The Bible in 16 Verses: 15. Justification

The Bible in 16 Verses So Far: Creation to Christ

Just to let you know, we've gone a long way so far. We've gone through the whole Old Testament, as far as this particular book is concerned. It's the whole story of the Bible in 16 verses. We've gone through creation, Adam and Eve, the fall, redemption promised, Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant, Judah the king, the Passover lamb, King David, the suffering servant, the resurrection promised, and the promise of a new creation.

As we've come into the New Testament, so far we've gone through the fulfillment. Jesus is the fulfillment of all of those promises. We get to the cross, where we see the suffering servant die on behalf of his people.

The resurrection, Jesus is resurrected from the dead. And because we are in Christ, we too will be resurrected from the dead. Today we're going to go through justification, which is a very important concept to understand as far as righteousness goes.

And then next week we'll close with glory, which is the book of Revelation. So today our scripture verse is Romans 3, verses 21 through 26, which reads, but now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. But 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 Jesus Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

The Righteousness of God Revealed Apart from the Law

That is a glorious verse. So what we want to do is unpack this verse, unpack the key statements found in the summary that Paul just gave us. And we start, but now the righteousness of God has been manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

Does anybody have an idea what it means when Paul, what it means when Paul says, the righteousness of God? Does anybody have an idea what that means? Right, exactly, so he's gonna talk to us about the righteousness of God.

Is God righteous? Yes, is he perfectly righteous? Yes, is man righteous? No, he's not even close to perfectly righteous, right? What kind of righteousness do we need to enter into God's presence? Perfect righteousness.

We need the righteousness of God. So after explaining the need for Christ and his identity as the son of God and power, which we went through last week, Paul begins his summary of the good news in Romans by affirming that God's righteousness, particularly as it is on display in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is revealed to us apart from the law and its stipulations.

However, the entire Old Testament, the law and the prophets testifies about God's righteousness. Jeremiah 23 says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called. Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord is our righteousness. Okay, and this is gonna be the difference between Christianity and every other world religion or every other man-made concept of God where we have to work and earn our own righteousness before God.

We need to be good enough based on our own performance versus Christianity saying, no, the Lord is your righteousness by faith in Christ Jesus. That's the good news. The bad news is you can never be good enough.

Right, no matter how hard you work, no matter what you do, you've sinned already and you cannot undo that by working it off. Philippians 3 .7 is gonna help us. Paul says, but whatever gain I had, remember Paul was a Pharisee, right?

A keeper of the law. Whatever gain I had, I counted it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.

Now that word in Greek is not really rubbish, it's poopoo, okay? So count them as poopoo in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, right? So that word knowing, I underline that. What does the word knowing mean here?

It's intimacy. It's not just knowing facts about something, right? There's many people who know facts about Jesus. Knowing Jesus and knowing facts about Jesus are two different things. Knowing Jesus is to be intimate with him the way Adam knew Eve, right?

In Amos, God says about Israel, only you have I known. Now God knows everything and everyone. What he means when he says only Israel have I known, he means he's only been in that intimate covenant relationship with the nation of Israel.

This is what Paul is talking about, being intimate, knowing, in covenant Christ. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law. Here's a Pharisee, a keeper of the law, saying I don't have a righteousness of my own because I've failed to keep the law.

But that which comes through faith in Christ, our righteousness, our right standing before God comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith. It can't be much more simpler than this.

The right Jehovah Sikhenu, the Lord is our righteousness. We need the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Christ Jesus. When you repent of your sins and place your faith and trust in Jesus, you now receive his righteousness.

And you're standing before God at peace. You now have peace with God. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

So what he's saying is, when Christ died on the cross, he died with him. He died to the law. In other words, he no longer is going to try to keep the law in order to gain good standing before God. He's going to trust in what Jesus has done for him.

That doesn't mean we jettison the law. And we'll talk about that in a minute. Isaiah 61 .10. So, Paul said that the law and the prophets testify about this. So I'm gonna show you an Old Testament verse that testifies to the righteousness of God.

In Isaiah 61. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. This is not just a New Testament novelty that Paul just discovered.

This is how human beings from Adam all the way to Paul have been saved all along. We've been covered with the robe of righteousness. As a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

So this is something that Isaiah talked about, being clothed with the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God from God. Not the righteousness of man by man. You see the difference? That's huge.

