The Heart of the Gospel — Paul Washer

Interpreting Scripture in the Context of Church History

If you come across anything new in Christianity, it's wrong. That's very important. If after 2 ,000 years we haven't come to grips with it, we're probably not going to. Another thing that is extremely important, there is a rule of hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the study of the Bible, a study of how to study the Bible. There's a rule of hermeneutics that says this, you always do your theology in the context of the church. Now, what does that mean?

It means that when you interpret, interpret the Bible, it is your interpretation of scripture. And in our postmodern society, people are always saying, well, that's your interpretation. So what do you do?

You go back through 2000 years of Christian history, and if everyone's in agreement with regard to the interpretation of that passage and you disagree with everyone else, you're probably wrong. So one of the things that's very important when we interpret scripture is that we do it in the context of history, and I can give a secular example to that.

It would be this. Americans know nothing about America. They don't know the history of America, so they can't know where they are at this point or where they're going. They have no point of staying or point of departure because they know nothing of their history.

It's the same way with the evangelical community today. I submit to you that many of the things we preach and many of the things we practice in church, if Christians could resurrect from only 100 years ago, they would scoff at us and cast us out of the church.

So you see, we simply cannot live in a vacuum. We have to address scripture and it is scripture and the grammar of scripture. It is the study of the word. But at the same time, we look through history and we compare ourselves to godly Christians down through the ages.

And when we do that, we find that modern day Christianity, in some cases, cannot be called Christianity at all. And one of the things that we have done is what I call a gospel reductionism. We've reduced the gospel down to a few little questions that if a person says yes to every one of those questions, we purposely declare them to be saved.

My dear friend, people are saved through a supernatural working of the spirit of God that occurs through the means of preaching the word of God. It cannot be manipulated, coerced. And if someone truly is born again, the evidence is not that one time in their life they prayed a prayer.

The evidence is the way they live, the fruit of their life. You shall know them by their fruit. And when Jesus was saying that, he was well aware of what James would later write. He is not saying the salvation is through works.

It is not. It is by faith and faith alone in the finished work of Jesus Christ. But salvation is a supernatural work of God. And if anyone's been saved, they become a new creature and new creatures do new things.

And if someone does not consistently do new things or consistently does bad things, they might be a member of the church, but they're not a new creature and they're not a new creature because they're not born again.

False Conversions and the Evidence of New Birth

We need to understand, as one preacher came to me, one pastor in Peru once, very angry, arrived at my house, a wonderful evangelist, he was a wonderful preacher, loved souls. He came to my house. He's very angry.

I said, Brother Zacharias, what's wrong? He said, well, an evangelist came and preached at my church all week and we had a hundred people saved. I said, what's wrong with that? He said, not one of them came to church on Sunday.

And I'll submit to you that a hundred people did not get saved, a hundred people made decisions. And in making decisions without being born again, they now believe themselves saved and have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.

We need to be very careful when we pronounce upon people that they've been born again, when in fact they haven't. We also need to be very careful when we speak of the cross, but do not teach it. Today, I'm going to go through some things in Romans chapter three.

We will go there and something that I do quite often is teach on the gospel. You say, Brother Paul, why would you teach on the gospel? Well, as I said, I stood before 16 seminary students several years ago and asked them one question, what is the gospel?

Fifteen of them definitely missed the whole boat. One of them got close, but not close enough. So we're going to go through the gospel and you might think that quite unusual, but that's exactly what we're going to do.

We're going to go through the gospel so that the message you do proclaim boldly is the correct one, because there's only one gospel that has the power to save. And that is the correct one. And if we preach any other gospel other than the true gospel, well, you know what Paul tells us in Galatians chapter one, anathema.

The Gravity and Universality of Sin

And so let's take a look, Romans chapter three, verse 23, a verse that you probably one of the first verses you ever memorized and yet so profound, we superficially look at things and don't understand the power that is there.

Romans chapter three, twenty three, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We tell people they've sinned today as though it were something like, well, you know, everyone's a sinner, don't you?

Would would a doctor walk up to a patient and say, well, you know, you have cancer, don't you? Sin is a very serious thing is a heinous thing. It is a horrifying thing is a terrible thing. It is an insane thing.

