From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: This is the hymn which begins with the words, "For all the saints who from their labors rest." We are doing this, and I've had this in mind in the choice of all the hymns as a mark of our tribute of respect to the memory of those two great men and servants of God, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, who exactly 400 years today were burned at the stake in Oxford for their faith, for their evangelical faith.

It's a great day and a day that we should not allow to pass without calling special attention to it. I do not believe in preaching anything but the word itself. Were I of the type that believes in preaching about men, I would most certainly be preaching about Latimer and Ridley today. But I know that it would not have been the wish and the will of Latimer and Ridley in their lives that one should call attention to them rather than to their Lord.

But we do thank God for the memory of such men, who stood valiantly and even gave and laid down their lives for their faith. They did so because they understood the truth, they understood the doctrine. Theirs wasn't a vague general belief somehow or another in Christ as our savior. They died for particular things, for the doctrine of justification by faith only, for a correct view of the sacraments. They refused any longer to wear the mitre and the cope, regarding them as being false and foreign to the true Christian faith. It was for such things that these men were burned at the stake.

And they were actually burned on October the 16th, 1555, precisely 400 years to today. I could say much about them. I will just remind you of one thing about each of them.

You remember how Nicholas Ridley the night before he was to be burned, was approached by his brother-in-law, who offered to spend the night with him, to comfort him and to strengthen him. But Ridley gave his immortal answer, "No, no," he said. "That you shall not, for I mind God willing to go to bed and to sleep as quietly tonight as ever I did in my life." And he did.

He giveth his beloved sleep. He blesses his beloved in sleep. "I lay me down and slept," says the psalmist, "I awoke, for thou art with me."

Then you remember, of course, everybody remembers the great words of Latimer. Latimer was a man of 70, Ridley was a man of 55. But there they were together, chained back to back on that stake in Oxford. And old Latimer, the great preacher, turned to Ridley and uttered these words, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the men. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out."

Those are the men whose memories we honor together today. But God grant us the understanding to realize that we honor them most of all, not by paying lip service to them, but by following in their train, by realizing the vital importance of understanding our faith, learning the doctrines, not being content, as I say, with something vague and nebulous and indefinite. Latimer there expresses the hope that that light should never go out. It's burning very dimly today. Some of the practices which they had rejected have been restored. There is a Romanizing tendency in all sections of the church. There is a doctrinal looseness and indefiniteness, which is really a denial of the things for which these men died. God forbid that this light should go out in this day and generation. But it won't. We are confident that it cannot.

The light lit is still there, and it will go on burning. And if we are faithful and continue steadfastly by word and by prayer, God will visit us again and revive his work. And what is but a flickering taper, perhaps, at the moment, will again become a mighty blaze. Let us this day therefore dedicate ourselves anew, as we thank God for the past, and let us make certain that we shall be worthy of these great men of God.

I should like to call your attention this morning to the words which are to be found in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, the second chapter and the first three verses, the first three verses in the second chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you 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. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."

We come back, in other words, to a consideration of this most important and vital statement here concerning men in sin. I would remind you that we are giving our time in this way to this because the apostle says that it is vital to an understanding of the greatness of the gospel, the greatness of God's grace, the greatness especially of the power of God toward us-ward that believe. We cannot understand the Christian doctrine of salvation until we understand its doctrine of sin.

And therefore the apostle displays it to us here as he did with these Ephesians in order that we may have the power to measure in this way the greatness of God's grace. You have to realize the depth out of which man has been raised, as well as the height to which he is raised, if you truly are to understand God's love and God's grace and God's mercy.

Well now, I indicated last Sunday morning that the apostle here tells us three things about this. The first is he gives us a description of man's state and condition in sin. And that you remember we considered last Sunday morning in these words. He says that man is dead. Dead in trespasses and sins. He is governed by this world and the mind of this world. He is governed by the principle of evil that is operating in this world and which in turn is governed by the prince of the power of the air. That great head, the devil, Satan, the God of this world, the controller of all these evil spiritual powers and forces that govern and rule men and determine that kind of life that is lived by men in this world.

