1. "The wonderful and offensive message of Christianity is that God really does exist. He really has made us. He really has revealed himself to us. And for that reason, doctrine matters. What we believe matters and is worth fighting for."

2. "Doctrine is worth fighting over because sound doctrine protects the gospel, and the gospel produces godliness."

3. "We know what the key is that unlocks the Scriptures. We know what that is because the mystery hidden for ages has been revealed, and his name is Jesus."

4. "They had shifted the spotlight off of Jesus and onto themselves, and they'd obscured the gospel."

5. "They stopped building their life on their doctrine and started instead basing their doctrine on the kind of life they wanted to live."

6. "God's law works like a map and a mirror. It orients us for how to live in God's world. What God's law doesn't do is it doesn't give us the power to keep the law."

7. "If the law is a map pointing you in the right direction, the gospel—well, the gospel is the engine. The gospel is what gets you there."

8. "Friend, you can set all the New Year's resolutions that you want, but those resolutions won't give you the power to keep them. You're just stacking up a debt of burdens that you might not be able to keep."

9. "We don't keep God's law by just resolving to keep it. We need God to both forgive us and transform us. And that's what God has done through Christ."

10. "God is not said to be happy because he gave his Son. God gave his Son because he is happy."

Observation Questions

1. In 1 Timothy 1:1-2, how does Paul identify himself and his source of authority, and what three blessings does he wish for Timothy?

2. According to verses 3-4, what specific command did Paul give Timothy regarding certain persons in Ephesus, and what were these persons devoted to instead of "the stewardship from God that is by faith"?

3. In verse 5, what does Paul say is "the aim of our charge," and what three sources does he say this aim issues from?

4. According to verses 6-7, what happened to certain persons who swerved from a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith, and what did they desire to become despite their lack of understanding?

5. In verses 8-10, Paul lists various types of people for whom the law is laid down. What categories of sinners does he mention, and how does he summarize this list at the end of verse 10?

6. How does Paul describe the gospel in verse 11, and what does he say about his relationship to this gospel?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul emphasize his apostolic authority "by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope" (v. 1) before giving Timothy instructions about false teachers? How does this establish the basis for fighting for sound doctrine?

2. The sermon describes a four-stage progression toward false teaching: aim, compromise, doctrine, conscience. How do verses 5-7 illustrate this progression, and why is the order of these stages significant for understanding how believers can drift from the faith?

3. In verses 8-10, Paul says "the law is good, if one uses it lawfully" and that it is "not laid down for the just but for the lawless." How does this explain the purpose of God's law, and how were the false teachers misusing it according to the sermon?

4. How does Paul's phrase "whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God" (vv. 10-11) connect right living with right believing? What does this reveal about the relationship between the gospel and godliness?

5. The sermon states that God is described as "blessed" (v. 11) not because He receives blessings but because He is intrinsically happy and joyful. How does understanding God's intrinsic blessedness shape our understanding of why He gave His Son and what He offers us through the gospel?

Application Questions

1. The sermon identifies reading the Gospels, remembering your testimony, and sharing the gospel as ways to stoke affection for Christ when the gospel feels stale. Which of these practices is most absent from your current spiritual life, and what specific step could you take this week to incorporate it?

2. Paul warns that false teachers "swerved" from a pure heart and good conscience before wandering into false doctrine. Are there any areas in your life where you sense your conscience warning you but you are tempted to ignore it? How might addressing this protect you from spiritual drift?

3. The sermon challenged listeners to consider who the primary voices are that shape what they believe—whether on TV, social media, or elsewhere. Can you identify one influential voice in your life whose "fruit" you cannot actually observe? What would it look like to prioritize the teaching of those whose lives you can see up close?

4. Paul says the aim of sound doctrine is "love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith" (v. 5). Think of a relationship where you struggle to love well. How might focusing on the gospel—rather than on the other person's faults—help you grow in genuine love toward them?

5. The sermon pointed out that our greatest pains often result from others breaking the very commandments listed in verses 9-10. How does recognizing that God's law is given for our protection and good change the way you view a biblical command you find difficult to accept or obey?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 20:17-35 — Paul's farewell address to the Ephesian elders, where he warns that "fierce wolves" will arise from among them, directly connects to his concern for Timothy and the Ephesian church in 1 Timothy.