As a matter of fact, the only problem humanity has ever had is sin. Everybody who dies, dies because of sin. But the worst thing about sin is not what it does to men, because men aren't the point. The worst thing about sin is it is offense against an infinitely holy and righteous and good God.

All have sinned, men don't tremble at that today when we tell them they've sinned because they don't know who God is. Do you realize that Sunday morning in church is about the greatest hour of idolatry throughout the week?

Do you want to know why? Because most of the people worshiping God in that church are not worshiping the God of the Bible, they're worshiping a figment of their own imagination, a God that in America looks more like Santa Claus than the God of the Bible.

And if the God of the Bible was preached in that church, people would become so offended and so angry they would stand up and say, I could never love a God like that. My God's not like that. You see, in America, we've tamed him.

We've made him palatable to carnal men, a good God, and our definition of good is quite warped. The God of the Bible is a dangerous God, he is a loving God, he is love. But he's not Santa Claus and he's not what most believe him to be, he rules over nations and kings, the smallest and the greatest, he lifts up his hand and no man can pull it down.

He slams his hand on the table and not one man can manipulate a finger. He's God and by and large, American Christianity doesn't like a God like that. But he's the one. And in order for men to understand the gravity of sin, they must understand who God is.

One of the greatest needs in America today is for pastors to stand up and start teaching about God. But in order to do that, they would have to start studying about God, spend less time studying how to make a church grow and more time studying about the God of the church.

All have sinned. Westminster Confession says lack of conformity to the law of God. The old Puritans used to say this, they'd say, you have not offended a governor of a small state. Nor the prince and mayor of some tiny village, but against the Lord of glory, you have railed.

Every sin would be so vile as to describe it as an affront against God of seeking to slam yourself into the very throne room of God and slaughter him. Sin is terrifyingly terrible because of the one against whom it is committed.

And so when we tell men that they are sinners, there must be love and passion and compassion in us, but there must be a seriousness about the matter. Men have sinned against God, they have broken his law, they deserve to die.

In hell for eternity, not much preaching like that anymore, is there? Sin is sin and it's vile and it is the job of the preacher to proclaim to men how vile sin is, to preach the law, to bring men to condemnation.

I hear modern preachers today say, well, you know, our ministry is not to condemn. Well, then Paul, the apostle, was quite mistaken because he spent the first three chapters of the book of Romans doing only one thing, seeking to condemn every human being on the face of the earth so that they would look for Jesus, so that they would look for a savior.

Mark my words, read the book, go from Romans one, two and three, and you will find out that he is doing with every bit of his mental ability, every bit of everything in him seeking to do one thing, show all men the gravity of their sin and condemn them so that he would leave them with their hand over their mouth, not able to say another word, to shut men up to their sin so that they might seek mercy from a good God.

For all have sinned. We don't understand the greatness of that. Let me try to put it for you this way. God. He stands there in the days of creation and he commands. Stars. Hundreds of times larger than our sun in our solar system, he commands them to put themselves in certain sectors of space and they all bow down and say yes.

He looks at planets and he tells them to put themselves in a certain orbit and to continue in that orbit until he gives them another word and they bow and say, yes, Lord. He tells mountains to be lifted up and seas to be cast down and they all worship him.

He looks at the sea and he says, you come to this point and come no further. And they all obey. And then he looks at man and says, come and man goes, no, the gravity of our sin is immense. And that is the scandal of our preaching, we think that we ought to be able to go out on those streets and preach and everyone sort of embrace us and appreciate us.

Not when we stand against our culture and much of even American Christianity and proclaim the Bible as it is truly declared. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God in modern day, if you were to go through commentaries, modern day commentaries, they would basically tell you to be falling short of the glory of God means that God created you for a glorious purpose and you've you've fallen short of that glorious plan.

But if you go back to the old commentaries, you won't hear such things. They have a totally different twist on it, it's not all centered around men. It's centered around God and the passage is usually interpreted this way, God made you for himself, he made you for his own glory, he made you to serve him and worship him, to glorify him, and you have not done it.

