Those of you who have come regularly to the church here will know that we have been engaged in a long series of messages concerning the most important subject of all: regeneration, renewal, and perfection in the biblical sense. We have spent a long time studying this exceedingly important subject, because in fact there is no subject more important than this one. And today we want to return to a passage that I have touched on once some four years ago, a little over four years ago, and rather briefly touched on not very long ago, perhaps sometime last year. But its importance is such that we must look at it again, this time from a third and different angle, so that we may fully comprehend what it is the Lord is saying to us.
Let us turn quickly again to Matthew chapter 19, because we want to look at this question — the question about eternal life, and how we inherit it. Matthew chapter 19, reading from verse 16: "And behold, one came up to him, saying, 'Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?' And he said to him, 'Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.' He said to him, 'Which?' And Jesus said, 'You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' The young man said to him, 'All these I have observed. What do I still lack?' Jesus said to him, 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, 'Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, 'Who then can be saved?' But Jesus looked at them and said to them, 'With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'"
Why is this passage so important? Why do we come back to it again? Because this is the only time in the Gospels where Jesus is specifically asked this most important question: "What do I have to do to get eternal life? How do I inherit eternal life?" Now this is the only place in all the Gospels where somebody actually puts the question to Jesus in plain, intelligible language. Now in Luke chapter 10, verse 25, that we don't need to turn to, a lawyer — a lawyer in the Bible in the New Testament does not mean a lawyer in the modern sense of the word. A lawyer in the Bible was someone who specialized in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is called the Book of the Law, and therefore a lawyer is really more or less equivalent to a modern-day theologian. In Luke 10:25, a theologian then put a question to Jesus to test him. That means he was putting the question in academic form. He was just trying to find out, out of academic interest, what Jesus would say to the question about inheriting eternal life. But only in this place do we have some person, this rich young man, who comes with all sincerity, not out of mere academic interest, to ask how to inherit eternal life. And therefore we've got to listen very carefully to the answer.
What is Jesus' answer to this? Now the question about eternal life is basically a question about the meaning of any life, of all life, the meaning of your life and of my life. You see, until Jesus came, the question of eternal life, or how to inherit eternal life, was not a question even worth asking. Because there wasn't an answer available. There's no point asking a question to something where there isn't an answer. Nowhere in the world, no religion, no philosophy, nowhere did anyone even attempt to answer this kind of a question. Inherit eternal life? I mean, that's not a question to ask. I mean, you might think about eternal life when you are daydreaming, or you might fantasize about it, or you might engage in wishful thinking, but eternal life — no. Not available. If it were, nobody knows how, anyway. And when you look through the whole world, you can search high and low, you can seek anywhere, anywhere in the world, in any religion, in any philosophy — there was no answer to this kind of question. And so it was meaningless to ask this kind of question.
Even in the Old Testament, there is hardly anything said about eternal life. A hint here, a hint there, but there is neither the question nor the answer concerning how to inherit eternal life, not even in the Old Testament. Only when Jesus came, that somehow this question could be asked. Amazing, isn't it? All of a sudden, it made sense to ask this kind of a question. There was something about the person of Jesus, about the ministry of Jesus, that made even the asking of a question of this type to be meaningful. Now this background to this question is important for you to understand. You can't take this for granted.
Without eternal life, what is life for? We saw that life is somehow sort of unknown to us, and after, what is it, 40 years, 50 years, 60 years maybe, you return it. It's gone. And all human effort, and all human labor, all this so-called achievement in the world. I mean, there are those who study year after year after year, picking up with tremendous effort one degree, maybe a second, maybe even a third. And they can put all this behind their name. And what for? I knew of a fellow who went to study theology, and he hardly graduated the day before, he rushed off the next day to print his name card. He said, what for? Because now, you could put BD behind his name, Bachelor of Divinity. And he presented me with one of these cards. Look, I knew him for years, I didn't need his name card. Why? Because suddenly, he got a degree, and he thought this was really the maximum achievement in life.
And then there were others pursuing more degrees, and another one, and another one, and then you can put more. There's more things to put behind. Look better. In fact, some who, for lack of degrees, joined the Royal Geographic Society, because if you join the Royal Geographic Society, you can put another letter behind your name: FRGS. It looks a bit like FRCS, so maybe somebody might mistake you for being a surgeon. If they didn't look carefully, it was a G instead of a C, they might think this guy was a surgeon. So, put all this there. Oh, what great achievements. Academic achievements. Or business achievements. We build up our little business, maybe even a little business empire. But what is all this in life? Without eternal life, what is this for? When you look back, it looks like a whole joke.
