There's nothing more wonderful than a creature can do than to seek and save the lost, to fill the church with sinners converted. And this is all our work for the salvation and the sanctification of sinners. how kind God is to reach down and snatch us out of the waters. This is the work that our brother Paul Washer has dedicated himself to, and he has with him at this conference the HeartCry US staff. And if you are part of HeartCry, would you please stand? Anyone part of HeartCry, stand. They're there, I guess. Yes. Thank you so much. We've identified them by the name of heart cry underneath their city. So if you see anybody with heart cry on their name tag, they just be really nice to them. Just be super nice to them. You know, tell them you love them. Throw your arm around them or something and pray for them, that God would give them strength in the midst of the trials and the battles that they're in the midst of. And pray for HeartCry Missionary Society. It's a blessed ministry that I'm confident many of us have been helped by and improved by. I'm just so grateful for their work and I pray that they're their servants would be so blessed and fruitful that they would multiply in every possible way that God has designed for fruitfulness and multiplication. And their fearless leader, Paul Washer, is here to come and help us to attempt to plumb the depths of this glorious gospel with the desire to teach all things that Christ has commanded until he comes again. Paul Washer. Before I get started, I would just like to thank those who did the worship. It reminded me of something that happened to me last year. I was actually in Europe and I was teaching at a secular university and I noticed that a lot of the girls came in My heart just immediately went out to them, 19, 20 year old girls, in much of European fashion, some of them with pink and purple hair and grunge and earrings in every part of their body and so on and so forth. And before I began the lecture, I asked them the question, is our generation the generation that has destroyed beauty. Have we seen in our generation the death of beauty? And then I asked them something that may seem to you rather secular, but I asked them, I said, how many of you girls here in the audience tonight have ever seen BBC's version of Pride and Prejudice? And so many of the girls raised their hand. And I said, now, let me ask you a question. And before you answer, I just want you to think about it and I want you to be sincere. How many of you, after you saw that movie, had a sense of melancholy come over you, a sense of sadness, a sense of woundedness and hurt? And after a while, even what seemed to be the most hardened among the girls sheepishly went Yes. And I said, why? Could it be that our culture knows nothing of that which is precious? Has lost the idea of beauty, of femininity, of masculinity, has taken all the precious terms of the gospel, such as simplicity, beauty, refinement. Excellence has taken those terms and turned them into luxury, luxury, sensuality, extravagance. And I told him, I said, you live in a culture that has witnessed the death of beauty, because as a culture gets further and further away from God, it becomes a culture of death. of moral filth, of ugliness, of that which is scraped off the inside of a tomb. And it's true. That's why I believe that when you talk about a reformation, if we're going to be historical, the reformation, I believe, begins with soteriology. I believe it finds its way then into such things as church and family. Much of what was good about Europe before its great departure from Christ did not come from some cultural thing of Europeans. Let's just face it. Prior to the advent of Christianity in Europe, most of our forefathers were running around naked, painting themselves blue and eating one another. But it was Christianity that brought a sense of beauty, of hiddenness, of all the things we consider to be virtue. I want all of you young people to think about that. We have no desire here for a nasty, rigid legalism, but we do have this desire that the beauty of Christ would prevail in every aspect of our own personal lives, our family and our society. Some of you may have come here and you're just all about legalistic rules and rigidness. I want you to know I'm not. I'm about God's wisdom and the beauty of God's law and the essence about the the fruit of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control about the magnificence of the Beatitudes lived out in the soul of a man. That's what we're looking for, isn't it? An inner working of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is our heritage and inheritance as Christians, as part of this great thing that God has done now. I don't know why it is, but anytime I'm in a conference such as this, my heart yearns for the young, for the youth, for for the children. for those who have now come out of childhood and are moving into adulthood, or maybe young adults. My desire that though you try so hard to live in a certain way, that you not miss the core of the gospel, which is the inner working of the Spirit of God that brings about a change in your nature. And that change in nature, you become a new creature which brings about a change of affections. And those affections drive you to God and to the wisdom of his word and the greatness of his law, not as some burdensome task, but as the most magnificent, joyful thing to be discovered and to be lived out. I want to be assured that you leave this place converted. soundly matched with Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit of God. It's my desire. I believe it's all our desires. I believe it's God's desire. I want to be assured that you are assured in the most biblical fashion possible that you are in Christ. Now, the question is, how can we determine whether or not we truly are in Christ? Well, there are many things that we would have to talk about tonight. We would have to look over your conversion experience and the gospel that supposedly led to that conversion experience. Were you told a gospel of a just God? And since he is just, It is impossible for Him to simply pardon unless first His justice is satisfied by an atonement. The Gospel that you heard at your conversion, did it tell you that on that tree, the perfect man, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, that your sins were imputed to Him and He suffered the wrath of Almighty God and with His death, He satisfied God's justice, appeased God's wrath, and made it possible for the guilty sinner to come before the bar of God and be pardoned. Fully pardoned because his sins have been atoned for. Is that the gospel