger one killed the older one. Might have been the other way around. But anyway, then he had to somehow make atonement and do things. And part of what the film showed was this him given this by a religious person, this task to get these enormous weights dangling from it and climb up a big mountain, dangling these terribly heavy things behind him. And it was in order to earn an atoning action to undo the harm done by how he killed his brother. But you can hear in that the idea of there’s been a wrongful thing done that something has to do to atone it. That’s not wrong. But what’s wrong in how the films construct what is an atonement is that they put it the responsibility of a person to atone for themselves.

[00:19:16] Or if not the person, certain circumstances that somehow undo the harm of the original bad action. But that’s not how the Bible understands atonement. The Gospel is all about how God saw there was no capacity that we, the human race, would ever have to make up for the fall. The original fall got the human race in toto kicked out of the garden and what it represented. And for the rest of the time, we have been a fallen race. And sinfulness is in our generics and comes out in every generation. It doesn’t matter how well people might be trained or how religious they might be, how good a church they attend and do things. But you can’t undo the fall, especially as it’s represented in you. The Apostle Paul speaks in the book of Romans of how wretched he was at his continued sin, how wretched man that I am.

[00:20:19] In the middle of the book of Romans he says, who shall deliver me from this body of death? And he’s talking about that in his humanity there is sin that keeps on propping up its head. And he likened it to that practice that they had back then. This is one of my favourite illustrations, I won’t apologise for giving it again, but what they used to do in those days is that they’d chain you or tie you up back to back, no shirts or anything to stop the worms getting from that corpse to which you were tied or shackled coming, creeping through and into your back. And they called that dead corpse to which they chained up or tied up a prisoner they were persecuting. They called it a body of death. And the Apostle Paul likens what we are in our humanity to being like we have a body of death.

[00:21:12] Come to us from the fallen, there isn’t anything we can do to change that. O wretched man, he says I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? But he goes on in the next chapter, thanks be to God, and he tells the Gospel as to what Jesus has done. And the Atonement is about what God did in Christ. He did the thing that we could never do. He did the thing that we never called on to do. He paid for. He atoned against the justice of God, against the anger of God, against the crime, because of the crime of our sins. He atoned for our sins. The Atonement is a once and for all thing that God did in history through Christ, and there is no other thing that could be done, but that it was done by Jesus as he dies for

[00:22:06] our sins. That’s the atonement. And what we’re called to do is to put our faith, our trust in the efficiency of that act of God. That’s the gospel. Now, it’s also the case, I think that Wesley wasn’t entirely wrong to add into the New Testament that it has a bit of law in it. But the law is what he would call the law of Jesus and the requisites of Jesus that what we should do now that we have been atoned. But in some respects, the Methodist way of articulating it is open for people to make a work out of that. But it’s not what the Bible teaches. Let me quote you some Bible verses at this juncture about what the gospel then calls on us to be and to do. And so I don’t know which one to pick on first, but I think we’ll go to John 1, 16 and 17. It’s not quite so apparent how this proves my point,

[00:23:08] but I’ll bring it out to you hopefully. It’s talking about Christ and his being full of grace. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, the point that hits me from that is not that the law and grace are put as, you’ve got to have one but you can’t have both. If you’ve got one, you don’t have the other. No, the law has a role to play and it was articulated to the Jewish nation through Moses. But it took Jesus to come to bring out a invisibility and to make presences and offering grace and truth. And in the person of Christ, grace and truth sums up the very essence of who he is. But what it also implies is that these are not two opposing things

[00:24:08] and if you pick one, you get the other. It is the different roles that the law plays. And the role of the Old Testament and the law that’s right and smacked through it is to reveal to us just how the Apostle Paul found out, because he was trained in the law, and he found out how wretched a man he was because of the body of death, because of in his humanity was sin that he could never get escape from. He was chained to, in this metaphor, this body of death. Who shall deliver me? And the grace and the truth of the gospel is what God has done in Christ, not what he calls us to do, but what God has done, that we may be delivered from what the law convicts us of the truth. It’s not deliverance from the law, but deliverance from that which the law shows is our story.

[00:25:11] Grace and truth. And so those two, though they may come through different testaments, they’re not opponents. In fact, the teaching about the law sets us up for understanding about atonement, that it’s not something that we do. We choose a Christian life, or we live good Christian values, or we serve the Lord through the church and do lots of jobs in the church. No, there’s nothing that we can do to deliver us from the body of death, as the Apostle Paul later said, because Jesus has done it all. And the very fact that he lived a sinless life was that he would qualify as a sinless sacrifice, and his death on the cross would then be that adequate and sufficient atonement for our sins. And not like the popular films, which have that people are given something to do to make up for

[00:26:06] the wrong they might have previously done, or people were given experiences that would undo the badness of the previous experiences. No, what it is, is that the law is to show us that there’s nothing we can do. And the gospel shows us what he has done. The gospel on coming to Christ because we receive his grace and we rest in his action is where faith comes to play. We trust in him by faith. And that will lead us to have the capacity to be able to live better. And so what the New Testament gives and what Charles Wesley, John Wesley, whichever it was of the two, taught that there’s a sort of a bit of a ought of how we should act because of the gospel and that’s the law in the New Testament. I think there’s something right about what they said but the way it comes across

