The God Who Justifies

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Turn with me, please, to Galatians chapter 5. I will seek to communicate with some force and some pace, shall we say, on the subject this evening.
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I began to address this somewhat, was that yesterday?
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Yes, I guess it would have been yesterday around noon or so, or 1130 -ish, or whenever it was we got started.
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And so I began discussing a little bit, and I guess that's the wind blowing by the microphone?
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Is that why I'm hearing that? Because I'm going, I'm not rubbing this thing, am I? But I guess it's just the air blowing by there.
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In fact, what I'll do just a little bit here, but it'll be a little bit, oh, wow, that's a big difference.
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Anyway, we'll survive. Well, if you don't have it blowing directly on you, I don't need to have it blowing directly on me.
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Galatians chapter 5, I would like to discuss this evening the God who justifies, but I'd like to do it in a little different manner than I frequently do.
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Normally, if I were to be speaking on this subject, I would probably go through Romans chapter 4, verses 4 through 5, but we sort of touched on that yesterday.
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If you weren't here, that was recorded and is available. Instead, I would like to try to briefly impress upon us the importance of this issue by noting the fact that outside of Jesus's words in Matthew chapter 23, where he brings a tremendous series of woes upon the scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones.
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He goes after them with a vengeance, you might say. Outside of that particular passage, it is very clear to me that the strongest language in all of the
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New Testament is found in Paul's epistle to the Galatians. If an apostle writing under the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit utilizes incredibly strong language, he begins at the beginning of the book, calling down the anathema of God, the curse of God, not the curse of men, but the anathema of God upon those who would pervert the gospel, who would preach another gospel, which is really not another.
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There's only one gospel that saves, but there are many false gospels. He starts off by calling the anathema down upon those who would preach a false gospel.
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And you need to remember, as he wrote this letter, he knew that it would be read in the church, in the presence of the very men that he was saying,
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God curses those who pervert the gospel. And everybody sitting there would have known exactly who
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Paul was talking about. It would be like, let's say this church was started and all of a sudden,
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Brother Steve comes along. And Brother Steve has a revelation from God. And he begins teaching this revelation from God.
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And it's way off and wild and wacky and has something to do with Star Wars and who knows what it has to do with.
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But anyways, and someone has to write a letter to the church to correct the church.
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And it's going to anathematize anyone who preaches coolism, this new movement, see?
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And so he knows it's gonna be read from the pulpit on Sunday morning and guess who's gonna be sitting right there?
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And there's all sorts of people who are already following that. And so if you're gonna read a letter like that in the middle of the
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Sunday morning service, that's not gonna be the most comfortable Sunday morning service anyone's ever had.
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It's gonna bring a lot of heartache. It's gonna bring a lot of pain. And that's why Paul says, I've written this letter with tears, because he knew that when it was read in the churches in Galatia, what the result was going to be was absolutely incredible.
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And he knew that, but he still wrote the letter. He wasn't like so many people today.
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Oh, we're gonna offend people. Oh my, I know that person over there is gonna be angry and that person over there is gonna be angry.
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So we better not do that. We better find another way to handle this. We need a committee. We need a committee to study this issue.
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Isn't that how we do things now? Paul couldn't do that because he realized that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation.
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You have a false gospel, you don't have salvation. And so he writes with tears in his eyes and the strongest language that I know of in the
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New Testament regarding the issue of how a man or a woman is made right before God.
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He brings down the anathema in Galatians chapter one. And in Galatians chapter three, he starts off really trying to win everybody's favor by saying, you foolish
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Galatians. It's easy for us to read this and go, oh, boy, glad I wasn't in that church.
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But you wonder how would Paul address the vast majority of evangelical churches today?
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Would he even bother writing is the question. You foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you?
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Who has bewitched you? And then he asks rhetorical questions and he asks them in such a way that, again, wouldn't this offend certain folks?
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I certainly find that to be the case in our society. I mean, there will be people next
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Thursday night, the very fact that we even engage in a debate, let alone the fact that I'm gonna say my opponent is wrong and to follow what he believes is to follow the path to eternal destruction.
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And there'll be people in the audience even who are allegedly on my side. Oh, can't you be more loving?
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Can't you be more tolerant? How about we be ecumenical and have a discussion of these things?
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The apostle Paul doesn't do that. And he gets to chapter five and the words he uses here, he says, it was for freedom that Christ set us free.
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Stand firm then, and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery, the handcuffs, the bondage of slavery.
