Hebrews Lesson 204 July 2010
NKJ Acts 4:12 "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
I want to start off where I did last week looking at the organization here of this 12th chapter. This is the 5th major section (the last section) in the book of Hebrews. It began in 11:1 and goes down to the end of the next chapter. We are tonight in the section between 12:12 and 12:17 so as you can tell we are coming close to the end of our study of Hebrews.
The focal point as we've see in the outline is first there's an instructional section; then there is what some might call an application section. Really it is a challenge to application to show how the teaching emphasis is to be put into practice in the life. Within those exhortations there is sometimes a new dire warning of the dangers that can come to a believer's spiritual life if he fails to continue to grow and persevere in the spiritual life. You can't lose your salvation but you can come under divine discipline. You can come under an extreme form of the sin unto death. You can also put in jeopardy rewards and inheritance.
The teaching section was in 11:1-40. The practical challenge is in 12:1-29. We are in that 3rd section there which really brings a conclusion. Having set Christ as our example of endurance in the first 2 verses and then taking that metaphor of running a race that was introduced there in 12:1 and then developing that within the context of discipline or really training.
That's the main idea here of paideuo, the idea of being trained in order to fulfill a task. W are all in a training program that God has designed for us spiritually to eventually prepare us for service not just as mature believers now in this life, but also in the Millennial Kingdom and on into eternity. We have to develop that forward focus.
The spiritual life really happens when you're mature. I mean how many of us can remember some of us may squeeze your eyebrows together but back when you were eight or nine years old or 12 or 13 you wanted to be treated like an adult because you knew that real life and the experiences of life in and the real joy of life occurred as an adult when you were treated as an adult and not as children. Yet in the spiritual life it seems like most Christians would rather stay in diapers and act like an infant than take on the responsibilities of mature spiritual life and spiritual growth. They have no vision for going forward in the Christian life. If they do, often it gets muddied. Or the sad thing is that it sort of gets stunted.
You see a lot of people who will think that, "Oh, we have great Bible studies at our church."
Then they come listen to somebody like me or Charlie Clough or somebody else and say, "That's a little heavy for me."
The reality is if you go back over church history, you look at mature believers even today you can't ever grow spiritually beyond the level of teaching that you have. That applies to the secular realm as well as to the spiritual realm. If you're only taught content that never gets you beyond the first grade, you'll never get beyond the first grade. Some people come in and they think this content is just too heavy. Well, you can catch on. I'm just amazed how many people no matter what their background is, no matter how limited their education might be, no matter how limited perhaps their native intelligence or IQ might be, who barely have room temperature IQ and who have all sorts of social and educational deficits, recognize that what they needed to do was have the consistency to be in Bible class night after night, a week after week. Years down the road they still might not make it out in the world of high finance or have sophisticated jobs, but spiritually they have a better handle on the Word of God and the spiritual life than people with high IQs and advanced education in all kinds of things, because the spiritual life is not based on those kinds of human factors. It is based on the grace of God as we're going to see in our passage this evening.
Now last time I talked some about the fact that you have this metaphor of a race (an athletic event) running through this whole chapter starting in verse 1.
NKJ Hebrews 12:1 …let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
I went into more detail last week on a metaphor. But in Garner's Modern America American Usage we learned that a figure of speech in which "a metaphor is a figure of speech in which one thing is called by the name of something else, or is said to be that other thing. Unlike similes which use words like "like" or "as", metaphorical comparisons are implicit." They're not explicit.
So we have this implied comparison here between living the Christian life and running a race. There has to be training. There has to be discipline. There has to be a level of self-mastery; but there are also struggles. There are times when we feel overwhelmed, times we are weary, times we're tired; times it seems like no matter what we do things (the world system) just gets on top of us. That is where these believers are.
I stress that because the more I've gotten into these next 5 verses the more I realize the focal point here isn't so much on confession of sin or restoration from being out of fellowship, which of course is always part of the spiritual life, it is dealing with people who are tired of persevering. They're tired. They've been enduring and enduring and enduring. They've been gutting it out, gutting it out, gutting it out. They just want to quit.
So the focal point here is to put out in front of them once again as a motivator what gets lost if you quit number one and number two the importance and the priorities that we need to have in order to keep going forward.
