Thank you so much for coming, some of you from far away. If you’ve come from out of town, why don’t you raise your hand. Is anybody else left? If you didn’t raise your hand and you’re from here, raise your hand. That’s probably a first. There are more people from out of town. Thank you so much for doing that. Some of you’ve come a long way, and some of you are celebrating some important things this weekend I heard about. So that’s great. I’m tickled that you’re here. My mom used to say that (tickled), and I would think, “Why would she say that?”

Influenced by Our Experience

We’re all governed in large measure by our experience in the way our theology develops. And we just should be honest about that. None of us is dropped down into the world with no cultural background, no family, no personality, no pain, no fear, and nothing influencing as if it’s just raw Bible. No, that doesn’t happen to anybody. We’re born into a family. We grow up. We have personalities that are a problem to us, and we experience amazing, painful, and happy things. All of them affect what we long for. And what you long for tends to be what you see in the Bible.

I’m just being honest that this seminar is shaped hugely by my inadequacies. I grew up a very fearful boy. I couldn’t talk in front of a group until I was about 20. I mean, I couldn’t. It’s not funny. It wasn’t like butterflies and weak knees. Everybody laughs about kids who can’t speak and get nervous. Bologna. It’s not funny. It wasn’t funny. To this day, it wasn’t funny. My mom took me to a psychologist who tried to blame it on her, so I never went back because she was the only one who understood and would cry with me at night about civics book reports I was supposed to give and couldn’t give, and therefore I had to take a C in class. So if you grew up like that, what would you look for in the Bible? Help? Courage? Fearlessness? Some way to be able to do it, right? So just know I’m after help in the Bible. And that wasn’t my only problem.

Living by faith in future grace is a way of life that I think is completely, totally biblical. Why would you embrace a view of life that you thought was helpful and was going to damn you in the end because it wasn’t biblical? Not me. I’m very eager to go to heaven. Another desire I had as a kid was not to go to hell. I still have it. And therefore, I’m looking for the truth. I want to know God. I don’t play any games with anybody’s ideas. I just want to know God. I think, “You tell me, God, what to believe, and I’ll believe it. Because you matter more than anything.” So living by faith in future grace has roots, and I hope they are refined by and shaped by the Bible. All these slides that I have here in front of me are going to be 90 percent Bible.

Pursuing Sanctification

Another way to describe the seminar is that you could call it a seminar on sanctification. So there’s justification, whereby God declares us righteous and perfect because of our union with Christ, through faith alone in Jesus Christ on the basis of his work. That’s justification and it’s the foundation. And then, built on that and happening over a lifetime, is this thing called sanctification, whereby we, through the Spirit, by the word, and — I’m going to argue — by faith in future grace, are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next, into the image of Christ. I’m 66, I want more. I want to be more like Christ tomorrow than I am today. I want to be a better husband next year than I am now. I’m not done. We’ll never be done.

Here’s a little flavor, maybe, of future grace You know where this is coming from. This is Philippians 3:8–16:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Pressing on Toward the Goal

If you understand that text, you understand future grace. He says, “I press on, I strain forward, and I reach out because I’ve been reached.” Now, let me add another little comment on that. When I say, “Because he made me his own I press on to make the resurrection and full fellowship with Jesus in the age to come my own,” where’s the faith in future grace? Aren’t I keying off of the, “He made me his own”? At this point — and I’m going to press you at every moment into the meaning of things — what does it mean to be thrilled by, “He made me his own”?

What does that mean? Does it mean, “Oh, 2000 years ago he paid for my sins, he canceled the wrath of God, he opened the doors of heaven, and he shut the doors of hell, but it has nothing to do with our relationship today. It has nothing to do with whether he’ll show up tomorrow and help me.” That’s wrong. I don’t give a rip what happened on the cross if it makes no difference for tomorrow. Let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die, unless when he made me his own, I’m still his own, and tomorrow I will be his own. If that’s not true, I’m finished. I’m out of here. I quit the ministry, I quit marriage, and I quit life. I’m gone if that’s not true. So you see, even when tenses are past — he made me his own and that’s why I’m straining forward to make him my own — it’s because him making me his own guarantees that I’m going to do it.

Now. I’m getting ahead of myself here and starting to get onto slide 20. I just feel like I’ve got to give you a flavor up front of where we’re going and why it matters.

So you could call it a seminar on sanctification. You could also call it a seminar on the glory of God, because, if it’s on sanctification, if it’s on fearlessness and courage and hope, then it’s on the glory of God, because Jesus says, “Let your light so shine before men so that they may see your good, sanctified deeds, and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). That’s the way the Father gets glory, right? We are transformed into the image of Jesus. We do things that are explainable only in terms of the glory of Jesus. And people look and say, “Hm. Their hope is somewhere else. Their treasure must be something different from mine by the way they love.”

The Truth of the Gospel

So it could be a seminar on the glory of God. Or it could be a class on the gospel. We could call it a class on the gospel. I just preached a sermon in this room yesterday at 12:30 to the Bethlehem College and Seminary folks, and I talked about Romans 8:32, which is maybe my favorite verse in all the Bible. It says:

He who did not spare his own Son (that’s the essence of the gospel in terms of its historic achievement) but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Yes, he will. That’s the logic. The logic of heaven holds was the thesis of that sermon. If he didn’t spare his own Son, he will give us everything with him that we need now, and the world and the universe in the age to come. And they relate like that. And so, all we’re talking about here is how God not sparing his Son gives rise to all we need now and in the future.

I want this. I bank on this. Among the “all things” that he’s going to give me for my good is the ability to talk for three hours. If I didn’t believe that, I just couldn’t come. There’s enough butterflies, there’s enough stuff going on inside me this afternoon that I would just say, “What use would I be tonight? If one of the things you didn’t buy for me on the cross was three hours worth of helpfulness, what am I going to do?” So all I’m doing is unpacking the gospel.

You know, when you talk about the gospel, you talk about a plan, you talk about an event in history (he died for us), you talk about achievement (he removed the wrath of God and perfected righteousness and slew sin), and then you talk about application of that in our lives through faith. And then, you talk about God. So you could say this is a seminar on God. Because the ultimate grace of future grace is that we get God, and nothing less will suffice or satisfy

Standing on the Promises

Here’s one more thing. I printed this out. Raise your hand if you’ve ever sung the song Standing on the Promises? Really? You guys are churchy. I thought it was too old for anybody to know. We could sing it. Maybe we will at the end. The reason I mention it is that, in case you’re thinking that living by faith in future grace is a modern, newfangled doctrine, all I’m doing is unpacking this hymn, okay? That’s all I’m doing. If your mama or daddy sang this song, they know what I’m going to say. I mean, if they thought about it:

Standing on the promises that cannot fail. When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, By the living word of God I shall prevail, Standing on the promises of God.

That’s all I have to say. Future grace, a fancy word for promises of God. It continues:

Standing on the promises of Christ, the Lord, Bound to him eternally by love’s strong cord, Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword, Standing on the promises of God.

That’s a really good song. They don’t write them like that anymore. But they write some good ones.

Course Outline and Definitions

That’s slide number 1 out of 94. I was praying on the bridge coming over here, my revelatory bridge, “Make it work out, Lord.” I have no notes. I mean, that’s done. That was my introduction. So now I have no notes. I just have slides. So everything I speak about is what will come into my head when I show a slide. That’s all I’ve got to go on. You can see why I’m desperate. I mean, divide 94 into whatever six times 60 is and see what it comes out. And I’ve already used 25 of them. I have no idea how this is going to work. It doesn’t matter if we get through them all, what matters is that God shows up and truth is spoken, and you get help.

This is an iPad. By the way, if you wonder, “How are you doing this?” I don’t know. They just put it up here and I push the right button. And I’m so skeptical. I want to keep looking to see, is it really up there? That’s another one of my problems. I’m really skeptical. I don’t trust anybody or anything. Which makes it hard in a relationship with God.

That’s the outline of the course there. The first thing we’re going to do is definitions. I’ve done some of them already. Then we’ll ask the question, so what? Why does it matter? And we’ll speak about different passions behind it — a passion for the supremacy of God, a passion for joy, and a passion for holiness. We;ll ask, is it biblical? We don’t want to just talk about these things, but we want to get down to the nitty-gritty Bible foundations of what I’m saying.

And fourth, we’ll ask, how does it work? How does it work for holiness? How does it work against sin? That’s the really practical part, where we’ll tackle, if we have time, anxiety, covetousness, lust, bitterness, and impatience.

I should also say, here’s the present volume of Future Grace. The old one is going out of print here shortly, and this will be the new one. This is coming out in the fall. I’ve edited Future Grace more than any book I’ve ever issued a new edition on because I’ve made exegetical decisions about some texts differently in the last 20 years. And so those changes will be reflected. The argument doesn’t change any, and the illustrations don’t change any, but there are a few foundational texts I understand differently now. So I think you’ve been given one of these. That’s great. You can ask questions from that with your Twitter or Facebook, and wait for the new edition in the fall.

Future

Let’s go to definitions. What do I mean by future? Well, it’s obvious. It’s that part of time yet to be experienced. The reason I just point out the obvious is that it evidently isn’t obvious, because when I use the term future grace, I think some people think heaven. Some people think some distant answer to prayer. And I mean whether I will finish this sentence. So when I think future, I mean from now forward. Those seconds are now past, which means that the present, the instant of experience, is almost non-existent.

I don’t want to get philosophical here because I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what time is. Time is a total mystery to me because when I try to figure out what is present, I can’t find it. I just can’t find it. It’s always flopping into the past. The moment it’s here, it’s gone. And the future is always arriving. Second after second it’s coming at me. What I mean by present is the instant of experience. If you’re experiencing something, that’s the present for you. But how long it lasts, I don’t know. A nanosecond? Whatever that is. I think God can divide a nanosecond into an infinite number of pieces, which is why he’s outside of time.

So that’s why I’m using the word experience. We know how we live. We know what past is. I was eating, bless your hearts, a piece of cinnamon raisin bread an hour ago. That’s past. What’s in the future? I’m going to change this slide. In the future, I’m going to die. In the future, I’m going to face the judgment.

This is what I mean by the past. It’s a reservoir that’s getting bigger all the time. This is why gratitude should be growing all the time. Paul said to give thanks for everything (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Everything is a lot, and it’s getting bigger every second. So gratitude should be getting bigger every second, because the past is getting bigger every second. And there’s more there to be grateful for. But the future is not getting smaller. Is that glorious or what?

