Full Salvation — Martyn-Lloyd Jones

I should like to take you once more to the chapter that we've been considering. This same Jesus who was crucified, died, buried, rose again, ascended into heaven, who is at the right hand of God, he will come again.

He will ride the clouds of heaven surrounded by the holy angels. He will destroy his every enemy. He'll purge the cosmos of all sin. And he'll set up his eternal glorious kingdom of righteousness and of peace.

That's the reason for glowing in him. Your statesmen can't do that. Your politicians can't do that. Your poets can't do that. No man can do that. He alone can do this, and he's going to do it. And my dear friend, if you but believe in him, do you know what happens to him?

To you? You become a part of him. You are Christ's, says Paul. You know when you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, it isn't merely an intellectual matter in the head. It is that, but there's something much more important.

Union With Christ and Sharing His Inheritance

You are joined to him. You enter into a union with him. You are in Christ, and you begin to share with him what you share with him. Well, I've already told you that God gave him the world. He made it for him, and he gave it to him.

He put men in it. Men has brought the chaos that we see in the world tonight. But you see, this Son of God, because it's his world, he came into it. He's not going to let the devil destroy it. He'll come back and will destroy the devil, and will restore in the grand regeneration the entire cosmos.

And you know, if you believe in him, and give your allegiance to him, you're going to share in that with him. If you are children, argues Paul in Romans 8, well then you are heirs. Heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.

Christ, you know, has prepared for us an inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. You are Christ's, and you share with him in this enjoyment of the inheritance. All things are yours.

What on earth are you glorying in men for, says Paul, when in Christ all these things already belong to you. What does he mean? Well, in a closing word, let me tell you what he does mean. He says, if you are Christ's, and you realize that, and you glory in him, you know, he says, men will become your possession.

Don't glory, he says, in me, or in Apollos, or in Cephas. Why not? Well, he says, all things are yours. What things? Well, Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas. You mustn't glory in us, says Paul. You know, you really own us.

We are only your servants. Ourselves, you are servants for Jesus' sake. Do you remember what Paul says in writing his fourth chapter to the Ephesians? He says, when Christ ascended into heaven, he gave gifts unto men.

And what did he give the church? Some apostles, some prophets. He gave them as gifts to and for the church. Don't glory in me, says Paul. I am your servant. You are our masters. Don't set us up as if we were dictators.

There's no idea of a pope or any great lord in the church in the New Testament. We don't lord it over God's inheritance, says Peter in his first epistle. No, no, we are your servants. So you see, in Christ, the very apostles become your servants.

What else? Well, in a very wonderful way, this is true of all other men also. Once you really glory in Christ and enter into this realization of what you are and what you have in him, you know, all men will become your servants.

I rather like to think of this. I quoted Shakespeare just now. That great man, you know, he's my servant. I use him when I want to. And I can put him down when I don't want him. All things are yours. Your Shakespeare's, your brilliant philosophers, they're all mine.

I don't sit trembling beneath them. I look down upon them. These are gifts given to men in order that they may help the children of God. They're not my masters. I use them. All things are yours. And he says it's the same exactly with the world.

The Christian’s New Relationship to the World

Don't be a slave of the world, says Paul, because the world is yours. Blessed are the meek, says our Lord, for they shall inherit the earth. When a man becomes a Christian, his whole attitude to this world becomes entirely different.

He rarely begins to see it for the first time, as it rarely is. Listen to a man saying this. Heaven above is softer blue. Earth around is sweeter green. Something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen.

Birds with gladder songs will flow. Flowers with deeper beauty shine. Since I know, as now I know, I am his and he is mine. I know a man who has a great estate in Britain. He's a man in the middle seventies who only became a Christian about six years ago.

And this is what he said to me comparatively recently. You know, he says, since I've realized I'm a son of God, as I walk around my estate, it seems to me to be a new estate. I'm seeing things I never saw before.

He's seeing the glory, the marvel, the wonder of the flowers and the animals and the brooks and the mountains. It's a new world. Why? Because he has got new eyes. The eyes of a man who is in Christ Jesus.

