The Law Established - Part 1 — John Metcalfe

The Law Established Through Faith

Romans chapter 3 and verse 31, the question and rejoins with a brief answer, the question is this. And this is the second time we are addressing ourselves to this question. We did so last sabbath day, which is this seventh day of the week.

And we're doing it this seventh day of the week, and if the Lord will, we shall do it finally on the next seventh day of the week, because we want to get at this matter. The apostle says, do we then make void the law through faith?

And he answers, God forbid, yes. So, we establish the Lord himself in the place of a hypothetical questioner. It isn't that he's asking this question as if he didn't know it. He does know it, but he's putting himself in the place of a questioner in order to bring up the kind of question that is raised by others, and I may say against the doctrine of the gospel, in order to undermine it.

So, he takes off his own coat, and he puts on the coat of this hypothetical questioner, who in fact is nothing better than a whitewashed hypocrite, who titles that to Paul, as though he was joined with him, and says, well, do we then make void the law through faith?

And then the apostle throws off this unaccustomed coat, and puts on his own simple garb, and he says, hey, God forbid, we establish the Lord. So, he takes the part of a hypothetical questioner, because we've got no fear of any questions that can be asked about our gospel.

We know whom we believe, we know what we believe, and we're not afraid of any questions from the world or from religion, because they're all answered in the word of God. And here they are, I say he asks, he puts himself in the place of a rhetorical questioner, of a hypothetical questioner, and he asks the rhetorical question.

It isn't that he needs to ask it, it isn't that he would ask it, it isn't that his godly hearers would ask it, but by putting on the coat of the questioner, this hypothetical questioner, and by asking this question rhetorically, not as though he really wanted to ask it or really needed the answer, but by rhetorical, we mean he asked it to bring out the truth for the benefit of his hearer who believes what he believes, that is, the gospel of God concerning his son.

And he draws out the truth, and that's his method. But the key is in the question, do we then make void the law through faith? Well, then, that is, because of the doctrine he just enunciated, because of the truth of the gospel, because of the doctrine of Christ, there are certain people who say, well, that's all very well, but do we then make void the law, never mind the gospel, do we then make void the law?

After running from the question, or hiding under the carpet, or whatever, he brings it out and asks it himself as though he were the questioner. He takes the place of the hypothetical questioner, and he asks this rhetorical question to bring out the truth, not to run from it.

Do we then make void the law through faith? Then, that is, because of the doctrine just enunciated. Now, what doctrine is that? It's the doctrine of the gospel. It's what he's been teaching in the last part of chapter 3 of Romans.

In a word, because of the doctrine, that sinners have no righteousness of their own, that they've no hope of achieving any righteousness of their own, and they've got no hope of overcoming their innate sinfulness, not a hope of it, but upon such, God confers, God reckons, God puts to their account, God credits them just as they are, without any change in themselves, without any change of them, Isaiah, he credits them with a divine righteousness, an everlasting righteousness, a righteousness outside of themselves.

He puts it to their account in, that is, he puts to their account in heaven, a righteousness which God himself has brought to them on earth by Jesus Christ in the days of his blessing on the cross. This is called justification by faith, and he counts the sinner and ungodly as a sinner, and as ungodly as he is, without any prior change in himself or herself.

He counts them, reckons them, credits them to be forever on no account of his own, but on account of this freely given, divinely wrought, eternally sure, graciously bestowed, imputed divine righteousness of God by Jesus Christ.

But, oh, oh, says the hypocrite, is it safe to working out my own righteousness, says the self-righteous. An hour and a half, just so long as you're making yourself comfortable, we spent an hour and a half saying so, through faith, and I say last week we saw with a witness, no we do not.

But these questions, self-justification, self-will, the works of the flesh, and the pride and the boasting of religion, they do, but we don't. Who hold on to the law, it's they who make it, boys, and this week we're going to see just how they do.

The questioner makes void the law through faith, and he does it in three ways. One, by misrepresenting the law, making the law the basis of justifying righteousness, and three, by setting the law before the believer as a rule of life.

That's how he makes void the law, and the gospel doesn't do any of those three things. But I'm going to show you, by the grace of God this evening, and I hope you'll listen, as you value your immortal soul, nor think these things above you, for if these things are above you, the New Testament's above you, and if the New Testament's above you, you haven't a hope in hell.

