From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Most of you will recall that at the moment we are studying together the words found in Paul's Epistle to the Romans in chapter 13, verses 8, 9, and 10. Verses 8, 9, and 10, in the 13th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

O, no men anything, but to love one another. For he that loveth another has fulfilled the law. For this, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not cover it, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Now, we began our treatment of these three verses, this little subsection in this chapter, last Friday night. And we tried to show then that here the apostle is summing up, as it were, what he began to say at the beginning of the 12th chapter. The whole section beginning at the first verse of the 12th chapter to the end of the Epistle deals with the outworking of the great doctrine that he'd been laying down in the previous 11 chapters. This is the practical portion of the Epistle, the application of the doctrine.

But we were particularly anxious to show that it's the summing up of all that he says from verse 3 in chapter 12 onwards. Verses 1 and 2 of that chapter, of course, are general introduction, but he really comes down to these particulars, and we've been working our way through them.

But now he's said what he wants to say, and he's summing it all up, as it were. Indeed, he'd already indicated in the 12th chapter that this was to be the governing principle in verses 9 and 10, where he had said, "Let love be without dissimulation."

"Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another." So he starts with love before he comes to the details. He tells them now everything's got to be done in love. Then having dealt with the details, back he comes again, summing it up. Back once more to this same great principle of love. And we saw the immediate connection how he came to say it by taking up the word that he'd used at the beginning of verse 7 about the dues, takes that word up and says, "O, no men anything, except to love one another."

"Don't be in debt," he says, "to anybody, but there's one respect in which you'll always be in debt, and that is in this matter of loving one another. That's a debt you can never discharge. It is permanent and will go on as long as we live." But having said that, he then opens it up a bit by saying, "Actually, of course, he says, this is the real meaning of God's commandment."

And so he links this all up all he's been saying with the law of God. And what he says, of course, is this, that we must be clear as to the nature of the law. Now, this is a great argument in so many places in the New Testament, as I showed last week. The real trouble with the Pharisees was that they misunderstood the law of God. They were the teachers of the law. Proud of themselves as experts on the law, but the real trouble with the Pharisee was that he completely misunderstood the law. It was the trouble with Paul himself, as he tells us in various places in bits of autobiography.

So we must be clear of this error, not only of the Pharisees, but of all moralists. Always, this is always the trouble with the moralist. Like the Pharisee, he tends to be more interested in the letter than in the spirit. And indeed, he fails to realize that without the spirit you cannot even carry out the letter. In other words, we ended by saying that what the apostle is showing us here is how the letter and the spirit are intimately bound together and they must never be separate.

As James says that faith without works is dead, so we can say that love without manifestation of love is equally dead. It's not a mere sentiment. Love is the most practical thing in the world. It's the most active thing. And if love isn't active, well, it isn't love. There's something wrong somewhere in your whole understanding of it. Very well.

So you see the apostle arrives at this statement at the end of the eighth verse. "He that loveth another has fulfilled the law." We explained that that does not mean that therefore the Christian preacher has nothing to do but to talk about love. No, no, as the apostle himself does, we've got to indicate the character of the commandments and to show how love works itself out in detail.

But having said that, what we are now to concentrate on is this, that the apostle there in that last statement in the eighth verse is really telling us this, that when a man truly loves his neighbor, he is of necessity fulfilling the law. He is carrying out the real intent and object of the law. Very well, that's the proposition at the end of the eighth verse. So we turn to the ninth verse, where the apostle now is expounding it and explaining it. For, he says, for this, you see, here's his proposition. He that loveth another has fulfilled, carried out fully, the intent, the real object and purpose of the law.

Now to prove this, for this, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Now, we didn't stay, I'm sure, with the mechanics, but you notice that the order in which the apostle puts these commandments differs from that which you read of in the Book of Exodus.

What's the explanation? Well, it's just another instance of how the apostle generally used the Septuagint translation. A point of interest as far as it goes, doesn't carry any doctrinal significance, of course, but that is what he generally does, as we've seen in most of his quotations. And when he says here, "and if there be any other commandment," he doesn't mean to say that he's forgotten for the time being what the other ones were. What he's really saying is, "I'm only giving you examples and illustrations. All, every commandment comes under this same general heading."