That’s going on and starting now. And now again it’s starting and now again it’s starting. You get the feel of what I’m talking about because this is where I live folks. When I couldn’t talk in front of a group and yet I tried in the eighth grade — and I had my one paragraph that I had to read in physical science in the eighth grade, and it was on one of those ring spiral binders because I thought if it was stiff, I wouldn’t shake so much — as it was coming, I knew that the person getting up and walking to the front and reading his paragraph and coming back left me about five seconds. That was an infinite future for me. I walked out of the room. I went to the bathroom and I cried my eyes out. I’ll tell you five seconds of future really matters.

You can walk away from your crucifixion. You can decide not to be a martyr in the last two seconds of your life. Two seconds of future really matters. So get what I’m saying about living by faith in future grace. It means, do you trust him for the next two seconds of the hardest conversation you may have ever have? This is just huge. This is the way we live the Christian life. It’s the way we do the things we’re called to do, and half the things we’re called to do are hard to do. Things worth doing are usually hard to do. Therefore, you have to have help. And the help arrives in five seconds — you hope, you believe.

Grace

Grace is God’s omnipotent commitment to do only what is good for his unworthy people. That’s what makes it grace. It’s about God’s commitment to an unworthy people and bringing them to conformity to Christ, glorification, and all-satisfying joy in fellowship with himself. That’s the ultimate goal of grace. That is, fulfilling all his promises to them because of Christ, which includes the help arriving in the next 10 seconds, our inheritance in the resurrection arriving possibly centuries from now, and everlasting demonstrations of his kindness in Christ Jesus. Grace is all the good that comes to you in your lack of merit starting now. Anybody dead yet? Good. You got grace. Lots of it. You’re breathing still. He gives to all men life and breath and everything. It arrives moment by moment. If he should withdraw his spirit, we would all fall over. We are living in a sea of grace.

Faith

Faith is receiving Christ as the supremely valuable treasure that he is and being satisfied with all that God is and promises to be for us in Jesus. I’m trying to use biblical words here. We know the word receiving from John 1:11–12, which says:

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name . . .

Receiving Jesus is a synonym for believing on Jesus. They’re just different images. There he is, offering himself to me and all that God is for us in him, and he says, “I will be yours if you will have me.” Faith receives him, embraces him for who he is. He is a Savior. He is a Lord. He is a treasure. And so, faith embraces him. If you say, “I think I want him as Savior, but not as Lord. I think him on him as Savior, but not as treasure,” you don’t have him.

You can’t chop him up. He dies if you chop him up. If you chop somebody in three pieces, they die. They’re not who they are. So he is who he is and he offers himself freely to all. And if we have him, we have the “all” that he is. Another way to say it is that faith is being satisfied with all that God is and promises to be for us. Now that’s huge. I’m going to argue for that. I’m just saying it right now. Later, I’ll give you texts to defend that.

But that’s huge because the problem I’m trying to solve in this course is, why does justifying faith sanctify? Because so many have said, “Okay, we know what justification is and how to have it — believe and receive. That’s good. Here comes some right and wrong. There’s a right to be done and a wrong to be avoided. Now what do we do? How do we do it? What’s the motive? How do we go about this? We’ve got to leave faith and all that stuff. That’s how we got saved. Now there’s something else. Will we obey out of gratitude?”

And my answer is no. The faith that saved you, if it’s this kind, sanctifies you. You can see why. Which is why I think there are so many people who aren’t saved who think they’re saved. Jesus says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46). In other words, “The faith that you put in me was just notional. It didn’t have anything of being satisfied with me in it.” But we’ll come back to that.

Past Grace

Past grace or bygone grace is all the good that God has ever done for his undeserving people before this present instant in their lives. The death of Christ and his resurrection are the foundational acts of past grace that give rise to all others. His people enjoy past and future grace. Let me say why that complicated language is used.

Over the years, the guys around me who’ve helped me refine these things — and almost anybody I read or anybody who asks me a question helps me — have pointed out to me that if I don’t distinguish the gospel events, the death and the resurrection of Christ, from other good things God does for us, someone might say, “Well, really? You’re going to put those in the same category?” I would say, “Well, yes, but not at all meaning they’re the same worth.” What I mean is that they’re all God’s good towards me, though I don’t deserve either. And they’re past. That’s all. Now, if you say how do they relate to each other? This one, the death of Christ for me, bought this one, my daughter getting into a school. That’s the difference. So when I say past grace, there are foundational graces, like the death of Jesus for all the others.

Biblical Justifications for Definitions

Here are a couple of examples of the definitions. Hebrews 11:1 says:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for . . .

That’s the clearest statement about faith and its meaning in the Bible. And it fits. It’s my definition. I like this definition. This is faith in future grace. Faith is the assurance or the confidence in things hoped for. The word translated assurance is a very interesting word. It’s the same word used in Hebrews 1:3, where Christ is said to be the exact nature of the Father, or the substance of the Father. So try that here: faith is the substance of things hoped for.

I think what he’s saying is this, faith looks into the future and sees a possible future because of God’s promises. And faith sees it so clearly, it has substance inside. It’s present to me now as a future that’s going to come true. And so, the way you obey, then, is by faith, by that confidence about what God is going to do in the future.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out . . . For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God (Hebrews 11:8–10).

He went out by faith. Where does obedience come from in Hebrews 11? It comes from faith. What is faith? It’s the reality of, “I have a city. It has foundations, and its designer and builder is God. I’m looking for it.” That’s faith, and obedience is flowing from it.

First Peter 4:11 says:

Whoever serves, [do so] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies . . .

We gather downstairs before every service and pray for half an hour, and the most common text cited in our prayers to God is this one. We pray, “Here we go, Lord. We want to serve now this people, and we want to serve in the strength that you supply.” When? In the next hour or hour and a half. Why? Because the giver gets the glory. I’ll finish the verse:

Whoever serves, [do so] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

As we walk up the stairs, each step we’re saying, “I trust you. I trust you. I trust you for this, the strength that God supplies.” I’m going to pause here. That’s the end of my definitions and I’m seeing a little question flash up there. I see the questions back there, do you see them? This is what we’re going to do. I’m just going to pause periodically and see if people have questions.

Question and Answer

This question is about Romans 8:12. I saw this one this afternoon, so it’s not fair. It’s the only one I saw, so I was able to think about it, but I think I’m going to say the same thing I would have said if I didn’t think about it.

Romans 8:12 seems to indicate obedience motivated by the debtor’s ethic. What do you think about how future grace relates to this text?

That’s a little bit ahead of the game because I’m going to talk about the debtor’s ethic in a few minutes. I’m going to complain about the debtor’s ethic. I’ll go ahead and jump ahead. The debtor’s ethic is:

He gave he gave his life for me What have I done for him?

If you take that in the worst possible interpretation, it means we live our lives by realizing God has done so much for us and we’re so much in his debt that we spend the rest of our life trying to pay him back by doing good things for him. That’s the debtor’s ethic, and that’s a really bad way to live. This text (Romans 8:12), the question says, seems to indicate that obedience is motivated by the debtor’s ethic, so what do you think about how future grace relates? I’ll read it in context for you and I think it will be perfectly obvious what I’m going to say about it. I’ll read Romans 8:11–12:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you (that’s present), he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead (that’s past) will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (that’s future).

So because he raised Jesus from the dead you can know for a certain that he will raise you from the dead. He continues:

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (Romans 8:12).

He’s saying, “Get all of your ideas of thinking you owe anything to the flesh out of your mind.” That’s the idea there. You don’t owe anything to the flesh. You owe everything to the Christ-raising, you-raising God.

Now, should we talk about paying debt to Christ or God for raising Jesus from the dead, or promising to raise us from the dead? And I can’t help but think that Paul did not carry this through because he got uneasy with his language. I could be wrong and it wouldn’t change. But look, he says, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh.” And now you want him to say, “But we are debtors to the Spirit.” Well, that would be fine. I could go with that. But he doesn’t. He drops it. He doesn’t go to the second half. He’s just saying, “You don’t owe anything to the flesh so don’t ever think you owe anything to yourself or your accomplishment or what you are by nature. You owe everything to grace.” And I’m very happy to say I’m a debtor to grace.

If you say, “All right, I’m a debtor to grace, and therefore I should pay God back for grace,” what are you going to do? You might say, “Well, I’m going to obey him.” In whose strength? You would have to say, “His.” So you’re going to pay him back with his strength? This isn’t going to work.

I’ll use a little image here. Obedience is me walking, okay? I have just been saved. He died for me, he secured me, he promises to raise me from the dead, and I’m going to live for him. I’m such a debtor to grace that I’m going to obey. Now, at that moment you have to ask, “Okay, how does he get glory and how do I do that?” 1 Corinthians 15:10 says:

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

That means every single step of obedience I take, I’m going deeper in debt. And that’s the way it will be forever. Praise God. You will never be less in debt than you are today unless you’re in hell. If you intend to go to heaven, the only pathway there is getting deeper and deeper and deeper in debt through grace. Every word you speak, every righteous thought you have, every action you do in reliance upon his power is reliance upon grace, and you go deeper into debt, which means it is impossible to live the debtor’s ethic to the glory of God. You can’t pay him back. The Christian life is not an amortization schedule. It’s a line of credit that is bottomless and you never make any payments, ever.

Passions that Shape Our Sanctification

Why does it matter? I’m going to zip through these really fast because I realize now it’s not a problem to have the time filled up. I’ve talked for 51 minutes and I’ve hardly started, so we’re not going to have a problem filling up these hours. I always worry. Stop worrying, Piper, you’re not going to have a problem filling up the hours, so get going here. We’ve done six slides.

1. A Passion for God’s Supremacy

There are passions behind this course. First is a passion for the supremacy of God. It’s written on the wall up there, and it says:

We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.

That’s the passion of my life. That’s what I get up in the morning thinking about. If I measure anything I do today, I measure it by, does it help make that happen? Why stress it? Because God stresses it. He says:

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
     for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
     that I may not cut you off.
Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
     I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
     for how should my name be profaned?
     My glory I will not give to another (Isaiah 48:9–11).

