It was the devil's trick to get Adam to think that the way to live was as Lord. You live as a subject. You live day by day, bowed down with the realization that Jesus is Lord of the entire universe. He is the Lord of life, of death, of tragedy, of exhilaration, of you, of me, of the birds, of the animals, of all. When you live bowed down with the realization of Jesus' Lordship and that you belong to Him, you are His property, believer. That is what it means to be a Christian. You belong to Him. You are His property. You owe Him your allegiance day by day. He has indelibly written into your being the mark of His ownership. When we live as subjects day by day, people see our subjecthood, and they are pointed to the Lordship of Jesus.

But do we not receive Jesus as Saviour in the gospel as well? Now here is the question. How is the Saviourhood of Jesus seen in Christian existence? Think about it! Don't rush in with a quick answer. If sanctification is justification in action, and if we receive Jesus as Saviour in the gospel, how are we to live as Christians? Remember that the Saviourhood of Jesus will be seen at the point of our daily behavior.

Christians must live as sinners. What do I mean by that statement? There is to be no point in your life when you confess yourself anything but a sinner. One of the constant characteristics of your existence is your confession of your sinnerhood. One of the constant characteristics of my existence is the confession of my sinnerhood. That is what John is saying in 1 John 1:9. We confess our sins, and God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. A distinctive characteristic of Christian existence is the willingness to admit that we are sinners—whether we feel like sinners or not.

I am so sinful that I very seldom feel sinful. Once in about every fortnight¹ I feel sinful. But the other times I don't feel sinful. I feel quite perfect. Sometimes I'll get a pain in the stomach, and that will make me feel like sin incarnate. And the feeling may not be directly attributable to sin at all.
You get up in the morning, and you say, 'Good morning, world. I have arrived." You go to the breakfast table and down your breakfast. And somehow that material which you poke into yourself gets mixed up in that labyrinth down there, your eyes cross, and then the world has changed. You have to stagger into the lecture room and hold yourself up. We are sinners whether we feel like it or not

Faith is not feeling. Faith is not sight. Faith is not the advice of friends. Faith is not the advice of enemies. Faith is faith in the Word of God—despite what we feel, despite what we think, despite what our friends tell us, despite what our enemies tell us.

All believers, at all times, never refuse to admit that they are sinners—and sinners to the extent that the Bible tells them that they are sinners. So I want none of this pretending, if you don't mind. If I sit next to you at lunch, I want none of this pretending that you are a "goody-goody," for you are going to make me feel very awkward. I'll feel awkward because: (1) I'm not a "goody-goody." The Bible tells me this. And when I'm not a "goody-goody" and I am sitting beside a "goody-goody," it makes me feel quite out of this world. (2) I have a sneaking suspicion that you are not a "goody-goody" either, and I am going to think you are a hypocrite. So there must be real admission, a real acknowledgment of sinnerhood. Why pretend otherwise?

You don't have to be a Christian to be a sinner, although you have to be a Christian to acknowledge you are a sinner. But we live as forgiven sinners. Sinners still! If you ever decide to get rid of your sin nerhood, at the same time get rid of God's forgiveness. God only forgives sinners. Can you see what I am saying? It is important to have this embedded into our skulls. Why, you can stop the strain of pretending. It might add ten years to your life. You may get through your course with an A instead of a B if you really stop the burden of pretending. That psychophysical drain will go away from you, and you will say, "Listen, I'm a sinner. The sooner I really acknowledge it and stop pretending, the better. I am going to start to live the gospel."

Let me illustrate this forgiven sinner with the example of Mephibosheth. Remember Mephibosheth? He was a social derelict, an outcast and a cripple, thrown out on the scrapheap. Because of King David's love for another, that social outcast, that psycho-physical derelict, was brought to the king's presence to sit at the king's table. Mephibosheth must have sat down in that banquet hall bowed down with the mercy of the king's kindness to him. Do you think Mephibosheth sat in that banquet hall looking around and thinking who he was better than? Do you think he would have given the impression that there was something in himself that made the king bring him to the banquet table? He was bowed down with the king's kindness. Read also Ezekiel 1 6.