2. Ezekiel 36:22-32 — This passage contains God's new covenant promise to give His people a new heart and spirit, which the sermon identifies as the source of the pure heart and good conscience that produce godliness.

3. Matthew 7:15-27 — Jesus teaches that false prophets are known by their fruits and that true discipleship means doing the will of the Father, reinforcing the sermon's emphasis on discerning teachers by their lives.

4. Romans 13:8-10 — Paul explains that love fulfills the law, connecting to the sermon's point that the gospel produces the love that is the aim of God's commandments.

5. 2 Timothy 2:14-26 — Paul's continued instructions to Timothy about handling false teaching and pursuing godliness provide further context for the battle over sound doctrine emphasized in 1 Timothy 1.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Question of What Battles Are Worth Fighting

II. Sound Doctrine Protects the Gospel (1 Timothy 1:1-7)

III. The Gospel Produces Godliness (1 Timothy 1:5-11)

IV. The Call to Fight for the Gospel and Enter God's Joy

Detailed Sermon Outline

What fights are worth fighting? The world is full of battles being fought that aren't worth fighting, as well as unfought battles that ought to be fought. What battles are worth fighting? Some fights take a break for Christmas, like that much-remembered impromptu truce during World War I, when German and British troops set down their weapons, and traded cards, gave gifts, and played football, only to return to killing each other 24 hours later.

Other fights don't seem to take much of a break for the holidays, like that inner battle with addiction or marital conflict. In all of this, around this season, the longing for peace, so much wished for, seems to shimmer mockingly against the bleak backdrop of suffering and death. What was it that Henry Woodsworth Longfellow penned on Christmas Day in 1863, shortly after hearing about the injury of his son in the Civil War? And in despair I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth.

Goodwill to men. Friends, in light of ever-escalating levels of factionalism in which, as James Madison warned, opposite sides seem more disposed to vex and oppress each other than cooperate for common good, is anything really worth fighting over? Surely of all the battles that are being fought today, religious beliefs isn't worth fighting for. I mean, wouldn't we all just be better off if we set the squabbles over doctrine aside and just got along? Can't we have Christmas without the some battles over this and that doctrine.

Friends, the wonderful and offensive message of Christianity is that God really does exist. He really has made us. He really has revealed himself to us. And for that reason, doctrine matters. What we believe matters and is worth fighting for.

That's the message of Paul's letter to Timothy. That's the message of our sermon this morning. And when I say doctrine, that might sound like an intimidating word. I really just mean what a church believes and what it practices. You see, sometimes we think about doctrine like it's just ideas.

You know, someone who knows doctrine is someone who knows a lot of large words. But doctrine is so much more than that. It's about how we live. So as a church, our doctrine is summed up in our statement of faith and in our church covenant. It's what we believe in how we live because the two cannot be separated.

You can find the letter to Timothy on page 991 of your pew Bibles. As I mentioned, that's where we'll be studying in this first of two messages from 1 Timothy. As you turn there in your Bibles, let me set some brief context. Paul had met Timothy around 15 years before he wrote this letter. It was on his second missionary journey.

Timothy was a young believer sometime around 50 AD. And he quickly became Paul's travel companion, his fellow laborer, his representative to several churches. By the time Paul writes this letter, Timothy has taken charge of a church in Ephesus. That's in modern-day Turkey. Timothy is the young pastor of this church.

And in this letter, Paul gives Timothy two reasons why doctrine is worth fighting over. So here's my answer in one sentence, the point of the sermon. Doctrine is worth fighting over because sound doctrine protects the gospel, and the gospel produces godliness. Doctrine is worth fighting over because sound doctrine protects the gospel, and the gospel produces godliness. That's what we see here in 1 Timothy 1:1-11.

Listen now as I read to us from God's Word.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless, the disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

In accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

The first thing we see here in verses 1 to 7 is that sound doctrine protects the gospel. Sound doctrine protects the gospel. Did you notice how Paul wastes no time in getting to his point? There's an urgency with which he writes to Timothy. Immediately after introducing himself in verses 1 to 2, he gets to his point.

Charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. Paul's commanding this because he is a man with authority because he is under authority. You see that in how he introduces himself in verse 1. He is an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. This isn't a message that Paul has come up with.

He didn't invest, he didn't invent this message. He receives it as a and he's charged with stewarding it. And now he's telling Timothy, continue to steward this message. We've received it from Christ who's risen from the dead, seated at God's right hand, coming back again, and he will hold us accountable for what we do with this message. So charge them not to teach any different doctrine.

These are military-like instructions from a seasoned general to his subordinate on the front lines. And the whole rest of this letter will unpack this one charge. Timothy is to urge to command with authority that certain persons not teach any different doctrine. And this different doctrine, whatever it is, is contrasted in verse 10 with healthy or sound doctrine. So who are these certain persons that Timothy is to charge?

You see that language in verse 3 and again in verse 6, certain persons.

Well, clearly they were still in some sense part of the church that Timothy was charged with overseeing, which is why he's instructed to charge them. Apparently Paul's prediction to the Ephesian elders from Acts 20 has come true, that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. These false teachers still professed Christ in some sense, but they had swerved from the faith, as verse 6 says. At the core of their false teaching was an improper use of the Old Testament. You see that in verse 4 in the way they are devoted to endless genealogies and myths.

You know those passages in Scripture that you're tempted to skip over when you're doing your Bible reading plan that begins today? You know those long lists, maybe somebody did it this morning, Matthew 1, anybody doing a McShane plan? In some sense or another, these false teachers were wrongly using those texts to teach false doctrine. And this is often what false teachers do. They take something that might seem confusing or complicated, and they pull out all kinds of things that you would never see, that no one reading that text would ever see it that way, unless they tell you exactly how to read it a certain way, and that's what they were doing.

We'll see more about how they were doing this in verse 8, but considering 1 and 2 Timothy as a whole, we can at least say this about what these false teachers were saying.

They were insisting on certain food laws, 1 Timothy 4. They were forbidding marriage, 1 Timothy 43. They were teaching that the resurrection had already taken place, 2 Timothy 218. We don't know how all these strands fit together, but what is clear is it was undermining the apostolic gospel. Tragically, these people who had been devoted to Jesus were now devoted to myths and endless genealogies.

Now, there's two types of false teaching. One type of false teaching detracts from what the Bible teaches and says, you don't really need to believe all these things that the Bible is saying. Another type of false teaching adds to what the Bible teaches and insists on things that the Bible doesn't teach. These false teachers were of the second kind. If you were to ask them, do you believe in Jesus?

That he is the Son of God, that he died for our sins, that he was raised for our justification, they would say, Yes, I believe all that. But that's just the basic stuff. The real juicy stuff is what I can tell you about. I mean, did Paul ever tell you that the resurrection has already happened and that you can be resurrected right now? Just read some of these genealogies in the Old Testament.

Pay a little money. Look a little carefully. Follow my teaching. I'll show you what the Bible is really about. They had shifted their focus off of Jesus and onto something else.

They were saying that they had secret knowledge that unlocked the key of Scripture, but that key was something other than Jesus. But friends, we know what the key is that unlocks the Scriptures. We know what that is because the mystery hidden for ages has been revealed, and his name is Jesus. As Jesus said, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is they that testify about me.

John 5 Jesus told his disciples, everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. In Luke 24, these false teachers had shifted the spotlight off of Jesus and onto themselves, and they'd obscured the gospel. The question is how? How did this happen? How did they go from being inside to outside, from being followers of Jesus to opposers?

Well, in verses 5 to 7, Paul lays out this terrible progression. And you see they had shifted their aim. That's the first thing. You can summarize their progression in four words: aim, compromise, doctrine, and conscience. The first thing that happened was they lost their aim.

Look at verse 5. They forgot that the aim of all things is love. After that, they started compromising. As verse 6 says, they swerved from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. These compromises started small, but before they knew it, they were doing things they had said they would never do.

And from there, they began to drift doctrinally. As verse 6 says, they wandered away into vain discussions.

