The Christian life finds its motive and purpose in true biblical doctrine. Without true doctrine there is no true Christian living. This is what God has joined together, and this is what distinguishes Christians from non-Christians in their moral behaviour.

Source: The Banner of Truth, 2007. 4 pages.

Christian Orthodoxy Must Lead to Christian Orthopraxis

In Ephesians, chapter two and verse ten, the apostle says, 'For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.'

We meet this great statement of why God brought these people and Christ together โ€“ to make us new creations. We have been created in Christ Jesus for this purpose: to do good works, or as the Authorized Version translates it, we are 'created ... unto good works.' I remember Professor John Murray preaching on this theme and saying at one point, 'Saved by good works, or saved unto good works. What's the difference? Just two little prepositions; what's the difference between them? All the difference between heaven and hell!' 'Saved by our good works', and we are lost people. 'Saved unto good works', and there is proof that the vilest person has been regenerated by the Spirit.

Martin Luther was a young man who had every reason to trust in his good works. This is what he once said,

I was a good monk and kept my order so strictly that I could claim that if ever a monk were able to reach heaven by monkish discipline I should have found my way there. All my fellows in the house who knew me would bear me out in this. For if it had continued much longer I would, what with vigils, prayers, readings and other such works, have done myself to death.

He spent hours in prayer and in confessing all the sins he could think of and wore a cruel hair shirt that irritated all his skin, and he lashed himself with a whip. Yet by all this he could not find a rest. He was in despair until he grasped the gospel. He was saved by the blood of Christ alone. Luther saw that his righteousness was in heaven. That righteousness was Christ himself. God's purpose in pouring out his grace into our lives is that ever afterwards we, with the energy of grace and constrained by the love of Jesus Christ for us, should be abundant in the good works we do.

Structure in New Testament Lettersโค’๐Ÿ”—

Both in Paul's letter to the Romans and again in his letter to the Ephesians a significant turning point occurs. The word 'therefore' announces the change. In Romans chapter twelve and verse one Paul says, 'I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.' In Ephesians chapter four and verse one Paul says, 'I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.'

Paul has been explaining to the Christians in Rome and in Ephesus the truths that we Christians believe, and at these junctures in the letters he moves on to deal with the way we Christians should live. That is the purpose of this 'therefore'. In other words, 'In the light of what you've just been reading, these are the implications for how you are to behave, and they are as follows...', and he opens up the theme of new living day by day. Paul's pattern in a number of his letters is that he begins with Christian truth and then moves on to practical advice.

So in the first half of the letter to the Ephesians Paul has been showing his readers the greatness of God's redemption in Christ, even concluding that section with a doxology, 'To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, Amen' (Eph. 3:21). That effectively is a line that he draws across the page.

He has finished one section with that 'Amen', but he doesn't end his letter there. He did not speak to the next Christian who visited him in prison asking him to arrange for this letter now to be taken immediately to Ephesus in Asia Minor and given to the elders of the church there for them to read to the congregation on the very next Lord's Day. 'Yes, certainly, Paul, we'll arrange that', his visitor would have said. No, it was going to be another week or so before he would have finished this letter. Paul was not quite half way through it yet; before he completed it he wanted to exhort the Ephesians about living elevated and noble lives which would reflect something of this glorious Lord who has redeemed them. They have received Paul's doctrinal input, but now they must display a practical output in their daily lives โ€“ if they are indeed genuine Christians.

Self-Examinationโ†โค’๐Ÿ”—

There can be no true doctrine of assurance that does not contain some element of self-examination to check whether my life matches up in good works to those described by the Bible as characteristically Christian. Our Lord Jesus speaks at the end of the Sermon on the Mount about many self-deluded men and women who die in the false hope that they are Christians. They have some right ideas about Christ; they use the right words; they work for him and even do extraordinary things in his name, but he will say unto many such people, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practise lawlessness!' (Matt. 7:23). They will not be received into heaven, and one reason for that is that they were not living as Paul describes in the second half of this letter. Holding orthodox doctrinal opinions is not a passport to heaven. You can talk the talk; are you walking the walk?

Let me stay for a moment on this point. I don't want to seem to denigrate revealed Christian teaching. You surely know how important truth is. You know how crucial it is to believe Romans chapters one to eleven and Ephesians chapters one, two and three, those words, written there on the pages of Scripture, breathed out by the Spirit. They are to be read and understood and believed. That is why God has given them to us. You don't have an option about that. You cannot be selective as to what purple passages you believe and as for the rest feel they can be discarded. God has spared not his own Son to redeem us from sin. Redemption has all been achieved through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That fact and also what it means has been recorded by the Holy Spirit through Christ's apostles in the Bible. Unbelief is a sin.

Bill Oddie writes of a vicar who told him he was greatly relieved when the Apostles' Creed was changed from beginning 'I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth...' to 'We believe ..' because he didn't believe a fair number of the statements of the Creed. In saying 'we' he felt he could repeat the words, because he knew that there would always be someone in the congregation alongside him who believed the bits which he rejected. Such vicars are wolves in sheep's clothing, that is, false prophets of whom we were warned by Jesus.