A little woman came to me after a meeting in Australia and said, "Mr. Paxton, I have not long been converted. The group through whom I was converted said that I ought to be a good witness to my husband. Now please tell me how I can be a good witness to my husband. I want to win him for the Lord."

"Indeed you must be a good witness," I replied, "and I will try to give you some guidelines. First, whatever you do, don't go home to your husband and give him the impression that now that you have become a Christian, you have become morally infallible. If you do that, he will do two things. (1) If he knows anything about his heart (and usually husbands do), he will first write off any possibility of his becoming a Christian. [Have you ever heard an unbeliever say, I couldn't live up to it"? This shows that an unbeliever has a fundamentally wrong concept of Christianity. Where did that concept come from? It must have come from the Christian community.] (2) When you 'goof,' your husband will also do something else. (And believe me, you will 'goof' sooner or later. You may go just perfectly for a week. Then the kids may get you down, the pressures will be very great, you will suddenly explode, and there will be shrapnel all over the house. You are going to feel miserable, because with that explosion your understanding of Christianity is going to be blown right out of your life and out of the home.) As soon as your husband sees you 'goof,' he will not only believe he could never be a Christian, but he will write off the validity of your Christianity as well."

"Mr. Paxton," the woman gasped, "that's different from anything I've ever been told. Then how am I going to witness to my husband?"

"You go home," I said, "and tell your husband you have discovered that all those things he said about you in that quarrel he had with you, were correct. That will knock him out on the floor for three minutes at least. And while he is out, you can compose the rest of your sermon. When he opens his eyes and rolls them about, tell him he didn't tell you half the truth. That was because he was either too kind or too ignorant. Confess that you are far worse than he ever said. Tell him that you have discovered you are a wretched sinner, but one who has found forgiveness at the hands of a merciful God. Then you can tell him that if he were to acknowledge his wretchedness and ask Jesus Christ to forgive him and to become his Substitute, he too could find forgiveness at the hand of a merciful God. Then when you try to work for God's glory day by day and you 'goof,' you will only confirm the gospel. You can say, 'Lord, there it is again. That's what You have forgiven. How can I ever grasp it!' "

The forgiveness of God is only meaningful in the light of an awareness of our wretchedness. We show the Saviourhood of Christ by living as forgiven sinners.

Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live. Ezek. 16:1-6.

Any person who lives with this burning into his mind will be bowed down with the mercy of God.

Part 2

Sanctification is justification in action. There must always be action. But it must always be the gospel in action. It must always be justification in action. It must always be the grace of God in action.

Let us summarize the ground we have covered:

1. In justification we receive God. God comes to us by His Spirit. We therefore live a God-ly existence. The God of justification is seen at the point of the believer's existence. The same God must be seen.

2. We receive love in justification. We receive love in the gospel. The Holy Spirit has poured the love of God into our hearts (Rom. 5:5). The love-ing existence must be the same love of the gospel. It is not a different type of love.

3. We receive hope in justification. We receive hope in the gospel. We live hope-fully. And the hope-ful existence we live is the same hope as in justification.

4. Jesus comes to us as Lord in the gospel. We show the Lordship of Christ in the gospel by living as subjects in our daily life. When people see our subjecthood, it points to Christ's Lordship.

5. In the gospel we receive Christ as Saviour as well as Lord. The Saviourhood of Christ is seen in the forgiven sinnerhood of the believer. We live constantly acknowledging our sin, constantly owning up to the fact that we are wretches, but constantly praising God for the fact that He has forgiven us wretched sinners. The Christian always remains two things: (a) He always remains a sinner despite the fact that he fights against sin. (b) He constantly recognizes that he is a forgiven sinner.

The Big Three of Christian Existence

Now we want to deal with the three great characteristics of Christian existence — faith, hope and love.

Let's Talk About Faith. There is no doubt about the distinguishing characteristic of Christian existence being faith. We receive faith in the gospel, do we not? Is faith not a gift of God? So if we receive faith in the gospel, if faith is the gift of God in the gospel, we ought to live faith-ful existences. We ought to live faith-fully. The faith of justification is expressed in the faithful existence of sanctification.

