The 'No More' of Grace — Roy Hession

We ask Thee, dear Lord, that Thou would give us all a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Thee. Lord, this is that for which Thou has given Thy Holy Spirit, who comes to take of those things that are freely given us of Thee and make them known to us.

And we ask that He shall be doing just that in our midst. And we should be strangely aware of understanding that we've never had quite before. And not only understanding, but that Thou are producing from us a heart response that perhaps we have never given Thee before.

We ask it in Thy dear name. Amen. I would like to turn to the verse with which we ended last night's gathering. John chapter 5. John chapter 5 at verse 14. Where Jesus said to that man whom He had made whole, who'd been thirty and eight years lying at the Pool of Bethesda.

Jesus’ Command to the Healed Man: “Sin No More”

In verse 14 He said, Behold, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee. Thou art made whole, sin no more. And I'm quite sure those words rang powerfully in our ears last night.

No more. No more. Thou art made whole, no more dabbling which caused that paralysis. No more dabbling with those things which caused that paralysis from which I've made you whole. And we understood, didn't we last night, that this word, no more, has to be built into our repentance.

It's something that Jesus says to us, no more. And we look up to Him and say, yes Lord. I think that's how that man responded. And I said, no more. Of those things which you did in your youth, which have caused this long-lasting paralysis, I've made you whole from it.

Now, no more. And I think that man did look up and say, yes Lord, no more. Well, that was the word we heard, did we not, last night. But this, no more, is first of all built into the grace of God. Not only is no more to be built in our repentance as we come to Jesus over that which He shows us, that we might be made whole, but it is also, thank God, built into His grace which offers us all that we need.

I read you just three verses where we see not only the no more of our repentance, but more important perhaps, the no more of God's grace. First of all, chapter Romans, verse 6 and verse 9. And I take just one phrase from that verse.

Death hath no more dominion over Him. We shall see what that means in a few moments. But it's a great word of grace for sinners. It points us to Jesus. And it's all on behalf of us. And it says, death hath no more dominion over Him.

And then there's a second no more of grace. It's in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 17. And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Quite as important as the no more of our repentance, even more important, is the no more of God's grace.

Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. And a third no more, a no more of grace, is in the very next verse. Now, where remission of these sins, there is no more offering for sin. The work's done.

No need to try to do it some other way. No more offering for sin. And so we see that there is the no more of God's grace on His side, as well as the no more of repentance on our side. Indeed, the latter is based on the former.

And so tonight I want to share with you some things God brought to my heart as I meditated on the word we had last night. I want to say something about this no more of grace. And then to look again at the no more of repentance.

Grace and repentance are inseparably linked, both in the Bible and in Christian experience. As we've had already defined to us, grace is the undeserved love of God. It's not into the love of God. Love can be love, can be what it is, without being grace.

The love of God becomes the grace of God when the object of that love doesn't deserve it. It's undeserved. It's completely uncalled for and sometimes quite unexpected. And it does for that undeserving one more than it ever conceived possible.

Even the angels can't understand it. That God should treat men who've rebelled against Him as God has is beyond them. Which things the angels desire to look into. They desire in vain that its depths to plough, as Wesley says in one of his hymns.

It's God doing good things for the wrong one. Sometimes we've said good news for bad people. You would have thought it would be good news for good people. But there aren't any good people. God says so.

There's none that do it good. No, not one. Therefore none would qualify if it were good news for good people. But grace is God's good news for bad people. And on that ground we all qualify, even when the bad people happen to be converted.

Peter Elford years ago in the tent at Clevedon defined it as a first-class seat for second-class Christians. A first-class seat for second-class Christians on condition they confess, frankly and fully, they are plain second-class.

Given that, you are ushered straight away by grace into a first-class seat. But you can see how you've got to admit you don't deserve it. You've got to admit that in this and that man, that matter, you're a wrong one.

You've got to confess, fully and frankly, that latterly at least, if not all the way along, you've been plain second-class. Unless you admit that, you just don't qualify. But when you admit it, you qualify for this undeserved, boundless grace of God, which we've been hearing so much of in the morning and which has been the theme of our songs this evening, as it is the theme of heaven as well as us on earth.

And the admitting of it is repentance. Oh, I know repentance means a change of mind. And why you have to change your mind is because you didn't admit it first of all. Second-class, I'm not second-class.

I'm as good as an X-man. The Holy Spirit says, will you mind changing your mind? And to change your mind is exactly the Greek word translated repent. And you do admit you are the wrong one. Where before you said you're right, you confess you're wrong.

