Justification: The Open Gates of Paradise

Justification and the Reformation

We're gonna be spending some time with Paul in the letter to the Roman church. So if you wanna open your Bibles there, we're gonna start in Romans chapter three. So what I wanna talk to you about is really an important doctrine of the Reformation, justification.

And so if there is a title to this presentation or this preaching, this teaching, what we have tonight, it would be justification, the open gates of paradise, the open gates of paradise. And I think you'll see why I titled it that.

So we wanna kind of talk about the Reformation. I'll be reading tonight from the Legacy Standard Bible. And so we'll look at some selected scriptures. We know that God always leaves a faithful remnant.

I think even like we can see that tonight. You're the faithful few. And so grateful for you guys to be here. You could spend your Friday night anywhere else. So glad you're here. But it was approximately 500 years ago that the dark ages ended.

And they ended when the light of the word of God was unlocked and this event is known as the Reformation. The Reformation ended a period of time where the Bible was locked away into Latin or into the Latin language for approximately 1 ,000 years.

A time characterized by the word of God not being accessible to the common people. And so in the fourth century AD, the theologian and Bible translator, Jerome, translated the original languages into Latin.

And this Bible translation was known as the Latin Vulgate and is the only translation accepted and affirmed by the Roman Catholic Church to this day. Over the centuries, as people lost Latin, they lost the ability to read the Bible in their own native tongues.

But then a series of events happened which changed the availability of God's word in the language of the people. On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther wrote to his bishop, Albrecht von Brandenburg, protesting the sale of indulgences.

He enclosed in his letter a copy of his disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences, which came to be known as the 95 Theses. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the church, which as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and of all the saints.

So that's the Catholic Church's Catechism describing the indulgence. In other words, a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins. Theses 86 asks this question. Why does the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the Basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?

That's Theses 86. Marcus Licinius Crassus was a Roman general and a statesman who played a key role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. And this was about 100 years before Christ.

He's often called, or his nickname would be, the richest man in Rome, very wealthy, powerful person. So Theses 86 had a little sting to it with Luther making the Crassus comment about the Pope. Why does the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the Basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?

Luther started a catalyst of events that would see the word of God unlocked from the Latin, held hostage by the Roman Catholic Church during the Dark Ages. Obviously, this had a tremendous impact on the German culture and the church.

Luther would later go on to translate the Bible into the modern German vernacular of the time, as well as influencing William Tyndale's translation, which was made between 1522 and 1536. Tyndale's Bible is credited with being the first Bible translation in the English language to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, while also relying on the Latin Vulgate by Jerome, just a few parts there.

Martin Luther, who lived from 1483 to 1546, was a German priest. He was a theologian, an author, hymn writer, and professor. A mighty fortress is our God is one of the best-known hymns written by Luther.

A former Augustinian monk, he's best known as the person that strongly influenced the developments in the Protestant Reformation and, of course, the namesake of Lutheranism. On July 2nd, 1505, while Luther was returning to university on horseback after a trip, a lightning bolt struck near him during a thunderstorm.

Later, telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, help, Saint Anna, I will become a monk, sort of like making a deal if God had spared him from that lightning bolt.

He came to view his cry for help as a vow that he could never break. He left university, sold his books, and entered St. Augustine's Monastery on July 17th, 1505. Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession.

It's said that at one point, he even was sleeping outside, I guess, semi-naked with no clothes, freezing to death. He would whip himself. There's all these sort of urban legends, but yeah, he wrote about this time period.

Luther described this period of his life as one of, quote, deep spiritual despair. He said, I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul. Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507.

He eventually came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. In particular, he disputed the view on indulgences. According to one account, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31st, 1517.

The story goes that starting around 1510, Luther began lecturing on the book of Psalms, on the letter to the Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways.

He became convinced that the church was corrupt in its ways and essentially had lost sight of what he saw as several of the key truths of Christianity. It was in his study of the book of Romans that the religious monk was given the sight to see the doctrine of justification by the Lord.

He described this period of life as feeling he had been born again and entered into paradise. Luther wrote that Christians receive righteousness entirely from outside themselves. Quote, that righteousness not only comes from Christ, but is the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians through faith rather than infused into them with works.

In the introduction to St. Paul's letter to the Romans, Luther's German Bible of 1522, Luther said this, that is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law. Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ.

Faith for Luther was a gift from God. The experience of being justified by faith for Luther was quote, as though I had been born again. Luther talked about his entry into paradise as a discovery about the righteousness of God, a discovery that the just person of whom the Bible speaks as in Romans chapter one verse 17, lives by faith.

