The Gospel: The Cross of Christ — Paul Washer

Young faces, and I would like to be able to just spend hours with you, just talk about the things of God, things that can be gleaned from the scriptures, things that can help you to walk with Him. But tonight, as these meetings are about the cross of Christ, I'm going to preach a message that I preach everywhere I go about the cross of Jesus Christ.

The Cross as the Christian’s Magnificent Obsession

And you get that aspect of your theology right and everything else falls into place. That the Christian life is being literally mesmerized by what God has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ, it should become our magnificent obsession to track down and trace out what God has done for us, because when that occurs, there's very little need for coercion, manipulation or seemingly pull yourself up by your bootstraps to be motivated to serve God and to love others.

All our energy, all our prompting, all our strength should come out of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Let's open up our Bibles to the Book of Romans, chapter three, verse twenty three. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, where then is boasting it is excluded by what kind of law of works?

No, but by law of faith. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, come before you in the name of your son. And what a dear and precious and powerful name that is. Father, I'm overwhelmed at your kindness and your goodness and your mercy and your grace.

You are so good. And the cross of Christ, so powerful that even a man like myself, prone with so many weaknesses, can know that he stands in full view of you, that you see every part, every fiber of my being and yet still have confidence to stand before you because of the power, the preciousness, the worth of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Our confidence is Christ. Relegate everything else, Lord, to useless refuse. Our confidence is in Christ and Christ alone. We ask you tonight, Lord, to help us to understand. To illuminate our hearts and our minds, to understand this text, to speak it forth, to hear it.

To be transformed by its truth. Lord, we acknowledge that. That apart from the working of the Holy Spirit, men cannot be converted. Nor can men grow. Or even stay where there are in the things of God.

We have constant need of him. And pray, Father, that you would see to it and see fit. Lord, we ask you tonight to empower us and strengthen us and teach us by the Holy Spirit in Jesus' name and for his sake.

The Universal Guilt of Sin

Amen. For all have sinned. You don't understand what that means, because if you did and you were outside of Christ at this very moment, you would fall on your face and tremble. You would have no strength left in you if you knew what it meant to sin against God.

At the same time, the Christian does not understand fully what this passage is saying, for all have sinned, because if we did, our joy would be so unspeakable. We would have to be chained to our pews to control us, that we have been forgiven of such vile crimes against God.

For all have sinned. Why does that not bother us? Well, first of all, we don't know who God is. We live in a culture that has dressed down deity. We live in a culture that sees God as this sort of benevolent, benign, somewhat lacking in intelligence.

Creator who will accept absolutely everyone on the face of the earth, that man is his most chosen and most precious possession and that he would do everything, even slack his own justice and lower the bar of his own rule in order to receive man to himself.

Have this idea of God that knows nothing of justice and nothing of holiness. We do not see God as he is, and therefore we do not understand sin as it truly is. All have sinned. Adam and Eve transgressed one time against the person of God, and it threw an entire universe into destruction.

From what we know, and we know very little about the origin of the devil and those angels that supposedly were with him in whatever rebellion there was, we know that only one crime is committed and they are cast out of the presence of God and offered not one single shred of hope.

When the glorious angels fell and God judged them with perfect justice, there was no need for him to give an explanation. Everyone in heaven nodded their head. The judge of all has done right. When Adam and Eve transgressed against one commandment of God and cast an entire race into condemnation, God did not have to call heaven to order and explain what he did.

Absolutely, everyone nodded their head and said the judge of all the earth has done right. You see, as the Puritans used to say, when you sin against God, you are not sinning against some small mayor of some unknown village.

Some small and petite leader in power of some unknown province, you have sinned against the God of glory. Sin is the greatest of all things in its evil. Sin is not neutral. Sin is not simply a mistake.

Every sin is seeking to bust through into the courts of God to knock him from his throne and slaughter him. Sin can be seen how vile it is, maybe in this, that in the day of creation, God speaks to planets and he says, you put yourself in this orbit and you stay there until I give you another word.

And every planet bowed down and said, amen. He spoke to stars that could swallow up our sun and he told them to put themselves in different places in space. And they all bowed and said, amen. He told mountains to be lifted up.