Last time we looked at this. We just got into this first verse of Hebrews 12:12.
NKJ Hebrews 12:12 Therefore
…reaching a conclusion within this section of application and challenge.
strengthen the hands which hang down,
These are just droopy hands. They just don't have the energy to pull up their hands and do any more work. That's the effort there. They're just tired.
and the feeble knees,
They've got droopy hands and wobbly knees. They just can't make it in the race anymore.
We saw that this imagery of hands that hang down (weak hands) really comes out of various Old Testament passages. We looked at these passages and their background in Isaiah 35:3-4 and also in Zephaniah 3:16. Again:
NKJ Zephaniah 3:16 …let not your hands be weak.
Job 4:3 – there were also similar idioms in extra Biblical works of that time. Sirak (?) 25:23 uses the same idiom of a battle weary group that has lost their will to go forward, lost their desire to persevere. Philo, a Jewish writer in the intertestamental period and into the first century uses a similar idiom to describe the Israelites in the wilderness who wanted to give up their struggle and go back to Egypt. He compares them to weary athletes who just want to drop their hands through weariness and not go forward.
That is the imagery that's there. It is to strengthen the hands which hang down and feeble knees.
Now when we looked at that verse, the command there to strengthen is an aorist imperative. Aorist imperatives emphasize priority. It's emphasizing the immediacy of an action. A present tense usually emphasizes ongoing action, so the present tense emphasizes that a certain action can be part of an ongoing characteristic (habit pattern, standard operating procedure) in the life of a believer. Now if I'm addressing this group over here and they haven't prayed at all, they don't do any prayer, then if I address them then I'm going to use an aorist imperative because this needs to be brought to their attention. This needs to be a priority and they need to get with it. But this group over here has been praying and they need to be encouraged. So I would put the same command in a present imperative because they need to just be reminded that this needs to be standard operating procedure (ongoing action) in their life. So the use of an aorist imperative or a present imperative depends on the audience and the writer's emphasis.
If you look at one book in the New Testament and it's an aorist imperative, that doesn't mean that that's stating a universal principle that's true for all. It's the writer addressing the immediate context of his readers.
Now what also happens in a course of a passage is you'll have an aorist imperative that emphasizes the priority, and it's followed by present tense imperatives. This is typical in the epistle of James—aorist imperatives to emphasize the priority—and then it's followed by present imperatives because the present imperatives help to understand how to implement the priority command. That's similar to what we have here in verses 12 through 17 is that beginning with this aorist imperative of verse 12 to strengthen two things: the hands that hang down and the feeble knees. But the point there is they're growing weary. That's the point back in verse 3, the command to consider Him (focus on Jesus), think about Him, reflect upon the struggles He went through in His own humanity.
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
Their problem is they've become weary and discouraged in their souls. They're ready to bailout on Christianity and just go back into legalistic Judaism.
So verse 12 here gives us the priority.
NKJ Hebrews 12:12 Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees,
Get tough! Wake up! Now how are we going to do that? You can't just do that by telling people to get tough.
And then verse 13 says:
NKJ Hebrews 12:13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.
Now here to understand this we have to go back to the athletic metaphor. They've been running a marathon and now they're just out of gas. They want to fall out. They want to quit. They've got 3 miles to go; and they're ready to buy into any rationalization that comes their way that would make it easier and give them an excuse to quit. So the command there is to strengthen the hands and the knees.
Now how do you do that? Well, you come in by making straight paths for your feet. Don't get off into some something that is going to take you through a winding course to get to the end zone.
NKJ Hebrews 12:13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated
They already have problems. If you're running a marathon and you begin to experience some of some muscle pains, cramps, other problems and you don't take care of it, then it will get worse. What he's saying here is that you have to recognize there's a problem. The problem is they want to get off course into false doctrine and go back into Judaism. But if they get off course into false doctrine; that's the crooked paths. Instead of just having a limp and being lame, they risk becoming spiritually crippled so that they can't make the end zone so that what's a minor problem becomes a more severe problem in the spiritual life.
The way to resolve that is to get straight with doctrine. That's the point. They're getting off course; and they have forgotten the superiority of Christ. We studied that earlier in Hebrews. They've forgotten the superiority of His priesthood. They've forgotten superiority of the completed work that He did on the cross. They're thinking that if they go back to Judaism and the ritual that that somehow is more meaningful.