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Listen, I, Paul, tell you that if you undergo circumcision, if you allow yourselves to be circumcised, and you gotta realize these men were in the church, they were leaders in the church, they may have even been men that the apostle
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Paul knew. They may have been men who were first generation converts.
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They dressed like us, talked like us. As Paul said to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, men will come up from among your own ranks.
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These weren't just somebody who had come in from the outside, they're in the church. They say it's important to believe in Jesus.
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Paul says nothing about their being wrong, nothing about who Christ is. They don't deny the resurrection, they don't deny the virgin birth, they don't deny the deity of Christ, nothing like that.
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They sound more orthodox than the vast majority of liberal theologians in Protestant churches today.
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And yet the apostle says, if you take the first step down the road, they said faith in Christ is important, but you see, there's something more.
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There's something more. Yes, believing in Christ is wonderful, but you see, what Paul is missing is that Christ is the
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Jewish Messiah. And to really enter into the covenant that Jehovah has made through the
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Messiah, you need to receive the sign of that covenant, which they said was circumcision. And so there's this law, see,
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God has given us his law and they did not understand, or if they did understand, they rejected that Christ was the end of the law for those who believe.
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He was the very goal and fulfillment of that law. He had taken the penalty of that law upon himself.
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And so they said, yes, faith in Christ, very important, but you must also be circumcised.
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You must enter into that covenant relationship by bearing that sign, by doing that activity.
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And Paul's missed that, see. Paul's only given you a portion. They'll so frequently come along, any false teacher and say, oh, so you listen to such and such a person.
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Well, you know, he says many good things, but there's a little something more that you're not aware of.
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Listen, I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, if you take that first step down the road,
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Christ will be of no benefit to you at all.
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Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul. Remember I mentioned this morning, I debated
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Barry Lynn on the subject of homosexuality. When we talked about scripture, interestingly enough,
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Barry Lynn believes that he receives revelation on the same level as the apostle Paul did, did you know that?
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Next time you see him on handy and combs or something like that, keep that in mind, that he receives revelation on the same level as apostles do.
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And when I asked about Paul in Galatians, he said, oh, definitely, he was over the top.
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He doesn't accept the authority of the book of Galatians. And this is one of the reasons why.
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Paul speaks in absolutes, black and white.
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And he says, you take one step down that road, even as a person claiming to be a
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Christian, realize that's what these people are doing. They're not saying, oh, my circumcision is all that saves me.
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They're not saying that Jesus isn't necessary. Yes, I have faith in Christ.
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And because of my faith in Christ, I'm going to be circumcised. I'm going to take that next step.
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I'm going to bear the covenant sign in my body. And that's gonna make me more justified than you.
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And Paul says, you start down that road, you travel it alone. Don't call on Christ to help you.
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Don't think he's gonna walk down that road with you. Christ will be of no benefit to you at all.
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Sounds to me like these folks were synergists. They are trying to add faith in Christ to other things, at least one other thing.
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And Paul says, no, Christ will not be a co -savior. He will not share his glory with anyone else.
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If he is going to save, it is going to be he and he alone. So Paul says, you wanna go back to slavery?
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You wanna go back to the old ways? You wanna walk down that road? Realize you will walk down it alone.
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Don't start down there and say, oh, I'm doing these works and Jesus is helping me to do them. Paul says, no, he's not.
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He will be of no benefit to you. Just dump the name. Stop using the name
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Jesus if you're not gonna follow his gospel. Wow, political correctness had not yet arrived at the time of the writing of the
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New Testament. Christ will be of no benefit to you at all.
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And I testify again to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.
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Paul had already argued in the previous chapters. You can't just pick and choose what you're gonna fulfill of the old covenant law.
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You start down the road of commandments and fulfillment of commandments and think that somehow adds to your status before God.
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And remember the context of all this, Galatians chapter two, when Peter and Barnabas are in Antioch and certain men come from James, remember what happens?
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The Jews start to withdraw from table fellowship with the Gentiles. Why? Well, because you're not supposed to do that kind of thing.
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There was a danger of two different Christian churches coming into existence, the Jewish and the
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Gentile. And obviously the Jewish one is saying, we've got something you don't. The ground isn't leveled the foot of the cross.
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We've got something more than you have. And Paul's point is no, the ground is leveled the foot of the cross.
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There's only one righteousness of Jesus Christ. There is only one way to be right before God.
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It's by faith, whether you're Jew or Gentile, add to that faith and you're destroying the gospel.
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And so he's already argued. Look, Peter and Barnabas were carried away in their hypocrisy. They were not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel.
