Justification by Faith Alone with Dr. James White

It is good to be with you again. This is my second time here, and for those of you who don't know, in 2019,

I flew 165 ,000 miles. I taught in Samara, Russia, Durban, South Africa, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Australia, spent two months in London, and I don't fly anymore.

I get around, and now I teach over in Conway for Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

I'm their professor of church history and apologetics. So I drive, and I have a fifth wheel.

Last year when I came here, I really didn't know what I was doing with that, but I've pulled it about 20 ,000 miles since then, and somehow have not cracked it up.

If any of you have ever done that, you know the toughest thing that I have to do when I drive that thing is get into a gas station, because I don't get to go through with the big diesel trucks.

I get to play around with all the cars in the islands, and when you're 47 feet long and 13 feet high, it's lots of fun to get into certain places and try to get gas.

So you happen to be along the path. I was just in St. Charles speaking over the past weekend, and I'll be in a couple places in Texas in a few days on the way back to Arizona.

And so I got in touch with the guys and said, hey, I know it's a Monday. Monday's not the best time for something like this, but would you be interested if I stopped by?

And they're like, eh, I don't know, and they had to talk about it, and they weren't really sure and stuff like that, but here we are.

And CREC, huh? You should have told me that beforehand. Now I know why you're in the front seat.

But I was going to say, when he introduced you, I said, you know how many times I've already pulled my fifth wheel to Moscow?

And last time I was up there, actually, Doug and I did a debate together, and we also ate at Taco Time together, just he and I.

Taco Time is my favorite super cheesy Mexican place to eat. I don't know if you've ever been there, but their crisp meat burritos, they'll kill you, but you'll feel really good as you're dying because they're just so, so, so, so yummy.

So Apologia has great relationships with the CREC and great debates as well, and that's a good thing.

So Doug and I do sweater vest dialogues all the time and love them and love what the

Lord's doing. So it's great to be with you. I noticed we have five Christmas trees, and so how in the world do you tie that into justification by faith?

Let's do it. Watch how we do it. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 9. Isaiah chapter 9, unfortunately these days

I have to put on my old man glasses to get the...

Oh, let me see how many geeks there are here. I need to put on my old man glasses to be able to read the codes for the

Reliant. One person, thank you, thank you very much.

Is that the only person who understands why putting old man glasses on to read the codes for the Reliant? Nobody else gets that.

Wow. You know, Bill Shatner would be very, very sad about what just happened here.

Y 'all need to go watch Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan, and then you'll figure out what

I just said, and it's just two of us understood it. You're a little nervous?

Oh, okay. Okay. All right, Isaiah chapter 9, you know the relevance of the text.

You know the prophecy that is found here. In verse 6, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.

On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of Yahweh of hosts will do this.

We all know this. I hope you know this. It is one of the most beautiful of the messianic passages in the

Old Testament, and of course it is a part of what should be the 28th book of the

New Testament called Handel's Messiah. If you do not listen to Handel's Messiah during the

Christmas season, what is wrong with you people? To use an R .C. Sproul phrase there. It is certainly one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and it is all straight out of Scripture.

So that is why you could sort of stick it in there and it would be okay. But Isaiah 9, 6, to us a child is born, to us a son is given.

It is not our subject this evening, but I just want you to notice that when it says a child is born, the Hebrew terms that are used there are the normal terms for birth of any child.

Jesus was truly born into this world, but then notice, to us a son is given. A son is given.

And when you think about who Christ was and who He was eternally and before the

Incarnation, the Son eternally, He is given, that is the term,

Nathan, is the term that is found there. And notice the names that are given to Him.

Wonderful, Counselor, El Gabor, Mighty God. Same term that is used of Yahweh in Isaiah 10, 21, by the way.

Everlasting Father, just real, real fast, that's not making Him the Father, it doesn't identify Him as the

Father. Father in the Old Testament is primarily the Creator. That is the fulfillment of what we have in Colossians 1, what is said of Jesus, for by Him all things are made, whether in heaven and earth, visible or invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities, all things are created by Him and for Him.

He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. That's what you have there, the everlasting.

It's literally Aviad, Father of Eternity. It's referring to Christ's creative role.

And then this phrase, Prince of Peace, Prince of Peace. Now we hear that all the time, again, this time of year, with Christmas carols and things like that,

Prince of Peace. How do you have peace with God? How do you have peace with God?

