2 Timothy 1 "Power, Love, and a Sound Mind"

II Timothy 1:6-14

“Power, Love, and a Sound Mind”

Dr. Douglas F. Kelly

It’s a joy to be back with you. I’m always glad of an opportunity to come back to Mississippi. We lived here eleven years, and those were the prime years we were raising our children. They came to this camp, so I half-way expect to see some of them jumping out from behind a tree, but many scenes of affection are at this camp and First Presbyterian/Jackson, and so many of you are in my regular prayer list that I’m covering. It takes me about three days to get through it all, so I divided it out. But you wouldn’t know how many of you in here I’m covering every three days. And I’m grateful for all that Ligon Duncan and Carl and the others with him…Terry…are doing to make this conference possible and to keep it going. God bless you.

Now I want to take as my text, II Timothy 1:7, and I shall of course be referring to a number of the verses that were read.

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

Paul is telling Timothy here, and he’s telling us, who follow Timothy in some way, that a life for ministry characterized chiefly by fear is not of God. God has given us something infinitely better to replace fear and painful thinking.

Just two points in this sermon. The first one looks a little bit at fear, and then after a while, secondly we shall look at the divine donation given us to replace fear.

I. Fear is not of God.

First of all, we want to look at fear, which the Apostle Paul tells us, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, is not of God. The Greek word used here for fear is rather more limited and specific than the normal word for fear in the New Testament. The normal word is phobos, where we get phobia and all that. But II Timothy 1:7 employs the term deilos, which is probably closer to something like cowardice or weak-kneed cravenness. John Calvin, in his comments on these verses, said that this sort of craven fear keeps the Christian ministry from reflecting the majesty of God. He speaks of fearful “modern ministers”—he meant sixteenth century—and he asks,

“Do they not sink down dumb as soon as any noise breaks out? The consequence is that no majesty of God is seen in their ministry.”

Calvin said it was disastrous that the majesty of God not be seen in your ministry, because this glorious crucified, now risen, Christ is riding forth in word and spirit through your ministry, and there’s a majesty there. “But fearful, cowardly thinking,” says Calvin, “can put paid to the majesty of this risen Lord and what He deserves to have through our lives and ministry.”

I don’t know if any of you have preached on Christ’s crucifixion on Good Friday (if you observe the day), but I do know that all of you have been thinking much of the Lord’s infinite sacrifice for His people on Calvary in recent days, and I imagine every person in here would have read several of the Gospel passages. And have you not been struck afresh by the sheer majesty of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords as He sets His face like a flint towards Jerusalem? As He stands silent in Pilate’s hall; as He endures the forty stripes minus one; the mocking, scourging, and spitting in His face; as He goes up the Via Dolorosa and tells the daughters of Jerusalem not to weep for Him, but to weep for themselves and their children on what would be coming on impenitent Jerusalem; as He prays for His persecutors; as He invites, and indeed ushers the penitent thief into the glory; as He finishes His atoning work and dismisses His spirit to His Father? What majesty of God in human flesh! The blessed Savior had prayed in the Gospel of John as He contemplates His approaching passion,

“Now is mine hour come. Father, glorify Thou Me; glorify Thyself.”

It’s the hour of the glory that’s lifting up.

No small part of the glory of God manifested in the cross of Jesus; no small part of it is the majestic calm and settledness of the soul that He had, lending a beauty and dignity to all His actions greater than stars and seas, and galaxies and skies, as Jesus somehow victoriously submits to all that the enraged and venomed armies of hell can inflict upon Him. You know that hymn,

“He came from His blessed throne

Salvation to impart;

Yet men made strange,

And none the longed for Christ would know;

Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,

That He His foes from thence might free.”

Majesty indeed!

In terms of this passage in II Timothy 1:7, God the Father Almighty did not give His beloved Son a spirit of fear or cowardice as He singlehandedly entered the fiercest battle of all the ages and all places. Instead, He anointed Jesus with the spirit of power, love, and a sound mind.

Paul, the imprisoned one, had long since been baptized into this majesty of Christ that tramples underfoot cowardice and painful thinking, and he invites young, somewhat timid Timothy (and all of us) to appropriate what we have already been given in our effectual calling to the Lord Jesus Christ. Second Timothy 1:9 – “Who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling.”

