From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: As most of you will remember, we are now dealing with the words that are to be found in Paul's epistle to the Romans in chapter 13, verses 11 to 14. The last four verses in the 13th chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans: And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.

We began our consideration of this great and moving and vital subsection of this chapter last Friday evening. I pointed out that these words "and that" connect with what has been going before. Indeed, we had started our consideration of this on a previous Friday evening. He has ended by saying, "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

The argument is roughly this: The Apostle, from the beginning of the 12th chapter and especially from the third verse in that chapter, has been giving a number of detailed injunctions and instructions to these Roman Christians as to how they should live. He says he is doing this because they are Christians. That great word "therefore" in the first verse of that 12th chapter reminds us of that. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God," etc. Having done all that, he is now winding it up and he says you should do this because this is the way to fulfill the law. This is the way to carry out the royal law of love.

That was his first appeal, the first motive that he presses upon them for fulfilling these instructions and injunctions in their daily life. Having done that, he then adds another "and that." On top of that, in addition to that, he says you must do it and then provides this other great reason which we describe as being a kind of eschatological argument. He is making his appeal in terms of the doctrine of the last or the ultimate things. We have indicated that this is a peculiar and special Christian motive for morality and ethics and good conduct.

It is a motive that nobody else knows anything about. It is unique and special to the Christian. That makes it all the more important that we should be perfectly clear about it and should know what it is to be influenced by it as an argument and as an inducement. The Apostle, as is his custom, divides his matter under two headings: the doctrinal aspect and then the practical application. He always does that, and we should always do exactly the same thing. We have taken a little time in emphasizing that these two things should never be considered in isolation, should never be separated.

We have no right ever to consider the teaching of the Scripture theoretically. We must never consider it only theologically or only practically. The two things must always be taken together. As the Apostle does here and as we have seen, he even mixes them up as if to make sure that none of us should ever divide them and separate them or divorce them from one another. There is the doctrinal, there is the practical. We must start obviously with the doctrinal. He does, so we must. I remind you again that he assumes that we know certain things. "And that, knowing the time."

The argument does not apply if we do not know these things. That is why you can never have Christian conduct apart from Christian doctrine. That is why it is heresy to expect to get Christian conduct from people who are not Christians. That is Pelagianism. It has been quite common in this century. It is the fatal weakness in what is called pacifism, that it expects and desiderates a kind of Christian attitude to things in people who are not Christians. That is, of course, nothing but sheer heresy. Now, the Apostle proceeds on the assumption that we know these things.

Though he knows that we know them, he repeats them to us. That is the essence of teaching. It is the repetition of things we already know because we are so ready either to forget them or to fail to apply them and to carry them always in our mind. What does he assume we know? This is the first section. We have already seen that he assumes that we know this time. The time in which we are living. "And that, knowing the time," which we have defined as being the time between the two comings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is what he means by the time. The time of the first advent, the time of the second advent. This is the Christian view of time, the interval between what he has done and what he is yet going to do. Having dealt with that, we proceed to the second matter that he takes for granted in his argument. The second thing that he assumes that we already know is our view of life in this world. This is again essential to the understanding of Christian conduct and to the practice of Christian conduct: that we have the right and the correct view of our life in this world.

It is another way of looking at this time. It is something that follows of necessity from that first postulate. It is because we view time in that way that we inevitably have a given, certain view of life in this world which is entirely different from the view of life in this world taken by people who are not Christians. The Apostle here reminds us of what that view is. He does so in two main words. The first is the night, and the second is darkness.

"The night is far spent. The day is at hand." Looking at this world, it is the night. He says, "Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light," and so on. Then, of course, he works it out in detail. But the two important words for us now are "night" and "darkness." Here is a tremendously important thing for us. The world is too much with us. In spite of the fact that we are Christians, we tend to be governed in our thinking so much by the prevailing notions and ideas that are current in the world round and about us.

This is especially true at this present time. There have been periods in the history of the world when life has been very hard and very difficult and very cruel for people; when men had to work for a very meager wage; when there were pestilences and things of that kind, and everybody realized that life was grim. But for various reasons and the result of various advances so-called, that in general is no longer the case. People tend to take a different view of life in this world.

