Well, it's a privilege and a pleasure to be with you tonight and through this weekend. In case you're wondering about the accent, it's called Educated Glasgow. I've told this to a number of people, but a few years ago I was preaching near Seattle and a little boy turned to his mother and asked, Mommy, is that man from China? not from China, but from Bonnie, Scotland. This isn't my first time in Virginia. It's a lovely state. It isn't Mississippi, but it's a lovely state with a great history. Doesn't go back very far, but it has a great history. But it is a pleasure. And as I said, a privilege to be with you over this weekend. Two brief readings. First of all, in the first letter of John, the first four verses. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it. and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us, that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. And two verses in the eighth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, Romans chapter eight, reading at verse 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. for those who are called according to his purpose. And what is God's purpose for all his people? That those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. I've entitled these addresses over the weekend, The Gospel Shaped Life, and that was not in any sense to promote the book that I wrote with that title. Ryan asked me to speak on this theme, but it is an appropriate theme because every Christian life is purposed by God to be a gospel shaped life. In his letter to the Romans in chapter 6, verse 17, Paul writes that God has provided us with a template, with a form, with a mold, literally, into which he is pouring his people. He has provided us a mold of teaching that we are to be modeled after. And all of us here tonight are very different, different in our backgrounds, temperaments, perhaps nationalities, different in our upbringings, different in our gifts and abilities. But God's purpose for every single one of us is singular. And that is to pour our lives into this mold of teaching, as Paul puts it, to which we have been committed. The Christian life is to be shaped and styled by a particular mold. And that mold, of course, is the gospel. But if we were to then ask ourselves, well, what exactly is the gospel? The New Testament is absolutely insistent that the gospel is Jesus Christ himself. He is the gospel. The gospel is not simply a set of propositions, though it is propositional. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, is himself the gospel. The gospel comes to bring us into union and communion with Jesus Christ. And that's why I read those few verses in Romans chapter 8. God's ultimate purpose for all his people is to conform us to the likeness of his son. He is the mold of teaching to which we have been committed and to which we are being conformed. Perhaps you are here tonight and you're wondering about your life. decisions you have to make. Maybe you're concerned that you'll make the right decision and not the wrong decision. What you need to understand is that God's ultimate purpose for your life and for every other Christian life, not just in this room, but in all of this wide world, is to conform you to the likeness of his son, Jesus Christ. But in order to rightly understand that, we need to understand the latter half of Romans 8 29, because God's ultimate purpose does not terminate on you or on me. The gospel is not first for you or for me. We are being predestined into the likeness of Jesus Christ in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. That is to say, you and I are God's proximate purpose. The Lord Jesus is the father's ultimate purpose. The gospel is ultimately for the glory of his son. It is, of course, for our eternal blessedness. It is, of course, for our redemption and salvation. But ultimately, God's Omega Point, His Terminus, is not your blessedness and mine, but the exalted eternal glory of His Son, Jesus Christ. You and I are saved to be creaturely analogues, creaturely representations of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that in no sense means that we will become clones of one another. The Lord's dealings with us are profoundly idiosyncratic. He has made us vastly different from one another. There is a glorious variegatedness to the Church of Jesus Christ. And within the particularity of our own humanity, our God is at work conforming us. to the likeness of his son, Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate gospel shaped life. His is the life, the template that God is seeking to conform us to. John Calvin, the great Geneva reformer, would often refer to the Holy Spirit's ministry of replication. He would come and take the template of the holy humanity that he first etched in the life of the Lord Jesus and take that template and overlay it idiosyncratically on all of our lives and pattern us after the likeness of his best friend, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. And so the great purpose of the gospel is to make us like our elder brother, Jesus Christ. Let me begin by asking you a question. If I were to ask you tonight, what do you think is the greatest hindrance in your Christian life? What is it that most holds you back from being the Christian you long to be. What is the biggest roadblock, hindrance, obstacle that keeps you from being all that you would long to be to the praise and glory of your savior Jesus Christ? What would your answer be? Just think for a moment. What is the greatest hindrance to my growing up into Jesus Christ? John Owen, the great English Puritan, was in no doubt whatsoever what the greatest hindrance is. He says our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is our lack of acquaintedness with our privileges. Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack of effort, our lack of understanding as such. Our greatest hindrance is our lack of acquaintedness with our privileges. And in these addresses on the gospel shaped life, it's my intention above all to highlight the richness of our blood bought privileges in our Lord Jesus Christ. That would be my great goal for myself. and for yourselves. There isn't a day I do not in one way or another cry out to the Lord, Lord, remind me again, remind me again of the richness, the vastness, the glory, the beauty, the immensity, the infinity of the privileges that you have lavished upon me in your son, Jesus Christ. And I have little doubt that The greatest of those privileges is that God in his son Jesus Christ has come to adopt us as his children into his family. John Owen, and you'll be hearing a little bit about John Owen throughout a number of these addresses. I've been influenced in my Christian life As a friend of mine put it by four Johns, the Apostle John, John Calvin, John Owen and John Murray. And you'll hear a little bit about Owen and Calvin tonight and God willing tomorrow. But Owen writes in one place that in the gospel, God brings us into communion with himself, with his son and with his spirit. That's why we read those verses in 1 John. Our communion, our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has come to rescue us from a lost and a ruined eternity. He has come to bring us back to God. and in bringing us back to God to bring us into vital living heart communion or fellowship with God Himself. And Owen goes on to say that that communion that we have which is of course bottomed upon, grounded upon our union with Jesus Christ, that that communion with God is a communion that is exercised in the reality of our adoption as his sons and daughters. In his second volume of his collected writings, there are 16 volumes in all, plus the seven volumes on the letter to the Hebrews. Owen writes in volume two, somewhere around, oh, I don't know, page 32 or so. He writes that the highest privilege that God gives to us in the gospel, the highest privilege, is that he adopts us as his children into his family. And in saying that, Owen is echoing, of course, what John Calvin, a hundred or so years before, wrote so magnificently in the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin speaks there about piety, heart religion. And Calvin says it is because heart religion, true piety, pietas as he calls it, is carried out in communion with God, The highest aspect of it, the profoundest dimension of it is familial. We are not only lifted out of the dust, we are not only brought from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the son of God's love, we are actually brought into the family of the living God. and can call him who made the heavens and the earth our father who art in heaven and do so because of our union with his son now our elder brother the Lord Jesus Christ and Calvin goes on to say that the first title of the spirit by which he means the the highest title accorded to the Holy Spirit is, says Calvin, the spirit of adoption. The spirit of adoption. John Owen, towards the end of his quite remarkable exposition in volume two of his writings on communion with God, speaks about the privileges that adoption brings to every single believer. Some of you may know Volume 2 of Owen's writings. If you haven't, then let me encourage you to read it. Owen's not as difficult as some people make out. He can be a little overly Latinate in his English sentences. He's got subordinate clause after subordinate clause. Once you get into the rhythm of Owen, he just sweeps you along. And when you read John Owen, you wonder why you bother reading anyone else. And in that remarkable second volume of his writings, Owen is explicating the believers communion with God, the Holy Trinity. And he does so in a way that no one in the history of the church had done before him. Owen recognises that. In the preface he says, I'm about to write something that I don't think anyone in the previous 1600 years of church history had actually written about. And what he does, and some of you will know this, is that he speaks about the believers communion with the father in love, with the son Jesus Christ in grace and with the Holy Spirit in comfort. And Owen understands that when you read the New Testament, something very striking occurs to you before long. Almost every time God's love is mentioned almost always, but not always, and this is important, but almost always it is predicated of the father. God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. That's the love of a father. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4 10. That's again the father. Now, Owen is not saying that the father alone loves us, but he says by way of eminency, love is predicated of the father. And then he goes on to say that by way of eminency, grace is almost always predicated of the son. Whenever you read about the grace of God, almost always, but not always. It is the son. Who is in the forefront, think, for example, just the doxology at the end of 2 Corinthians 13, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion or fellowship with the Holy Spirit be with you. And it's the same with the Holy Spirit, he says, the believer has communion with the Holy Spirit by way of eminency in his comfort. in his ministrations of blessing and support to us as we pilgrim our way through the believing life from this world to the life to come. Owen wants us to understand that the gospel shaped life is a life that is contoured by the believers communion or fellowship. with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The gospel-shaped life is essentially Trinitarian, Owen is saying. And this is something that is quite remote, I think, so sadly to many evangelical Christians. We do not instinctively think in Trinitarian terms. I think it's quite remarkable looking at the hymnology of today compared to the hymnology, for example, of the first five centuries. I don't know of one hymn written in the first five centuries of the Christian era. I don't know of one hymn that isn't explicitly Trinitarian. Now, there