that you knew? Were you told of a gospel of a resurrection, one that did not end in the tomb, but a glorious proclamation that this Jesus who died for our sins, the power of his death has been confirmed by his father who raised him from the dead on the third day, that he is ascended to the right hand of almighty God. And there he reigns, not as a future Lord, but as the present Lord of glory. My dear friend, there is a sense in which nations still abide. They still exist. But there is another sense in which all nations are nothing more than a cut flower. Because there is truly, in a sense, only one nation, only one people, only one king, and that king is Jesus Christ. Everyone else. plays games at his footstool. They call themselves governors and kings and presidents, but they play at his footstool as little children, for he alone is king. And his sovereignty rules over the nations. And if that sovereignty rules over the nations, then most assuredly it rules over the hearts of his people. Is that the gospel that you heard? Was it a gospel that commanded you by the authority of God to repent of your sins, to change your mind? You say, brother, Paul, just repentance is just change my mind. Isn't that rather superficial? Absolutely not. Your problem is you don't understand what the mind is. The mind is the very core of of your will, of your volition, of your emotions. To change your mind is to change absolutely everything about you. As I was sharing earlier today, the perfect illustration of repentance is the Apostle Paul. What happened to him on the road to Damascus? One thing, he changed his mind. Imagine this, this man takes off. to Damascus. He believes that Jesus Christ is possibly the greatest blasphemer that ever lived. And he believes that those who are his followers, that they are at best worthy of prison and at worst, they are worthy of death. And yet he is confronted by the Christ on that road. And in that moment, his mind changed. And that is the reason that for three days he sat in the darkness, neither eating nor sleeping. Why? His entire reality was totally and completely disintegrated and completely replaced with the very opposite of everything he had thought before. Now he knew that the one he called a blasphemer was God the King, the Son of God. And that the people he was killing were the very people of the most high God. That's repentance. His mind changed. And we see the power of a changed mind for that changed mind led to a changed life. The gospel that you heard preached, did it tell you of the power of salvation, that salvation is not merely a human decision? Let me share something with you. If justification is brought forth from just the decision of a man, then sanctification will rest upon another decision of a man. And that's what people believe today. Well, I was saved because I made the right choice, but I did not go on into sanctification because I didn't continue making the right choices. My dear friend, that's not true. That's absurd. I want you to know that your salvation, your repentance, your faith is a result of the new birth. This magnificent recreating work of the spirit of God that made you a new creature and being a new creature. It is assured that you will now follow him. Why? Your nature has been changed to be conformed to his. Thus, your affections are poured out upon him and your will is controlled by those affections that drive you to Christ. Your heart now belongs to him. You want nothing but him. You want nothing but his law, his wisdom, his word. Oh, what a mighty God with a mighty salvation. That's what we have here today. Is that the gospel that you heard? And did you hear this kind of gospel that if any man be in Christ? He is a new creature. This is more than just the change of the will. We're dealing now with ontology, the very changing of nature, of being. You become a new creature. This is not biblical poetry. This is biblical truth. This is not merely a promise to be hoped in. It is a reality in the most, the tiniest, newest child of God. They have become a new creature. A new creation. I believe that's why the Gospel of John begins with, in the beginning, he's telling us about this new work that's going to happen that is greater than any creation of any universe that's ever been created. That if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. That's the power of salvation. But then we go on to the providence of salvation. He who began a good work in you will finish it. He will not let you go. This is one of the most amazing truths of Christianity and one of the greatest evidences that you have truly been born again is that the providence of God in your life is inescapable. He is working in teaching, in blessing, in disciplining, in all things. He is working. To do what? To conform you to the image of his son, Jesus Christ. Everyone says they agree with that, but they believe that this transformation will occur in the eschaton. It will occur only on the last day. That men are basically justified, live their entire life in the broad way, in abject carnality and rebellion. And then in the last moment, God changes them. Absolutely not. Salvation is past tense. By faith and faith alone, sola fide, we were justified. But the God who justified us in past tense is now sanctifying us in present tense. He is constantly working. You see, this is not some side note with God. This is the passion of God to work in an existent people, changing them while they are on this earth in order to be a testimony to his power. And then finally comes that great and future glorification. great glorification when Christ returns, we're raised from the dead. There is a sense in which man only has two problems. I want you to understand this clearly. The first problem of man is the condemnation of sin. The second problem of man is the power of sin. Condemnation of sin was taken care of in our justification. There is therefore now no condemnation. Why? Because of Christ. Because of our own virtue and merit? Absolutely not. Because of the virtue and the merit of the person of Jesus Christ, we stand before God, righteous in the righteousness of Christ. So the condemnation of sin has been done away with in those who believe in Christ. But what about the power of sin? Well, the condemnation of sin is taken care of in the doctrine of justification. The power of sin is taken care of in the doctrine of regeneration and that we become new creatures. No, I'm not saying that the Christian can attain some level of spirituality in which he's removed from sin or even the struggle of sin. Absolutely not. But what I am telling you is that through the doctrine of