For Christs Love Compels Us
A Sermon on John 1:16
Originally preached March 22, 1964
Scripture
16And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Sermon Description
The Christian must consider how they feel about sin and about Jesus Christ. They must ask if their sin disgusts them to where they are driven to confession and repentance, and if they are drawn to love God, His Word, and people more and more? In this sermon on John 1:16 titled “For Christ’s Love Compels Us,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones delves into the joyous details surrounding the love of the Savior and how His love affects lives and desires. Paramount to understanding how the love of Christ affects is understanding the doctrine of union with Christ. This doctrine explains that those who have repented and believed in Christ are also united with Him. This not only means that the Christian is united to a righteousness like Christ’s through sanctification and justification, but also that they have been united to a death like Christ’s, namely, that they have died to sin. From this point Dr. Lloyd-Jones shows how the follower of Christ is not merely credited with Christ’s goodness, but also given a new heart and new desires to put off sin and put on righteousness.
Sermon Breakdown
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The sermon focuses on 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 which states "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again."
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The sermon begins by explaining that the Christian life is about receiving the fullness of Christ. Everything in the Christian life derives from Christ and our relationship to him.
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The sermon then focuses on how Christ's death promotes our sanctification. Sanctification is the process of being made holy and conforming to the image of Christ.
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Christ died for us and in our place to reconcile us to God. Christ took our guilt and punishment upon himself so we could be forgiven.
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However, we must go beyond just believing Christ died for us. We must realize we died with Christ. When Christ died, we died with him. We are no longer in Adam but have died to that old way of living. We are new creations in Christ.
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Christ died not just so we could be forgiven but so we would no longer live for ourselves. He died so we would live for him. The purpose of Christ's death was to redeem us from all iniquity and make us zealous for good works.
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The love of Christ constrains us. It pressures us and leaves us no choice but to live for Christ. The love of Christ constrains us as we think about why Christ died and what he accomplished.
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We must ask ourselves why Christ shed his precious blood. The answer is so we would no longer live vain, selfish lives inherited from our culture and upbringing. He died to make us holy as God is holy.
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The love of Christ should constrain our thinking, reasoning, judging, and philosophy of life. It should control all we do. We must give Christ our whole selves, not just parts.
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We must meditate on Christ's death so we can say the love of Christ compels us to live for him. Christ demands our all.
The Book of John
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was a Welsh evangelical minister who preached and taught in the Reformed tradition. His principal ministry was at Westminster Chapel, in central London, from 1939-1968, where he delivered multi-year expositions on books of the bible such as Romans, Ephesians and the Gospel of John. In addition to the MLJ Trust’s collection of 1,600 of these sermons in audio format, most of these great sermon series are available in book form (including a 14 volume collection of the Romans sermons), as are other series such as "Spiritual Depression", "Studies in the Sermon on the Mount" and "Great Biblical Doctrines". He is considered by many evangelical leaders today to be an authority on biblical truth and the sufficiency of Scripture.