Dr. White on the Resurrection of the Son of God

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Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

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What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service. And again, I want to thank you all so much for watching, for liking, for commenting, for sharing the sermon itself.

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We truly believe that it's important for the Christian Church to have an engagement in the public square with the

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Word of God. So we thank you so much for partnering with us to send this out across the world. I just wanted to say something before you actually watch this, and that is that I'm not your pastor.

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Though I'd love to be, I am not your pastor. And it's very important as you're watching this, you know that it's

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That is vitally important and actually a biblical command. And so as much as again as we love for your participation, your partnership, and we are so thankful to God that he's using these in your lives, we want to encourage you to get plugged into a local church.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. Please take your scriptures, please, and turn with me to Paul's epistle to the

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Romans chapter 4. Paul's epistle to the Romans chapter 4.

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As I mentioned earlier, when Pastor Jeff spoke to me about speaking today, it wasn't really that we were looking at a liturgical calendar so much.

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We don't have a real strong commitment to a liturgical calendar. But he said, well, you know,

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I'm going to do two weeks on justification and then you'll do a summary on the third week.

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And I happened to look at the calendar and saw that it was Resurrection Sunday.

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Couldn't have known even three weeks ago what events would take place between now and then.

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But then as Jeff worked through the doctrine of justification, I realized

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I needed to think through how you would do a summary of a topic that has already been rather thoroughly covered.

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And so my mind turned to the connection between justification and the resurrection, and to a particular passage that will be our central area of consideration.

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We will do somewhat of a summary, but there is a specific text we'll look at in Romans 4 .25.

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We'll read that in just a moment. But before we do that, let us ask the Lord to bless our time together.

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Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you in a way that we rarely truly thank you for this opportunity of being together.

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Lord, we confess that for many decades, in my experience, we have taken the freedom that you have given to us to gather together around your word for granted.

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We may have said many times, we thank you, O Lord, for this opportunity of worship.

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But until something is threatened, until something is taken away, we very often do not understand how precious the gift really was.

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And so now, Lord, as we are amongst a very few who still have this privilege, we ask that during this time you would help us to realize that when we open your word, you are speaking to us.

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That we are in your presence, that by your spirit you are conforming us to the image of Christ, that this is divine business.

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As such, may we do the work of worship. May our minds be focused.

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May you protect us from distraction. And Lord, may this time be to your honor and glory and for the benefit of your people.

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We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. If you have listened carefully over the past couple of weeks, you have heard an excellent summary provided to you of what the

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Bible teaches on the subject of how you are made right before God.

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It is a huge subject. There is much more that could be said about the

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Old Testament backgrounds. There's much more that could be said about some of the issues in the

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New Testament in regards to the relationship of Jews and Gentiles and the church as one body.

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And the Apostle Paul's great concern that there is only one body of Christ.

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You cannot have a Jewish church and a Gentile church. This would be the end of what

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God intended to do from eternity past. It would be a tremendous problem.

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It would be a denial of what Christ did. And that's why he is so strong when he writes the churches in Galatia.

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So strong to start off his letter by saying anyone who teaches other on this is under the very curse of God.

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They are anathema. In fact, one of the very interesting things is if you will compare the letter to the churches in Galatia with something like Romans, you can see when you're reading it, especially in the original language, that Romans flows smoothly and it's grammatically correct and it's clearly organized.

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Paul has put a tremendous amount of thought into what he wants to deliver to the church at Rome. But you read the epistle to the

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Galatians and it's choppy and there are verbs that are skipped over and it is emotional.

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And that makes sense. We know in scripture that men speak from God as they're carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. He uses those men. He uses their experience. He uses their language and there's nothing wrong with recognizing that the

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Apostle Paul was very much involved in the subject of warning the churches in Galatia that they were being misled.

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And what was what were they being misled about? They were being misled on this subject of how a person is made right before God.

