Ordo Salutis (part 4)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Heavenly Father, thank you so much for bringing us here this morning so that we can study your word, look at your word, learn more about the way in which you have saved us.

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I just pray, oh God, that you would focus our minds on your truth so it would help us to understand you better.

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As we sit under the teaching of Pastor Mike this morning, Lord, I just pray that you would use his words to affect us in such a way that only you can, that you would continually draw us to yourself and that you would help us in our confirmation to be more like your son.

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In your name we pray, amen. Alright, so I sprinted in here because I might have been running a little bit late so I didn't make more copies of the handout that I've given out the last three or four times.

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Does anybody still have their handouts? I have a couple of handouts. Does anybody want one that doesn't have one?

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A couple of people. Steve, would you be willing to make a few copies with that? Okay. So, the great and powerful

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Steve Nelson will make some photocopies, for which

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I'm very, very appreciative. I think, I think, yeah, there's plenty of people over there. Anitra's over there, you can have her help you make copies if you need it, so we should be good.

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Okay, so, for those of you who haven't been here, I've been going through the Ordo Salutis, the

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Order of Salvation, and I think it's gone into a few more parts than I expected it to.

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I thought it was going to be a two -part series. This is part four. I'm dubious as to my ability to get through everything

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I have prepared today, so we're probably looking at a few more. But I think it's a good study, I think it helps us to really understand this logical sequence of our salvation and how we are made right with God through his sovereign plan.

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And two weeks ago, we talked about the calling, the general and the effectual call, and we talked about regeneration.

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And we're getting into kind of an interesting part here with the Ordo Salutis, because it begins with election, and it begins with predestination, and those are things that happen when?

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Before the foundation of the world, right? And then we get into the call, the general call, this is something that happens over the course of a believer's life before they are saved, the effectual call, and then we start before the foundation of the world, and now we're in this sequence.

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We have the effectual call, regeneration, faith, repentance, justification, these are all things that happen functionally, chronologically, simultaneously.

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But for us, in our understanding of theology, we have this logical order that helps us to comprehend how and why certain things happen the way they do.

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And that I think is very, very helpful for us in our understanding, and it informs a lot of our theology as we come to the text and as we seek to understand what it says.

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It really helps us make determinations with things like, are we

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Calvinist, or are we Arminian, or many, many other things.

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Do we believe in works -based salvation or not? So it helps us to understand what it took for God to work a saving work in us, it helps us to understand where we stand in light of what

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God has done for us, and what we need to do about it, right? That is really kind of the structure, almost, of a gospel presentation, isn't it?

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What God had to do, where we stand, and what we need to do about it. This is the definition, and I've read this a few times, but I do think it's valuable.

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This is the definition from Ligonier on the Order of Seleutus. It says, the Order of Seleutus is the order of salvation.

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This focuses on the acts of God and the response of the individual in salvation.

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That's an interesting thing, and we're going to get into some real, if you needed a handout, could you just raise your hand?

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Steve's got some handouts. Thank you, Steve, for being greater than I. So this really,

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I think it's going to get a little sticky today as we look at what we are doing in this process, and how that all makes sense.

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Last time we talked about regeneration, and when we are regenerated, we are fundamentally changed by God.

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God changes our nature, and we hear this a lot of ways. Ezekiel 36 says, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit

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I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

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We see Psalm 51, creating me what? A clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

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And then, that was the wrong way. This is broken.

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And then 2 Corinthians 5 .17 says what? Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

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The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. And there's passages all over scripture that pertain to this.

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Jeremiah 24, 1 Samuel, Daniel. Regeneration is a theme in the scripture, and for good reason.

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We cannot change our own hearts. We need God to do it. You see this going down every time

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I touch it? That's not good. So, as we look at this order of salvation, regeneration is the pivot point where the sinner becomes the saint.

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See what I mean? Question. Once God has regenerated the heart, what is the immediate response of the new believer?

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Let's not all raise hands at once. Faith and repentance? What he said?

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Good. Anything else? You guys have a cheat sheet in front of you. That's handy, isn't it? Sorry, Karen.

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I'll do my best to put it back, I promise. But this is going to drive me crazy. Okay. Faith and repentance.

