January 5, 2008

• With the New Year Come New Resolutions, but How Can We Become Entirely New?

  

  From Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
  
  

  Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

  -Romans 7:4

  ...First, let us look at this verse as it gives us a general description and definition of the Christian life. It is here for us on the surface. It tells us immediately that to be a Christian means that we have an entirely new life. The Apostle speaks in terms of being "dead" and "alive". To be a Christian is nothing less than that. It involves a death and a rising. The difference, therefore, between the Christian and the non-Christian is obviously a radical one, and not merely something superficial. To become a Christian does not mean that you just modify your former life a little, or adjust it slightly, or make it look better, or "brush it up" as it were. There are many who conceive of Christianity in those terms. To become a Christian, they think, means in the main that you stop doing certain things, and begin to do others. There is a slight adjustment in your life, a slight modification, some things are dropped, others added; there is some improvement, you live a better life than you lived before. All that, of course, is quite true, but that alone is not Christianity. Whatever our definition of Christianity is, it must include this idea of a death and a new life – nothing less than that. In other words, to be a Christian means to undergo the profoundest change that one can ever know. That is why the New Testament, in speaking of the way in which a person becomes a Christian, uses such terms as "Ye must be born again", "a new creation", a "new creature". It is nothing less than regeneration...we are made to realize that to be a Christian is no small matter, and that the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not a slight one. It is the greatest difference possible between two human beings. It is no other than the difference between life and death. That is why I say that the main trouble with most of us in the Church today is that our whole concept of the Christian life is much too small. We seem to have lost this idea, though we may pay lip-service to it, that it involves as radical a process and as deep-seated a change as is conceivable...

  The second truth is that the man who has become a Christian is in an entirely new relationship....To be a Christian means that you are now in an entirely new relationship to God. Before, your relationship to God was one through the Law; it is now through the Lord Jesus Christ. What a change that is! My whole standing is different; my position, my status as I stand before God is altogether different from what it was before....We were "under law", but now we are "under grace".

  The third truth is that as Christians we have an entirely new purpose in life, namely, "to bring forth fruit unto God". The man who is not a Christian knows nothing of that purpose; he lives for himself, he brings forth fruit unto himself. He lives to satisfy himself; he is self-centered, entirely egocentric. It matters not how good a man he appears to be; if he is not a Christian, he is always egocentric. He is proud of his morality, he is proud that he is not like other people, he looks at them with disdain. All along he is pleasing himself, coming up to his own standard, trusting his own efforts and endeavours. He revolves around himself. But the man who has become a Christian has an entirely new purpose, to "bring forth fruit unto God"....

  The fourth general truth which here lies on the surface is that the Christian is a man who has been provided with an entirely new ability, a new power and strength. Certain things have happened to him in order that he should "bring forth fruit unto God". He could not do that before; he can do so now. A new ability, a new power has entered into the life of this man.

  There, I say, are four things which lie here on the very surface which are always true of the Christian. Therefore if we would know for certain whether or not we are Christians we have four thorough tests that we can apply to ourselves. Can you say quite honestly, "I am not the person I once was, I have been born again, I am a different person?" That is the first thing – new life. It does not mean of necessity that evidence is always very strong or powerful. You can be a "babe in Christ", but even a babe has life. A babe is not as strong as a grown-up adult person, but he has life. The question therefore is: Are we aware of the fact that there is this "new life" in us? It is not that we have done something, but that something has happened to us which causes us to be surprised at ourselves, and to wonder at ourselves that something is now true of us which was not true.

  * * *

  
  Therefore if any man be in Christ,
  he is a new creature:
  old things are passed away;
  behold, all things are become new.
  II Corinthians 5:17

  ---

  D.M. Lloyd-Jones, "Romans: An Exposition of Chapters 7.1-8.4. The Law: Its Functions and Limits" (Grand Rapids: Zondervan: 1979, seventh printing), 28, 30-32, emphasis mine.

  • 8:59 PM
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