And that in specific matters. And in that way you qualify, quite obviously and ostensibly, for this marvellous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. And so you see, grace and repentance are inseparably linked.

Indeed, it is a necessity of repentance associated with grace which gives the message of grace its teeth. Ah, perhaps that's not too kind a word. It's tender and gracious and free as we've heard. But what I mean is it gives it its deep challenge.

For I want to say the message of grace always goes so much deeper than the message of law. The message that comes from Calvary may not look so spectacular as that message that comes from Sarnia. Oh, what a show was put on at Sarnia.

Fireworks galore. And you can get some preachers, write fireworks. Everybody feels so bad, the order do be different. But it doesn't do anything. And you know it doesn't get very deep, but the message of grace does.

And if you want this, that Jesus came to offer you the supply of all your needs, you and I have got to be honest and admit it. And that really is repentance. So they're linked. And it gives the message of grace its deep, deep challenge to us all.

Faith, Grace, and Justification of the Ungodly

However, the word more usually associated in the New Testament with grace is faith. By grace are you saved through faith. And that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, Ephesians 2, Romans 4. Therefore it is of faith that it might be by grace.

And the reason why faith is the word usually associated with grace, especially in Paul's writings, is because he's trying to contrast for us the difference between the way of grace and the way of works.

And the opposite to works is faith. And faith leaves man nothing to do by which to make himself presentable to God. It is just that hand that embraces and says, come on Jesus, do what you promised to do for a man who's wrong on a hundred points.

That's faith. But saving faith always implies repentance. As, for instance, in this very important scripture in Romans 4, to him that worketh not is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt. If you're going to try and work your way to heaven or work your way into blessing, you're trying to put God in your debt.

You're not receiving it as a gift. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. It's counted for a righteousness which he doesn't otherwise possess.

He hasn't got it. But he's got one thing. He dares to believe that God is the God who justifies the ungodly, who declares him to be right, who's wrong. Something no earthly judge could do, but God is the God of grace and it's what he does.

But listen. How can he justify the ungodly unless the ungodly confess they're ungodly? And a Christian can be ungodly. In that whole situation I left God out of it. Tried to do it myself. Look at the mess.

That's ungodliness. And if you want to be cleared of the sense of being all wrong with God, you've got to confess you are ungodly. Therefore in the very nature of the case, repentance is always implied in saving faith.

And so I want you to see then the no mores, the no more built into the grace of God before we look again at the no more built into our repentance. Well, that first verse I read to you, Romans 6, 9. Death hath no more dominion over him.

Christ’s Death and Resurrection Break Sin’s Condemning Power

Death did have dominion over him. And why? Because he took my sins and my sorrows, he made them his very own. And the moment he took my sins and my sorrows, the death which was the reward of my sins and sorrows became his.

And it had dominion over him. And he was laid in the tomb. And the sins he took had therefore power to condemn him. And condemn him they did. But the third day God raised him from the dead. Such was the power in the blood that he shed, that it was enough for all the sins for which he took responsibility.

Proof that that was enough was given by the fact that God raised him from the dead, never more to taste of it again. Death hath no more dominion over him. Sin there lost its power to condemn him. It lost its power to condemn my substitute.

And if it lost its power to condemn my substitute, it lost its power to condemn me. And in the very next few verses, verse 14, it says, Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace.

Because sin, because sin had no more dominion, I'm sorry, I'm wrong, because death had no more dominion over him, sin need have no dominion over me. And of course the sense in which Paul uses this word dominion is simply a very simple one.

It doesn't mean that I won't have any more problem with solicitations to evil. It means that sin loses its power to condemn me. And that's its great power. You might think the greatest power of sin is to fascinate you, so you do it again, and then do it again, until it's a habit you can't stop.

That's the least of its power, I might almost say. Its major power lies in its ability to condemn me. And it goes on doing it, long after I may have ceased to commit that sin, a thing done years ago, never repeated.

We can be under its dominion still. It's something about which we're ill at ease, about which we don't want to be asked any awkward questions. Because we don't share it, we're under its dominion. It's still having power to condemn us in our hearts.

But dear friend, at the cross and the empty tomb, sin lost its power to condemn him. It has no more dominion over him. And if that be true, sin need have no more dominion over me for any longer than it takes me to confess it, and get to the cross of Jesus.

No more dominion over him. And dear one, if you have, over what he's been dealing with you about, been to the cross in confession, sin has no more dominion over you, those particular things. Because you're not under the law, which would accuse you and accuse you, but under grace that points to Calvary, where it's all been done.