In our day, when we have to deal with so many secularists, and that's what we're experiencing in our society, the chaos in our society is coming from the fact that a society that was founded upon the

Christian worldview is purposefully rebelling against all of that, rejecting all of that, and embracing a secular worldview.

The result is simple chaos. It is a collapse of all the things that gave meaning and gave coherence to society.

And when you're talking to a secularist, the idea of having peace doesn't make any sense.

If you're nothing but a bag of fizzing chemicals, if you're just a cosmic mistake, the idea of you seeking peace doesn't make any sense.

But the reality is, you're actually made in God's image. And so no matter what you do, always in the back, there is a desire for you to be at peace.

But if you can't recognize that you're living in God's world, then you don't even know how to ask the right questions.

Why am I not at peace? Because if you don't recognize that you are the creation of God, if you don't recognize that you have stamped right on you, made by God, and you've had that stolen from you so that you do not have any transcendent meaning or worth, then you're really left with extremely difficult questions to ask.

Peace with what? With the cosmos? With something that pitilessly could care less whether I exist or not?

Didn't care before I came into existence, won't care after I've gone out of existence? There's no answers to the real desire to have peace that comes from the fact that we're actually the creatures of God.

And that's why secularism always collapses in upon itself, and this form of secularism will collapse in upon itself, and in my opinion, none too early.

But it's going to be a big collapse when it happens, let's just put it that way.

I'm not going to get into that subject right now, even though we could talk about it all night long.

How do you have peace with God? How does the Bible say it? Because He is the Prince of Peace.

Now what is the term peace? Everybody knows the Hebrew term for peace, right? Shalom.

Shalom. But what does shalom mean? Is there shalom in Israel right now?

No. Even the Jews would not say there's shalom in Israel right now.

Why? Because the Iron Dome missile batteries are manned 24 -7, and violence could break out at any point, because you see, true shalom is a wellness of relationship.

It's not just a cessation of hostilities, but it's a wellness of relationship.

And so there's no peace there. So if that's the background of the

New Testament use of the term peace, the Greek term Irenae, how does one have that?

And why doesn't peace exist naturally? Well, we know why it doesn't exist naturally.

There is this reality of something called sin. And man, from his youth, goes astray.

And man rebels against God's ways, maybe not in the astonishingly obvious ways that we are doing today, to where we will not even allow

God to define man and woman, father and mother, brother, sister.

We simply reject the idea that God can determine any of our reality at all.

Even before all of that came into existence, there was a fundamental understanding that we need to find a way of having peace with God, because there is enmity between ourselves and God.

And it really seems, when you look back at the time of the

Reformation, a lot of people wonder why was it that people were willing to give their lives, to literally give their lives, for the doctrine of justification by faith?

Most people today, it's a theological, it's something that's interesting theologically, and you might get a little excited about it, but the idea of it being something that consumes your soul, so that you would give your life for it.

What led to that? Well, I would like to suggest to you, when you think about Luther, give you a little background here before we dive into the

Scriptures. When you think about what drove Luther to that need to find peace, it's difficult for us living in our day to recognize that everyone who lived back then had seen death by the time they were a small child.

You would have seen dead bodies. Between 1347 and 1351, over half of Europe had died.

You want a pandemic with not a 99 .9

-something percent way of survival, but that in some cities wiped out 70 % of the people?

There were forms of what we call today the plague, bubonic plague, the black death.

They didn't call it that. They called it the great mortality at that time. There were certain forms of it that people believed could be passed by looking at someone.

The reason was there was a certain form of it that, if it invaded your lungs, could kill you in less than 24 hours.

You just would have looked at someone and you could die. It wasn't the looking that did it.

They didn't understand that at that time, but it was that virulent. It was that powerful.

It kept coming back. It wasn't just 1347 to 1351. That was the major time.

But then, in cycles, it would keep coming back. For example, there was a period of time where it came into Zurich, and Ulrich Zwingli, the pastor there, one of the great reformers, risked his life to minister to his flock.

He got it, but he survived. Calvin did the same thing when he was in Strasburg.

He refused to flee, because what most people would do is, once it came into the city, you just got out of town.

They pretty much figured out, if you get out of town, you're pretty safe out in the countryside. But he refused to leave, and he stayed.

He didn't get it. Luther, when he went to school, to go to the city was to risk your life.

