Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Receiving the Fullness (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on August 30, 1992. Series: Salvation From the Outside In. Scripture: Ephesians 1:11-23. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Modern culture often says that our beliefs are secondary as long as we live like decent people. But the Bible insists that what we believe shapes our day-to-day lives. All summer long, we are sharing a series from Tim Keller which unpacks the core beliefs of the Christian faith. Dr. Keller looks at how the truths that shape our understanding of God, ourselves, and our salvation can transform us and free us in every part of our lives. Ephesians chapter one. Tonight is actually a kind of bridge.

We're moving into the third and last section of this chapter, Ephesians chapter one. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to read to you, let's see. Luckily I didn't need any of that. I don't have to go get it. I don't need it. It would have just probably made the sermon longer anyway. So in Ephesians chapter one,

I would have probably picked it up and thought I had to say something on the basis of those things, so good riddance. Ephesians chapter 1, I'm going to read to you from verse 12 down to the end, verse 23. We're only going to look, of course, at the beginning. But tonight I'd like to give you a kind of overview of what the chapter is saying in its broad themes and how this new section relates to the other two. So I'm going to read from verse 12 down to verse 23, listen. in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory, you were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory. for this reason ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given not only in the present age, but also in the one to come, And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to behead over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. Now, I may be wrong in how slowly I move through this chapter. I don't know that I've really got much of an alternative. When you read that chapter, couldn't you tell that you knew that there was so much going on

in every word and every phrase that you couldn't take it in, it's very much like biting in to some dessert that is way too sweet. It's just too much. It's like, you know, one bite and you know that you're into sugar shock. It just too, it overwhelms the senses. And the same thing happens here. Paul just lays one upon another, upon another, and the truth are so astonishing and so glorious,

I want you to know that, really, without exaggerating, if you could take in, if we could take in a tenth of the meaning and the power of these truths, you would receive enough strength never to sin again. We can't get our minds around it. We can't get our palettes around it. And therefore, though we're always in danger by going through something like this so carefully and looking and, you might say, reflecting on and tasting and sucking the sweetness out of every phrase and every aspect of the truth.

We're always in danger of the real problem, a major problem in interpreting a piece of literature, and that is you lose your reference point, you lose the context, you forget the broad themes, you're looking at the glorious details. So it's a danger, I know. I'm not sure what else you can do. And today, I'd like to, in a sense, show you

what the basic broad themes are of the chapter. Stand back for a moment and look at those to prepare us for a few weeks to look at this last section. Don't forget that this chapter is all about a little phrase in verse 13. The only place that the word salvation is used in the entire chapter is right there in verse 13, where Paul says, and you were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. The gospel of your salvation.

That's a body of truth that completely changed them. And even though the word salvation is only used in this little spot, it's clear that what Paul's doing in the chapter is he's expounding the gospel of our salvation. He's taking the gospel of our salvation, and he's running it through a prism and breaking it up into its constituent parts and looking at all the rainbow colors and dazzling us with it. Remember we made a joke last week. He said, Paul's like Scrooge McDuck, the cartoon character that jumps into his money bin, remember, into his money, and swims around and washes with his money, and he feels his wealth

go through his fingers, and he says, I'm rich, I'm rich, and I love it. And that's how Paul is doing. It's what he's doing. It's as crass and as glorious and as wonderful as that. This is the Gospel of Our Salvation. Now, I think that he really shows us that there are three broad things, three broad glories, three broad facets to this wonderful salvation he's breaking up for us and talking about. In the first section we looked at number of weeks, it's verses four to eight, and in it he says, we get a new family, we're adopted. And then verses 12, nine to 12, he says, we get a new kingdom. We're brought into the kingdom because our father is also or a king. So we get adoption into a family, we get introduced into a kingdom. But then lastly, from

verse 12, verse 13 in particular, all way to the end, he's given us the third great facet, and that is we get an inheritance. See, Jesus Christ is our past, our present, and our future. He's dealt with our sins to be brought into a family. He's now raised to be ruling over us and giving us his kingdom power. And next, you see, Jesus passed, our present, and in the future, and in the future, he's not raised to be ruling over us, he's In the future, we have an imperishable and almost an inexpressible and incomprehensible inheritance that's waiting for us guaranteed. You know what it's like to get a trust fund when you're not to the age of maturity? Somebody leaves you an enormous amount of money in a trust fund, and yet you're still maybe a youngster or even in college.