regeneration, we become new creatures with new desires that live a different way, with a new inclination toward the things of God, toward godliness. And when we move away from that inclination, we are struck by the Holy Spirit. We are struck, we are struck and made nauseous by our own sin, and we must return to Christ because we are his. We are his. And it is on the basis of this that the Apostle Paul can come to the church in Second Corinthians. Let's turn there. Chapter 13. And say the following. Now, Second Corinthians, chapter 13, verse five. Now, we all know that the church in Corinth is famous for many, many things of which I am sure they would not now be proud. But how on earth anyone, any preacher in his right mind or in good conscience could take this church and use it as a defense for the carnal Christian, I cannot understand. Because as a matter of fact, in these two letters, we do not see a defense of the carnal Christian, that someone can actually be saved and live their entire life in carnality. Rather, we see that doctrine refuted. How? We see this. In that first letter and in this second letter, we do not see these believers throughout the full course of their life. We see a moment in time in which sin had struck to the core of the church. Does it mean that it continued on that way forever? No, we see great repentance there, don't we? We see a great zeal for a hatred of sin and a return to God. You see, a believer can trespass, a believer can fall into sin, but the grace of God, the power of God, the very nature of regeneration will not allow that believer to stay there. He will come forth. He will bear fruit 30, 60 and 100 fold. He will. And that's why Paul can say, looking at a church in which some of the people had become wayward, he tells them this test yourselves to see if you are in the faith, examine yourselves, or do you not recognize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you fail the test. Now, what he is doing here is almost unknown in the modern evangelical community. If someone came to a a preacher today and said, I'm not sure if I'm saved, the great majority of preachers would do this. They would say, well, let me ask you a question. Was there ever a point in time in your life when you prayed and asked Jesus to come into your heart? Yes. Well, were you sincere? Well, I think so. Well, then look. Christ is in you. He promised to come in you. This is just the devil bothering you. If I had a dime for every time. I've heard that we could support every needed missionary in the 1040 window, it's true. Or I'll hear people say something like this. A child that has been in the church for a time, even made a profession of faith in the church and seemed to walk for a time in submission to God and His law, and his parents at 16 or 17 breaks away like a wild colt bolting from a stall, lives in total immorality, and his pastor and his parents go to him and say something like this. You're a Christian. And you need to start acting like one. You shouldn't act like this. You are a believer. That is not the way the Apostle Paul would have dealt with such a person. But he would have said this. Test yourself. Examine yourself to see if you are in the faith. He would have said, be diligent to make your calling and election sure. Examine your life in light of scripture to see if there is any reflection of the life of God. And then Paul, I am assured, would have warned that man. If you continue on, young man, in this course, It does not mean you have lost your salvation. It means that you are giving evidence that your salvation has been false from the very beginning. Now, how do we test our lives? What standard do we use where we can examine ourselves to see if we truly are in the faith? Now, should we compare ourselves by ourselves? No, Paul says that isn't wise. Should we compare ourselves with other Christians? No, because we may compare ourselves with a person who professes Christ and yet is ungodly, and we might find in them an assurance that is false. Should we compare ourselves by some mature and outstanding Christian in the congregation? No, because maybe they have many, many years in the faith and we will fall into a false condemnation, even though we are truly believers. What should we do? We should go to Scripture. And we have a magnificent book to give us biblical assurance with regard to salvation. And I want us to turn there for just a moment to First John, chapter five, verse 13. The Apostle John does something marvelous for us when he writes his gospel. He tells us why he writes it. And why does he write the gospel? That we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, that we might have eternal life. Well, now John takes us in this first epistle and at the end of it in chapter five, verse 13, he says something absolutely astounding, very informative. He says, these things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you will know that you have eternal life. Now, we need to be very careful here. John has not written this epistle in order to try to convince people that they are lost. No. What has possibly happened in this church is a group of false prophets have come in and the true believers are beginning to waver in their salvation. And since these super spiritual leaders were far beyond anyone else in their own words, it's possible that many of these simple, beautiful children of God were beginning to waver, to doubt whether they were even converted. And so this book, is designed to give us a biblical assurance of salvation. Yet at the same time, it plays an opposite role in this book. We can also possibly begin to see. Is it right with my soul compared to the evidences given to me in the word of God, should I have the greatest confidence that I am a believer? Or should maybe a healthy gospel fear be mine that drives me to receive greater counsel from wise men, from the word, to examine myself more fully, to determine whether or not I'm truly a believer. And so that's what I want to do tonight. Now, obviously, I can't go through the entire book, but I do want to take some of the first tests of conversion and I want to lay them out before you. And it's an amazing thing. I preached this many years ago to a church, very typical evangelical church, and the pastor came up to me afterwards and he said, Paul, when you started preaching. Said, I thought I've got four or five women in this church that bear all the fruit of Christians. but they're constantly struggling with assurance. They're constantly feeble. They're constantly lacking in that great confidence that should be theirs. And I was terrified that your preaching on this matter