The world becomes our servant. It's our position. And no longer our master. And it's exactly the same with regard to life. Oh, the modern man, he's tragically afraid of life. And so afraid he has to resort to drugs and to drink and to various other things.

But you know, when a man becomes a Christian and glories in Christ, he says, to me to live is Christ. This is the meaning of life. Look at Paul in prison and sent for one day before King Agrippa and the Roman governor Festus.

There they are seated in their pomp upon their great seats. And he stands before them with chains hanging heavily from his wrists, the poor prisoner. And do you remember what he said to them? Well, he'd said certain things.

And Agrippa said to him, almost thou makest me to be a Christian, with very little arguing. You think you can make me a Christian? And Paul looked at him and said, I would to God that you and all who are listening to me were both altogether, and indeed as I am, apart from these bonds.

You know, when a man becomes a Christian, he is immune to circumstances. The poor man who is not a Christian, he is dependent upon circumstances. He is the slave of circumstances. The Apostle Paul had gone out of that state.

He was the master of life. It doesn't matter where he is, he is the Lord of his life, even in a prison. No longer the slave, but the master. And it's exactly the same with death. Death is no longer a tyrant to the Christian.

To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. To be with Christ, which is far better. The Christian is not afraid of death. Death to the Christian is just a little rivulet that separates this land of sin and woe from that land of pure delights where saints immortal reign.

Look at Paul again in prison. He writes to Timothy who was worried about him. Timothy says, Don't worry about me. Pull yourself together. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

Don't worry about me, says Paul. The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me in heaven the crown of righteousness, which he, the righteous judge, shall give unto me, and not only unto me, but unto all who love his appearing.

This is the way in which the Christian faces death. It's no longer a tyrant. He stands above it. He owns it. It's under him. All things are yours, not only life but also death. And it's the same with the present.

It is the same with regard to the future. The Christian is able to say this, All things work together for good to them that love God. All things. Look at Paul once more. He writes to this second letter to these Corinthians, and this is what he says.

He is having terrible troubles and trials in all directions. This is how he describes them. Our light affliction, which is but for a moment. Worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Or hear him again. I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound.

I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheth me. Slave of the present, slave of the future? Of course not. He is the master of all. All things are his, whether the world or life or death or things present or things to come.

Indeed, this is the confession of the Christian at all times. In heavenly love abiding, what change my heart shall fear? And safe is such confiding, for nothing changes here. The storm may roar without me, my heart may long believe, but God is round about me, and can I be dismayed wherever he may guide me?

No lack shall turn me back, my shepherd is beside me, and nothing can I lack. His wisdom never faileth, his sight is never dim. He knows the way he taketh, and I will walk with him. Green pastures are before me, whites yet I have not seen.

Bright skies shall soon be all me, where the dark cloud hath been. My hope I cannot measure, my path to life is free. My Savior has my treasure, and he will walk with me. All things are mine, because I am Christ's, and Christ is God.

From him who loves me now so well, what power my soul can sever? Shall life, or death, or earth, or hell? I am his, for are you? You are either glorying in men, or else you are glorying in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Glorying in Christ Rather Than Men

Glory in men, and you will continue a slave, and the slavery will increase. Glory in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will set you free, and make you with himself, the owner, the heir of the whole cosmos.

Children of God, and if children, then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. My dear friend, are you deceiving yourself? Are you allowing the world to deceive you? Are you a fool? Look at these things again, in the light of your world that is round and about you, and see that the essence of wisdom is to become a fool, to become a Christian, to be laughed at by the world, but in reality to be made wise with the wisdom of God himself.

Let us pray. Lord our God, we thank thee once more for this glorious gospel. We know not what to say, O Lord. But we see our own folly in times past. We bless thy name that thou dost not hold it against us.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. O God, we can but offer our humble and unworthy praise and adoration and worship. We bless thy name that we are what we are. Solely by the grace of God, and O Lord, thine be all the praise and all the honor and all the glory.