And if you think to have a Jesus, have a religion, without doctrine, you're utterly blind, and God has never said to you, let there be light. They make void the law, who say we do, who question whether we do, by misrepresenting the law.

Human Merit and the Legalization of the Gospel

Now why do that? Well, to get the law into the gospel, now by the law we mean a system of works which requires men to do something, which if they do it, will merit favor from God. Whether it's thinking to think their way through, and the academics and the students love to say it, I'm thinking my way through.

What a conceit. Or whether you want to feel it, and you're imposing yourself on yourself, certain states and feelings which you must induce, and you must reach before you feel God will take notice of you.

Or whether it's volitional, and you think you must have this intention, and you must have that experience, and you must have this intensity, and you must do these things before God would look upon you, and as a consequence of what he sees, merit what you have achieved with the favor of his grace.

Absolutely, utterly, and completely. And we're bringing them to the light. And who knows who we're bringing to the light this evening. They misrepresent the law. Why to get it into the gospel where it never belongs?

But why do that? Why to legalize the gospel, so as to make human merit and free will and works essential to salvation? So the attainment of a certain state, whether of mind, whether of will, whether of life, whether of affections, whether of passions, whether of the flesh, to make a certain state, whether of self-denial, or whether of attainment, or whether of presumed spiritual experience, to make a certain state necessary before you can say, now God will give me salvation.

But why on earth do that? Well, because if you've done that, and you claim that, and vast cults and sects do claim it, then they've got some cause of boasting. Why, we've attained to that. That's why God has blessed us.

That's why the Spirit's been given to us, so they say. Because they've merited it by their standards and attainments, whether of emotions, whether of experiences, whether of mentality, or whether of will, or whether of life.

Having attained to it, they can then say, therefore God has blessed them with the Spirit, set them at liberty, given them this wonderful experience, set his favour upon them, and so on. That's not the gospel, that's the same as saying, do we make void the law through faith.

To get the gospel, to get the law into the gospel at any cost, in order to have a cause for self-righteousness, self-justification, and boasting. And as long as man does something, and as long as man supposes he must attain to that, or this, or the other, there is a cause of self-righteousness, there is a cause of self-justification, there is a cause of boasting.

And in the gospel, the Apostle Paul says, where is boasting? It is excluded from grace, and it's all free, and he doesn't regard the state of the sinner in the least degree. Romans 3, verse 27, boasting is excluded.

And why? Because law is excluded. Because the law requires works. The law demands that from you which you ought to render, in order to propitiate and appease God, and make him more favourable towards you.

Now Ed, if it's a soul in this room, including me, in whose heart that is an endemic, born with it, but we're reborn out of it, and we want to stay in the rebirth, we want to call the night fair, we want to call the darkness night, and we want to separate the two, because the law is excluded.

Then it must be, for these people, subtly misrepresented, to corrupt our saving, free, dense, grand, glorifying, righteousness-imputing gospel of Christ, by these people merging it with a misrepresentation of the law of works, or of religious dependence on self-righteousness.

Now, how will they misrepresent the law? Never directly. Satan never did a direct thing in his life, much less in religion. Always grey, always merging, always using a half, or if possible 99 of the gospel.

But God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. That's what you want to get. How do they misrepresent the law? Well, the first thing they do, in order to misrepresent the law, is confound the whole of the scripture together and mix it all up, and they start at the very beginning.

Adam, Moses, and the Misrepresentation of the Law

They call the law, they call the law, the forbidding of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil in the garden of Eden to Adam. They say God gave to Adam a law, and that law was he forbade him and them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God gave to Adam a law. That's a quotation. That is, he must not eat of it. Oh, all right. But then they say, categorically, this is the very same law which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. Oh, say they, it's the same in principle, say these marvellous theologians.

It's the same in principle. The law that God gave to Adam in the garden of Eden, that he was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is the same in principle, say they, as the law which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai.

That's a quote. If you want to find it in the Westminster Confession, don't bother to buy it. Buy the Westminster Confession exploding. It's the same in principle, say out those theologians. Oh, is it?

Then how do they account for the fact that Adam was forbidden to eat of the tree, as his sin was that he did so? Expressly called the same law was given to Moses on Sinai with the express commandment to keep it in a figure and metaphor to eat of it.

And eat of it on pain of death and he did and died. And Moses tells the people, you must eat of it, otherwise you won't live, you will die. In the one case, if Adam did it, he died. On the other case, if men did not do it, they died.