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So, if we look at our list, our logical order of salvation on the left, numbers five and six coming after regeneration are, rather unsurprisingly, faith and repentance.

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Why is it important, by the way, that we understand that regeneration precedes faith and repentance?

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Okay. Is Steve taking all your answers? Because all we contribute to our salvation is sin.

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I said, and my little answer here is, because Ephesians 2 .8 .9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

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It is the gift of God, not a result of work, so that no man may boast.

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And this gets interesting. This is really interesting. And if we believe this, that we contribute nothing to our salvation, then from an apologetic perspective, how do we explain this to someone who disagrees with us?

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How is it that God can save us through something that we do, even as it says that we are not saved by works?

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Because that's what it says here. It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith. What is faith?

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Faith is a gift from God. It is. But what is faith? If I sit in this chair,

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I have faith that this chair is going to hold me up. My faith might be misplaced, in which case

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I'm on America's Funniest Videos, but I have faith that if I'm going to plant my bottom in that chair, it's going to hold me up.

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That's faith. That is something that I have. I'm believing that this chair is going to hold me up.

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How is it that we are to have faith if we are to believe, which, by the way, is what we are called to preach in the

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Great Commission, is it not? How is it that we do this thing, and yet God uses it to save us?

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The only way that's possible is if faith is something that is a gift of God. It's something that is affected by God.

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Something that is called by God. And that's exactly what it says. By grace you have been saved through faith.

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Not that you have saved yourself, but that you have been saved. So, what do we call that?

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When we look at Ephesians 2, we see very clearly that this is an act of God that results in our faith.

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He pours out his grace on us, and it accomplishes, it does a particular thing.

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So, if we look at our cheat sheet, if we look at our Ordo Salutis, what is this act?

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What is it that God does that precedes faith? Regeneration. And this really gets to one of the big differences between, and I mentioned this before, the

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Arminian view, or a Catholic view, and our view as Calvinists, this order of faith and regeneration.

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We've talked about it before, but it has huge impacts on our theology.

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When we look at something like the Ordo Salutis, I think it's really, really helpful, especially in a church like ours, where we have a desire to really learn things really, really deeply.

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So, we'll say, you know what? I'm doing a 75 -part study on justification by faith alone, and I'm going to get super deep into this thing, and I'll be studying it for the next three months.

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I'll come up for air in November. Let me know how you're doing. That's kind of,

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I don't know that that's a bad perspective per se, but one thing that that kind of engenders when you do that kind of deep study is that you're like, okay, this is what

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I have these blinders on. I'm focusing on this one thing. Some stuff happens over here, and then we get to justification, and then some stuff happens after that.

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And when we look at something that is systemic like this, it really helps us to understand that, okay, if we're going to focus on faith and repentance, we need to understand that something happened to get us to this point where faith and repentance can occur.

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So, we've talked a little bit about what is faith. Hebrews 11 has a great definition of faith.

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What does it say? Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

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That is a great definition of faith. I have a couple of Bible dictionary definitions here. A constant outlook of trust towards God, whereby human beings abandon all reliance on their own efforts and put full confidence in Him, His Word, and His promises.

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I have a shorter definition that is simply reliance upon and trust in God. That is what faith is.

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Wayne Grudem in his Systematic Theology has this handy way that he analyzes faith, and he breaks it into three parts.

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He says that a true saving faith requires three things. It requires knowledge, it requires approval or agreement, and it requires personal trust.

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It requires all of these things. And if we look at these, we can really understand why it is that all of them are necessary.

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Romans tells us that we must hear before we can believe. How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe in Him in whom they have not heard?

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Jesus Christ tells us that He is the only way to heaven. And we know that we must hear the

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Word of God. We must hear the Gospel if we are to submit and we are to believe in Him.

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It is critical that we have a clear understanding, not just of there's a God who created everything, and He's George Burns' grandpa

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God, and He's great, and we're going to go hang out with Him because we're good. We need to have a clear understanding of who

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Jesus Christ is and what Jesus Christ has done. There is no other way to heaven.

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And then we see this thing, approval or agreement. And this is an interesting one because we see in the

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Scriptures examples of agreement that are not salvific. James 2 talks about the demons.

