New Life Baptist Church - Part 1 — Paul Washer

Romans 3 and the Heart of the Gospel

Let's open up our Bibles to the Book of Romans, Book of Romans, Chapter 3. Whenever I speak at a place, the first time I try never to miss speaking on this topic that Martin Lloyd-Jones called the Acropolis of the Christian Faith.

The Acropolis is a strong, major, main city of any civilization. It's the strong tower, the high hill. The passage we're going to study is possibly the greatest passage in the entire Bible. It's found in Romans, Chapter 3, verse 23.

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 a law of faith. It's possibly if I had to lose every portion of Scripture and keep just one, this would be the one that I kept.

It is the very heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To understand this passage is to understand something of the Gospel. To not understand this passage is for the cross to have very little meaning for you.

Sin and the Glory of God

So we'll take a look at this. For all have sinned. There is no fear of sin among men today because we do not realize that sin in itself is not the horrid thing, but the one against whom we sin. As the Puritans would always say, He is not an inferior prince of a small village, but He is the Lord of glory against whom you have sinned.

You see, we must know the attributes of God. We must know who He is and we must clearly communicate that to the world or they'll never understand how sinful sin truly is. For all have sinned. What does it mean to sin according to the Westminster Confession?

It is, of course, to not be conformed to the holy character and will of God, to violate His law, to deviate from it. You see, prior to becoming a Christian, it is not that you are pretty much a kind of a good person who every once in a while deviates from God's law.

Prior to becoming a Christian, the only thing you have ever done is sinned. Every act, every thought, every deed prior to your Christianity is sin. Now even some Christians would take me to task on that, saying that's not really true, when in fact it is and I'll show you how.

Even if an atheist were to sell everything that he had to buy a special potion to save an enemy of his and then buying that potion, walked 600 miles on broken glass through a snowstorm and took that potion to his enemy to save his life, even if an atheist did that, it would still be sin.

Why? Because the atheist has not done it unto the glory of God. Whether you eat or drink or anything you do, you do it unto the glory of God. You see, sin is not sin simply because we do it against men and it hurts men.

Sin is sin because of its relationship to God. Having no concern for God or to bring honor to God, you have sinned even if you have done a good deed to men. All have sinned. All. And fallen short of the glory of God.

Humanity Made for God's Glory

To fall short of the glory of God does not mean what contemporary Christianity would have you believe. Some say it means that, well, God had this tremendous glorious purpose for man and we have fallen short of that.

Well, that is true in some degree, but the emphasis here is not that. To fall short of the glory of God means that we were made to glorify God and we have not done that. It says, although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks.

You were made to honor and to worship and to please and to bring joy, good pleasure to God. And that is the reason why men are miserable. I make wooden bows and arrows and you can shoot an arrow very fast out of one of my bows, but you cannot play a hymn with one of my bows in the same way you cannot shoot an arrow with a guitar string.

Things are made to have a certain purpose and if they do not perform according to that purpose, they are miserable and wretched. Men were made for the glory of God, to glorify Him, to worship Him. We find our meaning in giving ourselves totally to Him.

Not only does that have something to do with the sinner without Christ, but it has something to do with the people of God. If you were to go into a Christian bookstore today, you would find that over half the bookstore is filled with books written about how empty we are.

We are the most wealthy, most prosperous, most protected Christians in the history of Christianity and yet we are the most empty. And why is that? For the same reason Jesus Christ was not empty. He said, I have food to eat that you know not of.

My food is to do the will of my Father who sent me. The reason why Christians are so empty today is because not only are they convinced, but they are being preached to with words that tell them that they are to get their best life now.

That they are to live their lives for themselves. That Jesus is all about us and doing things for us. It is almost as though God has been made into not only a Santa Claus, but the cosmic servant of man.

He exists for us. And that is not true. We exist for Him. And until we give our lives for Him and live for Him, we are miserable. There was an old Christian mystic who used to say, every conversation where Jesus Christ is not the principal theme is an absurdity.

We were made for Him. For Christ. But all of us have sinned. We have violated every law God has ever given. And none of us have lived for His glory, but for our own. It is an amazing thing. You think about that.