You would see death. The average woman, in the time period up to the Reformation, would have to have 10 live births to get one child through to maturity.

That's how high infant mortality was. Calvin lost the only child born to him.

Luther lost children. Pretty much everyone experienced the reality of death.

We don't even talk about death in our society. We hide death from our children. We don't take them to funerals.

It was only a few generations ago that you would live in the same house for generation after generation after generation, so you'd see your great -grandparents and your grandparents die.

So you knew that you were going to die. It was a lesson in mortality.

You recognized life is not going to go on forever. You stop looking at death and talking about death, and all of a sudden, you've got these people running around thinking,

I don't have to worry about eternity. I don't have to worry about life and death. I'm going to live forever.

It's the foolish pride of life. I think that's one of the reasons that the doctrine of justification by faith is more of a curiosity to people than it is the lifeblood of the gospel, because when you think of the

Reformation, there was the material principle and the formal principle. The material principle of Reformation was that which was being proclaimed, and that was you are made right with God by faith and faith alone, justification by faith.

The formal principle, which gave the form and the foundation of the proclamation, was sola scriptura.

Scripture is the sole and fallible rule of faith of the church, because as soon as Luther discovered again, it's not that he was the first one to come up with this.

You can find all sorts of the early church fathers who believed the same things in regards to justification.

In fact, some of the earliest Christian writings, Clement's epistle from Rome to Corinth, clear section on the imputation of Christ's righteousness, justification by faith, the epistle to Diognetus.

These are all within less than 70 years of the time of the apostles, maybe even closer.

But it had become covered over by tradition. When Luther begins presenting this, he's immediately hit with pushback, well, but the councils have said and the popes have said, and that's what forces

Luther to find out, to dig in and realize, oh, this is the only thing we have that is theanustas, the only thing we have that is

God -breathed. The councils and the popes, they're not God -breathed, and so sola scriptura comes to the fore at that point in time.

And so the question that everyone must ask, and some of you know that for many, many years

I have been involved in doing debates with Roman Catholicism, with Roman Catholic apologists, and in that process, when talking about the gospel, we always come to the issue of how do you have peace?

How does a Roman Catholic believe you have peace? I'll never forget, one of the guys that I've debated, I've debated him five times, he's really a nice guy, you've probably seen him on television, his name is

Father Mitchell Pacwa, he is always on EWTN, I don't know if that's on around here,

I imagine it's on pretty much everywhere, but we did a debate in,

I think it was January of 1991. How many of you were not yet on the planet in January of 1991?

Okay, there you go, that gives you, that gives you an idea. I think I'm gonna sit down now, because I'm feeling a little old.

January of 1991, we debated, we did two debates over two nights, the mass and justification.

And during the debate on justification, I asked Mitch this question, now again, brilliant guy, 12 languages, 12 languages, okay, he's a smart guy.

And because I knew that he could read Hebrew, and Greek, I said to him,

I said, how do you have peace with God, knowing what peace means, in light of the fact that the greatest commandment is to love the

Lord your God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And in Roman Catholicism, I gotta give you some background here that I could just assume with him, not everyone understands, in Roman Catholicism, you have different kinds of sin.

You have mortal and venial sin. And mortal sin destroys the grace of justification.

So in Roman Catholicism, you can be right with God, you can be justified, but if you commit a mortal sin, you lose that grace of justification, and now you're the enemy of God.

And you have to go through the sacrament of penance and be reconciled, so you can become the friend of God again. So you can be justified and unjustified, justified and unjustified within Roman Catholicism.

You're initially justified by baptism, but then once you commit a mortal sin, then you have to be re -justified through the sacramental system of Rome.

And so, the problem is, what's a mortal sin? There's a lot of disagreement, there's a lot of disagreement.

But basically, what I said to him was, if you know what peace means, and yet at the same time, you believe that before your head touches the pillow tonight, you could commit an act that would destroy the grace of justification and make you the enemy of God, no longer at peace with Him.

So, knowing what shalom means, so shalom means cessation of hostilities, wellness of relationship.

Knowing what shalom means, how can you say, you have peace with God, and I use the basis of this,

Romans 5 .1, we'll get there a little bit later on, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. When he first answered, he struggled a little bit, and he gave some background, and he didn't really directly answer the question.

Thankfully, I had the opportunity of redirecting. And so, I zeroed in on the meaning of peace as he understood it to be.