Now to say “Do not be fearful; don’t be scared” may seem like cheap advice from one in a well-secured fortress! Some say old men make war, and young men fight war. It is one thing to feel that the allied troops in Iraq should act bravely in the streets of Baghdad as they face possible snipers and suicide bombers, but especially if we’re watching CNN or Fox News (depending on your point of view!) [Laughter] You know we’re watching all this from the safety of our homes in America. But it’s quite another matter to be a U.S. Marine or a British soldier stationed near a mosque or a bank, or a museum.

Well, what about Paul? When he writes this, his last canonical letter, he is in jail awaiting decapitation. From a condemned prisoner on the verge of execution, it is no cheap advice to say, “God hath not given us a spirit of fear.” You can take it from him, can’t you? And Timothy, to whom he gives this word of strength, and yes, majesty…he’s a young leader of a hated minority movement facing…Timothy didn’t know it, but facing another 300 or so years of at times severe governmental persecution.

It does appear from other verses that Timothy was lacking in self-confidence. He was certainly not a naturally brave personality, from all we can tell. He had a nervous stomach, for which medicine was prescribed—the kind of medicine some of you like very much! [Laughter] And maybe his timidity showed too much self-consciousness. I don’t know. It’s not for me to criticize a better man than I am. But Timothy would be called on to minister to people, some of whom would certainly like to get the best of him. The environment at that time of the Roman Empire was a rather dangerous one, depending obviously on the region and on the emperor and local conditions, but it was far more dangerous than anything we Westerners have ever known—at least, those of us born since the Second World War. Even since September 11, 2001, we really (at least in this country and Britain) have not faced anything like the street insecurity that quite frequently surrounded Paul and Timothy. During this Iraqi war, America was under orange alert; but I learned that the high state of emergency is red alert. Under the red alert, everybody is under 24-hour curfew, housebound; all businesses and schools are closed; only hospitals and vital government agencies will be open if we ever go under a red alert. But we haven’t experienced anything like that, at least not yet.

Nonetheless, I think there’s been a general feeling in North America since September 11, 2001, that the protecting walls of the mighty oceans are down, and we are far less secure than was once the case. Still, in all of this we are no worse off – and indeed, we are in far better shape – than the early church for much of the first 350 years of her pilgrimage. And she made it.

I assume that Timothy did not face his ministry with boundless confidence, especially in prospect of the loss of his beloved father-figure, Paul, soon enough to have his head chopped off. Most of us probably don’t have boundless confidence as we face the task of our ministry. I guess a few do. The ministry is very demanding…to be pastor of a church. I’ve served as a seminary professor for some twenty years, and before that I was a parish minister for some ten years. I will honestly say that being a seminary professor is massively easier in terms of lack of personality conflict than what a pastor has to go through. If you are any good, you do as much study, as much work, yes; but it’s not the kind of conflict…or if there is, it’s your own fault! [Laughter] Some manage to do it! [Laughs] It’s their fault! But it is far more difficult – yes, it is – to be a parish minister than to be a seminary professor. (Don’t let the board know I said that; they may lower my salary again!)

Well, now, in the ten years I was in the ministry and long after that, for nearly thirty years of my life, I’ve kept a personal diary, writing in it every day. Now, some pages in that diary that were written when I was in the pastorate passing through certain testing experiences, I’ve literally never had the nerve to go back to those years and back to those months and back to those days—I know exactly when those times were – I’ve never had the nerve to open up the books and re-read it. It’s too painful to wish to relive some of that sort of baptisms of fire that the Lord called me to go through. I had the comfort of Paul-like father figures during those few times of testing: the Reverend James Phillip at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, who had been pastor of myself and my wife; and, Reverend William Still in Aberdeen. And I’d talk to them on the phone a few times, and most of all their prayer meetings that met every Saturday night. A hundred, hundred and fifty people praying two or three hours were holding us up, as well as some of my own consecrated relatives in North and South Carolina. I’ve often said I had to deal with some difficult things, wherever God called me, because at that time we were still in the PCUS and there was a majority of evangelical, but a very strong party of committed denominational modernist liberals, plus there was some serious political and moral corruption in the county that needed to be dealt with, and the devil wasn’t amused to be taken on through the word of God. So of all people, I would certainly know, at least a few times I can think of, a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you face roaring lions and ravenous wolves outside the church, and worst of all, inside it.

I don’t want you to think my ministry was difficult; I mean, ninety-some percent was wonderful, loving, a joy, a pleasure, and actually better than anything I could deserve, but there were those times of great testing, when I knew I wouldn’t get through it if God didn’t exist. That’s what.

