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The sermon presents Christianity as a present possession rather than merely a future hope. Through faith in Christ, believers are already forgiven, justified, adopted as God’s children, and given eternal life, though sanctification continues to develop. Present conduct matters because it reveals the direction of a person’s character and eternal destiny; genuine religion therefore includes moral obedience and rejection of sin. Hearers are urged not to delay but to submit to Christ and believe in Him for salvation now.
Theological center: Salvation by grace through faith in Christ grants believers present forgiveness, justification, adoption, sanctification, assurance, and eternal life.
Applications: Seek Christ now · Believe in Christ · Submit to God · Consider the present
Primary texts: 1 John 3:2 · Romans 8:1 · John 6:47
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” 1 John 3:2 I SHALL not pretend to preach from the whole of my text this morning, short though it is. The word “now” is to me the most prominent word in the text and I shall make it so this morning. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” It is astonishing how distance blunts the keen edge of anything that is disagreeable. War is at all times a most fearful scourge. The thought of slain bodies and of murdered men must always harrow up the soul. But because we hear of these things in the distance, there are few Englishmen who can truly enter into their horrors. If we should hear the booming of cannon on the deep which girdles this island, if we should see at our doors the marks of carnage and bloodshed—then should we more thoroughly appreciate what war means. But distance takes away the horror, and we therefore speak of war with too much levity, and even read of it with an interest not sufficiently linked with pain. As it is with war, so it is with death. Death is a frightful thing. He who is the bravest must still fear before it, for at best it is a solemn thing to die. Man, therefore, adopts the expedient of putting off all thoughts of death. It may be very near to him but he conceives it to be at a distance, and then the same effect is produced as when war is at a distance—its horror is forgotten and we speak of it with less solemnity. So likewise with true religion—men are constrained to believe that there is truth in religion. Though there are some foolhardy enough to deny it, the most of us in this enlightened land are obliged to acknowledge that there is a power in Godliness. What, then, does the worldling do? He practices the same expedient. He puts religion far away—he knows that its disagreeableness will be diminished by his believing it to be distant. Hence there has sprung up in the minds of the unregenerate world a notion that religion is a thing to be accomplished just at the close of life, and the usual prayer of an ungodly man, when in the slightest degree pricked in his conscience is, “Oh, that I may be saved at last!” He does not feel anxious to be saved now. Religion is a thing for which he has no appetite, and therefore, believing it essential to insure his eternal welfare, he adopts the alternative of saying, “I hope to have it at last.” The religion, then, of the present, is not the worldling’s religion. He tolerates that which speaks of eternity, that which deals with dying, that which leads him to look back with a specious repentance upon a life spent in sin, but not that which will enable him…