Now there is the state, the condition. How vital it is we should realize this. Vital, I say, not only from the standpoint of understanding the gospel truly, but surely in a very practical sense, absolutely essential to an understanding of the times in which we live, both internationally and in a national sense.

There is nothing that is so fatuous as the idea that Christian doctrine is remote from life. There is nothing that is so practical. And the world is today in its present condition of muddle because men simply will not recognize the truth of what the Bible tells us about men.

Look at the industrial, even the financial situation. What is the trouble? Well, we are told the main trouble is that production is not as great as it should be. Why is production not as great as it should be? That's the question. Why aren't we producing more? And the answer is, of course, that we are not producing more because man is in a state of sin. You notice I say, "man," not "the men." I say "man" to include all men.

We are not producing as much as we ought to because both employers and employed are increasingly extending their notion of the weekend. It applies to all. If one man has a right to extend his weekend, another has an equal right. And all because they're in sin and selfish, as I'm going to show you, are doing that. And hence our major problem at this moment.

And whence come wars amongst you, as James asks, and answers his own question. They come even of your own lusts that dwell within you. And the tragedy is, you see, that the world and its leaders and its statesmen, because they don't recognize the teaching of the scripture, think that they can explain it in some other terms. The various groups blame one another, and the various countries blame one another, not realizing that they're all in sin together. And while they are in sin and are self-centered and selfish, they'll all consider themselves only and nobody else, and the world will continue in its troubles.

So you see, this biblical doctrine of sin is the most practical thing this morning in the world. And yet people dismiss it with disdain, and alas, even Christian people do. They say, "We want a little comfort." You see how remote from the biblical teaching itself is the far too common idea of Christianity that it's simply a collection of a certain number of moral maxims, and that you go to church on Sunday just to have a little encouragement, to be told your duty, and to be told you're good if you do it, and no more. It doesn't begin to consider the problem. Before we realize the problem, we must understand exactly what man is in sin.

And it's only then we will see that nothing but spiritual renewal and the work of the Holy Ghost can possibly deal with the situation and deliver us in every respect. Very well, I say, we are considering it for these reasons. Having looked at man therefore in his condition, I come to the second question, which is the explanation of this condition. Why is man in this condition? What has brought him into it? What accounts for it? What explains it?

Well, the apostle answers that question in a series of terms and of words that he uses in these three verses. Let me pick them out for you. The first term that is of importance is the expression "the children of disobedience." "Wherein in time past," he says, "you 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." What a significant and important term this is. If you like, you can translate it "sons of disobedience." It's the same thing. What does it mean?

Well, it doesn't just mean disobedient children, or disobedient sons. This is a rather characteristic biblical expression. You'll find it a similar kind of expression used in many places. You remember our Lord turned to the Jews one day and said, "You are of your father the devil, and the works of your father you will do." Then you remember in the Old Testament, often you find certain wicked men are always referred to as "sons of Belial" or something like that, or "sons of Beelzebub."

Therefore, we must regard the term as saying something like this. It means that disobedience is the source of this distinctive character. We are children of disobedience. It is disobedience that leads to our being exactly what we are.

Now, that is the thing that the apostle, of course, is stressing here, as it is the essential part always of this biblical explanation of why man is like this. The essential primary trouble is disobedience. That is the thing that has led to all our troubles and all our disasters. In other words, it is man's relationship to God. And you've noticed that the emphasis is this. Sin isn't merely something negative. It isn't merely the absence of qualities, it isn't merely the absence of something. It's positive. It is active. It is deliberate. It is disobedience. It is a departure from obedience. It is a querying of the right to command. It is rebellion, in other words.