would drive them into further doubt. I have never used First John in that way. I did not know that was the purpose of the book. And when you begin to preach, I began to look at the ladies and gradually I saw joy come over their faces and now look at them. They're back there right now in the back of the church rejoicing in such a way as I've never seen them rejoice. And I said, brother, that's because the word of God is that which gives us the confidence, the spirit of God working through the word of God and assuring our hearts that we have truly become the children of God. And I hope the same thing will happen to you. I hope that some of you who have maybe wrestled with assurance that you'll walk out of here tonight by the Word of God confirmed in the faith, but also at the same time, I hope that some of you may hear this message and be struck to the heart and maybe go sleepless for weeks until you find peace with God. I do that he would strike your heart even as far as something of a holy madness until you knew without a shadow of a doubt that you belong to him. Well, let's go and start at the beginning of the book in 1st John, chapter one. Verse five. This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Now, John uses darkness and light quite a bit, and it is proper to say that he is speaking about the holiness of God, the impeccability of God, the fact that God is is without sin. There is no spot. There is no blemish. There is no shadow in his character. All his works are perfect and just. But I think there's something else going on here also. It's very important to say what we know. We know something about these false teachers and they seem to be at least maybe the root of what later became Gnosticism. And it was a very esoteric religion, very dark. You never really knew where you stood or you had to have all these secret ideas and thoughts and you had to be initiated into the group to go up into higher and higher levels of knowledge. And so these simple believers would be concerned that they were nothing more than Well, immature spiritual creatures who had no chance of ever attaining such a high knowledge. But John comes and he says something very important to us. He says this. God is light. And I believe that this not only refers to the fact that God is holy, that God is without sin, but I believe there's a tinge of the idea of revelation here, that God is not a dark, esoteric God. He is not a hiding God from a seeking man, that God is light. He has made known. himself to men, especially through the person of Christ, that we know something about the nature and the works and the will of God. It is known. It's not hidden. And so he goes on and he says this. If we say we have fellowship with him now throughout this throughout this entire book, the meaning of this phrase, this type of terminology, if we say that we are Christian, If we say that we are children of God, if we say that we are born again, that's the idea here. He says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and yet we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Now, the idea here is this. If we say that we are Christian. And yet we live in darkness with regard to the revelation of God concerning his nature, his person and his will. We're lying in our confession. If we say that we are Christian and yet we live in a manner that contradicts what God has revealed to us about his nature and his will, we are lying when we make that confession. Now, let's go on. I want us to see something else. He says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, peripateo, It's talking about its present tense. It's a continuous action. It's talking about a style of life. And believers, you must grasp this or you'll fall into a false condemnation. John is not talking about a perfect walking in the revelation of God, but he's talking about a style of life that when you look at an individual through the course of their profession of faith in Christ, you can see that there is an inclination, a tendency, a lifestyle of seeking and actually walking according to the revelation of God concerning his person and his will. Let me give you an example. If you follow me around with simply a snapshot camera, a digital camera, not anything that would shoot any form of video, but just a digital camera with a snapshot and you followed me around, it wouldn't take long for you to find me in a moment of sin. Maybe I'm impatient, maybe I was short with someone, maybe I was lazy, something you would be able all of a sudden to follow me around in the moment that happened, you'd be able to take a snapshot, click. And then you could come here next year to this conference, put the picture on the wall and say, look, told you that Paul Washer was reprobate. I told you that he was unconverted. Look here, he is obviously not walking in the revelation of God's person and God's will. He's sinning. But see, that wouldn't be just and it's most certainly not what John is talking about. But if you followed me around for several days, weeks, months, maybe even years with a video camera going on continuously, you just followed me around and then you were able to play that video in its entirety, you would have a better picture of what John is talking about. He's not saying that the true believer in Christ never steps outside of what God has revealed about himself and his law. No, what he's saying is when you look at the full course of the believer's life, you can see this tendency and probably an ever increasing tendency to conform himself and his actions more and more to the nature and will of God. Now, my question for you is this. Is that a reality in your life? Now I want you to understand me when we talk about this. When we go up to the mountains, we kind of live in the mountains. But when we go farther up into the mountains, you know that we do not take a straight course. For example, it is not a going up without break or intermission, is it? But you go up in this way, you go up, you go down, you go up, you go down, you go up, you go down. But even there, even though there is a going up and there is a going down over the course, of the route, you're seeing a constant, ever increasing height in our travels. It's the same way in the Christian life. The God who began a good work and you will finish it. There will be great struggles with sin. There will be at times possibilities of even great fallings. But over the course of your life, as you walk with God, if you truly belong to Him as a child of God, people are going to see that in increasing measure, your life is being conformed more and more to what God has revealed about Himself and His will