Hebrews Lesson
68
NKJ Matthew
We are in Hebrews,
but we won’t be there for long. So let’s
orient again. Hebrews 6:7-8 has this illustration about the fruitfulness
of the believer and we have to understand what the Bible means when it talks
about the fruitfulness of the believer and why fruitfulness is important. We have to understand what it is and what it
isn’t, what it is good for and what it is not good for. God did not call us to be fruit inspectors, but
to be students of the Word abiding in Him so that He can produce fruit in us. So we have an illustration in Hebrews 6.
Hebrews 6:7-8 is
in the midst of a section dealing with a warning passage against believers who have
completely fallen away or on the verge of completely falling away and how
dangerous that is. Then there is this
illustration.
NKJ Hebrews 6:7 For the earth which drinks
in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom
it is cultivated, receives blessing from God;
NKJ Hebrews 6:8 but if it bears thorns
and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to
be burned.
The focus is on
two things - fruit production (or the production of the plant) and the end results
(blessing or cursing both in time and eternity). We have looked at the symbols there and seen
that the earth is the believer. The rain
represents the provision of God – the Word of God and the Spirit of God. The herbs represent the production of good fruit
or divine good that has eternal quality to it.
The thorns and thistles are the production of evil, sin and human
good. The cultivator is God. God is the one ultimately producing the fruit. It is not ourselves. It is not our own efforts that produce the
fruit. We are to be in right
relationship with God the Holy Spirit.
We are to be walking with the Spirit, abiding in Christ, dependent upon
the Word of God, taking in the Word of God, applying the Word of God. When we are doing that, then it is the Holy
Spirit who takes that in an unseen invisible way and He produces growth and
maturity in us leading to the production of fruit. So we are going through the passages. Now these passages are all important because
we have to recognize that the Word of God doesn’t tell us everything there is
to say about any particular topic or subject or doctrine in any one verse. So we take different key passages where some was
revealed here, some was revealed there,
and some more was revealed over there
We start putting these together to create a clear understanding of the
entirety of doctrine. So we move from
Hebrews 6:7 to begin our study in John 15:1-6.
In John 15 we saw
that there were three types of branches.
There is the non-fruit bearing branches that were to be lifted up. That is the corrected translation – not cut
off, but lifted up. These represent
young believers that are nurtured so that they can produce fruit in coming
years as they mature. Then there were
the fruit bearing branches that were pruned for greater fruit production. This represents discipline in the positive
sense of the word, not discipline in the sense of punitive punishment. (That’s
kind of redundant isn’t it?) It is not
punitive discipline. It is productive
discipline, teaching us to be disciplined in the Christian life and to do away
with that which is not productive. Then
the third was the non abiding branches which were pruned, completely removed, discarded
as useless which is a picture of divine discipline on the believer in time even
to the extent of the sin unto death.
We saw secondly that
the goal in John 15 is fruit production. The believer is to abide. Some 6 times that word is used – to
abide. Several times the word fruit is used. That is the goal – fruit production.
NKJ John 15:8 "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much
fruit; so you will be My disciples.
So you will
become. That is in the process of
becoming something that you weren’t before. We saw that there were truly three different
stages of fruit production mentioned there - those who bore fruit, those who
produced more fruit, and those who bore much fruit. We see the same kind of
thing in Matthew 13 which we will look at a little more this evening. Believers produce fruit in different levels.
So the goal is
fruit production. The third thing we saw
is that the sole and necessary condition for fruit production is abiding in
John 15. You have to abide in
Christ.
NKJ John 15:7 "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire,
and it shall be done for you.
There is
doctrine.
It’s not just a
feel good thing. It is not a subjective
or psychological thing. It is based upon
the Word of God comprehended, studied, understood. You can’t believe what you don’t
understand. You can’t understand what
you haven’t thought about. That is why
the Old Testament talked about meditation all the time.
