Theological term
Passive Obedience
115 sermons · All terms
2LCF Chapter 32 - Of the Last Judgment
The biblical doctrine of the Last Judgment—its nature, purpose, and practical relevance—is examined through 1689 LBCF Chapter 32. God has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through Jesus Christ as covenant mediator, to manifest both His mercy in the eternal salvation of the elect and His justice in the eternal damnation of the reprobate. Romans 9 grounds the theocentric purpose of judgment in God's sovereign disposition of mercy and wrath, while 2 Thessalonians 1 supplies the apostolic warrant for the believer's rejoicing in divine justice. The session concludes with an overview of the major millennial positions and their hermeneutical foundations, urging the church to let eschatology produce holiness, consolation, and gospel urgency rather than pride or speculation.
The King's Exaltation and Future Triumph
Psalm 21 celebrates the exaltation of the true David, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose resurrection, ascension, and session at the right hand of the Father fulfill what the church prayed for in Psalm 20. The psalm moves from a declaration of the king's joy and the Father's bestowal of blessing, crown, and eternal reign upon the Son as mediator of the new covenant, to a prophetic anticipation of his final triumph over all remaining enemies at the second advent. What is true of the exalted head belongs to the body: the church's permanence, blessing, and ultimate glory are secured in Christ's own immovability and intercession. The sermon closes with a call for sinners to flee to the triumphant king and for the church to recover the militant confidence that comes from feasting on the Psalms of the true David.
The Trial Before Pilate, Part 1
John 18:28–32 records the opening of Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate, but the wickedness on display there cannot be understood without first reckoning with the trial before the Sanhedrin in Matthew 26. The sermon works through both proceedings to expose two realities in collision: the hypocrisy, lawlessness, and impotence of the Sanhedrin, and the sovereign decree of God that ordained every detail of these events for the salvation of His people. Even the creedal phrase 'suffered under Pontius Pilate' is shown to root the faith in history, confirm Christ's innocence, and demonstrate that He endured this degradation not for any guilt of His own but entirely for the sake of those He came to save.
The LORD's Help in the Day of Trouble
Psalm 20 presents the prayer and confidence of the covenant people on behalf of their king going into battle, but its deeper register is the church's intercession for Christ — the true David — as he undertakes his redemptive mission. The sermon works through two movements: the petitions of verses 1–5 (the presence of trouble, the place of help, the provision of grace, and the response of joy) and the confidence of verses 6–9 (grounded in the Lord's salvation of his anointed, contrasted sharply with those who trust in chariots and horses). The expositor draws out the prophetic significance of the psalm, showing that what the old covenant church prayed for before the first advent is answered in the resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ, and applies the psalm's stark contrast between trusters in earthly strength and trusters in the name of the Lord to every hearer's standing before God on the day of judgment.
The Gospel's Precious Liberty
Galatians 5:1–6 commands believers to stand fast in the liberty Christ has purchased, refusing any entanglement with a yoke of bondage. This sermon traces the full weight of Paul's argument through Galatians to show that Christian liberty is freedom from the dominion, guilt, and condemnation of sin, from the grip of the devil, and from the yoke of the ceremonial law. The forfeiture of that liberty — by adding circumcision or any other work to the ground of justification — renders Christ of no profit and leaves the soul estranged from grace. Seven means by which believers stand fast in this liberty are set out, all grounded in the Spirit's sustaining work through the means of grace.
The Resurrection-Hope of the Righteous One
Psalm 16 is expounded as a Messianic psalm concerning the mind and experience of Christ in his earthly ministry — his earnest petition for divine preservation, his joyful contentment amid sorrow, and his sufficiency rooted in the Father alone. The apostolic witness of Peter in Acts 2 and Paul in Acts 13 establishes that David speaks in this psalm concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, and only secondarily of David and the saints in union with him. The sermon calls believers to follow the pattern of their Savior: praying for preservation, finding sufficiency in God rather than earthly blessings, meditating on Scripture in the night seasons, and navigating trial through a settled confidence in divine providence.
