“Growing In Christ, Intro”
“Growing In Christ, Intro” is a sermon preached by Michael Beatty pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin – a confessional Reformed Baptist church subscribing to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
Introducing the Series: Life in Christ
So, as I mentioned last week, I want to begin a Sunday school series on growing in Christ or life in Christ. We looked at assurance of faith last week just as a reminder because sometimes, at least for me, when thinking about life in Christ, there’s so much more in terms of where we would like to have grown more, to be more conformed to the image of Christ, and it can quickly become really focused on ourselves. I wanted to remind us of the promises of the gospel.
Today’s Focus: Our Christian Life and Its Comparisons
But today I want to look at our Christian life and consider its comparison to some of the other ways that we could think about it through the lens of the Scriptures. I really want to do that in three sorts of views or pictures and the ways that we think through the type of life that we’ve known under the sun. Because no matter what we think about our Christian life or wherever we are, everything that we do has some sort of connection to our life in Christ. Everything that we do has a moral value towards it. In other words, there are no neutral actions that we can take. Everything is either in conformity to Christ or it’s in conformity to Adam.
Created in God’s Image (Genesis 1)
As we think through these things, we really begin to see this picture of life. The Scriptures begin, if you remember, in Genesis chapter 1, if you’d like to look there in verse 26, describing the way that the Lord has made people. I want to begin here because this is ultimately where we all begin our lives under Adam. We’ve been born here. If we think through our Christian life without thinking about where we were before, it can be easy to assume certain things about our Christian life without thinking about the way things were before – the way that we were born. We were born into sin.
But in Genesis 1:26, we learn that was not the way the Lord had created things. In verse 26, it says,
“God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’”
So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them,
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth,”
and so on and so forth.
Adam and Eve’s Vocation and Moral Responsibility
God first created Adam and Eve, our parents as it were, to work. They were made in his likeness. They had all these things that he had given to them. He says, “Be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth, having dominion over the earth.” Under this particular heading, as they were created by the Lord to serve as this sort of pinnacle of creation, they were to exercise that image of the Lord in the way that they did everything. In other words, they had a vocation. They had a moral grounding to what they were doing. As they went about their work, there was a value judgment that could be applied to it.
The Command and Covenant of Works (Genesis 2)
We see that even in the way the Lord had spoken to them and the way he told them in chapter 2, verses 15 through 17:
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’”
There’s this call then, this sort of judgment that’s going to be offered against the activity that Adam and Eve are going to do. It’s a very simple test. We’ve probably all had tests that are maybe a little more difficult. This one is really easy. You either do it or you don’t. Have you eaten of the tree? Yes or no. There’s no partial way of going about it. If they did, they would surely die in the day that they ate of it. However, if they would not, there was this sort of waiting of judgment over the works that they would do with the promise of life based on the performance of what God commanded them to do.
The Tree in Revelation and Christ’s Accomplishment
We even see that at the very end, if anyone remembers, the tree shows up again in the book of Revelation as the offer of what Christ will give to his people because of what he accomplished. So there’s this overarching value, and the reason why I want to focus here is that this really then is hard-baked into us even though our parents fell into sin, Genesis chapter 3. But this is hard-baked into us in the sense that we have our work and we oftentimes think to provide a value judgment to our work.
Human Inclination to Judge Works
We’ll even hear when we ask people, as they’re dying, “Why do you think the Lord should allow you to go into heaven?” you’ll hear things like, “Well, I think my good outweighs my bad,” or, “I hope that my good outweighs my bad,” or, “I’m better than other people in the sense of I haven’t done this or I haven’t done that.” All those answers focus on works. It’s a focus on something that they’ve done and asking for a value judgment of it. That really begins here in the garden. It’s a covenant of works – the phrase we would find in our theology books if we’re looking. In that picture, there is work, and then there is judgment at the end of it.
The Fall and Its Effects
Now since our parents fell into sin, this is no longer the case. As it says elsewhere, through one man sin entered the world, and now we are conformed to that earthy man and have received guilt and corruption from him. That really does play a role in the way that we think about the Christian life because that’s where we all start. That’s where we all are. If we want to have a different outcome, we need to look somewhere else because here they’ve already received their judgment, and we know that we’ve received it too.
The Reality of Sin, Corruption, and Death
We really see there are three things that we can see from that. First, we all sin. We’re all getting to know each other more, you’re getting to know me more, and there’s a sense in which I sin, you sin, we all sin. There’s also the sense of corruption, and there’s a sense of death. We are all slowly advancing towards death at different rates. We don’t know when the Lord will call us home, but that shows that the judgment has already been rendered. We know in a really experiential way that in the day our parents ate of it, they surely died, and we with them. We know that, and so we need to look somewhere else because there’s no rest to be found here under the garden paradigm.
The Noahic Covenant: Preservation Without Rest (Genesis 8-9)
The Lord, during the time that has come since that, if you’d like to look over at Genesis 8 and 9 with me, has put in place a framework that we’re reminded of every time we see the rainbow – this Noahic covenant picture where he has put a level of holding back judgment to maintain life under the sun. But there is no promise of rest in that period.
If you would like to look over at Genesis chapter 9, God blessed Noah, verse 1, and his sons, and said to them,
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning; from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.”
And then jumping down to verse 9:
“Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you,”
so on and so forth. Verse 11:
“I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
The Limitation of the Noahic Covenant
This covenant doesn’t have any promise of rest still. It’s just a sort of waiting for the judgment to be put into its full effect – namely that the Lord will return and set all things right. We’ll see some of that in Colossians when we’re working through that later together this summer.