Furthermore we
learned from this that this (the fourth point) abiding is not some subjective
or psychological state; but is related to doctrine in the believer - leading to
the fifth point that abiding is not simply a positional reality or and abstract
doctrine. It is manifest in an ongoing
relationship with Jesus Christ as indicated through prayer. There is the two-way communication. God speaks to us through His Word. We speak to God in prayer. It is two people as it were - two
persons. God is a person. He has the ability to communicate. We are people. We are designed for fellowship for intimacy with
God. The term abide emphasizes this
intimate ongoing relationship of the believer.
The relationship as I have said already isn’t based on subjective impressions
or subjective criterion of having a close walk with Jesus or feeling like you
are closer to Jesus because you have sung a lot of Christian choruses and
everybody had a good time standing up and stomping their feet and clapping
their hands and swaying to the music and enjoying the beat. But it is because you follow clear markers in
Scripture to indicate you are abiding in Christ.
NKJ John
If we disobey, we
are not abiding in His love. Are we out of the family now? No. Are we
in the wood shed? Yes. That is such an old saying. There has got to be something new, but I
don’t think that parents today discipline kids.
So I don’t know what the contemporary idiom would be. Are you having a time out? Somehow it just doesn’t communicate, does
it? You sinned and you are going to have
a spiritual time out. It just doesn’t
work. You see God built theses things
into the whole framework. You have got
to have corporal discipline.
If you don’t keep
His commandments, you don’t abide in His love.
You have to know the commandments to keep them. You have to come to Bible class to learn them. You have to study the Word, read the Word, know
what they are, and be reminded of them.
It doesn’t just happen.
The overriding
mandate throughout this whole section and I have pointed out is love. Jesus gave us the commandment that we are to
love one another…
NKJ John
That was based on
the new commandment in John 13:34-35. Love
is not marked by feelings, not by emotion, not by feelings of warmth and
rapport; but by objective standards of doing what the Word of God says to
do. People can get legalistic about it
and they can be doing what the Word of God says to do and there is no
relationship. You have to be careful not
to go too far to the other extreme. Love
is measured by keeping the commandments.
This leads to the production of fruit.
As I have said already the sole and necessary condition to produce fruit
in John 15 is abiding in Christ.
Now we go to
Galatians 5 which tells what the fruit of the Spirit is. This is a comprehensive list but it is not an
exhaustive list.
NKJ Galatians
NKJ
Galatians
That means it
gives us a lot but it doesn’t tell us everything there is to say about fruit. But what I want you to notice as we go through
this study tonight is that fruit in the Bible is character. It is the virtues of the Christian life. It is not external behavior. It is not witnessing. If you grow up in some Christian contexts
fruit is pretty much defined as how many people you witnessed to this week –
how many people you lead to the Lord. If
you didn’t lead 5 people to the Lord this week, you aren’t producing any fruit. But when we go through the
Scripture that’s not really how the Bible uses the term fruit in relation to
the Christian life. It’s
character transformation. Again and
again and again it has to do with what happens on the inside as God the Holy Spirit
takes the Word of God and uses it in the soul of the believer to produce the
character of Jesus Christ.
So we went from
John 15 to Luke 8 last time. We went to
Luke 8. That was the parable of the
soils. Just to give you a brief review
to help you get it back in your head, we had the story of the sower who comes
along and casts the seed. The seed
represents message of the gospel of the
But it fails under
temptation.
Then we have the
second kind of soil, where the seed falls amongst the thorns. Again it is choked out but for the seed to be
choked out there has to be germination and some growth. Then it is choked out. This is choked out by the details of life –
distractions. This represents the person who receives the message of the
kingdom but there is some growth but not much growth. There
is no fruit production because it is choked out by the thorns. There are too many distractions in life and this
is the person who never gets very far in his spiritual growth. Then it is the last soil where we have fruit produced.
What makes the
difference is the kind of soil. The
message is, what kind of soil are you? In other words, what is your volition toward
the Word of God? That makes the
difference. Now what I want to do before
we go on (I keep threatening that we will go to Ephesians 5, but I keep finding
other passages to go to.) Let’s go to
Matthew 13. I just want to point out a
couple of things here. You may not
realize it. Some of you do because you have
been around awhile. Many of these
passages that I am talking about are also at the heart of the debate that goes
back and forth over the nature of gospel, assurance of salvation, and what is
known as the debate between the free grace gospel
verses Lordship salvation.