And here it is. It's all, he says, "briefly comprehended in this saying." It can be summarized in this saying, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Now there, of course, he's quoting from Leviticus, chapter 19 and verse 18, where you find those actual words. The apostle is quoting.

And we are reminded that he's not the first to quote them. Our blessed Lord and Savior did exactly the same thing. You remember with the rich young ruler who came to him. You've got the different accounts of it. Here it is, for instance, in Matthew 19, beginning at verse 19, or before that even, this young man comes to our Lord and says, "Good master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" And he said unto him, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."

He saith unto him, "Which?" Jesus saith, "Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt commit, not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, honor thy father and thy mother, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And then you remember how on another occasion when a clever young lawyer came to him and asked, "Which is the first and the greatest commandment?" Our Lord said to him, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul and strength. This is the first and the chiefest commandment, and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Now that's found in Mark 12:31 and the corresponding passage in Luke 10, verse 17. So our Lord there is doing exactly the same thing. And we are reminded that the apostle Paul, and this this was a part of his whole argumentation with the Jews. That's why I'm troubling to give you all these details. He says it twice again. In Galatians 5:14, "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And you get James doing precisely the same thing.

James in the second chapter of his epistle, and in the eighth verse puts it in these words, "If you fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, you do well." Now, here is a most important matter. Of course, it's important of necessity in and of itself, because it is the summary of the law as given by our Lord himself.

But it's of exceptional importance in this way, the way that the apostle is using it in this 13th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and that is that it is something that is so easily and so frequently misunderstood. People have blundered over this. Always at the beginning, as I say, the Pharisees and others, in the early church, throughout the centuries, and perhaps more than ever at this present time.

There is perhaps no more important individual statement just at the moment than this very statement that we are now examining, because we are living in an age when what we are told here is not only misunderstood, the whole statement is reversed, and that is because of the obsession of the modern men with human relationships rather than with his relationship to God.

You see, this is how it's misunderstood. They say, "Here it is in the Scripture itself. He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." "If you love your neighbor as your self, you've done everything that the Lord demands of you." Or again, it's put, "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." Now this is, I say, most characteristic of the modern misunderstanding. The modern misunderstanding of the Christian faith and the Christian message.

This is the greatest of all the misunderstandings in the Christian church at the present time. Let me show you what I mean. There are statements that are being made very commonly at the present time. I came across one last week again. You can scarcely read a religious journal any week at the present time, but that you'll find this kind of statement is in it somewhere or another. I was reading of a certain church dignitary giving an address, and he put it like this. "Of course," he said, "Martin Luther was engaged in the search for the gracious God."

"That was the problem," he said, "in the 16th century. Owing to the wrong teaching of Roman Catholicism and owing to Luther coming under the conviction of sin and the terror of law, this frightening word, the righteousness of God. Poor Luther, his task was, his search was to find the gracious God. And at last he found him and got his great experience and everything was changed." But, this man goes on to say, and it's so common at the present time, "That is no longer the quest."

"We're all clear about that. The search now is the search for the gracious neighbor. The man next door, the neighbor. The search of the modern men is the search for the gracious neighbor." I remember once reading of this. I may have quoted this before, but it's it seemed to me such a striking illustration of this very thing. I remember reading of some religious congress that was being held in the city of Glasgow. And as is customary on such occasions in these degenerate days, they'd invited the then Lord Provost of Glasgow to address the meeting, not because he was a Christian, but because of his civic position. This is the sort of thing that is being done.

So he was addressed, called upon to address the gathering. And I remember very well what he said. He said that he was greatly honored to be asked to address such a great and august gathering. And he for himself was just a plain, simple, ordinary man of the world. He didn't understand theology and he wasn't very interested in it. He said, "What we need is not theology," he said, "I like the average man today. What I want to know is this, how can I love my neighbor?"

