WWUTT 1198 The Righteousness of God Through Faith in Jesus? (Romans 3:22)

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What is the gospel? Well, you would probably name some things like Jesus died on the cross, he rose again from the grave, our sins are forgiven.

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But another key element of the gospel is faith when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text, as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of Romans chapter 3, and I'm going to begin reading here in verse 21.

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We'll go through verse 26. The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

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This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

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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 Jesus.

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Yesterday, we looked at verses 21 and 22 and picking up where we left off yesterday, verses 23 through 26.

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This is Paul explaining further what he just said in verses 21 and 22. So 21 is kind of that bridging verse.

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We're coming off of the doctrine of depravity that Paul had been laying out from chapter 1, verse 18 through chapter 3, verse 20, and he says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.

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We could not be saved by the law. God's righteousness was in the law, but we couldn't keep the law to attain that righteousness.

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So now the wonderful good news of the gospel is that the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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So we're not discarding the law or the prophets. And in fact, Paul is going to summarize this in verse 31 by saying, do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

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By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. So lest there be any confusion or any concept of their wadding up the law and throwing it away.

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No, the law and the prophets bear witness to it. We couldn't attain righteousness by the law, but righteousness is still seen in the law.

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They bear witness to the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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And that's the gospel. I think it was Al Mohler I heard say years ago. And in fact,

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I'll even tell you what he was responding to. This was when Hank Hanegraaff had left

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Protestantism and had become Eastern Orthodox. And Al Mohler was doing one of those

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Q &As on Facebook where people were sending him questions in and he was responding to it in a live video feed.

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And one of the things that he said in response to a question about Hank Hanegraaff's conversion or de -conversion, you would probably say,

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Mohler said that justification by faith is the gospel. That is the good news.

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You have been justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, we would say the gospel is

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Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He rose again from the grave. Whoever believes in him would not perish, but would have everlasting life.

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You know, basically what John 3, 16 says. We would say that's the gospel. That's true. But it's particularly that believe part.

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All we must do is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we receive all of the benefits that come from God.

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The blessings that are poured out through his son in our sins being atoned for on the cross, the grave being conquered for us, being seated in the heavens at the right hand of God with Christ above.

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When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Colossians 3, 4.

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So all of these things that go together with the blessings of God poured out, we receive by faith.

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That's what makes the gospel so incredible. There's nothing that we do. And in fact, we can't do anything in order to get there.

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It is the grace of God that he has poured out upon us through faith.

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He has chosen faith to be that vessel that would, through that, would transmit all of the grace of God to us.

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I'm stumbling on this because of just how impossible that is.

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I mean, that's an incredible thing. You must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you get all the blessings of God.

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You don't have to do anything, no, by no work. Could you do anything to merit the favor of God in that way?

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Otherwise it wouldn't be grace. It is the grace of God because you don't do anything. It's God's work.

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It is not yours. Even the faith that you have to believe is the work of God. And we talked about that, you know, several days ago because no one can do righteous and no one can do a good thing.

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Isn't believing in God a good thing? Yes, but you can't do a good thing.

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No one does good, not even one, Romans 3 .12. So the fact that we believe in God is even a work that he has done in our hearts.

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How could it be logical for a human being to believe in a carpenter who was crucified on a cross and buried in a tomb and rose again from the grave and by believing in him you have everlasting life?

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How would that be logical for anybody? There's no logic in that, not by human reason anyway.

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It's completely illogical, which is why the worldly makes fun of us for it. And the apostle

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Paul, who was rebuking the Corinthians for believing that they had some higher lofty knowledge for believing in the gospel, he said to them, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.

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That's 1 Corinthians 1 .18. He goes on in chapter 2, verse 14 to say, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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Now spiritually discerned does not mean that you and I have made this decision that we're going to believe in a spiritual way.

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Where's your spiritual muscle? Which muscle did you activate so that you could believe in a spiritual way?

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You can't do that. You don't make that decision on your own. That work is the Holy Spirit's work in your heart.

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And Paul had been talking about that earlier in chapter 2, that we have the spirit of God who searches everything.