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They were being told that well first you need to become a Jew. Then you can become a

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Christian. You need to enter into the old through circumcision and then from there you can enter into the new covenant, but you've got to have that first step of entering into the old covenant first.

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And so what had happened even in his own experience, you remember what happens in Antioch when when the men come from James and Jerusalem, even though they had been having table fellowship, even though Peter had recognized that there was one gospel and one table of fellowship, when the men came from James he withdrew and all of a sudden you had the

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Jewish Christians over here and the Gentile Christians over here. And here's

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Paul, not one of the original 12, comes along later and he stands before Peter, Peter who went to the empty tomb who entered into that tomb and he stands up before Peter in front of them all and rebukes him.

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Why? Well as he said to the churches in Galatia, this is about the truth of the gospel. We did not put up with those who would deny this truth for even a moment so the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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And that's the issue. There are many in our land, I say with a broken heart, who when the opportunity returns will stand behind pulpits and they will open the

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Bible, but one thing will be missing from their message. There are many, many today, and this is because this is the understanding in many seminaries today and Bible colleges.

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There are many today who simply do not believe that we any longer know with any kind of certainty what the apostolic message of the gospel originally was.

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People I remember very clearly, I did my first master's degree at Fuller Theological Seminary here in Phoenix.

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They had, at the time, that was the only place you could go. And so I had finished up my bachelor's degree, so I started with Fuller and I remember this one individual and we both started at the same time, so we pretty much got done at the same time as well.

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He started with a fairly clear conviction, was involved in evangelism and in his church and so on and so forth.

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A few years later when we both graduated, the only way I could put it is he now had a master's degree in Confusion.

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A master's degree in, well, there sure are a lot of views out there and I'm not really sure which one's right, if any of them are right at all.

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And unfortunately, he was not alone. He was not alone. And so when we speak with such confidence on this issue of justification, a lot of people look at us and go, how can you be so confident?

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There are so many different understandings. There's a new perspective on Paul. And haven't you seen how smart

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N .T. Wright is? And so how can you still proclaim these old things?

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Wasn't this just something back at the Reformation and hasn't it been pretty much understood by now that they got it wrong back then?

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They didn't really understand what was going on in the days of Christ. They misunderstood

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Paul's point. Haven't we moved beyond all of this now? And we as your elders are here to say, no, they didn't get it wrong.

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We do not have to elevate the Reformers to positions of apostles to recognize that the issues that they addressed are vitally important and they will always be vitally important.

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And especially in our day, especially in our day, as issues of true life and death face each and every one of us, how you can have peace with God is more important than it has ever, ever been.

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And I say to each one of you, to each member of this church, to every believer in the sound of my voice, you need to be very quick with a clear message to those around you as to how they can have peace with God.

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If anything has changed in our society, there is a greater seriousness.

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I remember, I believe it was John Murray who said, speaking of the modern period, that one of the reasons that justification by faith no longer rings the bells of men's hearts is because we are not faced with the constant reality of death that they were in the days of the

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Reformation. Both Luther and Calvin, well,

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Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all faced the plague in their cities. A lot of people don't know this, but John Calvin refused to leave

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Strasbourg when he was pastoring a French congregation there before in the intermediate time between when he was in Geneva for the first time, then he was in Strasbourg, and then he went back to Geneva.

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He refused to leave when the plague struck. He stayed and ministered to people. He had a pastor's heart.

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A lot of people don't know that about Calvin. They knew death.

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Calvin lost a child shortly after birth. Luther lost a child. Zwingli was cut down in the prime of life.

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But they knew death. It was all around them. Everybody, everybody in that society had seen dead bodies in the street.

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And when that happens, you get serious about peace with God. It's no longer just something you argue about.

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You get serious about whether you have peace with God. And before we turn to the text, let me tell you a personal story.

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I'll never forget this. I wish we had the video of this. You can still hear the audio, but we don't have the video any longer.

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Well, we just were never given it. The other side suppressed it. But I did a debate.

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I believe it was January of 1991. You hear that? It was January of 1990. One of the two.

