The Great Exchange (Pt 2 - Alien Righteousness)

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How is a sinful man made right with a holy God? That question is the question of questions, the most important question that any person could ever ask and answer.
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It is the most precious of truths, and it is one that we dare not get wrong, because that question has eternal consequences.
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How can a sinful man be reconciled to a holy
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God? The two most common answers to that question are the two most insidious, and I might add, the two most dangerous.
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The first answer to that question is what is sometimes referred to as universalism.
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Universalism is the idea that all men are made right with a holy
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God by some virtue of either themselves or God's goodness or His forgiveness, but ultimately all men will be reconciled to God.
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That is expressed in many churches. In fact, some churches even bear the name
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Universalist Church. But even outside of the
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Universalist Church, there are many in the Evangelical Church who hold this view, albeit sometimes quietly, they hold it within themselves because they are willing to consider the fact that they have come to the point where no one will endure an eternal punishment from God.
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They've come to the point where there is no wrath in store for anyone, and that is a dangerous, false perspective.
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And again, it is called universalism. But on the other side is an altogether different and yet still dangerous perspective, and that is the perspective called legalism.
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For where the Universalist says that all men are made right with God by some kind of virtue, the legalist says the virtue that makes men right with God is their ability to keep some form of righteousness, some form of goodness that God will accept.
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And you'll be amazed how many people believe that. And you know if they do believe that.
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Ask them if they died today and faced God, and He said, why should I let you into my heaven?
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Their answer is normally not. I'm a good person. Realizing that in that very answer is the heart of legalism.
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I have some way made myself righteous before God. I have some way met the standard of God's holy law.
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And they are both again on wildly different ends of the spectrum, but they are both still insidious and dangerous, because both of them are completely wrong.
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Last week in our study of this passage, and this is our second week looking at 2
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Corinthians 5 .21, I said I was going to do two weeks minimum on this passage, as this passage
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I believe is one of the most important passages in the New Testament. It is one I would commend to your memory, not only for your own sake and for the sake of your understanding of the gospel, but also that when you are out sharing the gospel with others, that these words would fall off of your lips and into the ears of those who hear you, because this passage is so important.
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No less than at least two weeks of study, but in this passage we are given the answer.
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We are given the answer to the question, how can a sinful man be reconciled to a holy
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God? And as we will see today, as we looked last week at the penalty having been paid by Christ, we will see today that not only has our penalty been paid, but we will see today that our righteousness has been established in Him.
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And that is how a sinful man can be made right with a holy God. So that being said, let's stand together and read the
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Word of God as we give honor and reverence to the Word. Paul has been defending his ministry as a ministry of reconciliation throughout this chapter, and he culminates this chapter, moving into the next chapter, with this one statement, 15
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Greek words, two clauses connected by a purpose statement, which is the word hinnah.
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And so we see this together as it says, For our sake
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He made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word. I ask even now that as I seek to give an understanding of it, that first and foremost that You would keep me from error.
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And I pray this, Lord, every week, not simply to be repetitious, but Lord, because the genuine desire of my heart is that I would never preach anything that would violate
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Your Word. And I know my own failures. So I pray,
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God, that You would keep me from error for the sake of Your name, for the sake of my conscience.
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As Your Word says, not let everyone be teachers, for the teacher will be held to a stricter judgment.
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And I pray, Lord, for those who hear the Word, that it will be taught correctly.
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I pray that the Holy Spirit would be the teacher, that I would decrease, that Christ would increase, the
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Holy Spirit would take the words that are preached, mix them with faith, Lord, and that they would not stop merely at the ear canal or even in the brain,
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Lord, but that they would make their way down to the heart of each person. And for the believer, that they would be challenged toward a deeper understanding of what it means to be right with a holy
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God. And for the unbeliever, as Lord, there always are those among us.
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I pray, O God, that You would save them today. Help them to see that God made
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Him who knew no sin to become sin for every believer, that in Him they might become the righteousness of God by faith.