He told valleys to be cast down. They all obeyed him. He looked at the mighty sea and said, you will come to this place and come no further. And they all bowed in worship. And he looks at you and says, come.

And you go, no, we don't understand what sin is. We don't understand who God is. And this is a great problem. For all have sinned, broken the laws of God from preacher to prostitute to popes and princes.

Every son and daughter of Adam has violated God's law. And you have to understand something prior to coming to Christ. It's not that you were a pretty good fellow. It's just that you sin sometimes or even that you sinned much.

But that every breath, every beat of your heart was accomplished in rebellion against God. Even the greatest deeds that you might have done towards men was still rebellion against God. Someone asked me one time, they said, well, how how is that?

Well, let me just give you an illustration. Let's say you have a man who just despises you, who hates you. He lives on the other side of this city or across the continent. You understand that he's dying.

You sell your home, everything you have to buy a certain medicine that will save his life. You walk across the country on your knees, on broken shards of glass, and you present to him this medicine and it saves his life.

Have you done a good thing? No. You have sinned. Because the man who does such a thing and yet does not do it primarily and principally for the glory of God has done nothing. I travel around in the universities, they'll say, well, what about the good atheist?

What about him? What are we going to do with the good atheist? I said, well, first of all, could you tell me his name? Because I hear about this guy everywhere, but no one, he never comes so that I can talk to him and no one seems to have his phone number.

And they say, well, no, the atheist who does good. But what you have to understand is men define good by what they do to other men when sin is defined basically by your relationship before God. So even if you help a person, but you deny the creator, you are still in rebellion for everything that is done that is not done for the glory of God is sin.

Everything that is done that is not done by faith in pleasing God is sin. Everything that is done in service not to God is sin. We're very humanistic. We think, well, if he does fine things for elderly people, he must be a good man.

That's not the question. What is his relationship to his creator? Therein lie the question. And the Bible says that men are radically depraved. It does not mean that all men are as wicked as they potentially could be.

But what it means is that all men that sin depravity permeates their entire being and whatever they do prior to coming to Christ, they do not do it out of love for God. Men do not love God as they should, and they do not glorify God as they should.

They sin. And I think about this for a moment, first of all, and I know I'm just staying on this too long. I need to move on to the next verse, but it's so tempting. First of all, what you need to understand is there are no atheists.

Humanity’s Suppression of the Knowledge of God

I never get into debate with an atheist because they don't exist. The Bible does not acknowledge atheism at all. So if I'm talking to a man who's an atheist and he says, I'm an atheist, I look at him and I say, no, you're not.

He says, yes, I am. I say, no, you're not. How dare you say I'm not an atheist? Well, sir, it's a question of authority. So what do you mean? Well, I have to choose between two authorities here. Your authority are the authority of Scripture.

Under your authority, you're claiming to be an atheist, but the Scripture claims there is no atheist. Sir, you are not an atheist. Not only do you know there is a God, sir, the Bible says you know enough about the true God to hate him.

Sir, you know enough about the true God to repress and restrain every bit of truth that's ever slipped under your door about him. You see, men know who God is. And they know something about the real God.

They know enough to run from him. And why would men run from God? You could say it this way. I mean, a man on a life support system doing everything in his power to yank the plug out of the wall. It doesn't make much sense.

Why do men run from God? Jesus told us clearly. He said you will not come because your deeds are evil. You will not come to the light. What you need to understand about man is he's not a sinner simply because he sins.

He sins because by nature he is a sinner. It's something. Well, let's talk about ontology for a moment. The doctrine of being the idea of being in the very core of your being prior to coming to know Christ, you are fallen.

The Bible says that men are born hating God. Now, people say, no, I've loved God all my life. No, you didn't. Again, let's go back to the question of authority. You haven't loved God all your life. If you have, the Bible's wrong.

What you loved was a God you made in your own image. What you loved was a God that you heard about in cliches, but you didn't love the God of the Bible because the Bible says that all men prior to the work of the Holy Spirit, they're at war against God.