And that is what the Bible tells us from beginning to end about men. He's not a poor creature who's just never had a chance, and to whom therefore you should be very sympathetic and very lenient. That's the modern idea, as you know. The doctrine of sin really went out some 60 or 70 years ago, and psychology came in in its place, and that's why discipline and punishment have gone. The idea now is, you see, that we're all essentially really very good and the trouble is we've never been given a chance. What we need is encouragement. We don't believe in law or anything like that. That seems to us very harsh and very cruel. And, I say, the result of it all is the breakdown of discipline in every department of life: in the home, in the schools, on the streets, in industry, in commerce, everywhere.

You see how vital this doctrine is. Well, now then, the Bible says that it's all due to this initial disobedience. That man is a rebel against God, and deliberately rebels against God. And it all arises, of course, from his self-love. It's man's self-assertion. It is man setting himself up against God, the desire to be as a god himself.

Now, this works out, of course, along three main lines. The first thing, obviously, is that man denies his own creatureliness. He objects to that. Man doesn't like the idea that he is a creature, made and created by God. He feels that this idea of his creatureliness is insulting to him. That it somehow detracts from him and his essential greatness and glory. He doesn't like the idea of feeling that there is anybody, even God, who is above him. That's what it means. That man is supreme. He's above everything and can look down upon everything. That is, of course, the very heart and nerve of his objection to God and his opposition to God. Man resents by nature that there is anything or anybody whom he cannot comprehend with his mind. And when he's told that he's only a creature, and that his attitude towards the creator, the Lord God Almighty, should be one of humbling himself and falling down upon his face, he objects to it. He feels it's insulting. He says, "I am not a creature." "There's nothing beyond me."

And so, you have the modern man's atheism, his objection to God, his godlessness. And it's all, I say, on account of the fact that he objects to this idea of his own creatureliness, that he is someone whom God has made and created and fashioned for himself.

Another way in which it manifests itself obviously is this, and it follows from the first. Man always wants to assert his own self-sufficiency. He believes that he is sufficient in and of himself. Now the Bible, of course, says the exact opposite: that man was not only made by God for God, but that he is dependent upon God. That he can only be happy when he's in correspondence with God, and when he obeys God. The whole biblical conception of man is that man is thus in a state of complete dependence upon God, and his well-being depends upon his realization of that and his practice of that.

But of course, this cuts right across what man in sin has always felt about himself. He has always had the feeling that he is self-sufficient, that he's got the powers, and that he has but to exercise them, and he can make a perfect world and make a perfect life for himself, order his affairs in the right way, and he needs no aid and no assistance. That is why, you see, there is nothing that so offends the natural man as the gospel which tells him that he is saved alone by the grace of God, which he's got to accept as a pauper and as a free gift. He says, "I've not sunk as low as that. I'm not perfect perhaps, but I'm not a pauper. There's something that I can still do, and I'm capable of doing it." It's the doctrine of the grace of God that man hates. It's the offense of the cross. Because he believes in his own self-sufficiency, his own capacity. He believes he has it in him.

Well, you see, that is an expression of his disobedience. He won't accept this. He won't believe it. He rebels against it, and he is fighting it at this moment. Or perhaps we can put it in a phrase by putting it like this. It is man's assertion of his autonomy. His independence of God. Autonomous man. Man who can in every way manage his own affairs and needs no help and no assistance from anywhere, not even from God himself. Autonomous man, self-sufficient man, self-determinative man, independent man, man as a god, man as the Lord of the universe, man on the throne and on his pedestal.

And I think you'll see that that is nothing but a description of man as he is this morning, outside the Christian faith. He is utterly disobedient, and proud of it, and arrogant in it. He's asserting himself and his self-sufficiency.

Now, you notice that this must really be pressed to that point. Disobedience is, as I said, active. And it is active to the point of enmity. And if we fail to realize that, we haven't really understood this doctrine. So let me interpret what the apostle says here by what he says in the Epistle to the Romans, in the eighth chapter, in the seventh verse. "The natural mind," he says, "is enmity against God. Is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Now, what a statement, what an important addition.