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We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. One of the most precious doctrines which arose out of the
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Protestant Reformation is the doctrine of justification by faith alone, sometimes referred to as part of a five -statement
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Latin set of phrases known as the five solas.
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Justification by faith alone is known as sola fide. Sola fide, justification by faith alone.
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But the question that we must ask and answer is what is justification?
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Justification, I believe, is very misunderstood today in the church.
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Some people, I think, understand justification only as it pertains to sin.
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In fact, I remember hearing people who would define justification like this.
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Just as if I had not sinned, justified, justified, not sinned.
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And that's the way they sort of define justified in sort of a mnemonic way, justified, had not sinned.
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But I want to propose to you that that really is not the heart of justification. Because the heart of justification, the very root, as I talked about last week, the very heart of the word justification is the word just.
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And the word just means righteous. And to be justified means to be declared righteous.
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And so, while it is true that our sins have been taken away in Christ and the punishment has been paid by Christ and He has indeed bore the penalty for our sins, when it comes to justification, this is also dealing with, and I would say even more so dealing with, our standing as whether or not we stand before God having been declared righteous before Him.
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Martin Luther, as many of you know, struggled with his understanding of his own sin.
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He would literally torture himself because of his desire to try to rid himself of sin.
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He would go in and he would confess for hours and hours to his superiors about his dreadful sin to the point that he even said, and I have a quote here from him,
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Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience.
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I could not believe that He was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love.
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Yes, I hated the righteousness. I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly,
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I was angry with God and said, as if indeed it is not enough that miserable sinners eternally lost to their original sin are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the
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Decalogue without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with the righteousness and wrath, thus
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I raged with fierce and troubled conscience. This was Luther's feeling toward God.
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He hates me, and I hate him because he understood the dreadfulness of his sin and he understood that he lacked the one thing that God required.
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He lacked righteousness. And yet, as Luther took to studying the
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Word of God, seeking to find some respite for his soul in his studies of Paul's letter to Rome in the first chapter, he came upon these words.
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For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the
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Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
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And Luther said, having read that and having finally understood it, that it was as if, and these are his own words, it was as if he was altogether born again and he entered into paradise through open gates where he had been so desperately longing for the righteousness of God.
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He had been so desperately longing with some respite for his sin. He had been so desperately longing to find some solution to the question how can a sinful man be made right with a holy
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God? And in that passage he found it because he found that the righteousness of God is not something that he achieves, but rather it is something that is given by grace through faith.
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The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
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And therefore, he understood what justification actually meant.
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In fact, the word justification in our language can be somewhat confusing because it comes from the
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Latin justificar and the word just meaning righteous, but the verb ficar means to make something righteous or to make someone righteous and that is not what dikaios, which is the
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Greek underlying word, that's not what it means, because what that word means underlying that Latin, which again influenced the
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English, what underlies it is the idea not to make righteous, but to declare righteous.
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And you say, what is the difference? The difference is that a declaration of righteousness is a change of status, a forensic declaration about your standing before God.
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It is not an infusion of righteousness which makes you more and more righteous, even though we would argue that we do become more practically righteous through the process of sanctification, but that is not how we are justified before God.
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You are not justified by God by your own infusion of righteousness and goodness and growth, but you are justified before God by a declaration, a legal forensic standing where you go from standing as wicked to standing as righteous.
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And that is what gave Luther his confidence. Not just that his sins had been forgiven, which that is a wonderful thing, and we spent all last week talking about the fact that he has taken away our sin, he has borne the wrath, he has taken our punishment, the penal substitution has been made, and oh, what a glorious gift!
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But that is not all. Not only have our sins been forgiven, but we have been declared or counted as righteous.
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In fact, Paul in his letter to Rome makes a case study of one individual from the
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Old Testament to prove his point of this. And by the way, if you want to know where am I getting this doctrine, I'm getting it directly from the
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Apostle Paul. And I would argue it is consistent with the words of Jesus.