I think, some time ago, I shared with you about a friend of mine, a childhood friend. We grew up together. Literally, we grew up together. In fact, her mother and my mother were great friends. So, one was a boy, one was a girl. So, they thought, maybe this works out quite nicely, you see. Well, she was a bag of brains. She went running around, taking on the challenges of life. And the next thing she was, she collected so many degrees already — bachelor's, master's, PhD, everything. And she even became professor at Michigan State University in her particular scientific field. And then she got bored, you see. It was a little very boring, you know. I mean, she said, there are no more challenges in this line. So, she decided to go for business. And her father, being quite wealthy, it was very easy for her to become general manager of her father's business, an import-export business in Hong Kong.
So, when I saw her a few years ago, she was general manager of this. And I said, "Well, I thought you studied science. What are you doing in business?" She said, "Because I got bored with science, so I'm trying business now." She said, "You see, I climbed to the top of my profession and there was nowhere to go. Because when you get to the peak of the mountain, unless you take a helicopter, there's nowhere else to go. And even the helicopter can only go that high and nowhere else to go." But she said, "There were no more challenges. I climbed the mountain. There was nothing else. You know, from below, it looked so broad. When I got to the top, the spot was very small. I found myself boxed in. I couldn't take one step to the left or to the right without falling off the peak. So I decided, I'll go somewhere else and try to climb another mountain."
And so I said, "Well, how are you enjoying business?" She said, "Very boring." I said, "What do you mean boring?" She said, "Well, I've learned all the ropes of being a general manager of this company. I've learned business administration and there's nothing left to it. You see, no more challenge." I said, "Well, what else do you want to do now?" She said, "Well, I don't know." She said, "I don't know what to do from here on in. I think maybe outside politics." Well, the last I heard of her, she was running after another degree somewhere in Stanford University. And I thought, well, how many more degrees do you want? I mean, she just ran out of ideas of what to do. That's how pitiful her situation is. She just ran out of ideas. So, might as well collect a few more doctorates, I suppose. There's nothing much left to do. At least you can paper your wall with the diplomas if you've got enough of them.
And when I talked to her, being a childhood friend, I mean, we could be very frank to one another — how pitiful. How pitiful. I mean, you saw a person who didn't know what to live for. She was desperately looking for something to live for and there was nothing left of any meaning to live for. She said, "You know, when you don't have these things, they look so attractive, so wonderful. Ah, if I have a PhD." And then you've got a PhD and you say, "Well, so what? What's there to it?" Well, try another one. You've got two PhDs, so you've got two PhDs. What happens there? It's so boring. You don't know what to do.
You see, if it were for money, she doesn't need money. Her father is very wealthy. She doesn't need any money, so what's the point of chasing money? She's got all she needs. But her life was not only boring for her, her marriage was a disaster. She's got a daughter, which fell apart. She's divorced from a husband who is also a scientist, also very bored. And so they all get on fine, you know. It's very hard to build a marriage on that basis, you know. It's very tragic when you look at people who really don't know what life is about.
Without the prospect of eternal life, what are we really doing? We are simply building a castle in the sand by the seashore. And have you seen how they labor for hours putting up every tower, every gate in the castle, and the moat around the castle? And next day when you come by, it's gone. It's gone. And that is exactly how life is, without any enduring purpose. We can't make any enduring mark in this world because nothing stays in this world. Everything passes away. The kingdoms of glory of the past are only found in the pages of history, or under the spade of the archaeologist who digs up some stone and says, "Oh, I think that his kingdom must have been quite glorious from all these broken pots that we can find over here." All have gone. Where was the glory? Where was the splendor? And look at the world's powers today. How glorious. They only dwindle away into the pages of history.
You see, the point simply is that life is left without any real meaning unless we have some eternal purpose in view. I have faced this question before. Even as a teenager, I wondered to myself, what is life all about? Eternal life was something unknown to me. It was something that I thought was wishful thinking. You may know you're talking about this kind of question. Let's lift it bravely, put a brave face on this. It's all going to be gone before too long, but let's put a brave face on it. Fine. We can all put a brave face on it. It still doesn't solve the problem of the question. Where is life going? Where are you going? What are you living for?