God's Wrath Against Sin

You know, there is a lot of people today, I have heard evangelists say, begin their preaching by saying, now most of you think that God is an angry God, but God is not an angry God. That is a lie. It is a lie.

The Bible says God is angry every day. You see how in an attempt to bring carnal men to God, we teach them about a God that is not even the God of the Bible? How many times have I heard evangelists and preachers on television say, now the first thing you need to know is God is not an angry God.

And yet the Bible says He is angry with the wicked every day. And He has right to be. We have violated His law. We have shunned His glory. We have turned the punies of things into idols. The illustration I often use is, imagine the glory of God standing there in the days of creation, and God commands the stars to take orbit and move in the place that He has set for them.

And they all bow down and say, Yes, Lord. God commanded the planets to move in certain directions. And they all bowed down and said, Yes, Lord. God commanded the seas to stay put. They said, Yes, Lord.

He told mountains to be lifted up and valleys to be cast down. And they all obeyed Him. And then God looks at you and says, Come. And you say, No. You deserve hell. That is what the Bible teaches. You deserve hell.

You deserve condemnation. As a matter of fact, let me put it this way. In sin, men are so vile and so wretched, their crimes so heinous, before not only a holy God but a holy heaven. Let me share with you something.

The last thing you will hear when you take your first step into hell is all of creation standing to its feet and applauding God because He has rid the earth of you. That is how wicked holy creatures see you.

I never heard of such a thing. Of course you have not. But it is what the Bible teaches. We are really not convinced that men are evil. Let me ask you a question. How did Hitler become Hitler? Have you ever thought about that?

Here is a better question. Why wasn't Hitler worse than he was? Here is an even better question. Why are you not as wicked as Hitler? Were you born with some moral spark? Were you better than him? The only reason you do not make Hitler look like a choir boy is because the common grace of God restrains you in your sin.

And if he were to pull back from you, you would make Hitler ashamed. See, we really don't believe men are evil. You see atrocities in the newspaper and you say, well, I just can't imagine. You can't imagine?

You could do worse. If it were not for the grace of God. That is why this gospel is offensive. And that is why you don't see much power of the gospel revealed today. That is why churches use church growth methods and manipulation to make their churches grow, because there is no power in their gospel and there is no power in the gospel because they are not preaching it.

Because you can't preach the gospel if you are worried about offending carnal men. Because the gospel is offensive. It was offensive to me and that offense is the very thing that cut my heart and saved me.

The Hatred and Wrath of God

Now, let me share with you something before we go on. It is very, very important. You need to understand. It is the hatred of God. We always hear about the love of God, but when was the last time you heard about the hatred of God?

Have you ever heard someone say, God loves the sinner and hates the sin? Have you ever heard that? It is an absolutely beautiful statement. The problem is it is wrong. It is heresy. The book of Psalms chapter 5 says that God hates all those who do wrong.

It says in Malachi that Esau hated. It says that. And hate is a synonym really for wrath. It says God hates people. It says it all over the Bible. Now, if you want to preach something else, go ahead and preach something else, but don't call it biblical.

I had a lady one time say, I don't believe that. God is love. He can't hate. And I said, Madam, God is love, therefore He must hate. She says, I don't understand. I said, Listen. Well, I'll ask you the question.

Do you love children? Do you love babies? I love babies. I wish I had a whole bunch more babies. Do you love babies? Then you must hate abortion. Do you love Jews? Do you love Israel? Well, if you tell me that you love Israel, and then you tell me at the same time that you're apathetic with regard to the Holocaust and don't think it's really that big a deal, you've got a serious problem.

See, if you love Jews, you're going to hate the Holocaust. So, see, if you love, you've got to hate. Not in this neutral, pseudo-tolerant culture of ours. If you actually love something, you must hate something.

If God loves with a passion that is beyond description all that is holy, all that is righteous, all that is beautiful, all that is true, all that is good, He hates the opposite of that. And that holy hatred is manifested against men by means of His wrath.

You walk up to a sinner and, you know, you just tell him, God loves you so much. Well, there is a real sense in which God loves His creature, but you also maybe ought to tell him, did you know that the wrath of God abides on you?

