Becoming Children of God: Assurance and Transformation

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of men, but of God. Now this is essential Christianity, and that's why I'm calling attention to this. I've been pointing out how this gospel was Rick as, indeed, most of the New Testament was written, in order that Christian people might know the possibilities of the Christian life." [00:12:50]

"Nothing is more important for us than the assurance of salvation. The Christian is not only saved, he's meant and now it God is our Father he gave them power to become the children of God and it's a very poor father who doesn't want his children to be happy and God, according to the New Testament, wants us to be happy he wants us to enjoy the large yes which he has for us and his munificence and his unsearchable riches." [00:29:57]

"Now the Christian is a man who is aware of the fact that the Spirit of God is in him, everything about him brings him to that awareness. The epistles constantly put this men of the forest take for instance an example of it in 1 Corinthians 6 at the end what know ye not that the that you have body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in you you know that since Paul you realized that as a Christian the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in you as he was in Christ he is in you now the Christian is aware of this and as he goes on growing he becomes increasingly aware of it." [00:46:03]

"So that as he goes on he develops an increasing anxiety as it were fear less than anything or in any respect he should offend or grieve or cause the spirit to mourn in those words we've been singing of william kappa i hate the sins that made the mom and drove the from my breasts now, the way I would put the test therefore is this, that the Christian is more afraid of grieving the spirit than he is of anything else." [00:50:35]

"His fear is not so much that he may fall into sin of course he fears death but the thing that mark cement the thing that can give him reassurance is this that even when he does fall into sin, the thing that troubles him is not so much that he has sinned, not so much that he has been guilty of failure, but that he has grieved this blessed spirit that has deigned and humbled himself to come and dwell in him and to inhabit his very body." [00:54:54]

"Now I'm stressing this point for this reason, this is one of the most delicate and sensitive tests that I'm aware of in the matter of differentiating between the Christian and a good moral men that's the problem how do I know that I'm a Christian or not just a good morrow man there are very good moral men in the world very upright men there are men this morning who seem to be a Paragons of all the versions you can't point a finger at them they never seem to do any wrong and they've got a very high moral code or high ethical standard and they do believe in living up to this." [00:58:19]

"Now then here is obviously a very wonderful test that we can apply to ourselves in order to prove that we are the children of God if I'm a child of God the Spirit of God dwells in me if the Spirit of God dwells in me produces fruit if I find the fruit in myself I am of necessity therefore a child of God that's the way it works but let's look at it." [01:16:26]

"Now this again is a very wonderful thing and it's a very delicate test, this is a much more delicate test in the test of knowledge, knowledge is a test, grow in grace and in the knowledge of the law, the man who doesn't know more about the scriptures now than he did a year ago is in a bad state, as you go on in the Christian life your knowledge must increase." [01:20:30]

"Because unfortunately you can grow in a kind of head knowledge of the truth in a kind of intellectual academic knowledge and that doesn't have necessity prove that you're a Christian, it's an amazing thing this but it's quite true you can through listening to the preaching of the word and reading books about it you can be very interested in scriptural knowledge but it doesn't prove you're a Christian, you can do that with your head alone." [01:26:50]

"But you see what you can never do is to produce the fruit of the Spirit never, not only that as the Apostle puts it in 1 Corinthians 8:1 lease as we know that we all have knowledge these people in Corinth they were intellectuals and they were very knowledgeable people some of them have been dabbling with philosophy and so on and they were bursting about their knowledge the stronger brother that's right says Paul we know that we all have knowledge but knowledge puffeth up but charity, love edifies builds you see the difference the difference between being puffed up and then and being built up solidly securely safely very well then." [01:28:38]

"Now there is a and the preliminary difficulty about this testing of ourselves in terms of the presence of the fruit of the Spirit in us because it seems to be a self-contradictory thing in this way, that the more a man as the fruit of the spirit in in the more humbly will be the more meek the more lonely the more delicate and sensitive in his spirit and therefore the more he will be aware of indwelling sin." [01:35:48]

"So that when you look at it at first you feel this he would say well the most saintly amen becomes the more is he aware of his own deficiencies you are raw newborn convert thinks he's become perfect in one stroke that's because he's ignorant he'll have to learn that he isn't but we tend to be like the infants children always are in that position the older one gets the more one knows about one's ignorance and as one goes on in the Christian life the more windows about the plague of one's own heart well therefore you say the more you grow and the more the spirit works with indium the more you'll see all this blackness and darkness and therefore the more hopeless you'll feel about yourself but it's a false argument that it's quite wrong." [01:38:00]