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Do you know the only time the New Testament uses the word justified in the Gospels? The only time
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Jesus that we know of used the word justified was when two men went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.
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And the Pharisee said, look at me, look at all that I do. I give, and I do this, and I do that, and I tithe, and I do all these things.
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But the other man said, woe is me. He could not even look up to heaven, but he said, have mercy upon me, a sinner.
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And Jesus said, and that man went home justified. And not the other.
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But the case study that Paul gives us in the New Covenant, the New Testament, comes from the
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Old Covenant, comes from the Old Testament. And it is the case study of Abram.
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Abraham. Abram was given a promise by God in Genesis chapter 12.
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Go from your people and your kindred and go to the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you.
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In you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. You remember the promise given to Abram in Genesis chapter 12.
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Well, just a few chapters later in Genesis chapter 15, God takes Abram out. He shows him all the stars of heaven, and he says, so shall your offspring be.
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In Genesis chapter 15 in verse 6, Abram said, or the Bible says of Abram, and he believed
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God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
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That's the word credit. It's so important. The word credit. Credited to him. And that is worthy of an amen.
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All right, amen. It is. It's worthy of that because it's true. It's the credit of righteousness to Abraham.
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Why? Because he believed the promise of God, and when he believed the promise of God, it says it was credited to him as righteousness.
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And so, beloved, when we consider the concept of justification, when we consider the concept of righteousness, we need to understand that righteousness is in and of itself, when it comes to our standing before God, it is a legal declaration.
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And therefore, our justification sits upon two pillars. Our justification before God sits upon two pillars.
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And by the way, these two pillars are so properly and powerfully given to us in 2
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Corinthians 5 .21, the very passage we're looking at today. Because the dual pillars of our justification is, number one, our sin has been paid for, the penalty has been paid, and we no longer have to bear the penalty of our sin.
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God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. That's the first pillar.
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Without that, there's no forgiveness. Without that, there's no justice having been meted out. Without that, the righteousness of God would not be satisfied.
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His righteous wrath would not be satisfied. That pillar is last week, and that pillar is necessary.
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And without that pillar, and this is why I told you last week, all other theories of the atonement are lacking when they don't have that.
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When they don't have the penalty being paid, all other theories are lacking because that has to happen.
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Now, God is just, and His holiness will be vindicated.
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Pillar number one, the sin, penal substitution, that's got to be dealt with.
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But the second pillar, as we deal with today, is the pillar of positive righteousness.
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So we have the pillar of penal substitution. We have to have our penalty dealt with.
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But we also can't be left neutral. We can't be left just in a state of forgiveness.
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We have to have positive righteousness. And so the second pillar of our justification is the positive righteousness that is imputed to us.
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And if you are unfamiliar with that word, I'm not using it simply for the fact of establishing some theological bona fides, but I think it's a word that everyone should know.
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Because, in fact, some translations even say, Abraham believed
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God and it was imputed to him as righteousness. The word imputed is the idea of being credited.
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It has two senses, and I want you to think of this. Imputation has two senses.
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It has a commercial sense and it has a forensic sense. In the commercial sense, if you have an account, and I take money from my account and I put it into your account,
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I'm imputing into your account, that is a credit to your account.
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I'm crediting you. That's imputing to your account. That's a commercial sense of the word imputation.
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But there is also a forensic sense in which that term is used.
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Because what do we say when a man goes before the judge and the judge reads out what he has done?
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What do we call it? What are the charges? Your honor, what are the charges against this man?
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What debt has this man incurred? Or what debt is this man accused of having incurred?
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Has he taken a life and thereby now he owes for that life? Has he stolen something and therefore now he owes for having stolen something?
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Has he injured someone? Has he violated someone? Has he abused someone? What are the charges against this man?
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And in that sense, it's not commercial, it's forensic. But it still has the same idea.
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It has the idea of credit and charge. It has the idea of imputing something.