Because that's what Jesus said, that everyone who did not believe in Him, the wrath of God abides upon them. The pastor read that this morning. Now, knowing that, let's go for a minute, let's keep going.

Justification as a Legal Declaration

Now, having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, verse 24, speaking of Christians, true believers in Jesus Christ, people who have truly been regenerated, truly converted, it says, being justified.

Now, what does it mean to be justified? I was sharing this with a lady this morning who was struggling with victory over guilt and things, and what does it mean to be justified? Some people say, well, it's just as if I'd never sinned.

No, that's not what it means. Well, it means forgiven. No, it means more than that. What does it mean? It means it is a forensic or a legal term. It is a forensic or legal term. It means the moment that a person believes in Jesus Christ, the moment they believe, God Almighty legally declares them to be right with Him.

Okay? Legally declares that person to be right with Him. And who is that person? The person who has broken His law, the person who has not glorified Him, the person who is atrocity, the person who deserves judgment, the person who deserves wrath.

The moment that person believes in Jesus Christ, God legally declares that person right with Him. Now, the word legal is extremely important. Why? Some people believe that the moment that a person believes in Jesus, God makes them righteous.

Okay? Makes them righteous. He does not make them righteous. He declares them righteous. And there is an important difference. If the moment you believed in Jesus, He made you righteous, that means you would never sin again.

Do you see that? I am not righteous in that sense. God, when He saved me, although He is changing me, He did not make me righteous the moment He saved me because I still sin. I am still susceptible to sin.

I still commit error, moral failure, on and on. So the moment a believer believes in Christ and is saved, God does not make them righteous so as that they never sin again. He declares them legally before His throne to be righteous.

It is a legal standing before God. The moment a person believes in Jesus Christ, even though they've sinned, even though they've broken God's law, God declares them to be legally right forever with Him.

Do you understand that? Okay, it's a legal term. It's very, very important. Now, let's go on. Being justified as a gift by His grace. Now here's something that I want you to understand. Take all religions except for a few Eastern religions that don't even consider themselves religions.

You take the major religions, what are they all dealing with? How can a man be right with God? Do you realize that? It doesn't matter. Judaism? Muslim faith? It doesn't matter what you've got out there.

They all have one thing in common. And what is that? How can a man be right with God? Now that's proof right there that the Bible is true. Isn't it amazing that even people who never heard anything about the Bible or Christianity still have this sense that they're not right with God?

Isn't that amazing? All the religions that have ever been invented outside of Christianity deal with the fact that man is not right with God. How can he be right with God? That proves the Bible to be true.

That God has written His law in the hearts of all men and all men have a conscience and all men know their guilt. Because all religions are designed to remove that guilt and make someone right with God.

Now, I've said that's what all religions have in common. But now we're going to divide all religions into two groups. All religions and Christianity. Because all religions outside of Christianity say that a man can be made right with God by what he does.

By his works. But see, their greatest problem in saying that is they don't know God. Because none of those religions would say that a man could live perfectly before God. But they all think that you can live well enough before God so that He doesn't condemn you.

And they don't realize that God is so righteous that one moral infraction is enough to disqualify you. Just ask Adam and Eve. Alright? All the religions of the world have one thing in common is that they believe that a man can be made right with God through what that man does.

Christianity over here comes over with something completely different. Look what it says. Being justified as a gift by His grace. It is not through what is earned in Christianity by the beneficiary. It is not of works.

It is a gift. It is by grace. Now, a reporter interviews a Muslim and says, if you died right now, where would you go? The Muslim says, I would go to heaven or paradise. The interviewer says, why do you say that?

The Muslim says, well, I am a righteous man. I've read the Koran. I've made the pilgrimages. I've done the prayers. I've given alms to the poor. I'm a righteous man. Okay, I understand that. The reporter asks the Jewish man, if you died right now, where would you go?

I would go to heaven. Why would you go to heaven? I am a righteous man. I love the law of God. I've kept the law of God. I've kept the traditions of the fathers. I am a righteous man. The reporter, being a secular, worldly man, says, okay, I understand that.

