Deliverance: From Sin to Righteousness, Part 1

Nobody is a Christian who doesn't believe in the true gospel and who doesn't have holy longings, righteous affections, love for what is right and a deep animosity toward what is wrong. So, welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Now, here's a question for you. If you don't realize that you're in serious trouble, why would you call out for help?

You wouldn't. You know, that's a classic picture of the unregenerate sinner. He's in the worst possible trouble, yet he doesn't realize it. He doesn't know he's in danger of God's judgment for sin, and surprisingly, many churches today purposely do not tell sinners they're in danger. Imagine the consequences, both for the unbeliever left in the dark and for those who refuse to communicate the truth. Well, Grace to You is committed to the truth of God's word, even the hard truths. John MacArthur will explain the danger you are in if you don't know Christ, and if you're a believer, he will help you communicate the gospel with conviction. So stay here on Grace to You as John continues his study titled, Delivered by God.

I must continue to deliver what I feel is pressing on my heart. I don't ever remember hearing a sermon on deliverance. I don't ever remember reading a theology about deliverance. And so I began to look in some of the indexes in the back of theology books to see if there was any discussion on the subject of deliverance.

I couldn't find anything. I began to view salvation from the perspective of deliverance and realize that this great truth is largely neglected in the church. And so we're in the midst of this series on deliverance, the neglected doctrine.

And why is it important? It's important because I am saying to you in this series that I am continually saddened and I am continually disappointed by the widespread lack of discernment in the quote-unquote evangelical church. And while its lack of discernment is obvious to any discerning person, and while we could make a long list of things that they don't seem to discern very well, at the very top of that list is one most critical matter where there is a serious lack of discernment and that is the issue of who is a true Christian. It really is amazing to me that the evangelical church, the very term evangelical connects it with the evangel, the gospel. The very gospel church, the very church of the gospel cannot or will not distinguish those people who have been truly converted by the gospel from those who have not.

There is this new latitude, there is this new broadness that wants to embrace all claims to Christianity as true, even if they are oblique and self-defined and in fact resents any challenge to that broadness. This series has caused no small amount of discussion around here and beyond. I received a phone call from a man who was driving along listening to the series on tape and he said to me, I'm listening to the series and I have to tell you something. And I said, well, what is it? He said, you know, of course, what people are saying about you.

And I said, well, I could sort of guess on the broad general level, but maybe you'd like to tell me what you heard. And he said, oh, this is what I heard. Oh, that's just John MacArthur and he thinks he has all the truth.

And he said, you know, I'm listening to the tape and this grieves me that this is what people are saying. This is just John MacArthur and he thinks he knows all the truth. I just want you to know that I don't have the truth in me. I am not the source of the truth. But I do believe there is truth. Do you believe that? I believe there's truth. Now that puts me at odds with the whole culture.

You understand that? This is a post-modern world, there's no truth. The modern world, modernism means search for truth. They searched, they didn't find it. So now they've decided we couldn't find it so it doesn't exist.

The reason they couldn't find it is they refused to look here. The biggest problem in American culture is the Bible. It is the biggest problem in American culture.

Do you understand that? Do you understand we wouldn't be having any discussion about pornography if there wasn't a Bible? We wouldn't be having any discussion about pedophilia, fornication, adultery, divorce, breakup of the family. We wouldn't have any discussion about any of that if there wasn't a Bible.

We wouldn't have any discussion about abortion, euthanasia. This culture is divided over this book. This book is a problem. And the left liberal secular culture doesn't mind us believing in this book, they just don't want to bring it out of the church, keep it inside the walls, don't bring it into the public discourse because it contains truth we don't want to hear. This book is the big problem.

I understand that from the world, but when this book becomes a problem for the evangelical church, that is serious. I'm not telling you that I know the truth. I'm not telling you that I'm the source of the truth, but I'm telling you the Bible has the truth and there is truth. I wonder if people even know what the word truth means anymore because everybody has the freedom to define truth on their own terms. Let me just give you a simple definition of truth. Truth is the way things really are.

Did you get that? That's what it is. It's not the way you think they are, it's the way they really are. There is truth about how the universe got here and how it's held together. There is truth about everything material in the world, and there's truth about everything spiritual in the world, and the truth is the way things really are. And if you want to know the way they really are, then you have to go to the source of all truth, the God of truth, the Christ who is truth, and the Spirit of truth, and the Word of truth, and you'll learn the truth. I'm not trying to pass off my opinion.

I'm not inventing this as I go. I'm just studying the Bible. I'm not smart enough to even have opinions that people care about, let alone establish truth. But there is truth, and that truth is in the Word of God.