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This man did it and therefore he deserves to be punished. The charges have incurred a debt.
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And he has a debt to pay. What do we call it when somebody fulfills their time in prison? They've paid their debt to society.
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That's right, they've paid their debt to society. And so we use these terms in a commercial way.
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We use these terms in a forensic way. And both of those concepts are given to us in the
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Bible. Because the Bible talks about Jesus paying our penalty. That's a commercial thing.
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He's paying a price. But he's also paying it as a criminal would pay.
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He's taking the place in our place as a criminal. Accepting the forensic responsibility of those charges.
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And taking in himself our sin. That's what we call the imputed sin of Christ.
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This is what it means when it says, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us.
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What does it mean? It means our sin was imputed to him. Our sin was charged to him.
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Beloved, that's a beautiful thing. Because without our sin being charged to him, guess who it's going to be charged to?
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Us! God made him who knew no sin to become sin.
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In what way? Our sin was imputed to him. So that, in order that, we could become the righteousness of God.
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See, it's the same idea. Where our sin is imputed to Christ, righteousness is imputed to us.
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So that we could become the righteousness of God.
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I'm going to finish it in a moment because we're going to find out where that righteousness came from. But I just wanted to get the idea of imputation. We lacked righteousness and we needed it.
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We had sin and it was killing us. God takes our sin, he imputes it to Christ.
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He takes righteousness and he imputes it to us. Now the standing has completely changed.
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Where the standing was, we were guilty, we deserved punishment. Christ is righteous and he deserves no punishment.
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He takes our punishment and we receive righteousness.
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B .B. Warfield, if you're unfamiliar with Warfield, wrote in the 1800s, wonderful teacher of God's word.
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And he wrote that there was actually three acts of imputation.
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And this is important. And again, I hope I'm not confusing anyone.
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I hope that all of this will make sense in a moment. He said there's actually three acts of imputation. If you step back and look at the historical nature of imputation.
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He says when Adam sinned, Adam sinned on behalf of all of us.
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Adam sinned, as Brother Mike said in Sunday School this morning, as a federal representative of all of us. And you know what federal means?
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That means one who stands in your place. One who stands and represents you. That's why we call our government a representative government or a federal government.
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Adam in the garden stood and he represented us in his failure. He represented us in his sin.
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You might say, well, we didn't vote for him. Guess what? You don't get to vote. Voting for your leaders is a relatively recent historical reality anyway.
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The idea of you don't vote for kings. You don't vote for monarchs. This was relatively recent.
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But Adam did stand representatively in our place. And when he sinned, his sin at that point affected not only him.
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But his sin affected all of us where it brought death, disease, and destruction into the world.
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That's what happened when sin came into the world. The Bible says in Romans chapter 5 verse 12, for through one man sin entered the world and death through sin.
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And so death spread to all men because all sinned. You see that death, disease, and destruction came into the world and it spread to all men.
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And all men received through their representative Adam a corporate guilt.
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This is why it goes on right after Romans 5 verse 12 to say that even though there was no law given, men still died.
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Why did men still die between Adam and Moses even though there was no law given? Because the guilt that Adam had incurred had transferred to all.
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And all men die not just because they've broken God's law individually, but because corporately we have all received the guilt of Adam imputed to us.
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You understand we all are guilty of active, personal, passionate sin.
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But we're also the bearers of imputed sin from our first father.
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This is an important truth. Because when we consider that imputation, it helps us understand
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Christ's imputation a little better. Because we have Adam's sin.
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And we have Adam's blood coursing through our veins. And you know it because even as a believer you still have that blood in your veins, don't you?
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Anybody in here not sinned this week? I just poured water on myself.
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Amen. And I have too. And I have too. And I probably sinned since the sermon started.
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But I'm like... I mean I'm just... It's like if we really be honest, we realize just how much it's affected us.