And the one thing I loved about Mitch, unlike almost all the other folks that I've debated from that particular perspective, he sat there quietly for a moment and said,

I don't know. He was honest. He recognized what the problem was.

And so, that's the question for all of us. That's the question I ask Protestants. That's the question I ask the people in my own fellowship.

You know your own heart. You can put on, you can pretend for all the rest of us, you can put on your good

Baptist vibes or your Pentecostal vibes or whatever else, but you know your own heart.

You know the thoughts you have had, the lusts, the anger.

And if you really understand the holiness of God, you know that in and of yourself, you could not possibly ever stand in the presence of the thrice holy

God of eternity because He would know everything that you know about your own mind and your own heart.

In 2013, I had the opportunity of doing something I never, ever dreamed I would ever do.

And I encourage you to look this up on YouTube because it's available. But I did a debate on how we are made right before God with Shabir Ali in the

Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa. And as we debated that issue,

I stood right in front of the Qibla. The Qibla is the point in each mosque that is oriented directly toward the

Kaaba, the place of prayer, the black stone in Mecca.

And so I was standing right where the imam had just led the prayers. And the Muslims were all sitting on the floor.

The wimpy Christians are in chairs because the Muslims are used to sitting on the floor. And so they can do that for hours, and the

Christians couldn't do that. And so the Muslims, they're closer to me than this front row is. And to be able to look at them and to say, you know your heart, you know the thoughts you have had.

And if God is truly holy, as both of our scriptures say that He is, then how can you have peace?

The only way I have peace with God is because the righteousness of Jesus Christ has been imputed to me.

I am in Him. The wrath of God finds no place in Him.

The wrath of God will carry everyone else away. The only place that will ever be safe is for those who are in Him.

The look on their face was amazing. I'll never forget it. I'm so thankful to have had that opportunity. But that's a question for everybody.

I don't care what your church background is. I say this to Baptists and to evangelicals.

Why do you believe you have peace with God? Because really when we have the

Lord's Supper together, that's another thing that I really strongly emphasize. At Apologia Church, we do it every week. And a part of my, when

I have the opportunity of introducing the Supper, is I say to people, this is given to us to remind us of the great price that was paid so that we might have peace with God.

It was not something we did. It was something that was done in our place. We need that reminder.

We need that reminder. Let's look to Scripture. Let's look to Scripture. The Book of Romans is the gospel according to Paul.

Paul knows all roads lead to and from Rome. So if you establish a solid church in Rome, the gospel is going to go out.

That's how, for example, the church at Colossae had been founded. Paul spent three years in Ephesus because Ephesus functioned for Asia Minor the same way

Rome does for the entire Roman Empire. It was a major port and it was a major city where people went inland from there through all of Asia Minor.

And so when Paul wrote to the Colossians, for example, he had not been there. He had not found that church. But it was naturally founded by the fact the gospel went out from Ephesus.

And so Romans is a thought -through presentation of how we have peace with God.

And so if you think of the flow of the book, it's amazing that after the introductory material, the next major section is all about sin, the one thing we miss today, the one thing nobody wants to talk about today, the one thing even in seminaries people are taught to diminish and put down, which we can't do because you cannot tell someone how to get saved when they don't know they're lost.

And so the bad news is what makes the necessity for the good news.

We want to skip that part, but we can't. So when you read Romans 1, one of the most amazing texts

I have, when people ask me what's one of the main reasons you think the Bible is inspired, I'll say Romans 1. Because beginning of verse 18 to the end of that chapter, you have a description of mankind that holds true for all of mankind everywhere, in every age, in any language, in any culture.

It's the most insightful description of man and where he is that has ever been penned.

And what it tells us is all men know God exists and they suppress that knowledge and they rebel against Him.

Now we're not going to have time to open that text up, but it continues in chapter 2 to say to the Jews, now you're sitting there going, yeah, you get them,

Paul. But the problem is I'm talking about you too. Simple possession of the

Scriptures, of God's law, does not make you right with God. Because you know it's not right to rob temples, but you rob temples.

You have the law, but you don't do the law. There's a lot of connections there to what

Jesus experienced in dealing with the Pharisees. So you get into chapter 3, and what does he do?

He says, oh yes, the Jews have a great advantage. They've been given the

Scriptures, it's wonderful. But then, verse 9, what then? Are we

Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin as it is written.