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After all these years, it doesn't really matter. It was the first of five debates.

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I've done a total of five debates with Dr. Mitchell Pacwa, a Jesuit priest.

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I think those five debates are some of the best Roman Catholic debates we've done, primarily because Mitch Pacwa is a really good guy.

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He's not somebody who plays games. He's not just trying to win a debate. He actually believes what he believes.

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He's a scholar. He speaks 12 languages. And during the cross -examination, this was one of my first debates.

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I've only learned since then just how important cross -examination, as most of you know, is where the debate really takes place.

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But I wasn't fully aware of that when I first started doing debates. But I had come up with this question.

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And I'll expand upon a little bit so you can understand it. But here is the question. Knowing that Mitch Pacwa knows 12 languages, then

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I know he knows Greek. I know he knows Hebrew. And that means he knows what shalom means.

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And we've all heard that term, right? Shalom is the Hebrew word for peace.

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But peace, shalom, true shalom, and interestingly enough, in Arabic, it's salam.

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They're both Semitic languages, and so they're very closely related. Peace means much more than a mere cessation of hostilities.

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And so if we look at the state of Israel today, there may not have been any rocket attacks.

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There may not have been any terrorist attacks. But there is no peace in Israel today.

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It would never be described as shalom. Why? Well, because they have the Iron Dome missile system active at all times.

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And their military is on alert at all times. And there are tanks on the borders and soldiers with weapons guarding every crossing.

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That is not a wellness of relationship. That is not peace. It's a cessation of hostilities, but it's not peace.

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Knowing that he would know what shalom was, I asked him this question. I read to him from Mark where Jesus gave the greatest commandment to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And I said, if breaking lesser commandments is a mortal sin, then certainly breaking the greatest commandment has to be a mortal sin.

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And committing a mortal sin in Roman Catholicism destroys the grace of justification.

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So if you're not familiar with Roman Catholicism, let me just remind you of the fact that in Roman Catholicism, you can commit mortal sins or venial sins.

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A venial sin brings temporal punishment on your soul, but it does not destroy your relationship with God.

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It does not take you out of the state of grace. But a mortal sin destroys the state of grace and you have to be re -justified.

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If you die in the state of mortal sin, you do not go to heaven. You do not go to purgatory.

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You go to hell. That's old -style Roman Catholicism. I don't think

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Frankie believes any of that, but that's another issue we can't get into today. Knowing that he understood this, here was my question to him.

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None of us have loved God perfectly this day. If that is a mortal sin, how can he believe that he has peace with God if he knows that before he puts his head upon the pillow that night, he could commit that mortal sin and lose the relationship he has with God?

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Now, why was I asking him this question? Because Roman Catholicism doesn't have the blessed man.

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Remember last week? Jeff talked about Romans chapter 4, and he worked through verses 4 through 8, and there you have a definition of what justification is.

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Look at it, since we're right there. Now, to the one who works, verse 4, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due.

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But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.

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And so you have the one working to receive a wage, you have the one not working, and the one not working receives justification because of his faith in the one who justifies the ungodly.

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Then you have an apostolic interpretation of an Old Testament text.

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I love those. Just as David also speaks the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works.

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So Paul is going to look at this section from Psalm 32, and he says

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David is speaking about the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works.

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But then listen to what he quotes. Bless are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.

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Then verse 8, blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

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Now, what's the psalmist talking about? He's talking about sin and forgiveness. Yet Paul interprets him as speaking about the blessing of imputed righteousness.

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How can that be? Well, in verse 8, blessed is the man whose sin the

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Lord will not take into account. How can the Lord not take into account someone's sin?

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Because he has imputed it to another. He has imputed that sin to the sin bearer.

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And as a result, the righteousness of that sin bearer is imputed to us.

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Remember 2 Corinthians 5, 21? He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, the great exchange.

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In Roman Catholicism, you are made just and righteous by your baptism.