You run into that problem all the time with people that somehow think that certain kinds of environments (worship environments) appeal to them emotionally and so when they go to those churches; and they come out then they feel like they've worshipped. This can run the gamut from High Church worship where there's more formalism and ritual to Low Church worship that is much more free and easy. You have a lot of contemporary Christian music, and it just seems a lot less rigorous, a lot less demanding in terms of taking notes. It just seems a lot more fun. Every now and then we all like to sit down and have a good meal of ice cream rather than eating our vegetables and salad and everything like we should. Things like that. So you go to church like that and it may seem to help you feel more spiritual sometimes, but the diet's lousy. By the time you're there for 2 or 3 years, your spiritual life has shriveled up into nothing. That's the kind of thing that was a danger to those that the writer of Hebrews was addressing. So he challenges them. They need to make "straight paths for your feet."
The verb for making straight paths for your feet is onorthoo. It's a present active imperative here which means its' standard operating procedure. The aorist is in the previous verse.
"Therefore strengthen the hands", it should be. It is a standard operating procedure command from onorthoo. Orthoo is the root. It is the word that means to make straight.
Can anybody think of a word that comes from that? Orthodontist – to straighten out your teeth. So onorthoo means to restore that. The prefix the ana at the beginning has the idea of restoring straightness or rightness. To build something up again after it has fallen, to rebuild it, and restore it, to restore something to an erect position from a bent position or straighten up. That is the idea – to make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be dislocated but rather be healed.
The straight paths though all related to correct doctrine. The basic flaw that was threatening these Hebrew Christians was fundamentally a doctrinal issue. So they needed to straighten out their doctrine, to be on the straight path of doctrine (the straight path of the Word). Then there is restoration (healing). The word there for healing is iaomai, which basically means that there's a recovery from when we have been a spiritually bruised and beaten up. But apart from that there's no recovery.
We studied what we have to do to recover in terms of the problems solving devices, those 10 spiritual skills that help us to recover. When we put those into place, then that straightens us out. But it only comes when we're on the path of straight doctrine.
Now again this verse is not something that just pops into – these thoughts are not just something that pops into the mind of the writer of Hebrews. But it comes from the Old Testament – Proverbs 4:26 in the Greek.
Sometimes the Septuagint reads a little differently than either the Masoretic text or the Hebrew. Yet when the writer of the New Testament goes back and takes a verse out of the Septuagint (even though it's not an accurate translation of the Masoretic text or the Hebrew) it is stating something that is true and God the Holy Spirit uses that and incorporates that within the Scripture. So at the point that the writer (the New Testament writer) takes something and incorporates that within what he is writing; then at that point it becomes inspired infallible truth.
So Proverbs 4:26 says:
NKJ Proverbs 4:26 Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established.
It is these second person plural imperatives all through this section that emphasize the individual responsibility of every believer to keep on course. It's not your wife's job to keep you straightened out doctrinally. Sometimes wives need to be reminded of that. It's not the husband's job to keep the wife straightened out doctrinally. He's the leader in the home, but he's not the Holy Spirit in her life, which reminds me of a story about the children in Sunday school class where the child was going home after Sunday School. The parents were caught interacting with the kids, as they should.
"What did you learn today in Sunday school?"
The child said, "Well, we were studying about quilts."
The parents said, "Quilts? Where's that in the Bible?"
So they called up the Sunday school teacher and said, "You know, our little girl said you were teaching about quilts in Sunday school. What's going on?"
He said, "No, we weren't studying about quilts. Jesus said when He left He would send another Comforter."
The Holy Spirit is the comforter or the paraklete, not the husband, not the wife. The husband is the leader in the home that's true; but he doesn't replace the Holy Spirit. He doesn't try to function like the Holy Spirit. Each believer is responsible for his own spiritual life. You can't blame the church. You can't blame the pastor - although you do. But you're not supposed to; it is your responsibility.
Now back to Hebrews 12:13. Here we have the same basic root word here for orthos to make it a habit or to make something straight. We need to make those straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be dislocated but rather be healed.
At this point we've got two commands: to strengthen the droopy hands and the wobbly knees. That's the aorist tense. That's the priority. Then to make straight paths which is the present ongoing characteristic (present tense.).