Have mercy, we humbly pray thee, on all who still are deceiving themselves and are being deluded by this evil world. God, have mercy upon all such, and by thy blessed Spirit, open their blind eyes. Hear us, O Lord our God, for thine own glorious name's sake.

Amen. This is something that needs no demonstration. Haven't you noticed how textbooks so soon get out of date? I think of textbooks on medicine, which students had to read 40 years ago. Probably some of them are not even known at the present time.

They're out of date. Knowledge advances and grows, and what the great men of the past appear to have discovered is ridiculed at the present time. Newton and his discoveries were regarded as absolutes until comparatively recently.

The last word. But Newtonian physics is already seriously, hopelessly out of date. I remember being taught that the atom was the smallest and indivisible portion of matter. The atom could not be divided.

There was nothing smaller than the atom. By today, we know again that this is utterly ridiculous and hopelessly out of date. So you see, whatever men can do for us, it's limited, it's partial, and it dates and ceases to be of value.

The Folly of Trusting Human Leaders

But finally, it is unutterable folly to glory in men because these men themselves are failures. Man is sinful. Every man is sinful. The men who are lauded by the world, the men in whom the world glories, what feet of clay they have.

All these idols that men produce and men that are turned into idols by men, how obvious it is that they have feet of clay. How capricious they are. We've had a notable example of this quite recently to which I need make no reference.

But you see, these idols, these men who seem to stride the world like a colossus, how fallible they are, how unreliable, how uncertain, how selfish they are, how obstinate some of them are. And yet the world puts its faith in these and regards it as an insult to be asked to believe in and to glory in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the folly of men. And that's the point that the apostle is here arguing with these Corinthians. Therefore, let no man glory in men. It doesn't matter who he is. He is unworthy of being gloried in.

He's too small. He's too fallible. He is too sinful. But the more serious thing which the apostle tells us is this. That we must not glory in men because if we do so, we shall inevitably end in slavery.

You notice how he puts it. He says, therefore, let no man glory in men. Why not? He says, for all things are yours. All things are yours. Why are you glorying in men? You have no need to because all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come.

All are yours and you are Christ's and Christ is God's. Now that's his way of saying that to put your glory in men inevitably and always leads to slavery. He says you think you're going to gain something by doing this.

You're going to lose something. He says on the contrary. Because all things in Christ are yours. And by turning from him to anybody else, you are but reverting to slavery. Now, here I think is the essence of the modern problem and the modern difficulty with the world in which we are living.

Turning From God to Human Tyranny

It is in a condition of slavery. It's turned its back upon God and religion and it's put its faith in men. What is the result? The result is it is in a condition of slavery to men. The great William Penn who founded Pennsylvania, he said all this, you know, nearly 300 years ago.

He said men must choose to be governed by God or they condemn themselves to be ruled by tyrants. And what a profound remark that is. And how painfully does this 20th century of ours prove the wisdom of that dictum of the great William Penn.

Isn't this the tragedy of the 20th century? Let me give you an illustration or two. Look at the position in Russia. Here is a country that has turned its back upon religion, denounced it, dismissed it, condemned it.

Atheism is the rule because, as they say, it is this religion that has kept the people down. So they say the first thing we've got to do is to banish religion and then you'll get your freedom. That's what they've said.

But what is the result? Look at the position in that country. It is unutterable slavery. Not only political slavery. You've got slavery even in the matter of art. Slavery in the matter of literature. Slavery even in the matter of science.

The state dictates even to the scientific research worker with respect to his results. There was the famous case of Lysenko. And you've had similar cases among some of their literary men. Now, you see, the apostle says let no man deceive himself.

Yet that is precisely what the man who abolishes religion always does. He thinks he's clever. He thinks he can set himself free. He can emancipate himself. Get rid of God, he says, you're going to be free.

He gets rid of God, as it were. And you see where he lends himself. In unutterable slavery to men, to the state, to governments, to laws and enactments in every realm and department of life. What else?