But what are you going to do? This is professors. This is the wisdom of this world. This is right out of Oxford and Cambridge. This is straight out of a long parliament. This is your Westminster Confession.

They say that the law that Adam received is the same law that Moses received, but the law that Adam received was that he mustn't do it. The law that Moses received was that you must do it. If you didn't do it, if you did it, you died.

If you didn't do this, you died. Well, how can it be the same law? Because they don't know what they're talking about. That's why. Because they've already started to confuse the issue and they've already started to be cloud religion to such a dark miasma and such a fog, you'll never find your way through it from birth to death if you leave yourself to their mercies.

To reintroduce the law into a free grace gospel, however, they discover a difficulty. He won't fit. They can't. Because the scripture only ever speaks of the law as one. All of it is one. It makes this void.

It's lawless. It's antinomian to split it up, says Christ, or says the witness of the Spirit of Christ. The law was given by Moses. That's all of it. As such, everything that was given by Moses in total on Mount Sinai, the law was given by Moses.

But in total, absolute contrast of the separate thing altogether, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And they want to bring them together and they're not going to get away with it. And in order for them not to get away with it, this has got to be taught to you.

And you've got to get your doctrine right and know what you believe and receive the form of sound words. Because you needn't think that these things have been sounded out over the realm of Britain or over the capital London for many a long generation.

But you won't stop the mouth of God and you won't stop Christ speaking peace to his people. And they can't. They could kill us and they would if they could. I can tell you that. You might think that's exaggerated, but it isn't.

But God will raise up another and another and another when they burnt Latimer and Ridley. And his body dripping away and burning Sir Ridley. We shall this day light a candle in England which shall never be put out.

And they poured these churches and these theologians and these universities. They poured bucket after bucket after bucket of water. But the Lord says David shall light my candle. And God has given Christ the light in the sanctuary which shall never be put out.

And as the Lord liveth, that's the light that's flickering in this hall tonight. And if I said otherwise, I should be a liar against my own. To reintroduce law into a free grace gospel, may I say, discoverer of epicality.

It won't fit. Can't do it because the scripture speaks of the law as one, all of it. It makes it void to take a bit of it and leave the rest. It's not the law anymore because the law was given by Moses.

It's antinomian to split it up. The law, however, includes animal sacrifices, a single exclusive temple at Jerusalem, which was the one place where God would put his name and show his presence and nowhere else.

And all nations must go there under the law of sacrifices, a single temple at Jerusalem, circumcision at the time of being a Jew or being circumcised in order to become one without which you didn't keep the law, you broke it and were cursed.

Clean and unclean meats, you couldn't eat unclean meats without being shut out of the house of God and the congregation of his people. The feasts at Jerusalem up to which you must go three times in the year, all the males thereof.

Some other laws such as being excluded for an issue, for childbirth, for touching the dead, for contracting leprosy and many, many more. Now, clearly they couldn't reintroduce these into the gospel. So what are they going to do?

Tell a pack of lies, that's what. And what do you expect from religion? When he came unto his own and his own received him not. When Stephen testified by the Holy Ghost, he spilt nectar rebellious to the priests, to the scribes, to the Pharisees, to the rulers and the hierarchy of the people.

He spit nectar rebellious, he do always resist the Holy Ghost and it is so to this day. They're just the same, but the law is one, can't be done. Clearly the animal sacrifices, clearly the temple at Jerusalem, clearly circumcision, clearly the feasts, clearly the laws of clean and unclean meats can't be introduced.

But these just as much as the ten commandments of the law. And you'll be just as much damned for eating meat that is not clean, such as that which chews the cub but doesn't part the hoof. You'll be just as much damned as you will for bowing down to a graven idol.

You'll be just as much damned for adultery as going into the house of God when you got an issue upon you if you're a woman or you've had an issue as a man and you're not clean for seven days. Just as much damned because the law is one.

Whosoever offended in one point breaketh the whole law, not suffered. But they can't bring it all in, hence they misrepresent the law by hacking it without the least divine authority. Oh will you listen!

You go into these places and there you find written what they call the ten commandments. You go into your liturgy and there you hear and even you recite like a parrot the thing that's chanted to you, the ten commandments.