For in the righteousness of God, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith. In the small cold articles, a summary of Lutheran doctrine written by Martin Luther, he said this, the first and chief article is this, Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification.

He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. All have sinned and are justified freely without their own works and merits by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus in his blood.

This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us. Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered even though heaven and earth and everything else falls.

The doctrine of justification. This is a necessary and essential truth that all Christians must know, understand and believe by faith. This sweet and precious teaching says that all sinners are justified by faith alone in Christ alone.

This is a sovereign act of God's will in giving us the gift of grace to believe in Jesus for the repentance and forgiveness of sins. Like many Christians before him and many Christians after him, Martin Luther found comfort in the pages of the letter from the Apostle Paul to the Romans.

The reformer John Calvin, a contemporary of Luther's, was a French Protestant theologian, a major figure in the Reformation. He studied religion at the University of Paris and law in Orleans and Burgess.

Bourge, I think, is the way you pronounce it. When he returned to Paris in 1531, he studied the Bible and became part of the movement that emphasized that salvation was by grace rather than by works. So this was now picking up steam.

Government intolerance prompted Calvin to move to Basel, Switzerland, and there Calvin wrote the first edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536. That was 10 years before Luther died. So these men are contemporaries of one another.

Gaining a reputation among Protestant leaders, Calvin went to Geneva to help establish Protestantism in that city, but he was expelled by the city fathers in 1538. However, he did return in 41. At that time, the town council had instituted the church order outlined in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which included the abolition of Catholic, quote, superstition.

By 1555, Calvin served as pastor and head of the Geneva Academy. He wrote the sermons, biblical commentaries, and letters that form the basis of the doctrines of grace that we hold to when you hear that term reformed theology.

Calvin said this about the Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Rome. He said, with regard to the excellency of this epistle, it will then be better for me to pass on to the argument or the contents of the epistle that besides other excellencies and those remarkable, this can be said with truth of it, and it is what can never be sufficiently appreciated that when anyone gains a knowledge of this epistle, he has an entrance open to him to all the most hidden treasures of scripture.

The whole epistle is so methodical, for having begun with the proof of his apostleship, Paul then comes to the gospel with the view of recommending it, and as this necessarily draws with it the subject of faith, he glides into that, being led by the chain of words as by the hand, and thus he enters on the main subject of the whole epistle, justification by faith.

This is the heart of the letter to the Roman church. Among the theme of justification by faith in his letter to the Romans, Paul discussed the righteousness of God, he discussed sin, God's grace, he discussed spiritual leadership, Paul also discussed God's wrath and judgment, salvation, he discussed Israel's rejection of Christ, and of course, the gospel.

Paul developed the theme of righteousness in his letter to the Roman church by highlighting the relationship of God's righteousness to mankind, and appealing to the authority of the Old Testament, which you see again over and over, he's just quoting the Old Testament.

And so tonight, I wanna show you there are six key truths of salvation that the apostle Paul highlights in the letter to the Romans, so that you can have confidence in justification by faith, just like Luther and Calvin.

Everyone Needs Salvation

Number one, everyone needs salvation, everyone needs salvation. Number two, salvation comes through faith, salvation comes through faith. Three, Jesus died for our salvation, Jesus died for our salvation.

Four, salvation is a gift, salvation is a gift. Five, God saves all who call upon him, God saves all who call upon him. And six, we are saved by grace, we're saved by grace. Paul showed salvation as a demonstration of God's righteousness, and this applies to all of us, to every person, to every person who's ever lived.

And so this is the first key truth that gives us confidence in justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Number one, everyone needs salvation, everyone needs salvation. And so our first scripture is Romans chapter three, we'll look at verses 21 through 26.

Paul says, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith, for a demonstration of his righteousness, because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed, for the demonstration of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

And so I wanna point your attention to verse 23. Let's look at verse 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A couple observations from this verse that are helpful. Well, the first is the word all.

In the Greek, this is functioning as an adjective to describe those who believe in verse 22. And it's a participle verb in verse 22. Participles are the ones that are, they just end in ing. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those believing, for there is no distinction.

They can also function like a noun, hence the ones who believe, those who believe. The important part of the grammar here is that the adjective on its own pertains to totality with focus on its individual components, meaning each, every, any.

But when the adjective all is paired with the participle, it means all people, all men, everyone. Paul is saying everyone without exception has missed the mark and has sinned. All people, everyone, man, woman, or child, no exception.

The second observation is Paul's use of two verbs in the verse. Two verbs right next to each other that give a crystal clear picture of what it means to sin. And Paul is painting a picture here. The picture is that everyone has sinned and everyone needs a savior.