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Well, 1 Corinthians 2 .10, these things God has revealed to us through the spirit, for the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

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For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him. So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

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So how could you possibly comprehend the work of redemption, of justification that God is doing?

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How could you possibly comprehend that by human means and human wisdom? You would not be able to do it.

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So our ability to believe is a God -given belief.

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It is the spirit of God in our hearts that enables us to believe. That word regeneration that we often apply to this.

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You heard the gospel and believed it because the Holy Spirit regenerated your heart to believe it.

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We get that word from Titus 3 .5 where it says, well starting in verse 4, when the goodness and loving kindness of God our

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Savior appeared, he saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, including activating your belief muscle.

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You didn't do that. It's not your work. It's God's work. He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

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Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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We have faith. We have belief in God because he gave it to us.

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Because he awakened us. He brought us to life where we were dead. A dead person can't believe anything.

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And in the deadness of our spirits, you couldn't make the decision to follow

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God. Your spirit is dead. When we read in Ephesians 2 .1, you were dead in your sins and your trespasses in which you once walked.

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Your spirit was dead. You could not in your spirit believe in a spirit which

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God is. Jesus to the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4 saying that God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

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Well, how can you do that if your spirit is dead? There are many people that try to downplay that statement of being dead in your trespasses and sins.

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Well, you weren't totally dead. I mean, you were dead, but your body was still alive. So somehow that's supposed to mean that your spirit had life to it as well.

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My friends, the scriptures are clear. Your spirit is dead. What sort of death did we receive from Adam's sin if not for the fact that our spirit is dead within us?

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You may be born physically alive, but you are spiritually dead. And it is only by faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ that we are brought back to life. But that ability to believe is not something that you do with your dead mind.

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The dead mind is not even working. So this is God that revives the mind, gives life to it so that it may believe in the gospel faith, belief, which

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God gives to the dead person, that they may come fully to life and be resurrected and have relationship and fellowship with God and have life more abundant in Christ.

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John 10 10. I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly. All of this is the work of God by faith.

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As far as you're concerned, you made a decision to believe in Jesus. Absolutely. But when you study the theology of it, you recognize that you did nothing at all.

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It was God who did this work within you. May his name be praised, not of man, so that you have no place to boast.

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Think back to the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37. The hand of the

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Lord was upon me and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley and it was full of bones.

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And he led me around among them and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley and behold, they were very dry.

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So they were dead, you know, no even remnant of flesh upon them at all.

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They were dead bodies, nothing but dry bones. There was no way, no physical way for life to come into these bones at all.

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Hence why what Ezekiel was shown and what he saw were dry bones, no evidence of life there at all.

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And the Lord said to me, verse three, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, oh

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Lord God, you know. In other words, Ezekiel was like, well, what can

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I do to bring life to these bones? Then he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, oh, dry bones, hear the word of the

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Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold,

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I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live and I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the

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Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded and as I prophesied, there was a sound and behold, a rattling and the bones came together, bone to its bone.

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And I looked and behold, there were sinews on them and flesh had to come upon them and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them.

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So now you've got bodies. The bones have become bodies, but there's no life in them.

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They're standing up. But yet there there has yet to be a true resurrection that has occurred.

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Then he said to me, verse nine, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the

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Lord God come from the four winds, O breath and breathe on these slain that they may live.

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So I prophesied as he commanded me and the breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

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What you're seeing happen here in this vision that Ezekiel is given is a foreshadowing of the gospel, that by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, there are bodies that stand up but don't have life yet in them until the

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Holy Spirit comes in and gives life and they believe and they become an exceedingly great army.

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All of this being the work of God and all of it being done by the preaching of the gospel, you are saved because someone preached to you the gospel and you believed it and now you live.

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That is how salvation came to you, which is why we must go with the gospel to others so that they may hear the good news of Jesus dying on the cross for us, rising again from the grave, ascending into heaven, seated at the right hand of God, coming back again to judge the living and the dead, giving us his kingdom as an eternal inheritance.

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All of this good news that is wrapped up in the gospel, we have to declare it to somebody so that they have the chance to believe it and so be saved.

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This is the way that every Christian has ever come to salvation, because you heard the gospel of Christ and believed it.