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Baptism infuses into your soul righteousness. You become objectively pleasing to God, which is why you go to heaven.

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But if you commit a mortal sin, you become objectively displeasing to God. So now you're going back to hell.

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And so you have to be re -justified. And then you can lose it, and then have to be re -justified. Back and forth, back and forth.

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There is no non -imputation of sin. If you commit a mortal sin in Roman Catholicism, it's imputed to you.

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If you commit a venial sin, it's imputed to you. There is no non -imputation. And so when you ask a

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Roman Catholic, who is the blessed man of verse 8? They don't know. 19 years ago,

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I debated a Roman Catholic priest by the name of Father Peter Stravinskis. Dr. Peter Stravinskis. Two Ivy League PhDs.

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And when I asked him the question, who is the blessed man of Romans 4 -8?

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You know what he said at first? Jesus. Think about that for a second.

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Jesus is the blessed man because the Lord will not impute to Jesus, Jesus' sins. So I gave him a second to think about that.

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And I said, that really doesn't make much sense. Would you sort of like to try that again? And he had to think about it for a while.

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It's a sad thing that a man in his position had never thought about it before. And then he said, well,

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I hope to be the blessed man. I hope to be.

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Folks, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are the blessed man.

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If you don't know that your sins have been imputed to the sin bearer and his righteousness has been imputed to you, you do not yet know what the gospel is.

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Because that's how we have peace with God. That's how we have peace with God.

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So I go back to the debate with Mitch Pacwa. So I asked him, you know what Shalom means.

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How can you say you have peace? Now his first response, he didn't really respond to my question, but I had the opportunity of redirecting.

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And so I redirected it very directly right at how can you say, if you can be the enemy of God by the time you go to sleep tonight, how can you say you have peace?

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And this is one of the reasons that I really like Mitch Pacwa. And I would ask you to join with me in praying for Mitch Pacwa.

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He had a heart, a really bad heart attack a couple of years ago. He's still living, but he had to become less, much less active than he had been for a long time.

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This is why I like him. There was a brief pause and then he leaned into his microphone.

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He said, I don't know. I don't know. Very few of my debate opponents will ever say,

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I don't know. But he was honest enough to do so. That's why this is important.

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That's why this is key. And so look with me to Romans chapter four, beginning of verse 16.

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For this reason, it is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

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As it is written, a father of many nations have I made you in the sight of him who he believed, even

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God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope, he believed in order that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken.

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So shall your descendants be. And without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body.

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Now as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and the deadness of Sarah's womb, yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was also able to perform.

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Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Now, not for his sake only was it written, but that it was reckoned to him, but for our sake also to whom it will be reckoned as those who believe in him who raised

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Jesus our Lord from the dead. He who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification.

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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand and we exult in the hope of the glory of God.

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Now, you know, if you're following Paul's argument here, into the middle of the third chapter, he's been arguing universal sinfulness.

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He has been closing all doors. He's been closing every mouth. Jew and Gentile, he has convicted us all of sin.

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He has placed Jew and Gentile on the exact same level, so there can be one way of saving both

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Jew and Gentile. And then beginning in the middle of chapter three, getting around verse 20, you finally have the gospel.

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What God has done in light of man's universal sinfulness, in light of the fact that every person has to stand before God with mouth closed and head down.

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Do you want to know when you're talking to someone who is not yet ready to hear about a savior who is gracious, when their mouth is still moving about how good they are?

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I'm not as bad as other people. As long as that self -righteousness is still oozing out of every pore, you need to be in the first part of Romans, not in Romans 3 .20

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and following. But once that conviction is brought, then the message is presented.

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And it's a message of the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ, so that anyone who believes in him can have the forgiveness of their sins, the righteousness of Christ, and peace with God.

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But he has to deal with the Jew who says, well, wait a minute. This is, how can this, how can we all be on the same level?

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What about Abraham? And here in chapter four, notice where he starts saying in verse 16, for this reason, it is by faith, not by the works, not by your circumcision, not by your sacrifices.

