The Sinner and His Pigpen — E.A. Johnston

The False Hope of the Carnal Christian

It is not uncommon to hear the foul one from a concerned parent regarding their child. You will often hear a church member say, Please pray for my son Johnny. He accepted Jesus into his heart when he was a boy, but for the last 20 years or so, he hasn't been living for the Lord.

Please pray that Johnny will stop living with his girlfriend and start living for Jesus. That's a tragic picture because that parent is not praying properly for her son. She believes him to be a carnal Christian because he made a decision to be one years ago when he was a boy, but he never followed up on it when he became a man.

Rather, she needs to pray right. She needs to pray for his salvation because Johnny is enjoying the pig pen that he has chosen to live in because he is a sinner, a dead in sin. But the problem is, there's no such thing as a carnal Christian.

You are either saved or lost. Listen friends, for the last 60 years in America, there's risen a false teaching within the church, and this false teaching has been propagated by many Bible scholars in their Bible commentaries, and many influential preachers have preached the same thing about the carnal Christian.

I think I can sum it up with the average viewpoint on this with the following story. There was a Sunday school teacher in a Baptist church, and in her class, a boy raised his hand and asked her the following question.

He asked, was Hitler a Christian? The Sunday school teacher replied, well, he certainly didn't live for Jesus, but we can only hope that he received Jesus as a little boy. That is the mindset of many in our churches today, friends.

Revelation's Warning to the Lukewarm

One doesn't have to live for Jesus to be a Christian. Jesus just wants part of you, and this false teaching of the carnal Christian is centered around two passages in the New Testament. One is found in the book of Revelation in chapter 3, beginning in verse 14 concerning the Laodicean church, where the members of the Laodicean church are merely lukewarm Christians who need to start living for the Lord.

They are carnal Christians, not living for the Lord as they should. And the other passage is found in Luke's gospel in chapter 15 regarding the story of the prodigal son. Many preachers have taught that the prodigal son was a carnal Christian who finally came to his senses and returned back to God.

I've heard this preached often in my lifetime, and this teaching of the carnal Christian has had a profound influence on the way we conduct evangelism and on the church in America since World War II. Many good men have taught this doctrine of the carnal Christian, and they meant well, but they were greatly in error.

Listen, friends, there's no such creature as the carnal Christian. You are either a sheep or a goat, saved or lost. This false teaching of the carnal Christian has gained such prominence in this country that many big preachers preach this nonsense.

But we must remind ourselves that for the last 60 years in this country, there's been a great departure from God in the land and in the church. This has been a time of great spiritual declension within major denominations, and when society is unraveling all around us and perversion abounds in high places and the church is in a downward spiral of its own spiritual decay, then many false teachings will grow into popularity.

There are many today who teach you can be saved and sent all you want to because God is a God of love, and he wouldn't send anybody to hell. And there are many professing Christians today who fill our churches and say with their lips they love Jesus, yet with their lives deny him because they will not part with their sins, nor have him reign over them.

The Prodigal Son and the Sinner's Pigpen

I want us today to focus our attention on the story of the prodigal son, and I want to relate the story by the title of my sermon today, which is The Sinner and His Pigpen, because that is what a lost person is, a sinner in his pigpen, loving his slop, enjoying his sin, laying in filth and not even aware of his true condition.

A man is born with a rune nature that is bent toward evil. He is dead and trespasses in sin, blinded by his father the devil, who has bound him in the chains of sin. And we will look today at the sinner and his pigpen, and we will be in Luke's gospel in chapter 15, beginning in verse 11.

You can turn in your Bibles there now. And before I read us our passage, I want to relate a story to you, which I feel sums up this false teaching of the carnal Christian. I knew a man years ago who was a member in a Baptist church.

He was married with children and in my Sunday school class, and he was faithful about attending church. Every Sunday, he'd be sitting in my class smiling. But the problem was, on Saturday night, he'd be at a local strip club drinking and giving strippers his money.