And then beginning in verse 10, you have what's called a catena of passages all the way through verse 18.

And I don't know if you've ever spent much time with it, but it's sort of depressing.

I mean, it is a collection of passages from the Psalter. There's an unrighteous, no, not one.

No one who understands. No one who seeks for God. There is no

God -seeker. I always wondered what the seeker -sensitive movement thought of that particular verse.

You're trying to reach the people that don't exist. Oh, but I've met many people. May I suggest to you that outside of the work of the

Holy Spirit in someone's heart, what you're seeking are the benefits of God without God. You want the benefits

God can give you, but you don't want to deal with the God that would give you the benefits. There is no

God -seeker. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

Their throat is an open grave. And may I say in our day, that would include the fingers. Their throat is an open grave.

They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood. Got any Planned Parenthood locations nearby?

In their paths are ruin and misery and the way of what? Peace, Shalom, Irenae.

They have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Wow, we could spend a long time there, but we can't tonight. So what happens?

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

For by works of law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Here's the picture I want you to see. I don't watch almost any television any longer,

I just don't have time for it. But I do remember, you know, I was hospitalized about six, seven years, well, right at six years ago now, and I was stuck having to watch whatever was on TV.

And you have those shows with the, you know, like Judge Judy and stuff like that, right?

And you'll have these people come in and they are, they're very filled with themselves.

And they're accused of something and they've got an excuse for everything. Their mouth is just going.

And Judge Judy would be one of those that would finally just say, would you just shut up? Because it's just an excuse for everything.

Notice the picture here. So that every mouth may be stopped. Because sometimes what you see are the people that come into the court of law and their head is down.

There's no defiance. There's no excuses. There's no self -righteousness.

Yes, Your Honor, I did those things. Yes, I should be punished.

I recognize what I have done. That's the person who's ready to hear about justification.

That's the person ready to find out about peace. As long as the mouth is just going, that person is not ready.

And so when we cut out the bad news part, I was driving home from,

I forget where it was with all the driving I do anymore, but I saw a big old sign. It was in Arizona. And what was it?

Oh, God believes in you. God believes in you?

Well, he made you, so I suppose he would have to believe in you, but that's not what they were communicating.

It was this idea of, well, you've seen it. Try Jesus. Try Jesus.

Jesus said, if you'd be my disciple, deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow me.

That's not trying him. Jesus isn't something you add to all your other self -help methodologies.

And the person who we bring into the church without challenging them on their sin is the person whose mouth is still doing this and will always be doing this because they've never gotten that point,

I am guilty before God. I need to have peace. I need to cast myself on someone else.

Only once the mouth has stopped do you then have, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

Now, why does it say all who believe? It's amazing. You know, I was raised in a church. I'm very thankful I was raised in a church.

But when I memorized Romans 3 .23, and most of us in here,

I bet, have it memorized. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, right?

How do we use that? Well, it's every single individual. Well, there's truth to that, but what's actually going on in the context?

When it says there is no difference at all, it's talking about Jews and Greeks. It's talking about Jews and Gentiles. It's saying there's only one way of salvation.

There's not one way for the Jew, another way for the Gentile. For all, it's by faith in Jesus Christ.

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

God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, propitiation. Liberal scholars don't like that term.

You know why? They don't like it because propitiation refers to a sacrifice that brings about forgiveness, but that also deals with the wrath of the offended party.

So there is a, if I recall correctly, British theologian in the last century, which

I know very well because I was from the last century too. And C .H.

Dodd hated the term propitiation. He preferred expiation because expiation has no reference to wrath.

He just could not believe in a wrathful God. And I'm not going to develop this sermon here right now, but I've said many, many times, if you look at the cross of Christ and all you see is love, you're not seeing it as deeply as you should.

When you look at the cross of Christ, you must first and foremost see the wrath of God against sin that then provides the foundation of this self -giving love that then provides redemption from that sin through the giving of this perfect one's life.

We turn the cross, in American evangelicalism, we've turned it into an emotional experience.

Sticky sentimentality. It was not a pretty sight, but it was necessary.

Jesus said it was necessary. Why? Because God's law had been broken and God's law represents

God's character. So, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show

God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier, the one declaring righteous, the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It's excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works?

No. By a law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, the Gentiles also. Since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law.

That is, we demonstrate what its real purpose was. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham?