may well be, I just don't know of any. But if you look at most conservative, even reformed, hymnals today. You'll get many great and glorious hymns about God, but there'll be a tiny section on the Holy Trinity. But God is Trinity. He is the God who is three in his oneness and one in his threeness. And Owen and Calvin before him want us to understand that the believing life The life of faith in Jesus Christ is a gospel shaped life that has a definite Trinitarian cast to it. And that Trinitarian cast is explicated for us, portrayed to us, outlined for us in the relationship we have with God in Jesus Christ as his sons and daughters. When Owen comes to flesh out the contours of the life of communion with God as his adopted children, he writes this, now adoption is the authoritative translation of a believer by Jesus Christ from the family of the world and Satan into the family of God. Now, notice this with his investiture in all the privileges and advantages of that family. with all the privileges and advantages of that family. And for the next 15 pages or so from page 207, I think, to page 222, Owen sets before us some of the privileges and advantages that belong to our adoption as his sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. And what I simply want to do, that's the introduction, what I simply want to do for the remainder of our time initially this evening, is just to touch on six of the delineating features that Owen highlights features that, for me at least, contour the essence of the believing life, the gospel shaped life. So let me just highlight these six features. Number one, in Jesus Christ, we have fellowship in name. We have fellowship or communion in name, says Owen. We are, as Jesus is, sons of God. Remember the opening words of the address this evening. Our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack of effort. But our lack of acquaintedness with our privileges and supreme among our privileges. Is this that we are as Jesus Christ is sons of God. Now, he is the son of God by nature. And we are the sons and daughters of God by adoption. But we both with him bear that glorious name, Sons of God. You know, of course, in the New Testament that females to Corinthians 7 are called daughters. But the reason why we are together called sons, of course, is that he is elevating womanhood. Because in New Testament times, it was the male heir who received all the privileges and all the blessings. If you were not a male, you were a second class citizen. You could inherit nothing. But with the gospel coming. Women are embraced in the privileges and blessedness of the gospel and supreme among them. is that like the Son of God by nature, we have the right to call God our Father. And perhaps supreme in that is the wonder that we have, because we are His children, we have this grace of unfettered access into the presence of the living God. The story is told around the year 1910 in England of a little boy who some of you may have been to Buckingham Palace where our Queen lives and she could still be your Queen if you hadn't rebelled in 1776. But this little boy who had heard of Buckingham Palace had come and he was peering through the railings, just longingly admiring this magnificent building. And a stranger came up to him, now children don't ever talk to strangers, but this strange man came up to him and said, would you like to go in? Oh, said the little boy, I would love to go in, but they don't let in the likes of me. Oh, he says, take my hand. And he took the stranger's hand. and they walked through the great gates and the soldiers stood to attention, they saluted and the little boys looking around marvelling and they enter the courtyard and then they come to the great doors that open out into the very heart of Buckingham Palace and they swung open and he walked in with a stranger. The little boy didn't know that it was the son of the king who had taken him by the hand. All he could do was just marvel at the wonder that he had access. We have fellowship in name, says Owen. What a privilege we have. We need to learn to meditate and ponder and marvel. That we who were once not only children of dust, but rebel, judgment-deserving, hell-deserving sinners, that we are now in union with Jesus Christ and have fellowship in name with Him as the sons of the Most High God. But then secondly, says Owen, we have fellowship in title and right. And he's thinking of Romans 8, 17, where Paul writes that we are heirs together with Christ, joint heirs with Jesus Christ of the glory of God. I really don't know what that means. I probably preached on that one verse as part of a series of verses in Romans 8, but I've never ever been able to in any sense satisfactorily expound or explain in any way what that can mean. What can it possibly mean for the likes of people like me and you? What can it possibly mean that we should be joint heirs with Jesus Christ of the glory of God? Joint heirs, heirs together with him, not secondary heirs. but joint heirs with Jesus Christ of God and his glory. You can walk through the streets of Hampton tomorrow and probably people will never give you a second glance, but all heaven is looking at you marveling, marveling that you are an heir together with the son of God, of the glory of God. We think so little of ourselves. Now, in one sense, that's right. In another sense, we can walk through this world with our heads held high. Because of what we are by virtue of our union with Jesus Christ, we didn't deserve it, we didn't desire it, we didn't ask for it. But God, in his grace, has granted it to us. Someone might say to you next week as you talk to them, who do you think you are? Well, it wouldn't be a thing to say this to them. I'm a joint heir with Jesus Christ of the glory of God. Now, they might want to lock you up, but they might say, well, tell me more about this. I didn't know that Christianity was that exalted. What does that mean? We have fellowship in name, we