A man's right to stand in a pulpit before a church and teach them the Word of God depends on his believing what Scripture says. That is his great authority, and without it he is nothing. We're not interested in listening to men who say, 'Well, I think of God like this...' What does that matter? Your only right to inform my mind when you stand in a pulpit is that you believe the revelation of God in his Word and that you endorse the truth by a God-fearing life. So Paul's concern at these junctures, after having expounded the doctrines God had given him, is to expound the principles of conduct that please God. All true Christian teaching should lead to righteous Christian living; our behaviour flows out of what we believe about God and his salvation.

Biblical Exhortationโ†โค’๐Ÿ”—

This is a pattern seen not only on the grand scale of the structure of the great New Testament letters but also in the simple exhortations that pop up here and there in any chapter. Our daily behaviour is structured within the great events of redemption. There is an example in the letter to Titus. In the second chapter Paul writes these words, 'Say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and ... live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,' (verse 12).

That is a moral exhortation, and you might find similar sentiments in other religions or philosophies. But in those systems of belief you will not find them set in the context in which Paul sets them. Notice the context for the above-mentioned ethical exhortation. The apostle looks back into recent history to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says in the eleventh verse, 'For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.' In other words grace has become incarnate in God the Son and has preached the Sermon on the Mount to men; that revelation of the divine grace teaches us how to live, 'It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.' Then we can see that Paul also looks ahead to another event in the future; 'while we wait for the blessed hope โ€“ the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ' (verses 11-13). Our eyes are on the throne of judgment and the eternal state, and so Christians are to live different lives because of what God has done, once and for all, through Jesus Christ, and also because of what God promises that he will yet do through him.

Let me explain this crucial point again very simply. We sing the great hymn, 'When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died.' Now that is Christian doctrine. We are affirming in those words that the cross of Christ is not the ordinary death of a criminal, but that it is an object of wonder and amazement, because Jesus of Nazareth was the Prince of glory hanging on Golgotha. He was in agony dying there for my sins because he loved me. So how am I to respond to that? The hymnist tells us, 'Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.'

Henceforth my life (as someone saved by the Prince of glory's precious blood) is going to be different. I am not going to live for myself from now on, but my soul and my life and my all are going to be given to him, the one who died for me. The moment we believe in the cross work of Christ, the moment we are born again, we are going to change our way of life.

How Christian Good Works Differ from the World's Good Deedsโ†โค’๐Ÿ”—

You have members of your family who are not Christians. There are people who live on your street, and they never darken the doors of a church from one year to the next. Many of those people, your family and your neighbours, are simply grand people. They have splendid family lives; they don't fool around; they give themselves to caring for older parents and for their spouses who develop mental illness. They are people of integrity in their jobs; they can hold a firm together by their dedication, and they're greatly respected.

We Christians also seek to live moral lives like they do, but sometimes we feel they live more consistent lives than we ourselves. They put us to shame. In what ways are we different as Christians?

Or think of the righteousness of the Pharisees. In what spirit did the early Christians live so that their whole outlook was different from merely moral men? Let me ask it like this; how is a Christian woman different from a Stepford wife?1ย I suggest in four or five ways.

  • Firstly, our motives for living lives of self-denial are different from theirs. We live as we do in gratitude to God for what he has done for us in Jesus Christ.
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  • Secondly, our energy to go on denying ourselves, turning the other cheek, and not retaliating comes from outside our own genetic or environmental resources. It comes from a wholly different source, from our tapping the fullness of grace in the heavenly Lord Christ and in the indwelling Spirit of Jesus Christ. Our good works are the fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit. They are the fruit of grace.
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  • Thirdly, the instructions we receive in how we should behave come to us from a different authority. God has inspired the writers of Scripture, and we accept this Book as the Word of God. It binds our consciences to obey the Old and New Testaments. It is an endemic part of our lifestyles to be submitting to the Bible.
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  • Fourthly, our purpose in living a God-fearing life is different. We live to please our Saviour, and spread his kingdom, and honour our God by behaving in this new way. Men should see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven, said Jesus.
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  • Fifthly, our hope is different; it is that we are going to heaven to be with Christ, and those who have such a hope purify themselves in preparation for that goal.

Therefore it is in that ethos, through that Spirit and by his energy that we are made utterly different. That is how we worship God each Sunday, guard our tongues from taking his name in vain, turn the other cheek, put to death the power of remaining sin, and so on. Our actions come out of our purpose and goal in life. God himself has joined together in the Bible what we believe and how we live. Our conduct is explained by the teachings we have come to believe. Our good works are the fruit of grace.

Endnotesโ†โค’๐Ÿ”—

  1. ^ In the novel by Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives, the wives seemed to be impossibly perfect, but were actually sub-human slaves.

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