In the Christian Life, There is No One ‘Master Key’

The first of six posts containing the substance of teaching given by Albert N. Martin at the 1984 Banner Youth Conference, presenting a basic biblical theology of the Christian life.

A question of major importance is ‘How am I to live as a Christian’? It is one thing to be certain on biblical grounds that I have life from Christ, now I must be clear as to how I am to live the life of Christ. My purpose in setting before you some of the major principles of living the Christian life is three-fold:

—I wish to sketch in a biblical theology of the Christian life. My purpose is unashamedly one of indoctrination. I wish by God’s help, by Spirit and word, to indoctrinate you in a basic biblical theology of the Christian life.

—I wish to inoculate you and to immunize you against the major false views of the Christian life. Some of us desperately wish we had received such an inoculation early in our Christian experience. We spent many years chasing rabbits that we could never catch. We went after experiences and states of mind and heart in the hope that somehow in so doing we would find what it really meant to live as a Christian.

—I wish to purge you of any existing misconceptions which you may presently have. It may not be pleasant but it is in your own best interests.

We now examine these major principles of the Christian life.

Principle 1: There is No One ‘Master Key’ to Living the Christian Life

The kind of teaching I am purposing to focus upon in this principle goes something like this: There is a Christian who for many years has found himself in the doldrums. He has had his sails hoisted but he goes nowhere. It seems that he knows little of the wind of the Spirit filling his sails and carrying him anywhere. Or, to change the analogy, he may have his sails hoisted but they seem for ever to be full of holes, and while all around him have hoisted sails and appear to be making progress he seems to be going nowhere. And then one day at a conference or while reading a book or in his own devotions he comes across a passage of Scripture, say John chapter 15, and there he reads in the words of our Lord Jesus that beautiful analogy of the Christian’s relationship to Christ as the relationship of a branch to a vine.

This so ignites his own spiritual life that he is almost overnight lifted to an entirely new plateau of spiritual vitality. Either the holes in his sails get mended or it is as though a mighty zephyr from God himself fills his sails, causing them to billow out to the full. He makes more substantial progress in the Christian life in six months than he has made in the previous six years. This man says that the master key to the Christian life is understanding John 15 and if others will only come to understand the concept of Christ’s relationship to his people as the branch and the vine are related they too will come to an entirely new plateau of spiritual vitality and reality in their Christian walk.

Another example could be someone who has been struggling with a certain besetting sin which leaves him continually bowed down and crippled with guilt. Here is a young Christian struggling with a certain area of besetting sin, unknown to others, and he is constantly bogged down. His wheels are up to the hub-caps in mud, and no matter how much he changes the gears and pushes down on the accelerator he is spinning his wheels and all he is doing is using up petrol and making a mess. He is in that position for weeks and months perhaps, and then one day at a conference or reading a book or in his own devotions he comes to Romans, chapter 6, and he reads the glorious truth that in union with Jesus Christ all that he was as old man has been put to death, and in union with Jesus Christ the totality of the old life has been buried in Christ’s tomb and he is now a new man in Jesus Christ and he sees that he is called upon to reckon it so, and in the light of that, present himself as alive from the dead. He reads the statement, ‘Sin shall not exercise lordship over you’. You are no longer in the realm of law, with condemnation, guilt and all of its crippling power, you are within the orbit and the dynamics of grace. What happens? In the believing appropriation of that truth the wheels are suddenly out of the mud, he is on solid tarmac and when he puts the thing in gear and presses on the accelerator he goes somewhere. And to everyone he meets he says, ‘Do you know what the key to the Christian life is? It is there in Romans 6’.

Now you know what a master key is? It is the key that will unlock any door. There is no one master key to living the Christian life. The Bible nowhere presents us with a master key. What it presents us with is a keyring on which is hung every text of the Bible. In Matthew 4:4, our Lord, quoting from Deuteronomy, said ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’ but by what? ‘Every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God’. If you are to be a whole Christian you need the whole of the Word of God, not one master key.

Again, 2 Timothy 3:16, 17: ‘All scripture is breathed out of God and is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for child-training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished unto every good work’. It is the totality of scripture that is calculated to make whole men and women. ‘All scripture is breathed out of God’ and all scripture ‘is profitable for reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness’ in order that the man of God may be complete. We need the whole Bible to make us whole Christians. We could take Psalm 1. How is the blessed man described? Blessed is the man, negatively, who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. You want to be blessed? You will not be blessed spending hours in front of your ‘telly’. For the most part the counsel of your television is the raw counsel of ungodliness, explicitly and implicitly, and there is no-one who makes any significant strides in grace who spends hours at indiscriminate television watching.

The counsel of the ungodly comes through your popular tabloids, filthy gossip sheets. You do not grow in grace feeding your minds on that filth. ‘Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly nor stands in the way of sinners’. Do not tell me you are growing in grace when you stand with the utterly lawless patterns of life of your big-name rock stars and you let their drug-oriented, lawless, sex-soaked lyrics filter into your mind. Do not tell me you grow in grace. You cannot and you will not when you walk in the counsel of the ungodly.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in … the one great key to live the Christian life. That is not what it says! His delight is ‘in the law of the Lord’. ‘The law of the Lord’ means the totality of God’s revealed will. He meditates in the law of God day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. He shall be fruitful. He shall be one whose leaves never wither. He shall be the one who prospers in whatever he does. There is no one master key to living the Christian life. The view violates the entire structure of the Bible, particularly the epistles of the New Testament.

Now what kind of problems did Christians in the New Testament have? Take the church at Corinth. They had the problem of divisions, they had the problem of immorality, they had questions about marriage, questions about Christian liberty – shall I do this, do that, go here, go there? They had questions about self-denial, they had questions about spiritual gifts. You see, if there were one master key to the Christian life, Paul would simply hang out that key and say, ‘Here it is. Whatever your problem is, here is your key’.

You need to be immunized against this teaching that there is one master key to the Christian life. There is no one master key, much as your flesh and my flesh would love to have one!

Albert N. Martin (1934–2026) was a pastor and preacher whose penetrating exposition of God’s word has been a transformative influence on many. His noted lectures on pastoral theology, originally given at Trinity Ministerial Academy, can be accessed in mp3 or book format. Al Martin is the author of four booklets published by the Trust – A Life of Principled Obedience, Living the Christian Life (a booklet comprising the content of this six-part series), The Practical Implications of Calvinism, and What’s Wrong with Preaching Today? 

Look out for the remaining five posts coming Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of this and next week.