Now in the next verse we're going to add in two more commands. One verb but two distinct objects of the verb; one command, two distinct objects of the command. The object is peace in the first instance and spiritual growth in the second instance.
So in Hebrews 12:14 we read:
NKJ Hebrews 12:14 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord:
Now if you just took that verse out of context and you interpreted that on the basis of late 20th century or early 21st century evangelical idiom, you would walk away thinking that you just couldn't get to heaven if you weren't pursuing peace with everybody, trying to smooth over all the conflicts and make sure everybody gets along and if you were not pursuing holiness.
That's part of the things. This is one of those verses that gave rise to what was called the Holiness Movement back in the 19th century that we have to pursue holiness. If we haven't achieved holiness or sanctification; then we're not saved. We're not going to go to heaven because you can't see Jesus if you haven't pursued peace and holiness. It looks like that's what this is this verse is saying.
A problem that we often have is that there are certain verses in the Bible that when they get translated they appear because of the choice of words that are used by the translator (influenced by his theology) that appear to have a works orientation to them, that you have to do certain things in order to be saved. And if you don't do those things, if you don't have the right kind of morality in your life, if you don't have the right kind of theology; then you're not justified. You're not going to go to heaven. Heaven is only for those people who have the right kind of life and don't commit certain kinds of sins. That's not at all what this verse is saying. The verse is addressed to people as we've seen again and again and again and again all the way through Hebrews, to people who are saved (justified) who have settled that at the point of faith alone in Christ alone; and they are going to go to heaven.
But what does this mean that if we don't pursue peace with all people and holiness; then we won't see the Lord? Now we have to understand this a little bit so we have to break it down grammatically to begin with. First of all we have a command:
NKJ Hebrews 12:14 Pursue peace with all people,
The word "people" is in italics in your text. Actually it's "pursue peace with all." But "people" is understood. It's with everyone, and as we'll see in a minute this isn't an application to believers. It's not a one another passage. It's with everyone. That means you have to pursue peace with all who are in your circle of life whether that includes people you agree with, disagree with, like, dislike, whatever, that don't let personal preferences become a distraction that leads to the arrogance and hostility in those relationships because ultimately what that does is it negatively impacts your opportunity to witness to people and to be a good testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The verb here that controls this introductory clause, is dioko meaning to pursue and again it's a present active imperative, second person plural addressed to the whole group.
Make it a habit to pursue peace with all.
Now that word dioko has the idea of moving rapidly and decisively toward an object. Sometimes it means to hasten, to run, to press forward. In other instances it has the idea of pursuing something, striving for something, making that your objective, your priority, aspiring to something. What this is aspiring to is peace – eirene, peace with all men.
This is not talking about bringing people the gospel, which is the message of reconciliation. That is 2 Corinthians 5; that we're all ambassadors for Christ preaching the gospel of reconciliation. This is not talking about being an evangelist and bringing the gospel of peace into people's lives. It is talking about a behavior that is not going to allow non-essentials to disrupt relationships and to become divisive because that is an outgrowth of arrogance, which produces all kinds of things from anger to bitterness to resentment. People get on varieties of ego trips because they always have to be right about this or about that or about something else. We have to keep our focus on the real issue, which always has to do with our personal testimony and relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now the reason I say that is that is when you compare Scripture with Scripture, you see how this word is used in some other contexts. For example in 1 Thessalonians 5:15 it indicates the same thing.
1 Thessalonians 5:15 we have a command that is addressed to believers.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 5:15 See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone,
Don't get caught up in vindictiveness. Vindictiveness is the result, the child of resentment and anger and hostility towards people.
but always pursue
There's our word dioko again.
what is good both for yourselves
That's believers.
and for all.
…same phrase that we have in Hebrews. So we are to pursue peace, which is defined here as seeking after that which is good for all.
Now that's always an interesting idea. Sometimes I've defined love in those terms. I think that is the best definition I've ever heard of what genuine love is. Genuine love is always seeking that which is best, that which is right in an absolute sense, for the object of your love. But you can get into real trouble if you don't have an understanding of objective values because if there's no God, there are not absolutes. There are no values that go above personal preference.
Then I can look at somebody and say, "Well, I know exactly what's right for you." But that's nothing more than arrogance.