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In Ezekiel 37, we have a foreshadowing of that. Now there are some who will push against that and they will say, no, no, no, the context of this is strictly as it has to do with Israel.

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Sure, that's what was going on there. God saying how he was going to save his people Israel, but who could doubt that this was also a picture of what it was going to mean to believe the gospel.

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For Jesus used this very same language with Nicodemus in John chapter three, when he talked about the spirit.

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In John chapter three, starting in verse four, Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?

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Remember Jesus telling him, if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again. Nicodemus said, can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

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And Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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Well, that goes back to Ezekiel 36 verse 25, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness is and from all your idols,

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I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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Being born of water and the spirit, exactly as it was said to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36, unless you're born of water in the spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

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Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. And that's exactly the action of the spirit that we have in the next chapter in Ezekiel 37 coming into these bodies and giving them life.

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All of this is a work of God. It comes through the preaching of the gospel.

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Absolutely. But the gospel is God's work. The belief in the gospel is God's work so that you have no place to boast and you give all the glory to God.

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And I'm talking about this not to argue with any kind of theological perspective. I'm just coming at you straight from what the

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Bible says about this. And I'm saying this to you in this way so that you may give

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God the glory that you would rejoice and be glad in knowing the salvation that you have in Christ Jesus has come not by any work that you have done, but it has come by faith.

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It has. It has happened because because God has done this work and even given life to your dead spirit so that you may believe in his son and live.

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John 1 verse 11. He came to his own.

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Jesus came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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Once again, you've been born again, not of blood, not because your parents were

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Christians, not because anybody else around you was a Christian, not because you were in proximity with another

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Christian. That's not why you were born again. You were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh.

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It wasn't your desire. It wasn't anyone else's desire for you. It was not the will of man, but it was the will of God.

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You were born of God, born again, your dead spirit given life to have faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ so that you may live. This is all the work of God. May his name be praised.

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All glory be to Christ our King. He is the reason you have faith and you are saved.

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Now, if you are a Protestant, then you probably know the doctrines that are referred to as the five solas of the

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Protestant Reformation, at least I hope you do. If you've been a listener to this program for a long time, you've heard me talk about them.

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What are the five solas? It's basically this. It is the understanding that you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

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This is according to scripture alone. That's probably where I should have started. According to scripture alone, you are saved by grace alone, through faith, in Christ, to the glory of God alone.

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Those are five things. Five solas, because in Latin they are sola gratia, sola fide, sola deo gloria, sola scriptura.

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What's the one that I'm forgetting? I missed one in there. Solus Christus. The biggest one. How did I miss that?

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Anyway, so we get that idea. That's not something that we simply made up and then the reformers who came up with those doctrines imposed them onto the text.

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We actually have that right here in Romans chapter three, and I'm going to finish with this. We'll come back to studying this section of Romans three next week.

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So here's how I'm pointing out to you. The five solas of the Protestant Reformation that come straight from Romans chapter three.

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Look again at verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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There's sola scriptura, by scripture alone. We know the gospel of Christ and the work that God has done according to scripture alone, and it is through the hearing of God's word in the scripture that we have come to the faith that we have.

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So by scripture alone, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift.

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There's sola gratia, or by grace alone. We're justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

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Solus Christus. It's only through Jesus Christ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

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There's sola fide, by faith alone. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

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

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So it's to God belongs all of the glory. Sola Deo Gloria. That's where these doctrines come from.

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They're right here in this section of Romans chapter three. What a beautiful demonstration of the gospel this is.

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And part of that gospel, part of the good news is you receive all of the wonderful blessings of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

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Amen. Heavenly father, we thank you so much for the goodness you have shown to us through Christ our savior.

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And may we praise your great name. This is not our work. It is the work of God, not a result of any man's desires, ambitions, pursuits, a will, concoctions.

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It is nothing that we did. It is what God has done in us through your spirit and you continue to do as you grow us in sanctification and in holiness.

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As we come to a deeper appreciation of these beautiful doctrines that you've given to us in your word, grow us in Christ likeness, that we may be more like our savior.

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We ask these things in our savior's name. Amen. You've been listening to when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

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Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an