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"For the perfecting of the saints..." - Ephesians 4:12
He is seeking. He's up in them hills looking for the lost: He knows where you are; He's coming for ya. If you're one of His sheep, whether you know Him now, or not yet, but He's chosen you before the foundation of the earth, He's coming and He ain't some weakling! He's the Son of David; of whom David killed Goliath, and a bear, and a lion, but Jesus the Great Shepherd defeated Satan and death to deliver His sheep! HalleluYAH!
Listen! Should you not seek to excel in holiness? For the Scripture says: Saith the LORD, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." (Lev. 19:2, 1 Pet. 1:16) We are confronted with such words and phrases in the Bible as, Ask, Seek, Knock, Strive, Be ye,... Give us this day,... Fight, Wrestle,... (HalleluYAH, and the violent take it by force!). Enter ye in, Take my yoke, Do the will of my Father, Lay hold on, Take the water of life freely, I press toward, Presseth into it... "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." (John 6:56)
All these involve DOING on our part: an active and ongoing pressing into, and moving forward - NOT Works; you cannot boast, for it is He waiting on you to receive the true blessings and knowledge of God. These involve an aggressive GOING AFTER the things of God, as with a voracious appetite. That's the meaning of "the violent take the kingdom of heaven by force." There's also Stand fast, Be strong, walk, Continue in the faith (Oh, that's an important one, Oh, how important that one is!), Put on the new man...
Then there are some passive statements that are no less powerful, that we must apply if we are to truly know Christ: Abide in me, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, Rest in hope, Rest in the LORD, Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God.
1 Timothy 6:12, "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses." 1 Timothy 6:19 "Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life." Hebrews 6:18, "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us"
Andrew Murray wrote "Jesus said, "If any man will do, he shall know..." I came across that reading his 1898 book on Christian perfection, same day I began composing this message. I thought, "Now there's confirmation: I just wrote out all those verbs last night, all the actions we can and should be doing as Christians, and here right in the Preface of the book lies that little gem."
1 Corinthians 16:15, "They have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints" Wycliffe's 1382 Bible says "into ministry of saints they have ordained themselves..."
Then there is Ephesians 4:3 "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Now is where we should look at the full context of the opening verse, found in Ephesians 4:11-16, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."
Endeavoring is also a verb, an action word "spoudazo," which means to make haste and to exert ones self, to labor, to study. The word is related to "speudo" in 2 Peter 3:12 about hastening the coming day of God, of which I find the Church by and large does not. They may sometimes speak of Christs return, prophecy, end times events, but that is not hastening it. Hastening it means to be laboring for it by warning of its imminance, doing the work of God, occupying till he comes, and above all watching and praying as He commanded us. Too many are just plain way too occupied with this world, which is passing away.
Some even pray Jesus hold off returning. No! No! No: Pray Revelation 22:20 "Even so, come Lord Jesus!" And, we see the ministry for the perfecting of the saints involves edification of the Church, the body of Christ, until we all come in the unity of the faith. You see Paul mentions unity before that also, where he says "Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
Martyn Lloyd-Jones had this to say in his 1976 sermon,
"Let me conclude with a word of application. To end without application would be false to the memory of this great man of God. What are the lessons for today from Jonathan Edwards? No man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity than Jonathan Edwards. None is more needed. Take all we have been considering, and on top of that take the treatise he wrote in 1748 with the title An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and for the Advancement of Christ's kingdom on Earth. Some friends in Scotland had been meeting together to pray in this way, and they wrote to Edwards and told him about this. They asked whether he agreed with this and whether he would write about it. So he wrote this great treatise pleading with people to join together, and to agree to do so once a month and in various other ways. He argues and pleads very specially in terms of what he and they regarded then as the nearness of the second coming of Christ and the glory that was to be revealed. It is a mighty and a glorious statement.
Surely revival is the only answer to the present need and condition of the church. I would state it thus. An apologetic which fails to put supreme emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit is doomed to be a complete failure. But that is what we have been doing. We have brought out an apologetic which is highly philosophical and argumentative. We have argued about modern art, modern literature, modern drama, politics and social views as if this is what is needed. What is needed is an effusion, an outpouring of the Spirit; and any apologetic which does not finally bring us to the need of such an outpouring will ultimately be useless. I believe we are again in much the same position as that which obtained before those great things happened in the 30'S of the eighteenth century." - Jonathan Edwards and the Crucial Importance of Revival By Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones An address delivered at the Puritan and Westminster Conference of 1976
Now the Scripture Edwards uses as his text in the aforementioned sermon is Zechariah 8:20-22, "Thus saith the LORD of Hosts, It shall yet come to pass, that there shall come People, and the Inhabitants of many Cities; and the Inhabitants of one City shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the LORD, and to seek the LORD of Hosts: I will go also. Yea, many People and strong Nations shall come to seek the LORD of Hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the LORD."