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And it's not by making Gentiles become Jews first.

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It is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace. If you preach a gospel that includes merit, then don't use the word grace in the midst of it.

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God's grace must be free. The hand of grace will not grasp the hand that reaches up to it filled with all the little baubles and bangles of our merit and our works.

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You have nothing to give to a holy God that is going to remove from his nostrils the stench of your sin.

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The greatest works you could ever do will still stink in his sight.

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You cannot reach up for the grace of God with a hand filled with your own self -righteousness.

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It has to be the empty hand of faith. That's what he says right here. For this reason is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace.

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In order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham was the father of us all.

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What does he mean all the descendants? Here is the unity of the body. If you believe in God, like Abraham believed in God, then you're

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Abraham's descendant. All of us that offensive to the Jews who put so much pride in their connection to the patriarchs.

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What Paul is saying is no, what connects you to Abraham so that he believed and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

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You believe it's reckoned to you as righteousness is the fact that your faith is in the same

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God and the same God's promises. That's why you have the discussion here.

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Since it's by faith, then that promise can be made certain.

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And that's why you have the citation in verse 22 of Genesis 15 -6.

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The second most often, you know what the first most often quoted verse in the Old Testament is? Jeff tells you about it all the time.

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Psalm 110 -1, but second is Genesis 15 -6. And there you can see it in verse 22.

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Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And so the whole discussion there is about how

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Abraham, God has given him promises. And even though it doesn't look like those promises could ever come true, the guy's a hundred years old and God has said,

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I'm going to bless the whole world through your descendants. And he doesn't have any descendants and he can't have any descendants because I'm married to her and I'm, and neither one of us, this ain't going to happen.

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We're not exactly working in the baby ward right now. And so how can any of this happen? But Abraham remained in faith and God rewarded that.

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And therefore it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And so Paul then says in verse 23, now, not for his sake only was it written, though it certainly was for his sake.

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I bet that which substantiated Abraham in his old age is that God had revealed that his faith had been reckoned to him as righteousness, but it wasn't just for his sake that it was written, that it was reckoned to him.

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And by the way, that term reckoned in some translations is imputed. It's the same

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Greek term imputed. So when we talk about the imputation of our sin to Christ or his righteousness to us, it's the same term that is being used there.

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It's a term that's found in the Greek papyri in financial records where you would make a deposit to someone's account, imputation, crediting.

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Now, not for his sake only was it written that it was reckoned to him, but for our sake also.

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For us, God knew that we needed to know how we had peace with him.

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For our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned from Abraham's perspective, we're still in the future.

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Who? Who can have the righteousness of God? Isn't that what we need?

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Every person who fears death, why do they fear death? Because they know there's a God who's holy.

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And what every person knows in this world is we aren't. Oh, I know our society tells us we shouldn't even think about these things.

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We're just accidents. We don't have any transcendent meaning.

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There's not gonna be any judgment. And yet we all know. And we present the gospel, we can trust the fact that man is made in the image of God and the spirit of God will bless the proclamation of God's truth to those who are made in the spirit of God.

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When the spirit of God starts moving in someone's life, there's nothing in this world can stop it. And so we know when we die, we need to have a ground of having peace with him.

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This is our message. And so if someone looks at you, and there are a lot of very fearful people in our land right now, they are afraid of death.

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It has been brought before them and they know they are not ready. If they ask you, how can

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I have peace with God? How can I get rid of this fear? What are you gonna say to them?

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You need to understand why you shouldn't be fearful of death. You need to understand why you have peace with God.

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The first thing we should be thankful for every morning when our eyes open is not only

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God's protection of us through the night in the helplessness of sleep, but the fact that here is another day and I do not live in fear of the wrath of God breaking forth upon me.

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Not because there's not good reason for it to do so, but because that sin that I still know has been imputed to another.

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It was nailed to his cross. And now I am in the only one,

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I am in him who is the only one who is pleasing in the

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Father's sight. There is no place else to be that will be safe from the wrath of God.