And why are men at war against God? Because God is good. That's why. Because God is loving. And you say, now, hold it, Brother Paul, if you would have said men are at war against God because he's holy and just now, men are at war against God because he is holy and just, but also because he's good.

You see, men are not. And that's our greatest problem in society today. We have been taught all our life that men are basically good. The Bible says men are basically bad. Bad men don't like good men.

Don't you see that society everywhere? Bad men don't like good men. I went to a very, very rough high school that was not known for scholarship. And I was voted most likely to take a life my senior year.

But I went to a school that was very, very bad, where literally if you did your homework and answered the questions, you were probably going to get beat up after school because bad students don't like good students and bad men don't like good men.

And that's why men hate God, because he's good and men are not all have sinned. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now, what does it mean to fall short of the glory of God today? It's very popular to say God has a wonderful plan for your life and you have fallen short of it.

That to say that that man, you know, has fallen short of the glory of God means that God had this great and marvelous purpose for men and men have simply fallen short of it. But you have to interpret the Bible in its context.

I think it would be more appropriate in light of Romans one to interpret this passage that men have fallen short of the glory of God another way. It says in Romans one, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God to fall short of the glory of God may include that God has had a wonderful plan for man and he fell short of it.

But the principle and controlling idea is this, you were made for the glory, the good pleasure of God. You were made for him. Now, here's something that we hate. And it's this number one, God has a claim on men, he does.

They are his. He made them. And by virtue of being creator, he also claims to be their possessor, their owner. And their absolute Lord, men were made for God. Now, it is to our advantage that the God who made us happens to be a good God, but at the same time, we were made for this good God.

And the Bible says that even though we were made for this good God, we have lived for self. Now, I don't have to fillet this much. Men are full of self. You are full of self. Self is what we think about more than anything else.

And of course, you do know that the thing you think about most is your God, self-preservation, felt needs. We're all about we are consumed by self and anytime anyone, especially on a college campus, begins to talk about the sovereignty and the rule of God.

No, how dare anyone say they're going to rule over me or that I ought to do what some external person tells me I ought to do. I'll do what I want. I'll live my own way. You see now, here's a good question for Christians, why is it that Christians in America are the wealthiest and most protected Christians in the history of the church?

And yet you go into all these so-called Christian bookstores and 75 percent of the books are written about how empty we are, how our lives are so empty and so full of problems and our felt needs are not being met and so on and so forth.

Why is it that the wealthiest, most protected Christians on the face of the earth are so empty? For the very reason that Jesus Christ was never empty. He said, I have food to eat that, you know, not of my food is to do the will of the one who sent me.

You see. When our eyes are set upon ourselves and our own plans and our own glory and our own wants and even our own needs, we dry up, we become empty and hollow people. But when our eyes are set upon God and his purpose for us, we are full, even if we're hanging, crucified upside down, dying as a martyr.

We are full, even if it seems like the very fabric of our existence is being torn away from us. We are full because we have set our eye upon him and his purpose for us. That, my friend, is the basis for the Christian life.

Justification as God’s Free Declaration of Righteousness

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It may be said the Westminster says that sin is basically defined as lack of conformity to the law of God. Toward his law, your relationship to his law, if I were to give a somewhat of a Westminster type definition to what it means to fall short of the glory of God.

To sin is lack of conformity to the law, to fall short of his glory is an offense against his person. What is so terrible about this God? What has he done? How evil can he be that men want to run from him so much?

Is it that he is evil and men are good or that he is good and men are evil? We were made for him. That's why holiness doesn't just have to do with rule keeping, dotting every I and crossing every T. Holiness basically means to be cut, to be separate, to be separate from the world in order to be separated unto God, to live for him, for his pleasure, his communion, his fellowship.

Eternal life is knowing God. That's why I say most people want to go to heaven, but most of them don't want God to be there when they get there because they want a safe haven from hell. But they're not necessarily at all concerned about fellowship with the person of God.

So the Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And then it says being justified as a gift, the word justified, people say I've heard preachers say justified means just as if I'd never sinned.