"I'm going to deal with them on the basis of what I think is right for them - in my opinion."
That's nothing more than self-serving. It runs contrary to the definition or the descriptions of love that we have in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.
Love is not arrogant. Love is not boasting. Love is not self-oriented. So there has to be an external objective standard so that if I'm going to do what is right for you, or treat you on the basis of what is good in an absolute sense for you, then I have to have an understanding of what that is. It's not something that is good because I think it is but because that's what God sets as that external standard.
We are to seek that which is good for one another, not in a subjective sense but in an objective sense, and not just good for one another, which relates to believers, but also for all. When we look at this idea of pursuing peace with all, this concept of pursuing peace (love, doing what is good for others) is the same for believer versus unbeliever.
It all comes back to what Jesus emphasized in John 13:34-35 when He gave a new commandment to the church. The old commandment from Leviticus 13:18 that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves is transformed to much higher standard. We are to love one another even as Christ loved the church. What we see here is even though in most of those passages the focuses on loving one another that love for one another is also applied to those who are outside the body of Christ.
We often talk about this in terms of two words. The first word is impersonal love; and the second word is unconditional love. Now the reason that these two words are used is because it really difficult to define love. Take some time some time if you don't believe me and try to write a definition.
Years ago when I was working over at RB Thieme Bible Ministries and writing books, one of the manuscripts that I was set up on for awhile was writing a glossary. It is hard to write good definitions. It's very difficult. They should be concise. You're not saying everything there is to say about the word. You're just giving the core meaning of a particular word. So writing a definition is sometimes very difficult when you deal with abstract nouns. We can describe things about abstract nouns but sometimes defining a word is not the same as describing it. Most of time when you ask somebody to define love, what you get is a description. This is what love does in this situation.
That's what 1 Corinthians 13 does. It describes characteristics of love but it doesn't define love. Then when you get into Webster's or the Oxford English Dictionary or Collin's Dictionary or any of the other dictionaries that are out there, and you look up love, you don't get a good definition. They define it as an emotion or feeling of affection towards somebody. Now that's one kind of love. But if real love is based on simply an affection, on an emotion; then that's not very solid. That is always shifting and changing. One day I can wake up and not feel very good – don't feel like I love anybody. The next day I can feel like I love the whole world. Isn't everybody wonderful? So love can't be based on something that is that changeable, that mutable. It has to be based on something that never changes; and that's the character of God.
We use these words, and sometimes people get a little confused. Impersonal is a word that is not emphasizing the fact that it's like a machine or computer, and that person is not involved. It's not depersonalized. Impersonal means that you don't have to have a personal relationship with the person you are showing love to: the person who works the cash register at the grocery store, the person just cuts you off in traffic. The most convicting part of course is always the Indian guy who's on the other end of (you know) the customer service line. These are persons and how we relate to them is on a personal level, but we don't know them personally. So impersonal love emphasizes the fact that it's not directed simply to people we know and it's not based on what we know about people. It's based on our own character and our own personality. It is always therefore in that sense a personal love; but it doesn't involve a personal relationship. It is hard to find the words to say that. It's unconditional because it's not set up on conditions.
It's not saying, "Ah. I'm only going to love you if you have the right kind of education or you're dressed the right way or you have the right kind of tattoos or the absence of tattoos or your haircut is a certain way or you smell a certain way or all those other things."
It's directed to the person no matter what because it's predicated on the love that God demonstrated at the cross, which was directed towards all of us. We could do one of those nice touchy, feely kinds of exercises that you often get in some churches and have everybody sit around and think about the worst most offensive person you've ever seen and the revulsion that they created in your own person. You saw them and you just wanted to just recoil and shrivel up and get away from them.
Well, when you think about how you as a sinner are attractive to God; it's worse than that! You're more offensive to Him than the most offensive person you've ever run into. You're more obnoxious to God than the most obnoxious person you've ever run into. The stench of sin that follows us around is just an offense to God all the time because of His righteousness.
But He didn't love us by providing a solution to the sin problem by asking us to change that first, by somehow morally cleaning up our life so that we would become acceptable to Him and then He would save us. Because we can never clean it up enough to be morally acceptable to God.