But every Sunday morning, he'd be in church with his family, and he'd be sitting there smiling. He had the best of both worlds, religion and his lust. He just loved going to that strip club, pigpen every week, and gratifying his sensual lust.

For years, he was counseled at that Baptist church by staff members who told him he was a saved man who just wasn't living for Jesus like he should. And because it was common knowledge to just about everybody at that church that this man was addicted to strippers, even though he was married to a beautiful wife, and these Christian counselors would lead him in prayer to start living for the Lord.

And they would pat him on the back and have him commit to reading his Bible more and commit to living for Jesus more. But all he would do was to appear in church on Sunday after he spent the previous night at a local strip club.

And this was not an isolated case, but a common one. I knew another family with the same problem. They belonged to a different Baptist church in the same town. They were married with a child, and the husband would often come home drunk after blowing all his money in a strip club that evening.

But they'd be in church on Sunday because he was a carnal Christian who just was not living for the Lord yet, but he had good intentions. And there are many men who are church members who might be embarrassed to go out in public and risk being seen at a strip club, so they do the same thing privately when they are alone.

But they are still going to heaven because the teaching of the carnal Christian declares, once saved, always saved, no matter if you still hug your sins. But it isn't so, friend. Animals are true to their nature.

You won't ever find a sheep in a pig pen wallowing in her filth, but you will find a pig there, and that pig will be completely happy in his filth because he is being true to his nature. He is a pig who likes to wallow in his mire, and a sinner is true to his nature as well.

He is a pig who likes his pig pen to sin. My Bible declares that man drinks iniquity like it's water. A lost man will hate all things holy. He will refuse to bow to the lordship of Jesus Christ and turn from all sin.

He will join the crowd on the Broadway and cry out at the top of his lungs, we will not have this man reign over us. A self will be king, a self will rule on the throne of his heart, and he will hug his sins and wallow in them and be quite content and still gravitate towards some form of religion because a sinful man needs some kind of religion to make him feel a little better about himself, so he won't mind joining some religion as long as he can still run his life the way he wants to.

Repentance, Lordship, and the Necessity of Holiness

But a saved individual will throw down his shotgun of rebellion and lay all his arms at the foot of a sovereign king, King Jesus. He will live under the lordship of Jesus Christ through a life of repentance.

Listen friends, salvation isn't something you did 20 years ago and put away in a tin can. A saved person has experienced change. A self is dethroned and another is enthroned there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

A saved person exercises repentance every day, every day of their life in a continual turning away from sin and this world to a turning to God and repentance as they pursue a life of holiness unto the Lord.

Now you won't hear many sermons these days on holiness because if you preach on the need for holiness, then you have to preach on sin and you have to preach on hell and you have to preach on man's duty and repentance and then you got to preach on the utter necessity of regeneration, which is the work of grace upon the heart.

It's a lot easier just to preach nice little sermons that don't upset anybody and grow your church numerically and tell everybody they are on the way to heaven because they walked an aisle and repeated a prayer.

We make it real easy to come to Jesus today in our churches, but we fail to warn men and women about their great danger of dying in their sins and being cast into a place of eternal misery called hell.

My Bible declares the soul that sinneth, it shall die. My Bible declares that a pig in his pig pen is not a sheep, but a pig knee deep in sin. Revelation 22, 11 is clear. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still.

And he which is filthy, let him be filthy still. And my Bible declares, as a tree falleth, so it shall lie. If you live in your sins and you die in your sins, you'll be cast into hell for every dog has his kennel, every crab has his hole in the sand, and every sinner his filthy pig pen of sin.

And if you were living in habitual sin, friend, and you die suddenly, you will drop into hell, even if you've been baptized in church and are the chairman of the deacons. Now let us turn to a passage of the prodigal son who spent his living on harlots and ended up in a pig pen.

But listen, he was a good boy who just wasn't living for Jesus yet. That's what many will tell us. I like what Vance Habner said about the rich young ruler. Vance Habner said, the rich young ruler was a good boy, but he wasn't God's boy.

