Feb. 12, 2017 The Primacy of Faith by Pastor Josh Sheldon

We'll turn now in your Bibles to the text for this morning's message. Romans chapter 3, beginning at verse 27.

You'll find that on page 941. Actually, I'll begin reading one verse above to remind us of what came before the preaching text.

Again, verses 27 to 31. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be the just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law?

By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one.

Who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith?

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Martin Luther wrote of this paragraph that he considered it to be the chief point of the whole

Bible. Now if you want to intimidate a young preacher, just tell him that the text that he has for this morning's message is one that Martin Luther, the instigator of the

Great Reformation, says that this is the most important one in the Bible. He said once that the church stands by this one article, the article that these verses teach us, and he says that this main point that is in this article, this one paragraph, if it fails, the church fails.

If this point falls, the church falls. The issue at hand is faith.

It's faith. Faith is Paul's point in Romans 3, verses 27 to 31.

Faith is how the gospel is apprehended. Faith is key to our entire Christian life.

For I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Back in chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, the key to this book,

I think. I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to the Jew first and also to the

Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Faith. Faith is what this book is about. Faith is what the

Christian life is about. By grace you have been saved through faith. We walk by faith and not by sight.

Chapter 3, verses 21 to 26, which we preached last week, it ends with the verse that I started the reading with.

The statement that God, by means of redemption that is in Christ Jesus, because of that,

He is both the just and the justifier of the one who has what? Faith.

Faith in whom? In Christ Jesus. Faith in what about this

Christ Jesus we have faith in? Faith in the redemption that He accomplished on the cross.

The propitiation, the turning away of God's wrath, the forgiveness of sins that we have in Christ because of Christ.

And therefore, forgiveness from God. Now in verses 27 to 31 of this chapter,

He draws out some of the implications of this wonderful truth. In chapter 4, which

Lord willing, is for next week, He's going to show how faith played out in Abraham, the father of Jew and Christian in both.

But first, He sets the table here with the absolute primacy of faith.

Now we all know how important faith is. I mean, you can hardly read, even in a cursory way, through the

Bible, Old Testament, New Testament like, but I could say even especially the New Testament, without coming away with this idea that God demands faith.

Without faith it is impossible to please God. Hebrews 11, 6. And this is the victory.

Your faith, 1 John 5, 4. By grace you have been saved, through faith.

Ephesians 2, 8. The whole issue is that, is faith.

All of these and many, many more verses, they work towards this common goal to compel all human mind and most especially

Christ's blood -bought church, the faithful, most especially us, to divest themselves, ourselves, of any hope in anything other than faith in God's Son.

Faith in God's Son is all that we have. Jesus said, without me you can do nothing.

As He insisted, that any good works we can do can only be counted as such as they flow from branches, which is us, that are attached to Him, the true vine.

It's all of faith. And this morning, in these verses in chapter 3, verses 27 to 31, we join the apostle as he explains what faith actually does.

What is accomplished by God through the means, or we might say through the mechanism, of faith.

In three interconnected steps, he shows that faith unifies the people of God as one in God.

It's faith that unifies us together as one people in the one God. Now that's verse 29 in the first part of verse 30.

Verse 29 we would say verse 30a. He shows that faith trumps works.

Faith is superior. Faith excels over works. And that's verse 28 with the second part of verse 30.

And I'm going to read those as we preach through them. I know they're chopped up a little bit. We'll go through them as I preach them.

The third point, and that's verses 27 and 31, the first and the last verse, taken together, the third point is faith drives out boasting.

It's excluded. So I want to take these in the order that I just read those main divisions to you.

The first one, faith that unifies the people of God as one in God.

That's verse 29 in the first part of verse 30. Let me read them to you that way. Or is God the God of Jews only?

Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one.

Those last four words are the first part of the following verse. And you'll see that I think they belong with verse 29.

Since God is one. Paul asks this question in the middle of this paragraph.

Verse 27, 28, and then verse 29 is this question that I'm starting with. On its immediate border, one verse up, he summarizes a point that he's been laboring at for quite a while in this letter.

That justification is by faith and not by the works of the law. And then one verse below what

I just read to you in verse 29 and 30a. Verse below makes a similar point. Verse 30b, the second half of verse 30, says that God will justify through faith.

