" THE CHRISTIAN REPEATS AFTER GOD THAT HE IS DEAD IN SIN ."

Scripture Reading:
John 6:41-65
Romans 5:1-11

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 86:1,2
Psalm 75:6
Psalm 130:2,4
Psalm 51:3,4,5
Hymn 27:1,2,3,4

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

The Lord’s Day before us this afternoon admits in the first question that, Yes, "according to God’s righteous judgment we deserve temporal and eternal punishment." The question has its roots in what we confessed in Lord’s Day 3: though God had created us perfect and in His image, we’d snubbed our nose at God, disobeyed Him, joined the devil. God’s response, we’d confessed in Lord’s Day 4, was nothing to wave our hand at; God says we "deserve temporal and eternal punishment." It’s a horrible prospect; let everybody in church, in town, in the world be aware!

There, now, is the question for today: how in the world can we escape that punishment and be again received into God’s favor? Is there a way to escape the anguish and torment of hell?

In our Catechism we repeat after God the answer He gives us in His word. Yes, God says, there is a way to escape His wrath. What that way is? You have to pay. If somehow we can organize that "full payment ... be made, either by ourselves or by another," well, then the dark judgment will be replaced with grace….

But –says this Lord’s Day- we are not able to make payment ourselves, and we can’t arrange for some animal or angel to make the payment for us either. What’s left? Only the fearful prospect of experiencing the full load of God’s justice, receiving that punishment in this life and in the life to come….

That conclusion sounds terrible? Indeed, congregation, it does. But God would have us know that admitting our bankruptcy is the first step to enjoying God’s free redemption in Jesus Christ. So I summarize the sermon with this theme:

1. The depths of our misery
2. The heights of Christ’s deliverance

In the course of the centuries, much study and discussion has taken place in Christian circles about the natural nature of man. How is humankind to be characterized? Is one to understand that the human race can best be qualified as "dead", or ought one to conclude that people are "sick"?

The question has come up in the past in the context of what a person is able to do toward his salvation. LD 5 had mentioned the need for making payment to satisfy God’s justice and so escape His dreadful punishments. What can a person contribute?? We all understand that the "dead" person can contribute nothing (for the dead do nothing), while the "sick" can at least indicate a willingness to escape that wrath, can maybe even pay the first few cents or dollars of the payment. How ought one to qualify the human race: dead, unable to contribute so much as a sigh to the needed payment, or sick, able to contribute at least the smallest beginning?

This discussion has raged throughout church history ever since the days when the Bible was finalized. Pelagius argued that people were sick, maybe even desperately sick, but not so sick that they couldn’t ask for help and even cooperate with the doctor. Over against him, Augustine defended that people were dead, unable to contribute a thing to escape the punishment of God.

In later years Luther took up the position of Augustine over against the humanist Erasmus. And a number of decades later the Synod of Dort had to convene to demonstrate from the Scriptures that the Pelagian error of people being only sick (the error was raised again by Prof Jacob Arminius) was indeed wrong. At the time of the Secession of 1834 too it was Rev deCock’s opposition to that doctrine of man being able to contribute something to his salvation that sparked the struggle with the apostate church. Yes, the discussion has been going on for years, more, this point has featured very strongly in the history of the church.

Yet despite the discussions that have occurred on this point, and despite the repeated insistence of the church that people are by nature not sick but rather dead, it yet remains so that the majority of people today who call themselves Christians insist that people are by nature not dead but sick. It’s said today that people must themselves open their hearts to let Jesus in, must themselves come to the Saviour, must themselves ask for forgiveness before they can receive it – all things that a corpse cannot do. Not –this majority says- that people can pay for their own sins; these Christians maintain that the human race is far too sick for that. Rather –it’s said- people are to express willingness to be saved, are to open the doors of their hearts. That’s the contribution for which God waits before He gives salvation to anyone.

But what, brothers and sisters, does the Bible say? Are you to understand yourself to be dead before God, or sick?

The apostle Paul writes in Eph 2 the following: "And you He made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked..." (vs 1). Notice it: the apostle says that people are by nature "dead", so dead that there can be no life unless they are "made alive", raised (cf vs 5). Jesus makes the same point in the passage we read from Jn 6. Vs 44: "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." "Draws him," says Jesus, and the word that is used here pictures a stone, a lifeless object that is dragged from here to there. The contribution of the sinner in coming to God, says the chief Prophet and Teacher, is the same as the contribution of a stone to being moved to the other side of the garden. The reason for the total lack of cooperation is that stone has no will of its own, is stone dead. The reason for the total lack of cooperation on the part of the sinner is the same; he has no free will, is –spiritually- stone dead.