The view in general is often put in the phrase, "Isn't life wonderful?" People talk about living life with a capital "L" and how wonderful the world has become, and we tend to feel sorry for all who lived in this world before us. That in general is the view taken by the non-Christian. But the view taken by the Christian is the exact opposite. The Christian looks out upon life as it is today and to him, it is the night. It is darkness. I want to stress this, that he takes that view of life in this world at its best, not only at its worst.

The moral man, the ethical man who is not a Christian, the so-called good pagan, the good man as the world regards him, he regards certain things as being dark and of the darkness. But the Christian views the whole of life today as the night and as the darkness. The Apostle has already given us a hint of this at the beginning of the 12th chapter, in the second verse, where he says, "Be not conformed to this world." He has really said it there. This world is something to which we should not be conformed.

He has given us other hints of it in the eighth chapter and in the 23rd verse, where he has already told us that we, not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. It is the same thing put in a different way. We are not surprised when we come across this teaching now in an explicit form. Indeed, the first seven verses of this 13th chapter with which we have dealt at great length, it is all implicit there.

Why do you need the powers that be? Why do you need government? Why do you need magistrates? Why do you need a sword? Why are these things necessary? The answer is obvious. It is because of the nature and the character of life in this world, because of the way in which man in sin conducts himself. It is there implicit in all that. You would not need these powers that be were it not that it is the night, the darkness. That is the character of life in this world. This is not a teaching that is confined in any way to the great Apostle. It is the teaching of the whole Bible.

The men of God, the children of God, are strangers in this world and pilgrims. It is at its clearest in the New Testament. John 3:19: "This is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." Again our Lord, in his great claim, stands up in the world in the midst of men and he says, as we have got it in the eighth chapter of John's gospel in the 12th verse, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

It is as plain as anything can be. Later on, he exhorts these people, "While ye have the light, walk in the light," and so on. I could give you endless quotations from our Lord's own teaching as they are found in the gospels. But you find them scattered about everywhere in the epistles of this Apostle. Take for instance in the first epistle to the Corinthians in the fourth chapter in the fifth verse, he puts it like this: "Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart."

The same idea is implicit there. One of the most glorious and moving statements of it all is in that first chapter of the epistle to the Colossians. Listen to it starting at verse 10: "That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son."

What a wonderful and glorious statement that is of this same principle. Peter is not to be outclassed in this matter, and he has his own way of saying this: "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth his praises who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." What a glorious statement that is again. You see the contrast? Out of the darkness into his marvelous light. John is equally concerned about this and equally rejoices in it.

Listen to him in his first epistle, the first chapter: "This is the message that we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." On he goes in the second chapter, verse eight: "Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past."

That is the truth about us. "And the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now." The whole of the New Testament is full of this idea. Perhaps in the case of this Apostle Paul, it is not surprising that he makes a good deal of this, because when he was commissioned to preach, he was commissioned in these very terms. This is how he reports to Agrippa and Festus how he was called by the Lord: "But rise, stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of those things which thou hast seen, and of those things in which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee."

What for? "To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith which is in me." Now, there is explicit teaching which puts the whole thing in terms of the contrast between darkness and light, or night and day. There are other places where it is implicit and where it is obviously the whole basis of the argument. It is important we should keep our eye on them as we are expounding what the Apostle says here.

For instance, at the beginning of chapter five of the second epistle to the Corinthians, it is the same thing: "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life."

Again, you remember how he reminds the Galatians at the very beginning: "Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins." Why did he do it? "That he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father." You remember the beginning of Ephesians 2: "And you hath he quickened, who were 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," and so on.

We have this typical New Testament teaching about life in this world. John puts it very clearly in the first epistle again in the second chapter: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." And again in the fifth chapter of that epistle: "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."

Here you see is the teaching that the Apostle is putting before us here in these two words: the night and darkness. He assumes that we are clear about this, that this is our view of life in this world. What does he mean then by referring to it as "night" and as "darkness"? He is using the term to convey the state and the condition of mankind outside Christ. From an intellectual standpoint, it is the darkness of ignorance. This is a theme that is elaborated everywhere in the Scriptures. The ultimate trouble with mankind is that it is ignorant. That is what the original sin and fall did to man, cut him off from the vital, most essential knowledge.

The Apostle puts this perhaps in a more elaborate form. One of the clearest statements he has ever made about this is in Ephesians 4 beginning at verse 17: "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk." "Now, you are Christians," he says, "and you must not go on living now as you used to live, as Gentiles, unconverted, and as the unconverted Gentiles still live." Why not? "They walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart."