Lordship salvation
in essence says that the way you know you are saved is because of the fruit
that comes out in your life. Of course
all of these passages that deal with fruit would come to play in that debate. Their argument is if you want to know if you
are really saved, if there has been regeneration that has taken place,it’s going to produce fruit
in your life. If you don’t see the fruit,
then you weren’t truly saved. You weren’t
genuinely saved. You didn’t have saving
faith.
On the other hand
the free grace gospel says, “No we have to make a distinction between
justification which happens when you believed and received the gospel and
sanctification which is the spiritual life.”
This debate goes
back a long time into history. It has
taken different forms in different groups.
I think I pointed this out before that at the time of the Reformation
beginning in 1517 and in those early years, Luther did not grasp justification
by faith alone in all the ways he did a little later on, right at first. But he was close. Those of you who go shooting catch the
metaphor. He was on the paper. He
might not have been in the bull’s eye or on the black but he was at least on
the paper. He had a young sharp student
by the name of Philllip Melangthon
who was really the man who formulated and systematized Luther’s theology. Melangthon had a
crisp clear understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. At the instant of faith in Christ we received
Christ’s righteousness and God imputes that righteousness to us. On the basis
of the possession of Christ’s righteousness we are declared just by God. It is not that we are just. It is not “just as if I never sinned” which
you will hear some people express. It is
on the basis of the possession of Christ’s righteousness that you are declared
righteousness. It is not that you are
made righteous. That is an important
distinction.
In Roman Catholic theology
there is this confusion between justification by faith and sanctification so
that justification is the process of being made righteous. So in Roman Catholic theology justification
isn’t a point in time a slice of a nanosecond when all of those things happen
that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to you.
God the Father looks on that righteousness and declares you to be
righteous because you have received Christ’s righteousness - justification by faith
alone. When we talk about sanctification
and spiritual growth that’s what Roman Catholics mean by justification. You see they have confused that. For them justification is a process. How do you know you are justified? Because you look at the morality in your life
and the religion in your life and the good works in your life. If that’s not there, then you need to go get
some more grace. After Luther and then
later Calvin began to teach a true crisp unadulterated doctrine of justification
by faith alone, the reaction from the Roman Catholic Church was that if you
teach these things - that all a person has to do is trust in Christ to be saved
and they will be saved and they can’t lose it - then what is it to encourage
them to be moral and law-abiding and to be good people. You have just taken away all of the
motivation for that. You have to load
them up with guilt.
When I was in
So by the end of
his career a guy whose name is Dave Anderson who pastors is very good in this
area. Dave has done some tremendous work. In this he shows in an article published in the
GES a few years ago how in Calvin’s later editions of his institutes (which is what we have published today) that he goes through a
change. He begins to try to answer this
objection from the Roman Catholics and he slips into lordship view of
perseverance of the saints - that if you don’t show fruit you weren’t really
saved. That begins to develop within Calvin’s thought and later it entered into
reform theology and it’s been this debate that has gone on down through the
centuries. Is a person purely and simply
saved by faith alone in Christ alone? If
they believed the gospel such that they truly understand the propositions that
Christ died for their sins they understand that they can’t do anything for
their salvation. They understand that
Christ paid it all. All they have to do is receive it as a gift, believe in
Christ, accept His substitutionary death for them and that is all they need to
do to be saved, that if they live like the devil for the rest of their lives,
are they still saved? If the answer to
that is yes, you understand grace. But
if the answer to that is no, then you are starting to muddy the water a little
bit and you are confusing fruit production with germination and the beginning
of the plant. That is what we are really
dealing with here. Matthew 13 – the
parable of the soils and Luke 8 are parallel passages and that is where you get
into a lot of the debate. But I wanted
to come back to this and point out something that I think we need to pay
attention to.
In Matthew 13 just
like in Luke you have four responses to the gospel message. The parable begins in verse 3.
NKJ Matthew 13:3 Then He spoke many
things to them in parables, saying: "Behold, a sower went out to sow.
