The battle with indwelling sin described.

So presumptuous are they that they are firmly convinced heaven is theirs, yea, they are here represented as complaining to their Judge when He closes the door against them, putting in a plea for their claim at the bar of justice and arguing as though it were unfair that they should be excluded from the everlasting bliss of the righteous. Thus it is clearly implied that they lived and died in the full assurance that they were the objects of God's approbation, that they were completely secured from the wrath to come.

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When God sends forth His servants to preach the Gospel the Devil soon after prompts his emissaries to proclaim "another gospel": when God speaks the Devil gives a mocking echo. Satan has found that he can work far more effectively by counterfeiting the Truth than by openly denying it, hence in every age "false prophets" have abounded, and therefore we should be neither surprised nor stumbled by their number or success in our own day.

While the verses before us were addressed first and locally to the Jews of Christ's day, yet it is obvious that they have a far wider application, that they belong to the Gentiles of our day. As we have proceeded through this Sermon section by section, we have endeavoured to point out again and again and make clear the force and relevancy of our Lord's words as they respected His immediate hearers and also their pertinency unto and bearing upon ourselves.

Arthur Pink: 'For whom [God] did foreknow, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren' (Rom. 8:29). What an amazing statement is that! Certainly one which no mortal mind had ever thought of inventing. That some out of the fallen descendants of Adam should be not only saved from their sins and delivered from the wrath to come, but decreed by God to be made like that blessed one in whom his soul delights: that is the climax of grace, for it is not possible to confer a greater or higher favour upon its chosen subjects. That depraved creatures should yet become replicas of the Holy One – that worms of the earth should be fashioned after the Lord of glory – surpasses finite comprehension, yet faith receives, and love adores. But mark the perfect accuracy of this statement: not predestined 'to be conformed to his Son' – for that would have involved our deification (which is impossible) – but unto his 'image'.

Abandon your course of self-pleasing, bewail your rebellion against God and set your heart firmly against sill. Third, surrender yourself to God's righteous claims and yield yourself unreservedly to the Lordship of Christ. That exhortation is enforced by the following reason: "for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat." All who are unconverted proceed along it.

Why is it that there are scarcely any left among us who really believe that only the few will reach heaven? There can only be one answer: because it is now generally held that heaven can be obtained on much easier terms than those prescribed by Christ. The adulterous generation in which our lot is cast are quite sure that heaven can be reached without treading the only way which leads there, that the kingdom of God can be entered without passing through "much tribulation"