Later in the same chapter Jesus fleshes the point out further. Vs 63: "It is the spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing." This sentence was spoken in the context of the disciples’ complaint that Jesus’ preaching was too sharp, too condemning of man. To that complaint Jesus responded with a comment about the nature of the people who hear. What that nature is? The "flesh" doesn’t want to hear, has no delight in being told that there is no life in a person unless that person eats the flesh of the Son of man and drinks His blood (vs 53). No life, and therefore the flesh is useless.

On the basis of that reality Jesus could also repeat in vs 65 what He had said in vs 44: "This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him by the Father." ‘No one is able to come’, because by nature people are not sick, but dead, so dead that they can neither cooperate in paying for sin let alone show any willingness to be saved. That, brothers and sisters, is the teaching of Scripture: we are dead, have by nature no life in us.

To what, then, are we to compare the human race? Could we rightly compare the human race to the man who has jumped from the 43^rd floor of a building, and now lies well and truly dead on the sidewalk below, oblivious to the fact that every bone and organ in his body is broken, that he is hopelessly and helplessly dead? Or are we to compare the human race to the man who jumped not from the 43^rd floor but from the 3^rd floor; he’s now sprawled on the sidewalk, quite wounded, with a number of broken bones, but still quite able to call out for help and indicate an earnest willingness for the medics to assist him? Which image, do you think, does justice to the Lord’s description of you and me?

It will be clear, I trust, that the comparison with the man who jumped from the 3^rd floor is not Scriptural. That notion that we are only wounded, that we’re sick –theat concept is officially called Arminianism- is contrary to what the Lord has insisted in Jn 6 when He said of all people that "you have no life in you" (vs 53). As such, the understanding of what man is as held by the evangelicals of the world today is far too optimistic. We are to picture ourselves not as wounded or as sick, but rather as dead, very dead. The Synod of Dort convened nearly 400 years ago to fight the heresy of the Arminians summarize the teaching of Holy Scripture on this point as follows: "Therefore all men are ... incapable of any saving good ..., dead in sins" (III/IV.3).

With that instruction from Scripture in mind, congregation, we need now to go back to Lord’s Day 5. Escape from the horrid punishment of God is possible only if we can somehow make payment for sin. Question & Answer 13: "Can we ourselves make this payment?" The Catechism says that the answer is definitely NO, we cannot pay. And now we also understand the reason why we can’t pay; it’s because we are dead, and the dead can’t do anything, certainly can’t labor to pay off debts. We can’t pay, can’t even begin to pay, can do nothing to indicate even a willingness to pay, and hence there remains only the fearsome and terrible wrath of God! Would that we were only sick, wounded! Then we could at least make a beginning to satisfying God’s justice, could at least show our good will, our hearty desire to pay. But we can’t! Scripture teaches that we’re dead, as dead as a stone, and therefore we confess it: I am unable to begin paying, unable even to show any good will, yea, unable to have any sorrow for sin and good intentions to pay for sin. Dead, lost....

We hear it, and our thoughts go to the troubles and trials of our lives. If it’s temporal and eternal punishment we deserve because of our sins, and if we can’t escape this punishment by paying, can’t even express sorrow for sin and intent to make up, must we not conclude that the worries we face are indeed the beginning of the terrible punishment God has promised?! My struggle with the bank, my concerns with my children, my loneliness, my aches and pains: surely, these are but the beginning of the punishment I deserve because of my sins. And there’s nothing I can do about it…; I’m lost, lost…!

But wait, brothers and sisters, we mustn’t despair! A few weeks ago we confessed with Lord’s Day 1 that we by God’s grace belonged always to Jesus Christ. We said that not of the other person (though, thankfully, it may be true of him too); no, we said it in relation to ourselves. The first thing that’s true of us, then, is not that we’re hopelessly lost, dead in sin, crushed under the weight of God’s wrath. No, the first thing that’s to be said of us is that we belong to Jesus Christ. But now, with Lord’s Day 5, we’re asking how we became Christ’s possession. Did we make it that way ourselves? Did we buy a close relation with Christ, work our way into His good books? There’s the point of Lord’s Day 5: I contributed nothing to becoming Christ’s property. My going to church didn’t contribute, my repenting of sin didn’t contribute, my believing in Jesus Christ didn’t contribute – nothing I did was either full or partial payment for my sins. Why I must insist that nothing I did was either full or partial payment? Simply, beloved, because the dead don’t do anything, and by nature I am dead. Yet I belong with body and soul to Jesus Christ! How come? It’s 100% God’s doing - grace! That is: God has given the unworthy, the hopelessly dead –you, me!- the opposite of what we deserve, has given it without us contributing so much as a single sigh to that gift, without us even asking for it!