What is the distinctive characteristic of New Testament faith? Answer: You never go to faith itself for a distinctive characteristic. The distinctive characteristic of faith is that you go out of faith for its distinctive characteristic. Faith in the Bible is always affixed to the grace of God. The preoccupation of real faith is the grace of God. The preoccupation of Biblical faith is the mercy of God. The preoccupation of real, Biblical faith is the forgiveness of God in Christ. The preoccupation of real, Biblical faith is the love of God our Father. That is very important. So our whole life has to drip God's mercy. All our behavior, actions and attitudes are to represent the grace and mercy of God in the gospel.

You show me a man in the New Testament who is strong in faith, and his dominant characteristic will be that he is strong in the grace of God. You show me a man in the New Testament who is strong in faith, and I will show you a man who is preoccupied with God's mercy for his life. You show me a man in the New Testament who is strong in faith, and I will show you a man who is tickled red hot with forgiveness of sins. The notion that after you become a Christian, faith leaves grace — that faith leaves forgiveness and mercy and gets involved in techniques for Christian advancement — is un-Biblical through and through. The more strongly you grow in faith, the more strongly you appreciate the grace of God. The more strongly you grow in faith, the more strongly you appreciate the love of God the Father and His mercy. That is very important. It is surprising to see the number of Christian men and women you meet who are so intricately bound up in labyrinth-like complexes of advancing Christian personality and yet know almost nothing of the grace of God in Christ. They are not tickled pink with the gospel. They have left the gospel at commencement point.

The next statement I will make is fundamental. If I had the ability to take a stamp and impress this statement into each one of you so that you would never forget it for a minute, I would be a delighted man. Faith in the New Testament is always faith in the grace of God. It is always faith in the mercy of God. It is always faith in the forgiveness of God in Christ. It is always faith in the love of God. Faith only and always has a vertical reference point. It is never faith in anything horizontal. It is not faith in the church. It is not faith in your conversion. It is not faith in your perseverance. It is not faith in good Bible teachers. It is not faith in your grasp of the Bible. It is not faith in anything horizontal. It is always faith in God. It is always faith in the grace of God, the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, the love of God our Father. That is fundamental. I find people believing in their ability to persevere, Christians believing in their ability to maintain their walk with God. We find Christians directing their faith to horizontal reference points. The Bible knows nothing about this.

Here is another statement which could be the most fundamental I have made thus far: Faith is preoccupied with the love of God our Father. And this means that true, Biblical faith will be affixed to the love of God our Father in such a way that it comes to appreciate God. It comes to love God. This means that we will not want to hurt God. We will not want to sin. We will not want to go against Him. It is not Biblical to maintain the idea that a believer may go on in his sin because he realizes he has been converted and has become a child of God, and though he is out of temporal fellowship with God, he will no doubt come back into eternal fellowship with God when he dies. Faith in God is faith in the love of God our Father. Faith becomes so entranced with that love that we do not want to hurt Him. We don't want to go on in sin. We don't want to keep bringing shame to His name. The Bible knows nothing about the hypothetical notion that a believer can go on in sin and be out of temporal fellowship with God but still possess eternal fellowship with God. This dichotomy between temporal and eternal fellowship is an un-Biblical hypothesis.

The motivation for all our fighting against sin is faith in God, faith in what God has done for us. To understand what God has done for us in Christ melts our heart. When you come into vital, living relationship with someone you love, do you want to go on hurting that person? Of course you don't.

Let's Talk About Love. What is love? May I suggest that unless we are able to state clearly what love is, we may as well use the word "gobbledygook." "Dear brethren, let us 'gobbledygook' one another. He that 'gobbledygooketh' is born of God, and he that doth not 'gobbledygook' is not born of God. How can a man say that he 'gobbledygooketh' God if he does not 'gobbledygook' his brother."