The Prodigal's Descent and Return to the Father

Now let us go to our passage. This is the word of God. May the spirit of God attend the reading of his holy word. And he said, a certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.

And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in want.

And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine, and he would fain have filled his belly with the husk that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him.

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat and be merry.

For this my son was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found. I will stop there. Notice how the father describes his son. My son was dead. He was lost. Listen, friends. A sinner in his pig pen is dead in sin, and his condition is lost, for if he dies in his sins, his soul is lost forever.

The younger brother here in our story represents the lost sinner, dead in sin and living in it. The devil's servants make provision for the flesh to fulfill their lusts and run their own lives in their own far country, which is the world.

A man tied to his sins is a servant of sin and in bondage to sin, and the devil's hell awaits him. A lost sinner lies in the darkness and mire of a pig pen of filth and is quite content to remain there, enjoying his swill and rolling in his wallah, like I said, an animal is true to its nature.

Sheep stay in flocks and close to their shepherd, and you'll never find a sheep laying content in a pigsty of filth, but you will find a pig there, for the sinner and his pig pen go hand in hand. I like what Matthew Henry, the Bible calmer, has to say on this passage on the prodigal son, who he says is a picture of the lost sinner.

Regarding Luke 15, 17, which says the prodigal came to himself, Matthew Henry comments sinners will not come to Christ till they are brought to see themselves ready to perish in the service of sin. And where the text says I will arise and go to my father, Henry comments true repentance is arising and coming to God.

The confession of sin is required as a necessary condition of peace and pardon. And then Matthew Henry has this to say about the father's words about his son being dead and alive. He writes, the conversion of a soul from sin to God is the raising of that soul from death to life, and the finding of that which seemed to be lost.

It's a great and wonderful and happy change. Notice, friends, that Matthew Henry said conversion is a soul from sin to God. Listen, dear friend, you cannot have Christ in your cake too. You cannot be saved and remain in your sins and still go to heaven.

It's a raising of death to life from being dead in sin to being dead to sin. Notice he said it was a great and wonderful and happy change. When Jesus was here in his earthly ministry, as he passed through towns and villages, those who encountered him experienced change.

New Birth and a Transformed Life

When he healed the blind, they did not go back to being blind. They saw the world in a new light with new eyes. And that's what being born again means. You see things with new eyes, with spiritual eyes.

And you live for God in eternity because you have a new disposition of holiness in you through the new birth. You no longer live just to please yourself and gratify your lusts. Rather, you deny yourself and live under the lordship of Jesus Christ because he must rule in your life, friend.

He is a sovereign, and he must reign on the throne of your heart. Let me ask you, friend. Are you changed? Or are you still in your pig pen of sin? Have you been washed? Are your sins washed in the blood?

Are you born from above? Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commands. In Hebrews, it declares, without holiness, no one will see the Lord. A true convert loves what God loves, and hates what he hates, and God hates sin.

He hates it so much that he sent his only beloved son to suffer and die on an ignoble cross that had Christ's blood all over it because of sin. That cross was blood red, crimson red, because of my wretched sins.

That cross had Christ's blood running all down it, friend, because of your wretched sins. Christ came to save his people from their sins. Listen, friend. Christ didn't hang on that cross so you could claim to be his follower and continue to hug your sins and live in a pig pen in them.

This is the whole doctrine of the carnal Christian who has Jesus for their savior, but not as their lord. It's utter nonsense. Listen to me, dear friend. If you die in your sins, you will surely go to hell.

And if you claim Jesus as your savior, but you refuse to have him as your lord, you are not living for God, but for yourself, and you are yet unconverted for. You still sit on the throne of your heart and rule there, and Christ will have no rebels in his kingdom.

The Call to Repentance and Faith

Sheep won't be content to live in a pig pen. Jesus declared, unless you repent, ye shall all likewise perish. And that means you, friend. That means you. Repent before it's too late. Listen, friend, to the word of God, and may God open your heart to hear it.

Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Ho! Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.

And he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him. And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.