We notice in this, that people will come and say, "Let us go speedily to pray before the LORD, and to seek the LORD of Hosts" - See there, pray, and to seek. Now, some may wonder, well, it says they will come to Jerusalem, and we do know many do come to physical Jerusalem to pray and seek, especially in the past century. How many tours are offered by a large number of ministries? But then there is a "Jerusalem that is above," we see in Galatians 4:26. And in Hebrews 12:22-24 expands on this: "But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel." And in Revelation, 3 times the Great and holy city Jerusalem, also called the new Jerusalem is mentioned.
Some in Pentecostal circles believe in "Praying down the Spirit," but you cannot force or coerce the Spirit to come down, and really we should be praying to the GIVER of the Spirit for the Spirit. Truth is, all you really have to do is open the door. (Rev 3:20) The Holy Spirit is already here, but, Yes: the must be an outpouring of the Spirit to cause effectual true revival, whether individual or a group, or a community, large or small. Going up front to "make a decision for Christ," or "say a sinners prayer," is NOT revival, and a lot of times it ain't even conversion. It's become a fad thing, something people do because they're asked to, and it's shallow. More often than not there is NO repentance.
Lloyd-Jones also says, "Read Edwards on revival. The term he used always is ‘an outpouring of the Spirit'. Today, we are hearing much about what is called 'renewal'. They dislike the term revival; they prefer 'renewal'. What they mean by that is that we have all been baptized with the Spirit at the moment of regeneration, and that all we have to do therefore is to realize what we already have and yield ourselves to it. That is not revival! You can do all they teach and derive many benefits; but you still have not had revival. Revival is an out-pouring of the Spirit. It is something that comes upon us, that happens to us. We are not the agents, we are just aware that something has happened. The New Testament warns us against 'quenching the Spirit'. We can be guilty of doing so in many ways. We can quench the Spirit by being exclusively interested in theology. We can do so also by being concerned only about the application of Christianity to industry, to education, to art, to politics etc. At the same time Edwards gives similar warnings to those who emphasize experience only. "
I tell ya, the Church does this today, and it becomes "Idolatry of the Good Cause." That's EXACTLY what it is! People, Pastors, Christians putting more time into campaigning for and endorsing a certain candidate than they do campaigning for and endorsing the Prince of Peace, who is King of Kings and LORD OF LORDS! Amen. And it's both sides: Conservatives preach Trump, while liberal preachers like Al Sharpton preach Biden, or "Social Justice," or any number of movements: D.E.I., LGBT, etc. You know, there were a bunch of conservatives that "prophesied" that Trump would win in 2020 and have 4 more years?
Now I don't read "Christianity Today" but from time to time see something they publish and this is worthy of being repeated: from January 20, 2021, "The failed prophecies of Donald Trump’s reelection may have damaged the credibility of the US independent Charismatic wing of evangelicalism more than any event since the televangelist scandals of the 1980s. They have led some outsiders to criticize Christianity itself and rightly call us to introspection."
I pray we as believers come back and get to know our LORD and SAVIOUR Jesus Christ, because todays Church is far, far away from Him!
Consider what Jonathan Edwards says here: "I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of the subject. I know it has long been fashionable to despise a very earnest and pathetical way of preaching; and they only have been valued as preachers, who have shown the greatest extent of learning, strength of reason, and correctness of method and language. But I humbly conceive it has been for want of understanding or duly considering human nature, that such preaching has been thought to have the greatest tendency to answer the ends of preaching; and the experience of the present and past ages abundantly confirms the same. Though, as I said before, clearness of distinction, illustration, and strength of reason, and a good method in the doctrinal handling of the truths of religion, is in many ways needful and profitable, and not to be neglected; yet an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light and have no heat. How much has there been of this sort of know ledge, in the Christian world, in this age! Was there ever an age, wherein strength and penetration of reason, extent of learning, exactness of distinction, correctness of style, and clearness of expression, did so abound? And yet, was there ever an age, wherein there has been so little sense of the evil of sin, so little love to God, heavenly-mindedness, and holiness of life, among the professors of the true religion? Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching which has the greatest tendency to do this' (Vol.1.391)"
2 Corinthians 6:17-7:1, " Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
Philippians 3:15-16 As many as be perfect, let us mind the same thing. Again, this goes to unity. We see then, true Christian perfection involves holiness, and that being holy living, and godliness. And it involves unity: Holiness and unity, which can only work by love.