NKJ
Matthew
13:4
"And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came
and devoured them.
NKJ Matthew 13:5 "Some fell on stony
places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up
because they had no depth of earth.
See there is life.
There is germination. There is some
growth - a little bit.
NKJ Matthew 13:6 "But when the sun was up they were scorched, and
because they had no root they withered away.
NKJ
Matthew
13:7
"And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.
NKJ Matthew 13:8 "But others fell on
good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
That’s comparable
to John 15 – fruit, more fruit and much fruit.
There are different percentages of fruit production.
Then there is a
challenge – the disciples in 10-17 say…
NKJ Matthew
So Jesus is
explaining that. Then he comes back to
explain the parable in verse 18. Now the thing to understand about Matthew 13
that you don’t have in Luke 8 is that in Matthew 13 you have a series of
parables that build upon one another.
There is interconnectiveness to these parables so that the symbols in
one help you understand and interpret the next parable because he doesn’t
interpret all of the parables for you.
So you are supposed to be able to apply your thought to this and put
things together. The only thing I am concerned about right now is these first
two parables.
So he starts to explain
them. It is the same explanation that we
have over in Luke 8.
NKJ Matthew 13:19 "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does
not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was
sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.
NKJ Matthew
This is similar
terminology to Luke 8. He is a believer.
He just had a little growth before.
He doesn’t have any sustenance.
He withers up and is gone. He has no root in himself.
NKJ
Matthew
NKJ
Matthew
Then we have the
explanation of the fourth one.
Now what I want you
to note here is that on the second soil the soil in the rock ground and the
seed falls on the rocky ground and it germinates – what is that seed
producing? Is it producing the same kind
of plant that is produced in verse 23 that bears fruit? It is the same kind of plant or is it a
different kind of plant? It is the same
kind of plant. The only difference between the two is the soil. One is on good soil; one is on soil that is
rocky so it doesn’t produce any in depth root so it doesn’t grow to maturity. But it is the same plant. Now what we learn about this is that the
plant that is being talked about here is wheat.
The point I am making is that what you have in the parable of the soils
is all related to the three that produce some kind of growth are all
wheat. You don’t see the introduction of
the professing or the pseudo Christian until the next parable.
NKJ Matthew
It is the same man
sowing the same good seed. The good seed
is the gospel of the kingdom.
NKJ
Matthew
Now you are
introduced to another kind of plant. This
is the pseudo – Christian. Not a pseudo-
believer. Remember I talked about that a
few weeks ago. We have to keep that
clear. There are people who come along
and say well, there are folks who have a false faith in Jesus or just profess
to believe in Jesus. There is a
difference. We have to be very careful
here. There is a difference between
saying you profess to believe in Jesus and you profess to say you are a
Christian. If I claim (that is what
profess means) to believe in Jesus; then that is a statement. Unless I am lying I am telling the
truth. If I believe in Jesus; I believe in
Jesus. If I say, “I am a Christian.” I may or may not be a Christian. I may not understand the gospel at all. I may just be part of a denomination that
considers itself a Christian denomination.
They may be liberal. They may
hold to a moral view of the atonement. They
may hold to a works salvation. They may hold to baptismal regeneration. It is just a profession of being a
Christian. But if I say I believe in
Jesus, unless I am totally self deceived and I don’t know what I believe we
have to take that to be true. They
understand the gospel and they believe in Jesus.
It is not until the
second parable that we have the introduction of the pseudo-Christian. I am not going to say pseudo-believer. There is no category for that in the Scripture. The only way that they are identified - the tares
are identified and these are sown by the enemy.
They are not sown by the man with the good seed. It is a different seed. So what we have in the parable of the sower is
this is all the seed of the gospel that produces all of those plants. So those all have to be believers - the rocky
soil, the thorny soil and the good soil.
It is not until the second parable that we have the introduction of a
false counterfeit plant into the field.
So what we have
established so far is that not all Christians bear fruit. Some all you have is growth. You have a little stem production and that is
about it. Those that grow to maturity produce
fruit at different levels. Some produce
100-fold, 60-fold and 30-fold. Matthew
13 and Luke 8 both emphasize this and I think if we are honest with the
vocabulary that is used there, then the three soils all represent
believers.