Have you ever said to yourself, “You know what? I actually believe God exists!” How about it? You’ve said it a lot, haven’t you? You can go along in a ministry… you can go along and be, I suppose, a half-way decent professor and preacher and scarcely believe God exists! Right? But sometimes you get into these times of testing, and then everything is going to turn on whether God exists or not. Yes, indeed!

I preached on this very text, “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind,” in the spring of 1974. It may not have helped the people, but it helped me! [Laughter] And this text plus the prayers of so many saints, all of that has brought me through a few heavy tides. Most of my life has been easy and wonderful, happy; a few times I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t been for this text and its truth, and the God who gave it, and the saints who were praying it into execution. What would have happened? I wouldn’t be here to talk to you, I can tell you that much.

And I have said to myself before a few Session meetings, let’s say, and a few unavoidable confrontations with powerful people (or that seemed powerful), said to my little ol’ self going out of the house to face somebody, “Face it. The official body of the church. Nobody but little ol’ me, and that’s it.”

“God hath not given to us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

II. What God supplies to overcome fear.

Well, secondly, then, I want to speak to you – this texts speaks to you – about divinely donated qualities or virtues or attributes – whatever you want to call them – to replace fear...to replace painful thinking.

What has our gracious heavenly Father given us to replace fear? It’s clear – power, love, and a sound mind. Those qualities or virtues that come to characterize one’s functioning personality are of course a matter of the spirit, not a superficial new hair-do or a fancy new suit. Conflicts on the battlefield of truth have a way of jerking off fancy clothing. You’ll know this profound replacement of cowardly fear enters into your most characteristic self, as a regenerate person in Christ goes down deep. What old Robert L. Dabney used to speak of as the habitus. Saint Paul contrasts the spirit of fear to power, love, and a sound mind; and I think we could properly insert the term “the spirit” of power, love, and a sound mind. It’s the Holy Spirit that brings it into our spirit. These qualities wash out, flood out, the spirit of craven self-protectiveness at its Adamic roots in our effectual calling, and in all the work of sanctification that follows our effectual calling.

Listen to verse 9: “…Who hath saved us and called us with a holy calling.”

Verse 14: “That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.”

Now what do you think is the difference between legitimate fear (usually spoken of as phobos in the New Testament) and cowardly fear, or deilos, as used here? What do you think is the difference?

I’d say, first, legitimate fear is reverential awe and self-abasing trust before a holy, omnipotent God. There ought to be something of that in a legitimate worship service, at the very least. The angels and redeemed saints in the highest heavens cry out, “Who would not fear Thee and magnify Thy holy name?” We never lose, even in the highest heaven of heavens, that kind of fear. Indeed, Jesus tells us in Luke’s Gospel,

“Fear not them that can kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”

That’s the worst a wicked political system can do to you, kill your body. They’d like to do more. They can’t do it. Jesus says, “Rather I say unto you, fear Him who is able to cast both body and soul into the hell of fire.” And that’s God! Jesus says do fear God.

And of course there’s a second kind of legitimate fear. Paul himself tells us we are to exercise a certain realistic legitimate kind of fear, or at very least prudential awareness of, let us say, false brethren and other harmful persons who would do us damage if they were able to. In this very book, II Timothy 4:4, Paul warns Timothy to “beware of Alexander the coppersmith, who did me much harm.” And so forth. This is a sort of common sense prudence and carefulness that we all need, all through the course of our earthly life in a fallen and, at times, rather dangerous world. Read the book of Proverbs. It helps all of us in this way.

So those kinds of fear are of God, surely.

But the kind of fear that in no sense comes from God is craven protectiveness of the self-life with its multifarious interests. That’s what’s not of God. It’s how deilos is used here. Think of it this way. When we do not love people enough (say, people in our congregation), and we do not love them enough to let some of them dislike us (for clearly proclaiming the word of truth), and constantly summoning them to join with us on our knees and living it out. And somebody raises an eyebrow. We back off that kind of clear proclamation and faithful summons. We back off because they won’t like us.

Well, what does that mean? And who hasn’t felt the temptation? What he means is we’re more interested in the protection of self than in what Jesus wishes to do in these people whom He has given us in our congregation, even if it costs us some suffering. It usually does cost you some suffering to raise a bunch of children for Jesus…to turn out right, it will cost you something. Right? Same with a congregation.

Now that sort of self-interested fear can make us begin to lose at least something of the sheer majesty of Christ in our ministry, if we keep giving it grounds. But on the contrary, we’ll think of what this same Paul that wrote II Timothy says in II Corinthians 4:10-12. This is one of the big verses of Mr. Still, whose influence lives on in a different culture, in this conference:

“Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh…” [and then this] “…So then death worketh in us, but life in you.”