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You can't be behind Jesus. You can't be in front of Jesus. You can't be next to Jesus. You can't just know about Jesus.

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You need to be in Jesus when the wrath of God comes upon this world.

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Not knowing about him, in him. So that his righteousness is your righteousness.

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The only thing that you will claim before the thrice holy God is his righteousness.

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So who are these? To whom it will be reckoned? Those who believe in him who raised

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Jesus our Lord from the dead, from the dead.

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There's only one God that we can have faith in where that faith will result in our righteousness.

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And it's not just some vague concept of deity. It's not bare theism. It's the

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God who has decisively moved in this world and revealed himself particularly, only, and specially in Jesus Christ who claimed to be the

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Son of God. And that claim was verified, proven to be true by an empty tomb.

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Which we celebrate especially today. As those who believe in him who raised

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Jesus our Lord from the dead. He who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification.

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There is the text. So often the doctrine of justification exists over here and then the resurrection is over here.

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And it's like this is some sort of a thing we argue with atheists about, about historical events.

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I've almost never heard, I've almost never heard in a debate on the resurrection the issue of justification brought up.

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It's just something that happened in history. It's some wild event rather than the culmination of prophets who said the

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Messiah was coming and said the Messiah would do these things. And the prophecies we just read from Psalm 22.

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I mean, read Psalm 22 again. It is a prophecy of the suffering

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Messiah. And so the resurrection is part and parcel of the whole redemptive act on God's part.

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And yet almost always we view them and we discuss them in separate contexts.

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We don't see them as related, but here it is. Here is the relationship. Our faith is in Him who raised

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Jesus our Lord from the dead. There is no Christianity if you do not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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Some of you know that a number of years ago Dr. Renahan and I debated two well -known agnostics

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I guess you would say, one of whom has passed on since then on the subject of the resurrection.

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And we were well into the debate before one of them sort of in the cross -examination after we had expressed ourselves as clearly as we possibly ever could.

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One of them is like, so do you think his tomb was empty?

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Do you think something happened with his body? And it's sort of like, yeah, that's sort of what it's all about, yeah.

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Now these were not stupid men, not stupid men at all. John Dominic Croson is one of the smartest men

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I've ever met. But that's what liberalism does is it fundamentally redefines the very message of the

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Christian faith. If that tomb had a body in it on Monday, our faith is empty.

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The only thing that gathers us here this day or last

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Sunday or next Sunday is that we live in the light of the empty tomb.

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Without that, there's nothing more. Because we believe in the

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God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He acted decisively in history.

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And then there's a description of him. This verse, verse 25 is a description of Jesus.

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And there's two elements to it. Who was given over because of our transgressions.

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That's a literal translation. And we're gonna, I'm gonna introduce you to a

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Greek preposition. Everybody loves prepositions, right? Remember eighth grade? You know, where you, remember prepositions in, what was that PBS program?

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Schoolhouse Rock? I think that was after my time, actually. I think there was an earlier incarnation of that where we only used rocks because it was so long ago.

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Folks, I remember the first edition of Sesame Street. So I was back there a ways. It was done on flannel board instead of TV.

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But, but prepositions. Oh, remember, everybody loves prepositions, right?

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Well, they're even more complicated in Greek than they are in English, which is wonderful. And this is the preposition dia, dia.

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Dia with the accusative, normally simply means because. And so in the first phrase, it sort of makes sense.

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Who was delivered. That's the very term that's used of the delivering up of Jesus, the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.

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And it's frequently used as sacrificial context in regards to the giving up of the sacrifice. So it makes sense.

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He was delivered up because of the transgressions of us.

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Okay. Well, that makes sense. The reality of our transgressions necessitated the giving up of Jesus in a sacrificial fashion.

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Makes sense. But I gotta admit that last phrase is a little bit difficult.

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It's a little bit difficult. What does it say? And was raised dia because of the justification of us.