Chapter 4, Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

What does the scripture say? And then you have one of the most commonly cited texts from the Old Testament. The most commonly cited is what?

What's the most commonly cited text from the Old Testament? Oh, I'm waking everybody up. Very good.

God's favorite Bible verse, the 110th Psalm, Psalm 110 .1. But right behind it is

Genesis 15 .6. Abraham believed God and it was reckoned or counted to him as righteousness.

Now dig in with me here. Normally this is, I didn't, I chose not to do the

PowerPoint thing or the keynote thing or something like that because I'm traveling, I'm wearing jeans, didn't even change my shoes from driving today.

And so bringing the computer and setting all this up, no, can't do it. Normally this is where I put it up there because there are two 180 degree opposite positions placed here.

Now to the one who works, literally to the working one, his wage is not, and it's the term, legizimite, to be reckoned to, to be imputed to someone.

It is not counted as a gift, literally it's according to grace, but as his due or what is owed to him.

And all the terminology there is commonly used in the Greek papyri of the day of business transactions.

So the idea is to the one who works, if I work to gain something, if I'm working to earn something, then the wage that I get, it's not counted as grace, but as what is due to me.

And of course, even in our day, you put in 40 hours and someone refuses to pay, you've got a legal claim against them.

But notice verse five. And to the one who does not work. Use the exact same phraseology, the working one, just you put the negation term in there.

To the not working one, but instead the believing one, the one who believes in him, who does what?

Justifies the ungodly, justifies the ungodly.

His faith is counted as righteousness. His faith is counted as righteousness, not as what is due, because he believes in what?

The God who justifies the ungodly. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, never understood the grace of God.

Never understood the grace of God. He thought he was a prophet, and so he had the right and ability to change the Bible. So you know what he did this verse?

He couldn't, this didn't seem right to him. And so he changed it, and to the one who does not work, but believes him, who justifies the godly.

I'm sorry, I skipped down one. He put the not in, so that he turned the verse exactly upside down.

To the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, does not justify the ungodly.

The Mormon God does not justify the ungodly. Guess what? That means there's no hope, because you're the ungodly, and so am

I, and if God doesn't justify us, we're doomed. He literally changed it.

You can find it in the Joseph Smith translation. Turned it upside down. So then

Paul wants to give us an example, and he goes to Psalm 32. But what's really interesting here, sometimes we zoom over this, but zero in with me.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing to the one to whom

God counts or imputes, legitimi, righteousness apart from works.

Apart from works. So here's Paul saying, hey, David gives us an example of what it means to have righteousness imputed to you, not based upon what you do.

But then look at the verses he quotes. Bless are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Where did righteousness go?

Where did receiving something go? You see, Paul defines this counting as righteous apart from works as the forgiveness of sin.

And he says, bless are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered over.

And then blessed is the man against whom the

Lord will not count his sin. It's literally against whom the Lord will not impute his sin.

Think about that for a second. My Roman Catholic friends like to say that justification by faith is the fiction of forensic righteousness.

It's just, it's something you made up. Because what you're saying is God treats you as something you're not.

And God doesn't deal in fictions. You may be aware of the fact that, and I can't prove it, it's one of those things where Luther may have said it, may have not have said it, but I think this one he did.

Because it's very earthy. Luther likened the difference between justification and sanctification to a dung hill, a pile of fertilizer.

They didn't have the fertilizer you can buy, which is becoming very expensive now because the World Economic Forum's trying to kill us all, but they used farm animal refuse to fertilize their fields.

And so you had to pile it up someplace, you know, and by the end of the season, the flies certainly knew where it was, and it smelled, especially when the wind went the wrong direction.

But then the first snow of the fall would come. And you know,

I remember, I live in Arizona, so snow doesn't have any meaning to someone who lives in Phoenix, okay, none at all.

You can go up north and see it, but not where I live. But I was born in Minneapolis, we had snow.

And that first snow that would come, it was, remember how beautiful it was? It's not like the snow in March, you know, it's got all the black and all, oh, it's just disgusting.

But that first snow of the fall, it covers everything over, there's no tracks in it. And it covers over that pile of dung too.

And the flies, bye -bye flies, and the smell, the smell's gone. It covers everything over.

And what Luther said was, the righteousness of Christ is that snow that covers over the pile of dung.

We are the pile of dung. We are offensive to God and of ourselves. And it's something else that takes away that offense.