in the word of God. And that word of God will be such a strength to you and such a confirmation. Now, that's the first test. The child of God walks in the light as a style of life. Now, let's go on to an absolutely wondrous truth that follows that is so important, so perfect, the order of this, the next test. It's this. He says in verse eight, if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. I think that there is great evidence in this text to say that any idea of sinless perfection in the believer's life is simply wrong. What do we learn from this? How can this be a test of true conversion? The true believer will struggle with sin and experience many great victories over sin, but will also experience many disheartening defeats with sin. But now here is the difference in the life of the true believer. When he sins, It breaks his heart. The Spirit of God testifies against him and speaks highly of all the goodness of God in Christ for him. And it will lead that believer to a life of confession. I believe this is what Jesus is speaking about when he says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. You see, the Christian is identified by this, that it is difficult, ever increasingly, it is difficult for him to tolerate sin in his life, and that when he sins, when he falls in the struggle, it births confession. and asking for forgiveness, a greater reliance upon Christ, a clinging to Him. An unbeliever knows no such attitude towards sin. A believer, an unbeliever can sit in a church and be full of sin and hear sermons directed straight towards his conscience and not even be moved an inch. Isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing? This has happened so many times, and I've spoken with other pastors, and they have told me the same thing, that at times you will be preaching in a church, and every once in a while there is a very special, a very unique move of the Spirit of God. And I've seen it at times where I was preaching, and maybe over on this side, people would begin to weep. And then the weeping begin to pass and other people begin to weep and weep over their sins. And what's amazing, some people even getting out of their seats, even though I don't give an invitation, they're taught that way. They come forward in the midst of preaching and they're weeping. And you know what's the amazing thing? The people who come forward weeping with a broken heart over sin are the people that are known in the church to be the most devoted to Christ, the most sincere in their faith. And yet the most wicked, carnal, disturbing people in the church sit back there as though their conscience had no feeling, because surely it had no feeling. You see, what's being done here is a great judgment thrown of Christ in present tense. The sheep and the goats are being divided. The goats are the ones that sit back there with no mention of sin in their conscience. And the sheep are confessing their sins before God. Just the reverse of what the world would think. That's the believer. Let me give you an example, and I want to get on to more tests, but this is so important. Just to give you an idea of the change in nature of a believer. A man is unconverted. He's late for work. He's running out the door. It's snowing. He knows his boss is going to be mad at him. He hasn't done his homework as he should have done or his work for his business. He's running out the door. He comes to the door. He's about to open it up. His wife comes down, says, please take out the trash. He's so angry, turns around. He shouts at her, is very angry with her and walks out the door totally justified. He has no affliction of conscience whatsoever. He goes to work. He's at peace. He even comes home. He's still angry with her for even mentioning that he ought to take out the trash while he's had such a burden that day. Now, let's say that three weeks later, that man is converted and for the next eight months he begins to grow in Christ. And then again, it is winter. And the man rises late. He's late for work by accident. He's running out the door. He's nervous about a meeting that he has. He's all tense in every manner, shape, form and fashion. And at that moment, when he grabs the door handle, his wife comes down and says to him this, honey, can you take out the trash? And in that moment, without thinking, he reacts and he tells her, well, he tells her off. He is angry. He is he is vehement. He's just he's just wrong. But this is you say, well, what's the difference, Brother Paul? The moment he does that, he is struck in his heart. And you men know exactly what I'm talking. He is struck in his heart and he brushes it off. He's still angry. He walks out to the door, but he gets in his car. He is miserable. He's eaten up. He knows he was wrong. He knows he needs to get on the cell phone. He knows he needs to cancel the meeting, but he doesn't. He bucks up against it. He drives to work. He's there in the office trying to gather his thoughts. He cannot do it. He is miserable. He has sinned. It's like a voice screaming at him, you are wrong, you are wrong, you are wrong. And finally, he gets no peace. He calls his wife on the phone. He begs for forgiveness. She releases him and he feels peace. He cries out to God, forgive me, change me, make me a new man. That is evidence of conversion. He has become a new creature. He can no longer wallow in the sin. He is a higher being now in that sin makes him nauseous. He cannot feed upon it. He cannot justify it because he has been changed. And furthermore, the work of the spirit of God upon him, convicting him of sin. That is why when preachers tell you that in their church they do not mention sin, I can tell you the Holy Spirit has absolutely nothing to do with their ministry. Because one of the chief ministries of the Holy Spirit, that when He comes, He will convict the world of sin. And so this man is brought to confession. Do you see that in the Christian life, my dear friend, realize this? This is what I expect for myself. I hope if I live to be 90 years old. There will be something, well, I already know this paradox. I hope that when I am 90, I am so much more like Christ than I was when I was converted at 21. I hope that I am so radically transformed to be like Christ when I'm 90. But I can assure you that if I am, I will see more sin in my life than when I was 21. And although, because I see that sin, my mourning will be deeper, at the same time, my joy will be deeper, because the greater revelation of my sin does not hurt me to the point of affliction and death, because with that I also have a greater revelation of the grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and