This kind of fear that doesn’t come from God will make us back away from the sacrifice it will take of the integrity and the faithfulness and the self-forgetfulness, that this people could know Jesus, who He really is.

Well, Paul would say to Timothy, and to you, to me, all of us, that God has done something for us and in us that, if we lay hold of it, will enable us to trample down with hobnailed boots these self-protecting fears when they arise, and we shall be liberated to see God at work in the lives of the difficult people with whom He has providentially surrounded us. Sometimes it seems like whole armies of them as sort of unasked-for gifts. God says, ‘That’s who you’re working with. I want to do something.’

Paul is simply summoning us otherwise cowardly souls to live on the far side of the resurrection. That’s why I was having us sing I Know That My Redeemer Lives. Listen to

II Timothy 1:10, read earlier:

“Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

The resurrection of Christ is presently at work in the spiritual core of every believer, taking them down through the dark waters of fear of criticism, fear of loss, fear of persecution, and maybe even sometimes fear of physical death, or at least, loss of jobs, into the holy sunshine of resurrection morning.

The writer, the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 2:14-15, is saying that in a different kind of way:

“Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself, that is, Christ, likewise took part of the same, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and to deliver them who through fear of death through all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

Delivered from fear of death! Wonderful! And then God sends you out as the instrument He uses in the deliverance of others from such fears. Now this hath become ours through our holy calling (verse 9), which is an effective drawing of us into union with the once crucified but now risen Savior, as we see Paul speak of it in Romans 6. We’re baptized into His death; we’re baptized into His resurrection. Those are continuing powers which are working in us right now, that the Holy Spirit baptizes us into, and that characterizes the most important thing you could ever know about us. It is union with the risen Christ that keeps changing and purifying the wellsprings of our personality from self-centered fearfulness and painful thinking to power and love and a sound mind.

Professor John Murray, in his Principles of Christian Conduct, written many years ago, certainly had it right when he had a section in that wonderful book entitled “Union with Christ: the Dynamic of the Christian Life.” That’s the powerhouse! That’s the dynamite! Union with Christ is the only way we’re going to get rid of these fears that come from somebody other than God into our lives.

That leads me to look briefly at the three qualities that Paul mentions that God wishes to replace the fear of your heart with, and these three qualities I would say are at its core of both a meditative and active life that union with our risen Lord establishes in place of self-serving fear.

First, there’s power. Professor Murray, “The Dynamic of the Christian Life”—all of you know it, you’ve taken Greek. Dynamis – we get dynamite from it – spiritual dynamite blows out craven cowardice and makes saints and heroes of very humble, ordinary folk when, if they are put in a situation such virtuous resistance should be called for, they may not have that kind of heroism until they need it. I’ve been with many, what I thought were very ordinary Christians, at their deathbed, and when they needed it, God gave them triumphant and glorious grace when they needed it. And God has taken very humble, common Christian people and gets them in difficult situations and makes visible saints and heroes out of them.

We could think of the early church – Polycarp at age 86. They said, ‘If you’ll just sprinkle a little incense to the genius of Caesar…we don’t want to kill you at this age…you’re highly regarded. Say Caesar is lord.’ And he said, “I’ve served Jesus four-score and six years, and He’s done me no harm. How could I turn my back on Him now? No, I won’t sacrifice to him. Jesus is Lord.” And there are others we could mention—the killing times in the 1680’s in Scotland, some of the Scottish Covenanters. I was thinking particularly of James Rennick. I don’t think I’ll take the time to talk about him tonight.

But you know it comes much closer than Polycarp or the 1680’s Covenanters. In the 1990’s, we don’t know how many, many hundreds of thousands of Christian tribesmen and women were put to death for Jesus’ sake in the Sudan. We did nothing. I don’t even think the church has prayed. I reckon we didn’t know much about it. We did nothing. Well, what little I’m able to pick up here and there… if anybody’s alive that is able to remember, there could be volumes written on the noble majestic heroism shown by some of those men and women that were cruelly hacked to death, and sometimes crucified and flayed and burned in Sudan by radicalized Islam. That’s in the last two or three years, I’m talking about! Thousands, indeed! And what I’m told is that their thinking was not to be characterized by a craven fear. They confessed Jesus, just like Polycarp did, just like James Rennick and others did.