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Okay. How are, are the two parallel to each other?

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That's the first question. Are the two parallel to each other? Well, I'll be honest with you. When you dig through the commentaries, there's a couple different perspectives that are taken.

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There are those who will say, well, yeah, they really look like they're, in fact, it almost sounds like a creedal statement.

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This sounds like something that maybe Paul knew that they would be familiar with.

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And so he's like quoting from a hymn or an early creedal statement or something like that. Because it sort of has this rhyming pattern to it.

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And so maybe, maybe we don't have to translate dia in the same way in both places.

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Well, given that there's only a couple of words in between them, I'm really uncomfortable with that. I'm uncomfortable with all the interpretations that try to give a different meaning to dia, to the preposition dia and the second that it has in the first.

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And so because of that, I have to look at this and I go, then what does it mean he was raised because of our justification?

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And here's what I've come to understand. He was given over because of our transgressions.

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It was necessary in light of the fact that we are sinners, that we have a sin bearer.

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If God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is going to glorify himself in the redemption of a particular people, and that's what creation and redemption is all about, then our sins had to be dealt with by God himself.

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And he does that through self -sacrifice. So it's a necessary thing.

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So what does it mean that he was raised because of our justification? He was raised because our justification was accomplished through his death.

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There wasn't anything to add to it. And so he is raised from the dead, not only just as the demonstration of the acceptance on the part of God the

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Father of that sacrifice that has been made, but his resurrection then demonstrates and proves the justification itself.

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Righteousness has been made real for all those who are in him.

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Just as Paul can say in Ephesians chapter 2, we are already seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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The resurrection, that empty tomb, says that peace with God is not merely a hypothetical possibility.

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If you will do this and if you will do that, justification is real.

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It's as real as the empty tomb itself. He wasn't left there because he was taken up from the grave.

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It is demonstrated that what he had taught was true. He was who he claimed he was. His sacrifice was accepted and righteousness has been established for every one who believes in the

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Father and the Son, in the one who raised him and in the one who himself is raised.

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He could not have been left there. That tomb had to explode forth with life because the one who is placed within it could not be contained in that place of death.

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He who was delivered up because of our transgressions, they have been taken away and raised because of our justification.

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Our justification is real because of that.

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And remember, when the New Testament was written, you didn't have chapter divisions. You didn't have verse divisions.

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So this is the very next words that Paul dictated in his letter.

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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. There is the peace.

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He's been raised. All of the impediments that keep us from having peace with God have been removed and we didn't remove them.

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Do you see how empty any kind of work salvation gospel is in light of this?

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How can you add to what Christ has done? Justification was made a reality before you were ever born.

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That doesn't mean you're eternally justified. God works within time. He raises us to spiritual life within time.

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His spirit raises us up. But the reality is I can't add to what he has done.

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It is an accomplished reality. Therefore, we have peace with God. Now, let me just mention something real quick.

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And this is something that you just got to get used to. When the elders are willing to let me stand in the pulpit,

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I'm going to tell you stuff that a lot of other folks don't tell you. There's a textual variant here.

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And Brother Jeff will now come up to explain it to us. You ready, Jeff? He just, he's actually ignoring me right now as if he didn't hear that.

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Because he knows I'm going to go on one way or the other. There's a textual variant here. And it's an important one.

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The word for we have. Manuscripts have two different forms of that word.

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There's only one letter difference between the two. And it's the difference between what's called the indicative and the subjunctive.

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The indicative just simply states as a fact, we have peace. The subjunctive would be translated somewhere along the lines of, let us have or let us enjoy.

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Sort of as an exhortation. Let us enjoy peace with God. Now, interestingly enough, the vast majority of scholars read it as an indicative.

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Even Roman Catholic scholars read it as an indicative because it just seems in the flow of Paul's argument that that's what it would have to be.

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But what's interesting to me is when you look at the manuscripts, the subjunctive has much better manuscript support than the indicative does.