Now this rich young man, somewhat like my friend, you will notice, he too seemed to be a relatively well-educated person, well-versed in the law, which was the standard of education in those days. He seemed to be a wealthy person. In fact, he did not seem to be — we are told he was a wealthy man. But he realized that all of this wasn't going to do him much good. And he asked the Lord Jesus the question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life? What do I have to do?" You see, man sat in darkness, and then Jesus appeared, and now the question was being asked. But the answer to this question is not an easy one as we shall see. And if anyone tells you that the path to eternal life is a piece of cake, then you let him swallow the piece of cake. Because it's no piece of cake. The path to eternal life is a costly and difficult road as we shall see in a few moments.
But first, let us keep our eyes on the beauty of the scene. Until Jesus came, just as we were living in darkness until we met with Jesus, without hope, without purpose — the whole world sat in darkness. And those who don't know Jesus are still sitting in darkness. The power of death moves on like the tide, sweeping everything away. All this achievement in the sand will be swept away. The picture is one of gloom, unmitigated gloom, without Jesus. No matter how brave a face you put on it — stiff upper lip and all — your face is without hope until Jesus comes into your life.
I picture the situation somewhat like this: like an army unit, fighting bravely, putting a brave face on it, in the face of hopeless odds. Death and defeat just keep coming like the tide, and fight as we may, with our technology, our knowledge, whatever — we can prolong the physical life a few more years, we can take a heart out and put some artificial pump in. All this is all fine. But the problem is what you do. You might be able, through your sandcastle, to hold back the tide for a few more minutes, but not much longer. And these soldiers fighting bravely — as I'm sure many non-Christians, many of us, fought bravely against hopeless odds, against the odds of death, meaninglessness, purposelessness — we fought. But we all knew in our hearts, deep down, it was in vain. It was a matter of time. The enemy would wipe us out. Death would conquer all.
And then in that gloomy scene, darkened by this dismal lack of hope, suddenly the soldiers see the commanding general himself appears. And the commanding general quickly surveys the situation. He makes certain rearrangements. He redeploys his troops. He repositions his heavy weaponry. And the very presence of the commanding general inspires new hope into the soldiers. Victory is now at last a possibility. There is a glimmer of hope in the battle-weary soldiers. At last the tide is changing. And that's how the picture looks when Jesus came into this world — without hope. As I said, no one could offer any hope. When Jesus came and suddenly it was possible to talk about hope. It became a meaningful word again.
I'll put in another picture, a beautiful picture, in Acts chapter 27. The ship is sinking. 276 people on the ship were going to go down and drown in the Mediterranean. The ship was falling apart literally. They had to put cables underneath to hold the ship together in Acts chapter 27. But one thing made a difference, or rather one person made a difference. Because there was one man on board, and that man on board was the Apostle Paul. And because of that one man, the Apostle Paul, 276 lives were going to be saved. The ship was falling apart, bashed to pieces by the storm. The crew were terrified. They knew that now, like those soldiers in battle, death was going to conquer all.
And I picture the scene. The ship rattling, bouncing, squeaking, and crumbling in the storm. And there is the Apostle Paul. And I can picture him — frail, weak, scarred, about 60 years old at that time. His face bearing many scars. He had been beaten and stoned so many times in his missionary journeys. His body weakened from disease. Some say that he had malaria when he preached in Asia Minor. Malaria can be a crippling disease. Others think that he also had eye disease, all kinds of problems through the preaching of the gospel. Weak and frail, holding onto a railing on the ship as it swayed from side to side, falling apart. The terrified crew and sailors cowering there. And yet this weak man, physically weak, radiated confidence and power. His presence was like that of the commanding general coming to the battle scene.
And he said to them, captain, crew, and all, "I'll tell you something: not one life in this ship is going to be lost." They looked at him. What? "Look here, sir, you're a landlubber, we are seamen, this is our profession." He is a landlubber telling us that this storm is not going to sink the ship. "I don't think you know enough about ship construction, nor do you know about storms in the Mediterranean. I mean, you don't understand the situation, my friend." But nobody dared to open their mouth. Why? Because there was something about the Apostle Paul, bowed and weak in body, but powerful in the spirit. Nobody dared to say a word. And he said, "I'll tell you something more. My God has given me a message of grace through the angel that he sent to me. No life on this ship will be lost." Hey, there is somebody who has a hotline to heaven. Praise be to God, this guy has got a hotline to heaven. He hasn't even got a personal messenger delivering the message to him. When, since the beginning of time, have we had people like this, who was in touch with the commander-in-chief himself, and got the word: every soul on that boat will be safe.