This is the glorious gospel about which Paul writes to the Romans. Chap 5: in the vss 6-10 Paul uses four different terms to describe the people for whom Christ died. Paul says that we were weak, ungodly (vs 6), sinners (vs 8), and vs 10: enemies. The four descriptions are far from flattering to us. "Weak": yes, even Arminius would say Yes to that. But the other three descriptions are so terribly damning: "ungodly", that’s anti-God, opposed to God; "sinners", that’s those who miss completely the purpose for their existence, and hence forfeit the right to life; "enemies", that those who are at war with God. Each word in turn, then, spells out the hopelessness of our wretched condition. But what’s Paul say happened to these wretched sinners, these enemies of God? Listen: "While we were still weak, ...Christ died for the ungodly." More, "God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Again: "while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." There it is, beloved: Christ didn’t die for the worthy, for the godly, for the lovely, for those with good intentions to pay their debt with God. No, Christ died for the wretched, for the miserable, for the damned, the dead. What a love from God is displayed here! It’s one thing to show mercy to a person who struggles to help himself, to show love to an enemy who’s sorry that he’s hurt you. But it’s something so very different to show mercy to one who doesn’t want help, who’s dead, so very different to show love to a person who has no apologies for the hurt he’s done to you. But this is God: He loves the wretched!

"What do you need to know in order to live and die in the joy of this comfort?" Says the Catechism in accordance with the Scriptures: I need to know "first, how great my sins and misery are." Now I understand why I need to know my wretchedness before I can truly rejoice in the salvation I have. I’ll never understand how great my deliverance is, will never understand how merciful my Father in Christ is, unless I first have seen something of the misery from which God has graciously rescued me.

But that’s not all. The apostle Paul hastens to add that this undeserved work of salvation in Jesus Christ is now the source of a tremendous security for all of life. Rom 8: "He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (vs 32). The point is this: if the righteous Judge of heaven and earth was so moved with compassion at the sorry plight of wretched sinners, so moved that He sent His only Son to earth to satisfy for sins for people so undeserving and helpless and loathsome, will that God turn around and reject these same people?! Paul is insistent: the God who has shown such love, such compassion to people totally dead and unable to contribute in any way to escaping God’s wrath, this God will certainly, certainly not forsake His love, now pour out wrath on those for whom Christ died. Paul repeats it: "who shall bring a charge against God’s elect?" (vs 33). The inference is clear: because of God’s loved displayed so long ago in Christ is there no-body and no-thing that can make a charge stick against any of God’s people!

What, then, of the sufferings of this age? What about the tribulations or distresses or persecutions or deaths or poverty we experience in this broken life? Are these then not the beginnings of the eternal punishment we deserve? See here, beloved, the practical comfort of what you may confess in LD 5. If your wretchedness before God wasn’t absolute, if there was a little something you could do to encourage your own salvation, then you could indeed conclude that the trials of this life are expressions of God’s punishment; you could rightly conclude that you were maybe doing not quite well enough the little bit you had to contribute to your salvation, to satisfying God’s justice. But as it is, beloved, God knows how totally dead you are by nature, and therefore He worked a total salvation, including full payment for all your sins. So it does not depend on you at all. Escaping the wrath of God in this life and in the life to come is grace and only grace, and exactly for that reason may we all be assured today that we always escape the wrath of God, never taste it.

Now I ask you, brothers and sisters: what is better, what is richer, what is more comforting to you: to be an Arminian and embrace the notion that you need to add your two cents worth to your salvation? Or is it richer to be Reformed, to be Scriptural, and believe that you are dead by nature, that you can contribute nothing toward your salvation, that you are dependent totally and fully on the grace of the Lord in Jesus Christ? I know it now: to live and to die in the joy of the comfort of LD 1, I need to believe the deadness confessed in LD 5. What a God I have, that a wretch like me should receive such a total salvation!  Amen.