If that trust fund says, this person who I leave this money to, will get an annual allowance, a comfortable allowance, they can draw this much money out every year, but not until the person reaches the age of 18 or 21 or 25 or 30, or if I had my way, 40. Not until the person comes to maturity. Can that person actually touch the capital? The money's theirs, but it's not theirs. They're getting a foretaste of it. They're getting a regular allowance out of it.

but not until later can they come into the fullness of that wealth. And the Bible says in those very terms, as we're going to see, that there is an imperishable inheritance guaranteed waiting for you. You're already rich. In one sense, in another sense, you're only able to draw an allowance, and the bulk of the wealth is something that you can't come into until later. You won't come into till the end of time until you go to be with him, or until he comes back to be with us.

But until that time, the knowledge of that wealth, which is so encouraging, of course, and so rejoicing and so delightful, the knowledge of that wealth, though we can't touch it, just like the knowledge of that trust fund, though you can't get into all of it, supports and encourages you and shapes your life, the same way we draw the Holy Spirit as a down payment, as an allowance, something we receive now.

There's a sense in which we're already rich. That's the reason why verse three, which we never really spent much time on, can say what it says. It says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Has, past tense, every blessing. Any delight you can imagine, any pleasure, any fulfillment, any satisfaction, you can even imagine is already yours in Christ. Well, you say, hmm, I'm a Christian,

and every single blessing that I can even imagine is already mine. Well, that's funny. Why have I been so depressed this week? Why do I feel so lonely? Why do I get so anxious if I've got every spiritual blessing? Well, this passage, especially this last part, explains the wonderful irony and tension and paradox of being a Christian. It's all in the trust fund.

It's all there. It's coming to you. It gets no one else. Right now you can draw out of it. You can draw glorious parts of it. You can draw everything you need to live right now. And yet the knowledge of what's guaranteed to you, what's in a sense already yours, can also just lift you up and it'll give you the strength to face anything. And that's the teaching of this last part.

So, let's take a look at the bridge. Remember, last week we said, actually for the last few weeks, we were looking at the fact that Jesus, first of all, in salvation gives us adoption, then secondly, he gives us a kingdom, and now thirdly, we're going to talk about this incredible and perishable inheritance that's eternal. Remind you about what each of these three things, because they all build on each other are, adoption means, we saw in verse four and five, that you're holy and blameless in his sight. Just like a child doesn't earn the place in the family and can't really be expelled. So you, if you're a Christian, it's because of what Jesus Christ has done, you're in God's family.

You belong to him. He loves you and he accepts you. He can't lose that. You can't be expelled. And it happened, verse 7, through the shedding of Jesus' place. blood. That's the reason why we're legally, though we were separated from God, we're now legally righteous in Christ. We'll talk about that in a second. And it's all because of the riches of his grace. So we looked at that. Then we looked at the kingdom. And we looked especially last week,

or two weeks ago, I guess it was, right, on verse 11 and 10, where Jesus, where it says that he is working all things together according to the counsel of his will. Everything that happened, is under his control. He's the king of history. Nothing happens that's not part of his plan. Now friends, even this is part of the riches that you have right now. This is part of the allowance that you draw on right now. The knowledge that nothing happens by accident, that your father, who loves you completely, is also the king of history. So everything that's happening is happening according to his plan. And I know I went through that two weeks ago. A lot of people were a little bit blown away by that. But just to summarize and to make sure you got the balance, on the one hand,

there are many philosophies and religions that are fatalistic. Eastern religions are fatalistic. You know, in the East they believe in kismet. Fate. And that is that some impersonal force has fixed everything and your destiny is determined in spite of your choices. And therefore, you need to be passive toward life. There's really not much you can do about it. You know, Oedipus was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. And even though he did everything he could to avoid that in the end, what did he do? He killed his father and married his mother. And so you see, it's kismet, it's fate. no matter what you do, your destinies are determined despite your choices. And on the other hand, that's fatalism.

On the other hand, you've got what you might want to call contingency. Philosophy is a religion that basically say your destinies are determined because of your choices. Your destiny, in other words, isn't determined by anything. It's all up in the air. And you are the master of your fate. And if you step like this, then everything like this will happen. and if you step over in this direction, everything like this will happen.