Well, no, that's not what it means. It rhymes, but that's not what it means. Some people think justified means the moment I believed in Jesus, I was made righteous. No, that's not what it means either, because if the moment you believed in Jesus, you were made righteous.

You'd never sin again. Justified is a legal or forensic declaration. What it means is the moment a man trust with saving faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God declares that man to be legally right with him.

God declares that man to be righteous before him. So here we have all these men that have sinned against God, broken his law, lived outside of conformity to the law of God. We have all these men who have spurned his glory, spurned his fellowship, run from him.

But even the most vile of those men, if they come to him in repentance, trusting in what Christ has done for them on that tree, God the Father will declare them from the throne to be legally right with him.

Now, that's rather amazing, but it's more problematic than it is amazing. And we'll see that in a moment. He says we are justified. And then he says this being justified as a gift by his grace. Now, this almost seems redundant, doesn't it?

It's almost as if Paul is saying justified as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift. Well, first of all, this word here, it says justified as a gift. It's the same word that's used, you know, when it says this of the Messiah of Christ, they hated him without a cause.

What that statement means is Jesus Christ never sinned against anyone. He never gave anyone a sound reason to hate him. And if someone hated him, they had no cause whatsoever to do so. That's the same thing this word is saying.

He declared men right, even though men did not give him a cause to do so. As a matter of fact, men gave him just the opposite, not a reason to justify, but a reason to condemn. I used to think, well, I don't want to seem trite or anything, but there have been times when I've thought God must surely have a sense of humor.

Because a lot of times, I don't know why, but it was always a different lady. So it wasn't the same person following me around. But I would get up, you know, prepared to preach. And right before I would preach in a typical church, you know, pastors say, now we're going to have a very special special from sister so and so.

And get up and sing a song that would be, God, I don't know what worth you found in me. I don't know what value you saw in me. Lord, what did you see in me? So to save me and claim me as your own. And I'd be like a schoolboy in the back of the church with his hand raised.

Oh, pick me, I'll tell you. And I would have to get up and in the lovingest way I could possibly do, go, let me answer that question for you, for all of you. You were all vile, depraved, wicked, God hating creatures.

And God saw not one reason in you to save you. God saved you because God is love and because God chose to get glory for himself out of saving you. It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my glory.

God saves men not because of them. He saves them in spite of them. As a matter of fact, Paul used this very truth to humble the church in Corinth who were seemingly running around thinking, God saved me because I'm the cream of the crop.

And he basically said, no, if God saved you, it's because you were the scum in the bottom of the bucket. I always tell people the only thing I ever qualified for was grace. Grace. God chose to save the vilest among men to demonstrate his power and to confound men who think themselves good.

Redemption Through the Blood of Christ

So he says justified, yes. Declared right before God, yes, as a gift by his grace. Now, let's just do a study for a moment, a comparative religion class. Let's compare a few things. Let's say that you're a reporter and there is an Orthodox Jew standing here.

There's a Muslim standing here and a real Christian standing here. I have to say real Christian because everybody in America thinks they're Christian, a real one. So the reporter comes up to the Orthodox Jew and says, sir, if you died right now, where would you go?

An Orthodox Jew says, well, I'd go to paradise. Why? Well, I love the law of God. I study the law of God. I meditate upon the law of God. I am obedient to the law of God. OK. Makes sense. Comes to the Muslim, sir, if you died right now, where would you go?

I'd go to heaven. Why? Well, I love the Koran and I obey the Koran and I am a righteous man and I've made the pilgrimages and I give alms to the poor and I've done this and that. I am a righteous man.

The reporter goes, OK, makes sense to me. Comes to the Christian, sir, if you died right now, where would you go? To heaven. To paradise. Well, why? In sin did my mother conceive me and in sin was I brought forth.

I have broken every law that God has ever given. I deserve the very depths of right there. The reporter stops and says, sir, now you're confusing me. The other two guys, I understand. I asked them, where are they going?

They say they're going to heaven and they're right with God. And I asked them why? Because there are righteous men in themselves. They have virtue. They have merit. So they're going to heaven. Sir, I come to you and you declare with a smile on your face that you're going to heaven.