That’s not hard to see. God is passionate for God here. If God is passionate for God, woe to me if I’m not. So why do we care about God’s supremacy? Why do we make that the mission statement? That is clear. It’s because God does it. This is familiar. I mean, has it ever bothered you that Jesus, inspired by his Father, is telling us to pray, “Father, be great. Father, bring your kingdom. Father, make the world full of your will” (Matthew 6:9–10). This is God telling me to pray for the glory of God, isn’t it? This is God saying, “Do you want to know how to pray to me? Pray, ‘Oh, may your name be sanctified, reverenced, honored, adored, cherished, and treasured above all names.’ Yes, pray to me that way. I want my kingdom to come. I’m going to reign as king someday. Ask me to make that happen.”

This is clear. The first petition of all petitions that we should ever pray is, “God, make your name great.” Those two texts alone are enough to settle it for me, and there are hundreds. Just do a word search on “for your name’s sake,” or, “for your glory,” or just pick one of those phrases and start reading it all over the Bible. That’s number one. I’m going to skip those other arguments for it.

2. A Passion for Joy

First we talked about a passion for God’s supremacy, and now we’re talking about a passion for joy. These are things I’m after in thinking and writing and preaching from my life and for your life. I want my people to live for the supremacy of God, and I want my people to be happy, supremely happy in God. So how do you serve?

Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! (Psalm 100:2).

In 2 Corinthians 9:7, he’s talking about giving to the church. Why? What should your motivation be? He says:

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

So if you write your check for the church begrudgingly, God is not happy about that. I mean, this is a pretty surprising word. He says, “God loves a cheerful giver.” How does he feel about those who give begrudgingly? Well, he doesn’t love them. Whatever that means, we should be happy when we give. You just make it mean something that fits your theology. This is a really strong statement. When it comes to giving and say, time, energy, money, self-giving, serving, washing each others’ feet, laying down your life for each other, how do you do that? Joyfully. God doesn’t want it any other way. That’s legalism. One of the definitions of legalism would be: reluctantly and under compulsion.

Rejoice and Be Glad

A passion for joy is biblical. We will see that living by faith in future grace means rejoicing in future grace. Let’s take a sample text. This is Jesus in the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad . . . (Matthew 5:11–12).

Really? He is saying, “Rejoice and be glad when you are being persecuted and lied about.” I tell you, that is so not me. It’s scary, isn’t it? Are you a disciple of Jesus in that you rejoice when you hear that somebody has just written an email to so-and-so and it’s not true? You didn’t say that, but you should feel good about that? He says, “Rejoice and be glad.” How can you do that?

For your reward is great in heaven . . . (Matthew 5:12).

I don’t know what your battle is, but my battle every day is to go to this precious revelation of God and his future for me — and I mean short-term, which has a lot of pain in it, and longer-term, which has no pain in it — and love this future. This first one includes the afflictions that work together for my joy, and the second one is without any afflictions. I go to God’s revelation to love that future so fully that the email does not undo me but provides, in fact, a ground of rejoicing in God’s all-sufficiency. That’s a miracle. If that happens, it’s a miracle. It’s called new birth. It’s called living by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s called living by faith in future grace. So what I mean by future grace here is, “your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:12). And what I mean by faith is, “Rejoice and be glad.”

Faith is being satisfied with all that God promises to be for you in the future. That’s here in the statement “your reward is great in heaven.” So faith is this joyful embracing. God has promised a great reward, and my faith says I substantially embrace it and feel it. I embrace it, and it is so satisfying to me that I deal with the email without bitterness. I’m not bottoming out with despair, I’m not bottoming out with anger, I’m not bottoming out with plotting revenge, and I’m not bottoming out with endless self-justifications. I have enough grace to probe into something I might have said that would give the impression. Maybe they didn’t hear right. There’s a little grace going on here, hopefully.

This is the Christian life, being so satisfied. So my devotional life is up in the morning, in the Book, trying to get my heart satisfied in the great reward so it has that kind of effect. I’m not into pietism for pietism’s sake. I’m into piety for radical love’s sake, and this is radical love. We’ll see later the relationship between that right there and the end of chapter five where he says, “Love your enemies, and bless those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). We have those persecutors in that verse. Here, in Matthew 5:11–12 you’re happy. In Matthew 5:44 you’re blessing them. Do you think you can bless them if you’re not happy in the moment when they persecute you? No, you can’t.

3. A Passion for Holiness

The first passion is the supremacy of God, the second passion is joy, and the third passion is holiness. I said this is a seminar on sanctification so we have a passion for holiness, and here’s what I mean by holiness. I mean practical holiness. I mean obedience to God’s word in everyday life, so you can think in terms of obedience. That’s a good, biblical category to think in.

Second, you can think in terms of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. That’s another good, biblical category. Obedience is one category, fruit-bearing is another, and a third would be genuine love for other people. All those right there are holiness. If you think, “Are you sure you want to make a life of love and a life of holiness the same?” Look at this and see if you think so. This is 1 Thessalonians 3:12

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you . . .

Now get the logic here. He’s praying that their love will get bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger for people inside and outside the church. And then he says:

So that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness . . .

Does that make sense? To me, that says a life of mature, growing, abounding love for friends and enemies is holiness. A holy life is a life utterly devoted to the good of other people, measuring all your actions by whether they hurt or help other people, crucifying your own passions wherever they are inclining you to exalt yourself and not bless others. So I do put love as a third definition of holiness.

Why Holiness?

Why do we have a passion for holiness? Now it gets complicated. It is the only pathway to eternal pleasure in God — no holiness, no heaven. What I’m saying is, justification happens in an instant when you trust Christ and are united to him by faith and his righteousness becomes ours and his perfection is counted as our perfection. The Bible says, “Those whom he justified, he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). There are no dropouts. And the Bible also says you won’t be glorified if there’s no holiness lived out in your life.

So let’s see that and then tackle that problem because it’s one of the main reasons I wrote this. I was trying to figure out how the pursuit of holiness doesn’t mess up justification but grows out of justification and is absolutely necessary for final salvation without becoming legalistic. Here’s a key text to show that practical holiness is necessary for final salvation:

Strive for peace with everyone, and [strive] for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).

If you don’t have holiness, you won’t see the Lord.

James 2:17 says:

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Dead faith doesn’t save.

For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Galatians 6:8).

Eternal life is coming through sowing to the Spirit. Then Galatians 6:9 explains:

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

What will we reap? Eternal life. And it’s if we don’t give up. Give up what? Doing good. Sanctification is not optional. That makes the Christian life serious. I’m not an antinomian.

Repent or Perish

I came here 32 years ago and my office was in the building right across from us. Where we are now used to be a parking lot. I saw a woman get out and come into my office. We had planned for this. It was very serious. I knew she was having an affair. Her husband told me about it. He wanted me to confront her, and I did. She is still at the church, and so is he. God is good. I sat her down, and I said, “You’re seeing a man, and your husband has all the evidence.” She said, “I know.” I said, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to call him and tell him it’s over.” And she said, “I can’t do that.” I said, “Why?” And she said, “I care for him too much.”

I don’t do this with every counseling, but I said, “You know, if you don’t call him you’ll probably go to hell. It’s better to chop off your hand and go to heaven with one hand than to go to hell with two hands. Fornicators do not inherit the kingdom of God. Adulterers do not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Now I knew and she knew that there’s forgiveness in the world, and of course if she would repent — and she did — there’s a future. But at that point I felt it was the right thing to say. I’ve done this several times with amazing effect. The reason I’m bringing this story up is this. When I said that, her jaw dropped and she said to me, “Don’t you believe in eternal security?” I was a brand-new pastor. She said, “I thought our pastors believed in eternal security.” I said, “Yes, I do. I believe that the elect persevere to the end, and you show whether you are elect by whether you make this call or not.” More or less, I said that.

She quoted to me Romans 8:38–39. She had this worked out theologically. She said, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God, not things present, not things to come, nor principalities. Satan is tempting me to do this, and the Bible says Satan can’t separate me from the love of God.” She had this all worked out for eternal security. And I said, “The us in that verse is the elect, not everybody. Nothing separates us. Everybody off the street isn’t us. Everybody sleeping around isn’t us. The us are the people who have been born again. The us are the people who have faith and are justified. The us are the people who ‘do not grow weary of doing good,’ and who make the call tonight if you have to.” Some of you are doing that, you know. You’re doing it with your head, you’re doing it with the internet, and some of you are doing it with her.

So tonight at 10:30, make the call and then come back rejoicing in the morning. Paul says, “Don’t grow weary of doing good for in due season you’ll reap” (Galatians 6:9).

Eternal Life Through Sanctification

I’ll tell you another story. This is sad to any of you who know who this is. One of our missionaries, 25 years ago — I won’t even say the place because I don’t want to make anything too hard for the survivors of this — slept with 18 prostitutes, and we confronted him. We flew there and he came home. We met with him over and over again. He’s gone now. He’s left the faith, left the church, left his wife, and left his kids. It’s horrible. There’s no reconciliation to this day. He said, looking at the text here, “I just got tired of fighting the temptations. I just got tired.” He said, “I’m finished.” And he just gave himself to lust.

So Paul is pleading with us, “Let’s not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap eternal life if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

First John 2:4 says:

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him . . .

Words don’t mean much by themselves.

Second Thessalonians 2:13 says:

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved (how?), through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.

It’s not by sanctification but through sanctification, and there is no other path. So we’re justified and those whom he justified he glorified, with no dropouts. If you’re justified you walk this path, and there’s only one path, the path of sanctification. Don’t lose heart. The path of sanctification and the path of perfection are not the same. There is no perfection in this life. That was the point of quoting Philippians 3:12, which says:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

I’m not calling you to live a life of necessary perfection. We would all be in hell if perfection other than Christ’s were necessary. But we are called to be saved through sanctification.

First John 3:14 says:

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.

We’ve passed out of death into life. We’ve been born again. We were dead, now we’re alive. We were in the darkness, now we’re in the light. The evidence for that is love for believers.

The Assurance of Our Sanctification

Now here are just a few texts to encourage us. Those texts that I just gave you are to say this third passion for holiness is a necessary passion. Without holiness we won’t see the Lord, and that scares people. A lot of people haven’t been taught that. Some have been taught they can lose their salvation if they don’t have it. I don’t believe that because of Romans 8:30, and because of these texts.