They stopped building their life on their doctrine and started instead basing their doctrine on the kind of life they wanted to live.

From there, their consciences were seared. You see this later in verse 19. By sinning against the light, their God-given warning system stopped working. And instead of warning them, it confirmed them in their error. So that as verse 7 says, they made confident assertions without understanding.

Aim lost, compromise slowly, doctrinal drift, conscience seared. Friends, you can spell the highway to hell with the acronym ACDC.

How about you? Do you ever find yourself becoming bored with the gospel?

When the gospel starts feeling stale for you, what has God used in your life to stoke the fire of affection for Christ? That would be a good question for you to talk about over lunch. What has God used in your life to stoke the affections for Christ when the gospel begins to feel stale? I know in my life three things have helped me: reading the gospels and rereading them, remembering my testimony, and sharing the gospel with others. Friends, we have to fight to not move on from the gospel.

Teens and young people, if I could speak to you for a moment about the conscience. I mentioned that word conscience. The conscience is that God-given warning system that goes off when you do something wrong. You know when you do that thing you're not supposed to do? And something inside of you feels bad, feels kind of sick, well that's your conscience.

That's a sign that it's working properly. You know sometimes in your life it might feel like the only thing standing between you and the thing you want to do is your parents and their rules. And that might be the case but God has given you them to protect you so that your conscience can be formed and not broken. You see, if you do the thing that you know you shouldn't do, your conscience begins to break. And if you do that long enough, your conscience can be broken beyond recovery.

And so you can go through life like someone who has lost all sensory experience, who can grab a fire hot skillet and not feel a thing. It's not a good thing that you can't feel something in that moment. That's a bad thing. The pain is there to warn you. It's there to say, Stop.

Teens, kids, that's what your conscience is for. It's there to warn you. And it is such a gift that God has given you not only your conscience, but your parents and people in authority over you who can help shape your conscience.

I remember a time in my life when my conscience wasn't working properly. One of the most shameful moments of my life took place 11 years ago yesterday, on New Year's Eve. I was with a bunch of other Christians, kind of having a little New Year's party. My friends were there, my siblings were there, and I started acting inappropriately toward a girl there. It was clearly making everyone in the room uncomfortable, and to my shame, my conscience was so dull that I didn't even realize what I was doing I knew it was wrong.

And if I knew it, I ignored it. Thankfully, my older brother was there, and he came over to me, and very delicately and tactfully, he tried to pull me aside. And I behaved horribly toward him. I was mean, I was angry, but he took me outside and he told me, if you want to get back into this house, you're going to have to go through me. And he's a police officer now, and so I knew he meant it.

Friends, in God's kindness, when my conscience wasn't working for me, my brother was there on my behalf. He was my conscience when my conscience wasn't working. My question to you is, do you have friends like that? Teens, kids, are you thankful for the siblings that God has given you who can help be that conscience for you? They're loving you and they're caring for you in those moments.

As a local church, there are so many things that we do to try to protect the gospel and keep it central in our lives. Chief among them is the preaching of God's Word. This pulpit is here to help protect our doctrine, to keep us from moving on from the gospel. So pray for our church's public teaching. Pray for our pastors and elders.

Pray that the gospel would always be preached from this pulpit. You know, we're approaching 150 years as a local church.

In five years we'll be celebrating 150. And over all those years our church statement of faith has not changed one bit. We still preach the same gospel. And so much of that is thanks to the preaching of this pulpit that has kept us centered on the gospel. Friends, the gospel is worth fighting for.

And so sound doctrine is worth fighting for. Labor to protect the gospel in your own life and in the life of this church. Because sound doctrine protects the gospel and the gospel in turn protects godliness. That's our second point. Sound doctrine is worth fighting for because the gospel produces godliness.

Paul had told Timothy to charge certain persons to stop their false teaching and in verse 5 he gives the reason why. He says the aim is love. The aim is godliness. Read with me again starting in verse 5.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. The point here is that there is an inextricable link between what we believe and how we are to live, between sound doctrine and right living, between the gospel and godliness. That's Paul's point here.