This dynamis, God gave it to them. And it may well be in this third millennium…I don’t know, but it may well be that ordinary Christians in many parts of the world are going to need this dynamis, this power, to replace fear in the light of a radicalized Islam that at least in some places more and more people are having to face.

I mentioned to you a year ago when I was here this book by Philip Jenkins, The Coming of Global Christianity. The professor at Penn State University amazingly charts out the world religions, and particularly the numbers, numerical differences, between Islam (which is the next largest to Christianity, and it’s huge and it’s rich)…and yet he brings out that Christianity is bigger and is growing much more rapidly. And I’ve seen two articles of his and one other article in another journal by someone else—this other person not even necessarily a believer, as far as I could tell—but they were suggesting, all of them suggesting, that possibly part of the motivation for the rush of radicalized Islam to attack Christians and to do something is the fact that they see they’re being outstripped by Christian evangelism, by the massive numbers of conversions, let’s say, in Africa and in parts of East Asia. This is massively outstripping what Islam has been able to do. They’re scared; they’re worried; they’re mad! Kind of like a wounded bear. And it’s going to be a time when Christians in many, many areas – not so much here, I think, but other places – some of you will be called by God to those other places – are going to need this power that you get in union with the risen Jesus instead of painful, cowardly thinking.

The key to it, how to get it, is remember where it comes from, this dynamis, this power that I need to overcome the fears that the world, the flesh, and the devil will put upon me. Where’s it come from? It comes from the eternal Christ.

John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

He had the power to create. He was the agent of creation, created all things out of nothing in the space of six days by the word of His power. Just spoke, and galaxies sprang into bordered existence. That power!

Colossians 1:17, we’re told that all things cohere in Him. All things hold together in the One who was the agent of creation. He still, even when He was a baby in a manger, some of the fathers said, and Calvin said it, is still holding the heavens and the earth together, and causing the planets to rotate—this baby. It’s a mystery, this power.

Romans 1:4, the same apostle says that God declared Him to be His Son with power by His resurrection from the dead. He raised up Jesus’ dead body. That’s power!

Now, it is that Christ, agent of creation, holding all things together, the cosmic Christ – the one who was raised from the dead. His Father raised Him, He raised himself up according to John 10, and the Holy Spirit raised Him. It is that Christ that comes into union with you in the new birth, in effectual calling, and comes in you and you in Him. The most important thing to remember on a bad day, time of testing, is not only who I am but whose I am. I am Christ’s, the powerful One, the crucified One, the risen One, the reigning One. That surely is what Paul is counseling Timothy in verse 6: “Stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.”

Verse 13 – “Hold fast the form of sound words.” There’s power in the truth of these words.

Verse 14, I already read… “The good thing committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost.”

Keep it! Stir it up! Hold it fast! Keep it! And it will liberate you from all the world and the flesh and the devil can do to make you be fearful and craven, and lose the majesty. That’s power.

Much more briefly, love. God has instead of giving us craven fear, this kind of fear (deilos) when I’m thinking about myself, What if I’m hurt? What if I lose a job? What if I lose friends? What if I look like a fool? Things like that. And that’s great. We all fight it, this great focusing on self. And people can manipulate you very easily if you’re focusing on self, and they can perceive it. They don’t even have to be saved to perceive it.

God takes another way to handle that, to break that down, to flush that out, because Romans 5:5 says the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given unto us. That kind of love. The supernatural presence of God that flushes out this mess that the devil will use to corrupt you, to weaken you, to make you compromise, and to back off from holding forth His truth.

At I Corinthians 13, the same Apostle Paul says, “Love seeketh not its own.” It’s not self-centered. Love is really God-centered and others-centered. It’s freedom from self and glorious freedom! And that’s why you’re not all that worried about all this. I John 4:18 – “Perfect love casteth out fear. Fear hath torment.” God doesn’t want you to be tormented, and He gives you this love and then the risen Lord to cast it out.

Then the last word, “of a sound mind” – sophronismos. It’s a what we call a hapax legomena It’s used only one time in the New Testament, this rather unusual word sophronismos. In some of the classical Greek literature of the time, it bears the meaning of something like “to quit panting, or to quit whimpering.” [Laughter] How about that? The French translation renders it sagesse. Wisdom. Others, self control. And all those are fine, but “sound mind” I think is still about the best English. The basic idea is this, with sophronismos that God gives you instead of fear. It is a refusal to panic in face of threats and danger to yourself. It is a refusal to panic in face of threats and danger.