People always fall into the trap of thinking that, and that's was the first warning that comes in the next verse is to "watch carefully" or "examine yourself carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God". Because it's so easy to slip out of a grace orientation into some form of legalism.
Now when we look at this verse, it goes on to say:
NKJ Hebrews 12:14 Pursue peace with all people, …
… and secondly to pursue holiness. Now the emphasis is on the verb that we are to be running after something. We are to make it a priority. It is a primary objective in our life to achieve these goals: the first goal of peace with all and the second goal of holiness or sanctification.
without which no one will see the Lord:
Now we'll get into that phrase in just a minute. Right now I just want to focus on understanding this phrasehagiosmos. This word hagiosmos, which is from the root hagios meaning to be sanctified, holy, which actually means to be set apart to the service of God. We translate it with words that are pretty antiquated now and then a lot of people on the street just don't understand holiness, consecration, sanctification. All these words basically mean to be set apart, to be useful to the service of God.
This passage is not talking about sanctification in terms of absolute sanctification at the point of salvation but experiential sanctification. Where we're going with this as you can see is going to have something to do with inheritance because the personal example that the writer of the Hebrews is going to use in verse 16 is Esau.
NKJ Hebrews 12:16 … who for one morsel of food
He just loved that little red lentil soup.
sold his birthright.
He was willing to give up his long-term inheritance for the present time gratification. So we're not talking about getting in the family. He never lost his position in the family. What we're talking about is losing inheritance, jeopardizing rewards and position in the kingdom. So it's a phase 2 sanctification issue.
Now the spiritual life – we talked about the 3 stages, 3 phases.
- Phase 1 takes place at the cross. We call that justification. When a person trusts in Christ as Savior, at that instant they are imputed or given the righteousness of Christ; and God declares them to be justified. It can't be lost because it's not based on what we do in terms of moral actions or ritual. It's based on the work of Christ and His character.
- Phase 2 has to do with the spiritual life or spiritual growth. This takes place from the time that we first trust Christ as Savior until we are face to face with the Lord. We call that the spiritual life.
- This ends at phase 3 when we are absent from the body, face to face with the Lord at the rapture or physical death.
Now some other terms that we use for this: First of all, positional sanctification. Because we are identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, we are positionally and absolutely sanctified, set apart for God. It can't be lost. The process of the spiritual life we call progressive sanctification because we move from being obedient to being disobedient and disobedient to obedient. Then third, ultimate sanctification is when we're absent from the body face to face with the Lord - no more sin nature.
Another way we look at this is the phrase "freed from the penalty of sin at salvation." We're not going to head to the lake of fire. In progressive sanctification we learn how to be freed from the power of sin. It's been broken; but we have to learn to live on the basis of our walk with the Holy Spirit and not the sin nature. Then when we're absent from the body, face to face with the Lord then we are finally free from the presence of sin nature.
Now in this slide what I've tried to do is to sort of graph it out. The green area on the left represents life - like plants are green. The gray area on the right represents carnality - walking in the light versus walking in darkness. So the spiritual life goes from when we're first saved and should progress upward. It doesn't always go like that. It's a very jagged line, as you know. Sometimes it's going up and sometimes it's going down. Hopefully it generally heads in an upward direction; but not necessarily. That would be Lordship salvation. It begins with our spiritual birth. Then we move to spiritual adulthood and spiritual maturity. The green area is spirituality, which is defined by having a positive walk with the Holy Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, walking by the Spirit, walking in the light. All those terms are comparable. The dark area is carnality when we're living according to the flesh and the sin nature.
Now at spiritual birth we spend a little bit of time in the green area and a lot of time in the gray area. We maximize on living on the sin nature because that's been our habit pattern for the whole time we've lived up to the point of salvation. We just don't know any better. So at five minutes after person is saved, they're still living just like they did with all the bad habits and sin and everything else they did before they were saved. But everything has actually changed. Now the problem is that if they don't get the Word and they don't grow, then 30 years later they're still going be living in the same way. You can't judge their salvation on the basis of what you see in their life. As they grow to spiritual adulthood they spend a little more time walking by the Spirit, a little less time walking by the sin nature until hopefully it reaches sort of a level of balance and they reach a level of spiritual maturity where they're spending more time walking in the Spirit and less time walking in the flesh.