"Hey, we've got a lot of people who can't swim," we read from the record. There are a lot of people who can't swim. How are we going to be safe when this ship falls apart? "I gave the word: no life will be lost. My commander-in-chief told me so." When, since the days of Noah, was there a man who walked with God? Or since the days of Abraham? Or was it a long time afterwards there was someone called Elijah, and another one called Elisha, his disciple? And a few great prophets. A few men in the history of the world walked close enough with God to be able to carry the day in the face of hopelessness. Men of power. Where are these men today? Where are they? In the rare moments of history it seems there emerges such a man. So was the Apostle Paul.
Striking scene, isn't it? Just capture that picture in your mind. What a picture. But you see, he walked in the steps of his master. And his master did the same thing. There was a storm in the Lake of Galilee, we are told in Matthew 8. And there again there were a group of hardy seamen. And that ship was going down too. And there was Jesus sleeping in the boat. Sleeping, mind you. Fast asleep. No storm ever bothered him. And they woke him up and said, "Wake up! Look here, this ship is going down. Aren't you sensible to what's happening around here? We're all sinking, we're going down."
The first thing that Jesus said to them: "Why are you fearful?" Why are you fearful? Just open your eyes for a moment, look around. Look at those 20-foot waves — why are you fearful? "We've been on this sea all our lives. We know what happens in a sea like this." "Why are you fearful, you men of little faith?" Lord, don't give us a lecture, please. Look, if you keep talking much longer, we'll all be talking at the bottom of this lake. No anxiety, no fear. Death is no threat when the King is there. And then he does this amazing thing. He looks straight into the eye of the storm and says quietly, authoritatively, "Peace. Peace, be quiet." The storm goes down. "What is this?"
And Matthew 8 tells us, and it's recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, the disciples looked at Jesus and looked at one another and said, "Who is this? Who is this, that here is a man who talks to the storm and the storm listens to him?" Paul didn't attempt to speak to the storm. He wasn't Jesus. He worked on the authority from above. But Jesus was the one who talked straight to the storm and it was silent.
You believe that story? Wishful thinking, right? How do you know? You weren't there. Those who were in that boat, every one of them sealed their witness with their blood. Nobody wants to die for fairy tales, I tell you. But every one of them in that boat, as church history tells us, died to testify to the truth, not only of this account, but every other account that stands in the Gospel. They sealed it with their blood, including the Apostle John, though he wasn't executed. He was the only one who wasn't. But he suffered his share in the island of Patmos in hard labor.
That is the picture. And I wanted to spend some time for you to see the whole background to this question. Why, when Jesus came, it suddenly became meaningful to ask a question about eternal life. His very presence somehow made this question meaningful. You could ask that kind of question and not be ridiculous. And this young ruler did just that. He came to Jesus and said, "How do I inherit eternal life?" Jesus said, "Well, you've studied the law quite a bit. You are well informed. What does the law say?" Well, the law says this: you shall not bear false witness, you shall not steal. "But I didn't ask a question about what I shall not do to inherit eternal life. I asked the question about what I have to do. You got my question wrong." Oh, he didn't. Jesus didn't get the question wrong. He got the question very right, as we shall see in a moment.
But let me say again very quickly: the path to eternal life is a very difficult road. You can't walk that road alone. Without Jesus, you and I will never make it. That's what we mean by grace. It's not a ladder into heaven that we can climb up in our own strength. There is a ladder, but you can't climb up on your own strength. There is a road, but you can't walk it alone. You walk it with Jesus, or you don't walk it at all. And I want to say that this road is difficult, because there are people who want to tell you today in the churches — I'm sorry to say — who tell you that it's very easy. It's a piece of cake. Well, now, he said, let's make up our minds. Is it costly, or is it not costly? Jesus says it's costly, and they say it's not costly. So now we are having difficulty already trying to count up the cost, and then we have somebody telling us that you don't have to waste your time counting the cost, because there's no cost to count.