Justify by faith, by faith alone. And then verse 27 and the last one, verse 31, they combine to explain the relationship of what?

Of faith to the law. But pride of place is the center.

Verse 29 and those first four words of verse 30. Now there's more at stake here than might meet the eye at first when you read these.

The first four words here in verse 30 are crucial to us.

Since God is one. Think about these words for a moment.

Since God is one. Is God only of the

Jews? Is he not also the God of the Greeks, the Gentiles, of all else? Is how the question is.

Yes, of the Gentiles also. Since God is one.

There's a lot at stake here. This Greek word that's translated as since is used only six times in all of scripture.

And all six of them by this morning's author, by the apostle Paul. Now in English it sounds sort of conclusive, doesn't it?

It sounds as if Paul has written seeing that, conclusively,

God is one. But the word actually carries a sense of contingency to it.

Romans chapter 8, verse 9. Just gonna give you three examples of how this word is used elsewhere.

Romans 8, 9. If in fact, the spirit of God dwells in you. This idea of possibility.

Contingency. Paul already having affirmed before he says it that the spirit of God does dwell in the church, in the faithful.

If in fact, though, the spirit of God dwells in you. Romans 8, 17.

Provided we suffer with him. Just one more. First Corinthians 15, verse 15.

If it is true that the dead are not raised. It's an idea of possibility.

Contingent. Contingency, if you will. What Paul is saying here, though. We need to slow down as we read these words.

That's why I started this message with the middle of the paragraph. What Paul is saying is that, in a sense,

God's oneness is set at risk here. He hearkens back here to what's called the great

Shema. This is what John read to you just a moment ago. The Shema, which is the Hebrew word for hear. Hear, O Israel, the

Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is the foundation of not just our faith, but Jewish faith before us.

This is the key. The Lord our God, hear, O Israel, the Lord is one.

There are two aspects of command in this short phrase. First is to hear, which means in Scripture to obey.

And second is to believe that God is one. This is an aspect of his person that's no less important than his holiness or his glory.

Jesus himself said in Mark chapter 12 and verse 29 that this, hear,

O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Jesus said that this is, quote, the most important commandment.

What is Paul saying here? Here's a paraphrase. Paul is saying that if God is the God of the Jews only and he's not also the

God of the Greeks, then he is not one. Because he's saying these things are true.

That God is the God of the Jew and the Gentile. God is the God of all because he is one. So we can't deny the one without denying the other.

That's how important this is. His singularity is at stake.

And this implies even more, if God is not one, then neither is he triune.

Think about this a moment. If God is not one, then nor is he triune.

Our Trinitarian theology rests on the Shema. That the Lord is one.

If the most important commandment is untrue, then the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit cannot be three persons, all equally

God, all equally powerful, all omnipotent, and all omniscient, and all holy and just, and all unified as distinct persons under a singular

Godhead. Now that was a long sentence and a real mouthful and I want to say it again because I believe

Paul puts these as grave words for us to consider. They're implications to the way we conduct ourselves.

Our Trinitarian theology, which is that God is one in three persons.

There's no division. There's no confusion. There's no bleeding the categories or the borders.

Three persons. He is one unified God all equally what it means to be

God under a singular Godhead. That is what Paul sets at stake here when he says since God is one.

I can almost see the apostle hesitating to write these words. You can almost see him stopping for a moment, taking a break and going and praying before committing these words to scripture because they are so heavy, so important.

The church is unity you see. Our unity together is a testimony to the oneness of God himself.

Psalm 133. I'll read the entire psalm. It's only three verses. Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.

It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes.

It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion for there the Lord has commanded the blessing life forevermore.

How important is it to God for brethren to dwell together in unity.

It's as important as the anointing oil that anointed the first high priest who took that intercessory role which was a type, a precursor of the eternal intercession of the

Lord Jesus Christ. That's how important this is to God. Ephesians chapter 4 verses 4 and 5.

There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one

God and Father of all. Galatians 3 .28.

There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Chapter 5 verse 6 of Galatians. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love and just one more.

First Corinthians chapter 1 verse 13. I want you to hear the alarm in the apostles words here to the

Corinthian church. He says, is Christ divided? Do you see how important this is?