And yet. You claim to have no virtue, personal virtue or personal merit before God, how are you going to heaven? And the Christian says, I am going to heaven based upon the virtue and the merit of another.

Jesus Christ, my Lord. Nothing in my hands, I bring now need to step back for a moment. A true Christian will hear that all of grace and say, oh, how I want to be holy and how I want to keep his law. A religious carnal Southern Baptist church member.

We'll hear that and go, that's a good deal. Let's just keep living in sin so grace may abound. You see, true grace, which is what we have here going to heaven based upon the virtue and the merit of another true grace will always lead true Christians to desire greater godliness.

And true grace will always cause loss, churchmen to think themselves able to take advantage of it. And to live in sin. But he says we are justified and it is a gift. And then he says through redemption, there's some gospel songs that really bother me, especially they scream out terms sometimes and thoughtlessly.

There are some words that after you pronounce them, you should maybe be quiet for a few moments. If you understand those words correctly, maybe there'll be a bit of trembling in your lip. This is one of those words through the redemption, it is the price paid to free a slave or captive, and that would be a great thing.

To pay any amount of money for a slave or a captive who's made himself a slave willingly has made himself a captive willingly, and he's done so in disobedience against his master. So for his master to come and to pay a price for him is quite an amazing thing.

But it is a more amazing thing when that master happens to be God and he does it with the blood of his own son. That we were not redeemed by coffers of gold and silver and splendid thing or food of angels or any other thing.

We were redeemed by the blood of God's own son. And that should be a controlling truth in our lives. I always say that men should live between two days, the day that Christ hung before men and the day when men, all men will stand before the Christ and bow.

The controlling motivation of your life ought to be he shed his own blood for my soul. I am not my own. I was bought with a price. I belong to him. And you see, when the death of Christ is understood rightly in ethics, it has a way of transforming your life.

Why? Why should you be faithful to your wife? Because Christ died for you. Why should you live in service to your brothers and sisters in Christ? Christ died for you. Why should you separate yourself from the things of this world and avoid sin at all costs, even if it means amputation?

If you're right, I offend thee, pluck it out. If the right hand offend thee, cut it off. Why? Why all these things? There is one controlling factor. Christ shed his blood for me. Is there a need for another type of motivation in the Christian life?

No, not if you understand the cross correctly. He goes on and he says this, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. I'll just say simply this time, a young man came up to me after I was preaching on.

Maybe it was Ephesians one where it's just in Christ, in Christ, in him, in him, in Christ. He came up and he says, you're right, Brother Paul, Jesus is all we need. And I said, young man, Jesus is all we have.

There's a difference in those two statements. He's not only all we need, he's all we have outside of Christ. You have nothing to do with God and God has nothing to do with you except judgment. He's all we have.

Can you just for a moment think one of the most pitiful things about preaching is trying to preach this text. It's just useless before you start. You failed. Can you just consider for a moment the preciousness of what's being communicated here?

How precious and and unique and exquisite is the price paid for you and how it should control your life and how there is no life at all outside of Christ Jesus. There is not there is this is not about being religious.

This is not about adopting some moral creed. This is about recognizing who God is and what he has done in his only son and that becoming a controlling factor. Young men fall in love or whatever they call that thing they do when their hearts begin to spin and pound and they walk into walls and all sort of foolish things.

I know I've done it. Still do it a bit. Love controls them, they say. They can't stop thinking about her, they tell me. It's just everywhere they see her face. If they cannot have her, they will die. I just described the Christians relationship with God, you see.

Knowing God as the Source of Love and Holiness

Why getting off here, I'm running a rabbit, that's OK, I'm a pretty good shot. You ever preachers, they will always tell you what to do. Very rarely will they tell you how to do it. You notice that I had a preacher one time he preached the whole hour on you need to walk in the spirit.

I was in total agreement. But as a young Christian, I didn't mean to make it mad. It just seems I have that gift. But I walked up to him and I said, sir, I agree. Your message was great. I just have a question.