there's a transference in which my joy no longer comes from me and my virtue and merit, but it comes only from Christ and His virtue and merit. no longer hoping in anything but Christ, being made thousands of times more holy than when I first began and yet much more sensitive to sin than I could have ever imagined. Brother, that's the hope of the Christian life. He who began a good work in you will finish it. One of the greatest evidence of salvation is not that we are sinless, but it is our reaction towards sin. in our life. Now, let's look at another. It says in verse three of chapter two, by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. As a friend of mine says, brothers, to understand that. My goodness, it's not rocket surgery, he says. To understand that. Listen to what he says. By this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. And possibly you're out there right now saying, then I am doomed because I look at His commandments. I fall short of them. Again, understand what John is speaking of. He's speaking of a style of life. And it's within the context of what we know about sanctification. You see, the unbelieving man, though he be in the church, soundly resting in Zion, the unbelieving man cares not to know the will of God through the commandments. He does not want to hear them. He is ignorant of them in many ways. And even the commandments he knows, when he breaks them, he cares not. He's not afflicted in his conscience. He just goes on. He lives as one without law. And Jesus says in Matthew seven, thus he shall be condemned. But the true believer begins to grow and delight in God's commandments, delight in the wisdom and the precepts that are found in his law. throughout the full body of Scripture and gradually begins to grow in that delight and seeks to be conformed to those commandments. And throughout his life, you see an increasing deliverance of this person over to greater and greater obedience. You see just a simple change in direction in the believer's life. Where the unbeliever cared not for the commandments of God, the believer begins to grow in his affections for the commandments of God. Where the unbeliever cared not whether he was conformed or not, the believer, he mourns at his lack of conformity and presses on to greater conformity. He's inclined toward these commandments. It's amazing to me today, I honestly, I just don't understand the aversion of the evangelical community to God's law. I can't understand it. As a matter of fact, I can't even understand the unbelievers hatred of God's law. Let me give you an example. I was teaching again in Europe at this at this university, and someone made the mention that the law of God, it just binds us and does all these things. And I and they just did not like the law of God. So I asked the question to the students. I said, let me ask you a question. Just what part of God's law is it that you hate? Is it the part about you shall not lie? Is it the part that says don't steal another man's wife and destroy his family? Is it the part about not coveting so that there's no wars and murder among you? Just tell me what part of this law is so ugly to you. And if such things as I have just spoken are so ugly to you, what does that say about you? What kind of evil, vile, radically depraved creature are you that you would hate commandments that tells you to respect other people, not to lie to them, not to kill them, not to steal their wives? I don't understand. But it's the same way with the evangelical community. I began to talk about the law of God as a delight in my heart, and they're calling me a legalist. I said, what about this don't you love? What about the book of Proverbs? It makes you hate. And what is it in all this stuff? I just find it is beautiful. Do you find the law of God, his commandments, his wisdom? Do you go into the book of Proverbs and find something? Maybe you've read the book a hundred times, but all of a sudden you find something you've never seen before and you just get so excited. You're delighted in it. That's a mark of Christianity. But the type of Christianity that hates the law of God and hates the wisdom of God and looks for every possible loophole in the law of God in order to fill their Christianity with their fallen culture. If you're that type of person, be afraid. That on the day of judgment, you will stand naked before God and your entire life will be exposed and your soul will be cast into hell. because you were found to be one who claimed to be a disciple and yet lived as though God had never given a law to be obeyed. Do you delight in the law of God? Let's go on to another test quickly. It's one of my favorites. Verse six, the one who says he abides in him, in Christ, ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. Sometimes I'll say that and I'll see somebody on the front row just giving up all hope in salvation at that moment. What do you mean? Surely I have not converted. Walk as he walked. I have no hope. Let me just clear it all up with an illustration from my childhood. I was raised on a well, we raised Charlotte cattle and quarter horses and we were in Illinois. It snowed at times. And my dad would wake me up at about five thirty in the morning, just a little boy, maybe six years old. And he'd always say, Paul, boy, first Bible verse I ever memorized. Paul, boy, get up. No rest for the wicked. That's what he would say. And I'd go out there, and my dad was this huge man with a long stride, and we'd go out there, and we would water the animals, because the ice had frozen over. We'd bust the buckets, fill them up with water, and go off across the feedlot. He would have one bucket in one hand, another in the other hand, and take off across that snow with the largest stride you could ever imagine. Well, as a little boy, I just thought my dad, he was just my hero. I was scared of him, but he was still my hero. And I'd fill up my water bucket, and I was determined that when I walked across that feedlot, I would put my foot in his footprint, that I would do it. I looked like a drunken spider. I would fall down in the feedlot. If somebody on the outside had been staring at me as a little boy watching me do that, they would have maybe mocked me. They would have accused me. They would have scoffed at me. They would have made fun of me. But there wouldn't be one person who would be able to say that boy doesn't want to be like his dad. In all my flaunting and failures and stumbling and everything else, you could take a look at my life and you could see that little boy wants to walk in the steps of his father in the same way with the believer. And I've