You see how in America, our churches, our preaching, our evangelism, it's all built around men. For man, everything for man, scripture and old preaching, everything for God. It is the glory of God. For his honor, I submit to you, the Christians in America are the wealthiest, most secure, most protected and well-fed group of Christians that's ever existed on the face of the earth.

And yet you go into our supposed Christian bookstores and you find that half of those books are written about how empty we are. Why? Because we're empty for the same reason Jesus Christ never was. He said, I have food to eat that you know not of, and my food is to do the will of him who sent me.

We're so consumed with meeting our felt needs that we've missed the boat with regard to Christianity. As a matter of fact, churches are being built all over this country based upon meeting the felt needs of carnal people instead of teaching people the gospel so that they're no longer carnal and they're only centered in one thing, living, loving, serving and glorifying God.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Now he speaks and he says something extremely important. He says in verse 24, speaking of the Christian being justified. Now, what does it mean to be justified?

Justification, Redemption, and Salvation by Grace

This is very, very important. Many people don't understand justification, justification. When a person believes in Jesus Christ, they are justified. That does not mean the moment they believe God makes them righteous, because if that was the case, everyone who believed in Jesus would be perfect from that moment on.

What it means is this, the moment a person. Casts off from themselves every hope in their own good works and trusts only in the finished work of Christ, God legally declares them to be righteous before him.

To be right with him, the moment a person believes a person who has sinned, a person who has not lived for the glory of God, a rebel, a God hater, which is what we all were, according to the book. The moment that person believes in Christ, believes in the gospel, avails himself of the perfect work of Christ, God legally declares that person right with him before the throne.

Now, it says something very, very important here, it says. Being justified as a gift by his grace now, this is rather redundant, he's saying the same thing he's saying, being justified as a gift, as a gift, as a matter of fact, you know, in the place in Scripture where it says they hated him without a cause, they hated Jesus without a cause, that Jesus never gave anyone a reason to hate him.

That's the same word used here in the Greek. It's saying being justified, even though we never gave him a cause to justify us, as a matter of fact, not only did we not give him a cause, he justified us not because of us, but in spite of us, not because he saw some inherent worth in us, not because of a good deed or a good work we had done.

He declared us right in spite of us. And it was a gift. A gift based upon the finished work of his precious son on that tree now. He goes on and he says being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption.

Redemption means to purchase, to set a slave or a captive free by means of a purchase or a payment that God has made us right with him, has set us free from the condemnation of his law. And the fierceness of his own wrath, he has set us free by making a payment.

Now, what was the payment? The blood of his only begotten son, not coins, not metals, not not things in heaven, but his son. Now, what is very important here to whom was the payment made? If there is a payment and one who gives it, there must be one who receives it.

The in the early patristics, the first five centuries of the church, it was often common that the Greek theologians would say, well, he paid the devil. He redeemed us from the devil. The devil had a grasp on us and God made payment to the devil.

That is not true. God made payment, according to Orthodox Christianity, God made payment to himself. Now, why? I'll tell you why. Sometimes people will come to me and they'll say, I've been saved and kind of with a twinkle in my eye, I'll say, well, great, from what?

And they'll go, well, from hell. Well, hell wasn't after you. Well, I've been saved from from what? From sin. Sin is an impersonal thing. It wasn't after you. Do you want to know from what you have been saved?

It would better be to say from whom you have been saved. You have been saved from God. You see, we have broken God's law. God is just. In order for you to be saved, his justice must be satisfied, payment must be made.

The wages of sin is death. Who causes that death? God, in his judgment, in his wrath, the sinner must die in order for the sinner to be saved. A redemption, a payment must be made and that payment is to the justice of God.

God's justice must be satisfied. It is correct to say that God saved you. God saved you from himself. God saved you for himself and God saved you by himself. So he redeemed us. We have redemption. And it says this very, very important.

It says the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus. There are only two realms as you go through the New Testament, especially the Book of Romans, the writings of Paul and Ephesians, also in Colossians, two realms, two realms.

That's all. There are no third category. There are two realms. You're either in Adam or you're in Christ. You're either condemned. Or condemned. Or justified. You're either dead or alive. You're either lost or Christian.

The only thing we have is in Christ, not in an ecclesiastical system, not in a religious right, not even in a decision. Do you realize how many people are lost in America because they're not trusting in Christ?