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They were varying from the path. And that's why he had to publicly rebuke Peter before everyone for the sake of the purity of the gospel.
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So he's already argued. Look, once you start down that path, you've got to obey all of it. You can't just say,
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I'm going to fulfill one command. There's lots of others. The law brings a curse, but Christ bore that curse in his body upon the tree.
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And so he says, you're obligated to obey the whole law. But then notice verse four, what he says to those who have started down this path.
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You who are trying to be declared righteous by the law, you who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ.
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You have fallen away from grace. Wow. I was a preacher's kid.
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Amazingly enough, I managed to turn out semi -decent for being a preacher's kid. If you know anything about preacher's kids, you know that's pretty odd and unusual.
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And as a preacher's kid, I was very blessed at a very young age to be exposed to Bible teaching, memorization of scripture, learning where the books of the
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Bible were. And we moved to Phoenix, Arizona. There weren't very many churches like our old churches out in the
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Phoenix area. We came from back in the Pennsylvania area. And we joined a large
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Southern Baptist church in Phoenix, Arizona. When I say large, at one point it had 20 ,000 members.
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Now, of course, we could only find about 7 ,000 of them at any one time. And to get off the rolls of that church, you had to die three times and provide proof of your death in person to get off of the rolls of that church.
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So the 20 ,000 number was a tad bit on the inflated side. But it was a large church, a 250 -voice choir, full orchestra, whole nine yards.
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And I became very, very involved there. I mean, I did about everything you could possibly do at that church.
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I was the president of the youth choir, and I sang in a group called Liberation. I mean, that was one of the advantages of a large church in comparison to a small church, was we had this singing group called
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Liberation. We traveled around and competed up at Estes Park, Colorado at the Christian Music Festival up there in 1981.
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One, by the way. And it was, I ran television cameras,
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I ran sound, I did television engineering. I was a staff assistant.
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I did everything there was to do at that particular church, I really did. I was married at that church, in fact.
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So I have a lot of connections to that place. And when I was a senior in high school, one
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Sunday morning, you would have, I'm not sure how you all do Sunday school, but frequently what you'd have is you'd have a
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Bible study department. It would be a fairly large department. And you'd have a master lesson, and then you'd break up into small groups.
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You'd have a small group teacher. And we got into the small group on this one
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Sunday morning, and my Sunday school teacher began saying some odd things.
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And I was already known as a bit of a geek. My wife will tell you that I tried to get her attention for months and literally years before it ever dawned on her that I might want to date her.
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She once told me that she figured I was too spiritual to be interested in girls. She told me this after we started dating, thankfully, because that would have pretty much ended my life at that particular point in time.
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But we had a scripture memory contest to win a free trip to Glorietta, New Mexico, the
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Southern Baptist Conference Center there. And it was like 20 verses, and I won 17 of them, and everybody else won three, and so I got to Glorietta.
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And so she just didn't even think about these things. So I was known as a bit of a preacher's kid,
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Bible whiz guy as a senior in high school. And so I'm sitting here listening to this guy, and I'm going, there's something.
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He must be playing a game. He must be role -playing. He must be seeing how we're gonna respond when he throws out these false teachings.
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Because he went to this passage. He went to Galatians 5 .4. And finally, he just came straight out and said, look,
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I know that you've been taught by this church to believe that you're secure in your salvation, but you need to realize,
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Paul said, you can fall from grace. Well, once I realized what he was saying, I took him on.
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Now, that was unusual for me. I was raised to respect authority, and even in a situation like that, and when
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I saw that he was intent upon this, I stood up and I walked out of the class and immediately contacted the staff and said, this is what's going on, and found out later that he and his wife had both decided that this
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Sunday, they were both in their respective Sunday school classes, she, of course, with the young girls, was gonna hit him with this stuff.
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And of course, they left the church that week, and went to another church, and the next Sunday, the pastor preached on the subject, and yada, yada, yada.
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And I remember about two or three years later running into that Sunday school teacher at a
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Berean Christian bookstore, and in that time, I was now in Bible college,
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I had learned something about Galatians 5. This is one of the passages that's very frequently cited by people.
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See, you can be severed or alienated from Christ, and you can fall from grace.
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So obviously, whoever Paul is talking to here, had been in Christ, they had been savingly united to him, they had been in grace, they had received saving grace, and now they've lost it.
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The funny part was, basically what this man was saying was you lose that through sin, you lose that through various sins of the flesh, so on and so forth.