Others have been taught you don’t have to have it and it doesn’t matter what you do, even if you live like the devil from the day you sign your card till the day you die, you go to heaven. That’s not true. Others have been taught, “Work really hard at it because it all depends on you,” and that’s not right, either. So those are all bad ideas. These are the promises that make clear how to think about it:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).

That’s precious.

First Corinthians 1:8–9 says:

[God] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

He will sustain you guiltless in the day of Christ. He’s faithful. He’ll do it.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24).

Jeremiah 32:40 says:

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.

The Preserving Work of God

I love that promise. A person like me, a Reformed person, when he says, “I believe in eternal security,” does not mean it’s automatic. It’s not automatic, like you’re saved and you have an inoculation, and the inoculation means you pass at the Judgment Day but it has nothing to do with whether you live holy. That’s just not what I mean by eternal security because it’s not what the Bible means. It’s not what these texts mean.

Eternal security means God has so saved you, so dwells in you, and has made such a covenant with you that he himself will work in you what is required to get there. It’s a very dynamic thing. You pray for it. He says, “I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me” (Jeremiah 32:40).

I’ll just ask you this and put the rubber on the road. Why do you think you won’t wake up an unbeliever tomorrow morning? Why do you think that when you wake up, you won’t say, “I’m just sick of this. I’m just sick of church, I’m sick of those hypocrites. I’m sick of the Bible. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m sick of trying the whole thing,” and everything in you is saying, “I’m done!” And it comes true. Why do you think that won’t happen? If you answer by saying, “I won’t let it happen,” you’re crazy. You’re crazy. That’s not why it won’t happen. It won’t happen because he puts the fear of himself in your heart so that you won’t turn from him.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy . . . (Jude 24).

Romans 8:30 says:

Those whom he justified he also glorified.

Hebrews 13:20–21 says:

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight . . .

Why do you wake up doing that which is pleasing in his sight? It’s because he did it. He did it again and again. The mercies of the Lord are new how often? Every morning. And if they weren’t, we’d become unbelievers on his days off. Yes, we would. Our perseverance is a work of God. He works in us what is pleasing in his sight. My eternal security is not only because the cross is all sufficient to cover all my sins, but because the power of God now and ever arriving at every moment from the future will keep me in the faith.

The Link Between Justification and Sanctification

Now, here’s a problem. I’m going to finish this unit on holiness, and then we’ll take some questions. If we are justified once for all by grace, through faith, apart from works at the point of true conversion, which we indeed are, then how can our final salvation be conditional upon a transformed life of holiness?

Does everybody see the question? I totally believe that when I put my faith in Jesus at six years old, I was united to Jesus by that simple act of childlike faith, his righteousness was counted as mine, and his death covered all my sins. I was bought permanently, securely, infallibly, invincibly, and I received the forgiveness of all my sins forever. That’s what I believe happens in Christ and my union with him. And now I’m saying that final salvation — heaven and joy — is conditional upon this life and its holiness.

Are those contradictory? They’re not. How do they fit together? I just put a couple of verses here for affirming justification:

For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law (Romans 3:28).

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1).

So we are justified by faith. Those whom he justified, he glorified, and yet this holiness is required. What is the answer to that problem? Here’s the solution of the Westminster Confession. Let’s see if it’s adequate:

Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them (that’s a rejection of the Romans Catholic understanding of justification), but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not or anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone . . .

I totally agree with that. I love that. That’s beautiful. Paragraph two says:

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness (yes, that’s what faith does), is the alone (sole) instrument of justification . . .

Yes, indeed. And here comes the next part:

Yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is not dead faith, but worketh by love.

All those are acts of holiness and the fruits of the Spirit, and are not dead faith. They work through love, which is a quote from Galatians 5:6. So the answer of the Westminster Confession is, the reason you can have final salvation contingent upon my experiencing acts of holiness here, is because the faith that justifies is never alone. It says, “It is faith alone that justifies, and the faith that justifies is never alone, but is ever accompanied by all other saving graces.”

Faith and the Holy Spirit

I think that’s true, and the reason I wrote Future Grace is that it’s not enough. Why? Why is the faith that justifies always accompanied by other graces? Why? It is remarkable how little reflection in the Reformed tradition has gone into that question, I think. I’m not an expert in church history, but as I’ve poked around, you know what the usual answer is? “We receive the Holy Spirit when we trust Jesus and are justified, and the Holy Spirit bears his fruit.” Now, that’s true. That’s gloriously true. So my question is, is there a connection between faith and the activity of the Holy Spirit in an ongoing way, by which he enables me to do these holy acts by which I will be seen to be new, born again? That’s going to be the evidence on the last day.

My answer is yes, and I wrote this book to explain it. Yes, the faith that justifies also sanctifies because it is faith in the promises of God and the Holy Spirit has set things up in such a way that he flows along the channel of faith in future grace. And there are reasons for that. Biblical reasons are given for that, which we’ll get to shortly. Let me see if we’re at a stopping point.

Faith, Justification, and Sanctification

The question I’m asking is, why does practical holiness, or love, inevitably accompany justifying faith? I just gave my answer, let’s read it.

Faith itself is the agent of the works. They do not merely accompany faith, they come through or by faith. Faith is the agent that produces the works. It does so necessarily, thus the works are evidence of true faith, and are not the means of our salvation the way faith is. These works are the evidence that faith is real and thus are necessary for final salvation. But they are not the ground of our salvation the way the death of Christ and the righteousness of Christ are. Nor are our works the means of our salvation, the way faith is. That’s complicated and we’ll talk more about it. Let me see if I’m stopping here. I have an analogy.

In 1 Kings 3:16–28, two prostitutes had babies, remember? One of the prostitutes’ babies died in the middle of the night. This was in the reign of Solomon. She got up and she took the live baby from the other prostitute. She put her dead baby in the arms of the prostitute and went back to bed. The woman woke up and she saw her dead baby and she was distraught. And then she looked at the dead baby and said, “That’s not my baby. That’s my baby.” And their case made it all the way to King Solomon. So they walked in with this living baby. Now, the analogy here is that Solomon is like God and the real mom is like a saint who has been justified.

Solomon looked at them and said, “Okay, what do I need to do here? I need to discern publicly for all to see, so that justice is done, who the real mom is.” He wasn’t going to create a mom. Nothing she did was going to make her a mom. She was a mom. That’s a done deal. Just like you being born again. You’re not going to be born again at the judgment. You just need some evidence. So he said, “Let’s cut the baby in half.” And like an idiot, the false mom said, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” And the real mom said, “No, no, no. Let her have it. Don’t cut the baby. Don’t hurt the baby.” And Solomon said, “Give the baby to this woman here.” Why? Did her works earn her the baby? Did her works create motherhood? No. The work of her saying, “Give her the baby,” simply showed that she was a mom. That she had been born again, in the analogy.

The Empty Promises of Sin

So when I think about how works are required at the last day, I say that God has set things up so that public justice requires a public reckoning, so that there will be evidence of your new birth at the last day. And that evidence is your holiness, or your obedience, or your love. How then does faith do this great work? Faith severs the root of sin. Sin has power by promising a better tomorrow, or at least a better this evening, and by promising superior satisfaction. Pause and see if you agree with that. How does sin work in your life? Let’s pick a sin. It could be complaining, lying, anger, deceit, or pornography, whatever your besetting sin is. How does it work?

Nobody sins out of duty, right? Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I don’t want to sin today, but I think I should and so I will.” Nobody has ever, ever sinned like that. Sin has power because it promises us things. It may be very subtle. It may be very non-articulate, as if to whisper, “You should be angry here, and you’ll feel better if you’re angry here. You ought to be angry here and it’s right to be angry, and you should feel justified in being angry.” You’re not saying to yourself, “Sin is making a promise,” but it is. It’s promising you something. Lust is clearly this way. The only reason anybody clicks through to pornography is because it’s promising them something — a rush. It’s a lie. I mean, they will get a rush, but that their future will be better for that is a lie. Sin is always lying to us.

Sin has power in our lives because it makes promises. How do you defeat promises? Answer: with superior promises. You can spend your whole life trying to say “no” to the promises of sin. And if all you’ve ever developed in your strategies of sanctification is, “No, no, no,” you’re a goner. You’re an absolute goner. Many churches are built around this. I’ve seen churches like this and they’re just so sad. The whole congregation thinks in terms of holiness as, “No, no, can’t, can’t, don’t, don’t.” There’s just no overflowing alternative that’s putting to death those things. But true faith is of such a nature that it severs the root of sin by embracing a better future and providing a deeper satisfaction.

I’ve got a whole section on lust, which we’ll get to tomorrow, Lord willing. But I can’t help stopping right here on this pornography thing and saying:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).

Now, what that says, among other things, is that if you click through, you will lose friendship with him and sight of him. He will become cloudy and he will be more distant. Is that what you want? And if you click through, the answer is yes. You are saying, “I want this rush more than I want to see God.” And if you’ll stay there, think there, pray there, linger there, and plead there, not only thinking, “How can I say no?” but, “How can I love his face? How can I love his fellowship? How can I love his intimacy? How can I love his friendship so deeply, so satisfyingly?” then the promise of sin will lose its power. That’s the way. That’s the battle of life. The future grace of God is the better future, and faith in future grace is the deeper satisfaction. When you live by faith in future grace, the power of sin is broken by the power of a superior satisfaction in all that God promises to be for us in Christ. So that’s the summary of the seminar right there.

God’s Supremacy in Our Joy and Holiness

Here’s a summary now. First, we talked about a passion for God’s supremacy because he’s so jealous for his name. Then, we talked about a passion for joy because he wants us to fight the fight of faith gladly and serve him with joyfulness. And finally, we spoke about a passion for holiness because there’s no heaven without holiness, and because we lay hold on him and he laid hold on us.

That raises these three questions. What kind of life will magnify the supremacy of God most? And what kind of life will forever satisfy the deep longings of the soul? And what kind of life will produce a practical holiness that’s necessary for salvation, but do it in such a way that our justification is still by grace alone, through faith alone, based on Christ’s death and imputed righteousness alone? The answer to all three questions is living by faith in future grace, hence the seminar.