have fellowship in title and right. And thirdly, says Owen, we have fellowship in likeness and conformity. That is to say, we have been predestined to be like the firstborn of the family. That's God's will for your life tonight. Maybe you're at a crossroads in your life and you're not sure what to do, where to go, who to marry or whatever it may be. You're at some kind of crossroads. Well, here is the plumb line that you bring to every decision in life. Will this further God's eternal predestinating purpose for me to make me more like his son, my savior, Jesus Christ? We have fellowship in likeness and conformity. Now, later on this evening, God willing, we'll see a little more about what that means, but If I were to ask you tonight, when you think about the Lord Jesus, what is it you think about? What is it that so marked his life as we find it set before us, for example, in the Gospels? What is it that most strikes you about Jesus? What is it that we are being conformed to in that likeness? Well, perhaps just to anticipate what I hope to say later, it's surely this, that he came into the world not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. The whole course of his life from womb to tomb was a course dominated by heart obedience to his father in heaven. He came to be the servant of the Lord. And the great conforming ministry of the Holy Spirit is to take that template of holy heart obedience and overlay it on our lives. So that when people look at you or look at me, they will see some pale, faint reflection of something and someone infinitely greater. I came to faith in Jesus Christ through a boy at school. I was towards the end of my high school. I'd never met a living Christian, wasn't raised in a Christian home. There wasn't a Bible in my house. Neither of my parents ever went to church. My mother was a lapsed Roman Catholic. My father was nothing. There was a boy at school. Now, later he would say to me, he often witnessed to me. I don't remember him ever speaking to me about Jesus, though I'm sure he did. But I remember the impact his life had on me. He just lived differently from anyone I'd ever known. Now, from this vantage point, I can look back and say, I saw the lineaments of Jesus Christ in him. I would never have known what those words meant then. If someone asked me, what do you think about Albert? I wouldn't be saying, oh, I see the adumbrations of likeness to Jesus Christ. I would have said, he's a bit odd. And then slowly but surely I moved from saying and thinking he's a bit odd to he's just a little different. And then over time I began to think I would love to have what he's got. I hadn't a clue what it was. I hadn't a clue. Eventually he took me to a dispensational Baptist church. There are two kinds of churches where I come from. Catholic churches and Protestant churches. It was a church and it wasn't Roman Catholic. That was all I knew. And someone said to me, God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son and everything in an instant made sense to me. But it was the lineaments, the likeness of Jesus that so impacted my life. We have fellowship in likeness and conformity. And then fourth is his own. We have fellowship or communion in honor. And he's thinking about Hebrews 2.11, one of the most remarkable verses in the whole Bible. I hope you know it. He is not ashamed to call us his brothers. Now, many commentators tell us that this is a figure of speech called Laetotes, that what Paul is, Paul, I tend to think Paul actually wrote Hebrews, but most of my friends just think I've got a screw loose, but I have a sneaking suspicion. But anyway, the writer says, the writer says, what he's really saying is Jesus Christ is proud to call us his brothers. I don't think that's what the writer is saying at all. I think he's saying to these Hebrews that the world was excoriating, dismissing, persecuting. These Hebrew Christians who had experienced suffering and cost because of their faith in Jesus as the Messiah. I think he's saying this, this world looks down on you with shame. But the Son of God isn't ashamed of you. I think the same thing is happening in Romans 1, 16 and 17. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel. And most commentators say, really, this is litotes. He's really saying, I'm proud of the gospel. Now, Paul was proud of the gospel. I don't think that's what he's saying there. He's saying to these Romans, you live in an empire that looks down on you. That thinks you mad. They're ashamed to be seen with you. And they think the gospel, well, what do the Jews think? What do the Greek and Roman world think? Foolishness, absurdity, barbarism. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Yes, I'm proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it. We have fellowship in honor. He is not ashamed to call us his brethren. I think that's a remarkable thing. The next time you're feeling overwhelmed with life, the next time Satan comes and is telling you what a miserable Christian you are, You know, the best thing to say is you don't know the half. But my saviour does, and he's not ashamed to call me one of his. And then says Owen, fifthly, we have fellowship in sufferings. He learned obedience by what he suffered. And every son, says Owen, is to be scourged that has received. You see, the second half of Romans 8, 17, when it says we are heirs together with Christ, joint heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him. And Owen is saying that the gospel shaped life is of necessity, a life that will be shaped and styled and marked in one degree or another by suffering. You cannot be united to the one who suffered and not share in his sufferings. I bear in my body, he said, the marks of the Lord Jesus. The gospel shaped life. is often a life that's shaped in the crucible of life's afflictions. Maybe some of you know that tonight. You're thinking, Ian, how right you are. My life has been a catalogue of difficulties and trials and afflictions