Theological term
Passive Obedience
115 sermons · All terms
The Worship of God in Private Families
Family worship — the regular practice of reading Scripture, praying, and singing with one's household — is grounded in a consistent biblical pattern running from Abraham in Genesis 18 through the Apostle Paul's commands in Ephesians 6. This topical survey traces the biblical warrant for family worship through key Old Testament figures and texts, examines the elements that should mark it, and presses the duty home with both positive examples and negative warnings. Parents and grandparents are called to diligent, consistent instruction of their children in law and gospel, with the sobering reminder that neglect — not busyness — is the real obstacle.
The Glory of the Father and the Son
John 17:1–5 opens Christ's high priestly prayer with a petition that the Father glorify the Son so that the Son may glorify the Father — a reciprocal glorification whose goal is the glory of God Most High. The sermon works through three grounds for this petition: the salvation of the elect given to the Son in the covenant of redemption, the accomplishment of Christ's active and passive obedience as the basis of justification, and the restoration of the Son's pre-incarnate glory. The full deity of Christ is defended against subordinationist readings by surveying New Testament texts where the title theos is applied directly to Jesus, and the sermon closes with the call to pursue the knowledge of God and Christ as the very essence of eternal life — through Scripture reading, prayer, and faithful attendance upon the means of grace.
Genesis 2:15-17
Genesis 2:15–17 presents Adam not merely as a gardener but as a priest-guardian of a garden-temple, placed under a divine probation that Reformed theology identifies as the Covenant of Works. The study defends the presence of a genuine covenant in this passage despite the absence of the word 'covenant,' marshalling the elements of covenant structure, the covenantal name Yahweh Elohim, and later biblical commentary in Hosea 6:7, Isaiah 24, and Romans 5. The argument presses to a pointed soteriological conclusion: a deficient understanding of the Covenant of Works predictably produces a deficient understanding of the Covenant of Grace, opening the door to the error of faith plus works in justification. The remedy is to see the Covenant of Grace as the Covenant of Works kept for sinners by the Lord Jesus Christ, whose active and passive obedience is imputed to all who believe.
The Active Obedience of Christ
Romans 5:19 grounds the doctrine of Christ's active obedience: as Adam's disobedience constituted many sinners, so Christ's perfect law-keeping constitutes many righteous before God. This sermon surveys the theological structure of that doctrine under three heads — its explanation in covenant terms, the obligation that would fall on sinners apart from it, and its realization in Christ's historical life of obedience. The controlling pastoral burden is that God demands personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, a demand no sinner can meet, and that the righteousness imputed to believers by faith alone is the only ground on which any creature may ascend the mountain of God and dwell in His presence.
Of Justification (2LCF 11)
Justification — the forensic declaration by which God accounts and accepts sinners as righteous — is examined through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 11. The confession distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification: it is not an infused or imparted righteousness but an imputed one, grounded entirely in Christ's active obedience to the law and passive obedience in His death. Faith, itself a gift of God and not a human contribution, is the sole instrument by which the justified receive and rest on Christ's righteousness. The sermon closes by tracing the ongoing practical realities of the justified life — including fatherly displeasure, confession, and the impossibility of falling from the state of justification — and by drawing on J.C. Ryle to clarify precisely how justification and sanctification are alike yet distinct.
Of Christ the Mediator 2 (2LCF 8)
The person and work of Christ as Mediator, as confessed in chapter 8 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, is the most central locus in all of Christian theology — to be wrong here is damnable. This session surveys paragraphs 3 through 10 of that chapter, tracing Christ's anointing and suitability for office, the active and passive obedience by which He fully satisfied divine justice, the retrospective application of His redemption to the elect of all ages under the old covenant, the communication of idioms in His two natures, and the effectual application of salvation to His people by His Spirit and Word. The threefold office of prophet, priest, and king supplies precisely what the elect need in their ignorance, alienation, and inability — and no other mediator may share or transfer any part of that office.