The first verb in verse 23, excuse me, is translated sinned. It denotes to commit a wrong, to sin in the sense of transgression against divinity, a custom, or law. The second verb paired together is a passive verb, meaning this is happening to the one who has sinned.

The term fall short is one Greek verb meaning to miss out on something through one's own fault. This is to miss, to fail to reach. More precisely, to experience deficiency in something advantageous or desirable.

This is lack, to be lacking, to go without, to come short of. They have all gone astray. They are all alike corrupt. There is none that does good. No, not one, Psalm 14. We all miss the mark and fail to reach God's glory.

And sometimes we can think wrongly about sin as if one sin is more serious than the other. From a human perspective, certainly some sins seem larger than other sins, maybe even from the viewpoint of more serious consequences.

Think about murder, for instance. Let me ask, here's a hypothetical. Is it worse to hate someone you disagree with or kill someone you don't like? Or how about being involved in an extramarital affair versus having a secret thought life filled with fantasies?

From a human perspective, murder is worse than hate and adultery is worse than lust. But think about it like this. Does the Bible teach that committing a lesser sin from a human perspective means that we deserve everlasting life in heaven?

Any sin makes us sinners. Does it not? The Bible teaches that all sin separates us from our perfect Heavenly Father because sin leads to death. Paul actually uses the same term that all have sinned in chapter five when referring to the fall.

He's referring to the fall and the sin of Adam. He says, therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. That's Romans 5 .12.

The Bible commentator F .F. Bruce noted this on verse 23. The identical words, all have sinned, appear at the end of chapter five verse 12 where, however, the reference may be to the participation of all in man's first obedience.

Here, the meaning is that all human beings as individuals have sinned. The image of God in which man was created was believed to involve a share in the divine glory which was forfeited through sin. The words of Isaiah 43 .7, whom I created for my glory, spoken in the context of everyone who is called by my name, came to be applied to humanity in general.

The hope of sharing the glory of God awaits the believers in the coming age. The truth is that all sin, whether great or small in our eyes, is a transgression against a holy God. For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God's laws.

That's James 2. Sin leads to death because it makes it impossible for us to be in the presence of God. How can we live with a holy God if we are separated from God by sin? And the short answer is we cannot.

No matter how great or small our sin might be, it is deadly and it separates us from God. For us as believers, we should never minimize little sins or overestimate big sins. And you say those little or big in quotations.

That's faulty thinking from a human perspective because every sin, no matter our perception of severity, removes us from God's glory. All sin separates us from God and all have sinned. But all who have sinned can be forgiven through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And this is the critical first step in understanding the good news. Everyone needs salvation. So then where does this lead to next if everyone needs salvation? Well, salvation comes through faith, not works.

Salvation is a work of God alone. It seems obvious, but sometimes we miss what's right in front of us. We miss the obvious. Think about it. Martin Luther was a monk. He was a monk and a priest and he had the Bible, but he didn't see this.

He didn't see the obvious. You think justification by faith, not works. How can anyone miss this? It seems so obvious by a plain reading of the Bible, but sometimes we don't see that. We miss the obvious.

In 2022, my wife and I had the opportunity to attend a Bible conference in Memphis and we were treated to a wonderful exposition from the book of James by Dr. Stephen Yuley and he pointed this out. Sometimes we miss the obvious.

And so he asked us to think about it like this. He said, remember the characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. So everybody knows Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Sherlock Holmes, the world's greatest detective and his trusted sidekick, the dependable Dr. Watson.

Sherlock Holmes had an amazing power of observation and would deduce the most minor detail, making it obvious. In this example, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were out in the field chasing down the evil Dr. Moriarty, the arch nemesis of Sherlock Holmes.

The occasion led to them having to camp out overnight and sharing a single camping tent in the field. After tracking through the woods, they laid down their heads and they went to sleep for the night inside the tent.

In the middle of the night, Holmes woke up Watson and said, my dear doctor, look up and tell me what you see. Dr. Watson looked up and saw the night sky, filled with stars and the moon and far off planets.

He said, Holmes, I see the stars and the moon. Sherlock Holmes then asked him, tell me Watson, what do you observe? Dr. Watson told Holmes, I observe that the moon and the stars in the heavens are beautiful and exquisite.

Tell me Watson, said Sherlock, what do you deduce? Watson looked around and looked up and said, I deduce that these are a sign that only an all powerful creator could place such stars in the heavens. And feeling confident of his answer to Holmes, Watson turned to him and asked him, tell me Holmes, what do you deduce?