and unexpected sore providences. Brothers and sisters, in all of this, your Heavenly Father loves you and is conforming you to the likeness of His Son. The Lord Jesus Christ learned obedience through the things he suffered. It's one of the most astonishing statements in the whole Bible. In his holy humanity, he could not learn obedience in any other way. And we have the privilege of filling up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, as Paul puts it. for the sake of his body, the church? I'm sure your experience is much like mine, that the Christians who have most impacted my life for good in this world have almost uniformly, if not uniformly, but almost uniformly been those who have suffered most, who know what it is to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, who understand not notionally but experientially the cost of belonging to the Son of God. We have fellowship in sufferings and then finally says Owen, we have fellowship in his kingdom. And he quotes Revelation 5.10, we shall reign with him. The gospel shaped life has an omega point. an ultimate point. And that ultimate point is that we shall reign with Him, we shall be seated with Him, who is the Lamb in the midst of the throne. And He will make us a kingdom and priests to our God and we shall reign on the earth. Was His own That's what the gospel shaped life looks like. And that's why he's so right, isn't he, when he says our greatest hindrance in the Christian life is not our lack of effort, though God knows we do lack effort, but our greatest hindrance is not our lack of effort. It's our lack of acquaintedness with our privileges. Now, some of you young, young men in the front row here, you live in a world where You're being deluged with wickedness in every conceivable ways and ways I knew nothing about at your age. I listened to an eminent Christian tell me recently that over 50% of men in churches like this are engaging in internet pornography. I remember thinking, are you serious? That many? What's going to guard your heart? What's going to keep you from saying or thinking, I'll just try it for a moment. The thing that will most guard your heart and guard your mind is pondering the privileges that God has blessed you with in his son, Jesus Christ. I sometimes wonder what Joseph was actually thinking when Potiphar's wife seeks to seduce him in Genesis 39. You know, life has been unimaginably hard for Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, abandoned by his family, far from home. Life has just been one catalogue of miseries and then life seems to turn for the better. He ends up in the household of Potiphar. He has a semi-responsible position and he has a life of at least some meaning lying before him. And along comes Potiphar's wife and says, sleep with me, You could imagine, couldn't you? The little voices in Joseph's head saying, well, Joseph, grasp life while you can. Your family have given up on you. Your God has abandoned you. And what was Joseph's response? How can I do such a thing? and sin against God. I'd love to ask him, please God, one day I shall. Joseph, what exactly was in your mind? I have a thought that was in his mind. Tell me, when you said, how can I do such a thing and sin against God? What did you actually mean by that? Hebrew narrative is very frustrating. You read the Bible at times and you want to say, stop, stop, stop. Don't, don't hurry on. Stop. I want to fight. You don't need to know that. Hebrew narrative is really, really frustrating. Never stops, almost never stops to give you moral lessons to learn. It leads you to join up the dots. But I want to ask Joseph, Joseph, was this what was in your mind? How can I sin against Yahweh, the God of covenant grace and mercy, who came to my family, came to my forebears, made us his own, called us out of our darkness into his marvelous light, gave us a glorious promise that one day someone would come from the seed of woman and crush the serpent's head. I know life's been hard for me, but God is God. I just would love to know what was in his mind at that time. I'll close with this. I said this recently, so maybe some of you have heard this before, but I would guess most Christians know the letter to the Ephesians quite well. How many chapters does it have? Someone quickly shout out. Six chapters. How many commands in the first three chapters? How many imperative verbs, if you're more into grammar? One. How many imperative verbs in the next three chapters? I think it's 42. One command in chapters 1 through 3 and 42 in 4 through 6. Why is that? Well, for this reason, of course. Paul wants these Ephesians to understand that the gospel is principally, pre-eminently and principially about what God has done, not what we are to do. The first imperative verb in the letter to the Romans is halfway through chapter 6. You get to chapter 6 verse 11 of Romans before you find a command. It's very remarkable, isn't it? Because the gospel shaped life is lived out of who God is and what God has done. That's the foundations and the shape of the gospel shaped life is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So, part one of The Gospel-Shaped Life. Let's pray. Our God and Father, we bow in your presence to bless you tonight that you have come to us in your Son, And you have come to us, Lord, not only to rescue us from a lost and a ruined eternity. You have come not only, Lord Jesus, to pardon all our sin. But you have come to make us heirs together with yourself of the glory of God. You have come, Lord, that we might be conformed to your likeness, that you might be the firstborn among many brothers. And so we come, Lord, as your children here tonight to pray that you would mould and make us more like our Saviour. Our greatest shame is that we live lives so unlike our Lord Jesus Christ. And so we pray, Holy Spirit, come and overlay afresh on our lives tonight the likeness of your best friend, our Savior, Jesus Christ. And we ask it in his name. Amen.