The Prologue to the Passion Narrative
Matthew 26:1–5 opens the Passion Narrative with two structurally parallel statements placed side by side: Christ's sovereign prophecy of His own crucifixion and the chief priests' conspiracy to accomplish it. The sermon argues that the word 'delivered up' (paradidōmi) carries far greater theological weight than a simple 'betrayed,' pointing ultimately to the Father as the primary agent who delivered His Son according to the eternal covenant of redemption. The Passover timing is no coincidence but the deliberate fulfillment of Old Testament typology — Christ is the new Moses leading a new exodus — and the only fitting response to such grace is worship, adoration, and the resolve to point children and neighbors to the cross.
The Baptisms of Jesus Christ
Christ's two baptisms in Matthew 3 and Matthew 20 illuminate the two pillars of the gospel: His active obedience, by which He fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of His people, and His passive obedience, by which He endured the cross as a substitutionary ransom for many. The water baptism in Matthew 3 marks the public inauguration of Christ's life of perfect law-keeping, while the 'baptism' He anticipates in Matthew 20 refers to His immersion in suffering and divine wrath at Calvary. Together these two baptisms demonstrate that sinners need not only the forgiveness of sins secured by Christ's death, but also an alien righteousness — His own perfect obedience imputed to them by faith alone. The sermon calls both unbelievers and the baptized congregation to rest in the full sufficiency of what Christ accomplished, rejecting any gospel that offers the crown without the cross.
Gospel and Doxology for the Galatians
Galatians 1:4-5 presents both a summary of the true gospel and a call to doxology, set against the backdrop of the false gospel threatening the Galatian churches. The sermon works through three movements in the gospel itself: Christ who gave Himself (His free act, His assumption of human nature, His vicarious obedience, and His sacrificial death), the substitutionary and cleansing effect of that giving 'for our sins,' and the deliverance from this present evil age effected according to the sovereign will of God the Father. The exposition closes with Paul's doxology, arguing from Job, Acts 17, and the 1689 confession that God does not stand in need of glory but that His creatures are called to ascribe to Him the glory eternally due His name. Hearers are exhorted to know the triune God, guard against every false gospel, and train themselves now in the ascription of glory that will occupy the saints forever.
The Ascension of Christ
The bodily, visible, local ascension of Christ into heaven forty days after his resurrection is not a peripheral doctrine but the hinge on which the entire exaltation of the Mediator turns. This sermon expounds Acts 1:9–11 in three movements: the historical reality of the ascension (real, visible, bodily, local, and glorious), its theological significance (fulfillment of Scripture, completion of Christ's priestly work, his enthronement at the Father's right hand, and the glory given to him as Mediator), and its practical benefits for the church (the gift of the Holy Spirit, the perpetual intercession of Christ, and the guaranteed second coming). Believers are called to draw courage from Christ's present reign, flee to the cross before the judgment that the ascension makes inevitable, and rest in the advocacy of the enthroned Savior who always lives to make intercession.
Colossians 1:10-14
Paul's prayer in Colossians 1:9–14 reveals what the apostle considered most essential for the people of God: not merely physical welfare, but a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him. This study works through the four participial phrases of verses 10–14 — fruitfulness in good works, growth in the knowledge of God, God-wrought patience and long-suffering with joy, and thankfulness — showing how each flows from being filled with the knowledge of God's will. The practical challenge is double: to pray for others in the manner Paul prays, and to examine honestly whether one's own life resembles what Paul prays for.
The Justifying Grace of God
Zechariah 3 presents a divine courtroom scene in which Joshua the high priest stands before the angel of the Lord clothed in filthy garments — the most vile expression of defilement in the Hebrew language — while Satan stands ready to accuse. God silences the accuser not on the basis of Joshua's merit but on the grounds of sovereign election and justifying grace, stripping away the filthy garments and clothing Joshua in rich robes. This double transaction — the removal of guilt and the imputation of righteousness — is the Old Testament portrait of justification by faith alone, anticipating the work of the Branch, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bears the sin of his people so that they might bear his righteousness. The sermon calls believers to combat accusation, whether from Satan or from their own hearts, not by appealing to their performance but by resting in the finished work of Christ and the electing grace of God.