And in a sense, destiny and history is not fixed. It's always in flux. Of course, now this particular approach makes good science fiction, wonderful science fiction. I love the Back to the Future trilogy, and if you didn't have the whole idea of contingency, that history is always changing and it's unstable, and there's chance, and a person does this, and it changes everything in history, and a person does this, it changes everything. and those are wonderfully fun science fiction stories, but they're based on an impersonal understanding of the cosmos,

just like fatalism. In both cases, you don't have a personal God, a father who loves you, arranging and in charge of things. Instead, you really almost have, you know, see, history is a little bit like a billiard game, because it's just a series of chain reactions. And the only difference between fatalism and contingency, is the idea that one says that you really don't have any control over what ball gets hit,

which hits other balls and hits other balls, and everything in the chain reaction, of course, is determined by the event before. Fatalism says you have nothing to do with it. Contingency says you have everything to do with it, but in both cases you've got a kind of impersonal view of the cosmos. In one case, your destinies are determined despite your choices. In the other case, your destiny is determined because of your choices. But the Bible has this very weird and odd and beautiful and balanced and subtle and nuanced approach that says

that while God is in charge of everything and nothing happens except by his plan, yet he controls history in such a way that your choices remain intact. So you're responsible for what you do. In other words, your destiny is not. determined in spite of your choices or because of your choices, your destiny is determined through your choices. That means God always relates your destiny to your choices, and yet he is working all things out, yet you are responsible for what you do. There is nothing more secure and satisfying and balanced than that. Look, here's Jacob and Esau. Remember them? And Jacob lies and tries to get the

birthright from Esau, which he does. He disguises himself as Esau, and he tricks his father, Isaac, into giving him the birthright and the great blessing. So, Esau is furious with Jacob. Jacob, has done the most ridiculous thing, the most wicked thing, and Jacob, of course, has thrown a wedge into that family. Esau is furious and is ready to kill Jacob, and Jacob, instead of living in his home and being there among his people and having his inheritance, Jacob has forced to flee for his life to a far-off country for 14 years and work and labor for his uncle. And yet there he marries and meets and marries the love of his life, Rachel. And from that union comes Jesus, the Messiah. Now listen to that and recognize the incredible balance of that. Was Jacob responsible

for what he did? Yes. Did his sin have consequences? Yes. You see? Was there brokenness and devastation in his life because of it, yes. Was his life then put on plan B? Did God look down from heaven and say, oh, no, I don't believe Jacob did that. Now what am I going to do? Oh, well, I guess I have to patch this up. You know, it's a little bit like somebody working the back of a TV set,

and they say, well, this circuit doesn't work. He blew that circuit. Maybe I can reroute it around here. So God takes David over and takes Jacob over into another place. No way. Do you think Rachel? The love of Jacob's life was plan B. Do you think the Messiah being born of Rachel and Jacob was plan B?

Do you think therefore God actually wove that sin into the plan for Jacob's life? So everything worked out exactly the way God wanted? Yes, but does that mean the sin was all right? Absolutely not. Look at that. What could be more amazingly balanced than that? On the one hand, there is no passivity. You know, Paul looks at Anesimus, remember who's a slave, and says,

if you can get your freedom, get it. He doesn't say, well, you know, Anesimus, maybe you're, you know, is just destined to be a slave. He doesn't say that. He says, can you get, Paul, he says, if you can get your freedom, get it. There's no passivity here. You say to Jacob, you say to Esau, you say, obey. Do the right thing.

Follow him. There'll be consequences if you disson. obey. Irresponsible behavior and foolish and unwise choices, there'll be consequences. You can't break the law of God without it breaking you. I mean, you've got incentive here. You've got the impetus to obey and to work with him and to be responsible. And at the same time you know that even your failures and even your worst sins, God will weave in and does weave in to the plan A for your life. So that even your worst, failures he will use to humble you and to strengthen you and to heal you and to change you.