The Gospel Committed to the Apostle Paul
1 Timothy 1:15–17 contains one of five 'faithful sayings' in the Pastoral Epistles, and Paul deploys it here to contrast the life-giving gospel with the idle speculations of the false teachers troubling the church at Ephesus. The sermon works through three elements: the faithful saying as a standard confession received and guarded by the church; the glorious content of that saying — the incarnation of the Son and his effectual, definite work to save sinners; and the merciful application illustrated in Paul himself, who as the chief of sinners functions as a pattern of Christ's longsuffering for all who will believe. The doxology of verse 17 demonstrates that rightly understood soteriology issues in worship, and believers are called to keep this faithful saying at the centre of their hearts and to press it upon the unconverted.
Ask FGBC #63: What is Baxterianism?
Baxterianism, drawn from the teaching of 17th-century minister Richard Baxter, replaces the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone with a scheme in which God justifies the believer on the ground of evangelical obedience to a relaxed 'law of the gospel.' This Q&A exposition identifies Baxterianism as a conflation of justification and sanctification, a departure from the imputation of Christ's active and passive obedience, and an implicit relaxation of the moral law — errors addressed directly by 1689 LBCF chapters 11, 13, and 19. The discussion grounds its critique in Galatians 2:16 and the consistent witness of Paul that sinners are justified by faith alone, not by any human obedience, through the sole and finished work of Christ.
Ask FGBC #62: What is Federal Vision?
Federal Vision theology, originating largely within Presbyterian and broader Reformed circles, conflates the covenant of works with the covenant of grace into a mono-covenantalism that mingles works and grace. The result is a doctrine of justification dependent on grace-assisted covenantal faithfulness rather than the imputed righteousness of Christ alone. This Q&A response argues that Federal Vision constitutes not a subtle revision but an outright rejection of the historic doctrine of justification by faith alone, grounded in both Christ's active obedience imputed to the believer and his passive obedience bearing the wrath of God in the sinner's stead.
2LCF Chapter 19 - Of the Law of God
What role does the law of God play for the Christian now that Christ has come and the old covenant has been superseded? This confession-study exposition of 2LCF Chapter 19 works through seven paragraphs on the law of God, distinguishing moral universals from positive precepts, tracing the threefold division of the law (moral, ceremonial, judicial), establishing the creational and trans-covenantal abiding validity of the moral law, and demonstrating its divinely designed obsolescence in its ceremonial and judicial aspects. The three uses of the moral law — civil, pedagogical, and normative — are then applied to the Christian life, with Christ's active and passive obedience shown to be the only ground of righteousness before God.
2LCF Chapter 16 - Of Good Works
Good works, as defined in chapter 16 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, are only those things God has commanded in his holy word — not deeds devised by men from blind zeal or good intentions. They are not the ground or cause of justification, which is by faith alone through Christ alone; rather, they are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, flowing from hearts purified by that faith and enabled wholly by the Spirit of Christ. The confession targets both the Roman Catholic doctrine of supererogation and any merit-based soteriology, insisting that even the believer's best works, mingled with weakness and imperfection, are acceptable before God only through the mediation of Christ. Believers are therefore called to freely and cheerfully perform good works — including proper worship — not to secure salvation but as the grateful and Spirit-enabled response of those already justified by Christ's perfect obedience imputed to them.
What Is Faith? When Should I Be Baptized? & more| Ask FGBC Batch 6
This Q&A episode from a confessional Reformed Baptist church addresses twelve questions spanning baptism, faith, church membership, Scripture interpretation, seminary training, and the heresies of Federal Vision and Baxterianism. Particular attention is given to the definition of saving faith — distinguishing the objective content of the faith from the act of believing, warning against loading faith with feelings, faithfulness, or love as its ground, and insisting that faith is the empty instrument through which God-given grace lays hold of Christ alone. The episode closes with treatments of conviction of sin, catechetical instruction of children, and the importance of an educated ministry.