The Covenantal Context of the Incarnation
The Incarnation of the Son of God was not an afterthought but the execution of an eternal, intra-Trinitarian covenant — the covenant of redemption — in which the Father gave the Son a definite number of elect people, and the Son willingly undertook to be their covenant surety and mediator. Drawing on Hebrews 10:5–10, John's Gospel, Isaiah 53, Romans 5, and Ephesians 1, this study presents three lines of biblical evidence: the relationship between the Father and the Son, the covenantal language applied to that relationship, and the pre-temporal foundation of the Son's redemptive work. The practical force is doxological and pastoral: believers are eternally secure because their salvation rests not on their own resolve but on a covenant sworn before creation, in which Christ bore a covenant of works on their behalf, obeying perfectly so that his righteousness might be imputed to them by faith alone.
The Redeemer of God's Elect
Galatians 4:4–7 presents the person and work of the Redeemer in covenantal context: Christ's pre-existent eternal Sonship, incarnation, and role as mediator under the law provide the basis for redemption, adoption, and the indwelling of the Spirit. The sermon traces the obsolescence of the Mosaic covenant as designed and purposed by God, giving way to the full privileges of sons in the new covenant. The triune God is shown to be the sole initiator and executor of salvation — the Father sending the Son, the Son accomplishing redemption, and the Spirit sealing the adopted heirs. The sermon closes with a call to robust Trinitarian theology as inseparable from knowing and worshipping the God who saves.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification
The doctrine of justification — that sinners are legally declared righteous before God on the basis of Christ's work alone — is examined through 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 11, paragraphs 1, 2, and 5. The sermon distinguishes the essence, grounds, and method of justification, exposing the errors of Rome's infusion theology, Arminian faith-as-righteousness, and Baxterian neonomian imputation, while showing that faith is the instrument, not the ground, of justification. The inseparable yet distinct relationship between justification (a single forensic event) and sanctification (a progressive inward work) is explored against both legalism and antinomianism. Hearers are called to theological precision, assured confidence in their unlosable standing before God, and consistent holy living as fruit of that standing.
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant, Part 3
The Covenant of Redemption (pactum salutis) is the pre-temporal, intra-Trinitarian agreement between the Father and the Son in which the Father gives a particular people to the Son and the Son willingly undertakes to be their mediator and surety. This teaching examines the definition, parties, stipulations, and promises of the pactum, traces its exegetical foundations across both Testaments, and shows how it grounds the Covenant of Grace and underwrites definite atonement. Understanding the Covenant of Redemption provides believers with firm assurance, because the immutable and impassible God has covenanted in eternity to save the elect in Christ, and that plan cannot fail.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 3
Justification is the article upon which the church stands or falls, and this exposition of 2LCF Chapter 11 works through the nature, basis, and instrument of justification as the confession presents them. The sermon distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification against the Roman Catholic doctrine of infused righteousness, the neo-Nomian teaching of Richard Baxter, and the New Perspective on Paul, arguing that the elect are accepted by God solely on the basis of Christ's imputed active and passive obedience received through faith alone. The active obedience of Christ — his 33 years of perfect law-keeping — is shown to be as necessary as his death, because forgiveness alone would leave the believer back in a probationary state without a positive righteousness that avails before God. Faith is the alone instrument of justification, not its condition or cause, and is itself a gift of God, so that every ground of human boasting is excluded.