And my friend said to me on the phone, he said, you should know that one of the leading pastors in America, a large church, said to me, oh, MacArthur gets upset about things, and he just needs to realize that the Reformation wasn't as big a deal as we've made out of it. Well, I guess not if you don't care about the truth. I care about the truth. I live for the truth. I live by the truth. I proclaim the truth, and I contend for the truth.

And that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. And it's not because I want to gain some notoriety, it's because I believe God should be heard. All I'm trying to do, folks, is give you the truth, okay? The truth is the Word of God is revealed it. And one of the seminary students asked me if it was important in preaching not just to tell people the truth, but to show them in the Scripture how it is the reasonable interpretation. In other words, you can't just pontificate and say this is true, you have to show them in the Word of God why this is the reasonable way to understand this truth. And I said, of course, you can't pontificate, you can't just stand up and say this is so and this is so and this is so because you have some self-imposed authority.

If I tell you something and you look at the Scripture and you search the Scripture and you don't find that it's the truth, that's serious. My object in preaching to you is to show you the Word of God and to lead you to lead you to understand the Word of God so that it becomes very apparent to you what the truth is. My friend R.C. Sproul probably gave me the most kind and best introduction I've ever had, and I've had lots of introductions by lots of different people in different places. One time he introduced me and said, John MacArthur, and he's my friend because if I can show him from the Word of God where he's wrong, he'll change. I appreciated that, and that's the way it is. But there are some things in the Word of God that are very clear, and those are the things that are at the heart of our faith. And one of them is to understand who is a true Christian.

And it's astonishing to me how confused people are. And the way to understand who a Christian is, I've concluded, after a long time trying to get to this point, is to understand deliverance, the theology of deliverance. You can tell a Christian because they're delivered. That's what the Bible teaches.

And, you know, just at that point, maybe we can talk practically. Deliverance, I believe, may be the best, most comprehensive, most clarifying word to define a Christian. But that's not the way we do it.

Here's how we do it. Ask yourself, are you a Christian? Are you? Are you justified by God? Are you reconciled to God? Have you been redeemed?

Has the ransom Christ paid been applied to you? Are you a Christian? And then ask yourself, how do you know that? How do you know you're a Christian? Say, well, I prayed a prayer.

I won't do it. I went forward at a meeting. I felt very emotional and maybe I cried and I went down there and I talked to somebody.

No, that's not how you can tell you're a Christian. Well, I felt really bad. I did some things and I felt really bad. Or I got into a predicament in my marriage or in my life and I felt so bad, I just needed help from God and I reached up.

I won't do it. Well, I believe, I actually believe in God and I believe in Jesus. I must be a Christian. Or how about I was baptized? I mean, I was baptized in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. You see, all of that is looking at an event.

It might have been a physical event or an emotional event. That doesn't tell you you were saved. That just tells you you prayed. Lots of people prayed who aren't going to heaven. You went forward.

Oh, lots of people go forward, whatever that means, in some meeting. They're not saved. They're not converted.

They don't belong in the family of God. And a lot of people feel bad and a lot of people believe, even demons believe and feel bad about their fate. And lots of people get baptized.

That's not it. There isn't any event that's ever occurred in your life that can in itself verify that you are a Christian. True salvation is revealed and manifest by the divine work of the Holy Spirit in delivering you. If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit has delivered you.

And we are understanding the idea of deliverance as a general truth that sums up the realities of salvation that are manifest and experiential. There are elements of our salvation that are not experiential. Justification is not something you experience. Reconciliation is not something you experience.

Adoption is not something you experience. Redemption is not something you experience. There are elements of our salvation that are legal, that have to do with our status, that have to do with our state, that have to do with our position before God. But there are for God. But there are other elements of our salvation that are manifest revealed experiential things...regeneration, new life, new birth, conversion, sanctification. And when you begin to look at those, you begin to see them in the imagery of being delivered so that you can know you're a Christian, not by an event, but by the fact that you are manifestly delivered from one thing to another, one spiritual realm to another, one life principle to another, one set of realities to another. There is a real deliverance.

And what did we say the first one was? Those who belong to the Lord have been delivered from error to...what?...to truth. Colossians 1, 12 and 13 for a moment, I'm just going to touch this lightly and then I'm going to say whatever relates to this and then make a transition to the second point. But Colossians 1, and please, I'm just really kind of delivering my soul on this so you have to be patient with me because of the importance of it. Colossians 1, 12, we give thanks to the Father and we believers, we who are in the family of God, we give thanks to the Father because He qualified us.