Now the Bible uses a lot of different phrases and words to describe each of these different categories. In terms of spiritual life, Jesus said, "abide in Me." So Paul uses the phrase "in Christ" to refer to the absolute positional relationship that we have at salvation. But when Jesus is talking to His disciples in John 15 He says, "Abide in Me," because that's a relational term. Sometimes we abide in Him; and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we walk by the Spirit; sometimes we don't. It's also called being in fellowship. It's not that we don't have absolute fellowship with God; but experientially that is broken when there's sin in the life. As long as we're over in this area there's forward momentum, and we're growing.
On the other side of it, we can walk according to the flesh. We're out of fellowship; and we can even get into reverse momentum where we start going backward.
Now the believer that is advancing is called something specific in the Scripture; and there's debate over this. If you hold to Lordship salvation (which is basically the idea that comes out of a distortion of the fifth point of Calvinism), there are 5 points in Calvinism. That's always remembered with the little acronym TULIP. TULIP is:
- Total depravity
- Unconditional election.
- Limited atonement
- Irresistible grace and the
- Perseverance of the saints.
By perseverance of the saints they don't mean perseverance of Christ in keeping us saved. They mean that the true believer is going to persevere until he dies. He's never going to deny Christ. He can be carnal. He can sin at times; but he's always going to remain faithful to the Lord.
I'll give you one the most egregious examples that I've ever heard of my life. In fact this last Monday I had to go to Dallas for some things and I had breakfast with Roy Zuck who was along with John Walvoord was the general editor of the Bible Knowledge Commentary. Roy was one of my professors in seminary many years ago. He's the general editor for BibSac. We were talking about free grace theology, and we were on this very point. We were talking about some of the things people believe. I asked him if he was aware of this example. He wasn't. He was just appalled when I told him.
This happened about 8 or 9 years ago, I'm' not sure exactly when. A very well known pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia was a man named James Montgomery Boyce. Boyce wrote lot of books. He was a very strong Calvinist, a Presbyterian. He was dying. He was in his late 70's I believe. The Lord was about to take him home. At the same time a man who was a friend of his and a colleague in ministry by the name of R. C. Sproul (some of you hear him on the radio here on KHCB. R C Sproul is a preterist. That means he doesn't believe that any of the events of Mathew 24 or Revelation 3 through 19 are going to be future. They all happened in the past. Most people don't realize that; but that's where he is. He's also into Lordship salvation up to his hair roots. He was hosting a conference with his Ligonier ministry.
He stood up the first night and he said, "Our dear brother Dr Boyce is dying. He's on the edge of eternity; and we need to pray for him that he will persevere to the end and not forsake Christ so we'll know he's saved."
He did that every night. Then about the third night of the conference Dr Boyce died and R. C. Sproul announced that Dr Boyce had died; and he did not renounce Christ so we can be assured that he was actually saved.
That's works salvation. It's gotten so bad (and this is what Roy was telling me the other day) that you have people today in many different seminaries. The one I know of is a professor Dr Thomas Schreiner at a Southern Baptist Seminary. It is a Southern Baptist seminary but the name of the seminary is Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Schreiner believes that we're actually saved by works. If we don't have the right kind of works plus faith, we're not saved. That's just Roman Catholicism. But what he's done is he has been honest with himself, and he has taken his assumptions about lordship salvation and worked them out consistently. You won't find too many people including Dr John MacArthur who's also Lordship who will admit that they're really teaching a works gospel.
Those who are in lordship salvation believe that the word overcomer is a synonym for being a believer. But it's not. The word overcomer as we'll see describes a class of believers.
Now what I wanted to do is just briefly in the four or five minutes remaining to me just skim over the conclusions, the challenges and seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation because they all end with a promise to the overcomer, a promise of some additional blessing that an overcomer believer will get, if indeed they follow and implement the recommendations in each of these letters.
Remember when you go through the seven letters to seven churches, two of the churches have nothing good said about them. Two have nothing bad said about them. Each of those letters with the exception of the two they are told that they're doing certain things, they failed in certain areas; but if they repent (that is if they change) and then usually you have a phrase like this in Revelation 2:7.