They misrepresent the law by hacking it without any divine authority into three parts. They throw away two of the parts, throw them away. All the ceremonial law and the judicial law but they're never called that in your bible.

Search from cover to cover. What says the scripture? Hack it into three parts. They rename without authority two of the parts. They then pick them up and throw them out. They throw out which they call but scripture does not, the ceremonial law together with the judicial law.

Then without scripture, without right, without precedent, they borrow from heathen Greek philosophers, put it in their universities to teach their priests in the world when Christ never went to the school.

How has this man never having learned? They took knowledge of Peter and John that they were unlearned and ignorant men. Told them my doctrine says Christ is not mine but his that sent me. But these go to their schools, they learn this trash, they put you under darkness and why don't you open your eyes?

Some guts of Zealand, fire up. If anybody did it to your wife or your children, you'd be up in arms. They don't mind as you've got them. They borrow from heathen Greek philosophers in order to call what is left, the ten commandments graven on stone, the moral law.

A word that never occurs in the holy bible. As if the two parts they arbitrarily discard weren't moral. Are they immoral? Perhaps one is immoral, the other is immoral. Or as if they had the slightest right to drop fragments and change the law.

Scripture only ever, ever speaks of one law, the law in the integrity and entirety in which it was delivered on Mount Sinai. They mutilate and they make void this integrity and no one has the right to do that.

Scripture never recognizes their laceration, much less initiated it. But without it, they can't reintroduce what they call the moral law into the gospel and put the believer back under bondage. And you are in doubt and uncertainties about salvation.

And they need to do that in the lonely role because you're frightened. The perfect love casts it out for you. Therefore what they try and reintroduce is not even law because two parts are missing. Both are wrongly named and the third part that they've got left is wrongly named as well.

It's named by heathen Greek philosophers. It's unrecognizable this rump left over from their theological butchery. As to the real, entire, true and only law of God, God said to it, it brings the knowledge of sin.

It's a killing sentence. It's a damning curse. It's a sentence of death. It could not make known either the father or the son. It was hidden behind the veil as God was hidden under the name Jehovah unrevealed.

Not even the high priest could see the presence, much less any of the people. It brought flatness, darkness, the tempest, the sound of a trumpet, the voice of words which they could not stand and a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear, said Peter.

It brings servitude, fear, wrath. It works rebellion, unbelief, desperation and hardness of heart. And if some of these things are not your experience, your religion is nothing worse. But if some of these are, then don't be confounded and don't let the devil deceive you and don't let these dead dogs blind your eyes and throw sand in it.

You're in the way of salvation and the devil is in the way of bringing you out of it. But he won't succeed. None but it damned all. And will the butchers who make boy the law by this carnage reintroduce their mutilation to bring us all out of grace and under it?

As the law lives, they will not. So they misrepresent the law. Because they want to bring it into the gospel. They make boy the law by bringing it into the gospel as the basis of justifying righteousness.

Christ's Obedience and the Basis of Justification

Now this isn't difficult to follow. You can clearly follow this. There's no problem. Don't think you can't. They make boy the law by making the law the basis of justification. This is an unlawful proposal which teaches that the righteousness by which God justifies or reckons righteous his people, the ungodly, without works, without merit, without any change in themselves, who earn nothing but wrath, but who receive everything full grace.

I say this is an unlawful proposal which teaches that the righteousness by which God justifies his people resulted from Christ during his entire lifetime, keeping the law on their behalf. They say you, but throughout his lifetime he kept it on your behalf.

That's what they teach. So that this vicarious or substitutionary law keeping of Christ produced for you, they say, the righteousness which God puts to your account to justify you. So that this vicarious in a word, Christ is said to live our lives for us instead of us and put that to our account instead of our own in the eyes of the law.

But such a view is at once illegal, irrational, unevangelical, unsafe, scriptural, inconsistent, and unreformed. I could think of a few more, but that'll do. But it's no light matter. It's a saving matter.

The law demanded thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy understanding, and with all thy strength. Now we're talking of Christ in his manhood being made under the law.

Wonderful, perfect, and unique, that manhood. All of its heart, all of its mind, all of its understanding, and all of its strength was perceived, demanded to be rendered continually by the law. That's what the law required of manhood.

No matter that Christ's manhood was worth more than ten thousand times ten thousand, all was demanded of him. All thy strength, all thy mind, all thy heart, all thy understanding. That's precisely what he rendered, that nobody else did, but he did, in his manhood.