Question and Answer

Now I think this is a place for questions. Here we go from Facebook:

I would like to know how, in the heat of temptation, we can, for lack of a better term, convince ourselves that the promises of God are indeed superior. How can we practically do this when sin looks so appealing? It can be hard at times

That is absolutely true. Let me say an advertisement first. You should never do this, probably, but I’ve spent so much time on this. This question is the most often asked question in the last 30 years of my ministry. When I get done with the class on Desiring God, or a class on Future Grace, or class on The Pleasures of God, all of them have the same point — namely, that God is most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied in him. And when we’re most satisfied in him, we sever the root of sin and get victory over temptation. And this is asking, “How? It’s so hard. This rush is really immediate, I can feel it already. I don’t feel how happy I’ll be with the sight of God.” And after 25 years of that, I wrote a book to answer the question. It’s called When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. So this how question, if you want to know 200 pages-worth of my answer, is there in the book, okay? That’s not a helpful answer right now, I know. But I want you to know, this is pretty much all I think about.

It’s not only because the question comes so much, but because I get up every morning and my bucket leaks — meaning my satisfaction in God, which is the only means by which I can, in a gospel way, defeat sin, drains out overnight. I don’t know why. It doesn’t happen to everybody that way. I’m just not a morning person. I wake up and I have to fill it again. So my first answer is that the heat of the moment is not the best place to fill your tank, not that you shouldn’t try by calling to mind appropriate promises. But a lifetime of morning, noon, and night in communion with God cultivating a heart affection for him is the key.

It doesn’t happen by being distant from God and indifferent to God for a week and having this advertisement come up on your side bar with this scantily clad woman, and being prepared at that moment to have the wherewithal to prefer Jesus to anything you might do there. That’s not the way it works. That’s the first thing I would say. I hope one of the effects of this seminar is to set you on a course of morning, noon, and night devotion. Pick times, set them aside. Choose a little chair somewhere in your house or maybe a kneeling bench somewhere where you’re going to retreat. Maybe it’s just five minutes in the middle of the day, maybe it’s an hour in the morning, or maybe it’s 10 minutes at night. The whole point of going there is to strip away everything else, get on your face before God and say, “Incline my heart to your testimonies, oh God. Satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love.” We’re pleading with God to satisfy us and open our eyes to the word.

Maybe there’s one other thing about the heat of the moment to share. I’m sure that when Jesus said that if you look at a woman with lustful intent you’ve already committed adultery in your heart. And then went on to say, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better to lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29). I’m so he said so because hell is more feelable in the moment of temptation than heaven. It shouldn’t be. If you were mature, it wouldn’t be.

But isn’t Jesus kind that he would say to us, “Okay, in the moment when you’re about to suicidally click through to lust and have an affair in your heart, I’m telling you, you could go to hell for this.” That’s helpful. Unless you don’t believe it. If you don’t believe it, it’s not helpful. If you ask, how’s that a future of grace? That’s a good question. How is it living by faith in future grace to think, “I’m going to cut off my hand rather than click this button.” The answer is that the threat is meant to help you realize how valuable a future in heaven is and a future with Christ is, by threatening how much you could lose if you don’t walk with him.

Warnings in the Bible are the flip side of future grace. They are cautions saying, “This is what can happen if you throw away future grace. This is what can happen if you don’t embrace all that I promise to be for you in the future. You don’t want to go there.” And I think, realistically, children who are not yet capable of exulting in the glories of heaven, totally know what hell is. Is that not true? I would guess 80 percent of you who got saved as a child, got saved because you were scared of hell. It’s not sufficient. You can’t stay there. But my, how many get started there, and God meant it that way. He meant us to fly away from hell to Christ. And then, he means for us to stay with Christ and love Christ and be satisfied in Christ because of who Christ is, not just because that’s bad. So the warnings are also important.

Maybe one last thing I’ll mention: know your besetting sins. I said that fear is one of mine, especially fear of man. I just get nervous about various phone calls and conversations and talks, and I have anxiety about whether I can say something helpful. So I have to stock up some promises suited for that. Now, if porn is your besetting sin, then in the cooler moments, stock up three or four juicy promises that talk about how satisfying he is. Memorize Psalm 63:1–3, or Psalm 42, which says:

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
     so pants my soul for you, O God (Psalm 42:1).

Say that to yourself. You’re not going to be feeling it, but if you say it and ask, “Open my eyes,” you might start feeling it. So have a little store in the back of your brain over here, an anti-porn store, and pull out the sword and stick it. Stick it with that promise.

If perseverance is God’s dynamic, continuous work to get us there, can you elaborate on “there”? Destination? Trajectory?

What I mean by there is final glorification. Those who are justified are glorified. The final destination is not death and being with Christ. That’s a glorious step on the way. It’s far better to be with Christ, Paul said, than to be here. But he also said in 2 Corinthians 5:1–5, “I don’t want to be naked,” meaning, “I don’t want my body to be stripped off and have my soul to go out there without a body. I want to be over-clothed with life. I want my new body.” So the ultimate is a new body in a new earth and new heaven with no sin and ever-increasing joy in the presence of God, with Jesus as the supreme treasure around which all other goods are appropriately well-ordered.

There’s no idolatry anymore, and no temptation to love pizza more than Jesus. I’m sure there’ll be pizza there, but it will not be a temptation at all. And something better than sex will be there. There will be no marriage or giving in marriage in the age to come, but it will be better. It will be 1,000 times more exquisite than the best sexual climax. Yes, it will be. So don’t feel like, “Oh shoot, no sex. Boring!” Wrong. You’re a little child if that’s the way you think. You just haven’t gotten very far in knowing what spiritual delights are for and how everything is going to be bumped up. If you love trees, trees are going to be 1,000 times better. If you love dogs, dogs are going to be 1,000 times better.

I would almost say cats, but I have my doubts. No, I don’t have any doubts — a sanctified cat, I can just see it. It would be so humble, just like a dog. Don’t get me going on cats. I’ve just alienated half of you, I know. I don’t like cats, but I can imagine a holy cat. I know Jesus is the lion of Judah. Big cats are different. I have to stop that.

What were we on? Oh, this question. What is the future? Do you know one of the reasons I’m talking like this? As a kid, I was scared of heaven. I thought it was just going to be boring. I wouldn’t tell anybody. I couldn’t tell anybody. I was 11 years old. I was lying down on the top of my house on the roof. We had little spiral stairways to go up to the roof. I’d lie on the roof and I’d look into the starry night sky, and I’d be scared. And I wasn’t scared of hell, but of heaven. I would think, “I don’t like the songs we sing at church. The preacher is not that engaging.” I wasn’t mature enough to have any sense that this is going to be glorious.

When I’m working with kids I talk about this, and I’m assuming some of you are still there because you need help to know that a new heaven, a new earth, a new body in the likeness of Jesus’s glorious body, no sin anymore to contaminate any of our desires, and everything centered on the most glorious, beautiful, wonderful, wise, strong person that ever was, is going to be better than anything you’ve ever tasted — 10,000 times over. That’s the answer to that question, as best I can do it.

How would one engage a spouse that has less faith than you?

Wow, that’s a good question too. Well, 1 Peter 3 is for the wives of unbelieving husbands, and it tells them not to try to manipulate them with their clothing or makeup or sexiness, but rather to become a certain kind of person on the inside. It would involve being afraid of nothing. I love that text. I think it develops a beautiful image of magnificent womanhood. Besides Proverbs 31, I’d go here. I have a couple of messages about this. One of them is titled Six Things Submission Is Not. I believe in wives submitting to their husbands, but this text is roaring with glorious implications.

One of them is that Sarah and the women of old were fearless. She’s fearless around this man. She’s fearless and she laughs at the future, according to Proverbs 31:25. That fearlessness, being so confident in God, makes her meek without being weak. And it enables her to discern and love this unbelieving man in a way that might, God blessing her, win him over without a word. Now, I don’t think that “without a word” there means she can’t talk about her faith, because he knows she’s a Christian. It means she’s not going to nag him. She’s not going to manipulate him and push him. She’s going to wait for the appointed times, and pour herself out for him, if she can.

I don’t want to treat this as though there are no impossible situations of deadly abuse, from which she should be rescued by elders of the church from him. But if we don’t go that far and just talk about a courteous unbeliever, then there’s good help in that text. The man, I think, should take a lot of his cues from that text. We’re not called to submit in the same way. We’re called to be servants.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).

That’s not spoken just to believers. Marriage is a creation ordinance, not an ordinance of redemption. Marriage has its meaning because we’re human, not because we’re Christian. Christians understand the meaning of marriage for those outside, and the meaning is it’s a parable of Christ and the church. How does Christ mainly relate to his church? He dies for her. He spends himself to build her up. And he would need great wisdom if she didn’t want to be built up in the faith or she didn’t want anything to do with this Christianity.

He will need to plead with the Lord to know how he can love her well. And I would just encourage him to immerse himself in the Word and get brothers around him to pray for him, and have the wives of those brothers counsel him as to their discernment of the situation and what she might need from him. We should do a seminar on marriage, I suppose.

The Agent of Faith

Is this answer that I gave about future grace biblical? Basically, I think we’ve seen enough that you get the idea what I think the answer is to a life of holiness, a life of living out the gospel, a life of fulfilling the requirements to get to heaven without becoming a legalist, a life of triumph over sin, and a life of satisfaction in God. Now let’s go to the Bible and see more of it.

Faith is the great worker. That’s what I was arguing when I said it was the agent. It may have jarred you a minute ago when I said faith is the agent of holiness because you were thinking, “I thought the Holy Spirit is the agent?” That’s a good thought to have, and I will get to that, okay? They both are agents, but they’re not agents in the same way. So, here we go. Here’s why I’m using the term faith as a worker, or as an agent, of our holiness.

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 1:2–3).

You need to ponder what is a “work of faith”? And I think “work of faith” means a work that flows out of, is prompted by, and is somehow generated by saving, justifying faith.

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power (2 Thessalonians 1:11).

Now we see that fulfilling resolutions and getting the work done that we ought to get done in holiness is done by his power through faith. Faith is something I’m experiencing. And power is something that . . . How should we talk about it? Is it awakening the faith, flowing through faith, responding to faith? How does it come? And that’s where we’re going to try to get specific about how the power of God relates to my trusting a promise.