It's not changing us, because in Roman Catholicism, it's the infusion of grace that changes us and makes us objectively pleasing to God.

That's why He wants to take us to heaven. And Luther said, that's sanctification.

That comes later. That's something else. Justification is that perfect righteousness of Christ that covers us over.

Now the Roman Catholics go, ah, it's just fiction. But here's the problem. In Roman Catholicism, you are a pile of dung, and then you're baptized, and boom, you're now a pile of gold.

And see, God takes piles of gold to heaven because they're pleasing. But here's the problem.

What if you commit a venial sin? Well a venial sin doesn't destroy the grace of justification, but you start getting flecks of dung on the gold.

And so before you go to heaven, you've got to go to purgatory to burn off the flecks of dung from the gold.

But what if you commit a mortal sin? Back to a pile of dung. Then you've got to go through the sacrament of penance, the reconciliation, pile of gold, but flecks of dung on it now.

But if you commit another mortal sin, back to a pile of dung. And here's the problem.

In Roman Catholicism, you can never know which one you are. You can never know which one you are.

That's the sin of presumption. You can never know whether you've fulfilled all the conditions which are necessary for achieving justification,

Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. That's why

Mitch Pacwa couldn't tell me that he had peace with God. So, they may mock

Luther's idea, but theirs leaves them with no peace, no peace.

So here's the question that I've been asking Roman Catholics for years. And write it down if you want to see how this works.

It's one thing to come in here and say, hey, I did this once and this is the result. You can go watch.

I debated Father Peter Stravinskas on the subject of Purgatory, Long Island, 2001.

He had three PhDs. He had not read a word I'd ever written.

I had read everything he had ever written on the subject of Purgatory. You can tell how the debate went from there. During the cross -examination,

I got into Romans chapter 4 and I asked him this question. I said, blessed is the man against whom the

Lord will not count his sin. And I asked him the question, who is the blessed man?

Who is the blessed man in Romans 4 .8? His first response was

Jesus. So Jesus is the blessed man because God won't count

Jesus' sin against him. That's sort of a problem since Jesus has no sin to be counted against him.

He had obviously never even thought about it or been challenged on it. And so I said, yeah,

I don't really think that works because Jesus doesn't have any sin to be imputed to him in the first place. So you want to try that again?

And he said, well, I hope to be the blessed man. I hope to be.

He didn't know. He couldn't know. Rome does not have a finished work of Christ in the first place if you understand the doctrine of the

Mass. And because of its doctrine of justification, he couldn't know.

He couldn't know. So I ask you, are you the blessed man? If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you're the blessed man.

That's his whole point. His whole point is, blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

Is God being unjust? No, because he already counted that sin on Christ, our sin bearer.

He made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

It's the great exchange. Now, there's a couple of you theologian types out there.

And you're going, you haven't read any N .T. Wright, have you? Why don't you go listen to the debate that N .T.

Wright and I did on this subject on the Unbelievable Radio broadcast. You'll find out that I have. And that Wright's understanding of that passage is extremely problematic, as is

Romans 4. That's where the real issue is. So is this blessing then only for the circumcised?

Or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised? Here's something important, write this down. When we do the

Q &A, oh my goodness, is it 7 o 'clock? I don't know how that happened. But when we do the Q &A, we're going to talk a little bit about James 2.

Because there's somebody sitting out there going, yeah, but there's James 2. And here's the problem.

We can look at James. Got a little book here. God Who Justifies wrote it.

Oh, coming up on 20 years ago now. It's the only hardback book I've ever had, so this one's sort of special to me.

There's a 34 -page chapter in here on James 2 that I would invite you to look very carefully at.

Because I spend an awful lot of time on it. And I believe there is perfect harmony between James and Paul on this subject.

When you allow them to speak in their context. But here's the key. How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised? You see, in Roman Catholic theology, you can be justified, then unjustified.

And then justified, and then unjustified. And so they'll try to find three different justifications in Abraham's experience alone.

What does that do? That makes them an arguer against Paul. And when you're arguing against the

Apostle, you're probably on the wrong side of things. Your tradition has gotten in your way.

And let me tell you something. Roman Catholics are open about tradition. They speak about the necessity of tradition.

They deny Sola Scriptura. But there's a bunch of folks that think they believe in Sola Scriptura.

The reality is you've got a tradition just as big and just as thick as the

Roman Catholics do. You just won't admit it. And because of that, you can never examine it on the basis of Scripture.