You see the contrast. Not interested in theology. Practical man of affairs, "How can I love my neighbor? I don't want your theology, I don't want your doctrine. Don't understand that, not interested in it. What I am concerned about is, how can I love my neighbor?" You see, these things are put up as contrasts. This is typical of this modern attitude. Nothing new about it. The poet Leigh Hunt, you remember in the earlier part of the last century, put it in his famous poem about Abu Ben Adam.

Let me read a bit of it to you. You remember this man Abu Ben Adam had a dream one night, and then saw a vision. There was a presence in his room. And the poem goes on to say, "And to the presence in the room, he, Abu Ben Adam said, 'What writest thou?'" This presence, this vision was writing something in a book. "'What writest thou?' The vision raised its head, and with a look made of all sweet accord answered, 'The names of those who love the Lord.'"

"And his mind one, said Abu, 'Nay, not so,' replied the angel. Abu spoke more low, but cheeringly still and said, 'I pray thee then write me as one who loves his fellow men.'" "The angel wrote and vanished. Next night he came again, with a great wakening light, and showed the names of them whom love of God had blessed, and lo, Ben Adam's name led all the rest."

Here's the man, you see. He asks his name to be put down as one who loves his fellow men. And though the angel has first told him that his name is not amongst those who love God. Once he has said that he loves his fellow men, he's not only in the list of those who love God, he's at the top of the list. "Ben Adam's name led all the rest." Now that's typical of this teaching. The one thing that matters is that you love your fellow men. You start with that. That puts everything right. That guarantees everything.

And indeed, this is put in many different ways. It's very popular teaching at the present time. Again, I read somebody having an interview with the famous American Dr. Fosdick recently. And he was saying exactly the same thing. "Wherever you find love, you find God. You mustn't take the old views of God and the old theological statements about God. No, no. We've outgrown all that. Wherever you find love, you find God." So one man was a teacher in theology, actually put into print that he had found more of the love of God in the brothels and the bar parlors of Algeria than he'd ever found in a church.

That's the kind of thing to which I'm referring. Wherever you find love, though people say they're atheists, if they're manifesting love, that's God. This is God. God is love. By which they mean, you see, that love is God. Well, now, you see, therefore, the importance of all this. In other words, the contention that we are confronted by is this, that this statement, that thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, is the fulfilling of the law, and the two statements round it in verse 8 and verse 10, that they mean just that. That all you've got to do is to love your fellow men. That means you are loving God, whatever God may be.

The point is that they say you mustn't start with your theology and your doctrine and your definitions. That's all unnecessary. Indeed, you can have a religionless Christianity, they say. You don't need the church at all. This is it. You go out into the world and wherever you find love, you find God. Now then, what do we say to all this? Because it's the whole interpretation of this is dependent upon our attitude to this teaching.

Well, there are many, many comments we can make. Here are some of them. The first is that it is a complete reversing of the order of things in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are customarily divided into two tables, the first table and the second table. And if you say that nothing matters but these commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, all of which are summed up in thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. If you say that that's the one thing that matters, you are reversing the order of the Ten Commandments. Indeed, you are excluding the first table altogether and paying attention only to the second.

The second comment is equally obvious, and that is that it is to reverse completely the order in which the Lord Jesus Christ placed these things. Now you can say therefore to a man who doesn't refer to him as the Lord Jesus Christ, but who refers to him as Jesus and says, "He's the greatest religious teacher of all times, this inspired man." Well, if you're dealing with such a man, you can say, "Well, if your authority is the teaching of Jesus, you are actually reversing what Jesus said. He said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength. This is the first and the chiefest commandment.' And then comes to this, which is the second, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'"

So if they take Jesus as their authority, they're reversing the order in which he places these things. But still more serious, you see the insult that is involved to the glory of God in this. To put anything before God is an insult to the glorious God. Nothing and no one must be put before God. Man, of course, not. Even the Son bows before him and says, "Holy Father." The glory of God, any teaching, which whether with this modern impatience or not, tries to dismiss this and says, "It's man, it's your neighbor, that's of concern, and the search is the quest is for the gracious neighbor," and simply says that, is guilty of blasphemy against the eternal and all-glorious God.