They're trusting in a decision they made. They may. They went through a few steps, made a decision at the end. And if you ask them if they're going to heaven, they say yes. And you ask them why? Because I made a decision.

No, it's because I have thrown myself upon Christ and what Christ has done. Nothing in my hands, I bring simply to the cross of Christ, I cling and nothing else. Our redemption is in Christ Jesus. And apart from him, there is nothing.

Grace Versus Works in World Religions

Now, something very, very important when you get into world religions, it's extremely important. One of the greatest things to come across is this every religion, with the exception of a few eastern ones that aren't really religions to start off with.

But every religion has to do with man being right with God. You realize that. Which is proof that God really has written his law in the hearts of men and men really do know they're sinful and wicked and wrong with God, because every religion on the face of the earth is asking one question, how can I be right with God?

You ask a Muslim, how can you be, sir, let's pretend that I'm a reporter and I interview a Muslim, I say, sir, if you died right now, where would you go? He would say, well, I would I would go to paradise.

And I say, why? He'd say, well, I'm a good man. I give alms. I've made the pilgrimages. I make the daily prayers. Makes sense to me. He's going to paradise because that's where he deserves to go. I go to an Orthodox Jew and I say, sir, if you died right now, where would you go?

I would go to heaven. Why? Well, because I love the law of God. I keep the Torah. I am a righteous man and I walk in the way of the righteous. And I, as a reporter, say, well, makes sense to me. You're going to heaven because that's exactly where you deserve to go.

You're right with God by virtue of your acts. And then I come to a genuine Christian. And I say, sir, if you died right now, where would you go? And he says, I'd go to heaven. And well, sir, what is the basis of your hope?

He would say, well, in sin was I conceived and brought forth into this world. I have broken every law of a good and righteous God, and I deserve the greatest of his wrath. And I, as a reporter, stop him and say, sir, this doesn't make any sense at all.

You're telling me you're going to heaven when, in fact, you deserve the very bowels of hell. How can that be? And the Christian looks up at me and says, because I'm going to heaven upon the virtue and the merit of another Jesus Christ, my Lord.

And that is the difference in all religions. There's only two religions in the world, a religion of works and a religion of grace. And our boast is not in ourselves. Faith is the only eye that never it never looks back at itself.

It's always looking away from itself to the Christ. And it is not the size of our faith. It is the object of our faith. They give you an example, a very bold man. Looks at a very weak bridge. And he has great faith that that weak bridge will hold him and he walks across that bridge and gets halfway across and it caves in on him and he is destroyed, he perishes, he dies.

He had great faith in a weak bridge. But let's say a trembling, trembling, weak soul of a man comes to a great bridge and he begins to walk across that bridge with great fear and doubt and dread. No matter how small his faith, he's going to make it across.

Why? Because the bridge, not his faith today in America. Oh, it's all about my faith. I'm going to heaven because of my faith. No, your faith can't save you. It is faith in Christ. And Christ is the one who saves.

If the bottom of this hotel room right now were to drop out from underneath every one of us sitting here, none of you would go, oh, faith. You would all go, oh, Jesus, we can even turn faith into an idol, a decision into an idol.

Nothing is strong enough to save you but Jesus Christ and it is looking unto him. Now, here comes something in verse twenty five that I plead with you. If you will understand this, you will understand something that many have forgotten, not something new, something quite old.

As a matter of fact, it is very hard of the gospel. Many preachers, Martin Lloyd-Jones, Charles Spurgeon referred to this as the Acropolis of the Christian faith, the great fortified city. Some theologians have said that if all the Bible were to be removed, but a few short verses, these would be the verses to keep this verse here in verse twenty five, possibly the most powerful, most important text in the entire Bible.

And yet few people even investigate it. It's passed over. It says our redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, verse twenty five, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith, whom God displayed publicly.

The cross was not an accident. The cross was not an accident, but also evangelicals. Listen to me. The cross was not plan B. The cross is the greatest manifestation revelation of God. Without the cross, no one would ever know God, no one, not even principalities, powers, mights and dominions in heaven would know God as he is to be known, except through the cross of Jesus Christ.