John Wesley, who along with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were leaders during the Great Awakenings of the mid 1700s, wrote: "Desire not to live but to praise his name; let all your thoughts, words, and works tend to his glory.’ ‘Let your soul be filled with so entire a love to Him that you may love nothing but for his sake.’ ’Have a pure intention of heart, a steadfast regard to his glory in all you actions.’ For then, and not till then, is that ‘mind in us, which was also in Christ Jesus,’ when in every motion of our heart, in every word of our tongue, in every work of our hands, we ‘pursue nothing but in relation to him, and in subordination to his pleasure;’ when we too neither think, nor speak, nor act, to fulfil ‘our own will, but the will of Him that sent us;’ when, ‘whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do,’ we do it all ‘to the glory of God." - John Wesley: A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, 1777
1 Corinthians 1:10, "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment."
Philippians 1:27, "Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel."
Here we see many things going on: Your conversation; behavior that should be as it becometh the Gospel of Christ. The Gospel of Christ isn't gonna be married to the world. That's why the Bible tells us "Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the LORD." Worldliness gotta go! Selfishness gotta go! Pride gotta go! Especially that one: pride must be crucified sometimes more than all the rest. The lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life, all of that must be crucified (1 John 2:16).
Here in Philippians 1:27 we also see one of those phrases we looked at in the beginning of this message: "Stand Fast in one spirit..." This involves the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, but also the same spirit of fellowship, and of unity. So again, unity is emphasized when it says do all this with one mind. Then there's another verb, an action word again: "Striving," but this time it's "Striving together for the faith of the Gospel," as in Jude 3 where Jude exhorts, "That ye should earnestly CONTEND FOR THE FAITH once delivered unto the saints." Interesting word translated "Contend" there. The Greek is, "epagōnizomai" - "We have a word in English that derives from its root: "agony." Epagonizomai means literally "to agonize about," thus "to contest" or "to contend." It describes the efforts of an athlete to win his particular competition in the midst of the games..."
He is seeking. He's up in them hills looking for the lost: He knows where you are; He's coming for ya. If you're one of His sheep, whether you know Him now, or not yet, but He's chosen you before the foundation of the earth, He's coming and He ain't some weakling! He's the Son of David; of whom David killed Goliath, and a bear, and a lion, but Jesus the Great Shepherd defeated Satan and death to deliver His sheep! HalleluYAH!
Listen! Should you not seek to excel in holiness? For the Scripture says: Saith the LORD, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." (Lev. 19:2, 1 Pet. 1:16) We are confronted with such words and phrases in the Bible as, Ask, Seek, Knock, Strive, Be ye,... Give us this day,... Fight, Wrestle,... (HalleluYAH, and the violent take it by force!). Enter ye in, Take my yoke, Do the will of my Father, Lay hold on, Take the water of life freely, I press toward, Presseth into it... "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." (John 6:56)
All these involve DOING on our part: an active and ongoing pressing into, and moving forward - NOT Works; you cannot boast, for it is He waiting on you to receive the true blessings and knowledge of God. These involve an aggressive GOING AFTER the things of God, as with a voracious appetite. That's the meaning of "the violent take the kingdom of heaven by force." There's also Stand fast, Be strong, walk, Continue in the faith (Oh, that's an important one, Oh, how important that one is!), Put on the new man...
Then there are some passive statements that are no less powerful, that we must apply if we are to truly know Christ: Abide in me, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, Rest in hope, Rest in the LORD, Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God.
1 Timothy 6:12, "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses." 1 Timothy 6:19 "Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life." Hebrews 6:18, "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us"
Andrew Murray wrote "Jesus said, "If any man will do, he shall know..." I came across that reading his 1898 book on Christian perfection, same day I began composing this message. I thought, "Now there's confirmation: I just wrote out all those verbs last night, all the actions we can and should be doing as Christians, and here right in the Preface of the book lies that little gem."
1 Corinthians 16:15, "They have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints" Wycliffe's 1382 Bible says "into ministry of saints they have ordained themselves..."
Then there is Ephesians 4:3 "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Now is where we should look at the full context of the opening verse, found in Ephesians 4:11-16, "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."