2LCF Chapter 14 - Of Saving Faith
What is saving faith, where does it come from, and what does it rest upon? Working through Chapter 14 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, this study examines saving faith under three headings: its nature (divine source, instrumental means, and fortifying ordinances), its object (the consequent acts of believing the Word and the principal acts of accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone), and the variety and degree of faith across believers. The confession's teaching is grounded throughout in Scripture and the broader confessional architecture, demonstrating that saving faith is a purchased grace of the covenant of grace, given and sustained by the Spirit of Christ through the Word and the appointed means of the church.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification
Chapter 11 of the Second London Confession of Faith sets forth the biblical doctrine of justification with precision: sinners are accepted before God not by infused or inherent righteousness, nor by the imputation of faith as an act of obedience, but by the imputation of Christ's active obedience to the whole law and His passive obedience in death, received through faith alone as the instrument of justification. The confession navigates the doctrine through careful negative and positive statements, guarding both the sole ground of acceptance in Christ and the inseparable connection between justification and sanctification. Believers are called to rest their assurance entirely on Christ's active and passive obedience — cleansed in His blood and clothed in His righteousness — rather than on any covenantal faithfulness of their own.
The Conversion of Paul, Part 3
Philippians 3:9 presents two and only two kinds of righteousness before God: an inherent righteousness that inheres in the sinner and is condemned, and an imputed righteousness that comes from God through faith in Christ and justifies. This sermon expounds Paul's own conversion as the decisive illustration that no religious resume — however impressive — can satisfy the law's demand for personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience. Justification by faith alone confers twin blessings: the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ's active and passive obedience; and far from licensing sin, a right understanding of that justification is the very foundation of biblical sanctification.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 4
Chapter 8 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession sets forth the person and work of Christ the Mediator, and this study works through its latter paragraphs (4–10) covering the historical description of Christ's obedience, the specific operation of His atoning work, the retrospective application of redemptive benefit to Old Covenant saints, the communication of idioms, and the effectual application of redemption to the elect. The confession grounds definite atonement, active and passive obedience, and penal substitutionary atonement in Christ's willing entrance into the state of humiliation and His perfect fulfillment of the law, establishing the foundation for the confession's later treatment of justification by faith alone. The threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king is shown to be not an imposition on Scripture but its exegetical fruit, meeting precisely the threefold need of God's people for revelation, reconciliation, and kingly rule.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 3
The sinlessness of Christ, the efficient and instrumental causes of the incarnation, and the hypostatic union are examined through a clause-by-clause exposition of 2LCF Chapter 8, paragraph 2, with supporting analysis of paragraphs 3 and 7. The confession's language — 'yet without sin,' 'conceived by the Holy Spirit,' 'of the seed of Abraham and David,' 'without conversion, composition, or confusion' — is unpacked against the background of patristic Christology, Chalcedonian definition, and Reformed theological precision. The ministry of the Holy Spirit throughout the entire mediatorial life of Christ is recovered as an often-neglected dimension of Christology. Incarnational and interpretive rules drawn from paragraph 7 equip hearers to handle Scripture passages that appear to diminish Christ's deity, by distinguishing what is predicated of a nature from what is predicated of the one person according to a nature.
The Crucifixion of Christ, Part 3
John 19:28–29 records the fifth of the seven sayings of Christ from the cross: 'I thirst.' This exposition examines Christ's sovereign knowledge that all things were accomplished, the fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture — particularly Psalm 69 — in his cry, and the significance of the sour wine offered on hyssop. The sermon argues that Christ's thirst demonstrates both his true humanity and the completion of his redemptive mission, and calls both believers and unbelievers to come boldly to the throne of the sympathetic Savior who drained the cup of divine wrath on behalf of his people.