1 Samuel 15:1-9
1 Samuel 15:1–9 presents the divine command to utterly destroy the Amalekites, an act that raises the perennial ethical objection: how can a just God command genocide? This study works through the text to show that the destruction of the Amalekites was not arbitrary cruelty but the measured, delayed judgment of a sovereign God upon persistently wicked people who had already demonstrated their guilt. Saul's failure to execute the command fully is traced not merely to tactical disobedience but to the deeper sin of rejecting the word of the Lord — a sin the preacher identifies as common to all who minimize or rationalize disobedience. The study closes by pointing to Christ as the one who, unlike Saul, always obeyed the Father perfectly, whose active and passive obedience is received by faith alone as the ground of the believer's standing before God.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 1
Justification is the cardinal article of the Christian faith — the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. This first of two sessions on 1689 London Baptist Confession Chapter 11 (paragraphs 1–6) surveys the definition of justification through the Confession, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the 39 Articles, then examines five reasons why departure from the biblical doctrine is catastrophic: it is a damnable error, it diminishes the holiness and justice of God, it contradicts God's eternal decree, it lessens the severity of sin and robs Christ of his exclusivity as Savior, and it destroys the believer's peace. The session closes by tracing the three historical errors the Confession's negations target — Roman Catholicism, Anabaptism, and Arminianism — and calls the hearer to treasure the precise forensic definition of justification as a bulwark against every corruption of the gospel.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 3
The perfection, particularity, and certain application of Christ's saving work — as confessed in 2LCF 8.5, 6, and 8 — is examined through an extended exposition of Hebrews, John, Romans, and related texts. Christ's once-for-all sacrifice fully satisfied divine justice, procured reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance for a fixed and particular multitude given to him by the Father before the world was. The confession's teaching is traced along three coordinates: the pactum salutis (the pre-temporal intra-Trinitarian covenant of redemption), the historia salutis (the historical accomplishment of salvation), and the ordo salutis (the Spirit's effectual application of that finished work to the elect). Believers are called to rest in the certainty that Christ's redemption is not a matter of 'perhaps' but of infallible, sovereign, and free grace from first to last.
The Question Concerning Elijah
Matthew 17:9–13 records the disciples' question about the scribal expectation that Elijah must precede Messiah — an expectation derived from Malachi 3–4. Jesus resolves their confusion by identifying John the Baptist as the Elijah-figure who fulfilled Malachi's prophecy, thereby laying unmistakable claim to being Yahweh of hosts, the messenger of the covenant. The sermon moves through three elements: Christ's command to silence until the resurrection, the disciples' question about Elijah, and Christ's authoritative interpretation of Malachi. Throughout, the pattern of cross before crown is pressed upon the congregation as the ordained path to glory for both Christ and his people.
The Glory of the Father
John 17:1–5 records the opening of Christ's High Priestly Prayer, in which the incarnate Son petitions the Father to glorify Him in and through His approaching death, resurrection, and exaltation. The sermon expounds three grounds for that petition: the salvation of the elect, the accomplishment of redemption through Christ's active and passive obedience, and the restoration of the pre-incarnate glory to the God-Man. Central to the exposition is verse 3, where Christ defines eternal life as the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ — a knowledge that necessarily issues in glorifying God, sustaining believers through trial, and grounding assurance not in personal performance but in the character and covenant of the triune God. Hearers are pressed to pursue that knowledge through the ordinary means of grace: the reading of Scripture, prayer, and faithful attendance upon the Word.
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant, Part 3
Covenant theology is not abstract speculation but the architectural blueprint of all Scripture, and a faulty grasp of it distorts both law and gospel. This session works through 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 7, paragraph 3, tracing the covenant of grace from its first announcement in Genesis 3:15 through the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants as progressive, concentric revelations of the same redemptive promise, culminating in the new covenant ratified by Christ's blood. The eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son grounds the covenant of grace, so that for sinners, grace is free and unconditional, while for Christ, it was a covenant of works demanding exact, entire, and personal obedience. The session closes with the axiom that 'the covenant of grace is the covenant of works kept for us,' and applies this structure to the necessity of sola fide against Federal Vision, Baxterian, and Roman Catholic distortions.
The Place of Good Works
Ephesians 2:10 establishes that good works occupy a precise and necessary place in the Christian life — not as a condition of salvation, but as its inevitable consequence. This sermon traces the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone through Paul's letters to the Romans and the Galatians, exposing the Roman Catholic error of collapsing justification and sanctification into a faith-plus-works scheme and demonstrating why any such admixture invalidates grace entirely. Drawing on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the 1689 Confession, and writers from Machen to Gill, the sermon argues that the predestinating grace of God not only secures the salvation of the elect but also sets them on a course of holy living. Believers are exhorted to neither hide behind sola fide as a license for indolence nor to mistake moral performance for the ground of their acceptance before God.