So, I have to speak at this conference and I’m nervous and I’m going to do it. I’m going to obey. I’m going to do this work of coming over here to the church. How? I’m going to trust a promise. The promise would be: “I will help you, I will strengthen you, and I will hold you up until 10 o’clock, that’s what I’m going to do for you. I’ve done it a thousand times, and I’m going to do it tonight. Will you believe me?” So I say, “Yes, I believe you.” Now, as I’m believing him, what does power have to do with that?

Is that just me? My answer is — as we’ll see — the fact that I was able to call to mind a promise, that I feel any inclination to bank on the promise, that I’m able to feel some sense of hope and confidence and boldness rising in my heart through the promises, is all of God. That’s power.

Power Given in the Act of Faith

If you sit in your room when you have a phone call to make and it’s hard to make, or you have to take a test at school, or you’re in a relationship that needs some cultivating, or whatever, and say, “I don’t care what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to do this by the power of God. All right, I’ll wait.” He won’t come, and here’s the reason: it’s a work of faith.

Faith is something you act. God doesn’t act it, he enables it. He flows through it. It’s his fruit, but you act it. We’re doing a conference in the fall on sanctification called Act the Miracle.

In Acts 26:18, Jesus is talking to Paul:

[I am sending you] to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

That’s the clearest statement that sanctification is about faith in all the Bible. The holiness that they’re going to move into and in will be by faith in Christ.

Galatians 5:6 says:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

Now the issue is justification here and what justifies. And he says, “Circumcision doesn’t justify, and uncircumcision doesn’t justify. Those do not count for anything.” Well, what counts for justification? Answer: faith counts for justification. And then Paul speaks just like James. If you ever feel a tension between James and justification by works and Paul and justification by faith, this is Paul’s way of saying what James says, when he states that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17). If you say, “Paul, what kind of faith justifies?” His answer is, “The kind of faith that works through love.” It isn’t the working through love that justifies, the working through love shows you the faith is alive. It’s the kind of faith that justifies. It’s not a dead faith. It’s alive and it works, and the way it works is through love. And we’ll see why.

God’s Power Exerted on Our Behalf

First Timothy 1:5 says:

The aim of our charge is love (that’s holiness) that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

So, where is love coming from? Faith in future grace, I’m going to argue. If you’re having a hard time tonight doing an act of love or growing in the affections of love, the answer, Paul says, is that you need to work on this sincere, authentic resting in Christ, trusting in Christ, treasuring Christ, enjoying Christ, and banking on the promises of Christ. There’s where the battle is fought.

Hebrews 11:8 says:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

The grace in which we trust is not only God’s disposition to save the unworthy. That’s what we usually think about grace. Grace is unmerited favor — that’s the way it’s usually defined, isn’t it? And that’s absolutely right, but I’m making sure we see the future part of it. It is not only God’s disposition to save the unworthy, but grace is the power of God exerted to bless us in the future with all that we need. So, when I talk about future grace and faith in future grace, I mean faith in the power of God exerted to bless us. I think our obedience, our love, is enabled when we can count on God blessing us five years from now or a hundred years from now, whenever it’s needed.

Grace Producing Work

So, here’s some illustrations of grace’s power.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them . . . (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Clearly, grace is producing that work. He says, “I worked.” That’s risky. And he continues, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I.” Come on Paul, was it you or it wasn’t you? He says, “I worked.” Yes, he did. And then he says, “But it was not I.” No, he didn’t. It was the grace of God that was with him.

One plants, another waters, God gives the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything. We need to plant and we need to water. Yes, we do. We plant, we water, and we obey. But when we’re done, we say, “I was not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” I act the miracle. And because it’s a miracle — let’s add a word — it wasn’t decisively me. It was me. I mean, right now, am I preaching? I’m preaching, or whatever you call this that I’m doing. I’m moving my hands and raising my voice. I’m doing this. Now when I get home tonight, if God has been merciful, I will say, “I worked really hard at that. But if anything good comes, if anything lasting happens, it won’t have been me.” If you don’t believe that, you have to be a pretty arrogant Christian, I think.

So, grace is a power and it’s a power that arrives as you need it. Isn’t that implied here? He says, “On the contrary, I worked . . .” He’s working and he has to work tomorrow, and as he’s working, grace is enabling him to work.

Grace Be With You

This is interesting. Here’s the reason you want to wipe these two verses here. The first phrase (grace to you) is the at the beginning of a letter and the second phrase (grace be with you) is at the end of a letter. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this before. I didn’t notice this until I wrote this book, I think in 1994 or something. I didn’t notice this.

At the beginning of every single one of Paul’s 13 letters, he says something like “grace to you.” He always uses the word to. He will say something like, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father.” And at the end of every single letter, he says, “Grace be with you.” That’s amazing. I get amazed by things like that. I mean, I would expect it to be sort of consistent. So, I asked Paul, “Why do you say ‘grace to you’ at the beginning of the letters and ‘grace be with you’ at the end of the letters?” We’re talking about grace here. Now I’m trying to figure out what grace is and how it comes as a power. So, these people are already saved and he’s asking grace to come. Although they have grace, yes, but they get more grace.

We live by more grace every day. Tomorrow’s grace is what I need tomorrow, not today. I need today’s grace today. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, and sufficient for the day is the mercy thereof. They’re new every morning, and so are the troubles, and that’s the way it works. So, why do you say “grace to you” and “grace be with you”? I don’t know, but here’s my idea. You test it. Maybe you have a better idea.

I’ve never read an essay or an article on this. I’ve never seen anybody write about this. So, if you know an article about this by some reputable Bible thinker, tell me. My guess is that the letters were read in a pre-literate world. Nobody had Bibles, and this letter is the one that’s going to be read. There’s one precious parchment and Epaphroditus took it, or Timothy took it, or Titus took it, and they say, “We got a letter from the apostles!” They are all gathered together on the Lord’s Day on Sunday and they’re going to read it. So, they would open it up and it would start out with “Grace to you,” knowing they’re all gathered. And as they’re gathered together, Paul is speaking to them now for the next half hour, maybe as Colossians is being read to them. Paul is saying, “I want grace to come to you as I’m reading, as I’m speaking to you, so that my words are being read to you but it’s grace coming to you right now.”

Now he’s coming to the end, the half hour is over, the letter has been read, they’re about to close the book, pray, and go home back into the hard places — slaves will go to their masters’ work and everything is hard out there. There were just a few Christians in the Roman Empire at the time. They’re going to go out there, and what are they going to go with? Paul says, “May grace be with you.” That’s what I think is going on.

What it sheds light on for me is how Paul feels and thinks about grace as a power. He’s saying, “As my word is being read and preached, Christ is coming to you. Power is coming to you. God has ordained to come through his word in power.” Don’t go out in the woods without your Bible and pray for power. You’re going to get it and it won’t be his. And then you’ll do many mighty works in his name and go to hell. That’s what Jesus said in Matthew 7:21–23.

Instead, pick your Bible, because when the Word is coming, power is coming and grace is coming. God has linked together his Spirit and his power and his grace with his Word. And then, as they go out from the reading of the Word and the preaching of the Word, he says, “Grace, go with you.” Which means, “All that happened here, all that you’ve learned here, everything you’ve gotten here, may it stay fruitful now in your lives as God keeps bringing it to mind. That was a great discovery for me. I loved it.

All Grace Abounding for Every Good Work

Second Corinthians 9:8 says:

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

That’s one of the greatest promises in the Bible. God is able to make all grace abound to you tomorrow. What are you facing? Some of you came here desperately looking. Some of you are desperate and hoping that something will happen, that something will click, that something will come that will enable you to blank.

I’m tempted to list off the kinds of things that God might be doing — quit your job and go to the mission field, be reconciled to a spouse you haven’t had sex with and have been living in the same house with for two years, or own up to a lie you told two years ago at work. Whatever it is, you’re tormented inside about something. You’re hoping this will be it.

God is able tomorrow, two weeks from now, or in a month, to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency — not sufficiency to jump off a building, but to do what you have to do — you may abound in every good work.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man . . . but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13).

He won’t test you beyond what he gives grace to enable you to do in all things, at all times. These are just sweeping statements, like the statement “every good work.” That statement has troubled me for years. What does “every good work” mean? He will have grace for every good work. Is that like helping a man right now who just had a flat tire in Beijing? No. Okay, it’s not that good work. That’s not for you. So, it’s not every good work. Well, what then? That’s not an easy question. It’s a good question though. It’s every one you’re supposed to do, every one he calls you to do.

Why is the story of the Good Samaritan in the Bible? It’s to tell you that you’re not responsible for everybody, just the guy you pass. I mean, there were people 10 miles away who didn’t know this guy was lying on the side road. They’re not responsible. The priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, they’re responsible. If you walk by this guy, you fail. If you didn’t show up on this road and don’t know he’s there, it’s not a failure. “Every good work” doesn’t mean every possible good work, it means the good works you’re called to do. And Ephesians 2:10 says that they’re prepared for you before the foundation of the world by grace, through faith. So, there’s going to be grace for that good work, and faith in future grace means we trust him to give this grace.

Power Made Perfect in Weakness

Second Corinthians 12:9 says:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power (there’s grace and power aligned) is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Does that not mean something has happened to me? I’m weak physically, I’m weak emotionally, and I’m exhausted. I’m weak emotionally because I haven’t slept for two days and therefore my temper is short, and I’m really easily depressed, and I’m really vulnerable and weak right now. And Jesus comes and says, “I know that you do need sleep. You should get some sleep, but since you can’t right now, my grace is sufficient for you.” And when he says that, faith in that ever-arriving grace over the next eight hours embraces the promise and gladly boasts in the weakness. That’s faith in future grace. It’s embracing the promise “my grace is sufficient for you.”

I got an email one hour before I came over from one of our pastors who will do the funeral for a 21-month-old child. Probably some of you are connected with that situation. I forget the day he said. It’s sometime in the next few days. He hasn’t done many of these funerals, and I’ve been here 32 years and I’ve done a lot of funerals — a lot of children, suicides, and unbelievers. So he just said, “Any counsel? Anything you want to say that would give me a pointer?”