So now, just when we thought there is a road to eternal life, what happens when we've got people getting us all confused? Now, I can hardly get on to Jesus' answer without having to point out this problem, because nowadays it's very hard to preach the gospel without being confronted with a false gospel, everywhere you turn. I want you to be very clear about this, from the teaching of the Lord.
When you look at the Lord's teaching, we're immediately told that Paul's teaching is different. You see, here it says, in answer to the question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life," the Lord Jesus goes on to talk about two stages of things — the fulfilling of the law and discipleship — and we still have to figure out the connection between the two. But Paul was asked a similar question in Acts chapter 16, verse 31, by the Philippian jailer, very familiar to us all, we don't even have to turn to that, where the Philippian jailer asked Paul, "What must we do to be saved?" Paul's answer, very concisely, was, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved."
Now I'm sure that almost any of you are more familiar with Paul's answer to the question of salvation than Jesus' answer to the question of salvation, if I'm not entirely mistaken. If I asked you to quote exactly what was the Lord's words in reply to the rich young ruler, I think if we hadn't read this passage you would have trouble telling me. But if I asked you to tell me what Paul said in reply to the Philippian jailer, I think 95% of Christians could quote it after me right off: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." Acts 16:31. I've been to Sunday school many years.
Now, the question arises immediately: are these two different answers to the same question? Because the question of eternal life and the question of salvation, of course, are the same kind of question. If you are not saved, you don't have eternal life. If you don't have eternal life, you are not saved. We have the same question and two answers. Which one is right? Or do we have to choose? We have to choose if the answer of Paul is different from the answer of the Lord Jesus. And we are told today that the answer is in fact different. Much to our astonishment.
The Lord Jesus' answer has three elements in it. The first is functional demand. The question is asked, "What must I do?" And the Lord's answer is all in terms of function, of doing. They are all there. Just look at the passage for yourself. What is he saying to the rich young ruler? What does he say here? Verse 21: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have, give to the poor, come, follow me." Go, sell, give, come. Four verbs. Go first and then come. Go, sell, give, come. Functional demand. All is functional. Everything is involved with doing. You ask the question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Four things you got to do. First, functional demand. Second, we notice total demand. Sell all that you have. Total demand. Thirdly, an impossible demand. Impossible. That's why we read in verse 26: "Impossible with men. It is possible with God." As I say, it is not something you can do in your own strength. The Lord Jesus never said that you can do all these things simply by sheer will power. No. To do it in the way that he requires has to be done by his grace, by his power, by his Spirit.
When we look at Paul's statement, according to the teaching of many churches today, instead of being functional, we are told it is positional. Positional means that it is legal. What happens by faith is that there is a legal transition from being sinner to being righteous. No functional thing has ever happened. You have not changed, you have not done anything. You have simply switched your position by some act of God. You have certainly been declared righteous when you were a sinner before.
# The Path to Eternal Life (Part 2) - The Free Gift That Costs Everything
Or legal Christianity. We might, if we want to be rude about it, call it a legal fiction. Legal fiction means that you are declared to have died when you haven't really died at all. And you have played some trick on the law by some sort of means in which you declare yourself — you go and get a letter sent into the government to say, "I, Eric Chang, am dead." Yeah. And you don't exist anymore. And of course, you don't have to pay income tax anymore. And this goes very nicely, of course, if you're paying a lot of income tax. And I'm sure many people have thought of that as a trick before. This is called legal fiction. It's a way of deceiving the law. I'm wondering, how does this so-called positional teaching differ from legal fiction?
On top of that, this legal position, this positional Christianity, doesn't solve our problem. I've given the illustration before. That if you are a drug addict, and the police caught you with a certain amount of heroin or cocaine or whatever it is, and you are brought before the judge and you are sentenced — but suppose, suppose somehow someone paid your debt for you. Someone volunteered to go to jail in your stead, or pay the fine, or $50,000 bail, or whatever is necessary. So you're free. Free man, because you have a rich uncle, rich dad, or whoever, who got you out of there. So you're off the hook legally. Does that solve your problem? No, my friend. You are in as much trouble as before, because you are still a drug addict. The power of sin has still got you. Law or no law, the drug will kill you if the law doesn't.
What's the use of being off the hook as far as the law is concerned, if you are still firmly under the power of sin? What's the use of a legal forgiveness? What's the use, my friend, if you are a drug addict, if you are an addict to sin? What's the use if Jesus pardoned you, and you go out and sin tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, until sin kills you? What's the use of having a positional or legal pardon, if that's all there is? That's the point. I'm not saying there's no legal pardon in being a Christian. It's no use if that's all there is.