Sherlock Holmes slowly turned to Watson and said, my dear Watson, I deduce that someone has stolen our tent. You see, Dr. Watson had missed the obvious, missed it. Martin Luther had missed the obvious.

We need to read the scripture and bow our knee under the authority of the word of God. And at some point in his early life, he had not done that. So living as a monk in a religious system, ordained as a priest, he missed the obvious.

That works do not add grace. Works do not add salvation. Salvation comes through faith. And that is the second key truth about the justification through faith alone. Number two, salvation comes through faith.

Look at chapter four. We'll just look at the beginning of chapter four, verses one through eight. Chapter four, starting in verse one, Paul says, what then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, has found?

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wage is not counted according to grace, but according to what is due.

But to the one who does not work, but believes upon him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account. And so I wanna show you some things from verse five.

Salvation comes through faith. Look at verse five. And to the one who does not work, but believes upon him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. The one who believes upon him.

Belief is the key here. It's the Greek word pasteo. It's to consider something to be true and therefore worthy of one's trust to believe. Paul is talking about faith. Faith, faith that justifies. The lexical meaning of the verb is to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence.

This is to believe in, to trust. But this is very specific. It is with the implication of total commitment to the one who is trusted. In our modern understanding, God and Christ are objects of this type of faith that relies on their power and nearness to help in addition to being convinced that their revelations or disclosures are true.

Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. John six, the words of our Lord. The one who believes upon Jesus is justified by God. The Roman Catholic Church and also the modern charismatic movement have done so much damage here.

These religious systems have caused confusion and put the true gospel in a fog. But the word of God is not confusing. The living and active word is powerful and it breaks through the fog. It is crystal clear and plain.

It makes wise the simple. But think about this for a new convert. When new converts are told that they're saved by faith, they can become worried by the insidious false teaching that they might need more faith to access God's grace.

That they may need more good deeds to access that faith. Martin Luther wondered, do I have enough faith? Is my faith enough to save me? Is my faith strong enough to save me? What must I do to earn God's grace?

I know a brother in Christ that lived through this kind of teaching. And so this one is an illustration that is near to my heart. This isn't a funny story I heard at a Bible conference. This is a dear friend of mine in Christ.

And so he lived through this sort of charismatic Pentecostal understanding of faith. His mother was diagnosed with cancer to which she eventually succumbed and died in God's providence. The family went to their pastor and the pastor told the father that the reason his wife had died was that the family didn't have enough faith.

And you can only imagine what that would do to you if you believed that pastor. My friend told me that one of his brothers spiraled at this and actually believed that his lack of faith had resulted in their mother's diagnosis and then eventual death.

And my friend's brother was his little brother. He was the middle child of three brothers. And so yeah, my friend's brother eventually took his own life. And I tell you today that that man was not a pastor.

He may have held the office, but he didn't fulfill the role. These are false man-made teachings that miss the point. It is only the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who saves. It is not our feelings or actions or amount of faith or works.

No, it's God's grace and does not have anything to do with our effort. Jesus is the one. He is strong enough to save us no matter how weak our faith is. God through Jesus offers sinners salvation as a gift, not because we were good enough to believe, not because we did good deeds.

No, God saves because he loves us for the good pleasure of his will, for his namesake, never because we have earned it through our so-called strong faith, certainly not through indulgences. And I don't want you to think about this as a choice.

This is a truth. It's a truth that can be accepted or denied. In salvation, Luther was stuck on this question. What is the role of faith? Faith is not only believing and trusting in Jesus Christ. It is believing by the grace of God that Jesus is the only way to be saved from the wrath of God and accepting his marvelous gift of salvation.

That is why Jesus died. Jesus died to save sinners, to do the will of the Father. Jesus died for our salvation. And that is truth number three that gives us competence in the doctrine of justification.

Christ Died for Our Salvation

Jesus died for our salvation. Look at chapter five. Romans five, we'll look at verses six through 11. Romans five, starting in verse six. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And not only this, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. I wanna point you to verse eight. Jesus died for our salvation. Verse eight says, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

One commentator said this on verses six through 11. Quote, here Paul describes the believer's condition before regeneration. It is one that only grace could overcome. He demonstrates that a person in that condition has nothing to commend him to God.

It must be God's unmerited favor that reaches down to redeem. The three phrases that sum up all he says are when we were weak, while we were still sinners, and while we were enemies. That says it all.

The kind of people God saves are incapable of helping themselves because of their weakness morally and in every other way they are lawbreakers, going their own ways, caring nothing for the rules of human society given by God, and they are enemies who in everything they do, knowingly or unknowingly, show their hostility toward God and his ways.