Endeavoring is also a verb, an action word "spoudazo," which means to make haste and to exert ones self, to labor, to study. The word is related to "speudo" in 2 Peter 3:12 about hastening the coming day of God, of which I find the Church by and large does not. They may sometimes speak of Christs return, prophecy, end times events, but that is not hastening it. Hastening it means to be laboring for it by warning of its imminance, doing the work of God, occupying till he comes, and above all watching and praying as He commanded us. Too many are just plain way too occupied with this world, which is passing away.
Some even pray Jesus hold off returning. No! No! No: Pray Revelation 22:20 "Even so, come Lord Jesus!" And, we see the ministry for the perfecting of the saints involves edification of the Church, the body of Christ, until we all come in the unity of the faith. You see Paul mentions unity before that also, where he says "Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
Martyn Lloyd-Jones had this to say in his 1976 sermon,
"Let me conclude with a word of application. To end without application would be false to the memory of this great man of God. What are the lessons for today from Jonathan Edwards? No man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity than Jonathan Edwards. None is more needed. Take all we have been considering, and on top of that take the treatise he wrote in 1748 with the title An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and for the Advancement of Christ's kingdom on Earth. Some friends in Scotland had been meeting together to pray in this way, and they wrote to Edwards and told him about this. They asked whether he agreed with this and whether he would write about it. So he wrote this great treatise pleading with people to join together, and to agree to do so once a month and in various other ways. He argues and pleads very specially in terms of what he and they regarded then as the nearness of the second coming of Christ and the glory that was to be revealed. It is a mighty and a glorious statement.
Surely revival is the only answer to the present need and condition of the church. I would state it thus. An apologetic which fails to put supreme emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit is doomed to be a complete failure. But that is what we have been doing. We have brought out an apologetic which is highly philosophical and argumentative. We have argued about modern art, modern literature, modern drama, politics and social views as if this is what is needed. What is needed is an effusion, an outpouring of the Spirit; and any apologetic which does not finally bring us to the need of such an outpouring will ultimately be useless. I believe we are again in much the same position as that which obtained before those great things happened in the 30'S of the eighteenth century." - Jonathan Edwards and the Crucial Importance of Revival By Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones An address delivered at the Puritan and Westminster Conference of 1976
Now the Scripture Edwards uses as his text in the aforementioned sermon is Zechariah 8:20-22, "Thus saith the LORD of Hosts, It shall yet come to pass, that there shall come People, and the Inhabitants of many Cities; and the Inhabitants of one City shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the LORD, and to seek the LORD of Hosts: I will go also. Yea, many People and strong Nations shall come to seek the LORD of Hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the LORD."
We notice in this, that people will come and say, "Let us go speedily to pray before the LORD, and to seek the LORD of Hosts" - See there, pray, and to seek. Now, some may wonder, well, it says they will come to Jerusalem, and we do know many do come to physical Jerusalem to pray and seek, especially in the past century. How many tours are offered by a large number of ministries? But then there is a "Jerusalem that is above," we see in Galatians 4:26. And in Hebrews 12:22-24 expands on this: "But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel." And in Revelation, 3 times the Great and holy city Jerusalem, also called the new Jerusalem is mentioned.
Some in Pentecostal circles believe in "Praying down the Spirit," but you cannot force or coerce the Spirit to come down, and really we should be praying to the GIVER of the Spirit for the Spirit. Truth is, all you really have to do is open the door. (Rev 3:20) The Holy Spirit is already here, but, Yes: the must be an outpouring of the Spirit to cause effectual true revival, whether individual or a group, or a community, large or small. Going up front to "make a decision for Christ," or "say a sinners prayer," is NOT revival, and a lot of times it ain't even conversion. It's become a fad thing, something people do because they're asked to, and it's shallow. More often than not there is NO repentance.
Lloyd-Jones also says, "Read Edwards on revival. The term he used always is ‘an outpouring of the Spirit'. Today, we are hearing much about what is called 'renewal'. They dislike the term revival; they prefer 'renewal'. What they mean by that is that we have all been baptized with the Spirit at the moment of regeneration, and that all we have to do therefore is to realize what we already have and yield ourselves to it. That is not revival! You can do all they teach and derive many benefits; but you still have not had revival. Revival is an out-pouring of the Spirit. It is something that comes upon us, that happens to us. We are not the agents, we are just aware that something has happened. The New Testament warns us against 'quenching the Spirit'. We can be guilty of doing so in many ways. We can quench the Spirit by being exclusively interested in theology. We can do so also by being concerned only about the application of Christianity to industry, to education, to art, to politics etc. At the same time Edwards gives similar warnings to those who emphasize experience only. "
I tell ya, the Church does this today, and it becomes "Idolatry of the Good Cause." That's EXACTLY what it is! People, Pastors, Christians putting more time into campaigning for and endorsing a certain candidate than they do campaigning for and endorsing the Prince of Peace, who is King of Kings and LORD OF LORDS! Amen. And it's both sides: Conservatives preach Trump, while liberal preachers like Al Sharpton preach Biden, or "Social Justice," or any number of movements: D.E.I., LGBT, etc. You know, there were a bunch of conservatives that "prophesied" that Trump would win in 2020 and have 4 more years?