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And when I met him at that Berean Christian bookstore, it was sort of like no time had passed at all. It was sort of like, hi, about Galatians 5 .4,
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bah, you know, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, type of situation, just rah, wah, zzz, zzz, zzz, type thing, you know.
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It was sort of like when Obi -Wan meets Darth Vader in the first Star Wars movie, which I saw 11 times when
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I was like, how old was I, like 11 years old, something like that. That's how long ago it was. You know, as soon as they see each other, zzz, you know, remember the cheap old ones that didn't work real well?
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For some reason in the, you know, anyways, we won't get into that right now. But, you know, just immediately, zzz, zzz, zzz, zzz, you know, they went at it, and that's what we did.
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It was just like Galatians 5 .4, bah! And I said, did you notice something you didn't mention to us in Sunday school class?
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What's that? Well, who's Paul talking to? Context is always so important.
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Audience is always so important. He says, you who are trying to be declared righteous by the law, you who are seeking justification in the law, is that what a true believer is described as?
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Of course not. He's talking to those who are still seeking their justification.
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Romans 5 .1 tells us true believers look back upon their justification, having been justified by faith.
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We have peace with God. They're still looking for their justification. And he says to them, you who are trying to be justified, you who are seeking your justification, you're looking for it in the wrong place.
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And that's why it's so important to understand what it means to be alienated from Christ and fall away from grace.
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To be alienated from Christ. Remember what he's just said. Once you take that first step down that road of works and merit, fulfillment of law,
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Christ isn't going with you. He will be of no benefit to you. And so you have been alienated from him because you are walking down a path that he is not a part of.
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It is by your own action that you are going down a path and you're not gonna be able to put your hand out for help from Christ because you are walking away from him.
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Don't be deceived. He's not on that road. He's not gonna compromise just to make you feel better.
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And the other thing is law has no room for grace. He had already proven that.
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He who is going to live by the law must fulfill the law. You break that law at one point, the law condemns you.
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There's no room for grace there. And so when he talks about falling from grace, the assumption is through use, you're in grace and now grace loses its grip upon you.
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But what he's actually saying, once you take that first step from this point on, when you walk this way with Christ, there's grace on both sides of you.
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There's grace that holds you up. There's grace that sustains you. But you see over here, it's a very narrow path with very steep chasms on both sides.
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And once you get on that direction, the way of law, there's no grace. You can't call for grace.
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You can't depend upon grace. You can't say, well, I'll do 80 % of it, but grace will make up the other 20%.
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No. And I mentioned, I believe last, yesterday morning or the night before it all starts squishing together after a while, this is where Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, completely missed it.
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Remember what he did to Romans four? He talked about those who believe in the
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God who does not justify the ungodly. He thought you had to get yourself godly before God would justify you.
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He didn't understand this idea of grace. In fact, one passage in the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 25, 23, says it's, by grace we're saved after all we can do.
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So you do all you can do and then grace will meet you. Moroni chapter 10, verse 32.
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Isn't that a wonderful word, a name for a book, Moroni? Moroni chapter 10, verse 32 says, if you will love the
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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and if you will rid yourself of all ungodliness, then is the grace of Christ sufficient for you.
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Think about that for a moment. Love God perfectly, rid yourself of all ungodliness, then the grace of Christ is sufficient for you.
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Well, if you can do all that, why do you need the grace of Christ in the first place? If you can rid yourself of all ungodliness, love
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God perfectly, why do you need Christ's grace at all? But the idea is you put out total effort, but we know that's not gonna get you all the way.
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Grace will pick you up from there. No, it won't, because you're not trusting your grace in the first place.
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That's not faith, that's not Christian faith, and that's what Paul is saying here.
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When he talks about falling from grace, he's not talking about falling from a relationship, he's talking about how you are separating yourself, and not just slowly, but in a precipitous, fast fashion from the realm of grace, because that first step takes you out of the realm of grace, and every step after that, you're just moving farther and farther away from grace.
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Don't expect to find another stop down there where you're gonna find grace, it's not there.
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Just as Christ is not there, His grace will not be there. These are words spoken to people who had been deceived.
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They had been deceived. And see, a lot of people in our society seem to think, well, if you've been deceived,
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God's gonna take all that into consideration, won't He? I mean, come on.
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It's one thing for the originators of false doctrine, it's one thing to say strong things about them.
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But people who have been in false teaching for generations, it's all they know,
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God'll take that into consideration. In what way? I mean,
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I certainly can understand how, in regards to a person who purposely rebels against the truth, over against a person who's never even heard the truth, yeah, sure.