This oneness of God and how it relates to these things? That when Paul says he is the

God of Jew and Gentile and he supports that by saying since and contingently since, since God is one.

This is important. God is one because he is one. I put that out as a contingency for you.

I think I've told it to you the way the language would have us read it. But let me be clear.

God is one. Why? Because he is one. We don't make him one by anything that we do or say nor can we change anything in him.

There's nothing to suggest that in what I'm saying. I'm saying our oneness as a church is based upon the oneness of the

God and our belief in that implies something. And if we behave in a different manner that implies something too.

And brethren, I'm not going to turn this into a long theology lecture, but we cannot be

Trinitarian if God is not one. The two are hinged together. Our oneness together is based upon the oneness of God.

It's the same argument Paul makes in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 29 to 31 where he speaks of a husband and a wife being analogically one the way

God is one. And if a husband and wife are not one flesh in that way, then they're not reflecting the oneness of God, which they must.

And the same is true for the church. Why is God known? Why are we sure that God is the

God of the Jew and the Gentile and whoever else could come in here and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Because he's one.

If we're not one, if we are not one, then God's word has failed. It is that serious.

Now we need to think about this. You think about this when you consider that brother or sister next to you for whom

Christ also died. Think on this the next time you can't shake off some controversy or some seeming controversy that the oneness of the church is based upon the oneness of God himself.

And Paul says contingently, contingently, since God is one. If God is one, then we must be.

Think on this as we rank the doctrines over which we cannot compromise. We cannot give room for an alternative interpretation honestly come by from someone else but it's different from yours.

We say, nope, that's got to be in there. We're gonna put in these words blasphemy or heresy or damnable heresy or whatever the case is.

Those categories do exist and we must not compromise on them. But before we jump into them, let's go a little cautiously because our oneness is based upon, can we say, the most important aspect of God himself.

Here O Israel, the Lord our God, Jesus Christ said this is the most important, the first, the pride of place.

He is one Lord is how it's sometimes interpreted. Compare the importance of your particular way of thinking, your view of how things should or shouldn't be, to the most important command, the very one that Paul risks for the unity of the church.

Our oneness because God is one. We learn from this short paragraph how faith trumps works.

Faith excels in every way over anything we can do. Verse 28 and the second half of verse 30, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works, from the works of the law.

And he goes on in verse 30, the second half, God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

How are we justified? By faith. Paul has been working on this one truth for us since much earlier in this book.

You're justified by faith, given as a free gift of God, justified by faith and by faith alone.

That's what verses 21 to 26 are all about, this one thing, justification by faith. This idea of justification by faith is something

I've covered every time it's come up in the preaching and I've resisted the idea of lumping together all the references to justification by faith and preaching them as one topical message to you.

I've resisted that for a couple of reasons. First, and most importantly, Paul doesn't do that.

He keeps coming back to this theme again and again. We're dull of hearing.

We need to hear it again and again. Your preacher is thick of heart.

He needs to read it again and again and preach it to you the way Paul presents it to us.

And secondly, this is a theme that the church can never get tired of hearing.

We can't get tired of hearing. We can never treat it as something blase that we're justified by faith.

This free gift of God, this thing that is foreign to ourselves, this imputation of Christ's righteousness to us so we can stand before God as righteous, literally righteous, because of the imputation that we have by faith in Christ.

How are you justified? By faith. How is God's righteousness imputed to you? By faith.

What is the object of our faith? The atonement that God worked. Who is the object of our faith?

Jesus Christ, the one who worked that atonement so that God's wrath would be expiated, propitiated, and that we could be redeemed.

Church, do not get tired of this theme. I have not been criticized once for hitting this too many times.

So I'm not trying to prevent anything like that. But Paul comes over this one thing again and again and again and let us rejoice in it.

And every time we hear it, not go, oh yes, that again. No, praise God, hallelujah, thank you that your spirit inspired

Paul to write this for us this many times, because if it comes up that often, it's got to be important.

Just count the number of times. So we'll go through it, and it's going to come up again.

Prepare yourselves. It's going to come up again and again, and I rejoice in that, and I can't wait to keep giving this to you.

The whole Reformation rose or fell on this one premise, sola fide, by faith alone.

Faith is more than just the means by which we're saved. Faith is the entrance into freedom from the terror of the law.