Then he describes the kind of life they live because of that, who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. "But ye have not so learned Christ." You know differently. Very well, but it is put in terms of this intellectual darkness. That is how he describes the world at its best, at its most enlightened. It is in the dark. It is blind. It is in the night. In what respects? Well, in all the really important matters, first and foremost with regard to God himself.

You remember our Lord at the end of his great high priestly prayer: "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me." The world has not known thee. That is the whole trouble in the world tonight. It does not know God. Ignorant, blind, alienated by wicked works. It needs the light. It has not got it. Even your Greek philosophers fumbling after God, if haply they might seek after him and find him. They do not. They are in the dark. They are groping like men groping in the dark at noonday. This ignorance about God is darkness.

It is equally true in the world's understanding of man and its knowledge of man. It is all very well for the Greek philosophers to put up as their great slogan, "Know thyself," but is there anything more difficult than that? That is where we fail all of us, in knowing ourselves and the truth about ourselves. It is the same with regard to life and the whole purpose of life and living. Mankind is in the dark about this. When it comes to death, nothing but impenetrable darkness. Without a hope to cheer the tomb. Can't see. Everything seems to collapse into final darkness.

The world is ignorant about the judgment beyond. It would not go on living for a second as it does if it knew something about the judgment to come. But it does not. It is completely ignorant. It is unaware of this. It is in the dark. It is the same with regard to eternity and what lies beyond death and the judgment. This has often been put in many of our hymns: "O'er heathen lands afar, thick darkness broodeth yet." It is as true of this country as any so-called heathen country at the present time. It is true of all our civilized countries. Thick darkness broodeth yet.

Last century, two books were published about the same time. One was "In Darkest Africa" and General Booth published his book "In Darkest England". He was quite right. Darkest Africa, everybody was more or less prepared to use that term. But they could not see that England was equally dark in this vital spiritual sense. So it means the darkness of ignorance, intellectual darkness, lack of awareness of the things that really matter and count. But it is equally true as a description of the moral condition of mankind, the life which is lived by such people.

That is why I read to you that portion out of the fifth chapter of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, because the Apostle puts it there so plainly and clearly in very terms of this thing that we are dealing with. He says, "But ye brethren, ye are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of the darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober." Then he describes it. "They that sleep sleep in the night; they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober."

There he is giving us a picture of the kind of life which is lived by people who lack the light of this knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. They belong to the night. They belong to the darkness. They indulge in what he calls elsewhere "the unfruitful works of darkness." There are many descriptions of this which are given to us by the Apostle. Look at this one in the fifth chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians: "Ye were sometimes darkness. But now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light."

Then he goes on to tell us, "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them." Why? "It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." If you want a real description of it, read the second half of the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans, read chapter six of the first epistle to the Corinthians.

Now, that is darkness. It is moral darkness. It is the life of evil and sin. "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles," etc. That is Peter. There is the description given of this darkness about which the Apostle is speaking, this night. The whole outlook of the man who is not a Christian and his mode of behavior. It belongs to that kind of realm. You can add to that the darkness or the night and the gloom of despair and of hopelessness.

Men die in darkness at thy side without a hope to cheer the tomb. Nothing at all. The final bankruptcy as they approach death. They hate it. They hate the thought of it. Everybody is trying to keep young and to look young, and we must not talk about death, that is said to be morbid. It is because of this utter final despair. It is the darkness in that sense about our ultimate and final destiny. Now this is the essential teaching that the Apostle puts before us here and which is so typical of the teaching of the New Testament.

Take another one from the Sermon on the Mount: "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body also shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body also shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" What a text for today. That is the Bible's description of life in this world as it is without Christ. The world, of course, talks about ages of enlightenment and it says we are living in such an age.

The world boasts about the 18th century, when the enlightenment came in. It glories in that 18th century, calls it the enlightenment. It has continued ever since, the last century and this one. All the knowledge we've accumulated and garnered, all the wonderful discoveries we've made. We are living in an enlightened world and we are so sorry for our rude and ignorant forefathers who lacked all this wonderful knowledge and enlightenment that we have.

But the Bible looks out upon it all and it says it is the night. It is the darkness. All that the world is boasting about is entirely on the surface. There is no change whatsoever about the subjects I've been mentioning. There is no more light today than there has ever been. In fact, it is one of the encouraging things for the Christian preacher at the present time that learned authorities are tumbling one over another in their autobiographies and interviews, telling us that really they are completely in the dark about themselves and about life and death and above all about God.