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So let's think of it in the subjunctive for a moment. What would that mean?

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And how would that flow from the words that came before it? If he has been raised because of our justification, then this understanding would be, therefore, having been justified by faith.

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Now that is a past tense. That's not something we're trying to do for ourselves.

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That's something that's a reality. If you believe in the one who raised Jesus from the dead, you have been justified by faith.

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The gavel has come down and the judge has said, you are right with me, not because of who you are, but because of who he is in your place.

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And if you ever lose sight of that, the Christian life is going to become pretty ugly. That's the reason you can wake up in the morning and be assured of peace, my friends.

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Never lose sight of that. Never lose sight of that. No matter what happens in this world.

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We have Christian brothers and sisters in China this day who are suffering and they have peace with God because they know this is true.

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And they know the people torturing them don't have peace with God. And they pity them and pray for them.

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It gets real, doesn't it? Yeah, it gets real, real. But if we take it in the subjunctive, what it would be saying then is, having been justified by faith, knowing that Christ has accomplished this, therefore, let us enjoy, let us live in this reality of peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Let us realize there's nothing we can add to what he has done.

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You see, when you think about man's religions, man's religions are all about God setting up parameters.

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And then you, like the little mouse, run through the maze and you do this thing, right?

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And then you go over here and do that thing, right? And so you got all these sacraments and things like this, and you're running around trying to do stuff, but you don't have a

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God who actually accomplishes his will and his glorification in the salvation of a particular people through his own self -sacrifice.

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No one's ever even thought of such a thing before. That's how Christianity is completely different.

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And so if you have been justified by faith, then enjoy that peace.

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Live in that peace which you have with God in only one way, through our

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Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received this introduction by faith into the grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

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That's where we are. And that's where we are today because of an empty tomb.

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None of this would make any sense if that tomb still had a body in it.

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But because it doesn't, we have peace with God.

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Is there someone in your life that needs to know about how to have peace with God?

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Are you ready to tell them about it? When you speak of these things, when you speak of having peace with God, I'm going to get personal here for a second.

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Do the people who know you best know that you have it? Do the people who know you best know that you have it?

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Would the people around you know who to ask if they were looking for someone that can tell them how to have peace with God?

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Do we live in such a fashion, live in such a way? That it would be natural for them to turn to us.

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We have an incredible opportunity, friends. I don't know all the reasons why

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God has allowed to happen what has happened, but I do know one thing. He has his reasons.

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And everything that's happened over the past six weeks, two months in our world has not changed the fact that Christ is building his kingdom.

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And there's nothing that can stop that. But we have to pray to God, give me wisdom to understand how we can serve you in this context.

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I know I'm just like you. First thing that crosses my mind is, how am

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I going to survive this? How am I going to survive that? How am I going to make this work? How am I going to make do with that?

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I get it. I understand we have to live in this world. But you and I have a message that the world has, in our experience, never needed more than it needs now.

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But believe you me, during the Black Death, yeah, it needed even more than now.

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But in our experience, we now live in a secular world where the people around us have been given a lie that they're just simply an evolved animal.

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But when they think about death, they already know that's a lie. So who's going to tell them the truth?

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Those who already have peace with God will be the ones to be able to direct them to how they can have peace with God.

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May God use us in that way in this coming week. Let's pray together.

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Our gracious Heavenly Father, your word is so precious to us.

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And it reveals your truth and your gospel. And it reveals how we can truly revel in the peace that we have with you.

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When we think of the condescension of our Lord and Savior in our behalf, we are truly stunned.

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The love, the grace. And you know us better than we know ourselves. You know how often we trample upon your grace, and yet you still love us this day.

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As we think about the empty tomb, may we rejoice at the provision you have made for us.

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All of grace, we thank you for it. Lord, make us instruments in your hand as we who experience peace with you, make us to be those who will proclaim the means of that peace to those around us who desperately need to hear it.

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Give us that opportunity even this coming week, Lord. We love you.