What is justification? Declared not guilty before the bar of God's law, free from its condemnation, its terror.

Remember when the law was given, not an animal could touch the mountain while God was there giving his will to Moses for the people, for us.

Terrifying event. And the people said, Moses, you go.

You get on up there. You come back and tell us what he said. We're not going. We're not getting near this place.

His face glowed when he came back from meeting with God, and that scared them too. Faith. Faith apart from the works of that law.

Faith is what Paul is pushing us to. Faith, freedom from the constant effort of the law, of always having to do better, of the constant pressure of just don't be bad, just don't do those wrong things anymore.

Faith in the justification we have in Jesus Christ. And what does that mean? What's this freedom

I'm talking about here? It's that Christ did it all. It's that Jesus Christ and his accomplishment of the law credited to your account if you will but believe he died for your sins against that very law.

That's what it is to be declared righteous. By faith we're justified. Pronouncement of a favorable adjudication.

It's a judge saying you're not guilty. I read once,

I believe it's in the book Papillon, the autobiography of the man who escaped from the French penal system many years ago, that the

French system for the jury has not just guilty and not guilty as we have.

They can pronounce you guilty if the evidence supports it. They can pronounce you not guilty if the evidence doesn't support it but they have one more option

I believe, innocent. You see in our system not guilty could mean what?

The evidence was damning against you but it was wrongly collected. Your rights were violated somehow and a technicality, the jury has no choice but to say not guilty but innocent is different.

That is total exoneration. That is, no, this is baseless. This person is not even related to this particular crime.

Justification by faith is like that. It's a declaration of your innocence.

It's a declaration that what Christ accomplished has been credited to your account.

This is what we mean by imputation. Not a mistrial, not a hung jury, not gotten off on technicality, not because of the eloquence of our defense before God, exonerated.

You leave the courtroom innocent. Why? Because by faith,

Christ's accomplishment, his obedience to the law stands for you. That's how important this is except we are hardly innocent.

The evidence against us is overwhelmingly unassailably true Our advocate, small a, not

Jesus, our advocate, our lawyer, has no answer for the piles of proof presented against us. And what is that evidence?

The evidence is the law, Law, capital L, the Mosaic Law from Moses, from Sinai, to the

Israelites. With a small l, we might say, from earlier in Romans, that's the law of God written on the conscience.

And by either one of those, we are all what? Guilty, condemned sinners. What is

Paul saying here? The Jew is justified by faith. The Gentile is justified by what?

By faith. The difference in prepositions by faith, through faith, that's just stylistic.

It doesn't mean anything towards what Paul is arguing for here. Jew, Gentile alike, justified alike by the same one faith in the one true

God since God is one. There's not one type or quality of faith for the

Jew and another for all others. If that were the case, then we have to go back to verse 38, since God is one, and wonder what on earth he's talking about.

Ephesians 4, I read it a moment ago. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. The verse begins with, we hold that one is justified by faith.

Martin Luther, to quote him again, he does it a little bit better. He says, we conclude, not hold, we conclude that.

And he goes on, he says this, quote, the words we conclude must not be taken in the sense we think, as though they were attached to the righteousness of faith, any doubt.

The expression rather means, we believe most assuredly and firmly. Indeed, we know and are persuaded by the divine word to believe that sinners are justified by faith.

Few doctrines more important for us to get a handle on. In the transaction of salvation, leaving behind any arguments about predestination and God's free choice of who he will save and when he will save them and how he shall do that, all determined before the foundation of the world, setting all that aside for a moment.

We believe in those things, but just on these verses, bring nothing else into them.

What do we learn? We learn that our futile and vain efforts to make ourselves right, whether by complying with the law or by doing good deeds or by following the dictates of conscience, none of this avails.

And will you plead that case before God? Will you hold to him the law of God implanted in your being and testified to you by what has been created and make yourself vulnerable to charges of any violations?

And think carefully about this. Chapter one, verse 20, we covered some time ago.

It says that creation itself reveals to us about God his invisible attributes, his eternal power, his divine nature.

That's a lot of communication. That's a lot about God that you know just by looking at what is.

Are you willing to stand before a God who has communicated those aspects of his nature to you and somehow answer for your actions, your words, your thoughts, your attitudes, your agendas that do not meet with what he has revealed?

