Theological term
Active and Passive Obedience
44 sermons · All terms
The Reformation of the Church
What does it mean for the church to be 'the pillar and ground of the truth'? Expounding 1 Timothy 3:14–16, this sermon examines the identity and confession of the church through three descriptions Paul gives in verse 15 — the house of God, the church of the living God, and the pillar and ground of the truth — before applying the doctrinal legacy of the sixteenth-century Reformation to the contemporary church. The great Christological confession of verse 16 is shown to be the theological center around which all church conduct, worship, and proclamation must orbit. The sermon calls the church to guard sola scriptura, justification by faith alone, the regulative principle of worship, and a proper Christology against the perpetual drift toward pragmatism, experientialism, and Romanizing errors.
Free Grace Baptist Church - October 23, 2016 PM
What does it look like for a justified sinner to walk in the Spirit? Working through Galatians 5:22-26, this exposition of the fruit of the Spirit demonstrates that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are not optional extras but the necessary outflow of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The sermon argues that because those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires at regeneration, the absence of these fruits is not an excuse but a call to repentance, and the presence of the Spirit provides the very power by which they are cultivated.
The Pharisee and the Publican
Luke 18:9–14 presents two men at prayer whose contrasting postures before God expose the heart of the doctrine of justification. The Pharisee's self-congratulatory prayer — cataloguing what he is not and what he does — illustrates the fatal error of self-righteousness: banking one's standing with God upon personal merit, which inevitably produces contempt for others. The tax collector's wordless self-renunciation — 'God be propitious to me, the sinner' — is the only posture that receives the verdict 'justified,' because justification is an act of God's free grace wherein the righteousness of Christ alone, received by faith, is the ground of the sinner's acceptance. The parable calls every hearer to kill pride, renounce all self-congratulatory religion, and cast himself entirely upon the mercy of God in Christ.
2LCF Chapter 27 - Of the Communion of Saints
What does it mean for believers to share communion with one another, and on what foundation does that communion rest? Working through 2LCF Chapter 27, paragraphs 1 and 2, this study establishes that the communion of the saints flows necessarily from the believer's union with Christ: because every saint is vitally joined to the same head, they are thereby joined to one another. The chapter's two qualifications — that union with Christ does not divinize the believer, and that spiritual communion does not abolish private property — guard the doctrine against historic errors ranging from pantheism to Anabaptist collectivism. The practical weight falls on concrete duties: faithful attendance at corporate worship, private mutual edification, material relief of the needy, and a willingness to extend fellowship beyond one's own congregation to all who call on the name of Christ.
The Rich Young Ruler
What must a man do to inherit eternal life? This exposition of Matthew 19:16–22 examines the encounter between Christ and the rich young ruler, showing that the young man's question is at once legitimate — every soul must reckon with eternity — and illegitimate, because it proceeds from the assumption that salvation is earned by human merit. Christ answers him on the terms of the covenant of works, pressing the second table of the Decalogue and then the tenth commandment in particular, not to prescribe a new way of salvation by poverty, but to expose the man's covetousness and unmask the bankruptcy of his self-righteousness. The sermon calls hearers to abandon proud self-righteousness, reckon honestly with the spirituality of God's law, and flee by faith to the one who alone kept it perfectly.
The Pharisee and the Publican
How can a sinful person be accepted before a holy God? Jesus answers that question directly in Luke 18:9–14, where two men pray in the temple and only one goes home justified. The parable exposes the bankruptcy of self-righteousness — trusting in one's own moral record before God — and vindicates the tax collector who, acknowledging himself as 'the sinner,' casts himself wholly on divine mercy. Justification belongs to those who bring nothing but their sin and receive by faith alone the righteousness of Christ, whose personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience is imputed to all who trust in him.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 2
The forensic doctrine of justification — God's one-time legal declaration that the sinner is righteous on the sole ground of Christ's imputed righteousness — faces persistent assault in every era. This session surveys three modern deviations: Arminian evangelicalism (which collapses faith into a meritorious work or relocates righteousness within the believer), the New Perspective on Paul (which reframes Paul's argument as a corrective for ethnic exclusivity rather than a remedy for the condemnation of sin), and the Federal Vision (which renders righteousness relational, conflates Christ's faithfulness with the believer's, and anticipates a future eschatological justification grounded in covenantal obedience). Against all three, Scripture and the confession insist that justification is a completed legal verdict, not a process, and that its ground is exclusively the active and passive obedience of Christ credited to the elect.