Well, how many potential panic buttons there are in every church, even very small ones. (I don’t mean the buttons are small; the churches are small…the buttons are fairly large and accessible!) [Laughter] And how readily some ecclesiastical folk try to manipulate young ministers particularly. When you get as old as I am, they know they can’t do anything with you, but…anyway, they try to manipulate particularly the younger ones by saying, “Now, a lot of people in this church are very upset about so-and-so.” And then two or three times after that’s happened, you look them in the face and say, “Specifically, how many?”

“I can’t say.”

“So I’m not going to carry on the conversation if you won’t tell me specifically how many are upset about so-and-so.”

“Well, it’s my wife and me, and my son and his wife, and it’s…ah…” [Laughter]

And yet you’re being pushed to take immediate action, or all is lost. That’s where sophronismos – and in much more serious situations, sophronismos, or “sound mind” – refusal to panic and make decisions you don’t need to make right then. That’s where He comes in.

I want to say something about sophronismos, or sound mind, or refusal to panic. That kind of approach is something you need to decide before you get in a crisis. Then when you get in a crisis, since you are in the crucified risen Lord, you’re always going to have the resources available to you to enable you to handle it when you’re in the clinches.

Let me finally summarize these three glorious and majestic replacements of fear this way, and turn you again to another epistle of Paul, I Corinthians 1:30.

“But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”

Well, there you have it. That’s in a sense much the same as power, love, and a sound mind. All this is in Christ. Christ is made unto us wisdom. That’s the basis of sophronismos. Wisdom is sophos in Greek. Sophos, sophronismos…it’s the basis of this kind of practical prudence that you don’t panic, and it’s kind of…the Lord helps you hang in there, and you get through it, and it works out fine, and you realize there was a higher hand in all of this. The wealth you have in Christ, as indeed you have perfect and full divine righteousness.

I don’t want to go into this issue tonight, but I’ve been reading some stuff on “the new perspective on Paul” and been amazed at some of the very talented, very learned New Testament scholars that have actually said that we are not given the righteousness of God. I went back and re-read it, and I looked into other works for this verse. I was thinking of Professor John Murray’s commentary of Romans 3, and the others. The lot we’re given, the only… that…is the very righteousness of God! And this person was saying, no, you couldn’t have it; you’re human. But wait a minute: Christ is made unto us the righteousness of God. That justification is imputed to us. Because we’re in Him, we’re His; He’s ours. Don’t you think Christ…His righteousness is as high as the righteousness of God, since He is God? That’s what we have, you see.

Well, now, that’s important when you come to pray. The devil doesn’t want you to pray. He’ll remind you of weak points. That’s easy to do with me. (That was even before I had any teenagers! And now they’re much… [Laughter] Now they’re in their twenties they’re much more charitable, or either they don’t tell me what they think!) But you go to pray, and the Father hears the tones of His well-loved Son breaking through your intercessions, and that’s why it works.

And you’re going to come to die one day, and you die in the perfect righteousness of Christ, and you go home into the highest glory, whatever place there He’s got prepared for you, in the righteousness of Christ. That’s what God has given to you that gives you a glorious liberation from these different kinds of fears that can tie your hands and feet from being the kind of active minister, and the beautiful gospel feet going forward with the message to which the Lord has called you.

All of that, and He is sanctification. He’s made to us sanctification. Sanctification is being like Jesus. Jesus is the love of God incarnate. Love is the fulfilling of the Law. Love to God above all, and neighbor as self is the fulfillment of all that. And you have that in Jesus. He’s working in you in redemption, and eventually He’s going to get what He’s done in your spirit to give you resurrection, (you’re resurrected folk or you wouldn’t be believers). He’s already raised your spirit; He’s going to raise your body. The resurrection influence of Christ will go through your very body and renew it and restore it and transform it and glorify it. Yes!

Well, it’s time to close. What a matchless opportunity you and I have as ministers of the Lord in today’s society. I think, increasingly in some of the world’s richest societies. People are getting frightened. A fearful person can be manipulated in sordid and self-serving directions. Some politicians are good at that. How greatly people need to see the majesty of Christ operating in the souls of those who minister to them in the Lord. Such majesty, even though we wouldn’t be aware of it…if in any sense it was upon us, we wouldn’t feel it. We wouldn’t know it. We don’t need to. Such a majesty manifested as self-centered, fearful, painful thinking is constantly being washed out and replaced by power, love, and a sound mind that is always ours in the One who is the very life of our lifetime.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

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