So Jesus taught a functional demand, in which you must rise up and respond to God's command in order to tread the path of eternal life. There are things you've got to do. But according to some churches, there's nothing you've got to do. What kind of Christianity are we talking about? We are saying that the servant, Paul, is contradicting his master. He's teaching something different from his master. Now if I were you, would I follow the servant, or would I follow the master? I'd say, "Sorry Paul, I mean you're a great guy, but I follow Jesus." If that's what you are teaching, I don't want to listen to this. And there are those who tell us that that's what Paul teaches.
We saw the second element in the Lord's teaching is total demand. Sell all that you have. Now I'm not going to say to you, to become a Christian, that simply you rush out today and you sell the shirt off your back, and you sit freezing on the road, you sold your house, your car, so you jog to work — which is very good for your health, I'm sure, but sleeping out in the open might not do you much good. The meaning of that I have expounded elsewhere. Selling your possessions in the context of the Lord's teaching means selling those things that you don't need, that you are not using right now. That is, what you store up. "Store not up, lay not up treasure on earth, but lay it up in heaven." It's to do with that which is laid up, not with the things that you are wearing. You sell literally all your possessions, and this jacket is also my possession, these glasses are also my possession, and tomorrow I'll have to grope my way around, because the Lord Jesus said "all your possessions," that includes this, I suppose, gold-rimmed glass. I'm not sure, you know what I'm saying. But even if it were plastic, "all" would include plastic too, I suppose. So tomorrow I can't see where I'm going, but I'm fulfilling the Lord's teaching. I mean, let's not be ridiculous. The Lord's teaching has to be properly understood. We won't go into that now.
But even so, the Lord's demand is total. Not merely in our possessions, as we understand the Lord's teaching more clearly. He wants our heart, not our possessions. But we must express our total love for him through also our possessions, not only by our possessions. The Lord Jesus knew that we can sell everything and not have love, just as the Apostle Paul said. But there is total demand. There is a total demand. He demands everything — that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your strength. That is why this passage is being quoted here. And your neighbor as yourself. Everything. The demand is total. But according to those in some churches, they tell us that in Paul's teaching, there is no demand at all. None whatsoever. Believe only in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's all you've got to do. There's no demand affecting your life. Nothing of the sort. You just believe that Jesus died for you. You've heard it all before. You confess your sins, you repent, he died for you. You believe that and you are saved. No demand apart from just making this confession of faith. Who is right? Paul or Jesus?
The third thing we saw is that it was an impossible demand. Impossible. Can't be done except by God's power. Because the thing that has to be done is so difficult to do, that's why we have to depend on God's power to do it. I mean, to give yourself totally, unreservedly, everything you have, everything that you are, everything to God — no natural man can respond to such a demand apart from the miracle-working, transforming power of God in your heart. But to believe in the Lord Jesus, that he died for you, is relatively easy. What's so difficult to believe that he came? We tell people that Jesus loves you. What's so hard to believe in somebody who loves you? I mean, we are all lonely people. If there's no demand beyond that, what is impossible about it? In fact, nothing. Nothing is impossible.
A whole of Europe are Christians today, in name at least. A whole of Germany, a whole of Sweden, a whole of Scandinavia, a whole of Denmark — you go and name it. Everybody are Lutherans, everybody are Christians. You believe in Jesus? "Of course I do. What do you think? I'm a heathen?" I asked that question once to a person in Switzerland. "Are you a Christian?" "Who are you? Of course I'm a Christian. Do I look like a heathen to you?" I said, "Well, excuse me. I'm sure you go to church every Sunday." "Church? No." "Oh, you don't go to church?" "No." "What's wrong? I thought you said you're a Christian." "Yeah. I go on Christmas." Christmas. And that's not too bad if they go at Christmas time, because most of them go only two times in their life. The first time when they're married, and the second time when they're carried there in a coffin. So in fact, only one time, but we can count it as two. Just give them as much credit as possible.