We ought to be able to give concrete expression to what we mean by love. Christianity means something by love. Now what is it? Would you ever consider it possible that you loved someone while you behaved in an ungodly way toward him? Would you think it possible that while you behaved in a godly way toward him, you couldn't love him? Or you didn't love him? You would say that ungodly behavior can't be love, and you would say that godly behavior is love. And that is exactly what it is. Love in the New Testament is behaving in a God-ly fashion. Write it in your minds. How could you possibly behave in an ungodly way toward someone and call it love? On the other hand, how could you behave in a godly way toward someone and not call it love? God is love. To behave in a godly way is to behave in a love-ing way.

Now let me give you a statement on love. I have already said that sanctification is justification in action. Now I say, Love is behaving toward each other as God has and does behave toward us. That is what godly means. We behave the way God behaves. Love is behaving toward each other as God has behaved toward us. This takes love away from being an ooey-gooey feeling in the tummy. It is incredible that when some folk talk about love, they always grab their tummy. I used to think they had a pain. Love is as fussless and as down to earth as this — behaving toward each other as God has behaved toward us.

How has God behaved toward us? There is a very real sense in which God does not have direct fellowship with His people. Why do we say at the end of our prayers, "Through Jesus Christ, our Lord"? Why do we pray, "For Jesus sake"? Why do we pray, In Jesus name"? We pray in this manner because we are constantly acknowledging that although our access is real, bold and confident, it is not a direct access. It is through Jesus. Now if we have fellowship with God through His Son Jesus, God has fellowship with us through Jesus. St. Paul declares, "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." There is Someone between God and us. If love is behaving toward each other as God has behaved toward us, then we must see that God has behaved toward us through a Mediator. There is a very real sense in which God does not have direct fellowship with us. We are not Unitarians; we are Trinitarians. There is a terrible teaching going about in ecumenism which says that you can dispense with Christ, that you can have fellowship with God despite Christ, that you do not have to come to God through Christ. The Bible recognizes no fellowship with God apart from Christ. This is what we ought to echo home to the "ecu-maniacal" thinking deluging our world. The exclusivity of Christ is in danger of being denied. Love is behaving toward each other in and through Christ.

Love means having no direct fellowship with one another. That is right! Does God have direct fellowship with us? Should we then have direct fellowship with each other if God does not have direct fellowship with us? Of course not! We want to behave the way God behaves, don't we? Love is behaving toward each other through a Mediator. Love is the Mediator between man and man just as He is between God and man. If this is good enough for God, why isn't it good enough for us?

Now I'll tell you something that will rock you. The New Testament thinks of love in such a factual, fussless manner, that I earnestly believe, after several years of quiet and patient research, that the New Testament says love is behaving as a Christian. Love is behaving in Christ and through Christ The believer is one who is in Christ. The believer is one who has fellowship through Christ. The believer is one who has fellowship with his fellow believer through Christ. The believer is one who behaves toward his fellow man in exactly the way that God has and does behave toward him. We shouldn't think for a moment that we can behave toward our brother in a different way from the way God behaves toward us.

Why does God accept you? Because of Christ. Have you any right to accept yourself for any other reason? No! Why does God accept your brother? Because of Christ. Have you any right to accept him for any other reason? Have you the right to reject him if God accepts him?

What does it mean to love God? Sometimes I see pictures of people who are held up as being great examples of loving God. They are depicted in great, ecstatic trances, shaking their hands, faces or bodies convulsed as if "smitten by the wound of love." I am inclined to think it is pornographic. I really am. It wasn't without reason that that Presbyterian woman described the feeling of speaking in tongues as being like the exultation of the finished sex longing (which testimony we read yesterday). You don't have to look glassy-eyed and you don't have to shake all over to show that you love God. Let me ask you: What is the highest thing you can do for God? Can you do any more for God than trust Him? That is the very best thing you can do to let God be God. Love and trust are identical in life. It is because he is a believer that the believer loves God. That is why Paul says in Romans 8:28, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." You don't have to get "ooey-gooey" in the tummy to love God. I am not denying that this may be involved. But you must not think that the distinctive element in loving God is "ooey-gooeyism" in the tummy.