Now let’s look at
another passage that fruit production from a different perspective.
Now let’s look at James
1:18
NKJ James 1:18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth,
that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
There is the
active element at regeneration. God uses
intermediate means to bring about regeneration.
It is the word of truth, the message of the gospel that Jesus Christ
died on the cross for us that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His
creatures. So verse 18
is talking about regeneration.
That is where salvation comes into this discourse in this part of
James. Then he shifts. That is the last thing he says in the introduction. Then in verse 19 and 20 he starts to make the
shift to set up the rest of the book.
NKJ James
“My beloved
brethren” is a term that is used to refer to believers. He uses it many times in this epistle and he
emphasizes the fact that he is addressing them as believers, as regenerate
believers.
That is the
outline of the book of James. You have
an introduction in vs. 1-18. In 19 down
through the end of chapter 2 you have a section that expounds on the idea of
what it means to be swift to hear. Chapter
3 deals with slow to speak and the sins of the tongue. Then starting toward the end of chapter 3 you
have a section on mental attitude sins and on wisdom of the world versus the
wisdom of God. This deals with mental
attitude sins summarized by the term anger or wrath here in verse 19.
NKJ James
That’s what we are
after – production of the righteousness of God.
This isn’t righteousness for justification. This isn’t imputed righteousness because he
is already talking about the fact that they are saved. They were justified, (let’s clarify my
terminology here).
NKJ James 1:18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth,
that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
That’s when they
are justified – when they are regenerated.
That all happened in a moment in time.
It all happens simultaneously. Regeneration
and justification all take place at the instant of faith alone in Christ
alone. Now we are going to talk about post
salvation experiential righteousness as God is going to build maturity into the
life of the believer and produce experiential righteousness which is part of
the fruit of spiritual growth. We will
see that as we go through.
Therefore he says…
NKJ James
I love the Old
King James – super fluidity of naughtiness.
Just ask somebody what that means.
Meditate on that in your morning devotions.
It is a great
term. It is difficult to translate the
Greek. It literally means the excess in your life which sin is. Sin is an excess in your life. It is not necessary. That is the same thing Paul says over in I Corinthians…
NKJ 1 Corinthians
In Romans 6 he
says that…
NKJ Romans 6:2 Certainly
not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
Sin is superfluous
now. It is an excess. Sin in not necessary. Before you were saved you had no choice but to
sin. Everything you did came out of the
sin nature. Human good came out of the
sin nature. Morality came out of the sin
nature. Everything came out of the sin
nature. Some of the most evil people in
the world today are not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
or Hugo Chavez. I mean these people are
evil, but they are not anything compared to some of the folks in this country.
I mean you think about some of the folks in this country who are moral and
religious. I could name you a couple of pastors who I am convinced that they
are not saved. Boy, do they have a huge
influence. They have no belief in a substitutionary atonement of Christ, no
belief in sin. One of them is out in
So God is producing righteousness in the
believer. There is a pre-condition for
this though. That is what is interesting
about looking at James 1:21 because it looks in your English Bible as if you
have two imperatives there - lay aside and receive. Right? That is what it looks like in your
English. Actually in the Greek you
don’t. You have one aorist imperative
which is “receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your
souls”. Now they are already
justified. Aren’t they? Didn’t we say that already? They are justified. So when it talks about receiving the implanted
word which is able to save your souls, it is not talking about getting
justified These folks are already
justified. They are “my beloved brethren.”
Hold your place right
there and we are going to have sword drill time. Turn over to Romans 5.
NKJ Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Right now
according to that verse what are we? Having now been justified.
Just think a little bit. What are
we right now? We are justified. Present tense, right? Having now been justified. That “now” is a big word.
