Qualities That Are Christ’s Own

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Philippians” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, February 7, 1993.

Sermon transcript

This morning we begin our scripture reading in Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is Paul’s letter to the Romans, and we are beginning at verse 16. Listen to the word of God. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. He changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause, God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change that natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was suitable. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient.

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, maliciousness rather, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, Haters of God, despiteful, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents without understanding, covenant breakers without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, knowing the judgment of God that they that commit such things are worthy of death.” And then turning over to Philippians, the fourth chapter. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.

Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me, do. And the God of peace shall be with you. Pray with me. O God, may your word have its rightful place before us. May we receive your word as that inspired revelation, that infallible revelation, a revelation inerrant, and may we be built up, by your word so that we might be filled with those works that please you. All of this that we may be assured that we are yours. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

A young woman in her twenties, living in Moscow, rejoices over the news that her government has collapsed. Now, her joy isn’t what you might think. It isn’t because she is rejoicing that there has been the end of tyranny and an oppressive, godless government. Instead, she is rejoicing because living in the East, she now has greater hopes that she will have access to Western rock and roll.

A middle-aged man living in Pretoria. He longs for the day when the present government in South Africa will end. It’s not particularly because of his political convictions, it’s not that he has exercised over racial injustice, but he wishes the end of apartheid. He just wishes for the end of the government as it is, because that government has insisted upon enforcing the laws banning pornography and homosexual behavior. This is important to him because he is a homosexual.

In this country, the mood may well be euphoric in many places and uniformly in the media these days because of the transformation in administration that has taken place in Washington, D.C. In all honesty and without the intent of making any political remark from this pulpit, I do believe that there is one word, however, that better characterizes the mood of our country and things as they are even in Washington, D.C., and that word is not freedom, it is license. It is license. There is a world of difference between liberty and libertineism. And tragically, in this nation and around the world, there seems to be little ability to distinguish between those two.

We had a motto given us a few years ago, read out across the land. In answer to the drug plague in our nation, that motto was, just say no. It seems that we now lack the ability to say no to anything, except to those who might say no. We have become a people.

We seem content to learn our morals, our ethics, from the strangest sources. We have become a people intent upon learning our moral and ethical values, especially from the media, especially from programs aired regularly, week by week, programs like LA Law, Northern Exposure, I’ll Fly Away. It seems that we no longer have any problem, or see any problem, if our lives actually do match up to the real lives of these eminently successful and sensitive, politically correct divorced, remarried, adulterers and adulteresses, gay and lesbian folk who play out their roles with such self-righteous arrogance week by week over the airwaves. We have become a people whose moral sensitivity is being trained by tabloid sensuality. communicated to us continually through the media, from the nightly news to the ubiquitous talk shows.

We are waking up. There is no more insulation. There was a time in which we felt protected. We felt at least that there was a barrier of some sort in place. We felt that there was some insulation, a reserve for some sort of innocence and naivete within our society, and especially for our young. That is no more the case.

And that hypothesis, all of this sensitivity about children, and then the abuse of children in exposing them to all the toddleriness of the world and the wickedness in this planet what hypothesis all of this all of this exercise over violence and a violence filled society when we are filled with violence day by day from every aspect of our culture from those who are claiming to be responsible individuals Our society has a mission, it seems. It believes that it has a mission in the name of honesty, in the name of realism, in the name of a view of morality all of its own, to remove every bit of that insulation, every vestige of it, every aspect of that protection that was there once in our society as an evidence of God’s wonderful common grace to us. After all, I have a fundamental constitutional right to challenge all restraints, do I not? And to expose everyone and anyone, young and old, to the limits of my excesses.

Therefore a child can pick up the comments in the local newspaper and be faced with a cartoon one would think something innocent enough. He’s faced with a cartoon in which he is confronted with descriptions of womanizing and homosexuality. On an adjoining page, this child is confronted with graphic descriptions of sexual practices all in the name of therapy. and the advancement of better social awareness.

Your family can sit down to watch the new news. Now that’s safe, isn’t it? One would think, as mine did this last summer. waiting for the highlights from the pirate game played the previous evening, only to be hit in the face with an ad for an upcoming Donahue show featuring a man famous for his sexual acrobatics. You can sit down to watch a children’s program, presumably.