These qualities that God has informed you of and are supposed to inform us in everything we do?

The Jew who had tablets of stone written with the finger of God, he's in no better situation.

But Paul is fully convinced of something glorious, the truth that God as an act of his mercy forgives the sins and justifies the person of those who have faith in him, in his son, in the redemption he accomplished.

The object of that faith we covered last week. I think I mentioned a few times a moment ago. It bears repeating.

Look up at verse 24 of this chapter. Romans 3, 24. And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom

God put forth as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ whose blood was spilled for your redemption.

This, all of this is what it means to be apart from the law.

For we hold, we believe, we are completely convinced by the word of God, by the pen of the apostle here in this book of Romans that one is saved apart from the works of the law by faith.

This is what Paul means. Something that Paul in this paragraph has particularly the

Jew in mind. Something is particularly the Gentile. I think it's both. The oneness of God in the oneness of the church populated by Jew and Gentile supports this idea.

Now the oneness of saving faith adds to it. And on top of that, the oneness of the object of saving faith, the only object worthy of our faith is

Jesus Christ our Lord since God is one. These terribly important words and everything hinges on it.

The third and final point this morning is that faith trumps works. Faith is better than works.

Faith does something. God has regard only for this, for faith.

God's good regard for faith is that which particularly and solely and completely focused in on His Son, Jesus Christ.

Now it would seem that by now every reader of this letter will be convinced of their need to abandon any hope of salvation by works, by effort, by law keeping, by anything other than this one thing.

Faith in what God the Father has done for you in Christ Jesus, His Son. As I said a moment ago,

I hit this theme over and over because Paul does. Why does Paul hit it so many times?

Well, primarily because Paul is writing by direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God and so God would have us hear this many times.

You see, we don't let go of our self -sufficiency very easily. We want to have works.

We want to be able to say, look what I've done. I've got my checklist. I've got my report card.

I deserve something. I want some credit. We don't let go of our self -sufficiency very easily.

Babies have no problem with complete dependence. Teenagers are usually a bit harder to convince of their dependence.

It's not an easy thing to drive out of us. Now, what does

Paul say it is to remain, if even only a little bit, reliant on myself as a means of salvation?

Where does he go next? He calls it boasting. Sheer braggadocio.

These are our last two verses, 27 and 31, third and final point, faith trumps works.

What becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works?

No, but by the law of faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? No, by no means.

On the contrary, we uphold the law. Now, the question relates all the way back to what he had said in verse 21.

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law has been manifested. And verse 26, it was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ Jesus.

So that being the case, that God's righteousness has been manifested in the gospel of his son, that he is just when he justifies, that being the case, all these things being true, where's our boasting?

Well, the quick answer is that it is excluded just as he says.

It's jettisoned as the dead weight that it is. We need to be a little careful here again because boasting is our inveterate tendency.

You think of Babel in Genesis chapter 11. You think of the waters of judgment having just receded.

And what is the first thing that man comes to? The very next thing in our scripture, man wants to build this tower so he can make a name for himself.

He's going to reach up to God. He's going to go where God is, make himself equal with God. Humankind, except for eight souls, had just been destroyed.

And here's his next great effort. Is that not boasting? Pride leads to boasting.

The more we boast, the prouder we get. It's sheer boasting.

Sennacherib's captain, when they besieged Jerusalem, he said, Beware, lest King Hezekiah mislead you by saying,

The Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

Boasting against the Lord God. Isaiah chapter 10 verse 12 speaks of that very king's boastful looks.

Think about Nebuchadnezzar and his boasting. And he was driven mad. He walked around on all fours and ate the grass with the cows.

That's what boasting is. And see, we think of boasting as that kind of bragging, which it is.

Those are in scripture and it's called boasting, called bragging. We think of it as an overweening egotism that can't help but gloat over its own excellencies, which it is.

But see, when we stand before God, when we think of the terms of ourselves in relation to God, the standard of what constitutes a boast or boasting is much, much lower.

In chapter 3 verse 24, Paul wrote that justification is a free gift earned by Christ's atoning sacrifice received by faith.

Neither you nor I are included anywhere in that transaction. It's all of God.

