| Back | Contents | Next |
{Sermons on Ephesians 5:15
Evidence for the Absolute Necessity of Precise Godliness
From Reasons Drawn from Scripture: Six Propositions
Those Not Living Precisely Are Undoubtedly Bound for Hell}
Whoever is not truly a person of a precise life is certainly in the state of damnation.133 This so clearly follows from the former propositions that it needs no further proof.134 He who is not inwardly, habitually, and universally being sanctified or loves anything more than God and godliness is not converted and new-born. Thus he has not become a new creature and he is actually in the state of damnation. He who is not a precise walker is not converted, new-born, or sanctified. This is because whoever is made this new creature will necessarily make it evident (as has been shown) by newness of life.
You see, beloved, to what issue this matter is brought: either you must take up this strict way of holiness or be reprobates from God. Some among you have the most rooted enmity in your hearts against this holiness of life. You have cast the greatest slights and contempt on it and those who thus live. You despise them in your hearts, as Michal did David (2 Samuel 6:16). Some among you are most peremptorily resolved against listening to any further entreaties about this thing, throwing them off with the greatest scorn and indignation. I must be bold and tell you from God that, if you live and die in this mind, you will be shut forever out of the kingdom of God. If it were not so, God must cease to be true, the Scriptures must be proved to be a lie, and the teaching of the Gospel mere forgery or falsehood.
Do you not yet see enough to persuade you to come in and be of this number? Are you not yet convinced that it is your duty and that it will be your wisdom to become a precise Christian? Do you not see that none but fools and animals will continue to be libertines? While you accuse the saints of folly, will you at last prove yourselves to be the only fools? And will you verify that proverb, “Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, yet his foolishness will not depart from him” (Proverbs 27:22 NKJV)? “Let them be instructed. Let them be convinced. Let them be warned. But all is the same: fools they are and fools they will be.”135 Will this be said of you? Oh, you fools, when will you be wise? Search the Scriptures and learn from them. Come to Christ and learn from Him. And if He does not speak the same things that have been spoken here, if He does not teach you the same lesson that you have been taught here, then go on and take your liberty still. But if Christ tells you to be holy, to be circumspect, and to be perfect, and you still refuse to listen, then carry this inscription on your foreheads: “We have rejected the Word of the Lord, and what wisdom is there in us?” (Jeremiah 8:9).
133state of damnation: the state in which, if a person dies, he or she will go to Hell. It does not at all imply reprobation or that repentance and belief in Jesus Christ is not available while the person is yet living.
134Should the reader still not be convinced, here are two additional proofs: First, Scripture teaches that human marriage is a reflection of Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:32). All throughout the Bible, God compares idolatry to adultery (e.g., Jeremiah 3:6–10; Ezekiel 23:37). In contrast to some perverted ideas, Scripture teaches that it is a normal and good thing for a husband to be jealous when a wife is even potentially unfaithful (Exodus 20:14; Numbers 5:11–31; Proverbs 6:32–35). Unsurprisingly then, God will not tolerate idolatry, even in those who otherwise serve the Lord (Exodus 20:3–6; Matthew 6:24). “‘Did you present Me with sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel? You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves. Therefore, I will make you go into exile beyond Damascus,’ says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts” (Amos 5:25–27 NASB). One who presumptuously and willfully clings to any sin or refuses any duty makes an idol in his or her life. To imagine that God will accept as His own adopted child such an idolater is as ludicrous as expecting a normal man to accept as wife a woman who declares that she will marry him but continue to sleep with other men from time to time. (The editor is not ignorant of “open marriage” and other hideous perversions of God-ordained marriage; those who practice such things are not normal, but children of Hell.) The second proof lies in Matthew 18:15–20. In this passage, the Lord Jesus gives terrifying commands concerning unrepentant supposed believers who are found to be in any sin. After they are confronted with their sin by their brethren and their church, and yet do not repent, they are to be “to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” Christ then promises that he will uphold this process of church discipline from Heaven. It is significant that our Lord’s instructions make no mention of how good a life that sinner otherwise lives apart from the single sin that is at issue.
135This is not a Scripture quote, but appears to be a proverb whose origin is unknown to this editor.
| Back | Contents | Next |