NKJ Revelation 2:7 "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches…
In other words, if you really listen to me and put it into practice then you're going to stop doing what I've told you to stop doing. And if you stop doing what I told you to stop doing, then you're an overcomer. And if you do that and quit being a failure then there's going to be some additional rewards of blessings for you.
To the church at Ephesus:
NKJ Revelation 2:7 "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." '
We saw this in the New Jerusalem the other day about the Tree of Life. As the river of life comes out of the throne of God in the New Jerusalem the Tree of Life grows there. But there's only going to be a certain segment of believers that are going to have access to that. Those are overcomers.
Now what exactly is an overcomer? Most people think it refers to sin; and in a sense it is. But that's not the focal point. Dealing with the sin problem is phase one. Dealing with the influence of the world and sanctification is phase two.
In John 16:33 John said:
NKJ John 16:33 "These things I have spoken to you,
He says to His disciples the night before He goes to the cross.
that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Perfect tense – I have already overcome. It's completed. It's over and done with. Before He went to the cross, He overcame the world. But on the cross He dealt with sin. These are two different issues. The sin problem is getting saved. Overcoming the world is getting sanctified. It is salvation being saved from the present of sin.
Then in a similar way John (the Apostle John who wrote 1 John) in 1 John 2:14 states in the last part:
NKJ 1 John 2:14 …I have written to you, young men, Because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you,
Abide is a word for fellowship.
And you have overcome the wicked one.
That's not salvation justification; that is phase 2 related to fellowship.
Then in 1 John 5:4:
NKJ 1 John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith.
That phrase isn't a phrase that talks about being regenerate. It's talking about how a regenerate person is supposed to live.
NKJ 1 John 5:4 For whatever is born
That is whoever is living like a person born of God.
of God overcomes the world.
Notice the world is the object of overcoming; not sin, but the world. It's not a phase 1 justification issue; it's a phase 2 issue.
And this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith.
So in the letter to Smyrna, Jesus says:
NKJ Revelation 2:11 "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death." '
We studied that. This lesson needs to be linked to that lesson in Revelation last week is because we saw that the second death – this doesn't mean that they personally would go into the Lake of Fire but that if they don't grow and advance in sanctification then their rewards will be destroyed in the lake of fire.
NKJ Revelation 2:17 …To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat.
So there are special banquet privileges.
And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it." '
White stones were used like tickets to get into special events - to get into the Olympics. It's like getting a free pass to get into the ringside seats at any special event. This shows that the overcomer gets special access and privilege that's not available to every believer in heaven.
NKJ Revelation 2:27 'He
That is, the overcomer.
shall rule them
That is the rest of the world in association with Christ.
with a rod of iron; They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter's vessels' -- as I also have received from My Father;
The "rod of iron" phrase comes out of Psalm 2. The Messiah will rule with a rod of iron.
NKJ Psalm 2:9 You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel.'
So the overcomer rules (co-rules) with Christ and receives an award recognition called the Morningstar.
He has a special uniform.
NKJ Revelation 3:5 "He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments,
I wanted to wear this tonight to make sure that you sort of had a preview - just joking.
and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life;
That doesn't mean you name can be blotted out but it is an emphasis on the fact that you still won't lose. You'll gain.
but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.
NKJ Revelation 3:12 "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more.
This is again a new form of recognition of accomplishments.
And I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.
Furthermore, again a way of expressing the believers co-reigning with Christ:
NKJ Revelation 3:21 "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
So you see we've gone through this many, many times so it's just kind of a brief overview. Then we saw in our Revelation study a week ago Tuesday:
NKJ Revelation 21:7 "He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.
It's an inheritance issue. It's not a justification issue. It's not a salvation issue. It is a reward issue.
So, when we come back to and look at this passage in Hebrews 12 when it says to pursue peace and holiness; that is advancing in your spiritual life. Come back talk about that.
NKJ Hebrews 12:14 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord:
If you haven't advanced to some level of maturity, then you won't see the Lord. Those special privileges to the overcomer are what that phrase "seeing the Lord" It is a special intimacy that overcomers will have with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Millennial Kingdom and on into eternity.
Now the way we pursue peace is indicated by the next verse because it starts off with an adverbial participle of means. How do you pursue peace? How do you pursue holiness? By looking carefully (a self evaluation term) at 3 things and watching out for one negative example. We'll get to that next Thursday night.