All the enlightenment hasn't given us any light at all. If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! That is the Scripture's verdict on the sophistication and the enlightenment and the culture of this present age. I say that is the world at its best, at its highest. It produces its artificial light and it glories in it. But it is entirely artificial. With regard to everything that is of vital and eternal importance, it is nothing but darkness, both from the standpoint of understanding and of conduct and of behavior.

That can easily be proved by the fact that men still commit the same sins as they have always done throughout the running centuries, and above all in their ignorance of ultimate matters. The Christian is a man who realizes this. He knows this. He realizes the character of the world in which he lives. Therefore, he never trusts human culture. He never gets excited about it as the world does. Never pins his faith to it. The Christian does not dismiss it. He does not say it is useless.

It has its place, but it is a subordinate place. It comes under the heading of common grace. It is all right. The Christian must not despise culture. But what he never does is to put his faith in it or to glory in it and say how wonderful it is. He knows it isn't. It is like an artificial flower. It has its beauty. It can show certain of the faculties and propensities of man. But it isn't living. It isn't real. It hasn't got life. These things can be used to the glory of God.

But in and of themselves, they belong to the realm of the night and to the realm of darkness. The Christian then sees the limits to all these things always. He does not belong to the night. He does not belong to the darkness. He is a child of the day. He belongs to the light. We are children of light. I can sum it up by putting it like this: The Christian realizes always that he is a stranger and a pilgrim in this world. He is in this world and he is fighting the world and the flesh and the devil.

In this tabernacle, he groans, being burdened. He remembers that our Lord said, "In the world ye shall have tribulations." His view of this present world is that it is an evil world. And all the efforts of all the politicians of every party will never change it. They are mere ripples on the surface. They do not affect the real position at all. "In the world ye shall have tribulations." It is a dark world. It is an evil world. It is a doomed world. It is a condemned world. It is a world that is under the wrath of God.

But the Christian isn't depressed when he says that. He says it like this: "Here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come." What is our life in this world? Pilgrim's Progress. We don't settle down here. We don't even want to stay here forever and forever. That would not be satisfactory for us. We realize that as we're here, we're passing through Vanity Fair, and all its gaudy colors and all its supposed enlightenment is Vanity Fair. We pass on. We are pilgrims on the way to eternity.

There is the second great principle then: because we are what we are in Christ Jesus, we know the truth about life in this world. That leads me on to the third thing that the Apostle tells us that we likewise know. He assumes that we have got a particular view of the future and of our outlook. This is again something which is quite unique to the Christian and belongs to him alone. What is this? He puts this again in two words. The first word is the word "salvation," and the second word is "the day."

"And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep." There is another description of what we've been dealing with. They that sleep sleep in the night. Darkness, sleep and so on, it all fits in together. "For now," he says, "is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Here it is. These are most important terms once more and this is a crucial matter. This is the very essence of this argument that the Apostle is implying.

If you merely look at this world and have the true view, you might end in depression. But the Scripture never does. "Here have we no continuing city, but..." That is all right. A door is open. This isn't all. Here the Apostle is doing exactly the same thing. It's crucial. Look at this first term: salvation. He says, "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." I am concerned now with the term salvation and especially "our salvation." "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."

This is an important statement here: "our salvation." I agree with those who say that this is not the best translation here. It rather tends to conceal the true meaning. Taken literally, you would have to translate it like this: "Near is of us the salvation." Those are the actual words themselves. "Near is of us the salvation." Why I prefer that is because instead of saying "our salvation," which you might interpret in a subjective, experimental sense, it reminds us that the Apostle is not speaking about that.

He is talking about the salvation, this objective salvation, the salvation that is outside us and to which we are moving. That is why that is a better way of translating it. "Our salvation," people will immediately rush to interpret in terms of feelings, mood states, and experiences. All right, that is a part of the Christian life. That isn't actually what the Apostle is talking about. He says that "the salvation" is as far as we are concerned nearer than it was when we believed.

What does he mean by "the salvation"? I am sure many of you are tempted to ask this question. When he says here that "our salvation" is nearer than when we believed, is the Apostle suggesting that we are not already saved? Is he here denying the doctrine of assurance of salvation? Is he simply saying that no man has a right to say while he is in this life and in this world, "I am saved" or "I am a saved person"? Is he correcting us and saying you must not say that, you are people who are going towards salvation?