In Ephesians 2 .9, he writes that salvation is of grace, not of works, so that no one may boast. Boasting before God is now what?

What does it mean to boast before God? What can we say that then gets defined as boasting? Well, very simple.

It's taking any credit, be it ever so slight, any credit at all, for what

God the Father has done for sinners like you and me in and by and through and exclusively in and by and through His Son, Jesus Christ.

And all we can do is fall down in humble adoration and thanksgiving and by faith accept that.

That's all we have. The Gospel, wherein

God freely justifies sinners like you and me, just cannot lead to any taking credit and take the smallest amount you can and say,

I give God all of it except for this one word, this one syllable, this one beginning of a thought that I had towards it.

And you've boasted. That's what Paul's excluding. I want to close with a word about faith and the law.

In verse 27, law refers to a principle, to a rule, if you will.

What becomes of our boasting is excluded. By what kind of a law? You could substitute the word principle. By what principle?

By a principle of works? No, but by the principle of faith. And if you look at the last verse, and I think verse 27 and 31 combine to make a single point about the law and faith.

In verse 31, when he speaks of the law, now he's speaking about the law, the

Mosaic law. Do we then overthrow the law, the law by this faith?

By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Paul says that we by faith,

Jew and Gentile alike, are upholding, some versions say, established the law. Some people think this means that the life of faith is what the law has always been meant to reveal to us, and so if we have faith in Jesus, we are fulfilling, we are upholding, if you will, the law's purpose.

I think what Paul is saying here, though, is something a little different, and something we've been saying, that it's

Jesus who fulfilled the law. Jesus fulfilled the law. In Romans 8, verses 3 and 4, for God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own

Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the

Spirit. So what does it mean that we uphold the law, we establish the law?

I think it means simply this, that we by faith confess that the righteous requirements of the law were fulfilled by Christ Jesus.

This is how and why we are justified. The law wasn't set aside, the law wasn't changed to meet our poor compliance.

It was fulfilled. It was made complete. Its righteous requirements were met, and not by you or me, because then we could boast.

By Jesus. By Jesus Christ. Paul is saying that we uphold the law, we establish the law by believing that.

We don't cast aside the law, we uphold it. We don't ignore it.

We say it's established by us, by the faith that we have in the fact that Jesus did the law.

We could ask, do you struggle with your sin? Do you mourn over your inability to be right?

Do you work hard to make yourself good and acceptable before God? There is one great takeaway, one application, if you will, from all this, everything in Romans, but maybe most especially these verses 3, 27 to 31.

Stop struggling. It's useless. It's futile.

It gets you nowhere. You will never achieve what you're after by working against the requirements of the law or towards those requirements.

We're not in a Boy Scout troop where we get merit badges, and you get enough merit badges and then you get the next rank.

Nothing against the Boy Scouts. I was a Boy Scout. But that's not the way salvation works.

That's not the way the law works. Do you struggle? Do you mourn over your sin and just keep trying harder and harder to get it right?

Put your faith in Jesus Christ. He and he alone got it right. Stop boasting that you even think you can.

Give it up because only Christ Jesus can do what you're trying to do.

Only he did what you're thinking you're going to accomplish. Only he can bring you to God, not you yourself.

That's boasting. As Paul says, it's excluded. By the works of the law, any law, no flesh will be justified in God's sight, only by grace through faith in his

Son. I call you, look to him, sinner. Look to him and be saved.

Look to him, oh you who strive and be relieved of your useless effort and rather rest in what

Christ has done. What is our basis for all this? What do we hold on to?

Remember that the way we conduct ourselves, the way we strive after making ourselves right, what do we rely on for that great accomplishment?

It all implies something. And I would have you go away with these four words and have them inform everything that you think and do and try.

All your conduct in the church and the basis of your faith in God, let it be these four, since God is one.

Amen? Heavenly Father, thank you again for the day that you've given us. We thank you, Father, for this word and for the sureness that we have that God is indeed one,

Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And so we worship you in the name of Jesus Christ as that, as the triune and most holy

God. And Father, we thank you that we can rely upon that, most especially,

Father, that Jesus Christ, our surety, our advocate, that he did what we could never, which is to fulfill the law and to bring us to you, having imputed to us his righteousness, so that we could stand innocent before you.