But in the fourth place, this teaching breaks down completely and can be shown, as I want to show you, to be completely wrong because it takes such a false view of man, of the self. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as you love yourself. Now, taking it as it is put, you see, out of its context, and in the first place, and without the first, it shows this woeful and lamentable ignorance of the truth concerning man as the result of the fall. What has the fall done to man? What has it done to our self? Well, what it has done, of course, is to make us all self-centered, to make us all selfish.

Indeed, this is an essential part of preaching. It's the whole message of the Bible. The terrible thing that sin has done to man is to turn him in upon himself and thereby to spoil his view of everything. That's why there are wars. Whence come wars among you, asks James again? Even of your lusts that war within you. What what is the explanation of all the great trouble in the world tonight? Lust, immorality, vice, theft, robbery, the problems that are filling your newspapers, that are mounting so rapidly that really the politicians are at their wits' end in trying to discover what can be done about them, and the whole international tension and everything else.

What's the cause of all these things? And the answer is self, selfishness, self-centeredness. So if you tell the modern men to love his neighbor as himself, he's doing something that he cannot do. He's incapable of it, because he's selfish. It is the exact opposite of this. His view of himself is totally wrong. He doesn't realize this truth about himself. But there it is. And therefore, it turns out to be the exact opposite of what the apostle is saying here and what our Lord says in the passages which I've already quoted to you.

So if you tell a man to love his neighbor as he loves himself, well, in the first instance, you're telling him to be selfish and to be self-centered and to be grasping and to get all he can for himself. But the thing becomes ridiculous, of course, because in being that, he cannot be fair to his neighbor. And indeed, he's inciting his neighbor to do the same. So you must get quarrels and wars and all these things. It is the great problem of mankind and has been from the very beginning.

So there's our fourth answer to this modern popular teaching. But my fifth is, it seems to me, a very interesting one as well as being an important one. They're all interesting, of course, but there is a reason here which I'm giving you now, which merits, I think, more attention than it has often received.

This modern teaching about loving your neighbor as yourself completely fails to understand the meaning of the word love. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Now, we'll all agree, I'm sure, that nothing is more tragic about life today than the debasing of the connotation of this word love. The film idea of love, it's a contradiction of love. It's nothing but lust, of course. But quite apart from that, this teaching shows a woeful ignorance of the way in which the Bible deals with this word love. And it's rather interesting to observe this, and it is very germane to a true understanding of this particular teaching.

There are three words used in the Bible which are translated by this one word love. The first is the word that refers to the flesh, eros. Everything that describes fleshly desire and lust and so on. The erotic meaning of this word. But there's a second word, phileo. Now here is a word that generally stands in the Bible for natural human affection, the feeling of members of a family to one another and so on. That's the second word. And the third word is the word agape. Now, here is the interesting word.

This is the great word of the New Testament. It's interesting to trace this use of these different words. Those of you who may happen to possess copies of the two volumes of commentary on the Gospel according to St. John by Hendrickson will find that he has a most interesting note on this very thing at the end of his second volume, where he goes into it with his customary thoroughness and tells you about the argument that has gone on throughout the centuries as to whether these two words, phileo and agape mean the same thing or whether they don't, and he quotes the authorities on the various sides and comes in the end to this conclusion with which I am in entire agreement.

That they are different words. Now, he deals with it, you see, in terms of what you read in the last chapter of John's Gospel. You remember how our Lord spoke to Peter in one of the appearances on that occasion when they'd been fishing all night and so on. And then our Lord makes himself known and they make their breakfast and they eat together. So while they're dining, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" He said unto him, "Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee."

You see, it's the word love in both cases, but in the first instance, it's this word agape that is used. In the second one, phileo, as if to say, our Lord said to Peter, "Do you really love me in a profound sense more than these others?" And Peter replied, saying, "Lord, thou knowest that I am fond of thee." He said unto him, "Feed my lambs." He says to him again, the second time, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" Again that agape. He said unto him, "Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee, that I am fond of thee."