And it was God's doing that his son be crucified and that he be crucified publicly. The number one religious city of the world outside of that city on a crossroads, he hung on that tree for everyone to see because God was doing something, teaching something, showing something about himself that had to be explained now.

Propitiation, what is that about? Well, let me share with you, I want you to hold your place and I want you to go to the book of Proverbs, I want you to see something that if you can grasp, it will help you a great deal.

Proverbs 1715, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. You know what it means?

Abomination is the hardest, is the hardest, coarsest word possibly used in all of Scripture. There's nothing harder to be an abomination before God is to be the worst thing. There's nothing worse. It's vile, it goes beyond words to describe to be an abomination before God is a horrid, hated thing before God.

Now, listen to what it says. Listen carefully to justify the wicked. Is what an abomination, do you realize what's going on here? I have been teaching you for the last 15 minutes that God justified the wicked.

And I just showed you there's a verse that says anyone who justifies the wicked is an abomination before God. Does anyone see a problem? I want to submit to you something, and again, anything new is wrong.

This is old. The greatest problem in the entire Bible, the greatest problem in all of redemptive history, the thing the Bible is written about, the main one, number one theme is this. If God is just, he cannot forgive you.

How can a just God forgive wicked men and still be just? That's the greatest problem in all of Scripture. And some of you have never even heard it. If you were to read all the great theologians down through history, this is it.

But not just the theologians. This is what the Bible is teaching. The greatest problem, the reason for everything written is this. If God is just, how can he forgive wicked men and still be just? Let me give you a secular illustration.

Let's say that someone kills your entire family and he's caught red handed with the blood dripping off his hands as the police rush in, as he's strangling the life out of the last dear one in your family.

The police rush in and catch him and they take this man with all the evidence necessary and they present him before the judge and the judge looks down and says, I'm a loving judge. Therefore, go free.

What would you say? You would say that that judge was an abomination, that he was more wicked than the criminals he pardons. Why? Because a judge must do justice and a judge who doesn't do justice is not a judge.

So the question of all of Scripture in this gospel thing that we've been proclaiming around the world is this, the great problem is God is just and the God of all the earth does right. Man has broken every law of God.

How can God be just and forgive wicked men and declare them to be righteous when they are not righteous? That is the problem and the basis and the foundation and the reason for the gospel. Doesn't anyone read old books anymore?

Have you ever shared that with a person? I was teaching a group of students in Romania several years ago, budding theologians. Why did Jesus die? Well, for a sin that that didn't answer my question, why did he have to die for sin?

Well, because the sin is bad. No, it all goes back to God. God is just and a just God can not declare something righteous when it is not righteous. To do so would be an abomination, and that is the reason why a propitiation had to be made.

What is a propitiation? A sacrifice that satisfies justice makes full payment to the justice of God so that that just God can then show mercy to wicked men. A payment must be made now. What is that payment?

The Necessity and Nature of Christ’s Perfect Sacrifice

What could that payment be? Well, first of all, that payment has to be a man. A man has to die. Man has sinned. Man must die for men to be free. A man must die in their place. The blood of bulls and goats will not take away sin.

It will not cleanse the conscience. It will not satisfy God's justice. A man must die. Does anyone qualify? Clean hands, pure heart. No one. Job said, oh, that there was a mediator, someone who could lay his hands on both of us.

But that one who dies. He must be God. Why is that the one who dies on that tree must be more than a man, he must be God who becomes man, and why is that necessary? Well, let me give you several reasons.

First of all, salvation is of the Lord. The abominable doctrine of the Jehovah's Witnesses is they say that Jesus was a creature, was a created being. And in saying that they're saying the one who died and provided salvation, that one is not God and God is not our savior.

And that is an abomination, the Bible all throughout the scriptures declares that salvation is of the Lord and only Yahweh, only God saves. So the one who's on that tree, the one who saves his people, the one who will save his people from their sins, the one named Jesus must be God.

But there's another reason who else but God could withstand the wrath of God and rise again. It says about the fierce fury and the holy hatred of God against sin that when his wrath is poured out, the rivers dry up, the mountains melt.