Well, you know the great higher critical movement of the scriptures. It began in Germany about 130 years ago. Germany was in the vein in this supposed liberation of men from the thralldom of the dictatorship of the Bible.

They were going to set men free. That's where the movement began. And it began not only in the realm of theology. Their philosophers followed along the same line. What has it led to? Has this banishment of the authority of the scripture led to freedom and liberty in Germany?

The answer can be given in one word, Hitler. Never has there been a more awful dictatorship. But this is, you see, the thing the world doesn't understand. It thinks it's clever, it's up to date, it's come of age.

You get rid of religion and man is free. Invariably, as the apostle says, this is self-deception. You're putting yourself under the tyranny of men. It is the fulfillment of the dictum of William Penn.

Men must choose to be governed by God or they condemn themselves to be ruled by tyrants. Mussolini. And think of the various tyrants that are ruling in this world tonight. Governing the very minds of men and their bodies, the entire system.

Oh, the apostle, you see, says this 1900 years ago. But oh, how blind man is. What self-deception sin is. What a fool the sinner is, imagining that freedom means renouncing God. And it ever leads to nothing but slavery.

Indeed, there is nothing more pathetic to me than to notice the way in which these great men, as they're called, are pitiful slaves themselves. Slaves to their own position. Slaves to public opinion and applause.

These great dictators. Notice how sensitive they are, how troubled they are, if somebody else's popularity seems to be going up. No, no, my friends, Shakespeare said it long ago, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

A man may get to the top, is he happy, is he free? No, no, he's the slave of his own position. He sees another man coming up and threatening his position. This is slavery. Even men of wealth and possessions and various other things, they become slaves to the very thing they've created themselves.

And their lives are a misery and unhappiness. But not only that, says the apostle, there is another most terrible consequence. If you turn your back upon God, you will not only become the slave of men, you will become the slave of the world, the slave of life, the slave of death, the slave of things present, the slave of things to come.

You see, this is the apostle's way of putting it. He says, don't glory in men, because all things are yours. I'm yours, Apollos is yours, Cephas is yours, the world is yours, life is yours, death is yours, things present, things to come.

But he says, in turning away from the Lord Jesus Christ and glorying in men, you become the slaves of all these things and don't realize that they are yours. Is he right? Well, let's ask a serious Christian.

Are you, my friend, free tonight? And if you are, what about your neighbor? Put this question to him when you go home tonight or tomorrow. He says he's free, he's not interested in Christianity. He's sorry for you when he sees you going to a place of worship on Sunday morning.

Poor miserable slave, he says, fancies still doing that. He's afraid not to do it. If only you were free like I am. Just put a few questions to him and show him how he has become a slave to the world.

Oh, there is nothing to me that is sadder about the modern man than his utter slavery and serfdom to the world, the mind and the altars of the world. What do I mean? Well, the Apostle Paul again expounds himself in a word that he uses to the Ephesians.

He says, you are to be quickened to wear dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.

Now this is a most interesting phrase. How did you live, says Paul to the Ephesians, before you became Christians? The answer is, you lived entirely according to the course of this world. That means according to the tyranny and the bondage of the way and the mind and the outlook of the world.

Isn't this obvious today? Take these people who dismiss religion and scoff at it and say that they are free men. Are they free men? What is their life determined by? What decides how they live? Today, of course they don't.

They do what they see on the television. They do what they hear on the radio. They do what they read in the morning newspaper. I remember reading a statement by a great educationalist in Oxford during the war, Sir Richard Livingstone.

He was one of our greatest, if not the greatest authority on education in Great Britain. And he wrote a book in 1944. And in that book he said this. He said, What has been the chief result in this country of the popular education that we've enjoyed since the Education Act of 1870?

A great act was passed in 1870 giving popular education free. He said, What has been the chief result of this up to date? And this is his answer. He said, It seems to me that the chief result of popular education since 1870 up to date has been this.