You deserve to go just like your Muslim friend. Then he comes to the Christian. He says, if you died right now, where would you go? The Christian smiles and says, I would go to heaven. He says, well, why?

The Christian says, well, I was born in sin, and in sin my mother conceived me. I have broken every law and I have not served the purpose for which I was made. And the reporter stops him and says, hold on, buddy.

I mean, I can understand the other two. They're going to heaven because they deserve to go there. You're telling me with a great confidence you're going to heaven, but also at the same time you're telling me that you deserve absolute condemnation.

How are you going to heaven? And the Christian says, because I'm going to heaven upon the virtue and the merit of another, Jesus Christ my Lord. All other religions are self-glorification and trying to put God in debt.

I'm going to heaven, self-glorification, because I'm a good man and because God owes me. I've done enough. He's got to pay me heaven. Christianity is, I have done nothing but deserved condemnation, but Jesus Christ my Lord has shed His own blood for myself.

Who's glorified in that? Jesus Christ. And God is no man's debtor. God has done it all. Now, here's something that's very, very interesting. Being justified as a gift. The word gift here is the same word in Greek that's used when the Scripture says they hated Him without cause.

Speaking of the Messiah, of Jesus, they hated Him without cause. Did anyone ever have a cause to hate Jesus? Did Jesus ever sin against anyone, give them reason for hating Him? Of course not. That's absolutely absurd.

They hated Him without a cause. It's the same word here. It says that you were justified without a cause. You gave God no cause to justify you. You did not give God any cause to declare you right. As a matter of fact, you gave God cause to do just the opposite, condemn you.

But He says, justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption. It's a marvelous word. Frightful word. Because of the price that was paid. To be redeemed means to be bought with a price from slavery.

To be bought with a price as a captive. And the Bible says that you, if you are a Christian, you were bought with a price. And you were not bought with the blood of bulls and goats. You were not bought with coffers of gold from heaven.

You were bought with the precious blood of God's own Son. Why do we live for Him? You know, there are many self-centered reasons to live for God. And preachers are full of them. The Gospel in preaching today is so humanistic.

We tell people, you need to trust in Jesus. You don't want to go to that nasty old hell, do you? So my motivation for trusting in Jesus is to save my own skin? You need to follow Jesus. You don't want to get to heaven and not have any rewards, do you?

There's no virtue in that. It's like men sitting around a cafe talking about how they're going to rob a bank and get something for nothing. You need to believe in Jesus because He's worthy. You need to serve Him because He's worthy.

I would submit this to you. When I'm with a person who has very little assurance of salvation, I've done this many, many times. A girl that was seeking assurance of salvation kept calling on the Lord.

She was not sure that she was saved, that God had saved her. And I shared with her this. I said, look, you need to repent of your sins whether He saves you or not because He's worthy. You need to believe in Him whether He saves you or not because He's worthy.

And you need to serve Him all the days of your life whether He casts you in hell or not because He's worthy. It wasn't a little bit after that that she gained assurance. Because I want to tell you something, a person who comes to God out of a sincere heart and says, God, I'm going to repent of my sins whether You save me or not because You're worthy.

And I'm going to believe in Your Son whether You save me or not because He's worthy. And I'm going to serve You all the days of my life whether You save me or not because You're worthy. It won't be long.

God grants that person assurance. I'm going to do it even if I get nothing. How many Puritans do we hear down through the ages and early Baptists that used to say that type of thing would wrestle with whether or not God had saved them and come to the conclusion, God, You are so worthy that I should serve You whether You save me or not.

It's a little bit different gospel than the one you'll hear today, isn't it? But it's a strong one and it's mighty to save. He says, justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

Redemption and Union With Christ

You know what God's doing? He's going to spend your entire life teaching you just this one thing in Christ Jesus. The longest sentence in the whole Bible is in Ephesians 1. Paul almost goes wild. I mean, he just can't put the period.

It was at 11 times, like 14 verses, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Him, in Him, in Christ, in Him, in the Beloved. You see, every ounce and inkling of your salvation is in Christ. None of it is you.