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Again, death, disease, and destruction is coming to the world through sin, through Adam. And it's affected all of us. That imputation of Adam's sin to all of Adam's race.
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And we sing songs about that, right? We talk about all of Adam's race. Doesn't matter what nation you came from.
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Doesn't matter what color you are. We all come from one man, Adam. We all come from one pair,
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Adam and Eve. And in Adam's representation, he brought death, disease, and destruction into the world.
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And it has affected all of us. It's imputed unto all of us. And so now you say, what do we do? What is the remedy?
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How can the sinful man be made right? With the Holy God. Another act of imputation.
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I'll say two more acts of imputation have to occur. God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us.
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Christ is born without the imputed sin of Adam.
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This is why he's called the second Adam. If you read your New Testament, he's called the last
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Adam. Because there's only two. There's the first and the last. There's the first and the second
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Adam. The first Adam comes into the world. He has no sin. He brings sin into the world. And through that brings sin to all of us.
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The second Adam comes into the world. He has no sin. And he lives a life that Adam should have lived. He lives the life that Adam failed to live.
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And he kept the law perfectly for 33 years. And what
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Brother Mike said as he was talking about Isaiah this morning. He mentioned the active and passive.
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Was it you who mentioned that? Okay. The active and passive obedience of Christ refers to Christ's actively keeping the law of God in our place perfectly his whole life.
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What did Jesus say? It is my will to do the will of him who sent me.
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Right? I've come to do the will of him who sent me. And he didn't fail. Not even once to do that.
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And by the way, this is one of the dangers of modern teaching. It's one of the things that you will find in many modern teaching and in a lot of TV shows about Jesus and other things.
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Is that they are trying to promote a Jesus who fails. They're trying to promote a Jesus who sins. I want to show
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Jesus and his failures. Guess what? If you're showing Jesus and his failures, you're not showing
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Jesus. It's dangerous to say that I want to see
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Jesus and his failures. Because he didn't have none. God made him who knew no sin.
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Active obedience. And you say, well, what's passive obedience? Passive obedience is when he gave up his life.
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When he laid down and received the wrath of God. He's receiving the wrath of the Father on our part.
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In our place. Passive does not mean that he wasn't involved.
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But it simply means he was the recipient. So he was actively righteous and passively recipient of the wrath for sin that we deserve.
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Our sin, which we have. And by the way, if you ever get upset about the
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Adam thing, let me just say this. And this may not satisfy you, but it satisfies me. I didn't vote for Adam, but every time
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I sin, I sure give my thumbs up in his direction. I'm voting for him in the ballot box of my own sin.
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Because I'm pointing to him and going, just like that. God takes my sin.
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And he charges Christ with it. And Christ becomes the bearer of my sin.
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Christ becomes the recipient of what I deserve. And so that's the second imputation.
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Adam's sin is imputed to all of his posterity. Adam's sin becomes ours corporately.
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And then we individually, as we trust in Christ, our sin is laid upon him.
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And that's not the end of the story. That's a great part of the story. But that's not the end of the story.
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Because here's the other part of the story. I mentioned earlier that we receive righteousness.
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Well the question becomes, from where? And some people say, well the righteousness is
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God's righteousness. It comes from God. In fact, that's the very text. I can't deny that the text does say, in order that we might become the righteousness of God.
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But notice the last part of that. That we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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You see, the righteousness of God that we receive is the righteousness of Christ in our place.
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I want to show you a few passages to bear up what I've said. The first one
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I'll take you to is in Philippians chapter 3. When you get there, go to verse 7.
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It says in verse 7, But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. By the way, this is right after Paul just got done talking about how much he was a good
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Pharisee. A Hebrew of Hebrews and all those things. He just got done, in a sense, bragging about himself as a
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Pharisee. But now he says, But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
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Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my
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Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as skubalon.
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The Greek word translated in the ESV as rubbish. What's it in the King James? Dung. Literally, it is that.
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I count them as worthless. Why? In order that.