It has been to produce a mentality that is governed solely by the thinking and the ideas of Beaverbrook and Metro Goldwyn. And how perfectly true that is. The modern man who thinks he's free because he's shaken off religion, what's he governed by?

He's governed by his morning newspaper, the popular press, Metro Goldwyn, the cinema, the film, the acting, advertising. It's the age of advertising, the age of propaganda. Never have men and women been greater slaves than they are at the present time.

They're slaves to the world. They're governed by what other people do, what other people think, what other people say. They're governed in their dress, in their speech, in their walk, in their conduct, in everything, by the way of the world.

Slavery to the world. But it isn't only slavery to the world, says the apostle. They're slaves of money, they're slaves of possessions, they're slaves, as I say, of their own positions. But in addition to being slaves to the world, they are slaves to life itself.

They're afraid of life. Never has man been more afraid of life than he is today. He's the victim of it, he doesn't understand it. He's being carried along by it. Now, you've got your problems here as we've got them in Britain, problems of these poor young people who seem to be defying all rule and law and order and custom, who just want to be different and not to conform to anything at all in any respect.

What's the matter with them? The answer is they're afraid of life. They are slaves to the fear of life and living. They can't stand after it. To be ordinary, decent citizens is too great a demand. They're in a condition of slavery.

Then he says the same is true about death. And isn't this true likewise? Oh, the power of the fear of death. I know the modern man pretends that he's not afraid of death. He whistles to keep up his courage in the dark.

But never has an age or a generation been more subject to the fear of death, slavery to the fear of death, than this present generation. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews in his second chapter and in verse 14 says that one of the most glorious things that the Lord Jesus Christ has done has been to deliver them who through all their lifetime were subject to bondage, the fear of death.

Freedom From the Fear of Death and the Future

And the modern man does everything he can to dismiss the notion of death. We try to keep young, to look young, to dress young. We are horrified of this, this awful spectre that he's ever approaching towards, the fear of death, this bomb that's hanging over us.

Isn't this true? We think we've made ourselves free by turning our backs upon God and upon his Son, but we are slaves to the fear of death. And it's exactly the same as he says with regard to the present and with regard to the future.

This I can show you very simply. One of the great prophets of this freedom of men, once he gets rid of the incubus of religion, was the late Mr. H .G. Wells. He taught that men simply needed education and knowledge and they'd banish war and they'd turn their world into a paradise.

And he believed this and he propagated it. But then the Second World War came and poor H .G. Wells, you know the title of the last book he ever wrote? Mind at the End of its Tether. He was afraid of the future.

He was afraid of the outcome. All he'd ever preached had come crashing to the ground. Let me quote another man to you. There was a man who was president of a college in Cambridge and he wrote an autobiography.

His name was Professor R .R. Merritt and in that book, again during the last war, he wrote one of the saddest sentences I think I've ever read in my life. Here it is. I've remembered it ever since. But to me, he said, the war, he meant the Second War, to me, the war, brought to an end the long autumn of my life.

Henceforth, the long summer of my life, I should have said. To me, the war brought to an end the long summer of my life. The culture and the learning and the happiness of life in Oxford. Henceforth, I have nothing to look forward to except chill autumn and still chillier winter.

And yet I must somehow, he says, try not to lose hope. Have you ever heard of anything more hopeless? Here is a man who's afraid of the present. He's afraid of the future. He's in a condition of utter slavery.

He doesn't understand. He isn't under any control. He sees it coming. It's inevitable. Nothing can be done to stop it. And here he is, admitting complete and utter bankruptcy. Ah, we've travelled a long way since one of the Victorians, Sir Henry Newbolt, was able to write his famous poem, Invictus.

How optimistic and self-satisfied people were towards the end of the last century. You see, with the Pax Britannica and with the belief that man was evolving and that wars would be banished, men thought that at last they could really get rid of God and be in absolute control of themselves and their life and their living.

So he writes like this. It matters not how straight the gate, nor how inaccessible the girl. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. Do you hear that today? Of course you don't. They hadn't discovered the atomic bomb then.