We were unqualified, we were unworthy, we had no qualifications whatsoever by which to be accepted by Him. But He qualified us, and you know how He did that, by applying the righteousness of Christ to us. He qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Light is a metaphor for truth. And then verse 13, for He delivered us. There's that concept of deliverance. He delivered us out of the domain of darkness, which is a metaphor for error. The first category of deliverance is those who are really Christians have been delivered out of error into truth.

Now listen to what I say. No one is a Christian who does not understand, believe, embrace and love the truth. What truth? The truth that we call the gospel. No one can be a Christian who has not been delivered out of false doctrine into true doctrine and that is into the gospel of Jesus Christ. You must be delivered into the true gospel.

Any other gospel, Galatians 1, results in a curse. In 2 John, anybody who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, who doesn't settle down in the true teaching of Christ, does not have God, 2 John 9. People say, you hear this in mission discussions, oh, those people over there who have never heard the gospel, the Lord's going to save them somehow. Nobody will ever be saved, nobody will ever come into a saving relationship with God who does not know the true gospel regarding Jesus Christ, nobody.

There isn't any salvation in any other name. The one who does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. The one who does abide in that teaching has both the Father and the Son. Nobody is a Christian who hasn't been delivered out of error into truth, and that truth is that the Bible is the Word of God in which the doctrine of salvation is clearly revealed in its fullness. That is a belief in the true God, the God who is, the Trinity, the God who revealed Himself in the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity through a virgin birth, lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, rose from the grave in a literal resurrection, ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Spirit, reigns with the Father at His right hand, intercedes for the saints and someday will come back to establish His eternal kingdom in glory. That is the substance of the foundation of gospel truth. And nobody is saved apart from understanding that, not obviously in all of its full ramifications, but understanding it in its truth, believing it, embracing it, and loving it. When the Spirit of truth regenerates, He moves people from error to truth.

He brings the sinner the understanding of, belief in, embracing of, and total commitment to the truth. That's why in Colossians 1 it says essentially that the saints dwelling in light, and it's almost a synonym, have been transferred into the kingdom of His beloved Son. Light and the Son are synonymous. Jesus said it, I am the light. To be in the light, that is to know the truth, is to understand the one who is the truth, Jesus Christ. Now let me just take you to a passage that will act for us as a transition. Turn to Romans 10.

You have to understand this. I don't know how more clear it can be stated, verse 9, if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, which embodies all of His person and work, and you believe in your heart that God...what?...raised Him from the dead, you'll be saved. If you don't believe that, if you don't believe that Jesus is Lord and God and sovereign master, the sinless one, if you don't believe that He actually rose from the grave and all that that implies, it implies that God Himself was satisfied with His atonement and raised Him from the dead, that He is therefore the perfect and exalted Savior. If you don't believe that, you can't be saved. What the heart man believes resulting in righteousness with the mouth, he confesses resulting in salvation.

Now there's no distinction. Verse 12 says it's open to everybody. Verse 13 says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But you have to call on the name of the Lord, you have to believe the essence of the gospel. You can't be saved without it and that's why verse 14 says, how shall they call on Him whom they have not believed? If nobody's told them the truth and nobody's given them the information to believe, how are they going to call on Him and how are they going to believe if they haven't heard and how are they going to hear without a preacher and how are they going to preach unless they're sent?

You get the picture? They don't understand and they can't believe unless they hear and they can't hear unless somebody goes and nobody goes unless somebody's sent. The point being, we've got to go because there isn't any other way. That's why Jesus said, go into all the world and do what? Preach the gospel to every creature.

That's the only hope. Nobody's ever going to be converted and taken to heaven who didn't get delivered out of error into truth, the truth regarding Jesus Christ. Education, work, and salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Him alone. That's why we say in verse 15, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the glad tidings of good things. How beautiful are the feet of those who go because if they don't go, they can't hear. If they can't hear, they can't believe.

If they can't believe, they can't be saved. In verse 17, faith comes from what? Hearing. It doesn't come from intuition.

It comes from hearing what? The Word of God, the Word of Christ, actually the better manuscript, the Word of Christ, the Word about Jesus Christ, the gospel. That's why we have to go. And believe me, as I've told you before, if people out there live up to the light they have, the light of conscience and the light of reason, God will make sure they get the light of the gospel. God is not at all limited in bringing the message to those whose hearts are prepared by His Spirit. Now turn to Romans 6, verse 17. Just a simple thought here, okay?

Thanks be to God. You were slaves of sin. Stop there. What's a slave? Oh, that's a word that carries a lot of baggage with it, right? A slave is somebody who is in abject, dutiful service under a master. When we think of a slave, we think of someone whose will, whose ideas, whose opinions, whose plans, whose purposes, whose future are not in their own hands, don't matter. A slave is somebody who does whatever he's told.