Now tell me something, what can be more secure than that? That is not fatalism, that is not contingency. That is not determinism, right? On the one hand, it's not humanism on the other hand. Well, what is it? It's what the Bible says. See, all things work. together according to the counsel of his will. But this is not a kind of, this doesn't make us automons at all, because instead of an impersonal cosmos, you've got the most personal thing possible. You've got your heavenly father who's in charge of everything. Your father is the king. To know that is part of the allowance you have right now on your inheritance. To know that and to live in that. So on the one hand, not be passive at all. To, to be passive at all.

the mess around you, not to be passive toward your life. You can look back on your life if you're a Christian and say, I blew it here and here and here, and I'm still suffering the ramifications in my life. And yet, my father is so in complete control that there is no way I'm on plan B or plan C. There's no way that I am now living a sub-Christian life, but instead I am on plan A. God is still working in my life through that. Everything I've done, he'll turn to glory. Everything I've done, he will turn to his own glory and to my good. He makes the wrath of men to praise him. Remember that?

God can make the wrath of men to praise him, and he'll even take my wrath and make that praise him. This is an astonishing thing, if you realize this is part of the inheritance that we've got. Now, we move finally. Now, you know, I told you this is a bridge night. I'm trying to give you the overview. Salvation is what it's about.

Our past, we're adopted. present, we're in the kingdom of God. Our father's the king. He's with us every step. He's guiding us every step. Even when we blow it, we can't really muck our lives up because the king of the universe and the one who is in charge of every circumstance of your life is your father. Now, lastly, we look past and we look present, now we're supposed to look future. And that's why we get to the place here, where it says, and you who were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession

to the praise of his glory. Do you struggle to find the words to share your faith effectively with others? Most Christians, pastors included, have moments where we have trouble articulating what we believe and why our faith matters. In his book preaching, communicating faith in an age of skepticism, Tim Keller shows how to communicate the Christian message in a way that's clear, compassionate, and accessible, whether you're speaking to a group or having a casual conversation with a friend. Drawing from his decades of experience connecting the gospel to real life circumstances, Dr. Keller shows how the gospel message can speak even to the most skeptical or spiritually curious people. During the month of July, we'll send you a copy of preaching as our thanks for your gift

to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Now the rest of this chapter tells us several things, and we're only going to begin looking at it tonight. First of all, it tells us that you're already getting an allowance on that inheritance. As one minister used to say it, yes, there is pie in the sky, by and by, but you can start slicing and having dessert for it now. You know, it's a pie that you can slice right now and begin eating.

And that's what it's saying. It's saying that even though there's this great inheritance, there actually is a down payment, as we're going to see in a minute, a down payment is not just a pledge. A down payment is an actual piece of the thing that's coming later. You already get some of the life of heaven deposited in your heart, and it's called the sealing of the Holy Spirit. And then we're also told how we receive that, then we go on and we're told in verses 15 to about 20 that one of the most important keys of the Christian life, there are keys to the Christian life. There's no one key. There's no one little button if you get that secret and push it. The Christian life's a breeze. But one of the main secrets of the Christian life is living with a

supernatural illuminated understanding of that inheritance. Verse 15 through 20 is a prayer by Paul for the Ephesians. What Paul prays for them is that they will know the glory of the hope of their calling. They will know the power that's there. They will know the riches of their inheritance. One of the great keys to being a Christian is to know what's in your future, is to live with your eyes on the future. It makes perfect sense. And so, you know, remember, I ever tell you about Archie Moore, was a great guy. He used to live in Japan, and he was a tremendous football fan, especially he followed the Dallas Cowboys, and he was so excited about living in Japan because when he was in this country, he couldn't watch his favorite team in a regular game.

He couldn't do it. He was too scared. He was too afraid. If they were thrown for a loss or the other team got ahead, he would turn it off. He would get that upset and that uptight because he was that emotionally bound up with a team. Some of you know what that means. You know, isn't it embarrassing? Don't you feel like just a little baby that you get so excited when your team's ahead and when they start to get behind it? It ruins your whole week. And most those of us who have gotten that emotionally attached to a sports team usually don't want to admit it. So you probably don't even know anybody like that. except unless it's you. He used to get like that. He got very upset. But when he went to Japan for a while, as a missionary, he just loved it because he would watch the games and he would never worry. Even when Roger Stolvack was thrown for a 20-yard loss,

even when they were 20 points behind, he'd watch it and he'd be very happy. Because, you see, on Armed Forces Radio, he listened to the game yesterday, and he was watching it when it was played on TV the next day. So he already knew how it was going to come out. And the only way he was able to handle the anxieties of the game was he had to know how it came out. He already knew they had won. On this down, they were thrown back. This was a bad