It all was demanded, and all was given, as it must be or the law would find fault. How can a superfluity be produced on behalf of others? How can a superfluity be produced on behalf of others? It all is demanded what is left over to reckon to others.

Otherwise it wasn't all any superfluity. Law would demand that as well of his manhood, from his manhood, all thy strength. Then it's illegal to propose that the law allowed of that over and above all, on behalf of others, so that that would be counted to them as if it was their life, instead of his.

It's simply illegal, so they may void the law. But we don't. It's completely irrational. By this scheme, Christ, by his life, would have secured a substitutionary righteousness for his people, in his lifetime, living his life for them, or their life for them, right?

Yes. He would have secured a substitutionary righteousness by his lifetime, before the cross. Then why die for them? Then why die for them? Die for what? For those deemed by his life to be perfectly righteous?

For any deemed perfectly righteous, if these are right, then why die? You don't die for those who are deemed to be perfectly righteous, by virtue of the life. Believers are reckoned as if they perfectly kept the law, and they say that Christ perfectly kept the law, instead of them, on their behalf, as a substitutionary life.

If they're deemed as having perfectly kept the law, then they're deemed as being perfect. So why did Christ die as if they'd not kept the law, and as if they were not perfect? What? Black as the ace of spades.

You say you shouldn't say ace of spades. Well, I'm here, and you're there, and I'm saying ace of spades. Black as the ace of spades. Right? That's your life. That's my life. That's how your life stands in the sight of God under the law.

White as snow. Right? That's my life. I'm there saying that's his life on my behalf. So why die for someone as white as snow? Can you tell me? Well, I can tell you the scheme must be wrong, because he did die, and Christ died for sinners, according to Bibles.

They wouldn't have been sinners, if a life of righteousness had been put to their account before. Snowbite life lived on their behalf. Why die? It's irrational. That's what I'm saying. It's irrational.

It would make void the law, as if the law had not been kept when it had, according to them. They make void the law. That's the thing. And they're accusing us of doing it. And until you get these things clear, you'll never separate cleanly and clearly your gospel.

But you know the first thing God did after he created the world, was to say, let there be night. And he called the light good. And he called the light pain. And he called the darkness night. And he separated the light from the darkness.

That's what's happening. Next thing, thirdly, is that it's unevangelical. It's not the gospel. Christ's obedience was not called obedience to the law by which we're justified, though he did obey the law.

But Christ's obedience by which we're justified was called the obedience of faith. But says Paul, the law is not of faith. The law says this do and thou shalt live. Faith says this believe and thou shalt be saved.

The law is not of faith. But Christ's obedience was the obedience of faith. The law demanded works from a servant. But Christ gave obedience as a son. And the obedience of a son is the obedience of faith.

Why Christ's Death, Not Merely His Life, Saves

Besides, legal obedience couldn't save even. Very soon, Moses was a whole world after Adam. But it's the fall of Adam that plunged mankind into ruin. It's the fall of Adam that opened the great gulf between God and man.

It was the fall of Adam that brought in inbred sin and inbred supremacy that caused man to slide down and down and down and down into the pit. And after a world of sliding down, then the law came in. And the great gulf, there's still the offended holiness, righteousness and justice of God, the other side of the gulf out of sight.

The law doesn't even address these questions. And the gospel does. The law doesn't even address these questions. And the gospel does. So it's unevangelical. Legal obedience couldn't save. Moses was Christ's whole world after Adam.

But the fall of Adam, the great gulf, the offended righteousness of God, the other side of the gulf, that's the gospel piece. But the law can't. And even if it could, and even if it were lawful for one to keep the law on behalf of another, it would only bring man back from the bottom of the pit up to the point where Moses gave the law, which was a whole world of falling since Adam, bring even up to Adam in innocence.

It wouldn't cross the gulf. It wouldn't fill the abyss. He wouldn't reach to God. He couldn't touch his nature. It couldn't bring him back from infinity and eternity to which in his holiness, he'd withdrawn.

Unevangelical. But all these things, the gospel of Christ does. He reaches to God in his divinity. He reaches to man in his humanity. He reaches to his depravity in being made sin on the cross. He kept the law of Moses in the perfection of his human nature.

He met the curse when he plunged over the gulf. He bared his bosom to the righteous wrath of God, but all God's waves and billows fell over him. He met God's righteousness from the other side, quite apart from the righteousness of the law.