The Grace That Remembers Sins No More

Oh, the great and glorious, no more, the wonderful no more of grace. And then there was that second one in Hebrews 10, their sins and iniquities. Well, I remember, no more! That's as emphatic as the word that Jesus said to that paralytic.

Go and sin no more! Here's another no more, but this time of grace. Your sins and iniquities, I will remember, no more! Never more to be brought up to you, never more need they haunt you, if they've truly been brought to the cross of Jesus, if you've truly looked and lived.

Because death has no more dominion over me, and the deed's all been done and finished with. Never to be gone through again by him is enough. Sin need have no more dominion over me. The ones that I confess.

And sometimes they do, because, well, have they been truly confessed? Have you really brought me to the cross? Have you exercised faith in the blood of Jesus? Oh, this lovely no more of grace. Can you believe it?

You must, if you're to have peace. And then that third one. Where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Because, you know, having a bad conscience, feeling we're not the sort of Christians that we ought to be, trying so hard, we might try to make all sorts of offerings to God.

In reality, they're really offering for sin. If you are praising the Lord, it's because of sin, somewhere along the line. But we're trying to make up by our efforts for a peace that we've really lost by our sin.

If we'd brought that to Calvary, there's no need for any more offering for sin. God says no more! No more praying and supplications, strong crying and tears. All that's been gone through by Jesus. The words I've quoted you come from Hebrews, speaking of him.

He's done it all. And dear one, he says to you, no more. Struggling to get by your own efforts what Jesus has already obtained for you and made available for you on street level. So if there's a no more in our repentance, oh thank God, there's a no more in God's grace for us.

We just don't deserve it. Death has no more dominion over him. It's all finished. I can be free. My sins, my personal iniquities, my past record, he will remember. No more! And if he doesn't remember it, you can afford to park it too.

And because it's all been done, there's no more struggling and trying and seeking to improve in order to get peace and blessing it's given you on another ground altogether. Now this is really what we call freedom.

New Testament Freedom Means Release from Guilt

Stanley this morning talked about free, being free. He asked us, are you free? Now I wonder how you interpret that word freedom. It could be that we feel we can only be free when we are absolutely liberated and immune to all solicitation to evil.

I don't think that is the meaning of freedom in the New Testament. In this sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, three times you have this phrase, being made free from sin. He doesn't expound it.

He assumes you know what it is. And we get our new Christians, and they're just about to sign it for Christ. And do you know what they sing? I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me, that on the cross he shed his blood from sin to set me free.

What are they professing? A place where they're completely immune to solicitation for evil? No, it means they're free from the hangover of guilt and past transgressions. That awful sense of not being good enough and not measuring up.

That awful long slog to try and make ourselves more acceptable to God. Free. He that has died is freed from sin. And in Jesus Christ I've died to sin's power to condemn me. And I can be as free of the hangover of sin as my substitute is.

Or to use Paul's phrase in Hebrews, perfect as pertaining to the conscience. That's one perfection we may all have. Being made perfect as pertaining to the conscience. Not all the blood of beasts and Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace or take away its stain.

But Christ the heavenly Lamb takes all our sins away as sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they. This is freedom. Please turn the cassette over now. Do not fast wind it in either direction.

But Christ the heavenly Lamb takes all our sins away as sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they. This is freedom. I was struck last night when we were singing that hymn. Praise him who broke the chain, holding me in sin's domain and set me free again.

How do you see that? Why in this term? I've been thrashed. My sins and failures had power to condemn me. I was struggling to try and get a better state before God. And I say it's all been done. And if I would only believe that the skies are blue above my head and I've got this all of grace without that painful struggle which never got me anywhere.

And so this is freedom. And I've been thinking this, that every deliverance that Jesus gives us is to be celebrated as something complete and once for all. And that's how it is celebrated in our gospel hymns.

You are set free. You can walk, leap and praise God this moment. Every last hangover with regard to the failures of the past may be gone. Free by the blood of Jesus Christ, by his finished work, free because we are not under the law but they would always condemn us but under grace it always points to the blood.

And as I say, every coming to Jesus, every deliverance is to be celebrated as a complete once for all thing. But you say what if I... You deal with that when it comes. The deliverance into which you and I can come today you can come into later on if needed, if things haven't been maintained.

But right now you and I are to rejoice in the fact in a completed once for all thing. Jesus said to that man, thou art made whole. He didn't say I've got to keep on being made whole. He might need extra touches, I don't know, from the Lord.