No Rest Under Adam or Noah
In both of these pictures of life under the sun, whether it be the life our first parents had or the life we have under the Noahic covenant, there is no rest to be found. It’s all judgment – either already rendered as it was to our first parents, which we have received, or it’s a suspension of judgment with no rest.
The Christian Life: Judgment, Work, and Rest
So what I want to look at then in the Christian life is to say that the Christian life is different. The Christian life starts with a judgment, then there is work, and then there is rest. The judgment we think about is this picture of what Christ has done. It’s that justification – that we are declared righteous. There is a declaration, a legal declaration of what Christ has said about us because he’s clothed us in his righteousness and imputed to us his satisfaction.
Romans 14: Living by Faith
If you’d like to look over at Romans chapter 14 with me, we see that this Christian life is very different. We know all this, and I’m not expecting any of this to be news to anyone this morning – hopefully not – but I want to begin here to remind ourselves of where we’re going, but also to see the way that the Christian life will flow out. I want to dig into each of these aspects in the weeks ahead, but I want to provide an overview this morning.
In Romans chapter 14, verse 23 – this is perhaps not the verse that we would always turn to for this particular purpose, but I want to highlight again that here in this picture there is a description of work, but the work is not tied to some sort of activity that we’re doing waiting for a judgment, but rather it’s done in faith.
Romans 14:23 says,
“Whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”
Christian Work Is Done by Faith Through the Spirit
So the work that is occurring under the Christian life is done by faith, and it is produced then by the Holy Spirit because of what Christ has accomplished. The Christian life then is very different than what we naturally know. By naturally, I mean what we receive from our parents. We automatically have baked in this sort of work and judgment. We say, “Look what I did, and I want to receive the judgment that I think I’ve earned.” But the Christian life is different. It’s saying that we haven’t earned it. Christ has, and we’re declared righteous. That’s the judgment. The word we might use, or the Scriptures would use, is justification.
Good Works Flowing from Justification
Then in the Christian life, there is work because of what’s already been declared. We’re already righteous. We’re already firmly fixed. But there is this outcome, which is sanctification.
James 2: Faith That Produces Works
If you’d like to look over at James chapter 2 with me, we see much the same again. Again, nothing new, but just a reminder to put these verses before our eyes. Speaking of faith, it says,
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
The Declaration in Baptism and Our New Life
So the Christian life then, following that declaration of what Christ has said about us – about each and every one of us – that we hear in baptism, what does it say? That we are lowered and raised in newness of life in Christ, that we have that declaration of what he has done and what he is accomplishing in us. Now we have the blessing to do those good works, as it says in Ephesians chapter 2, that Christ prepared beforehand that we would walk in them.
The Christian Life: Loving Christ, Brethren, and Neighbors
That’s the Christian life. We’re doing those things because we love Christ, we love the brethren, and we love our neighbor. That’s the sort of activity that’s occurring – that true faith then works out those good deeds which the Lord has done.
The Promise of Rest Secured by Christ
It ultimately then has the hope – and by hope, I don’t mean something like pie in the sky, but the promise of rest – that we enter into as rest, that we get to go and enjoy that which our first parents were promised if they were obedient. But now we are promised it because of the work of another, because of Christ.
The Christian Life as Moral Life in Response to Judgment
So summarizing this third lens, the Christian life then is a moral life that’s lived in response to judgment, meaning we are declared righteous because of what Christ has done, and we’re responding to that. It’s not in preparation for a judgment to come.
Preparing for Death with Certainty
In really practical terms, this is very important as we think about dying. If you really like the Heidelberg Catechism, in the first question and answer, if you remember, it asks, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” That whole catechism is preparing people to live and die. We’re looking towards that end. The practical outcome of this is that as we prepare to die, we can know with certainty that when we close our eyes in death, we will see the Savior. Why? Because we already have the judgment. We’ve already been declared righteous. We’re not waiting on something else.
Confidence in Christ’s Work Alone
We don’t have to say, “I hope that the work that I did here is good enough.” We can say, “Well, certainly it’s not good enough, but we’ve already received the judgment. And I’ve done all these things to the glory of the Savior, for the good of his people, for the good of my neighbor.” And now we enter into rest with certainty because of the promise of what Jesus has done. And that’s what we saw last week – that infallible promise of the gospel that we can have infallible assurance, not because of anything we’ve done or anything that’s in us, but because of Christ.
Overview of the Pattern: Judgment, Work, Rest
That’s really what we’re looking at with the Christian life – that it has that pattern of judgment. If we are in Christ, we’ve already received that. We’re in the period of work, of being conformed to his likeness. And now we are looking forward to that time when we all go to be with Christ to enter into his rest.
The Goal of the Christian Life
Thinking through those, I just want to briefly transition with the time that remains to think about then if we have this type of life, what is the goal? What’s the goal? We have this great ground or support or beginning, but what is the end?
Living for the Glory of God
First of all, it’s for the glory of God. We want to glorify God with all that we do. That’s the goal of everything we see under the Scriptures – that every creature would praise the Lord and bring glory to him. Whatever we do, we’re bringing glory to the Lord. We’re living for his glory.
More Than a Slogan: Truly Seeking God’s Glory
But it’s not something… sometimes it can become sort of a slogan. And again, if anyone does this, I don’t know that, so I’m not necessarily saying that. But I’m saying it can become something where we just use it. We’ll say, “Soli Deo Gloria,” and we just write it at the end of our emails or wherever we might have it, and it becomes a slogan without a meaning. There’s a sense that we’re living for the glory of the Lord and that we’re actually trying to do that.
We can use the saying, and I like the saying, and mean it in the truest sense. But it’s more than just a slogan. It’s something that we’re trying to do, and that’s ultimately what we’re seeking to accomplish.
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