The Lord's Prayer, Part 4
Matthew 6:10 — 'Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven' — is not a passive resignation but a twofold petition: that God's people would actively obey His revealed, preceptive will as disclosed in Scripture, and that they would submit patiently to His secret, decretive will even when it brings hardship and trial. The study distinguishes the decretive will (God's eternal, all-encompassing decree, which cannot be altered) from the preceptive will (the commandments and precepts God requires of His creatures), drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism, John Owen, Thomas Watson, and Thomas Manton. Four practical applications follow for the individual — recognizing God's right to command, knowing His revealed will, obeying it, and submitting patiently to His providential ordering — together with applications for the church and for society.
The Baptisms of Jesus
Christian baptism is grounded not merely in ecclesiastical command or apostolic precedent, but in the two baptisms of Christ himself: his water baptism in Matthew 3, where he publicly undertook to 'fulfill all righteousness' through perfect active obedience to the law, and the baptism of divine wrath he endured at Calvary — the cup of God's fury poured out upon him as the substitute for his people. Justification rests on both the doing and the dying of the Redeemer: his active obedience provides the righteousness sinners lack, and his passive obedience absorbs the condemnation they deserve. Those who go into the baptismal waters go not on the basis of their own achievement but because Christ was overwhelmed in their place, and they are called from that point forward to follow the Lamb wherever he goes — into service, suffering, and fidelity to his Word.
The One Who Justifies the Ungodly
Romans 4:5 announces that God justifies the ungodly — a declaration that seems to violate the standard of Proverbs 17:15, which condemns justifying the wicked. The doctrine of imputation resolves the apparent tension: God reckons, credits, and accounts righteousness to sinners not on the basis of moral transformation but on the basis of Christ's active and passive obedience received through faith alone. Three acts of imputation structure the biblical argument — Adam's sin imputed to his posterity, the elect's sin imputed to Christ, and Christ's righteousness imputed to the elect — establishing that the gospel upholds rather than undermines divine justice. This sermon was preached in the context of a Lord's Supper service, directing communicants away from any sense of personal worthiness and toward the finished work of Christ as the sole ground of acceptance before God.
The Significance of the Resurrection
Romans 4:25 presents what Charles Hodge called 'a comprehensive statement of the Gospel': Christ was delivered up because of our offenses and raised because of our justification. This sermon expounds the two parallel clauses of that verse, arguing that the death of Christ was a particular, substitutionary, propitiatory sacrifice for the definite sins of God's elect, and that the resurrection is the Father's public attestation that the atonement was fully accepted and justification secured. The practical implication is that justified sinners — not improved moralists — have peace with God and an unshakeable hope grounded not in exemplary preaching but in the historical, redemptive work of Christ.
The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus
John 18:1–11 records the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, yet John's Gospel frames the scene not primarily as a display of suffering but as a revelation of divine glory. The great I AM steps forward to meet his captors, causes a detachment of soldiers to fall to the ground by the mere utterance of his name, and willingly drinks the cup of God's wrath — not as a victim, but as the covenant mediator and surety who executes the eternal decree of the Father. The sermon calls hearers to resist a narcissistic reading of the passion narratives and instead to bow in worship before the obedient Son of God, whose vicarious, substitutionary death is the sole ground of the sinner's justification.
Don't Be Antichrist
Philippians 2:6–11, the Carmen Christi, presents in six verses the whole point of the Bible: the person and work of Christ unto the glory of God the Father. This sermon works through that hymn under three heads — the deity and humanity of Christ in his person, the voluntary and obedient character of his work (distinguishing his preceptive and penal obedience), and the exaltation that issues in universal worship. The congregation is pressed to hold a full, undiluted Christology, warned that a defective view of either Christ's deity or his humanity places one outside saving faith, and called to bow the knee now in genuine confession rather than await the compelled confession of judgment.