But what Jesus said, it's complete. And I believe there's an aspect in which you must praise the Lord in this sense. I am made whole. My problem has been solved by grace. The hangover's gone. I've got it as a matter of grace without struggling to improve.

And I'm under cloudless skies. That being so, he simply must say, go and sin no more. If you're rejoicing in something complete and once for all, obviously, he must say this word. And the strange thing is this.

“Neither Do I Condemn Thee”: Grace and a Changed Life

Jesus said almost the same to the woman taken in adultery three chapters later recorded. Where he said, neither do I condemn thee. No one else dared condemn thee. They were just as bad as you. And they all slipped away.

But you didn't. You stayed in the light. Exposed. Virtually owning up to it. Has no man condemned thee? No man, Lord. Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin. Same thing. He has to say it. No more to that paralytic man.

No more playing with those things that have caused this. No more. He said, yes, Lord. And Jesus said to that woman, I'm not condemning you. You're declared free from my condemnation. I'm not condemning you.

But he said, no more men. No more adultery. No more fornication. Amen, Lord. And remember Paul said much the same? He said, let him that stole, and the one who has stolen, has been stealing, has apparently come to know Jesus Christ.

And Paul says to him, let him that stole, steal no more. No more stealing. And so it is these two things go together. This glorious completed emancipation is always accompanied with this word from Jesus, no more.

And that no more is to be reflected in our repentance. No more. What have you been convicted of? The sin of nagging and blaming, making your married life unhappy? Could it be someone needs to come to the cross?

Right, you're made whole. The blood has made you whole. You're as right with God, now that you've confessed this thing, as the blood can make you, but go and sin in that matter. No more has it been impurity.

And we've stumbled to the cross with impurity. And Jesus says you're made whole. But no more. No more go and sin. No more. Could it be a relationship that hasn't been proper and you brought it to the cross?

Jesus says you're made whole unconditionally, by grace. But go and sin no more. No more. So we could go through the various things. This is a very, very important word for us. Could it be? We've been yielding to and indulging in wrong fantasies?

Have you seen it to be sin? Perhaps you should. It is sin. I know it in my own case. And I have to call it such. When I come to Jesus, to his cross, such as the power of the blood, he says you're made whole.

But no more. No more. Can it be more complete and explicit? I don't think that this is a call for us to turn over a new leaf. But rather to turn back the old leaves and have a look at what's there. And what's there, we confess to God as the sin or sins they are.

We appropriate gratefully them no more of grace, no more under the condemnation, because Jesus finished it for me. And then he says go and sin no more, which obviously, well, one thing it's going to mean is, in some situations, you're going to put something right with somebody else.

You may have to ask somebody else's forgiveness, or break off a certain relationship, and so on and so on. And sometimes we hesitate to make as clean a cut with it as that, because, well, supposing I wanted a little bit of it again.

And therefore our response to this word does imply this sort of clear-cut repentance that calls it by its name before God, that receives what he has for us in cleansing us and forgiving us, and then, where necessary, makes the break final and complete.

It could be someone needs to write a letter aptly renouncing a certain relationship. It could be some of us have got to go to another about an attitude. Oh, but I might want to have that attitude again.

No more. And the fact it's no more for us will sometimes be expressed by the fact we confess it to another who's involved and ask their forgiveness for it. In other words, this no more really means what Paul says at the end of Romans 14.

We make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. You are so to act, there's going to be the hardest thing in the world for you to repeat it. And do you intend to finish with that thing like that?

Then let us act accordingly. And I want to tell you, because we are in the good of the no more of grace, no more condemnation, no more hangover. We're free. We'll find new motivations to act in this way.

He that's forgiven much, loves much, and loving much, he's going to quit those things and he's going to act accordingly. And he's going to receive that added grace, that undeserved help from God to do it, without which it would be very hard, almost impossible.

But this is God's word for us. But you see, what if I... All right, let's look at it. For my thinking, I class sins into two classes. One, I call volitional sins. This that that man did, this that the woman in John 8 did, they were volitional.

Volitional and Dispositional Sin

They chose to do it. And many of our sins are volitional. You've done them. You have been doing them. But you're coming to Jesus these days, being made whole. And as I say, that could be well expressed in the way in which I've indicated in steps we take.

But then there are other sins which I call dispositional. Sins of the disposition. Well, let's say jealousy. That's a good example. Someone else, a friend of yours, is praised and appreciated by other people more than you.