Now I don't read "Christianity Today" but from time to time see something they publish and this is worthy of being repeated: from January 20, 2021, "The failed prophecies of Donald Trump’s reelection may have damaged the credibility of the US independent Charismatic wing of evangelicalism more than any event since the televangelist scandals of the 1980s. They have led some outsiders to criticize Christianity itself and rightly call us to introspection."
I pray we as believers come back and get to know our LORD and SAVIOUR Jesus Christ, because todays Church is far, far away from Him!
Consider what Jonathan Edwards says here: "I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of the subject. I know it has long been fashionable to despise a very earnest and pathetical way of preaching; and they only have been valued as preachers, who have shown the greatest extent of learning, strength of reason, and correctness of method and language. But I humbly conceive it has been for want of understanding or duly considering human nature, that such preaching has been thought to have the greatest tendency to answer the ends of preaching; and the experience of the present and past ages abundantly confirms the same. Though, as I said before, clearness of distinction, illustration, and strength of reason, and a good method in the doctrinal handling of the truths of religion, is in many ways needful and profitable, and not to be neglected; yet an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light and have no heat. How much has there been of this sort of know ledge, in the Christian world, in this age! Was there ever an age, wherein strength and penetration of reason, extent of learning, exactness of distinction, correctness of style, and clearness of expression, did so abound? And yet, was there ever an age, wherein there has been so little sense of the evil of sin, so little love to God, heavenly-mindedness, and holiness of life, among the professors of the true religion? Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching which has the greatest tendency to do this' (Vol.1.391)"
2 Corinthians 6:17-7:1, " Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
Philippians 3:15-16 As many as be perfect, let us mind the same thing. Again, this goes to unity. We see then, true Christian perfection involves holiness, and that being holy living, and godliness. And it involves unity: Holiness and unity, which can only work by love.
John Wesley, who along with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were leaders during the Great Awakenings of the mid 1700s, wrote: "Desire not to live but to praise his name; let all your thoughts, words, and works tend to his glory.’ ‘Let your soul be filled with so entire a love to Him that you may love nothing but for his sake.’ ’Have a pure intention of heart, a steadfast regard to his glory in all you actions.’ For then, and not till then, is that ‘mind in us, which was also in Christ Jesus,’ when in every motion of our heart, in every word of our tongue, in every work of our hands, we ‘pursue nothing but in relation to him, and in subordination to his pleasure;’ when we too neither think, nor speak, nor act, to fulfil ‘our own will, but the will of Him that sent us;’ when, ‘whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do,’ we do it all ‘to the glory of God." - John Wesley: A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, 1777
1 Corinthians 1:10, "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment."
Philippians 1:27, "Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel."
Here we see many things going on: Your conversation; behavior that should be as it becometh the Gospel of Christ. The Gospel of Christ isn't gonna be married to the world. That's why the Bible tells us "Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the LORD." Worldliness gotta go! Selfishness gotta go! Pride gotta go! Especially that one: pride must be crucified sometimes more than all the rest. The lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life, all of that must be crucified (1 John 2:16).
Here in Philippians 1:27 we also see one of those phrases we looked at in the beginning of this message: "Stand Fast in one spirit..." This involves the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, but also the same spirit of fellowship, and of unity. So again, unity is emphasized when it says do all this with one mind. Then there's another verb, an action word again: "Striving," but this time it's "Striving together for the faith of the Gospel," as in Jude 3 where Jude exhorts, "That ye should earnestly CONTEND FOR THE FAITH once delivered unto the saints." Interesting word translated "Contend" there. The Greek is, "epagōnizomai" - "We have a word in English that derives from its root: "agony." Epagonizomai means literally "to agonize about," thus "to contest" or "to contend." It describes the efforts of an athlete to win his particular competition in the midst of the games..."