I didn’t have much time and I thought, “I know if I don’t do this now, I won’t get it done.” So, I was fitting it into my crunch preparation here, which may be just so I could tell you though I didn’t think about it at the time. I said to him, “I wouldn’t linger long over the destiny of the child. I would talk about that later and entrust him to the Lord. Don’t get too theological about heaven, hell, and election. Just say God is good and God will take care. Focus on the horrific nature of this loss. Focus on this pain. Focus on the magnitude of what the present people are dealing with and give them a promise.” And this what I quoted, and the reason I did was because in this text, the list of weaknesses is very unusual:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

And I said, “I think calamity fits here, and I think hardship fits here.” I don’t know if he’ll use this text, but I closed it by saying, “His grace will be sufficient in that situation if they will receive it. And it will be for you too at the funeral.”

Help for the Weak

So, this is precious. This has endless applications. This is one of those not necessarily for the porn-fighting category back here, but it’s for the tiredness and exhaustion, and for the moments where you think, “I’m at my wits end. I can’t do it this week. I can’t do it this week. This week is not possible for a human being on the planet with time the way it is.” In the midst of that, he says, “My grace will be sufficient here.” And I came into this week feeling that way. I had a funeral Monday, and so there went my day off. That was gone, and it wasn’t going to exist anyway. And then Tuesday I had a long, 90-minute interview I had to get ready for and do, and then what was Wednesday? I forget. There’s something that consumed Wednesday. Thursday I had to preach at chapel. Friday I had to prepare my sermon for Sunday and get ready for this. My sermon is not ready for Sunday yet. This was one of those weeks where I looked at it at the front end and I said, “It can’t be done.”

I’m so glad my wife was in China because this is one of the weeks where I said, “Okay, at least I don’t have a wife to fret about my pace because this is just flat out, morning to night, seven days and then I’ll rest on Sunday and Monday next week, I hope. But you know what, I’m 66 and I’ve seen these weeks so many times. After thinking about that, I said to David Mathis, “This is an impossible week.” And I said, “It’ll happen. God will do it. I don’t know how.” I was all fired up for my sermon this afternoon. I cut off preparations at about five. It’ll take me probably another 90 minutes when I get home tonight to finish that sermon. But it’s there. I know what I’m going to say and I’m excited to say it. So, come back on Sunday. All that is to say that his grace is sufficient and I love him for it.

Here’s the conclusion about grace as power: therefore though grace was given to us before the ages began and was the disposition of God that moved him to send his Son to die for us. It is also a divine power promised for our entire future and given for our present experience. Let me pause for a question.

Question and Answer

How does future grace relate to Paul’s confidence in 2 Timothy 4:18, where Paul says, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed.” Is this the hope that God will keep him physically safe, or protect him spiritually?

Let’s go there, 2 Timothy 4:18. This is not an unfamiliar text to me. Do you know why? I preached on this for my first anniversary here at Bethlehem in July 1981. I remember the sermon I preached on my first anniversary was this text and I wrestled with that exact question. It’s really fresh to my mind 31 years later. My text was 2 Timothy 4:17, which says, “The Lord stood by me . . .”

I was so green. I had been here for a year. I had never been a pastor before, and I skipped all the practical courses in seminary. I had preached maybe five times before I came here. I had never buried anybody. I had conducted two marriages for my students, Tom Stellar and Steve Calvin, and I had never done a baby dedication. I had never baptized anybody. I was so green and now I survived a year. And I was so thankful. The Lord stood by me. He did. The Lord stood by me. And now, 32 years later, I love this text! It says:

But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth . . . (2 Timothy 4:17–18).

So, I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. What does that mean? Does that mean I didn’t get thrown to the Coliseum yet, or does it mean Satan did not get the upper hand and devour me because he is the one who prowls around like a roaring lion? I think it’s the latter. He continues:

The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed . . . (2 Timothy 4:18).

Does that mean the deed of the Caesar who was going to chop off his head, which he did? So did he not get rescued from that evil deed, or is the rescue from his own evil deeds? That would be what Satan would really delight in if he could bite down on him, make him give up the faith, and make him lust and make him get angry at his people who abandoned him in Rome. And why do I think it’s that? He goes on to say:

And bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom (2 Timothy 4:18).

You don’t get brought safely into the heavenly kingdom by not being eaten by lions. Being eaten by lions brings you to the heavenly kingdom. The question is, will you get there safely? Meaning, will you not abandon the faith and not commit evil works. That’s my answer to that text. That’s my take on it.

How do I, as a father, help to cultivate an environment of faith in future grace in my home when I feel like my tank is empty?

What shall I say? Devote the lion’s share of your energies to getting your tank full. But you’re asking, “Okay, if it’s not that way, what do I do now in my relationship with the kids and in my relationship with the family?” I was thinking about this today because I sense, and I could be wrong about this, that among younger people today who’ve grown up in the church and had a lot of legalism in their background as they see it, they are solving the problem of legalism by throwing out the disciplines of Bible reading and prayer and family devotions. And this question might be answered by saying, “Look, if your tank is empty, then if you try to lead your family in devotions and sing a song and pray with them, it will be so formalistic and so mechanical and so coerced by your sense of duty that you will do more harm than good. So, skip it tonight.” I think that’s a very common approach.

And do you know what usually happens? Skipping spiritual disciplines — your own or with your family — doesn’t make the glory fall so that you can come back with glorious spontaneity. It becomes habitual. And now you’re skipping it two, three, four times a week in the name of Christian freedom, and then the power starts to go in you and the family. And what is the answer?

The answer isn’t hypocrisy. Kids know this, okay? Just be really honest. Kids know hypocrisy. I think you gather the family and you just tell them how you feel. Dad is really tired and you have an eight year old, a 12 year old, a five year old, and a 16 year old, and a wife who is patient with you. And I’m talking to the men here because I think men have this main responsibility. It’s not that single moms don’t, or that women don’t if their guy is a slacker, but mainly men should do this. Make it a teaching moment and pick out a child and say, “Sometimes you don’t love Jesus like you ought to, do you? Sometimes you don’t feel like doing what’s right or you don’t want to go to church or don’t feel like going to school. I feel like that right now.” You’ll shock the socks off your kids if you say that.

And then, you just help them and say, “We could skip it, but that wouldn’t be more real, would it kids? Wouldn’t it be better just for all of us to pray, and let’s read through the text about the grace of God and you pray for me and I’ll pray for you.” You could say something like that. You can’t do that every night for a year, but you probably can do it more often than you think you can. And my guess is that’s what the kids will remember when they go off to college.

My analogy is that if you want a fire in the camp to cook marshmallows — or hotdogs, or hamburgers, or s’mores — and it’s going out, leaving it untended isn’t the answer. It won’t work to leave it like that and just say, “I hope we have a fire someday.” No, you put the little sticks on. The big sticks don’t burn till it’s hot, so you put the little sticks on. Tend the fire. That’s what that gathering would be. You would be thinking, “We don’t have big sticks, we have some little sticks, and the little sticks are this verse. We might ordinarily read a chapter but we’re reading a verse tonight, and we’re just laying hold on that little stick that God would set it on fire, and maybe the next time it’ll burn a little hotter.

Could you expound further on the relationship between our union with Christ and our personal holiness?

I’m glad that was asked because I want to make sure that the nature of the influence of union with Christ in justification and the nature of the influence of union with Christ in sanctification are not confused because they’re not the same.

When you are born again, and the wind blows where it wills, and the Christ that you have found boring and unbelievable and mythological suddenly shines with self-evidencing glory and beauty, and you say yes to him and believe him, embrace him, and trust him, that’s the Holy Spirit uniting you to Christ. I said that the way I wanted to say it. That is the Holy Spirit uniting. It’s not like the union comes later, like, “I do this first then I get union.” It’s the Holy Spirit moving you in, and as soon as you’re there, there’s life. He is where life is. You don’t get life and then get united later. You don’t get united and then 10 minutes later get life.

When you’re in the vine, the sap is flowing and you’re in union with Christ. Now, two things happen and they’re not the same. The one is that God looks upon you in union with Christ as Christ. He says, “My Son’s righteousness is yours, my Son’s perfection is yours, and my Son’s obedience is yours.” That’s called justification, and it’s by faith alone apart from any whimper of a work. Faith is not a work, faith is a receiving. It’s the reality, “I receive him, I love him, I enjoy him, and I’m just taking him like a fountain — drink, drink, drink.” This is not a work, this is a resting, an awakening of heart to the pleasure.

If you’re looking at artwork and you feel nothing, and then you see beauty, that wasn’t a work. Your eyes were opened. It happened to you, and that’s the way faith is. So that’s union and justification. That righteousness is counted as yours. Now, union with Christ is also living. It has to do with the real, daily you and the Holy Spirit now being in you and Christ being in you. It would be helpful to look at Romans 8:8 says:

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness (Romans 8:8–11).

Now, if you analyze that out, union with Christ is also Christ in you and the Holy Spirit in you, which means union with Christ is the source of the power by which we are changed, called sanctification. And the faith that unites us to Christ and lives in Christ is one faith. And the thesis of this course is that faith unites us with Christ for justification (imputed), and that faith unites us with Christ for sanctification (imparted).

We’re going to keep working on that for the next three hours and 27 minutes. I think we’ll stop with questions there and keep going for a few more minutes. If I discern that you’re just about done I’ll stop early, so flop over in your seat if you want to stop early.

The Future-Oriented Nature of Faith

Faith is profoundly and pervasively future-oriented. This is one of the parts I revised because there was a lot of confusion in what I was saying. So let me see if I can help be less confusing. Faith can look back and believe a truth about the past, like Christ died for my sins. So when I say faith in future grace, don’t hear me negating that. Faith can look back and see Jesus in history, dying, and say, “I believe that.” You have to believe that. You’re not saved if you don’t believe that. That’s past, glorious, foundational grace, and if you deny it, don’t believe it, don’t receive it, then you’re not a Christian.

Faith can look back and out, and trust a person, like a person receiving Christ. At any given moment in an unbeliever’s life that unbeliever can, when he hears the gospel, look out of himself and in the gospel say “yes” and receive him now. And that’s an act of faith in the now. That means in the experienced moment of the present, I say “yes” now to Jesus. So faith in future grace doesn’t deny that.

Faith can also look forward and be assured about a promise, like, “I’ll be with you till the end,” and that’s what I’m stressing. There’s a promise, like, “He won’t let me fall and he’ll keep me till the end.” But now watch this. I wrote profoundly and pervasively, and those words were not in edition number one. I think I originally had mainly. Someone might say, “Why are you picking profoundly and pervasively future-oriented?” Here’s the reason why: even when faith embraces a past reality, its saving essence includes the embrace of the implications of that reality for the present and the future. I’m going to argue that if you look back at the death of Jesus and say, “I believe he died for my sins,” and there is no believing in the implications of that for now and tomorrow, you’re not saved. Where would you go for that in the Bible? Right here:

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son (past), much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life (future) (Romans 5:10).