“We shall be saved.” Now what tense do you think that is? That’s future tense. Does that mean we can be justified and not saved? That doesn’t fit American superficial
evangelical terminology which says that always asks the question, “Brother are
you saved? We don’t use the word “saved”
in the same way the Bible uses the word saved most of the time. Sometimes sozo
is a synonym for justification, but in many cases sozo
is related to the post justification life or it’s related to the future
glorification life. So you have to look
at the context to find out. In Romans
the word sozo to my knowledge never refers to
justification. That is not the word Paul
uses getting righteousness and being able to enter into heaven. In his
vocabulary in Romans he will ask people, “Are you justified?”
If you are
justified, then we will be saved. It is
future tense. So I just want you to
understand that what I am saying here in James 1 about “receiving the implanted
word which is able to save your souls” is we’re not talking about justification
here, we are talking about what happens now that you are justified. You have to receive the implanted Word and
that will save you. It is an aorist
command. But what is interesting in the
Greek is you have something called a participle of attended circumstance. I just love these terms.
You don’t have a
clue what that means. What that means –
if you go to the grammars they will say that there are 5 characteristics you
look for grammatically in a sentence structure to know if you have a participle
of attended circumstance. You got them
here. You’ve got an aorist participle
that precedes an aorist imperative and a number of other things that are going
on in the text. What it basically means
is that the aorist participle lays down the conditions that must come
antecedently, preceding the mandate. In
other words before you can receive “the Word that is able to save your soul”
you have to lay aside filthiness and the excess that sin is. Does that mean that I have to quit sinning
before I can get saved? If that’s true
then we are all lost. So we are not
talking about that. What we are talking about
here is that one little word that we use a lot - confession. It is confession. It is the same structure as a matter of fact that
you have over in I Peter 2:1. In I Peter 2:1 you have the command…
NKJ 1 Peter 2:1 Therefore, laying aside
all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
It is the same
word. It is like taking off an old set
of dirty clothes.
NKJ 1 Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire
the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
Before you can
desire the sincere milk of the Word and grow by it, what do you have to
do? You have to go through that process
of cleansing from sin which comes as a result of confession. I John 1:9. So you see all of those ties together. Before you can start receiving the Word
implanted which is able to deliver us.
Remember the three stages of sanctification or three stages of
salvation. We are saved from the penalty
of sin when we put our faith alone in Christ alone. We are saved from the power of sin during our
Christian life. We are saved from the presence
of sin and glorification. What did I say
happens during sanctification? We are
saved from the power of sin so that since we died to sin we don’t have to obey
sin anymore. That is Romans 6. So James
NKJ John
How do I get that
life? You get that life by being cleansed
from sin and then receiving the implanted word which is able to save you life
which is able to save you from the power of sin on a day-to-day basis. Then he goes on to develop from verse 23 on
the emphasis on hearing the Word.
NKJ James
By doer, he means
applier. You come to Bible class and you
hear you are to
pray without ceasing. You go home and
you don’t pray for three weeks. Have you
been applying the Word? No. You see you
are a hearer and not a doer. That is
what it means doer is in Christian service.
Doing is application of the Word of God.
So this is where we see the production of fruit coming in at that point. In the implanted word in verse 21 it is the
seed that grows up and produces fruit. It
is that same imagery that is used there that buys into that whole fruit
production metaphor that we find throughout Scripture. Now what are some other passages that have to
do with fruit production?
Let’s look at a
couple of them.
NKJ Hebrews
This isn’t
legalism. Legalism says that by doing good, by being moral we please God and gain His
approbation. That’s not what this is
talking about. This is talking about
that within the context of divine discipline in the life of the believer; the
believer learns to be obedient, to abide in Christ and to be filled with the
Spirit. As you take in the Word of God
and let the Word of God abide in you, then it produces fruit. Part of that fruit it produces is personal evangelism,
right? (I just wanted to see if anybody
was listening.) It is righteousness. This
is experiential righteousness. This
isn’t imputed righteousness. So then we
have other verses that back this up. For example…
NKJ Colossians
This is obviously
post salvation.
Isn’t that an
interesting word? It just hit me - increasing in
knowledge of God. I wonder how many Christians
there are that this year can say they know more about God and they know God
better than they did a year ago. That is
part of growth. It has a consequence of
producing fruit in divine good.
NKJ Philippians
NKJ
Philippians
The flip side of
that is you don’t approve the things that are not excellent.