[00:27:03] is a little bit leading into a law way. But the way that they said was really interesting. I’m quoting I hope the way that they did it the Wesleyans and let me read to you God loves you so that we should love and we should obey him it’s sort of true I like the truth that we should obey him but not because it’s a law way it’s actually what comes from you when you rest in his love you find you want to obey him that’s the amazing thing God loves you and when you rest in his love there’s something that is naturally released in you to do what you want to do because you love him love brings obedience but not as a a recompense for the wrong that you once had there’s a fine distinction there let me keep going Christ died for you and therefore, according to the Wesley’s, you need to die to sin.

[00:28:15] But the way they’re phrasing it is to make it an atonement thing, you know, make up the difference. You did the bad, now you better do the good. It’s sort of half true. Christ died for you and therefore you need to die to sin because sin is a terrible thing and you need to learn what it is to be quit from sin and to learn that you can take yourself as having died from sin because of how Jesus died for your sin. He did the dying and you can get it to apply to you because of what he did, not so much that he died for you, you better take your turn and die for him. You hear the difference? The third one, Christ is risen and therefore you have a responsibility to rise and seek to live in the image of God. I don’t want to disagree with the fact that that’s what we ought to be doing but it’s not an ought that is

[00:29:14] a part of the salvation. It’s not the way that we end up obeying the law and therefore have merit by so obeying. It is the natural result that comes about that you can learn to do as God wants you to because you’re enabled by being released from the guilt of how you were guilty before. Christ lives forevermore is the fourth thing that Wesley said and therefore we should live to God and once again it’s I think it’s true that we should live to God and if you’ve become a Christian at some time in your past I’m pretty sure that it would have dawned on you sometime now that was how you were then and God has given me a total new beginning I will now try and live for him. I think that’s a natural consequence within human hearts because of his grace but you

[00:30:14] don’t have to turn it into a law. I don’t actually agree with the Wesleys finding the law in the New Testament and part of the problem that happens to people who read the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus teaching that if they too strictly make it what ought to be done they can turn it into a law that gets you in a sense of defeat again because what if you fail? Do you say the whole thing has blown up for me? I blew it. Every now and then you meet someone who came to Christ and they receive Christ as saviour and then they fail to live it out and say oh I’ve already done my dash that didn’t work for me I’ll throw the law away. But some of that throwing away is because they thought that they were meant now to carry on the task. Jesus did his bit and I need to do mine. The real truth of the

[00:31:09] matter is that the gospel is Jesus did what he did in order for you to be able to have his spirit in you and his spirit with the agenda of reproducing the life and power of Jesus in you is not something done by your effort but done by that continued faith in his supernatural presence and it is something that you learn after becoming a Christian that when you became a Christian it wasn’t that you’d be set up to then you do so well because you discover like the Apostle Paul you’re still doing bad in some areas or you’re still finding difficulty. His problem was the covetousness that he couldn’t get over. The wretched man that he saw himself to be because he couldn’t live it out. But when you recognise that the atonement is to call for you, to let the Spirit of God do for you what you cannot do of yourself,

[00:32:03] there’s a lesson in there that’s just so strong that the Christian life is not lived by what you do for Christ, it’s lived by what you allow Christ to do in you. And the Apostle Paul himself spoke about the fact that he seeks to serve the Lord with all of the energy that he, the Lord, inspires within him. And to know that the atonement of Jesus is not to set you with an obedience burden, it’s to set you with a capacity to do what Jesus’ atonement gives you that inspiration to be and to do. I know I’m making a rather an application, I’m making a distinction that is one that takes a bit of seeing carefully. The atonement of Jesus is finished, you don’t have to do anything to atone by living so good. You just have to trust him as to how his Spirit leads and rest in what he will do through you. And as his Spirit is in you

[00:33:11] he’ll inspire you to do things that it won’t be just you sitting like this and the Spirit does it, you know, without you doing anything. It’ll be you and him together as the Apostle Paul spoke about the fact that he struggles more, just more than everybody does to do the things that God would have him do, but he does it with the strength that Jesus gives you to do and it’s a bit of a trick I don’t mean a deception trick but a bit of a thing to learn to learn how to serve Christ but not in your strength but in his it’s not a lesson of get converted and then do nothing some people characterise this message I’m now giving tonight as one which is saying trust God and don’t bother anymore just do nothing the Lord will do it all no it isn’t that we aren’t involved in fact we’re to be like the Apostle Paul

[00:34:07] who learns how to serve the Lord with all the strength that he inspires within us and that is what the Gospel is and it’s not more law although it is in many respects his power to fulfil the law but not because law has got you it’s because you’ve actually got clear of the recrimination of the law in order that you might find you can fulfil it I don’t know how to word this I wish I were able to get to say this I’m going to work on it to somehow make it clearer but there’s something very beautiful in how the Scriptures speak about this capacity that we end up being led into to be able to serve him let’s look to a few other verses let’s go to Galatians 2.16 Galatians 2.16 Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law wherever you find the law I want to tell you that you’re not justified