Man disobeys God because he is at enmity against God. He hates God. Oh, but you say, "I know many people who are not Christians, and they say they believe in God." No, they don't. They believe in a figment of their own imagination. They don't believe in God. If they believed in God, they'd believe in his Christ, but they don't. You see, they believe in what they think God is, a God that they've manufactured. That isn't God. The natural mind is enmity against God. "Is not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can be."

Now then, this is important in this way. That man, as the result of sin, as the result of being dominated by the devil and the principle of evil that is introduced, and the mind of this world. Man now in sin is in such a state and condition that he cannot obey God. Which is what the great Martin Luther called the bondage of the will. But what a hateful doctrine to the man in sin. And to the modern man. The bondage of the will. My will is free, says man. Man likes to think that he's absolutely free to choose anything he likes. He can choose to serve God if he wants to. He can choose to be a Christian if he wants to. Assertion of the will, free will.

No, no. Children of disobedience. You are of your father the devil, and the works of your father you will do. You can't help it. You must do it. He's not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Incapable of it. Such is the depth to which man has sunk in sin. And yet, this is where the paradox, as it were, comes in. In spite of that, everything man does, he does deliberately. He wills to sin. He enjoys sinning. He glories in sinning. He does exert his will negatively in sin. What he cannot do is to will positive good. To will, to will spiritual good, he's incapable of that. But he can will evil, and he delights in doing so. What he doesn't realize is that he's rendered incapable of willing good. And willing anything in the direction of salvation, he's not free to. Children of disobedience. The spawn of disobedience. The progeny of disobedience, this evil mind. We are the offspring of it. That's the biblical teaching.

And it almost passes my comprehension how anybody who has any understanding of these matters can dispute that for a second. The world is just demonstrating it. Men and women are the slaves of the devil. The bond slaves of the devil. They are under the power of Satan. That's the first term, but let's hurry to the second term.

The second term is there at the end of the third verse: "And we were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." I pick out the words "by nature." Now again, this is obviously a most important term. And this is the thing which explains why we are children of disobedience and why we are in this particular attitude with respect to God. Now the apostle uses it primarily here in explication of his teaching of the fact that we are under the wrath of God. We are under the wrath of God, he says, by nature. I hope to deal with that next Sunday, God willing. This morning though, I want to show that it means something in addition to that.

We are what we are in every respect by nature. If you prefer another translation, you could substitute the words "by birth." "And we were by birth the children of wrath, even as others." In other words, the teaching here is again the teaching of the whole Bible with regard to man in sin. The teaching is that we are born into this world with a disobedient nature.

We are not born neutral into this world. We are not born, as it were, upon a balance. And can go either that way or this way, not at all. We are born on one side. David, of course, puts it memorably in Psalm 51 in the fifth verse, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." What a profound bit of self-analysis and of psychology. If you want psychology, go to the scriptures. There you've got it. Look at the man, he's examining himself. He's been reminded of what he's done, the adultery and the murder following it, and he's awakened and he examines himself and said, "How could I do it? How could a man ever do such a thing? What renders a man capable of that? What is it?" And he says, "There's only one answer. It's as deep as this: 'I was shapen in iniquity, shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.'"

Well, I know that this doctrine's not popular today. Man in sin has never liked it. But he likes to say, of course, is this: that we're all born neutral. Peter Pan, perfect. Look at that little child, how wonderful, how perfect. Well, why does he sin when he grows up? Ah, well, you see, they say that's the trouble. It's the sinful world into which he comes. He sees bad things. He sees bad habits, and he's gradually influenced by them. They say the child's all right, but the environment isn't. If only that child could be put into a perfect world, he'd remain perfect. But he comes into an imperfect world, and he sees, and he picks up habits. He listens to talk. He sees what people do. And he gradually picks them up, and he practices them. It's nothing but bad environment, bad example, bad influence.