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I love that phrase. That clause. For the purpose of. In order that.
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I may gain Christ. See, I had all those good things.
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Hebrew of Hebrew. Circumcised on the eighth day. I was a Pharisee. I did all these things.
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But I count all that as manure.
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When I consider gaining Christ. And be found in Him.
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Here it comes. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.
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But that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith.
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That is where the term alien righteousness comes from. Because alien means that which is from the outside.
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This is why when people come into our country. We talk about people being aliens.
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This is why when we talk about the lights in the sky. We say are those aliens.
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We're talking about things that come from the outside. They're not inherent.
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In our constitution. We talk about certain inalienable rights.
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That means they're not from the outside. They can't be taken away.
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Because they're inherent. That's what inalienable is indicating. But to be alien means to be from the outside.
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And Paul says in this passage that I want to be found in Christ. Having a righteousness that does not come from keeping the law.
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But a righteousness which comes through faith in Christ. And then he tells us what it is.
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The righteousness from God that depends on faith. Beloved that is the only righteousness that will stand.
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That's the only righteousness that will stand before God. A couple other passages just to consider as we think about this.
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You don't have to turn if you don't want to. But if you're quick you can. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30 says this.
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Notice what it's saying. You, when you are in Christ.
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Christ becomes for you these things. He becomes sanctification. He becomes wisdom.
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He becomes redemption. But he also becomes righteousness for you. That is what he is for you.
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That is what he is to you. He is God's righteousness for you.
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This is why Romans chapter 5 when it's talking about Adam. Listen to this. This is key.
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Romans chapter 5 verse 18. One trespass led to condemnation for all men.
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So one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. You see when they talk about Adam they talk about the one instance of sin.
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And you say but Christ was full of righteousness. Yes. But in that sense what Paul is doing is he's comparing
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Adam and he's comparing Christ. And he's saying there's one act of righteousness. Or I'm sorry.
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One act of sin, condemnation that Adam did. And Christ in his cumulative life had this righteousness that he possessed.
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And that righteousness becomes ours by faith. This is why
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Romans chapter 10 in verse 4 says. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
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He's the end of the law for righteousness. He is our righteousness. It is his that has been imputed to us.
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Beloved we sing about this. And we're going to sing about it in a minute. There's two songs that rest in my heart this morning.
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We're going to sing one of them. But both of them have the word rock in them.
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One is rock of ages. Remember rock of ages cleft for me.
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Let me hide myself in thee. Remember this verse. Nothing in my hand I bring.
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Only to the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress.
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Helpless look to thee for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly.
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Wash me Savior or I die. See those hymn writers knew what was up.
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They knew what they were talking about. They were expressing to us the grand truth of the imputed righteousness of Christ.
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Nothing in my hand I bring. Only to the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress.
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Do you understand what the hymn writer there is stressing? He's stressing the very parable of Jesus where Jesus talked about the wedding feast.
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And you remember when all the people were invited to the wedding feast and they wouldn't come. So the master sent out the servants to go and compel people to come in.
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And they all came in to the feast of the sun. But there was one man there who was missing something. What was he missing?
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He was missing the garment. The garment provided by the king. The man did not have.
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And what happened to that man? He was cast into outer darkness.
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Where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Why? Because he did not have the garment provided by the king.
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And that is the righteousness that we need. Dressed in his righteousness alone.
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Faultless to stand before the throne. And the other hymn that we will sing in just a moment.
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By William Bradbury. The hymn called the solid rock.
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When he shall come with trumpet sound. May I then in him be found.
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Dressed in his righteousness alone.
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Faultless to stand before the throne. Beloved I want to say this to you as I close.
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We will all stand before God one day. And we will stand before God dressed either in our righteousness.
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Or in the righteousness of Christ. And if you stand before God in your own righteousness.
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It will be insufficient. But if you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
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It will be all sufficient. So I leave this to you.
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What are you wearing today? Your rags or Christ's righteousness?