seen this countless times. Some young guy was like a bull in a china shop. He seems to do more wrong than good. But when you take a look at this young man, you can see something has happened in his life. And all he wants to do is walk like Jesus. Yes, he looks like a spiritually drunk spider, but there's no doubt in your mind. This boy honors Christ, esteems Christ and wants to be like Christ. You know him. You want to walk. And here's the great thing. The love of God. The safety net that gives us such boldness to take off and say, I will. Press on, I will enter in violently, I will walk like him because it mattered not how many times I fall. My father in heaven knows he has made me righteous and though a righteous man falls seven times, he will rise. It gives you that freedom to take off with no fear and walk like Him. Now, there's one more, and it's the only one we're going to have time to get to. It may be the most important, and it's this. He says, beloved, in verse seven, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in him and in you. It's true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Now, what is he talking about? He's talking about love. Now, how is love an old commandment and a new commandment? It's an old commandment. And I don't have to argue or debate this. Just read the book of Deuteronomy. You will find the love of God in that book. You find the love of God on every page of Scripture when it is read rightly. Love has always been a major player in God's economy. Love. And so it's old. He's always told us to love. But it's new. in that in the person of Jesus Christ, such an illustration and such a definition of love has been given to us that it is though we had never been told to love before. So magnificent, this Christian love that is to be ours. Now, he says it's true in Christ and he also says it's true in the believer. And then he says, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. And so he tells the believer it's true in Christ and it's true in you. And the believer looks at himself and says, how can it be true in me? And we see, I think the idea here of sanctification, the darkness is passing, the true light is shining, you're growing, you're learning to love, you're becoming more like Christ. And then he goes on and says in verse nine, the one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness. Until now, the one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. Now, this is where we get to the part of the church. Here, brother does not refer to the poor, even though we have plenty of passages in the Scripture that tell us to love the poor. Brother does not refer to someone from another race because there just so happens to be only one race. It's called the human race, but it doesn't refer to loving someone of another nationality, of another skin. Here, brother refers to the Christian. And what he is saying is this. The one who loves his fellow Christian abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates the believer, hates the child of God, is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. One of the greatest evidences of conversion is that you love the people of God. You love the people of God. Before I was converted, there was this place where I lifted weights and it was right across this very narrow street from the First Baptist Church. And when the Christians would go to church on Sunday, Sunday night or Wednesday, if I was in the gym lifting, I would many times open up the windows and the door and everything to the gym, and I would turn on the worst rock, heavy metal, whatever you could imagine just to bother them. My favorite was Highway to Hell by ACDC. And I just loved this. I don't even know why there was such antagonism in me. But when God saved me, I wanted to be in church. And if my church wasn't having a meeting, I wanted to go somewhere else that was. Look in the newspaper for a revival going on anywhere. I didn't care. After church, just sit back at the door hoping that an old couple would take me home and share with me something about the Scriptures. Your heart changes for the people of God. One of the greatest evidences That you are truly Christian is that you long to be with God's people in fellowship and practical service. I hear so many people say, well, I believe in Christ and I love God, but I'll not go into that church. It's full of hypocrites. And when they tell me that I figure they have thrown down the gauntlet and my proper response can only be this. Congratulations, you child of the devil, you're doing the work of your father, who was an accuser and a liar from the beginning. You stand outside the people of God and you spew your hatred at them. You are not Christian. In spite of all the problems that we have in church life, because in community and closeness and relationship, there's always going to be problems. But we cannot separate ourselves from the people of God. We love the people of God. And I know that people are always talking about where there's so much division in the body of Christ and all these things. I, for one, don't agree. Jesus prayed that we would be one. The New Covenant in Jeremiah 31 and chapter 32 talks about the oneness of the people of God. I believe we are one. I do. Because I have sat down on so many plains, walked through so many jungles, everything else, and come across someone I had never met in my life. And the moment we start talking, find out that they are a believer, see that it is evident they love Jesus. And at that moment, I would die for them because we're one. We're one. I love that person. That person loves me. We are in Christ. Now, I want to give you an example of how this works out and we'll close. But I also want to give you an example of how we can wrongly treat Scripture. Here, it says that one of the greatest evidences of conversion is our love for the people of God. Now, when we go over to Matthew 25, what do we find? We find the great judgment and the separation of the sheep and the goats. And in that, what does Jesus say? Well, to the sheep, he says, enter into the joy, enter into heaven. Why? Well, I was I was hungry and you fed me. I was naked, you clothed me, I was in prison, you visited me and so on and so forth. And then he he looks at the goats and he says this. He says, depart from me. Well, why? Well, I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was naked. You did not clothe me. I was in prison. You did not visit me. Now, so many ministries that deal with the poor. So many prison ministries use that text as the very foundation of their ministries. Now, we ought to have ministries to the poor. And as the brother