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I can understand how there's a difference in the judgment that's gonna be theirs, not in the condemnation that's gonna be theirs, but the level of punishment,
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I can understand that. But for many people, it's like, well, you know, if it's no fault of your own, that is so common in our society.
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We are taught by the way our society thinks to think that way, that's not the biblical standard.
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God has made His truth known. And remember in Matthew chapter 22, again, yesterday morning, we looked at this, where Jesus held men accountable for what
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God said in His word. And those scribes and Pharisees standing in front of Jesus could have used the exact same excuse people use today.
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Well, that's what I was taught. That's what my daddy was taught and my grandfather was taught.
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That didn't stop Jesus from uttering the condemnations of Matthew 23, did it? No, it didn't.
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God's standard of truth is tremendously high. Look back at verse one, there's a phrase there that I really love.
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Paul says, stand firm. He said that in 2
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Thessalonians chapter two, verse 15. Stand firm, hold fast to what you've been taught.
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He said to the Corinthians, stand firm, battle like men. Think about the situation
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Paul was in, writing these churches, infant churches, not 2000 years of church history behind them, infant churches in a pagan world, just about to go through two full centuries of imperial persecution, being thrown to lions, being persecuted in the most horrible fashions.
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Paul says to them, stand firm. You don't say that to someone who's not in a battle.
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You don't say to someone who's not gonna be faced with tremendous opposition, stand firm.
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There's only one context that gives that phrase. And that command meaning, and that means you hold your ground.
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He does not say wonder about aimlessly. He does not say, hey, go out and taste every kind of theological system there is out there.
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You've got freedom in Christ. Stand firm, stand firm on the truths of the gospel.
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Stand firm on this issue of faith and faith alone, not faith plus, faith alone.
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Stand firm. Oh, but Paul, there are people who are gonna, they're gonna believe that I'm unloving,
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I'm intolerant. They're gonna say a Christian would be more loving.
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And Paul says, stand firm. Let Jesus define what love is.
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Why is it so loving for us to compromise the truth of Christ and show disrespect to his name?
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Why is that loving? That's what the world tells us to do. That's what religious people will tell us to do.
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The highest good it seems for so many in our society is the feelings of the lost.
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The loss of the Bible describes as rebels, haters of God. God's honor and God's truth and God's glory.
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Well, that can be trampled underfoot. Why? Paul believed the message of justification, the message of what it means to be made right before God was so clear and so knowable that he could use the strongest language to condemn those who presented what we'd call today just another view.
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That's what's eaten the heart out of the power and proclamation of so much of what calls itself
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Christianity today. We've lost confidence that we actually know what the gospel is.
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And that's understandable. That's understandable. If you're a person who reads fairly widely, you know that almost any single thing you say from the pulpit, somebody in your congregation could go to the local
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Christian bookstore and find a book that says you're wrong. And that can't help but enter into your thinking as you are proclaiming those truths.
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So the result for many is to draw back, to lack confidence.
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And you see, this again is where the scholarship of the world and what it should be to be a minister of the gospel clash with another because scholarship says, look, when there's differences of opinion, don't be dogmatic.
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Well, you know what? When you're studying things like history and there's different opinions as to what happened in history, that makes perfect sense.
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When you're a scientist and there is dispute about a certain theory, that makes perfect sense.
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But you see, what ends up coming through the door with that into the church and into the
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Christian educational system is we really don't know what the gospel is because there's so many different viewpoints.
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And so people look at Galatians and they go, well, you know, Paul could say that because he was an apostle, but the apostles are gone.
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So we just can't have that attitude anymore. And once you've adopted that viewpoint, is it any wonder that the pulpit becomes a place where you share opinions?
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But the idea of being an ambassador or representative of Christ, bearing his authority and a command to repent and believe, that becomes pretty unusual.
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And the people are left in confusion. What am I to believe if those that God has put in a position of leadership are uncertain?
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If there's an uncertain sound from the trumpet, how will the people prepare for war? The uncertainty of the sound in some churches has become no sound at all.
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Strong words. Strong words Paul uses here. And we're faced with the decision, either we have to choose and decide that, you know what,
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Paul? That was ill -advised. You went over the top there,
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Paul. We see here the human element of scripture. And we can see that Paul here is very, very upset because these churches that he's founded are questioning his apostolic authority.
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And that's really all we should see in these words. We shouldn't model ourselves in this way. We either have to choose to believe that the gospel message has become muddled.
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The Spirit of God has not been able to protect the gospel.