This is a point that people have often raised. People are very ready to divide over this. I have known very good Christian people who dislike the doctrine of assurance of salvation. They say, "I wouldn't like to say that I am saved. I am hoping to be saved." They regarded it rather as presumption to say that you are saved. They were always ready to quote a text such as this: "Our salvation is nearer than when we believed." "Don't say you are saved, say you are going to be saved, say you are hoping to be saved."

You're familiar with that kind of talk. You'll often get it amongst people who hold the high Calvinistic doctrine. They live a kind of depressed life, never being sure of where they are, but hoping. Let's clear this up. This is quite wrong. If you speak like this, what you're really doing is to make the great Apostle contradict himself. He says about himself that he is saved and "we who are saved," and so on. There is really no difficulty about this. This is just a question of the tenses of salvation.

There are three tenses quite clearly. We have been saved. If we are Christians, we are already saved. It has happened to us. But there is another sense in which it is equally true to say that we are being saved. There is a third sense in which it is equally true to say we shall be saved. Like this: as regards the guilt of sin, I am already saved. I say that by the grace of God. You don't take my word for this. This is how the Apostle puts it: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."

Not only is there no condemnation now, there never will be. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath already, aorist, made me free from the law of sin and death. I am not under law, I am under grace. I am saved. I am dead to sin. I have been crucified with Christ. I have died to sin with him. Verse six of the sixth chapter: "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him." It has happened. I assert that and I must assert that, and as Christians, we should all assert it and rejoice in it.

We have been saved from the curse and the condemnation of the law. There is no condemnation now to them that are in Christ Jesus. That is the guilt of sin. I have already been cleared. It is past. It is gone once and for all. But when I consider the question of my relationship to the power of sin and the pollution of sin, I cannot say that I am saved. It isn't true. There is the remaining pollution. There is the remaining falling into sin. Read the first chapter of John's first epistle, and there you get it.

The fight, the conflict, the failure. "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but also for the sin of the whole world." This is progressive. This is continuous. This is sanctification. I am progressively being saved from the power of sin, from the pollution of sin. Christ is being formed in me progressively. Here is that second tense, the second way of looking at it.

There is equally this third way that the Apostle is dealing with here. He is looking to the ultimate, to the final, to the complete. He puts this in many different ways. Take for instance in the 30th verse of the first chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians: "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." I am already redeemed, but the final redemption which includes glorification, all that lies in the future and is yet to come.

Here the Apostle has got his eye on this third tense, this future tense. Let me remind you of how he has already said all this. He is summing up in these last chapters, and he is summing up here particularly at the end of this chapter. But he said it all in the eighth chapter in these words: "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us."

Then he goes on to say: "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." This is equally true now. It's happening now.

"And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." That's the thing the Apostle is talking about here. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews is tremendously interested in the same thing. "Are they not all ministering spirits," he says at the end of the first chapter, "sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" That's got nothing to do with this world. That salvation is the world to come of which he speaks in the fifth verse of the next chapter.

Take what he says at the end of the ninth chapter of that epistle to the Hebrews: "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." This is the ultimate, the absolute, the final. Let me close with a word from the Apostle Peter in the first chapter of his first epistle: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

"To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed at the last time." That's what he's talking about. In the same chapter, verses eight and nine: "Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls."

I have merely introduced this third strand in the teaching of the Apostle, the third of the things which he assumes that we know. That is our outlook, our view of the future that lies ahead of us. God willing, we shall come back to work this out a little bit in detail together next Friday evening. My dear friends, do you know these things? Are you certain of them? Do you understand the time in which you are living? Do you understand the nature of life in this world?

Have you this outlook upon your ultimate full, final salvation? Is it in the light of these things that you are living your daily life? That's what the Apostle is exhorting us to do. O Lord our God, we come again to thank thee for the provision thou hast made for us. We realize we are without any excuse for our ignorance and for our failure. O God, have mercy upon us. Pardon us and cleanse us.

We thank thee that if we confess our sins, thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Grant that we all may know this fully, freely, abundantly, in order that we may continue to walk with thee in the light as children of the light and children of the day. Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now this night, throughout the remainder of this our short, uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage, and until we shall see him as he is and be made like unto him in the glory everlasting. Amen.