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What does James 2 say about the demons? They believe and they shudder.

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They have the knowledge, right? They know who God is. They believe that God is

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God, that He is a righteous authority. But they do not have personal trust in Him.

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They don't have that relationship with Him. And so their response is a right response.

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It is a response of fear and terror. So knowledge and agreement alone does not save.

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Nicodemus, John 3, the beginning of John chapter 3. At this point, is Nicodemus a

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Christian? No, he's not. And we see as John 3 opens up in this conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus that he clearly does not understand that personal relationship with Christ, and that salvific relationship with Christ.

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What are the first words that he says? Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God.

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For no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him. We know that God is

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Yahweh. We know that you come from Him. But we don't trust you.

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We don't have that relationship with you. Even Agrippa, talking with Paul in Acts 26.

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They're going back and forth. Paul is preaching. Paul says, King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets?

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I know that you believe. And then Agrippa responds and says, in a short time, would you persuade me to become a

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Christian? King Agrippa knew. And this is really, when we talk about faith and we talk about belief, this is that belief component here.

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This is that idea of that personal relationship. John 3 .16 doesn't say whoever knows that he is

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God. It says whoever believes in Him. Both of the dictionary definitions I read earlier contain this notion of trust.

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Trust is so important. Trust in God. Individual, personal trust. John 1 describes

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Christians as those who believed in His name. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name,

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He gave the right to become children of God. It's complete trust.

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Salvific trust. Trust as Savior. Trust as Lord. Did you want to add something? I was very convicted of that over the last few years.

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And so now in our home group, we're studying Mark. We're studying the Gospel of Mark and what Jesus did and who

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He was with the apostles. Because it is critical to understand who Jesus is and to trust in His whole person.

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And that's really biblically when it talks about believing in His name. That's what that represents. A .W.

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Pink in writing on the topic of Lordship, Salvation, specifically says that something more than believing is necessary to salvation.

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A heart that is steeled in rebellion against God cannot savingly believe. It must first be broken.

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No one can receive Christ as his Savior while he rejects Him as Lord. It is true that the preacher adds that the one who accepts

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Christ should also surrender to Him as Lord. But he once spoils it by assertion that though the convert fails to do so, nevertheless, heaven is sure to him.

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That is one of the devil's lies. What is he saying there? It is true that the preacher would say you must accept

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Jesus as Lord and Savior, but the moment that he suggests that you do not have to wholly submit to the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ, you are prostituting that Gospel. We'll talk a lot more about that as we move from faith into repentance.

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These two things are coupled together. I don't want to say yin and yang. That's probably not the right thing.

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In many ways, they are mirror images of each other. John 3 .16

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again does not refer to those who merely believe Him, but those who believe in Him.

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And the consequence of that, if our faith is built upon our agreement or our approval, which is built upon our knowledge, then as we grow in knowledge, we should also be growing in faith.

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And if we're not, then that is something that we need to investigate internally, that we need to really look at in ourselves and see what's going on there.

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And as we grow in that knowledge, one thing that happens as our faith grows is that we become more sensitive to sin.

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Our awareness of our own sin grows. That is why when we look at the epistle to the

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Roman Church, Paul describes himself as not just a sinner, but THE sinner. Even though we know that at that point in his life he is arguably one of the least sinful people on the planet.

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Soft shoe around those words. But he is completely and totally dedicated his life to the service of Jesus Christ, so much so that he can say to his disciples, imitate me as I imitate

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Christ. And yet he describes himself not as a sinner, but as THE sinner. Because as we grow in our faith and our knowledge, we also grow in our awareness of our sinfulness.

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When we are saved, there is frequently a dramatic change in our lives where everything that we loved we hate and everything that we hated or thought were ridiculous we now love.

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And that is this attitude of repentance. And that is what we see next on our Ordo Salutis.

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I mentioned this before. Affectual call, regeneration, faith, repentance, justification. These are all things that happen really at the same time.

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And so when we kind of think about this as chronological beings who are going through time, we are like, well, okay, is there a millisecond between?

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Not really. All of these, we break them out to understand logically.

