From another great sermon by J.C. Philpot can be found the Old Doctrine about works and grace.
In the coming days, as Rick Warren’s Global P.E.A.C.E. Plan gets more fully operational, believers may find more psychological, guilt-producing pressure brought to bear to “fulfill the Great Commission” or “end poverty” or “find a cure for AIDS.”
The emphasis in Peter Drucker’s philosophy is always placed on “results.” When this translates into Christianity, it becomes “works” — the shallow, performance-driven, people-pleasing, Pharisaical activities which the Lord Jesus Christ cried out against.
From another great sermon by J.C. Philpot can be found the Old Doctrine about works and grace. This sermon, which is excerpted below, poignantly presents the truth of the matter — that it is a heart fully submitted to God that gives rise to genuine good deeds — not external peer pressure from small groups, nor manipulative marketing tactics. Herescope readers are encouraged to read the sermons by Philpot in their entirety. The truth will be a blessing in these times when the pure, unadulterated Word of God is scarce.
From “On the Law and the Gospel,” at http://www.truegospel.net/Philpot/072.htm:
“I would say that a believer has a rule to walk by which is sufficient to guide him in every step of the way; for if he has the eternal quickenings, teachings and leadings of the Spirit to make his conscience tender in the fear of God, and has a law of love written upon the heart by the finger of God; and besides this has the precepts of the gospel as a full and complete code of Christian obedience, what more can he want to make him perfect in every good word and work Heb 13:21 Can the law do any of these things for him? Can it give him life, in the first instance, when it is a killing letter? Can it maintain life, if it is not in its power to bestow it?
“But it may be asked: Do you then set aside the two great commandments of the law: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God’ etc. and ‘thy neighbour as thyself’? No, on the contrary, the gospel as an external and internal rule fulfills them both, for ‘love is the fulfilling of the law.’ Ro 13:10 So this blessed rule of the gospel not only does not set aside the law as regards its fulfillment, but so to speak absorbs into itself and glorifies and harmonizes its two great commandments, by yielding to them in obedience of heart, which the law could not give; for the believers serves in the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the letter Ro 7:6 as Christ’s freeman Joh 8:32 and not as Moses’s bondslave. This is willing obedience not a legal task. This will explain the meaning of the Apostle: ‘For I delight in the law of God after the inward man’: for the new man of grace, under the powerful influence of the Holy Spirit, delights in the law of God, not only for its holiness, but as inculcating that to do which fills the renewed heart and the inward delight — love to God and His people. . . .”