2LCF Chapter 6 - Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof
The fall of Adam and Eve was not an unforeseen catastrophe but an event God sovereignly permitted according to his wise and holy counsel to order to his own glory. Working through all five paragraphs of 2LCF Chapter 6, this study traces the anatomy of the fall — from man's original uprightness under the covenant of works, through the willful transgression of the law of their creation, to the imputation of guilt and conveyance of corrupt nature to all of Adam's posterity by ordinary generation. The totality of sin's consequences — total depravity, total inability, spiritual death, and the inheritance of wrath — makes the second and last Adam, Jesus Christ, the only and necessary answer, whose active and passive obedience reverses both the imputation and the inheritance fallen humanity bears in the first Adam.
The Trial Before Pilate, Part 2
Standing before Pontius Pilate, Jesus affirms His kingship while making clear that His kingdom does not originate from this world and poses no military threat to Rome — it advances solely through the proclamation of truth. The sermon works through John 18:33–40 under two heads: Pilate's examination of Jesus (vv. 33–38) and Pilate's cowardly compromise (vv. 39–40), drawing in the parallel account in Luke 23 to trace Jesus' transfer to Herod and back. Pilate's threefold declaration of innocence, Herod's contemptuous mockery, and the crowd's demand for Barabbas together underscore the great exchange: the just for the unjust, the holy Lamb standing in the place of guilty, vile, helpless sinners.
The Power of the Word of God
Isaiah 55:10–11 declares that God's word, like rain and snow sent from heaven, does not return to him void but accomplishes precisely what he purposes. This sermon expounds that promise under two heads: the power of the written word and the glory of the incarnate word. The written word is shown to be efficacious in gospel proclamation — bringing either the aroma of life or of death — while the incarnate word, the eternal Son proceeding from the Father, accomplishes a definite redemption that cannot be frustrated. Both heads converge in a call to sinners to seek the Lord while he may be found and to believers to renew covenant at the Lord's Supper with confidence in the abundance of divine pardon.
Live Stream - April 13, 2025
Philippians 2:9–11 sets forth the exaltation of Christ as the direct consequence and divine vindication of his humiliation. The sermon works through three considerations in the nature of that exaltation — the consequences of Christ's humiliation for the sinner (freedom from sin's penalty and power, from Satan's bondage, from the law's curse, and free access to God), the Father's approbation of the Son's finished work, and the manifestation of Christ's divine identity in the name given above every name. The significance of the exaltation presses toward a universal, unavoidable submission: every knee will bow and every tongue confess, whether in saving faith now or in compelled acknowledgment on the last day. The sermon closes by pressing sinners to confess Christ willingly in the present day and by reminding believers that the pattern of Christ's humiliation leading to exaltation both grounds their salvation in his active and passive obedience and shapes their life of humble, others-centered love in the church.
The Example of the Savior, Part 3
Philippians 2:8 presents the humility of Christ not as incidental biography but as the doctrinal and ethical foundation for the church's conduct. This sermon examines first the declaration of Christ's humility — that he humbled himself voluntarily, according to his human nature as covenant mediator, in active obedience to every demand of God's law from his mother's womb — and then its demonstration in the extent of that humiliation: even the death of the cross, a death cursed by the law and laden with shame. The active and passive obedience of Christ, taken together, are the sole ground of justification by faith alone, which is why the Lord's Supper is received not as a reward for good conduct but as a proclamation of what the Savior accomplished on behalf of his people.
Our Robe of Beauty
Galatians 2:16 presents a five-fold declaration that justification is by faith alone and not by the works of the law — a doctrine that stands at the very heart of the Christian gospel. This sermon works through four categories: a definition of justification as a forensic declaration set in opposition to condemnation, its foundation in the obedience and satisfaction of Christ alone (not infused righteousness, works, the act of faith, or evangelical obedience), the transaction of imputation by which sin is credited to Christ and his righteousness credited to the believer, and faith as the empty instrument that receives rather than earns that righteousness. The pastoral application presses the believer's assurance away from inward evidences toward the finished work of Christ, and calls the unconverted to look to Christ in faith as their only standing before a holy God.