And this is the purpose of the law. The law sets the standard of godliness. It tells us what God is like and how we are to live. And what Paul is pointing out here is not only are these false teachers misunderstanding the law, but the very thing they're misunderstanding the law proves that their doctrine is false. That's why he's turning to the law in verse 8.

The law sets the standard for godliness and their lives are falling far short of this law. Instead of producing godliness, their message is producing ungodliness, which shows that they haven't even understood the law to begin with. So under this second point, I want us to first see in verses 8 to 11 how these false teachers misinterpreted the law.

And how that law undermined godliness. Second, we'll look at verses 5 to 7 again to see how the gospel produces the godliness that is the point of the law. So that's where we're going. These false teachers were misinterpreting the law and it was undermining godliness. That's what Paul is explaining in verses 8 to 11.

And when he writes that the law is good, he's making a statement that he would expect these teachers to agree with. He would expect them to believe that the law is good. That's what we read about in Psalm 119 this morning. The problem wasn't that they rejected God's law, the problem they were misusing it. They were misapplying it.

They were misunderstanding its purpose. And it was producing disastrous effects in their lives. You know, if you try a new recipe over the break, and it turns out terrible, the problem could be the recipe, or the problem could be you. It could be that you made a mistake somewhere along the way. You misunderstood or misapplied the recipe.

Well, that's what was going on with these false teachers. Their lives were showing that they had misunderstood the law. As Jesus explained in Matthew 7, as Barak read, you will recognize them by their fruits. And the fruits of these false teachers were not good. They were so busy engaging in vain discussions about genealogies, they missed the whole point of the law.

The whole point of the law is to expose and convict of sin. That's what Paul is saying here in verse 9, the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless, the disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, the unholy and profane. It's not that there's no other use for the law in the Christian life. No, there's certainly other uses for it. Paul later on argues from 1 Timothy 5:18 that the general equity of the Old Testament law produces principles like we should pay our pastors.

So there are other uses for the law, but the primary point is to convict and expose sin. And this was especially what the false teachers were missing. See, God's law works like a map and a mirror. God's law is a map and a mirror. It orients us for how to live in God's world.

It's like the GPS on your phone. You know, when you plug in directions and it tells you where to go, God's law tells us where to go. It says, you, are here. Proceed to this point. It says, this is the way to go.

Take left. This way leads to life. It says, Stop. Don't go that way. That way leads leads to death.

The law is a map. It tells us what God's world is like and how we should live. What God's law doesn't do is it doesn't give us the power to keep the law. That's why God's law is also a mirror. It shows how far you've fallen short of living rightly in God's world.

What Paul is doing here in verses 9, 10, and 11 is he's summarizing the second half of the Ten Commandments. That's what explains this list that might seem somewhat disparate and random. In verse 9, you see that command against striking father and mother. Well, that's Paul explaining Exodus 20:12, Honor your father and your mother. Murderers, there that next word corresponds to Exodus 20:13, you shall not murder.

And he keeps going, just walking through that second table of the law.

Now, it's interesting in verse 10, Paul mentions both a general category and a specific example. He mentions both the sexually immoral and men who practice homosexuality. Well, these correspond to Exodus 20, verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. In other words, both sexual immorality in general and homosexuality in particular are prohibited by the law's prohibition of adultery. That's how God's law works.

When God's law forbids a particular sin, it also prohibits all sins of the same kind. As the Westminster Larger Catechism explains, Under one sin, all of the same kind are forbidden, together with all the causes, means, occasions, and appearances thereof, and provocations thereunto. This is exactly what Mark will lead us in at the conclusion of this service. When we celebrate the Lord's Supper, he'll lead a prayer of confession. And he won't just mention particular sins, like he's quoting Scripture, he'll also talk about implications of those commands, both things that we've done and things we've left undone.

The Bible doesn't need to mention every particular sinful act in order for that action to be forbidden. The Bible describes human beings as inventors of evil. I mean, the Bible would be exhaustive if it described every particular example of a kind of sin we could commit. No, the general category prohibits sins of the same kind as well. And we see this in the next example Paul gives in verse 10.