No, no, says the Bible. It doesn't. That little child was shapen in iniquity, and born and conceived in sin. Our very natures when we come into this world are already polluted. We inherit a sinful nature. By nature. It's come to us. We start with it. The tendencies and the desires are all there, and all the world gives us is an outlet. There is this rebellion within us, this desire for the prohibited. It comes out at once. It's one of the first things we manifest, all of us. Why? Well, by nature.

In other words, the whole fallacy comes in at this point, doesn't it, in this way. We tend to think of sin in terms of separate acts of the will, and therefore we tend to lose sight of the fact that we are ourselves sinful apart from our actions. That sin is in us and of our very nature. We must get rid of this notion that we, as it were, are all right, but that a temptation comes, and then we do it. Ah, that's sin. A sinful action. I exerted my will, and I did what I shouldn't do. That isn't the explanation. The whole point is this. What was it that ever led to it? Well, that's something within me. Take the words of our Lord himself, who put it once and forever, "It is not that which entereth into the mouth that defileth the man, but that which cometh out. It is out of the heart that proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, and all the rest." It's in the heart of men. It's in this fallen sinful nature. It's what Paul calls in the seventh of Romans, "the law in my members. In me, that is to say in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." It's corrupt. It's evil by nature.

We are the children of wrath, even as others. Well now, obviously, this again is of the most vital importance. You see, if the other theory is right, and that man is more or less neutral, and that it's only the bad influence and environment that takes him astray, well, all you've got to do therefore is to deal with the environment. And that's been the controlling philosophy for the last 60 to 70 years. Education, housing, economic improvement. "Give men the right conditions and give him the right conditions, and he'll be right." But by now, surely, we must all be beginning to realize that it isn't true. It doesn't work. You can give him the most ideal conditions and he'll go wrong in them. It was in paradise that man fell. And if men originally righteous could fall, how much more so men who's already fallen? You see, this is absolutely vital all along the line as I'm trying to indicate. The tragedy is, I say, that the trouble is much deeper. I never cease to quote this because it's something we can all well remember. Shakespeare has stated it once and forever, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings." By nature. We start with it, with a bias towards evil, with a will that's in bondage, under the dominion of Satan, with lusts and evil desires. As we shall see, already there and waiting for an opportunity to demonstrate and to manifest themselves.

And then we come on to the next word, which is a most important one, it's the word "all." "Wherein in time past you 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, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath." And again he says it, "even as others." Or if you prefer another translation, "like the rest of mankind." All. It's universal.

Now, this is the startling thing. Of course, this point was very germane to the apostle's particular argument just here. His theme is, you remember, how God in Christ, in the fullness of the times, is going to reunite all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and on earth, even in him. And he says he's already started doing it. "We are already in, who are Jews, we've believed, and we're in." "You also have obtained an inheritance." Now then he comes back to it again, "You hath he quickened." "And you," is done it to you Gentiles. But he says, "Wait a minute, don't let anybody think that I'm only saying these things about the Gentiles." No, no, "We all had our conversation." "We all were the children of wrath, even as others."

What he says here about man in sin was as true about the Jew as it was about the Gentile. How difficult it was for the Jew to believe that. For centuries he'd believed that he was quite apart. Jew. Outside were the dogs, the Gentiles, the strangers, outside the commonwealth of Israel. He, a Jew, was a child of God. He was saved because he was a Jew. He was altogether right and better. The others were sinners, dogs of the Gentiles outside. How difficult for him to accept a doctrine which says that he was as much a sinner as was the Gentile. That was the stumbling block to the Jew. He didn't like it. And this classification still obtains in a different sense. But here the apostle says, not only Gentiles, but also Jews. And you notice he even puts himself in. Having started with, "you," he says, "we." Paul the apostle, the thing is unthinkable, isn't it? But that was the whole tragedy in his life before his conversion, wasn't it? As Saul of Tarsus, he thought he was perfect. "As touching the righteousness which is of the law, blameless." He thought he really was perfect. And he tells us how it was that he came to see his error. It was when he understood the law to say, "You shall not covet." "Sin revived, I died." When the law begins to say, "You mustn't desire, you mustn't covet," he saw the real meaning of law, and he saw what a terrible sinner he was. So that in writing to Timothy he says this, "It is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." He's the chief of them. "We all had our conversation in times past." This is true of all.