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There is consequence going from one to the other, but really these happen more or less simultaneously.

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With faith and repentance there is a continuing, it is like a vector, it has a starting point and a direction and it continues in that direction.

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But it is something that has an instantaneous beginning. We want to study, to worship, to learn more about Him.

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We now treasure the Word of God. Has anybody ever seen those Facebook videos? They just get shared on Facebook of a delivery of Bibles to a group of people maybe in their native language and it is the first time they have ever had

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Bibles. Has anybody ever seen these videos? They are like some of the most convicting videos to me because it is like this swarm on the pile of Bibles and they are all taking their

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Bibles and they are kissing them and they are crying. That is love and that is desire to have the

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Word of God. For me, I am like, I have six Bibles on the shelf. I guess

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I better study. It is so convicting to me because that is the attitude we should have when we come to the text and it is not.

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And repentance is packed. There are a lot of different things we can look at in there. 2 Corinthians 7 As it is,

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I rejoice not because you were grieved but because you were grieved into repenting for you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret whereas worldly grief produces death.

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So when we talk about repentance, it is really two things. The first thing is that it is sorrow for our sin.

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People grieve over sins all the time but the result of grief can be a lot of things.

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It can lead to anger. It can lead to avoidance. Pastor Steve shared a video of a bicycle cop who was riding around catching people that were in their cars on Facebook.

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Anybody see this video? It is unbelievable. Half of them, the second they realize they are caught they just burst into tears and they are crying and they are super upset.

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At the very end of the video, it is unbelievable. If you haven't seen this, send me a message or whatever,

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I will find the link and send it to you. The police officer in his uniform rides away and this lady yells after him get a life, get a job.

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He is in his uniform doing his work but it is this response.

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It is grief and then anger. When we think about sin what we first think about is grief but also as a

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Christian that grief should lead to sorrow. I talked to a teacher about this a long time ago and I don't remember what happened but there was something that happened it was some horrible event and one of the ideas we kept coming back to this idea that there is no place in our world for sorrow, for sin.

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Everybody has to be angry about something there always has to be someone to blame oh no, it was a natural disaster so it is

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FEMA's fault or this guy's fault or that guy's fault for not adequately preparing 7 million people to whatever but there is no sorrow for the tragedy.

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Sorrow is not a word that really exists in our culture anymore. For the

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Christian there is certainly grief but that grief leads to sorrow for sin.

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True repentance is sorrow that ultimately changes our desires and creates in us a willful desire to turn away from our sinful behavior and to focus on righteousness.

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Now I do want to say that we are to live our lives with repentant hearts but with regard to a specific sin that we repent of the turn away from sinfulness that is repentance the ongoing life of righteousness repentance is the act of turning away

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I think it is helpful for us to understand this not including you two, three

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Does anybody remember Pastor Mike's object lesson for repentance? Go ahead Steve So what is the object lesson?

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What does he have the kids do? He yells out repent Do you have any funny stories about this by the way?

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I'd love to hear one Any of you, not just Haley No, it was great every time

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It was perfect So the kids are marching in a line Is that pretty much how it happens?

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Oh no? I'm just trying to get the picture here So it's one at a time?

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Okay Repent But you remember and you're never going to forget it and neither are we

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The reason why this is a fantastic object lesson is because it puts in our mind this clear image of turning around and going in the other direction

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This is a great tool for us to understand what repentance is

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Because it is these two things It is sorrow for our sinfulness and it is a desire to turn away from our sinfulness

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I think Tom, this is something you alluded to a little bit when you were talking about carnal

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Christians in some of your flavor text This idea that a lot of denominations miss this whole point of turning away from our sin reflecting a changed life

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In this area, I think the big example of that would be the Catholic Church How does the

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Catholic Church handle sin? If you're in the Catholic Church and you sin, what do you do? Just all shut out

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You go see the priest, you go to confession Personal atonement, which is in itself another problem

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But then what? 20 Hail Marys, 10 Our Fathers Are there other ones?

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I never did the whole confession thing Do whatever you want You go back to being an idiot again

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But the focus is not on the turning away from your sinfulness but on the atonement for your sins so that you can go on and do whatever you want to do again

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Hebrews 12, we see Esau Esau sells his birthright and then what?