There hadn't been the two world wars then. And men could stand up and say, I don't need God. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. Are you? Can you stand up in this modern world and say that?

With all that is happening around and about you, locally, nationally, internationally. Are you in control? Are you the master of your fate? Are you the captain of your soul? Of course you're not. You're trembling.

You're alarmed. You're frightened. To all these things that are around and about you. Well now my friends, that is what glorying in man always and invariably leads to. This modern world of ours is proving the gospel in a way that it has never been proved.

I sometimes say in my pulpit in London that I'm very glad that I'm preaching in this century and not in the last century. People are astonished to hear that. But why do I say it? I say it for this reason.

It must have been rather difficult to preach this gospel in the Victorian era, say a hundred years ago. Why? Well as I say, life seemed to be so wonderful. We belong to an empire on which the sun never sets.

Knowledge was growing and developing. Life was comfortable and wonderful. Everything was going forward. It must have been rather difficult to preach to people and to tell them that they were sinners and that they were in a condition of bondage.

Everything seemed so marvelous. It's not at all difficult today. The modern world is proving the truth of the apostles' contention. Turn your back on God and you'll be a slave. Slave to men. Slave to the world.

Slave to life. Slave to death. Slave to the present. Slave to the future. And this is the tragedy that man in doing this thinks he's setting himself free, deceiving himself. Why? Well because he turns away from the only one who ever really can set him free and give him possession of the things that are now mastering and enslaving him.

Jesus Christ as the Only True Liberator

Who is this? It is this Christ of whom he's writing. He's the only foundation. He's the only everything. Listen says Paul. Don't glory in men whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come because all are yours and you are Christ's and Christ is God.

In whom should we glory? The answer is we should glory in this Jesus of Nazareth. Why? The Lord he talks about. He says it at the end of the first chapter. Him that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.

Why should any man glory in the Lord Jesus Christ? Let me tell you. It's the exact opposite of all that we've been considering. We should glory in him because he is who he is. Who is he? He is not merely a man.

Here is the everlasting eternal Son of God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Here he is. This is the one by whom and through whom all things have been made and without whom nothing was made that is made.

Who is this? This is the one who is co-equal with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And he is the one for whom this world was made. The apostle says this in the epistle to the Colossians in the first chapter.

Not only were all things made by him but all things were made for him. You know this whole world of ours it was made not for us it was made for the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the Father's gift to his Son.

He made a universe for him. He made men for him. Here it is, he said, it's yours. He is the one who owns the entire universe. But not only that, you see, here he is in this world and he is the only one who can speak to us with authority about these ultimate questions that so agitate our minds and our hearts and our consciences.

Do you remember how he put it to Nicodemus? There was a man called Nicodemus a great teacher of the Jews a great religious teacher and yet when he saw this Jesus and heard his teaching and saw his miracles he realized his superiority and he went and had an interview with him.

He was trying to understand him but he couldn't but our Lord turns to him and he says this Art thou a master of Israel and understandest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen and you receive not our witness.

If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven even the Son of Man which is in heaven.

That's why you should glory in him my friend. Do you want someone to follow? Do you want someone whose teaching you can espouse? Do you want someone who will lead you and guide you and direct you? Here is the only one who is worthy of your allegiance because as he says we speak that we do know and testify that which we have seen.

It's alright to read a great philosopher's book on religion and on life and on God what does he know? Has he ever seen God? What does he know about God? It is all speculation. It is all theory. That's what you get in your newspapers that's what you get on your television that's what you get on your radio speculations men standing up and saying I say this and people say isn't it wonderful how modern he is how daring he is but what is he speaking?

What does he know? What's his authority? Nothing but his own self confidence and self delusion. This world has only seen one person who has the right to get up and say follow me. He's the only one who's had the right to say I am the light of the world.

I am the way, the truth and the life no man cometh unto the Father but by me. Why should I listen to him? It is because he's come from Him. He knows God. He's looked into the face of God. He speaks what he has seen what he knows and no one else's.