If it was 99 .99999 Christ and .00001 you, you'd go to hell. It is all Christ. Like a young boy said one time, he goes, that's right, Jesus is all we need. And I said, young man, Jesus is all we have.

Apart from Him, you have nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. Now, he goes on and he says, redemption which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation.

Martin Lloyd-Jones used the word placard. God placarded Him publicly, billboarded Him. In the crucifixion, God purposed that it be the most public possible. Christ could have put away sin in a dark room somewhere, but He was hung on a cross.

He was hung on a cross. In the most significant religious city in the history of the world, at a crossroads outside of that city for all the world and principalities and powers to see. You see, the cross of Jesus Christ is not an accident.

It's not plan B as I heard a very popular radio preacher a few years ago say. He actually said this, if those Jews had accepted Jesus and not crucified Him, the millennial kingdom would have started and we'd all be walking around in glory.

If Jesus Christ hadn't died on that cross, we'd all be in hell. The cross wasn't plan B. It was plan A. And it wasn't even plan B with regard to the fall of Adam. A lot of people say the cross was necessary because of the fall.

No. The fall was necessary so that there could be a cross. Because it is only through the cross of Jesus Christ that the full revelation of God comes to men. The cross is everything. Absolutely everything.

And God did it. God ordained it that His Son would die. Delivered up by the hands of wicked men, but according to the foreknowledge, the ordination, the election of God. God did it. And He did it with purpose and on purpose.

He goes on and says, whom God displayed publicly. Now we've got to ask ourselves, why publicly? Because God is going to reveal something through the cross. It's going to be something quite different than what you think.

I want you to hold this in your mind. I know that you see the cross as the means through which God justified men. That men were justified through the cross. And that is true, but I'm going to give you something bigger.

The cross is the means through which God justified Himself. Another word for that synonym would be vindicated Himself. Proved Himself right. Now, let's go on. It says, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation.

Propitiation and the Divine Dilemma

Now, possibly the most important word in the entire Bible. Propitiation. Propitiation. In ancient Castellano, we use the word propitio, which means mercy. Propitio. Sed propitio a me, amo. Be merciful to me, Master.

Propitio. So what is a propitiation? A sacrifice that enables mercy. A sacrifice that makes mercy possible. Now, I want you to understand something, and some of you have heard this sermon probably a few times, but I do this everywhere because so few people truly understand the cross.

Do you want to know what the greatest problem in the Bible is? What the whole Bible is written about? It's called the divine dilemma. It's what everything is about. It's the greatest problem in all the Bible.

This is it. If God is just, He cannot forgive you. And if He does, He becomes an abomination. If God is just, He cannot forgive you. You say, well, I don't know why not. I know you don't know why not because of the culture you live in where there's no justice.

If God is just, He cannot forgive you. It's wrong. And let me give you a text. Just listen to this. It's in Proverbs 17, 15. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike, are an abomination to God.

What is an abomination? The worst thing you can be to God. Synonyms would be something putrid, horrid, disgusting, loathsome. So what he says here, he who justifies the wicked is an abomination to God.

Now, anyone who justifies a wicked person is an abomination, a horrid, disgusting thing to God. But here's the problem. In Romans that we've been studying, what does it say? God justified who? The wicked.

Romans chapter 3 is rejoicing in the fact that God has justified the wicked. Proverbs 17, 15 says anyone who justifies the wicked is an abomination to God. Do you see the problem? That's the greatest problem in all the Bible.

If God is just, He cannot forgive wicked men. There it is. Let me give you an illustration because I can see that some of you are going, well, why not? Well, don't you complain all the time about the corruption of judges?

My, they let the criminals go. Those judges are just as wicked as the criminals who stand before them. Haven't you said that before? You have. Someone murders your entire family, is caught by the police, is taken before the judge.

The judge looks down on the man who's murdered your entire family, and he says, I'm really loving, so I'm going to let you go. Goodbye. Have a good day. I forgive you. What are you going to do? The first thing you're going to do is scream out for justice.

Then you're going to write the newspapers. You're going to call the media. You're going to write congressmen. You're going to say, there's a judge on the bench that's more wicked than the many forgives.