He said unto him, "Feed my sheep." He said unto him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" Yes, but this time our Lord uses the word that was used by Peter, this phileo, instead of agape. Comes down to the level of Peter. And Peter, we are told, was grieved because he said unto him the third time, "Lovest thou me?" And he said unto him, "Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee."

And I agree entirely that Peter was upset because our Lord had changed his word and had come down to his level, thereby indicating that he accepted that Peter's love really was not what it should be. He had claimed a great deal. He had said that though all the others deny me, "I will never deny thee. I never. My love is greater." And he's given proof through his denial at the trial that his love was not greater. Well now, this is, you see, so interesting.

Now, this word which is used here in the passage that is before us is this great word agape. I'm interested to find that Hendrickson, even in his exhaustive treatment of this, doesn't point out something that is very true, and I would have thought a very powerful argument with regard to all this, which is pointed out by others, that this word agape was never used in classical Greek. In other words, the Greek philosophers and the Greek poets, they wrote a lot about love. They never used this word, never, which is, of course, of very great significance.

It's a word that was used very rarely in the Septuagint. But in the New Testament and in the early Christian writers, it is the habitual and the general word. Paul, for instance, only uses that word phileo twice. He has agape 30 times. This is the great word of the New Testament. And again, another bit of evidence which Hendrickson fails to adduce, which to me is crucial in this whole argument. Why did the apostle Paul ever write the 13th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that great chapter on love?

Why does he enter into all these definitions, saying, "Charity suffereth long and is kind, charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own," and so on and so forth. Why why all this? Why is it necessary? Why doesn't he just talk about love? You see, the answer is quite simple. Here was something new. They didn't know about this. The Greeks knew nothing about it with all their culture and all their philosophy and all their wonderful ideas. It's a new word in a sense.

But the idea is still new. This is a type of love that man by nature knows nothing about, even in the flowering period of Greek culture and of civilization. But it is the great word of the Christian teaching. It is the great word of the Christian life. So when these people simply start with loving thy neighbor as thyself, and taking it out of the context of the love of God, they're simply displaying their ignorance of the newness of this whole conception of love, as it is to be found not only in this little passage, but also in the whole of the New Testament teaching.

So there's my fifth argument against it. The sixth is this, which I've really in a sense already suggested, that it is to expect and to ask the natural men to do something which is quite impossible to him. That, of course, because, as I say, of the effects of sin and the fall upon him. And this is rank heresy, known as the heresy of Pelagianism, if you like. It is to ask the natural men to do something that only a Christian can do. That's heresy. We must never do that. You must never ask a man to do something that he cannot possibly do.

Now then, that leads us, having given you my six reasons for for rejecting this modern, specious teaching about seeking for the gracious neighbor and so on, and not being interested in theology and doctrine and definitions, that enables me now to come to the positive statement. There is only one way whereby anybody can ever love his neighbor as himself. And what is that? Well, obviously, the first thing he needs is a right view of himself.

That's the commandment, love thy neighbor as thyself. Well, obviously then, you must be clear as to how to love yourself. What is this self? How do you discover the truth about yourself? Here, you see, you come across the profundity from the psychological standpoint alone of the biblical teaching. Man, according to the Bible, everywhere, cannot know himself and does not know himself until he stands in the presence of God.

This is the basic teaching of the Bible. As I say, the world is as it is because of man's wrong view of himself. Why has he got it? Because of the original fall, the original rebellion against God. Eve accepted this suggestion, the subtlety of the devil. He puts it in terms of self. "Has God said? Can't you see," said the devil, "God's against you. He's not allowing you to use the great qualities and propensities that are in you. Don't listen to him. You eat of that fruit and then you'll be as God." Wrong view of himself. It was accepted by Eve and by Adam, hence the fall, hence all our troubles.

So this is basic. You will never have a true understanding of yourself until you see yourself under God and in the light of God. There and there alone man gets to know the truth about himself. Every other view of men is completely wrong. There have been many of them. And we could take them up one by one and show you how false they are. We could show you how they nearly all cancel one another out, but we needn't waste time. They're all false. And the world is proving that they're all false, every one of them. Whether it be the Marxist view that's popular in Russia and China and other places, or the materialist view in this country, humanist views and ideas, scientific, biological, doesn't matter.