But wonder you, you might sit down and watch it with your children only to discover the wonder of the wonder years is the discovery of one’s own sexuality and that at the earliest age portrayed for you on the screen by actors and actresses that look to you as if they are not even out of grade school I sometimes have the feeling that we are living in a Fellini film.

Nothing is to be denied us. If we want to fornicate, we have a right to do so. We even have a right to expect the state to supply us safety in the pursuit of our activities. If we want to be promiscuous, we have a right to be promiscuous. And then if there are consequences to our immorality, such as a pregnancy, we have the inherent right to execute the unborn child. We even have a right to expect that society would pay for it. If we want to engage in homosexual behavior, that is our constitutional right. That is what we say.

And when we get sick from our behavior, or contract a terminal disease from it, we have a right to hold the health insurance industry and our society hostage to our demands for extraordinary treatment. And if we are homosexual, We should not be denied the right to raise children, even though our practices should preclude that. They can’t even generate children. Society itself is obliged to guarantee to us that right, and then to treat us and these children as if we were a family like any other on the face of the earth. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. is to be denied us.

Now, you may be thinking that this is a bleak account indeed. And somewhat of variance from what you heard in Philippians 8 and 9, although not removed from what we heard in Romans 1. Our focus this morning, however, is verses 8 and 9 in Philippians 4. But it doesn’t seem as if this description is linking up well with the things that are described there by the Apostle Paul. I want to make you aware of a certain feature of this 8th verse in particular. This 8th verse is unique in Paul’s writings. There are other listings that he gives in his epistles. We have read one of those listings in the first chapter of Romans. Those listings in other places in his epistles bear similar marks, but this listing in Philippians 4 is unique.

This has pressed commentators then to make some sort of explanation with regard to it. The suggestion that they have made, and I think with a degree of credibility, is that Paul here is running through a list of virtues and characteristics held up at one time as ideal for Roman citizens. But Roman society in 1860, when this epistle was written, was one in which increasingly nothing was to be denied the citizenry of Rome. It was one in which the insulation of which we have been speaking about, the insulation of God’s common grace, was fast disappearing. In fact, the Church at Philippi had become the victims of Roman decadence and assault. Paul then here revives these features before this Philippian congregation.

He sets them before this congregation again, but by so doing, completely transforms them and sees them in the service, not of the Roman Empire, but in the service of the kingdom of heaven. This means, then, that the apostle is not merely transforming the matters that he speaks of in this verse, but he is lending to them a transcendence, a transcendence that is all grace, grace that belongs to the kingdom that is given to the children of God in the midst of a perverse world.

This means, then, that this eighth verse in the fourth chapter is directly tied to what the Apostle had said in the third chapter, the twentieth verse, where he says that we are, in fact, the citizens of heaven. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence, and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Here is Paul’s exposition of heavenly mindedness. not just good citizenship in this world, but heavenly mindedness. I do take stock of what the apostle says next in that ninth verse. He makes a claim that such people who are characterized by thinking as is described in that 8th verse, although they live in a world in which the insulation seems to be removed, do not live in isolation from that world in which they find themselves. The things which you learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, says Paul. in this very world in which the insulation is being removed.

The very light of Christ’s heavenly glory, then, will shine through you. The light of a heavenly city, the city of God, will shine through you, even upon those who are hostile to you. Those men whose thoughts are as the ones described in the 8th verse, will in fact behave like the one who describes himself in the 9th verse. But Paul, the one who describes himself in that 9th verse, is also modeling his behavior after someone else, namely his dear Savior, the one who reigns over the heavenly kingdom, the Lord Jesus Christ. And mark now, mark now the wonderful promise given to those who so think and so live.

The God of peace shall be with you. Let that settle in. The God of peace himself will be with you. You are not alone. Your God is with you, even in a world in which the insulation is removed and the old guarantees which have stood for the protection of the Church within our civilization are gone. God, the God of peace, shall be with you.

I would really appreciate it if we’d have a little bit more decorum down here in the second row. I’m not going to proceed with this service unless there is order in this church, and I will not serve communion unless there is order. Our Father in Heaven, we do glory in you, and thank you for the promises of a heavenly kingdom. And not only the promise of that kingdom, but the realities of it communicated to us well presently in Christ. O Father, refresh us in your presence with the knowledge that you, the God of peace, are with us. We thank you for this, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.