And it's your ultimate authority, not Scripture. And if your tradition tells you that Paul isn't quite dealing with it here, then your tradition is contradicting

Scripture. And you can sit there and go, yeah, you go ahead and debate those Roman Catholics, those papers, they've got all sorts of unbiblical stuff.

Well, you've got an entire tradition that exalts the abilities of man. And it ain't biblical either.

It's your tradition. And it's got you enslaved. It's got you enslaved.

Keep that in mind. So read through the rest of Romans Chapter 4 because he talks about the fact that for salvation to be of grace, the hand that embraces that salvation, you can't bring anything in it.

You can't come to God and say, oh God, I'm truly in need.

I know I can't make it myself, but I'm going to put these filthy rags in my hand.

I'm going to give them to you. You have to have an empty hand of faith.

You have to recognize you can't bring anything. Your sin makes it necessary for Christ to be the perfect Savior.

You've got nothing to add to what He does. And that the only hand that will ever grasp that hand of grace is an empty hand.

That's what the rest of Chapter 4 is about. And then the big conclusion, Chapter 5. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. There's the peace. There is the peace. The Prince of Peace, how did

He bring about peace? By His self -sacrifice. When I stand before God, the only righteousness

I'm going to stand in is the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to me. Anything that I do does not add to His righteousness.

It glorifies Him. It's His purpose. He wants to conform me to the image of Christ. But my peace with Him is solely based upon that righteousness, which is mine by faith and faith alone.

And if I try to add anything to that, Paul has some really strong words over in the book of Galatians.

And yet that's what mankind wants to do. Man wants to add to that.

And that's why the strongest language in all of Scripture is plainly found.

It's either in Matthew 23 or it's all through Galatians.

Depends on how you define roughest language. But when

Paul speaks about the Judaizers that have come in, he calls them pseudedelphoi, false brethren.

And he says, we didn't stand for them for an hour so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.

He made this the very issue of defining the gospel. You know what? My life would be a lot easier if he hadn't done that.

It would be a whole lot easier for me to get along. It's so popular today to have mere

Christianity where it's, well, it's all based on believing the

Trinity and the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. But you can't ask what the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus actually accomplishes because then you get into the gospel and everybody starts fighting.

And so we're going to minimize everything down. And that means

Protestants and Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, we can all get together and we're all just good. We're all happy because we left the gospel out.

And that would make my life a whole lot easier. You know, I've got Roman Catholic friends, and I wish that I didn't have to be constantly talking about that.

Because very often we come to the very same conclusions, especially with what craziness is going on in this world right now.

But I have to talk about this. I'm betraying them if I don't talk about this. And that's why in the last chapter when

Paul's talking about don't be enslaved again, he says, I wish that those who are troubling you would let the knife slip.

He's talking about circumcision. That's in Scripture.

Wow. That's how serious it was. That's not how serious it is for most of us today.

That's something we can go over to Starbucks and have a nice chat about it, right? This is how you're made right with God.

This is how you're made right with God. And Paul said, there's only one gospel.

And those that are perverting the gospel at this point, they are anathema under the curse of God.

Now he's talking about people who are purposefully doing this. And I hope and pray that there are people...

You know, people said, you're saying that every single Roman Catholic is going to hell. No, I've never said that. I sat down with a man that I would call my friend.

And he's a Roman Catholic priest. And he will tell you, we have gone in depth.

I have proclaimed the whole counsel of God. And he knows it's because I love him.

He's a special guy. He really is. And he fully understands what I'm saying.

He gets it. And he understands what my position is.

My position is, a Roman Catholic who does have peace with God, has that peace with God.

Not because of what Rome teaches. But because they don't accept all that Rome teaches. Because they've accepted the gospel in its place.

And I hope there are a lot of people like that. I really do. But you can't just hope you're going to slide in the back door.

When you have the clarity of what we have in Scripture, you can't. So if we love them, we have to speak to them with clarity.

We have to speak to them with clarity. Now, it's already seven minutes past and we're supposed to do the

Q &A stuff and all the rest of that kind of thing. There's so much more I could add. But I'm not sure how long the break is supposed to be before we do the five minutes, right?

Yeah, one bathroom in the back, five minutes. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I've seen that one before.

Well, we'll call it five minutes. It won't be. We'll call it five minutes and then we'll get back to it with the