I remember years
ago hearing one of my seminary professors saying to us as pastors, “Men the
biggest challenge that you are going to face as pastors is not choosing between
the good and the sinful. It is going to be between the good and the excellent.”
Don’t get distracted
by things that are fine and fun and good that keep you from the pursuit of the
excellent in your Christian life. That
is what Paul is saying here.
It is experiential
righteousness. It is divine good and it
is living a life that is consistent with the righteous standards of God. He sets out the protocols for living the
Christian life throughout the New Testament.
That defines his standards – living consistent with those standards –
standards for the royal family of God.
Back
to James. We have come full circle.
NKJ James
The gospel again
is pictured as a seed. As it grows it
matures. As it is watered and fertilized;
its fruit is righteousness. It sort of
gives us a framework in talking about fruit.
Now let’s go to
another key passage on fruit. Before we
can get to Galatians 5 which will tie it all together, we need to look at
Ephesians 5. So what we have done is tie
John 15, Luke 8, James 1, and now Ephesians 5 and then Galatians 5. These are the critical passages.
Now remember Ephesians
is Paul’s classic concise explanation of the church and the Church Age. Ephesians is a great book that one day we
will get to. It’s so easy to understand
because the first three chapters deal with doctrine. This is who God is and what He has done for
you in salvation. Then the last three
chapters are in light of the doctrine this is what you do. It’s almost like a sermon. When we take two years to get through the
first three chapters, some how we forget how the last three chapters relate
because we are dealing with all of this great doctrine in the first three
chapters. The doctrine always leads to
the real practical stuff. The practical
stuff is good. A lot of people want to jump there, but you can’t understand what
it means to love one another, you can’t understand what it means for husbands
to love their wives and wives to submit to your husbands if you don’t think in
the framework of the first tree chapters.
These wonderful, practical commands that relate to husbands, wives,
parents, children that come in the 5th chapter are based on an
understanding of the first three chapters.
If you don’t understand that doctrinal foundation, then you end up (which
is what happens in too many churches today) preaching too many “how to” sermons
on how to have a good marriage, how to keep your checkbook balanced, how to raise
good kids. It’s nice stuff. It’s not wrong stuff. But guess what. Because it is divorced from the doctrinal
foundation, it ends up being nothing more than preaching morality. People don’t understand why they are doing
what they are doing any more they are just doing moral things. Then end up trying to pull themselves up by
their own bootstraps in their spiritual lives.
So we will go to Ephesians 5
which is the second chapter of the application section.
He starts to
remind them of their position in verse 8 so he can challenge them to
application after that.
NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once
darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
What is he talking
about here? What we call positional
truth – our position in Christ. Before
we were justified, we were children of darkness. We were in the
NAS Colossians
So when he says
“you were once darkness”, this is what characterized you as an unbeliever. You were in darkness no matter how smart you were,
no matter how high your IQ was, no matter how moral you were,
you were in darkness. But now you are
light in the Lord, positionally.
Then he has a command. Walk is a present imperative. This is to characterize your life as standard
operating procedure.
Some of you may have
used this example when you were a parent or maybe you heard it when you were a
kid.
Your father said,
“You are a member of this family and if you are going to be a member of this
family you are not going to act like that.
You are going to act like this.”
That is what Paul
is saying here. Now you are light in the
Lord. You are a member of the royal
family. That means you have to live a
certain way. You can’t live like you
did before because there has been a shift that has taken place. You have been transferred from the kingdom of
darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son.
So you can’t live like you used to live because you are not who you used
to be. You are somebody new. You are children of light, so walk as
children o f light.
I want you to
notice the contrast. I will come back
to verse 9 in just a minute. I have to
set you up for something. We have this
juxtaposition between light and darkness – absolute states. You were once darkness. Now you are light. Walk as light, not as darkness.
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
So there is a
heavy emphasis all through this section on light.