[00:35:13] by the works of that law I think he’s referring to the Mosaic law and the whole tenor of the Old Testament that put on to people to have to keep the law in order to know they’re okay with God but you’re not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ so we also who also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law now this is easily understood if you identify the law as a Mosaic law but I think it probably is true for any articulation of what God wants which is what is a law and even if the Wesleyan interpretation of the law was to be doing the Sermon on the Mount the Sermon on the Mount was not meant by Jesus to put a pressure on us to have to behave and if we don’t, we’ll be guilty

[00:36:08] it’s rather to give us the capacity of us being able to keep the law by the works of the law, no one will be justified it doesn’t mean that you won’t end up doing the works of the law but they’re not the means of your justification. Your justification is based on the once and for all accomplished atonement. And in the morning service I was explaining a little bit more about one of my favourite verses, 1 John 1.9. If we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we confess our sin, he is faithful. Now, this morning I was explaining faithful is Jesus keeping his word. Jesus doesn’t have to trump up any faith. He keeps his word. That’s what it means when it says he’s faithful. But when it says he’s faithful and just,

[00:37:07] just because the atonement has finished with there being any recrimination from your failures, even the ones you’re yet to do. And he’s just to put you on a forgiven list because he’s dealt with it. That’s what the atonement’s all about. And when you see the breadth and depth of what the atonement has finished once and for all, never get into trying to be in a form of obedience that makes you feel better. Being obedient is wonderful, but the obedience is the obedience that he helps you do as a consequence of coming to your conscience. And when you know you’re forgiven, he’s faithful and just to forgive you because he has paid for it. That’s what’s just. The action of the atonement makes his forgiveness of you. Every sins, even the ones you’re yet to commit, to be just by him, just as in justice,

[00:38:07] just thing that he’s doing to forgive you. So it’s not really anything to do with law way. It’s faith way and grace way, which is what the New Testament says of Jesus. I think I’ve said enough. But it’s about the fact that as we understand the atonement, it sets us up to then trust Jesus to be the power that will help us to live consequently and appropriately the way that we then are called on to do. And that’s the secret of the Christian life. And atonement has already been made. You don’t have to live well. You don’t have to take on a Christian job. One of the Baptist problems we have is if the church doesn’t have clear enunciation of the gospel when we do what is our normal Baptist practice of get people to take up jobs, they do it in a sense of somehow thinking they’re adding to their atonement.

[00:39:17] They do it in a sense of even if they know that Jesus died for them but they do somehow that that will make them better before God. and that’s an error. You don’t serve the Lord because somehow it will help in your atonement. Why do you serve him? Do you know? No. Thank you for helping me. There is a sense in which we are called to be obedient but why do we want to be obedient? We love you. Thank you, thank you. Give that man a clap. Because that’s where what the Christian life springs out of, the love. How big is your love? Probably proportional to how much you realise how totally atoned you are. And when you realise what it costs Christ to atone for your sin, then out of love you serve him. And one of the joys of being a Christian actually is finding somewhere to serve out of love

[00:40:28] and do it because you love him. And you discover some of the richest things in the Christian life when you’re led to something you can do for your love for Jesus. I know these are slight things that sometimes we can have a little bit of the wrong motives and right motives mixed. It’s not quite so this or that, one or t’other. It’s learning to do things out of love for him. Don’t do anything because you have to be atoned. I think there are things you should do because to be obedient, which is where I’ve got to be careful because the word obedient is what we’re called to do. But not because we have to be obedient to somehow atone for when we were disobedient. if you have some shadow in your life because of a time when you were disobedient leave it with Christ if you just trust his atonement

[00:41:31] you can forget about all that and let the years that you walk with God and do things because you love him be the thing that you take into eternity we don’t have to even at the judgement listen to this atone for all our sins we’ll be judged well Christ will judge everything that’s happened but the sins that we’ve made he has atoned for I don’t know how to say it that we could grasp it that he has totally atoned for you just take his hand and walk on if you have just a little bit of guilt here tonight and you’re seeking to somehow undo that guilt quit trying but take it by faith that what Jesus did on the cross has atoned his atonement is complete it’s finished you know the words tetelestia that Jesus cried on the cross it is finished also used when people paid off the bill and they come to the last payment

[00:42:38] the person would write across the bill it is finished Jesus by his death has finished your bill now you live and do the things because you love him and this is the gospel I like the four spiritual laws that Campus Crusade for Christ have I don’t think you should use it formula strictly but it does put across the facts that Jesus and Jesus Christ alone is the hope of forgiveness and the way that we can have relationship with God that sets us free from the past sets us free from sins even where we still are not able to be free in our behaviour totally but you confess your sins and this morning was the burden of the morning message that I might adieu people to live a life of confessing their sin in order to stand on the promise if we confess our sins he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and then you serve him in the clarity of a conscience that’s free from all the past because you love him, no other reason is needed.