quarter. There was fumbles, but he just could handle it. He could handle it emotionally because he knew about the future. He knew it was going to come. Now, what it means to be a Christian? I can't tell you how literally you can take that illustration. I can't tell you how important it is for you to take it that way. Paul says to the degree that you have a spiritual grasp through the Holy Spirit of your future and the knowledge of that future and the glory of that future, to that degree you're going to be able to handle when you're thrown for a loss. People that go completely to pieces over the present don't understand their future. It's simply a theoretical thing. And so you see, the understanding of what's coming in the future is one of the secrets of being a Christian.

You know, what's really hard, and I'll speak here as a pastor, when I, you know, this is a fairly young congregation in many ways, and when I had a more normal church, and people were of all age groups and all kinds of backgrounds, there were still a fairly homogeneous group of people, I spent a lot more time, you know, in hospitals, holding people's hands who were dying. I spent a lot more time than I do now. I still spend some time with that, of course. And I know one of the problems is that I would talk to many people to whom some great tragedy had come upon them,

unlooked for, talking to people who suddenly found out that their spouse, though he or she was in the pink, it seemed to be the picture of good health was suddenly staring death in the face. And one of the things that they often would do is they would look at me and they'd sit down and say, I'm just dying here. I'm a Christian. I know I'm a Christian. I know all the things that I'm supposed to believe, but they don't seem very real to me right now. How do you do it? How do you get to faith? How do you have the roots? Very often a person who was just dying emotionally would say to me,

you know, I saw so and so when her husband died, I saw so and so when he was facing cancers. I saw, they said, they're really strong Christians and they had such joy and they had such radiance and they were able to handle the tragedy in a way that was so clearly a testimony to who God was for them. And they looked at me and they said, I'm not handling it that way. I can't seem to handle it that way. How can I handle it the way they can? And of course, I could almost never say what was factually the right answer, but it would have been pasturally a poor answer. Factually, the answer was this.

It's too late for you. It's probably too late for you to develop such a heart for God and such a deep prayer life to develop the disciplines of reflecting and meditating on the truth of what God has given you in your inheritance until the Holy Spirit illuminates your heart and just melts your heart with the thought of it. That takes discipline.

That takes hours. That takes prayer. That takes time spent in the Word of God. That takes a cultivation. That takes a revelation, a spirit of wisdom and revelation that Paul talks about right here. Paul prays and says, I'm not praying for anything more than this, that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened by the Spirit of God. So you will know the hope of your calling and you will know the riches of your inheritance and the saints. and you will know the exceedingly great power to those who believe. That takes time, that takes effort, it's a discipline, until you're able to sit down not only through your reading,

but through your prayer life and through the discipline of meditation and really connect with God and really commune with Him and really know that he's your father and really think about what's in store for you. There's passages of the scripture to go to. There's great books that draw all that out. It's a discipline. It takes time, it takes thought. And I would look at these people who are saying, how am I ever going to be able to handle this

tragedy the way Sarah did it or the way John did it? And I would, you know, the factual answer is you're not going to. You can't suddenly hurry up and become a mature Christian in three days now that you've really got to be one. You can't suddenly hurry up and have God become a living reality to you when you have been so busy and so lazy in the disciplines that Paul talks about here. And you've been so lazy in your soul. study of the Word of God and your discipline of your own heart and your self-control and your

obedience and your discipleship. It's too late. You're not going to do this in three days. You're not going to ever have, frankly, the kind of power and the kind of steadiness and the kind of deep spiritual poise that those people had. Now, you know, I never ever said that to somebody in a situation like that. And you know, I'm glad I didn't. Not only was it past really wrong, in some cases it was actually factually wrong because it's amazing what suffering can do for you. It's amazing how God can refine you. It's amazing how fast you can grow if instead of being bitter against your Heavenly Father, you really believe he's the king and that this is part of his plan and that he's teaching you

and that you owe it to him to serve him and that he really owes you nothing. Do you really understand all that? In other words, if you submit to somebody, if you submit to the first, father under suffering. Sometimes you really can grow pretty fast. But ordinarily, ordinarily, I never saw it. What happens is tragedy overtakes you. A great spiritual difficulty overtakes you, and you're not ready. It would be a little bit like, if you jog 10 miles a day, and suddenly you're on some camping trip and somebody has a terrible accident and somebody has got to run for help. And the only way to run for help is to run for about 20 miles and somebody's got to get there within a certain amount of