A slave is somebody who is under commanding authority. And he says about us, you were slaves of sin. We are literally dominated by sin. Sin is our master. Occasionally we do something that is humanly good and kind and something that may be even humanly noble. Occasionally we express love, we take care of children, we take care of older people, we give to charity, but the basic dominating force and power in our lives is sin.

That's the way it is. In verse 18, but you've been freed from sin and you became slaves of righteousness. Wow, this is a dramatic change.

I mean, this is a major dramatic change. You no longer are a slave to sin, you're now a slave to righteousness. Your master is righteousness. Your compelling power is righteousness. And where once you found your satisfaction and you found your delight and you found your joy and you found your fulfillment in sin, you now find your delight and your satisfaction and your joy and your fulfillment in righteousness, where once you hated the thought of doing right and loved the thought of doing wrong and now you hate the thought of doing wrong and love the thought of doing right, that's a big change...big change. is a Christian who doesn't believe in the true gospel and who doesn't have holy longings, righteous affections, love for what is right and a deep animosity toward what is wrong. That's the indication that you have been delivered. So when you evaluate somebody's Christianity, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, right?

Jesus said in Matthew 7, I'm going to say, depart from Me, I never knew you. You workers of...what? I just look at your life and I see the product. You do iniquity. You don't belong to Me. I don't care what your claim is. You do iniquity. You don't belong to Me. It doesn't matter that you said, Lord, Lord, we did this in Your name, did that, prophesied, cast out demons.

That isn't...that isn't the point. Look at your life, workers of iniquity. You can tell who's a Christian. It's manifest. They've been delivered. They have been delivered to faith in the truth, in the language of 2 Thessalonians 2, 13, and they have been delivered into sanctification by the Spirit.

That is, they have been separated from error and from sin into truth and righteousness. Do you see? How can we ask the question, who's a Christian? It's all right there.

It's all right there. They believe the truth, and they live as new creations. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, continuing his series Delivered by God here on Grace to You. Now John, early today you said the biggest problem in America is the Bible, and your point was that in the United States, and really in any culture, the Bible is truth that confronts and divides, and without its clear, authoritative, exclusive claims, there would be a lot less friction. Absolutely right, and strangely enough, look at how many evangelicals there are that are trying to eliminate that friction, trying to eliminate that confrontation, trying to eliminate that division by soft-selling some kind of quasi-subsaving gospel, trying to find some common ground that everybody can tolerate. That is a prostitution of the intention of Scripture. You know, it was Jesus who said he didn't come to bring peace, but he came to bring a sword.

He came to pit a man against his wife and his children, children against parents, children against each other. The truth of the gospel and its exclusive claims is divisive. People say, are you saying that Christ is the only way?

Absolutely. Are you saying that you cannot be saved any other way? That's exactly what we're saying. That's exactly what the Bible says. Are you saying that persons can't go to heaven apart from faith in Christ?

That is exactly what the Bible teaches, and that's what true preachers will affirm. I want to offer you a book, and I think it's one of the most important books I've ever written. It's not a large book. It's not a big book, but boy, is it potent. It's titled Why One Way.

Here's the good news. It's a hard back, and we'll send it free to anyone who's never contacted us before. It looks at the distinctiveness, the uniqueness, the exclusive nature of Christianity and the gospel.

This is so very important. It's an argument for the truth and the distinctiveness of the gospel message. For a limited time, we'll send a free copy of this book, Why One Way, to anyone who's never called or written us before and requests it. Beautiful book, hard cover, gift size. Request your copy if you've never called us before. Do it today.

Yes, do. This book will show you why there is only one road to heaven, and it will help you defend that narrow path lovingly and yet without compromise. As John said, we'll send you a free copy of the book, Why One Way, if you've never contacted us before. Request your copy today. You can make your request over the phone, dial toll-free, 855-GRACE, Monday through Friday from 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time, or visit our website, GTY.org.

The book, Why One Way, is a quick read that's packed with gospel truth. It's a great resource to pass along to a friend, and so again, we'll send it to you free if you're contacting us for the first time. Just call 800-55-GRACE or visit GTY.org. And friend, as we've mentioned many times before, your letters are a great encouragement to us. So if John's teaching has helped deepen your worship or shown you where to look in Scripture for comfort in your trials or maybe even led to your salvation, let us know. Send your letter to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412, or you can email us at letters at GTY.org. That's our email address one more time, letters at GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the staff, thanks for tuning in today, and tomorrow you're going to see how coming to Christ should affect your day-to-day decisions, and you'll see the effect that has on your future. Be here for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.