The Superstructure of Grace
Romans 8:32 sets forth what Thomas Manton called 'the superstructure of grace': because the Father did not spare his own Son but delivered him up as substitutionary, propitiatory, sin-bearing, and curse-bearing sacrifice for all the elect, it necessarily follows that he will freely give them all things besides. The argument moves from the greater to the lesser — if God has done the immeasurably costly thing, he will certainly not withhold the lesser mercies of guidance, strength, and ultimate glory. The sermon closes by calling believers to rest the full weight of their security, sanctification, and glorification on this one redemptive foundation, and to come to the Lord's Table in that confidence.
1 Samuel 12
1 Samuel 12 records Samuel's final public address to Israel at Gilgal, functioning as a covenant renewal ceremony in which Samuel vindicates his own integrity, indicts the nation for rejecting Yahweh as king, and summons the people to renewed covenantal obedience. The chapter exposes the characteristic human pattern of forgetting God's past deliverances when a new crisis arrives, a forgetfulness that is answered not by the people's merit but by God's own commitment to his name and to his covenant promises. The anchor of the entire chapter, and of the Christian's assurance, is verse 22: God will not forsake his people for his great name's sake, grounded in his free election and not in their fidelity. Hearers are therefore urged to maintain short accounts with God — confessing sin promptly, forsaking it, and pressing forward in simple, grateful obedience rather than wallowing in guilt as a form of Protestant penance.
The Whole Armor of God
Ephesians 6:10–20 calls believers to put on the whole armor of God not as a passive ideal but as an urgent, daily discipline in genuine spiritual warfare against principalities, powers, and the wiles of the devil. The sermon works through three structural observations: the two commands of verses 10–11 (be strong in the Lord; put on the armor), the reason given in verses 11–12 (the nature and reality of the enemy), and the armor described in verses 13–20 (five defensive elements and one offensive element). Each piece of armor — truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the Word, and prayer — is shown to direct the believer away from self-reliance and toward Christ as the captain of salvation. The central application is that theological grounding, not spiritual showmanship, constitutes genuine spiritual warfare, and that apart from Christ no believer will stand in the evil day.
The Pursuit of Heavenly Treasure
Matthew 6:19–21 sets before the believer a stark choice: lay up treasure on earth, where moth, rust, and thieves destroy, or lay up treasure in heaven, where nothing can diminish what is stored. The sermon expounds three movements in the text — a prohibition against covetousness and materialism, a positive command to pursue heavenly treasure through kingdom-shaped living, and an implication that wherever a man's treasure lies, his heart inevitably follows. The application presses hearers toward honest self-examination, gratitude for Christ's perfect loyalty to the Father, and the call to believe on him as the only one who perfectly laid up treasures in heaven on behalf of his people.
The Christian Father
Colossians 3:21 delivers a single, pointed command to fathers: do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. This sermon exposits that verse within the broader household code of Colossians 3:18–4:1, arguing that redemption in Christ does not dissolve familial distinctions but rather furnishes the spiritual capacity to fulfill them rightly. Drawing on positive examples from Abraham and Joshua and the negative example of Eli, the sermon identifies specific forms of provocation — unrighteous anger, unbiblical discipline, favoritism, inconsistency, and gospel-less child-rearing — before turning to the positive exhortation of Ephesians 6:4. The sermon closes with five concrete duties of the Christian father: presence, provision, protection, prayer, and preaching sound doctrine in the home.
The Good Shepherd
John 10:1–21 presents Christ under two complementary images — the door and the Good Shepherd — images that together exclude every other ground of salvation and every other claimant to spiritual authority. The Pharisees of John 9 stand as the type of all false shepherds who steal, kill, and destroy; Christ alone enters through the proper door, knows his sheep by name, and lays down his life as a willing substitute in their place. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement is the hinge of the passage: the sheep deserve to die, and the Shepherd dies in their stead, not as a moral example or martyr but as the divinely appointed substitute. The sermon calls the unconverted to come through this door in faith and the converted to rejoice in the intimate, abundant life that union with the Good Shepherd secures.
The Apostle's Fear for the Galatians
Paul's alarm over the Galatian churches' drift toward the Judaizers' doctrine serves as the occasion for examining three realities: the degradation of man's former state apart from God, the divine initiative that constitutes saving knowledge, and the spiritual equivalence of all false religion — whether pagan ritualism or Mosaic ceremony — as a return to bondage. The sermon works through Galatians 4:8–11, pressing the claim that any addition to Christ as the ground of justification — whether circumcision, holy days, or any human merit — renders the cross of no effect. The hearer is called to rest in Christ alone, to worship God for the sovereign grace by which he is known before he knows, and to pray for faithful ministers who will not soften the apostolic warning against gospel corruption.