Paul summarizes the eighth commandment from Exodus 20:15, you, shall not steal with the word enslavers. Enslavers. This refers to people who would kidnap human beings and sell them into slavery. This is one of the great plagues of the world, a practice as old as creation. But here we see that God's law prohibits not only theft, you shall not steal, but all kinds of stealing, whether that be time, credit, or human beings.

See, as much as some people try to twist Scripture to defend race-based slavery, there's really no way to do that by being faithful to the clear teaching of Scripture. And this is where, as Christians, I think God's law is one of our greatest aids in evangelism today in an increasingly post-Christian culture. You see, everyone's living according to a set of rules, according to a certain map. God's law gives us the map for living in his world. And this world is his world.

And so when he gives us commandments and we follow them, it works. That's because it's God's world and it's God's rules. See, many people today rage militantly against the Bible's teaching on homosexuality, yet they ardently defend the law's prohibition of slavery. And if you press them, well, why do you have the one and not the other? You know, why is it so obvious to you that there is that slavery is an unalloyed evil, but homosexuality is an unalloyed good?

If you press them on that, the best they can come up with is something like the harm principle. Well, as long as you're not harming another person, no big deal. You can do whatever you want. But then you press them and ask, well, why is it wrong to harm someone else? Well, it's self-evident, they say.

Yeah, but no, it's not. Not to nature. What's obvious to nature is might makes right. What's obvious to nature is survival of the fittest. What's obvious to nature is that harm is defined by whoever is in power.

Which, by the way, is increasingly how harm is being defined today. No, it's the Bible that teaches that to harm another human being is wrong because they're made in the image of God. And this belief that it's wrong to harm other people is part of the lingering oxygen of Christianity, which those who oppose God's law readily inhale to condemn the very breath that gives them life. God's law tells us what's right and wrong. So when the Bible prohibits anything from man-stealing to lying to murder to adultery we trust God that what he says is good and it's there for our good.

If this is hard for you to hear this morning let me just ask you a question. Where have you experienced the greatest pain in your life?

I would wager that some of the most painful experiences of your life are the result of someone else breaking these very commandments that we just read about.

It's that adultery that led to divorce. It's the lie that left you feeling betrayed. It's the violence that tore your family apart. See, God's law is given here for our good. It's here to protect you.

So where is your life out of accord with God's law?

Where is your heart tempted to believe that what's in God's law isn't for your good.

To my Christian friend, I hope you see how this especially applies to you. You see, because when our lives are out of step with God's law, it's because they're out of step with the gospel. That's what Paul is explaining in verse 10 when he gets to that catch-all phrase, whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. You see, The doctrine is not just what we profess, it's what we do. It's what our lives show.

And our lives are meant to accord with sound doctrine and accord with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. All these sins that he describes are out of sync with the gospel. They're out of character for a Christian because of what's true in the gospel. The gospel produces love, as verse 5 says, and love is the summary of the law.

So Paul can say that the law is not for believers in the sense that it is not for believers in the same way that it is for non-believers. The way Christians live should already accord with the gospel. And when Christians are living in a manner that accords with the gospel, they will be loving God, they'll be loving others, they'll be fulfilling the law. The Christian life lived under the gospel will be in step with God's law. All of that is how verses 8 to 11 show how false teachers were misinterpreting the law and undermining godliness.

If all this talk about false teachers seems kind of vague to you, just ask yourself, who are the primary voices that you are listening to? Who are shaping what you believe, what you think, whether on TV, or on social media?

You see, the primary criterion that Paul lays out for discerning false teachers isn't the content of their teaching. It's the content of their lives. That's what Barrick read from Matthew 7. That's what we've been seeing in this passage. Do you see good fruit or bad fruit?

My question to you is how are you supposed to discern the fruit of the life of someone when you only see what they want you to see.

How are you supposed to discern fruit from the life of someone you only see on social media or only see on TV? In contrast, friends, God has placed over us as a church teachers, preachers, pastors who live their lives right in front of us. Kids, God has placed in your life, your parents. You see their life up close. You see the fruit of their life.

My question is why would you trust someone online who you have never seen over the people God has put in your life who you see every day? God has given those people to you to follow in so far as the fruit of their lives accords with godliness. These false teachers were misinterpreting God's law in ways that undermine godliness and their lives showed it. In contrast, in verses 5 to 7 we see how the gospel produces godliness.