They're all wrong and they're all proved to be wrong in practice. It is only as he stands before God that man can see the truth about himself. That is why, you see, in the Ten Commandments, the first table is man in his relationship to God. The second table, man in his relationship to men. That's why our Lord in summarizing the law, "This is the first and the chiefest commandment." Total love to God. "The second is like unto it," follows out from it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Now then, here I say, is the only way whereby man can ever love his neighbor. He must get to know the truth about himself. Now the law, and this is, you see, the very thing the apostle is saying. The law really should give us this knowledge of ourselves. That's why the law was really given. As Paul puts it to the Galatians, "The law was really our schoolmaster." What for? To teach us how to love our neighbors? No. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, which means this, the law was our schoolmaster to show us our need of Christ. The law was our schoolmaster to show us our failure, our total inability.

To make us see that so plainly that we'd give up even trying and we'd look to Christ. The law was meant to be our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The law was never meant to save us. It couldn't save us. Why not? Well, we've already had the answer to that in the eighth chapter of this Epistle to the Romans in the third verse. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh." Now this is the total misunderstanding of the law, that not only the Pharisees, but their modern representatives are guilty of.

This idea that all you need is to tell men, "Love your neighbor." "Love your neighbor," then all is well. That's the one thing that men cannot do. And the law which he quotes as if it was supporting him, is the very thing that was given to show him that he can't do it, that it's impossible for him to do it, to shut him in in complete failure, to aggravate, as the apostle has put it earlier to us, and to show us the entire incapacity of man. We've had this suggestion, "The law entered that the offense might abound." Not not it'd never had a saving purpose. It was meant to cause the offense to abound, to pinpoint it, to bring it out. It's in the seventh chapter as well as that fifth chapter which I've just quoted to you.

But now the law, you see, because it was twisted and perverted, has not succeeded in doing this. But the gospel has come in, and the gospel does this still more effectively. Mark you, and this is vital, the first part of the preaching of the gospel is to preach the law. That's inevitable, isn't it? Here is Christ, Christ has come. Why has Christ come? The gospel says that God has sent his Son into the world. But why has he sent him into the world? You're bound to ask that question. There's no use saying to people, "Come to the savior, all is well." Don't bother about theology, don't bother about repentance, but why should anybody come to the savior?

Why has the savior ever come? Now the moment you ask those questions, you're bringing in the law. As the law was the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, so he in turn shows us how he has come to do what the law could not do for us, for the reason that it was weak through our flesh, our inability to do it. So when you look at the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you believe that he is the Son of God and that he had to die upon the cross, that he bore our sins, what are you saying? What are you believing? Well, what you're saying and believing is that man is a sinner.

There is no one who reveals our sin to us more than the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that he had to come into this world and live and die and rise again is the greatest manifestation of our sin and guilt that is conceivable. The law does it once you understand the law, as Paul came to do under the influence of the Holy Spirit. He says, "Sin revived, I died." He thought I was well once. He was complete, perfect without the law, but the moment truly was understood by him, "Sin revived and I died."

Sin and guilt. The cross of Christ is the greatest exposure of man's sin and guilt. It's only as you survey it with Isaac Watts that you begin to know yourself. You you see it all. "When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died," what happens to you? Well, you're poor, contempt, and all your pride, and all your foolish boasting. And everything you've ever thought about yourself. "You're humbled to the dust." My sinful self, my only shame, says another. The cross reveals this in a way that nothing else does. But not only that, our Lord and all that he did and all that happened to him, not only establishes our sin and our guilt, but establishes at the same time our utter deadness.

Spiritual deadness. "You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." But not only that, it establishes above everything else our complete helplessness. The law couldn't do anything. Nobody could keep it. Teachers have taught, philosophers and others, they haven't helped at all. It's just as if they'd never lived. Why? Well, because man is completely helpless. But nothing shows this so much, of course, as the gospel and our blessed Lord. What does it come to? Well, it comes to this, Christians, that the gospel of Jesus Christ not only establishes my guilt, it establishes that I am so rotten by nature that I must be born again.