The Apostolic Magnitude of Justification
Paul's confrontation of Peter at Antioch in Galatians 2:11–16 is not merely a biographical episode but a defence of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Peter's hypocritical withdrawal from table fellowship with Gentile believers, driven by fear of the circumcision party, was not an open denial of the gospel but a compromise of it — and Paul's rebuke exposes how even the appearance of impropriety can bring the truth of the gospel into disrepute. The sermon then turns to the apostolic doctrine set forth in verses 15–16, tracing the five-fold reiterative negation and affirmation of justification by faith and not by the works of the law, grounding Christian peace in the imputation of Christ's active and passive obedience. Hearers are exhorted to carry the doctrine of justification beyond the service itself, resting their peace not on any measure of personal performance but on the sole and complete work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The High Priestly Prayer, Part 2
John 17:4–5 records Christ's proleptic and covenantal claim to have glorified the Father and finished the work given him — a claim that opens into the full theology of active obedience and its indispensable place in justification by faith alone. The sermon demonstrates that Jesus was not merely an ethical example but the obedient substitute whose 33 years of perfect law-keeping is imputed to the elect alongside the forgiveness secured by his blood. Verse 5 is examined against the kenosis error: Christ does not pray to recover a lost glory but to be manifested as the glorified God-man and mediator who has accomplished the covenant of redemption. Believers are exhorted to pursue the knowledge of God and Christ as the essence of eternal life; unbelievers are called to look to the only Savior in whom alone there is both forgiveness and a righteousness that avails before God.
The Love of Christ and Love to One Another
John 15:9–11 presents the love of Christ for his disciples as the pattern, precept, and purpose of the Christian life. The Father's love for the Son — infinite, eternal, and unchangeable — is the very measure of Christ's love for his people, a love that is not conditional upon the disciples' obedience but is rather the ground from which obedience springs. Keeping Christ's commandments is not the cause of the disciple's acceptance before God but the consequence of justification freely received: the blood and righteousness of Christ alone secure standing with the Father. The sermon closes with an urgent call to unbelievers to cease searching for joy in creatures and to come to Christ, in whom fullness of joy is found both now and in glory.
The Apostle Paul, Part 4: His Doctrinal Legacy
The doctrinal legacy of the Apostle Paul is surveyed across seven theological themes: the comprehensive nature of sin and depravity, the incarnation of the divine Son of God, the sovereignty of the triune God in salvation, amazing grace, justification by faith alone, sanctification in union with Christ, and a simple and glorious eschatology. Paul's writings are shown to move consistently from the gravity of man's ruin to the glory of God's redeeming grace in Christ. The sermon closes with a direct call to believers to be built up in the knowledge of the gospel, and to those outside of Christ to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
The Closing Doxology of Jude
Jude closes his epistle not with a warning but with a doxology — an ascription of praise that draws the beleaguered saints away from contemplating false teachers and upward toward the triune God who alone can keep them. This sermon works through Jude 24–25 under three heads: the omnipotent, preserving God who keeps his people from apostasy; the faithful God who presents his people faultless before divine glory on the ground of Christ's imputed righteousness and substitutionary work; and the sole-wise God to whom glory, majesty, dominion, and power are due both now and forever. The doxology is shown to be not merely a liturgical flourish but a confession of triune preservation, definite atonement, and the utter sufficiency of Christ's active and passive obedience.
2LCF Chapter 19 - Of the Law of God
2 London Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter 19 sets forth a comprehensive doctrine of the law of God, tracing its origin in the covenant of works given to Adam, its threefold division into moral, ceremonial, and judicial law under the Mosaic economy, and its continuing role in the life of the New Covenant church. The moral law, rooted in creation and specially revealed at Sinai in the Ten Commandments, retains its binding force for all persons, while the ceremonial law finds its divinely designed terminus in the person and work of Christ, and the judicial law expired with the dissolution of the Israelite state. The sermon closes with a christological summary: Christ alone actively obeyed the whole law in the room and stead of the elect, bore the law's curse in his passive obedience, and now governs the hearts of his people by his Spirit according to that same law.