time and you take off and if you've been in this right if you've been jogging for you're in shape you can do it you can save the day but if you're in that situation and now suddenly you've got to run that and you're totally out of shape you might die of a heart attack on the way and certainly the person that you're trying to say will die too it's too late isn't that right you can't say okay i got to run 20 miles in this amount of time, huh? I better get in shape, excuse me. You can't do that. It takes time to develop a love for your inheritance and an understanding of your inheritance. Now, one more thing we learn here. And I want to actually, in a sense, get this out of the way so we can get right into what the seal of the Holy Spirit is. Next time we get together, I want to be talking to you

immediately about what it means to say that the Holy Spirit is a deposit. It's the first fruits of this wonderful heavenly inheritance. The last thing I want you to see is, you receive the first fruits of this inheritance, you receive the allowance on your trust fund. You get the trust fund only, it says, if you believe the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

Now, I just want to take a moment because people are always in and out here, and some of you, of course, have just started coming, and you might be visitors tonight. Some of you've been here for a while, but you need to be reminded of this, and that's this. What does it mean to be a Christian?

What does it mean to have that trust fund? What does it mean to become a Christian so that that trust fund is put there for you and you have that inheritance guaranteed, the inheritance of glory? It means having to believe in the word of truth. That means that there is a body of truth that you have to believe in order to be a Christian.

Christianity is more than believing, It's an experience, yes. It's a lifestyle, yes. It's more than that, but it's not less. And I want no one to walk out of here thinking otherwise. We live in a culture that is absolutely and completely repulsed by the idea that you've got to believe in absolute religious truth in order to be a good person. One of the things that has irked me terribly is there's recently been set of letters, wonderful letters that have been published, letters from men who were fighting in the Civil War back to their families. Actually, in the last few years, there's been a number of these volumes put out. People have gone into museums and gone into attics, and they've found all

these great letters, and these are letters written by the men to their home about what they were seeing and feeling and thinking and what they were doing in the midst of the great Civil War. One of the things that irked us terribly, Kathy pointed this out to me, was reading a book review. One of the authors admitted that most of the letters written by the men were full of Christian and theological references, because the men were all Christians. They were all Bible-believing Christians. And they had lots of experiences, and they had lots of understanding, they had lots of behavior, but it was all based on a set of doctrinal truth. They believed in the classic fundamentals of the faith. But this particular editor decided that he was going to pull all that out.

he basically removed almost all the religious references as he was putting this book out. And the reason why? He said, because, you know, modern people have a lot of trouble relating to that. That's right. Modern people don't want to believe that absolute doctrinal truth is the basis for your experience and your lifestyle. It's how you live and how you make your choice is not what you believe about this or that religion. That's a prejudice. That's bad historiography. It's bad ethnography. It's bad because you're supposed to let people speak for themselves if you want to understand them. So that irritates me, but I'm trying to say is you and I are part of this modern culture that doesn't want to believe that.

We want to think Christianity is kind of an experience or a mindset or an attitude or a lifestyle. Paul says, you did not receive the Holy Spirit until you have already believed in the Word of Truth. the gospel of our salvation, there is a basic, doctrinal, irreducible minimum that you've got to believe to be a Christian. Christianity is much more than believing a doctrine, a set of doctrinal principles, but it's not less. And if you don't like that idea, then you can just say, fine, but let's just realize you're rejecting the Christian faith. You mustn't remake the Christian faith in your own terms. Now, what is that irreducible minimum? The beautiful, thing about Paul is the gospel of our salvation is never canned. You don't see that when he talks about

the gospel of our salvation, he's always producing a kind of canned outliner statement that he reproduces. No, Paul is constantly giving you that irreducible minimum in small statements. And if you look at all those statements, you'll see always the whole gospel right there in a nice compact span. And it's always basically the same, but it's always got a different slant. So, for example, you've got 2 Corinthians 5, verse 19 to 21. Listen, here's the gospel in a nutshell. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting our sins against us, and we are ambassadors of this message. There it is. Or two verses later, he says, we implore you, be reconciled to God, for God made him sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in