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And what hope then do we have? Or we must believe that God has preserved
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His Word and He has preserved His gospel. And every generation is called to agonize, to defend that gospel, even in the face of those who will claim to be our brothers and sisters.
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They may even be so broad -minded as to say, well, I accept you as my brother.
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And oh, how unkind of you to condemn poor me. I believe in Jesus. Could not every one of the
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Judaizers in Galatia have said the exact same thing to the Apostle Paul? And how many people would have listened to them?
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History of the church tells us the man -centered way of looking at the gospel is always the most popular.
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That'll always sell real well. But Paul says, you start down that road,
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Christ will be of no benefit to you. I hope you hear those words and you go, oh
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Lord, oh Lord, protect me from ever dishonoring your truth and embracing that which will result in my hearing from God.
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Christ will be of no benefit to you for He is my only hope. If He is of no benefit to me,
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I am lost. Our passion should be the passion that is demonstrated in the word of God itself.
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This should be our standard, not what the world says. The world says, be passionate about sports.
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Be passionate about certain political causes, as long as they're the right ones. Be passionate about these things.
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But whatever you do, you can't be passionate about religion because no one really knows.
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And yet your Lord and Savior said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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We believe a radical message that not only is our
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Savior alive today, risen from the dead, you can't find His body, however many movies they make about it, however many books
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Dan Brown sells, whatever lies are promoted in the
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Da Vinci Code coming out in the movies soon, and that book is nothing but a pack of lies.
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We tried to get him to debate me, by the way, we did. We tried to get him to debate up in Seattle.
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We tried everything we could. You know what, he has absolutely no interest in any of that because he knows that you can go from page to page to page, lie after lie after lie, documentable, not just from religious sources, but secular sources.
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He didn't even try to be accurate. Oh, but it's fiction. Fiction, he believes, and that stuff's gonna be hitting our society again very soon, folks.
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Lies. We believe Jesus is the truth. He embodies the truth.
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We serve the Lord of truth. And so we cannot accept, even when evangelicalism says, well, true enough for us, but we need to allow for others' truths.
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There are no other lords. Our forefathers in the original early centuries of the church gave their lives before they would offer a pinch of incense upon the
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Roman altar and say, Kaiser Kurios, Caesar is
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Lord. That's all you had to do. Pinch of incense.
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Caesar is Lord. The Christians would rather go into the arena and be eaten by wild animals.
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And that's not a fast death, folks. It's a ghastly and horrible death.
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They would rather face that, imprisonment, separation from their loved ones, than to just simply go,
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Caesar is Lord. Because you see, the Christian says, Jesus Christ is
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Lord. And he's the only one. And they recognized, you can't go,
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Caesar is a Lord and Jesus is a
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Lord. Jesus is my Lord. Maybe Caesar is your Lord, but Jesus is my
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Lord. They didn't function on that worldview. They knew what that was.
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That's compromise. There's no room for that. What you're called every single day to do in this world is to compromise.
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And say, Jesus is my Lord. That's okay. As long as you don't say, and he's the only
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Lord that exists, and he's yours, too, and you're in rebellion against him. Oh, don't say that. Intolerant.
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Hate speech. It's coming, folks. There are people right here in our nation that would like to be able to see people use the force of law to keep you from saying that very phrase.
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It's already happening in Europe. Right as I was leaving
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England a few months ago, a pastor friend mentioned to me that the parliament had just now passed a law that they were extremely concerned about because it seemed to be very much like what they have in Australia and Canada now that can be used against the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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He said, oh, that will never happen. Really? Really? When it does, are we going to count the cost?
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Are we going to count the cost? The apostle wrote this letter with tears. He was in pain as he wrote it.
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But he did it anyways because he had the right priorities. We won't see the church have any meaningful impact in a culture until we have the same kind of radical priorities ourselves.
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Justification is not some theological doctrine to be discussed only in the systematic theology class.
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It's at the very core of the gospel. To compromise it is to compromise the only message that brings eternal life.
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God, help us to be faithful to what has been delivered to us in the gospel of our
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Lord and Savior. Let us pray together. Our Heavenly Father, indeed we do thank you that you speak with fervor and passion and force so that we might hear.
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May we look to your word. May it be our standard. And may you conform our thinking to what your word reveals rather than what the world would force into us.
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We thank you for the glory of the gospel. We thank you that we do stand, not because of what we've done, but because of what
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Jesus Christ has done in our place. May he be glorified in what has taken place in this place this day and your church throughout this world.