But people are still very slow to see that. They say, "Take this description of sin which you've got in those three verses." "Of course," says the man, "I can see quite well that that applies to certain people. I walk along the streets, I see that poor drunkard, the fallen woman. I see sin in its rags and in its vice." "And you're quite right in what you say." "You're talking about an evil nature, and the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the mind, and so on. I quite agree with you." "But we're not all like that." "Are there not good people, and moral and decent people, and upright people, and religious people?" "Are you saying that about them?" The answer of the Apostle Paul is, "All." "Even as others," "the rest of mankind." "Not a single exception."

We are all shapen in iniquity, conceived in sin. We all have this sinful nature. The fatal mistake, I say, always is to think of sin in terms of acts and of actions, rather than in terms of nature and of disposition. The mistake is to think of it, I say, in terms of particular things, instead of thinking of it as we ought to always of our relationship to God. Do you want to know what sin is? I'll tell you. Sin is the opposite of this in any shape or form. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength." And if you're not doing so, you're a sinner. It doesn't matter how respectable you are. If you're not living entirely to the glory of God, you're a sinner. And the more you think you are perfect in and of yourself apart from relationship to God, the greater is your sin. That is why I think we all, when we read it objectively, can see quite clearly that the Pharisees of the New Testament were greater sinners, if you can use such terms, than were the publicans and sinners. Why? Because they were self-satisfied, they were self-sufficient. The height of sin is not to feel any need for the grace of God. There is no greater sin than that. Infinitely worse than committing some sin of the flesh, is to feel that you're independent of God, and that Christ need never have died on the cross of Calvary. There is no greater sin than that. That final self-sufficiency and self-satisfaction and self-righteousness is the sin of sins. It's sin at its height because it's spiritual sin.

So when you realize that, you realize the apostle isn't exaggerating. "We all, even as others." That is man in sin. It's universal. There's only one adequate explanation of this, isn't there? It's what's given at the beginning of the book of Genesis. It's the biblical doctrine of the fall and of original sin. You cannot understand the modern world apart from the doctrine of original sin. It has all come about in this way. One man, Adam, the whole of humanity, the representative of humanity, he sinned, he rebelled, he fell, and the consequences have devolved upon all his progeny. I defy you to explain the universality of sin in any other terms. It simply cannot be done. Every other theory breaks down. That is why we must believe the early chapters of Genesis if we are to believe the New Testament. You cannot have a true doctrine of salvation apart from this. The two things go together, as Paul proves there in that fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and again in exactly the same way in the 15th chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians.

That is the problem of man. That is why man is as he is. Adam fell. Adam sinned. And the result is that all the seed of Adam are born in corruption, with a polluted nature. It's universal everywhere. It's this that makes the whole world kin. It's this that demolishes all your various curtains and all your colors and all your philosophies. The whole world is one here. We are all in sin. Children of disobedience. Inheritors of an evil nature, that expresses and manifests itself in the way in which I hope to consider with you next Sunday, "In the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind." "And therefore under the wrath of God." "And absolutely helpless."

I leave it there this morning, because I'm preaching on the assumption that I'm preaching to Christian people. But if I were preaching this at night instead of the morning, I wouldn't stop there. I dare not. I'd go on to say, "But, even when we were like that, in his infinite grace and love and mercy, he came and quickened us." Nothing else could do it. What else can deal with man in such a condition? Nothing less than the almighty power of God, the power as he said at the end of the first chapter, that brought the Lord Jesus again from the dead, and raised him and set him in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that can be named. That's it. Nothing less than the power of God can rescue and redeem and save man. But he has done it in Christ. And we as Christians this morning are raised out of that, solely because of his wondrous grace. Amen.