And this godliness fulfills the whole purpose of the law. That's what we see in verses 5 to 7. Paul says, the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Right doctrine is never an end in itself. It's supposed to go somewhere.

It goes toward love. It goes toward love toward God and love for other people.

If the law is a map pointing you in the right direction, the gospel, well the gospel is the engine. The gospel is what gets you there. And this love, Paul says, comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Faith is here sincere in the sense that it lasts. It stands the test of time.

It's faith that perseveres. Like the faith of Herb Carlson that persevered all that way until his death and is such an example to us. Faith that is sincere is faith that lasts. The conscience refers to that inner faculty that we've been talking about. It translates faith into action.

Faith is what the conscience is what connects beliefs to actions and the conscience is working properly when it's producing good works, when it's producing love. And then there's that description of the heart that Paul gets to. Well, the heart is the deepest part of you. It's the animating center. It's your inclinations and your affections.

The question is, if the law functions like a map in a mirror, if it shows how far we've fallen short of God's law, how can we say that our hearts are pure? As Proverbs 20 verse 9 says, who can say, 'I have made my heart pure. I am clean from my sin.' Friends, this is where the good news of the gospel comes in. See, these roots of godliness in verse 5 are the fruits of conversion. I think when Paul is describing the conscience and the heart, he must have had in mind the promise of the new covenant from Ezekiel 36 verse 25 to 27.

God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, from all your idols. I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. This inner transformation is the result of God's Spirit at work in our lives and it produces faith that perseveres and works. Unlike the empty words of false teachers, this message of the gospel actually has the power to create the realities that the law demands.

Friend, you can set all the New Year's resolutions that you want, but those resolutions won't give you the power to keep them. You're just stacking up a debt of burdens that you might not be able to keep. That's what God's law is like. None of us have kept God's law perfectly. We don't keep God's law by just resolving to keep it.

We need God to both forgive us and transform us. And that's what God has done through Christ. God sent his perfect and only Son who lived the life that we have not lived. He perfectly followed God's law as a map. He never turned to the left or to the right.

He perfectly mirrored God. He showed what God was like in the way that he loved God and loved others. Yet he died on the cross in our place. He died as a substitute for anyone who would turn from their sins and trust in him.

God raised him from the dead, seated him at his right hand, and God now pours out his Spirit through his Son to anyone who would turn from their sins and trust in him. Oh friend, turn from your sins today and know his transforming power in your life. You don't need new resolutions. You need a new heart. God will give that to you if you turn to Christ in repentance and faith.

Do so today.

And this is God's work. This isn't something we do for ourselves. This is something He does for us so that we can say with Paul in verse 2, Grace, mercy, and peace come from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. And when we recognize this, that any aspiration fulfilled, any obedience kept is not most fundamentally the result of our own efforts but the result of God's grace, we give glory to God. Which is the goal of all things, as Paul says in verse 11.

You see how he described the gospel as the gospel of the glory of the blessed God in verse 11? When God is described as blessed here, Paul is not saying that he's worthy of our blessings and honor, though that's true. He's saying that God is intrinsically blessed, or happy, or joyful, and that His happiness is glorious. There is an awesome weight to the intrinsic joy of the triune God. The good news of the gospel that we have not just heard but will see pictured here in a few minutes is that God's infinite joy led Him to give His only Son to reconcile us to himself, and that it is into that same joy that he now invites us through his Son.

The order here matters. Don't miss this. God is not said to be happy because he gave his Son. God gave his Son because he is happy.

In that message, that message of the gospel, that is a message worth fighting for. Friends, do not move on from that message. Come, behold the wondrous mystery. See the Father's plan unfold, bringing many sons to glory. Grace unmeasured, love untold.

Will you join the fight? Will you enter into his joy? Let's pray.

Lord God, we praise you as the blessed God. We praise you as the God of all joy and of love who has poured out your very own love on us most undeserving sinners. We thank you that even now your table is a picture of that love as we don't enter to receive your gifts, but you bring your gifts to us as you have done through your Son. We pray now in his name, amen.