Because a judge does justice. Judges don't forgive. They do justice. And if they forgive the wicked, all the righteous people in the community jump up and are angry. Why? Because they ought to be. Because it's an abomination.

And that's what God says it is. Anyone who forgives the wicked and justifies them and declares them to be right when they're not right is loathsome, abomination. So the question comes back, if God is the just God who does right in all the earth, then how can he justify the wicked?

There's only one way. He must first satisfy the demands of justice with his own life. Justice has demands. They must be satisfied before the unrighteous can be declared righteous. Now, I've heard a lot of people say this in such a way that's wrong.

It's almost like they say there's this rule that's even above God. God's got to satisfy justice before He can forgive men. No. God's got to satisfy His own justice. It's His own justice. There's no inconsistency in God like there is in us.

Remember? There's no shadow. There's no turning. God is perfectly consistent, absolute perfection in all His attributes. Have you ever heard someone say, God could have been just with you, but instead of being just, He was loving?

You realize what they're saying? God's love is wicked. It's unjust. You can't do that. God has to be loving and just at the same time. So what does He do? He satisfies His justice by paying the price for all our crimes.

For all our crimes. Now, how does He do that? How does He do that? Now, here's something that is probably of all the things I think about, all the things I dwell on, all the things I teach on, this is the most important thing to me, by far.

The Cross Bears the Curse

How does a cross satisfy the justice of God? How does a man dying on a tree with nails in his hands and a Roman spear through his side and a crown of thorns on his head, how does that in any way pay for our sins?

Most people do not understand this. I was in Romania several years ago and I was kind of in a Germanic seminary, a brethren seminary, and I was looking for something to read during one of my free times there.

And I found this book on the cross of Christ. And if you read a lot, you can pretty much kind of thumb through a book and kind of figure out where the author's at. You know where to look. And so I started reading through this book.

I got to the important point. And this is what he said. God looked down from heaven and saw the punishment and the suffering that men inflicted upon Jesus Christ and He counted that as payment for our sin.

That's heresy. That's false teaching. It's blasphemy. Did you notice what was wrong there in that statement? Men afflicted Jesus and God counted that as payment for our sin. That's not what happened. How was justice satisfied?

It wasn't simply because Romans whipped Jesus or they put a crown of thorns on His head or they nailed His hands to a tree or they put a spear in His side. That in no way satisfies justice by itself. Justice was satisfied because when Jesus hung on that tree, He bore our sin and in bearing our sin, He became the curse and in bearing the curse, His Father broke fellowship with Him, turned away from Him, and then His Father poured out all of His holy hatred upon His own Son and crushed Him.

That's what satisfies justice. It's not what men did to Jesus. It's what God the Father did to His only begotten Son. I have heard preachers say that the Father looked down upon His Son and saw that He was suffering so much that He could not bear to look at His suffering, so He turned away.

Really? Well, Jesus had another interpretation to that. My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me? Abandoned Me. You see, when we say God is holy and man is not, and in our little tracts we got that separation or divide between God and man, someone had to die abandoned of God.

Someone had to die forsaken of God. Someone had to die like that criminal. Out of God's favor, God turning away, God cannot look upon any sin or any wickedness. His eyes are too pure and too holy, and His Son became the curse.

Cursed is every man who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the Law so as to perform them. And then the Bible says, and Jesus Christ, He became a curse for us, to redeem us from the curse of the Law.

All the filth of His people, all the guilt of His people, He carried. The Father turned away from His Son who had become sin. You know, the Son always dwelled in the bosom of the Father. Always perfect fellowship, always perfect communion.

And on that tree, He bore our filth, and the Father turned away from Him. And then, all the holy, just hatred of God turned against the filth and wickedness and criminality of men. Every full force of it was thrown down upon God's only Son.

Have you never read, And it pleased the Lord to crush Him? God crushed His only begotten Son on that tree. Do you remember Abraham? He takes Isaac up to the mount. He takes the knife, probably puts his hand on the head of the boy to either thrust the knife into his heart or to thrust it into his neck and slaughter him like a lamb.