There were those, of course, who also ventured in in those days when they didn't know any better, when they had to go to confirmation class. But then they treated that as part of school anyway. So who worries about that, you know. And that wasn't going to church. It was going to a class somewhere near the church. And yet when I asked this lady, "Are you a Christian?" she was absolutely insulted. "Of course I'm a Christian. Of course I believe in Jesus. We all believe in Jesus. Everybody believes in Jesus, I think." Impossible demand. The impossibility is not to believe in Jesus for them. I mean, no sane person in his right mind doesn't believe in Jesus. Because it would mean you're uncivilized. In fact, you're not even a good German. Not even a good Swiss. No, no. Not decent not to believe in Jesus. And I'm not kidding. I talked with some Swiss people, and they say, if you ever dare to state on your form that you have no religion, you might have trouble getting treatment in hospital. You'll be put at the end of the list. And that's no kidding. You don't dare not to believe in Jesus, because if you want to find a place to get buried in a cemetery, you better believe in Jesus, because there's no cemetery that might bury you in Christian Europe. Beautiful, isn't it? That has all come, strange enough to say, from some kind of teaching about justification by faith. Strange, isn't it? Of course, we are not trying to suggest that that is what Luther meant. But that's what happened.
But then someone will say, "Look, I've been around long enough and I know the Bible. Oh yes I do. And I know Paul was right, because he said that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus." I even know where to find it. Where? Let's look at it. Romans chapter 6, verse 23. Romans 6:23. There you have it, in black and white, in front of you. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." The free gift. Can I tell you, it's a free gift? And free gift means no functional demand. Free gift means no total demand. It means no impossible demand. It means no demand at all. That's free gift, right? I mean, you don't call a free gift a free gift if it demands anything.
Did I not tell you right at the beginning of this message, the Lord Jesus has opened the way of eternal life for us. This road is costly and it is dangerous. Dangerous. And I think the danger is greater than the cost. Why? Because we might be able to handle the cost. We don't know how to handle the danger of false teaching. Most brothers and sisters today are simply not equipped enough in the Word of God to know how to answer this kind of problem. They don't know how to handle it.
Let me say to you, brothers and sisters, that the Apostle Paul never said anything different from what the Lord Jesus said. He did not teach one word that is different from the Lord Jesus. I say not one word. And I can demonstrate this to you, and I will demonstrate this in one final sentence in a few concluding moments. I can't take you in this message through all the teaching of Paul, in which I have spent a great deal of time. But I can assure you that you don't have to choose between Paul and Jesus. Because there has never been a more faithful servant of Christ than Paul himself. There has never been a more faithful servant. And there is not one word in the teaching of Paul that differs from that of his master. Not one word.
But you say, "You just quoted to me Romans 6:23. It's a free gift. See? It's a free gift. I told you." My friend, when you study the Bible, don't make the mistake of doing what many people already in the New Testament time did with Paul's writings — twisting and distorting his writings, much to his own frustration, as we see in Romans itself, and as the Apostle Peter himself warned. Let me read to you one more time 2 Peter, that you may see it very clearly for yourself, the warning concerning Paul's writings. 2 Peter chapter 3, verses 15 and 16, and this is what the Apostle Peter says: "And count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist or distort to their own destruction, as they do all the other scriptures."
A basic principle in studying the Bible, brothers and sisters, is never take a verse out of its context. You do not do that with human writings. You do not do that with the Word of God. To do it with the Word of God is to end up in destruction. How did Paul start this chapter, Romans 6? Look at how he starts the chapter. He starts the chapter with a total demand, exactly as the Lord Jesus did. He starts the chapter talking about death.
You know, I received a magazine, and in it there was a little advertisement for a book — a free book. Oh yes, free gift. And this is how this free gift was advertised in this magazine. These are the words: "This free gift may cost you your life. It cost me mine." This gift is free, but it's going to cost you your life. It's very interesting. I took that little thing out and put it in front of me on my desk. The book was advertising a free gift of a missionary book, and that missionary book is sent to anyone who wants to read it about missions. But the warning is that if you read that book, you might want to become a missionary, and therefore that free gift is going to cost you everything to become a missionary. And the writer says, "It cost me mine. I read that book and I became a missionary. I gave up my job. I gave up everything. And I'm a missionary now. It cost me mine indeed." Eternal life may be spoken of as a free gift, and oh, how it's going to cost you. That free gift is sure going to cost you.