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He wept over his sin, but he did not repent So there was no reconciliation

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According to scripture, repentance is a holy and inward act and should not be confounded with the change of life that proceeds from it

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Confession of sin and reparation of wrongs are fruits of repentance

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Repentance is only a negative condition and not a positive means of salvation

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While it is the sinner's present duty it does not offset the claims of the law on account of past transgressions

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Moreover, true repentance never exists except in conjunction with faith while on the other hand, wherever there is true faith there is also real repentance

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The two are but different aspects of the same turning a turning away from sin in the direction of God This is

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Birkhoff Murray calls it a penitent faith This idea that they are tightly coupled together

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They are opposite sides of the same coin In fact, if you read Grudem's Systematic Theology he even makes the case that the same three -tiered system that we talked about knowledge, agreement, and trust is also applicable with repentance

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Knowledge that we have sinned agree that what God has commanded is right and that we have sinned against it and then trust that we are to turn away from that sinfulness

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Much like faith grows throughout our lives so too does repentance because it informs our behaviors and it lasts until we die

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Is there repentance in heaven, by the way? No, why not? There's no sin in heaven

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Sounds better every day We are new creations with new regenerated hearts who respond to our changed nature with faith and repentance

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And that's great, that is wonderful And that is a comfort to us Not only is there faith and repentance as a response to regeneration but there's also thankfulness

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We are thankful for what he has done for us when we can see it

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But there's a problem still And that problem is the law We have still sinned against God We have committed sins against the holy law of God So he performs this miraculous act of regeneration within us but he also has to perform a legal act with regard to the law and we see that in number 7 of the

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Ordo Salutis Justification It is 9 .35,

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buckle up As I started studying justification

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I looked on my bookshelf for really good resources on justification

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Just to start, I had one initial goal I want a comprehensive definition of justification that I could start with that I could work from that I could take apart and analyze sort of like I did with faith and repentance

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James White wrote a great book called The God Who Justifies Very, very good book

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So I'm flipping through and I find Justified, the Bible's meaning, perfect It's a 20 page chapter

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Justification really is something that warrants an extended study more than one

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Sunday school session even just on the topic of justification because it is a fascinating thing

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So we're not really going to do it justice Get that? But who can define for me justification?

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Who can define justification for me? Well, you know what, that's okay I'll take that one, thank you

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A declaration of not guilty, I like that Being put into a right standing with God So, I think with justification there's two really important things that we need to understand about justification

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And one of them is, what is it? But the other one is, how is it accomplished?

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And this is important because Well, I'll just bury the lead here and I won't tell you, there's a good reason why we need to know that We'll get there

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We can look at the biblical definition of justification That's helpful 2 Corinthians 5 .21

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Probably some of you have that memorized Sorry, I scrolled with my punching

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That's right ESV changes up the word order just to make it confusing for us

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For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin So that in him we might become the righteousness of God Hendrickson describes justification similarly

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He says That act of God the Father whereby he counts our sins to be

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Christ's and Christ's righteousness to be ours It is the opposite of condemnation

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It implies deliverance from the curse of God because that curse was placed on Christ It means forgiveness, full and free

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It is God's free gift, the fruit of sovereign grace and not in any way the result of human goodness or accomplishment

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So this answers the big question of what is justification Who here has heard the term double imputation?

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Double imputation we've heard We've also heard the great exchange Similar idea

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And that really describes this event It's the imputation of the penalty of our sins onto the account of Jesus Christ and the imputation of Christ's righteousness onto our account

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But both of those are important How many imputations are there in the Bible? Trick question 3

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What's the third imputation? Well that's part of the righteousness of Christ Adam's sin imputed onto our account

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As our federal head, Adam sinned and his sinfulness is imputed to us And then there's the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us and the penalty of our sin to Jesus Christ So as we look at these

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We'll get into imputation in a minute But question

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What would happen if our sins were imputed to Christ's account and that was it?

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So from a strict interpretation Just as if I never sinned

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We would have no righteousness So what happens?