What person then has any reason to boast about anything that he is or that he has achieved? These verses should eradicate all such pride in a flash. It was while we were sinners notorious in God's sight that he died for us.

That unfolds something of the amazing love that God determined to set on us. Verses seven and eight are designed to elicit amazement and gratitude. If they do not, when read to a believer, try to discover why.

Does he or she not know Christ as a savior? Does this seem like old hat? Does the person fail to appreciate what these words mean?

Ask.

Their answer probably will be important. So let me ask you, does this verse elicit amazement and gratitude? But God showed his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Are you filled with amazement and gratitude?

And if not, why is that? Do you know Christ as savior? Does this seem boring to you? Do you appreciate what these words mean? Think about how profound this is. Jesus removes our guilt. Jesus died for our salvation.

It is an amazing fact and it shows God's amazing love. It's almost incomprehensible. The word translated were is the verb in the verse, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This is a verb that's an adverbial participle of concession. It means to be or to exist, as in humankind was existing in a constant state of sin when the Messiah died for us. The adverbial sense is modifying or describing the main verb shows, sometimes translated demonstrates.

I really like the legacy standard here. God demonstrates his love. This is to provide evidence of a personal characteristic or claim through action, to demonstrate, to show, to bring out. God made a demonstration of his eternal love for us while we existed in a state of unredeemable sin.

And the point is that it is amazing and should give every believer a heart of gratitude, a heart of gratitude. This is wonderful and it is a gospel reality that can help us to be grateful and thankful no matter what the earthly circumstances.

I read an illustration that is helpful here. Think about this example from God's creation, an evergreen, an evergreen. An evergreen is a plant with foliage that remains green and functional through more than one growing season.

Conifers, live oak, and holly are just a few examples. An evergreen is always green despite the changes in weather around it. It is green in the heat of summer as well as the cold of winter. So also our lives as Christians are to be characterized by an enduring thankfulness that is unaffected by the changes or circumstances around us.

When the heat of a pressured week or the deadly cold of pain strikes us, we should stand evergreen, unchanging, always thankful, regardless of that which surrounds us. The psalmist said it like this, blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit and its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Of course, the famous Psalm 1.

On this side of the cross, not the law, but on this side of the cross, are you meditating on the word of God? Are you meditating on the word of life, the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ, the good news that Jesus died for your salvation?

No one can earn salvation for themselves. Jesus is the one who earned salvation on others' behalf. Jesus died for our salvation. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

For all sinners. This is an amazing and life-changing truth. Salvation is not earned. Salvation is a gift. And that is the fourth truth that can give us confidence and justification. Number four, salvation is a gift.

Salvation as a Gift and the Wages of Sin

Look at Romans chapter six. Just four verses here. Romans chapter six, starting in verse 20. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then having from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit leading to sanctification and the end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Salvation is a gift. I wanna point out verse 23. Verse 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Just a few things to point out in this verse.

The wages of sin is just that. It literally means pay. This is payment, pay. Sometimes this word is used in the imagery of Christians as soldiers, on the Christian life as military service, whose wages are paid by the heavenly general.

The Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature points out that verse 23 is further from the military scene and it's probably better to class it under compensation.

Compensation in public services, as in the compensation paid by sin, for services rendered to it, is death. The other observation is what Paul means by death here. Well, we know death means death. This is the termination of physical life, death, but Paul means more than physical death here.

This is more than physical death. In verse 22, Paul says that believers have been set free from sin and that leads to sanctification, which results in eternal life. That means the opposite of eternal life is the deserved payment for sin.

Compensation for sin is eternal death. The fruit of sanctification is eternal life. The compensation for sin is eternal death. Paul is talking about death viewed transcendently in contrast to a living relationship with God, physical and spiritual death.

This is the second death, the lake of fire, and if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Revelation 20. I read a good illustration while studying this verse 23.

You are free to choose between two masters, but you are not free to adjust the consequences of your choice. Each of the two masters pays with his own kind of currency. The currency of sin is eternal death.

That is all you can expect or hope for in this life without God. Christ's currency is eternal life, new life with God that begins on earth and continues forever with God. And so what choice have you made?

What master will you serve while you're here on earth? I think that's helpful to think about, but it's really not a choice, it's a truth. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sin leads to eternal death, but God freely gives eternal life. It's not about choosing, it's about accepting the truth. Christ died for you, salvation is a gift. You don't choose a gift, you don't earn a gift, you accept a gift.

I pray today that you've accepted the gift of everlasting life. And it's not too late if you haven't. And so let's make it simple. All you have to do is call on the name of the Lord. He will allow you to repent and believe.