Now, there is nothing that condemns a man so much as the doctrine of the rebirth. It not only tells me that it's no use commanding me to love my neighbor, it tells me that I cannot possibly love him because my nature is wrong. It's a nature that hates. It's a nature that loves self. It's all wrong. I must be born again. So it's no there is no purpose in just starting with me and my neighbor and say, "I'm not interested in God, I'm not interested in doctrine. Don't be concerned about finding God, go and find your neighbor." It's impossible to me. I am so rotten and so is my neighbor. We can never love one another. I've got to be born again.

The whole coming of Christ and all he did and all his teaching emphasizes this fact that we need to be made new creatures, a new creation. Now, you see, the vital importance of all this. For the gospel now goes on to tell us that because of the love and the grace of God to us, that this becomes possible. But it does emphasize always that we are saved alone by the grace of God. By grace are we saved. Nothing in ourselves. Lest any man should boast, it is all given. It is all received. By grace are we saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

There is no room for boasting. We've seen the apostle saying that many times. He says it in all his epistles everywhere, no room for boasting. God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are his workmanship, entirely, from beginning to end. This is the whole of the teaching. But thank God, it's a teaching that tells us that we can be born again, we can receive the new nature. That we become new creatures, new creations. That we have a new mind and a new outlook on everything.

Do you remember how Paul puts it? Dealing with this very point that is engaging us at this moment, this love of the neighbor in 2 Corinthians 5:16 and 17, he puts it like this. "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh. Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him so no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new." Thank God, says Paul. "I'm a new man, and because I'm a new man, I see everything differently. I see men and women differently. I used to know them after the flesh. His one canon of judgment was this, 'Is a man a Jew or a Gentile?' If he was a Jew, he was all right. If he was a Gentile, he was a dog."

The Greeks had a similar classification, the Greeks and the barbarians, the wise and the unwise, always division. The opposite of love. But he says, "I'm a new creature. I know no man anymore after the flesh, not even Christ himself." This is because, you see, he's got this entire new outlook. And without this new outlook and this new nature of love, no man will ever be able to love his neighbor. He'll never even see him truly. He'll see him in terms of some iron curtains or divisions. He'll see him in terms of color and a thousand and one other things, and it'll all be wrong and he'll never be able to love him.

Here is the only way, new creatures, new creations, born again, new heart, new nature, new outlook, new everything. And not only that, the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within us. And the spirit produces fruit. What is it? The fruit of the spirit is love, the very thing we need. We are devoid of love, hateful and hating one another, says Paul to Titus. We need love, where can I get it? Oh, the spirit alone can give it to me. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, faith, temperance, the very things we need in our dealings with one another.

But without the spirit and his fruit, this is an utter and a complete impossibility. Well, my friends, I find my time has gone, and I'm afraid I've got to leave it at that point tonight. I can and hope to next Friday elaborate this yet further to you. But you see, we've established this, that man by nature is totally incapable of loving his neighbor as himself. There is only one way whereby man can do this, and that is that he be born of the spirit, born again, born from above, that the mind of Christ be in him, that the fruit of the spirit be manifest in his total relationships. And then and then alone, can he begin to love his neighbor as himself? And that's only the beginning.

I have further reasons to give you as we work that out together, to show how this man not only can, but does love his neighbor as himself. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we thank thee for the glorious gospel of the blessed God. We see how helpless and hopeless we are, how completely impotent, that we bless thee for a gospel of the new birth, the new beginning, the new man in Christ Jesus, the gospel of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us and producing his fruit within us. Of the baptism of the Spirit with love. O God, we thank thee for this new creation that thy dear Son has made possible and brought to us in this world, enabling us to live even as he lived, as thou hast reminded us, as he is, so are we in this world. O God, fill us all with this Spirit that will lead us to love one another, and thereby to glorify thy great and holy name. And 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 and uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage and evermore. Amen.