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It's an impossibility It is critical for the righteousness of Jesus Christ to be imputed to our account

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Because without it, we have no righteousness We cannot get into heaven without righteousness

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So both of these are super important So just as if I never sinned

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Helpful, it aligns from a word perspective closely with justification But it's an incomplete definition

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In fact, I read a book I studied a book And this book is an arduous read

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It was very difficult But if you're really into that kind of thing Brian Vickers wrote a book called

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Jesus, Blood and Righteousness, Paul's Theology of Imputation And it works through justification over the corpus of Christian history

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And it's really interesting because it turns out that Martin Luther really struggled with the positive imputation of Christ's righteousness onto our account

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And that was one of the big reasons why he was almost driven mad in a monastery really

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Because he just couldn't grasp that we would have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us But for those of us mere mortals

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I include myself, that book was brutal The God Who Justifies by James White is an excellent resource on the topic

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Does anybody remember the rough breakdown of Romans? Romans chapters 1, 2 and 3

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Talk about what? Sin and condemnation Chapters 4 and 5 Justification 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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Sanctification, 9, 10, 11 Past, present, future of Israel, 12 and beyond, Christian living So unsurprisingly, here we are in Romans 4

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For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness

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Now to the one who works his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due

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And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly his faith is counted as righteousness

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Justification by faith That is why in our order salutis we see faith preceding justification

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Romans 4 down to verse 22 That is why his faith, Abraham's faith was counted to him as righteousness

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But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone but for ours also

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It will be counted to us who believe in him who was raised from the dead, Jesus our

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Lord who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification Therefore, chapter 5 verse 1

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Since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ So we see that this is what justification is this idea of double imputation this great exchange, our sins for Christ's righteousness and I mentioned this before, how is it done?

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This seems kind of trivial until we look at it and we realize that it is actually really, really important Murray describes justification and helps us with this when he says

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Regeneration is an act of God in us Justification is a judgment of God with respect to us

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The distinction is like that of the distinction between the act of a surgeon and the act of a judge

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The surgeon, when he removes an inward cancer does something in us That is not what a judge does

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He gives a verdict regarding our judicial status If we are innocent, he declares us accordingly

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And so when we talk about justification by faith it is always described as a forensic or legal declaration

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Justification and condemnation I talked about them as antonyms They are set against each other in scripture It is

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God who justifies, who is to condemn Christ Jesus is the one who died

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More than that, who was raised Who is at the right hand of God Who indeed is interceding for us all

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What does condemnation mean? Real question What does condemnation mean?

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Under the penalty, you stand condemned It is a label that is applied to you It is a condition that is applied to you

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When that happens does it reflect an internal change in the person or is it a change in their position? It is a change in their position

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And so justification, likewise, is a change in position When we talk about the

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Great Exchange they are not infusements

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This is what is critically important here This is something that is not understood by certain denominations

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What do I mean by that? If we are Christians, we have been justified

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If justification was more than a legal declaration and God actually swapped our sinfulness and gave it to Christ and God actually took

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Christ's righteousness and gave it to us would we still sin? No, we would be perfectly righteous

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Do we sin? Yes So, when we look at this in a very logical way we can understand that justification cannot possibly mean an infusement of righteousness

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And if so, if it did We would need continual justification over and over and over again

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It would be like blood transfusions of righteousness over and over and over again

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But every time we see justification presented in the scriptures it is a one -time act

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It is a declaration by God It is raining, huh? Justification does not mean

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Regeneration does not change our nature Regeneration changes our nature

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Justification is the method by which our creator our judge points at us and says, as Pastor Bob said

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Not guilty It is the way in which he sees us as though we are wrapped in the robes of Christ's righteousness

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For there is no distinction For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith

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This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance

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He had passed over former sins It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Let's pray

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Heavenly Father, thank You so much for these words from Your Bible Thank You so much that You have given them to us that You have wrought a work through holy men that were governed by Your Holy Spirit I just pray,

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Father, that You would commit these words to our hearts that You would help us in our understanding of faith, repentance, and justification

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Give us joy and give us strength as we worship You in song and as we worship You in hearing the preaching of Your Word today

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Help us, O God, as we go from this place and continue our lives that we would show through our lives that we are