Now, I’m arguing that even when you are most self-consciously past-looking, looking back at the glorious work of Christ on the cross to reconcile you, you are believing things for the future or you’re not believing. If that was the case, you’ve just turned it into a past, meaningless historical anecdote.

If that death does not mean right now I’m reconciled and tomorrow I’ll be reconciled, it’s worthless. So I’m sticking with my word pervasively. When I say pervasively, I mean that when you look back it’s future-oriented. And now, I’m going to argue, when you look out it is also future oriented.

Eating the Bread of Life

Thus, faith looks back and embraces the death of his Son, and it also embraces the reconciliation of the present and the future. And when faith looks out and trusts Christ in the present, its saving essence consists in being satisfied with him now and forever.

Okay, now why do I think that? John 6:35 says:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me (present) shall not hunger (future), and whoever believes in me (present) shall never thirst (future).

What does that mean? That means that if in any given moment, you are coming to Jesus to drink, and if in any given moment you are believing in Jesus as satisfying bread, part of the conviction of coming and part of the conviction of believing is that he keeps satisfying forever, because that’s what it says. If you say, “I am coming now to Jesus as an all-satisfying fountain, and I am believing now in Jesus as all satisfying spiritual bread, but I have no idea whether he will be there in five hours and whether he will be Lord, and Savior, and treasure, and bread, and water for my life, and I have no idea whether in the future 1,000 years out he will be satisfying,” you don’t have saving faith.

Saving faith is not about the next five minutes alone, it’s not about the next minute alone, it’s about the fact that he is who he says he is forever. And so, I repeat, faith is past, present and future, and it is pervasively future-oriented.

The Assurance of Things Hoped For

Here’s a text to show the future-oriented nature of faith. This is one we’ve seen:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for . . .

I love this next one.

[Abraham] did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb (Romans 4:19).

What do you mean he didn’t weaken in faith? I mean, “No unbelief made him waiver concerning the promise” (Romans 4:20). That’s what faith was for Abraham. And it continues:

But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised (Romans 5:20–21).

As a model of justifying faith, Abraham believes the promise of God. Faith is future-oriented.

John 14:1 says:

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.

What kind of belief is that? Well, what are you troubled about? You’re troubled about tomorrow or five minutes from now, or the cancer diagnosis. Let’s say you have the appointment for the reading of the spot on your lung in three days, and that’s what you’re troubled about. Well, if that’s what you’re troubled about and he says, “Believe in God,” what does he mean? Does it mean, “I believe he was there in the past and has nothing to do with the next three days”? No, he means trust him because he’s going to take care of you these days. That’s what it means.

Second Corinthians 1:8–9 says:

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.

Why had God appointed that kind of despair and suffering and danger?

But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:9).

Now think, Paul has been brought up to the edge of life and despairs of life. He’s trapped, perhaps, in Damascus, and there’s no way out. There are murderous mobs outside of his house and he’s maybe thinking, “I’m gone, then it’s over,” or it could have been more emotional than that. Maybe he was sick, or maybe he was depressed, or maybe everybody had abandoned him or whatever. We don’t know what the situation was. And clearly this was of God, and the reason I say it’s clear is because Satan does not have the design to make Paul rely on God who raises the dead. And it wasn’t Paul’s design. So the design in this moment of despair is that you may rely on the God who raises the dead — that’s in the future, do you see? This is what I’m seeing over and over again in the Bible.

Looking to the Future by Faith

What does God want for me right now in this moment when I’m just ready to die? He wants you to believe in the resurrection and be happy about it. That’s future grace. He wants you to be sustained right now in prison, or in despair, or in family crisis, or in relational breakdown, or in cancer, by the promise that we’re going to be raised from the dead.

I’m reading the Gospel of John for my devotions, and I just read for the third time this morning the statement, “And I will raise him from the dead.” I underlined it all three times. I will raise him from the dead. Nobody comes to the Father but by me, and I’ll raise him from the dead. And God used it. He is saying, “I’m going to raise you from the dead.” Anything else that happens that’s going to happen so we can make it. That’s future grace, and he wanted Paul to rely on it.

Here’s my conclusion about the future orientation of faith: saving faith is profoundly and pervasively future-oriented. There is no saving act of faith, whether looking back to history, or out to a person, or forward to a promise, that does not include a future orientation. That’s a pretty sweeping claim, you should think about it before you embrace it. Because if it’s true, it lends a lot of weight to how we live the Christian life.

Spectacular Promises

Why does faith have such power to transform such that when you have it, you cannot but be sanctified? And the answer I’m arguing is that it always embraces all that God is for you in Jesus from this second on, and the promises are spectacular. In the short run, the promises are that all things will work together for your good, and in the long run, do you know what you inherit?

Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s (1 Corinthians 3:21–23).

Stop bragging about your car, or your house, or your teachers. You own the world. Isn’t that an interesting way to argue against pride? Why do people boast in their teachers, or why do people boast in their churches, or why do people boast in their jobs? It’s because they’re weak, that’s why. They’re fearful, they’re insecure, and they want their ego stroked by somebody praising them. Do you know the people who don’t need to do that? People who in about an hour will inherit the universe.

Do you remember that story from John Newton? I love the story. You’ve heard it. I’ll tell it again because I love it. He told a story about a man going to New York to inherit a million dollars. This was roughly 200 years ago. He was from England, but he was telling this story about a man going to New York in his carriage to get a million dollars. A million dollars in those days would have been 100 million today.

The man was going to inherit a million dollars and the wheel fell off his carriage, and he was one mile from New York. And he got down and he looked, and he walked all the way to New York, one mile away, grumbling the whole way, saying, “My carriage is broken, my carriage is broken.” That’s the Christian life of a grumbler. That’s stupid. You’re on your way to get a hundred million dollars. Have you ever thought about your life that way? I feel like a fool every day. I’m a fool every day. Why can’t I wake up?

Faith is profoundly future-oriented and the power of believing is something we’re going to see tomorrow when we get into its power to love, its power to kill lust, and its power to kill impatience. This is it. That future glory is the solution to conquering your failures of love and your sin. Therefore, faith banks on the future that God promises and thus breaks the power of sin, which lures us with the deceitful promise of a happier future.

Satisfied in Jesus

I think I’ll take these two verses and then I’m probably going to quit. Faith is being satisfied with all that God promises to be for us. That’s such a huge premise in this seminar, so make sure you see reasons for believing it, not just because I told you. I’m arguing that the nature of saving faith is not simply believing facts about Jesus in the past, present, and future, but embracing him, receiving him and treasuring him as all that God promises to be for us, and being satisfied in him. It has a very big affectional dimension, not just a notional or rational dimension, and here are a couple of verses that point in that direction:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

Now, there is a parallel here. Coming is parallel to believing, and not hungering is parallel to not thirsting. These are two pictures of trusting Christ. Trusting Christ is believing in him and receiving him as water for the soul, and trusting him is coming to him as bread for the soul. These are all spiritual images of soul hunger and us being satisfied.

I’m reading an article right now in First Things called Pornography and Acedia. It’s a very powerful article. I’m waiting for the electronic version to be public and then I’m going to tweet a connection to it. Acedia is the old sin of spiritual apathy or boredom. And the thesis of this article is that pornography is rampant because spiritual apathy is rampant. There are very few people who are so thrilled and taken with spiritual things, and the power, beauty, glory, wisdom, and majesty of God that their lives are basically drab and boring, and therefore the rush has power.

We live so low spiritually. We live so low. The tide has gone so far out in the church and in many lives that when along comes a razzle-dazzle nudity, nothing can stand against it. This says faith is coming to Christ to be satisfied in him in our souls. That’s what that teaches.

Look at this one. John 7:37 says:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts (and who doesn’t), let him come to me and drink.”

Jesus comes into a world of craving people and says, “Come drink.” There’s the faith piece. And he continues:

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).

I think coming and believing there are parallel realities, just like they were in John 6:35. So both of those texts argue that in the Gospel of John, in the mouth of Jesus, saving faith is a coming to Jesus for satisfaction and finding it.

Overcoming the World

Here are two more and then we’ll be done. First John 5:3–4 says:

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

So does loving God mean keeping his commandments? No, no, no. The Pharisee Paul said, “As to the law, I was blameless; as to zeal, I persecuted the church; as to law, I was a Pharisee; as to righteousness under the law, I was blameless” (Philippians 3:5–6). No, the love of God is that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome because he’s just so satisfying. Freedom is doing what you want to do and not regretting it in 1000 years.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world (1 John 5:4).

Oh, so when you’re born again, a change happens so that you don’t find the commandments burdensome anymore, but they’re a delight. To know him, to love him, and to follow him is a delight because the new birth changed that. Now, we just need to add one more piece — faith:

And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith (1 John 5:4).

Oh, I thought it was the new birth that overcame the world? Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, so the new birth overcomes the world. And then he says, “This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” So do you see why I said faith, as an agent, is the channeling, and that it’s the wire through which the current of the new birth power flows? When you got saved, you plugged into Christ and the current went right through the faith. There’s no hesitation and there’s no delay whatsoever. You plug in and a light goes on. Let your light so shine before men that they may see you’re plugged in. The light doesn’t make you plug in; it’s on because you’re plugged in. The light didn’t plug you in.

New birth is the key to overcoming the world. What’s the world here? The world is a heart that finds the commands burdensome. I’m a worldly person if I come to the Bible and say, “Ah, ah, ah” — that’s a worldly heart. To come to the Bible and say, “More, more, more” — that’s a new-birth heart. This is serious. Christianity is a miracle, not merely a decision. It’s a miracle. It’c called the new birth, and the first cry of the newborn baby is faith.

Therefore, faith includes love for God, because that’s what it says there. It includes love for God in the sense of valuing him and treasuring him above all else. So faith is being satisfied in all that God is and promises to be for us, and because he’s satisfying we don’t find his words burdensome any more. Therefore, faith severs the root of sin, which is the promise sin makes for a better future and a better satisfaction. We’ll see a lot of illustrations of that tomorrow, but we are done.