And you say, Oh Lord, may I not be jealous of so and so. And the Lord says, It's too late to pray that prayer. You're jealous already. And whereas we don't expect a pickpocket to just pick fewer and fewer pockets, it's finished!

And a whole class of other things. There's some of these inner dispositional things. They happen sometimes before you know them. But this attitude of no more is still to be maintained and expressed by the fact as soon as they come, we repent of them and confess them.

And our attitude of no more is still there. Although, before I hardly knew it, I found a rising resentment or a jealousy or something else that comes from my disposition. But I am to call it by its name.

And provision is made for my ongoing constant deliverance. Forgiveness and cleansing from these things through the blood of Jesus. If any man sin, he has an advocate with the Father. And this is very much the case.

And so, of course, you have this extraordinary paradox. On the one hand, the saints testifying and rejoicing in a completed deliverance on a new issue. Rolled away and the burden from my heart rolled away.

That particular thing, absolutely praise the Lord, that relationship's been put right, we love one another, Amen and Amen. And yet at the same time, there's this other aspect where as the light increases, if nothing else.

And I see more in my heart. I shall see new places where Jesus has to help me to come to him. Where he will need to forgive me and cleanse me. The two are paradoxical. But we need it. If all we think of is something, oh, I'll always have to be repenting, never getting free.

No. You... We've got to get in the joy of this. I believe when we're in the joy of it, we're harder for the devil to get us down than when we're not. On the other hand, there is this ongoing openness to light, openness to conviction and the experience of new repentance and cleansing.

Responsibility for the “Raw Material” of Fallen Nature

Now the last thing I want to say, this might prove helpful for some of us. All of us have to contend with a fallen sinful raw material. It's the old Adam within us. It will vary in us. Some may have a perverted raw material.

Some might have a psychologically defective raw material. Some may have a just very ordinary raw material. But the whole thing is fallen. And out from this raw material will come all sorts of suggestions and potential reactions.

And inasmuch as we vary, some of us are more prone to this way or that way than others. But even the most normal person, he's got a perverted, a wrong raw material. Now, this I was helped to see through something C .S. Lewis wrote.

The real degree of sinfulness is not the fact how wrong or beastly or perverted, even sexually perverted my raw material may be, but what I do with it. Do I endow self in it or do I deny self in it? And C .S. Lewis says that respectable man who goes to business, etc., church member, may be far more culpable than God's sight because though his raw material is very ordinary, it's egocentric as it is with everybody and he's endowing himself in it.

And he's not an easy person to live with. Here's another man who's got a terribly thwarted, twisted raw material, a homosexual, some other terrible thing and he's trying out mightily to God in all the battles he fights, resisting unto blood perhaps, striving against sin to refuse the dictates of that raw material.

And God may well see that man walking a holier life than the other man. The raw material, it varies in itself. It isn't sin. It only becomes sin when I endow self in it or it becomes something infinitely sweet when I learn to deny self in it.

The psychiatrist, he only deals with the raw material. It's a very small thing he does. He tries to improve your raw material but that's not going to make you less of a sinner because if self's on the throne, whatever your raw material is, you can still be endowing self in it.

Only Jesus could overthrow self so that he's the one who strikes us with might in the inner man to deny self, to see a new opportunity to die to my own wishes in the clamming dictates of my raw material.

But this is the important thing. You and I are responsible. Never say, it's my psychological makeup, it's my upbringing. There's no help from heaven for us in our situation until you say, I am responsible for obeying the dictates of that raw material of mine.

And it's one of the most hopeful things that there's beginning to come a new way by which Christian psychiatrists are helping people, especially in America. Where instead of saying, oh you're not responsible, it was the way you were brought up.

You weren't breastfed or something. Oh, they can say that. It was the way you were treated. Do you know they say that classical psychiatry is breeding a generation of parent haters. It does nothing. I'm sure this is much more according to God's word to lay upon us our responsibility.

I have a certain raw material, so what? It doesn't matter too much where it's come from. What am I going to do with it? Am I going to say, Lord Jesus, I'm going to walk with you through this. I'm going to learn to die to my wishes as they come to me through whatever my raw material is.

And where I haven't done so, and I'm afraid in one point or another we're all guilty, I'm to take responsibility for God and say it's my sin. It's not the parent's sin. It's not the other person's sin.

It's not my own. It's me. And I go to Jesus for the cleansing power. I go for a glorious restoration. And I come into the no more of grace which gives me every encouragement in the world for that other no more to those things.

Amen.