"One
is unlikely to assert that we are justified by sanctification, but,
whether done intentionally or not, that is what happens when we allow
the teaching of Christian living, ethical imperatives, and exhortations
to holiness to be separated from and to take the place of the clear
statement of the gospel. We can preach our hearts out on texts about
what we ought to be, what makes a mature church,
or what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives, but if we do not
constantly, in every sermon, show the link between the Spirit's work in
us to Christ's work for us, we will distort the message and send people
away with a natural theology of salvation by works. Preaching from the
epistles demands of the preacher that the message of the document be
taken as a whole even if only a selection of texts, or just one verse,
is to be expounded. Every sermon should be understandable on its own as a
proclamation of Christ. It is no good to say that we dealt with the
justification element three weeks ago and now we are following Paul into
the imperatives and injunctions for Christian living. Paul wasn't
anticipating a three-week gap between his exposition of the gospel and
his defining of the implications of the gospel in our lives. Nor was he
anticipating that some people would not be present for the reading of
the whole epistle and would hear part of its message out of context."
Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching The Whole Bible As Christian Scripture, p. 237
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