You said we should walk in the spirit. But I just don't know how to do that. Could you please tell me what it means to walk in the spirit? He got so mad. He never explained to me what it meant. He just kind of went off.

So I figure he didn't really understand what it meant. Preachers are always saying you need to love God. And they tell me you need to love God. And I kind of go, duh. Yeah, right. I do. And I feel bad about the fact that I don't.

Thank you for mentioning it. Now I feel worse. We all need to love God. But how do you do that? I mean, how do you say, OK, I'm going to love God more. So pull yourself up by your bootstraps. How do you do that?

Well, I'm going to tell you so that you don't have to worry about this question anymore. Here's how you come to love God more. I love my wife now more after 14 years than I did when I first married her.

I really do. Why? Now, she's not perfect, although she tries to make me think she is, she is not. Even though I see more flaws after 14 years than I saw when I first saw her. I see more virtue and I see more things about her that are so pleasing that endear me to her.

How do you love God more? There's only one way. Come to know him. The more you understand who he is and what he has done in Christ Jesus, the more love will be drawn out of your well. And that's the only way it can happen.

Oh, you can go to some meetings, a choir, the fire or something and get all psyched up about loving God. And it'll last about a week. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about growing in the knowledge of who God is.

He is so splendid, so beautiful, so fantastic, so beyond anything we can describe. But the more you track down who he is and the more you track down what he's done for you in Christ, the more all these other things, these stupid little trinkets that mesmerize you and cause you to look in wrong directions.

All those things will begin to disappear as you see the glories of God. And that's how you come to love God more. It begins, really, it really does begin with truth. Comprehending that truth with the mind and it becoming a controlling factor in every part of who you are.

So when I go to a place, I don't seek to bring revival. I mean, it's not like I carry the thing around in my pocket. Sometimes revival does break out and that's a wonderful thing. But if I can leave you with truth, it can permeate and work in you until the love of God is perfected in you.

Propitiation and the Justice of God

Now, let's go on. Whom God displayed publicly is the propitiation. Martin Lloyd Jones referred to this as the Acropolis of the Christian faith. And so did Charles Spurgeon, for that matter. So does just about everyone else who understands the Bible.

I just read to you probably the most important line in the entire Bible. There may be no greater word in the entire Bible, apart from the names of God, than propitiation. This word is absolutely essential.

Remember a few years ago, I had the terrifying reality. I got off the plane, was going to preach in a conference in Detroit. And the preacher before me was preaching. And I walked in. I said, by the way, sir, I said, I know I'm preaching next.

Who's preaching before me? And they said, oh, it's Vernon Higham, the guy who preached the funeral for Martin Lloyd Jones. And I was just terrified, I mean, to be in the presence of such a man and to have to preach.

And I preached on propitiation. I'll never forget that old man. He was in his 80s. Oh, what a preacher. And I said, sir, he walked up to me like this in tears, just running down his cheeks. And he had his Bible open and he pointed and he goes, we got the word back in the book.

And I said, what? We got the word back in the book. They put it back in the book. And he was talking about a new translation of the Bible that was used in England for so long. They had taken out propitiation.

The translators finally put it back. He said, it's the center of the gospel. You can't understand anything apart from this word. He's right. Propitiation, what is it? Well, let's first of all, talk about a problem.

It's the greatest problem in the Bible. There's no greater problem in the Bible than this. It's the divine dilemma. It is the thing that cannot be solved. But what is impossible with men is possible with God.

The reason if you want to know why the Bible was written, if you want to know everything that's ever you needed to know about the Bible, you're about to learn it. Why was there a sacrificial system? Why did God do everything he's ever done?

It's found in an obscure text in Proverbs. Well, it's all throughout scripture. But Proverbs set something up for us. That's very, very good. And I want you to go just for a moment to Proverbs 17, and I'm going to show you the greatest problem in the Bible and why everything that's been done has been done.

Proverbs 17, verse 15, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. So I don't understand. OK, let's put this thing together. He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.

Anyone who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. What does that mean? That if there's this wicked man, he comes before a judge or before a council or before even just common people, and that judge looks down at that wicked man and declares him to be right.