Some men boast that on the day of judgment they will stand before God and I tell them you will melt before God like a tiny wax figurine before a blast furnace. Who but God can withstand the wrath of God, pay the full price and die and rise again.

Then there's another reason a life has to be given. Who has life to give? Even if you were fit to die, you have no life. From where does your life come? It comes from God. It's borrowed. You don't have your own life, an angel in heaven.

They have no life inherent in them for them to die. They would have to have life. They do not possess it. It comes from God. They're giving away a borrowed thing. But Jesus said. I have authority to lay down my life and authority to take it up again.

He is life, he borrows it from no one. He alone has the life to lay down. One time I was speaking and this is the last reason I was speaking at a university and after I was talking on the cross of Christ, this student popped up wanting to show everyone how how smart he was.

And he says, well, I got a question for you. And I said, well, what is it? He said, how can one man suffer a few short hours on a tree and save a multitude of men from an eternity in hell? It's not right.

And I said, young man, this is the reason that one man could suffer a few short hours on that tree and save a multitude of men from hell, because that one man was worth more than all of them put together.

You take everything that is cosmos and galaxies and planets and crickets and clowns and mountains and molehills, everything that ever has been or will be in any realm, and you put it in the balance and you put the man, Jesus Christ, on the other side of that scale and he outweighs them all.

That's what theologians mean when they're saying a perfect sacrifice, it doesn't just mean that he was without blemish or without sin, it means the value sins were committed against an infinitely good God.

They should be punished infinitely. And therefore, it took a gift of infinite value to pay for your sin. Now, something about the cross is very important. I was in a seminary in Eastern Europe again a few years ago preaching, and I walked into the library and everything was written in German.

I was kind of looking around for a book I could read and I saw one there, the cross of Christ. I pulled it off and I began to look through it. If you've read enough books, you kind of get to the point where you can just look through a book real quick and find what the author is all about.

So I was going through the book and there it was. This is what he said when Jesus Christ was hanging on that cross, the father looked down from heaven and he saw the affliction of his son. He saw the suffering of his son from the hands of Romans and sold, he saw how his son was beat by men and whipped by men and nailed to a cross.

And he looked at that suffering heaped upon him by those men and counted it as payment for our sin. That's heresy. Did you know that that's abject heresy? Most Christians don't even recognize it. My friend, if you're saved here today, you are not saved because a bunch of Romans got together and beat up Jesus.

If you're saved here today, you're saved because when he was nailed to that tree, he took upon himself the sins of men and the father in heaven turned away from him because he became sin and the father in heaven crushed his only begotten son under the full force of his wrath, the wrath that you deserve, the wrath that a holy, just God must pour out.

And if it is not poured out, if it is not satisfied, he cannot forgive you. Jesus, he's in a garden and he cries out, let this cup pass from me. Let this cup pass from me. Let this cup pass from me. What was in the cup?

I hear modern day preachers saying, well, that was the cross and the Roman soldiers and the whip that we talk about all the time. No, it most certainly was not. Let me show you why. All right, here we have Jesus frightened over being nailed to a cross and yet thousands, if not tens of thousands of his followers would willingly go to crosses and die singing hymns full of joy.

Now, are you telling me they had such boldness, yet their captain, their savior, hid himself in a garden with terrifying fear? Do you honestly think the Lord of Glory was afraid of a whip? Do you honestly think the Lord of the Glory feared nails or a cross or a crown of thorns?

You see, that's what we talk about all the time. But we don't talk about the real thing that happened. And what happened? What was in the cup? I'll never forget, I was speaking in a classical reformed school for children back east, and I asked that question and a little eight year old girl raised her hand.

And I said, yes. And she stood beside her desk and she said, sir, the cup, the wrath of almighty God was in the cup. I said, yes, you're right. And you're the first one that's ever answered correctly.

If you sum up all the prophets in the Old Testament, just get a concordance out and look up cup. If you were to sum up all the prophets, they would say something like this because of the wickedness and the rebellion of the nations.

I will hand them the cup of my wrath and I will force them to drink it and they will drink it and they will stagger and they will die. But on that tree, the son of God, he took the cup of God's justice, of his fierce wrath, of his hatred against sin, and he drank it down.