This is serious. We have to pull ourselves back into Biblical thinking. In reference to loving God, it simply means trusting Him. That is why Paul very seldom speaks of loving God, and John very seldom speaks of faith in God. Faith in God for Paul is the same as John's love for God. And love for God in John is the same as faith in God for Paul. When you trust God, you love Him. It may or it may not involve feeling. I think one of the most profound statements ever given in the Bible is found in Job. We see Job sitting there with scabs all over him. But he says, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." That must delight the heart of God more than any lover could delight the heart of his beloved. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." How glorious!

What does love mean for each other? Love toward each other is the outworking of our faith toward God. That is why John said that you cannot say you love God and hate your brother. If we love God, i.e., if we trust God, then the outworking of this in the horizontal relationship will be that we love each other. We always love our brother when we are trusting God. Paul says in Galatians 5:6 that it is "faith working through love."

What does this mean in concrete terms? Faith in God is always faith in the life of Jesus. Do you believe that Jesus lived for Himself? Who did He live for? Jesus lived for me. That perfect life was on my behalf. This means that Jesus is the only good that I have. There is none good but One. Therefore we all have the one good.

Let's think of the implications of that. The good that Gloria has is the good that I have, and that is the same good as you have. If we all have the one good, it must mean that no one is superior. How can you be superior if your good is the same as my good? How can any of us be superior if we all have the one good? You can only be superior if you think you have a good apart from Christ. A fundamental tenet of Christian faith is the acknowledgment that we only have one good in Christ.

If no one is superior, then no one is inferior. No superiority. No inferiority. Superiority and inferiority fly out the window in the Christian circle. This is what the Bible calls "love." You see, my dearly beloved brother, if I feel inferior to you, I deny the gospel, and if you feel superior to me, you deny the gospel. You cannot live by faith and think you are superior to anybody. That is important.

Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? Do you believe that He died for the sins of your brother? Do you believe He died for the sins of your Christian sister? Do you believe He took the responsibility for all believers' sins? Then why do you judge them? The only way you can condemn your brother or condemn your sister is if you cease to believe. So when you deal with your erring brother, though you may try to get him to see that the gospel has implications for the way he lives, though you may seek to bring his life into conformity with the gospel, you never hold him responsible for his faults. You believe that Jesus took that condemnation.

There is no superiority, no inferiority and no condemnation. That is not a bad community to start with, is it? Acts 2:32 says that when Jesus ascended into heaven, God gave Him the promised Holy Spirit. There is a very real sense in the Bible in which the Holy Spirit belongs to Jesus. And by our faith in Jesus, all that He has and all that He is is ours. If we have faith in Jesus, it means the Holy Spirit becomes ours by virtue of our faith in Christ. That is why the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. Jesus "owns" the Spirit, and all those who have their faith in Jesus, by virtue of that union with Him," own" what Christ "owns," i.e., in this respect, the Holy Spirit. What is the ministry of the Spirit? Is it to make one Christian an economy-class Christian and another a first-class Christian? The ministry of the Spirit is to highlight Christ's life so there is no superiority and no inferiority. It is to highlight His death so we may see that judgment is taken and we are not to meet out judgment on each other. The ministry of the Spirit is to expound the life and death of Jesus for the life and death of the believer. Paul can say, "Maintain the unity which the Spirit gives," because when there is no one superior, no one inferior and no one condemning another, we are not far away from being united. I wish we had a semester to discuss what it means to be a Christian, to examine the radical implications for simply saying that love is living as a Christian.

Can you go up to a pagan and ask, "Can't you see that I'm a son of God?" We are not even seen to be sons of God yet. Further, read verses 22 and 23:

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

This is what Romans 8 says that real Christians have now:

     1. Present suffering.
     2. Unrevealed glory.
     3. Not seen to be children of God.
     4. Groaning inwardly.
     5. The first fruits of the Spirit only.
     6. Waiting for the second blessing — the second coming of Jesus, the blessed  hope.

We have only had time to introduce this subject of Christian existence. We don't want you to agree with everything we say. When two minds think alike on everything, one is redundant. What does the New Testament teach on Christian existence? What does it mean to live by faith? What does it mean to live by hope and to live in hope? Seek to come to grips with these questions. Bask in the realism of the Bible and not in the fantasy of manmade ideas.

¹ For those not acquainted with the term, fortnight means two weeks