him. And here's another verse. First Thessalonians 1, 9 and 10. He's talking about how our gospel came to you. And then he says, you turn from idols to serve the living God and to wait for his son, who he raised from the dead. Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath. Do you know what the word of truth is? You see, it's running through all of those. First of all, you might believe that sin is just a matter of a moral code, failing, failure of the moral code. It says there that sin is worshipping idols, that everybody worships something besides God. Everybody plays God. Everybody avoids God. Everybody therefore is worthy of the wrath of God. If that sounds too extreme for you, you haven't believed the word of truth, the irreducible minimum. If you think, you know, sin is just falling short of a moral code,

you're missing it. Sin is worshiping the wrong things. Sin is doing everything you can to avoid letting God really be your Savior. If you've been raised, for example, in the Christian faith, raised in the church, and yet you've been converted, you know what happened to you? One day you realized that you were proud of your good teaching, you were proud of your right doctrine, you were proud of your moral life, and it was all self-righteousness, and you were using that, you were using your decency, and you were using your doctrinal accuracy as a way of keeping God from being your savior. You were proud of yourself and you were humbled into the dust and you saw that you were actually worshipping an idol. You saw that you were actually worthy of the wrath

of God. You're not a Christian. You've never really heard the word of truth unless you believe that. And then secondly, that Jesus Christ is not simply a friend, not simply an example, but a substitute. God made him sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Kathy and I, when we were in seminary, even though we've been Christians for at least a couple of years, we took one class in Old Testament that actually for the first time helped us understand substitution. The Old Testament professor said, you know, in the Old Testament there were always covenants. And whenever you made a covenant, you said, if you obey the covenant, here are the blessings. Blessed art thou, blessed are thou, and I will give you all these blessings if you obey me.

But if you break this covenant, here are the curses. I will curse you in all these ways. Well, you see, God entered into a covenant with us as his people, and we failed and we deserve the curses. And so the Old Testament professor says, so you have to realize what happened. Jesus came to earth. And it's sort of like he was running a race trying to obey the covenant. We've been running a race trying to obey the covenant. And you see, at the end of our race, because we've broken the covenant, we deserve the gallows, the curse. And at the end of Jesus' life, he's obey. made the covenant perfectly. He's loved the Lord,

his God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mine. He's loved his neighbor as himself, and he deserves the garland. He deserves the crown. But at the end of his life, instead of stepping in to the victor's circle and picking up the crown, he cuts over in front of us and says, excuse me, and goes into our circle and puts his head in the gallows, in the noose, and he's killed, and he takes the curses. God made him sin who knew no sin. And what's that left for us? The crown. He was not just a friend. He's not just an inspiring thing. He didn't just die on the cross in a general way to forgive us for our sins. So now our sins are forgiven. Now we can live the best life possible. He was our substitute. He cut in front of us. He put his head in our noose. He's our substitute, which means now when we believe in him, we get his crown. His righteousness becomes us. It falls on us. We become his righteousness. And the Father treats us as if we've done everything he'd ever done.

That is so powerful, and that's substitution. You have not believed the Word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, until you see your sin as idolatry and deserving the wrath of God, until you see what Jesus has done is substitution and has done everything for you. And when He's become your everything, you believe the Word of Truth, and then and only then. Does the Holy Spirit, the first fruits of the imperishable inheritance come to you? Do you understand that? There is a doctrinal, irreducible minimum. God made him sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God and Him. All I'm asking you to see is, as astonishing as all this is, it starts with a very, very, very simple action. There's some truth.

Will you believe it? Will you put your hope in it? Will you stand on it? Will you rely on it? Then immediately God fills a trust fund in heaven for you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Immediately sends out the first installment into your heart. It's called the Holy Spirit of the new birth and says, way do you see what's in store for you. I has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart, the imagination of any human being, what I have in store for those who love me. let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you would help us in the next couple of weeks understand the riches of our inheritance, the hope of our calling, the great power that belongs to us, and we ask now that you would enable us and prepare us to take these truths in.

We pray, Father, in a sense, that you would gird us with these truths, that you would plant these truths in us so that they might bear fruit in our lives, and we might be more like your son. In his name we pray. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime, visit gospelandlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 1992.

The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Thank you.