Do You Not Know?

Part 1

Text: 1 Cor. 6:9-20

Introduction:

A.    We are all human beings made in the image of God.

B.    We are all sexual beings.

C.    We are all sexual sinners.

“We are frail and vulnerable. We are pilgrims on our way to God. We are very far from having arrived. We are engaged in an unremitting conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Not yet have we conquered. Perfection awaits the parousia (Second Coming of Christ-J.F.)…There is no question, therefore, of coming to this study with a horrid ‘holier than thou’ attitude of moral superiority. Because all of us are sinners, we all stand under the judgment of God, and we are all in urgent need of the grace of God. Besides, sexual sins are not the only sins, nor even necessarily the most sinful; pride and hypocrisy are surely worse” (John Stott, Same Sex Partnerships, pp. 11-12).

D.    We are all deficient in our knowledge of the gospel and its implications for our lives.

They that think they know the Gospel well enough bewray their ignorance; no man can be too evangelical, it will take all his life-time to get a legal temper destroyed, (The Works of Ralph Erskine, vol. 2, “Law-Death, Gospel-Life,” p. 27).

Reflection:

1.     All the problems and imperfections that we experience are failures to be   conformed to the gospel.

“As we begin the Christian life by placing our whole trust in the Christ of the gospel event, so in the same way we continue in the Christian life. The gospel not only brings us to the new birth and faith as Christians; it is God’s means of saving us totally. The gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16), and this means the whole of salvation for the whole person. Thus the gospel converts us, the gospel sustains us in the Christian life and brings us to maturity and the gospel brings us to perfection through our resurrection from the dead…All the problems and imperfections that we experience are failures to be conformed to the gospel. The only remedy that the New Testament prescribes for our problems is to bring our lives to conform to the gospel,” (Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan, pp. 47, 50).

2.     We must never assume that we know the gospel and its implications for our lives.

On the one hand, you have to unlearn many of your old, deep-rooted notions of how to become godly…On the other hand, you must pray earnestly to the Lord to teach you the true way of godliness…’Teach me, Oh Lord, the way of your statutes, and I shall keep them to the end’ (Psalm 119:5, 33)…May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God’ (2 Thessalonians 3:5),” (Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, p. 21).

© John Fonville

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