And when he'd done it, he laid dead in a tomb saying it is finished. And the third day, God raised him from the dead and gave him glory and justified his guilt. That's what the gospel does and satisfy the law and made it honorable.

So it's unevangelical. Fourthly, it's unsafe. It makes void the law. It utilizes the system, right? It utilizes a legal convenience, the right of proxy, in a way never intended by the law and truly unsafe to all legal reptities.

Simply a legal array of number of civil transactions in the absence of one party through circumstances beyond their control, whereby another can sign in their behalf by written consent. This is in precisely defined circumstances so that the proxy can act for the appointee.

Applies to legal obligations or to criminal law. Otherwise, you could go and commit a murder while your proxy is going to church. I mean, it's fantastic. It's incredible. It's against all reason. It's against all jurisprudence.

It's against the foundations of the law. What what wretches these people are. Proxy can't apply to legal obligations, criminal law or legal duty. It's utterly contrary and unsafe by legal jurisprudence to allow a counterfeiting to the law to be transferred by proxy to another in any case or any circumstances, and most of all, in salvation.

It won't work. The unsafe, it makes void the law, but it's the basis of their whole legal system. It's unscriptural. But anyone could check for proxy legal righteousness of man by the law when Romans 3 21 says that.

But now the righteousness of God, not man, of God, without the law is manifested. That's what's in the gospel. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for there it is, the righteousness of God, not man, not even the righteousness of Christ.

The faith of Jesus Christ brought forth the righteousness of God by the shedding of his blood to impute the same unto those lost sinners for whom he died. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, Romans 3 22.

It's unscriptural. Justice is in the Bible, and it defies what is in the Bible. Justifying righteousness is not called Christ's righteousness by keeping the law, but the righteousness of God by Christ dying under the law on our behalf.

117, I've quoted you, not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed. Well, when have you heard the gospel revealing the righteousness of God? You've never heard it at Haringey, I can tell you that, or any other of these trumped-up Yankee personality money-crabbing evangelists.

And you don't hear it in the churches either. But you'll hear it from heaven, and you'll hear it from the lips of Christ, and you'll get it from your Bible, and it's by believing this and this alone that you'll be saved.

And you won't be saved without faith. Go into all the world and preach the gospel. Not preaching Christ merely, it's preaching Christ in terms of intelligible doctrine about himself. Preach the gospel, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that does not believe shall be damned.

But they've separated Christ from the gospel, and they've separated the spirit from the gospel, and where does that lead you? Wacko. That's where it leads you. So get back on the old book, man, and get back on the old authority, woman, and get under Christ and his truth.

For if any man come unto you and bring not this doctrine, don't receive it into your house, neither bid him God speak. He that hath the doctrine, he that transgresseth the doctrine of Christ hath not God.

He that hath the doctrine of Christ hath both the Father and the Son. It's said to be the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. Not the righteousness of revealed by the works of the law, but the righteousness of God revealed by the faith of Jesus Christ, namely in his death.

Romans 10, verse 4 says, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Well, how could you bring it back then? Not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, either am I attempting to keep it, or of Christ keeping it for me.

Though dying under my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Jesus Christ, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith. Christians 5, 1, we're made the righteousness of God in him who has made sin for us.

God has made him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. And I can't stand by and see that sunnied by legal confusion, can you? And if it doesn't matter, then the fidelity of your wife doesn't matter.

Then the morality of your children doesn't matter. Then the shocking debts of the country doesn't matter. Then the fact that the vilest of men are exulting over us to rule over us doesn't matter. But it does matter.

Then death doesn't matter. Then cancer doesn't matter. Then sickness doesn't matter. None of these things, besides the pure doctrine being clear in your mind that you're hearing today. Romans 3, 25 and 26 says, the gospel of Christ declares God's righteousness for the remission of sins.

Not Christ's righteousness for keeping the law in life, but God's righteousness through Christ's death to remit our sins in consequence of his death in our behalf. Proxy living for a legal fiction, but his death bringing in God's righteousness to justify the ungodly.

Every scripture declares justifying righteousness, the righteousness of God to be by the faith of Jesus Christ through his death, not the works of Jesus Christ by the law of his life. That makes void the law, it makes void the scripture, and it also makes void the gospel.

Sacrifice and Substitution in the Gospel