But Paul says something even more strong than that. Well, can you say it any stronger? Sure he can. And that's how he says it in Romans 6. And let no man ever quote Romans 6:23 again out of the context of Romans 6. Romans 6, the first eight verses, talk about death. In other words, you don't even get the free gift until you first die. How's that for a beginning? It's not first you get the free gift and then it'll cost you your life. No, no. It's the other way around. You first die before you get the free gift. That's what Romans 6 is talking about. And nobody has ever read Romans 6 with his eyes open who hasn't seen this.
Yet look at it for yourself. Go home and read Romans 6. "What shall we say then?" Verse 1. "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" When did we die to sin? "Do you not know" — verse 3 — "that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" No, a lot of Christians don't know that. "We were buried therefore" — not only died, buried — as far as this world is concerned, we were finished. Dead and buried. "We were buried with him therefore by baptism into death" — not just by baptism, but into death — "so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." And so Paul goes on. You think he is talking about a fictional death? Do you think he is talking about an imaginary death? You haven't understood Paul, my friend.
In Romans 6:14, Paul says, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ." Why does he glory? Because by that cross, he says, "by which I was crucified to the world." Crucified. I'm finished with this world, and the world is finished with me. That sounds like a fictional death to you? An imaginary death? "I have suffered the loss of all things," Paul says in Philippians 3. The rich young ruler was only going to suffer some possessions. "I have suffered the loss of everything, and I count it as garbage, that I may gain Christ." Do you think Paul preaches a different gospel from Jesus? Where have we been reading our Bible?
But if that is not clear enough, he goes on through the whole chapter, saying, "Once we were slaves to sin, but now no more. We have died to all that. We are now slaves" — notice the word "slaves" — "to God." If you are a slave, do you possess anything? Everything that you own belongs to your master. That's what the Lord Jesus was trying to tell the rich young ruler. The day you want to inherit eternal life, you follow me. And when you follow me, you are the slave, you are the disciple. I am the master. And everything you are and everything you have. And Paul said exactly the same thing.
But if you haven't seen that far yet, just look at the previous verse. Let's get the context of verse 23. What does it say in the verse before that? What does verse 22 say? It talks about eternal life too. "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves" — notice, "you have become slaves" — the Greek word is "slaves" — "of God, the return you get is sanctification, and its end is eternal life." Is that clear enough language for you? Do you have to be a theologian to understand that? Very easy to understand. "Now that you have been set free from sin" — plain language. You don't need to be a theologian to understand that. "And you have become slaves of God." He's been talking through all those previous passages about this. If you don't want to become a slave of God, you just forget about eternal life, because Paul is telling you that there is no way you're going to have eternal life unless you first become a slave of God. You thought he said something different from the Lord Jesus? He said nothing of the kind.
And he says, look at verse 22, think on it carefully. It is to those who become slaves of Jesus Christ, who become slaves of God — it is to these people who will get eternal life as a free gift. Because no matter how earnestly you serve him as a slave — a slave gets no wages. He never earns anything. Everyone who knows what slavery is knows it is the hired worker who is paid wages. The slave gets no wages. He works for nothing. Anything he gets is a gift. A free gift. It is the slave of God who will get eternal life as a gift at the end of his service.
What is this? And yet there are people who go around daring to quote this verse out of its context, saying that the free gift of eternal life is being dished out like confetti, and all you have to do is open your hands. Look, this eternal life is dropping into your palms. All you have to do is open your hands. There it is. What are we talking about? Look at Romans 6. Look at the previous verse. It also talks about the same thing. And verse 23 — even if you are not a Bible exegete, you will know that verse 23 is connected to verse 22 by the word "for." "For the wages of sin is death." You are a hired servant as far as sin is concerned. But as far as God is concerned, you are a slave. You get no wages at all. But so good a master is he, so kind, so gracious a master is he, he gives you something better than wages. He gives you the free gift of eternal life — if you are his slave.
Brothers and sisters, we have to close. Eternal life is available to you and to me. Jesus died for us to secure that gift of eternal life. And he called the rich young ruler into slavery to God, to be his servant, to be his slave. And you know, the Apostle Paul regarded the highest title of honor for himself — in every letter he starts the letter, "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ" — usually translated as "servant," but the Greek word of course is doulos, slave. We have Greek brothers here; yes, they know the word very well. "Slave of Jesus Christ." For him, that was the highest title. He never once referred to himself as "Paul, a son of God." For him, "slave of Jesus Christ" — glorious title. It is to the slave that he will give the free gift of eternal life. Let's by all means be slaves. That is the path to life.
Let us be quiet before God in prayer.