Now somewhere back
in the late 200’s (late third century AD) a textual variant (that means another
word) slipped into the text. So in some manuscripts we find “for the fruit
of the light” in verse 9 “is in all goodness, righteousness and truth”. But the majority of documents have Spirit
there. Three of the eunseals
(SP? )(some of the oldest
documents) support one another that the reading should be “light” and not
spirit. I call them the big four because
there are four of the oldest manuscripts.
If they all agree then people who believe oldest is right go with that.
But it is a split witness – three against one.
One of the oldies agrees with the majority text that the reading here
should be Spirit and not light.
People who look at
things like this have various rules. One of the rules is that you should take
the harder reading. It seems to me that
the reading that would be harder here would be Spirit because light is used in
juxtaposition to all the way through it would be easy to see how a scribe would
come along and say well it would make more sense fruit of the light rather than
fruit of the Spirit. I am just going to
write that in the margin. Then the next
thing you know it is copied in. So I
believe that as you have in the King James and New King James which is based on
the TR but the TR is related to the majority text that it is fruit of the
Spirit here. But in either case they
are used synonymously in many places in Scripture so we shouldn’t get caught up
one way or the other. This production of
the Spirit which is a production of walking in the light is defined as goodness
(divine good) intrinsic good, righteousness and truth – veracity and integrity. This is what is produced when the believer is
walking in the light. Of course if the believer
is walking in the light he also walking by the Spirit and abiding in Christ. All
of these terms for walking are synonymous to one another. What we see here in Ephesian 5 is this
juxtaposition between two absolute conditions - you are either in the light or
in darkness. You are either foolish or
you are wise.
Skip down to verse
15.
NKJ Ephesians
You see you are
either walking as fools or walking as wise.
You can’t be a little bit of both.
You have a tendency today from a lot of people to say it is done a
little bit by the Spirit and a little bit by the flesh. But I don’t believe that. It is either one or the other.
Galatians 5 makes
it very clear. We will see that next time.
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
It’s an
instrumental dative there indicating that the means of spirituality is going to
be in one case is wine and in the other case is spirit. You will mostly hear people talk about when
you are under the influence of alcohol it controls you. We talk about influence or control. I think these are confusing terms. Control would indicate that you don’t have
any volition. Influence is a better term,
but the emphasis here is on the instrumentality. In other words you are using wine to get
spiritual. That is what was happening
in
I can say, “Fill
my coffee cup with coffee.”
I use the English
preposition with. The content of filling
is the coffee.
Or I can say,
“Fill up my mug with that pitcher.”
Then the pitcher
is the means of filling it. When you are
indwelt by the Holy Spirit you have got all the Holy Spirit you are ever going to
get at the instant of salvation. You
don’t get anymore. You don’t get filled
up with any more. But you are either
going to be filled up with something by the Spirit or you are not. Look at the result.
You are filled by
means of the Spirit. What are the
results?
NKJ Ephesians
NKJ Ephesians
Then it talks
about wives submitting to your husbands, husbands loving their wives and fathers
raising up your children.
Flip over to the
parallel book which is Colossians. The command there is…
NKJ Colossians
What are the
results?
Have we heard that
before? Yeah, we just heard it. It is the result of being filled by means of
the Spirit.
Didn’t we just
hear that? Yeah we just heard that. It is the result of being filled with the
Spirit.
Wait a minute. Here it is the result of letting the word of
Christ dwelling in you. If A produces X
behavior and B also produces X behavior, there has to be a relationship between
A and B. In other words the filling by
means of the Spirit is talking about one aspect. The letting the word of Christ dwell in you
is the other aspect. The Holy Spirit
fills you with something. You are filled
by means of something, but what are you filled with? You are filled with the Word of God. So when
we are in right relationship to the Holy Spirit, the dynamic, the
sanctification dynamic, that is filling us with His
word is operational. As we abide in
Christ and walk by the Spirit it produces fruit, but when we sin and we grieve
and quench the Spirit it stifles that ministry and there is no filling and
growing. He is not taking the Word and filling our
lives with it. So there is no growth and
no fruit production. That brings us up
to Galatians 5.
I will go over
this again next week because it is so important and critical to understand how
these passages all fit together. Then we
will wrap up this side trail on fruit production up in Galatians 5.