shared with us yesterday so powerfully in that small meeting, we ought to care for the poor. And if we're not caring for the poor, there is sin. But that text is not talking about a ministry to the unbelieving poor. Now, we ought to have prison ministries. Yes, we ought to be going into prisons and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in the most dark, the darkest of cells. But that text is not talking about a prison ministry. Jesus is not saying I was a pedophile in prison and you didn't visit me. That's not what he's saying. Remember the identification that we've been studying about in Christ, our unity being united with Christ, that when God's people is persecuted, Christ is persecuted. Paul, why are you persecuting me? So what is he saying? Here in this great separation of the sheep and the goats, we see that one of the greatest evidences of true conversion is the practical outworking of the individual toward the community of Christ in love, even though it might cost that individual everything. Here's what he's teaching. I want you to think for a moment that we're back in Rome. We have an underground church and we're meeting out in the woods somewhere. There's about 30 of us. And so we're out there, we're having a service. And as we know how to do, we each depart from that service two by twos in different directions to make our way home. And then you make your way home about midnight, getting ready for bed. And all of a sudden there's a frantic knock at the door. You open up the door, you're scared, but there's a believer. You bring him in and he says, oh, listen to me. When we were coming back, I saw just over the other side of the woods, I saw that two of the brothers were going in that direction on their way home and they ran into a Roman guard and they were captured and accused as Christians. They were beaten right there. They were stripped of their clothing and they were hauled off to the prison. What are we going to do? Well, we've got to call a meeting. So go around and secretly go to each house and they call a meeting. All the believers are gathered there now at four in the morning. And this is what they say. Look, two of ours were taken. They're thrown in prison. They're beaten. They're hungry. They're thirsty. They have no clothing. They need medical attention. They need help. We've got to do something. And a young man stands up and says, I'll go. I'll go immediately. And then a wise brother in the church stands up and says, young man, thank you so much, but You need to understand something. If you go to that prison. To take water and medicine and clothing. They're probably going to identify you with the two that you are visiting and they will capture you, maybe at the loss of your own life. Now, I want you to think closely about this matter. On hearing that, a few members in the congregation began to grumble. And some of them go, look, look, this is just unwise. Anybody goes there, they're going to get caught. No one should do anything. Let's just be secret about this. If some of us get caught, all of us are going to get caught. Let's just leave the matter alone. There's nothing we can do about it. That older, wiser brother stands up and says, no, Christ commanded us. If we are truly believers, we will love at all costs, we will go no matter what it takes. And the ones that were grumbling go, we've had enough. You know, we've seen the direction that all this is going. We think every week we meet here, you people are just getting more fanatical. We'll have nothing to do with any of this. We're out of here. About 15 of them march off. And the young man stands up again and says, I'll go. I still want to go. I got to go. And another believer says, I'll go with him. I'll go. We'll go. And the believers run out, and they get water, and they get bandages, and they get clothing, and they get food, and they march over to the prison and visit Christ. You see, the whole thing works together just so perfectly. One of the greatest evidences that we are truly born again is that we love the people of God practically. Not in great eloquent words, but in practical deeds, we love the people of God. And we love them sacrificially. One of the great passions that I have is to unite the people of God in this sense. I have spent a great deal of my life watching the people of God suffer in other lands. I could tell you stories you would not believe, that you would not permit being told in mixed company. Such terrible things. Remember your brothers in chains. Remember your brothers without Bibles. Remember your brothers without the sound doctrine. Remember the brothers that have not had the privileges that you have known and like me taken for granted. Remember your brothers throughout the world. Remember them. Show forth your love. Make your calling and election sure. Now, believer, we are granted assurance in many ways. Assurance comes, can come in a supernatural manner involving the will and the emotions and the affections at the moment of conversion, a great testimony of the outpouring of the love of God within our hearts. That is a wonderful thing, but that in itself is not proof. As we increase and go on, we can see the providence of God working in our life through the years of our pilgrim's progress. That is an additional proof. As we begin to look in the mirror of God's Word and we honestly, without pride, can say, He's changing me. Glory to God. He's changing me. That is another great proof of our conversion. But one of the greatest proofs. Is that we do. What the law. You know, that primitive, ugly thing that no one likes anymore, what the law from the very beginning told us to do. To love the Lord, our God, with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. And to love our neighbor as ourself, to love our brother in Christ in a way that supersedes to have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. The great evidence of conversion. Is a progressive sanctification. In a love for God and a love for the people of God. The people of God closest to you in your community of faith, in your local church. Are you growing in these things, children? Is there a fire in your heart? Is there a work of the spirit of God? I don't just want to have the theology of the Puritans and then brag about the size of my brain. I want the fire of the Puritan. That which burned in the Reformers. Is there a work of God? Is there a life of God in the soul of man in you? Are you Christian? You will know them by their fruits. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the church and the family to the Word of God, and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org.