If you think you're gonna earn your way to heaven, you have a big problem. You need perfect righteousness, and you don't have it. You need to ask God, Lord, what do I need? I need your revelation to recognize that this is true, and that my righteousness in and of itself is but filthy rags before you.

The righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus for all who believe. Now that word, believe, means to trust. It doesn't mean, oh, I believe, easy believism, and now I can do whatever I want to do.

When you trust in God, you're gonna obey his word. You're gonna keep his law in the sense that the commandments are something that you live your life by. Now you don't rely on you keeping that law in order to get into heaven, but God's law is a reflection of his nature.

Justification for Jew and Gentile by Grace through Faith

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. So first, when he says there is no distinction, for all have sinned, what is he talking about?

There's no distinction. What does that mean? Say again? We all sin, but what is he specifically talking about here? Jew and Gentile. Remember, Paul is speaking to the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews are saying, well, this is our plan of salvation.

God is in covenant with us, not you Gentile dogs. Paul says there's no distinction. The Gentiles are sinners, but so are you. Don't think that you're any better than a Gentile, right? For all, Jew and Gentile, have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified, made right, declared innocent in God's sight, we're gonna get through, we're gonna talk about what the definition of that is, by his grace, what is grace?

Unmerited favor, divine favor, getting what you don't deserve as a gift. What's a gift? Is a gift something you earn?

No.

So righteousness from God is not something you earn,.

It's a gift.

No one enters God's kingdom based on race. It's grace, not race, right? That's the way it's been explained to me. It's grace, not race. Just because you're a Jew doesn't mean you're entitled to salvation.

You are not saved genealogically, you are saved Christologically, in Christ alone. Just in case anyone misunderstands, Paul emphasizes that the righteousness of God, he has in mind here, is that which comes to God's people through faith in Christ Jesus.

All are guilty. No one is righteous in and of themselves. As you hope in Jesus and trust in Jesus as the only substitute for your sin and cast yourself on him, God righteously declares you not guilty and welcomes you into his kingdom.

Don't forget the history of Israel and begin to think that you can somehow fix your sin problem or anyone else's. You need the substitute, the suffering servant, to do it for you. Righteousness is not something you give to God, it's something you get from God.

Most people think, oh, I'm gonna give my righteousness to God and he's gonna accept me based on what I've done.

No.

Righteousness comes from God. You need the righteousness of God by Jesus imputed to your account, given to you as a gift, not something that you earn. This is why it's called good news.

Jesus is Lord.

He died in your place, he rose in your place. He lived the perfect life that you needed to live but died the death that you deserve. He is your substitute. This is what the whole old covenant was pointing to.

This is justification, I'm gonna define it for you. Anybody wanna give me a guess as to what justification means? Yes, that's what's called a pastorism. Just as if I haven't sinned, kinda, yes, Ted?

Just as if I haven't sinned.

Just as if I didn't sin, okay, good. Justification is the divine forensic act of God based upon the work of Christ on the cross whereby a sinner, all of us, is pronounced or declared righteous by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to that person.

All right?

So that word forensic means legal. So when the judge smacks the gavel down and says, you're innocent, you're free to go, that's what God did. You're declared righteous because Jesus's righteousness has been credited to your account.

Now, Romanists are gonna say, that's a legal fiction. You're not actually righteous. And they're right. We aren't actually righteous, we are declared righteous because the substitute earned it on our behalf.

They think by their works, they can become perfectly righteous. And if they don't, at least they'll have purgatory to purge out the rest of the remaining sin in their life to get them in. So they'll rely on the righteousness of Jesus, Mary, and the saints in the treasury of merit to be applied to their account when they die so that they get into heaven, which I remind them is imputation.

If you're relying on the treasury of merit being applied to your account, that's the same thing as me relying on Jesus and his righteousness to be applied to my account. Only I believe it's Jesus alone.

You think Jesus's righteousness isn't enough. You need the righteousness of Jesus, Mary, and the rest of the saints. No good, it's Jesus alone, yes. Like the prodigal son, he puts his robe on him, brings him in, slaughters the fattened calf.

My son has come home. He's now clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The doctrine of justification is developed most fully by the Apostle Paul as the central truth explaining how both Jew and Gentile can be made right before God on the exact same basis, that being faith in Jesus Christ.

No one is saved by what they do. You are only saved by what God has done for you in Christ. Without this divine truth, there can be no unity in the body of Christ. Hence, its centrality to Paul's theology of the church and salvation, okay?

So, justification by faith alone, where have we heard that before? What's that called? The five solas, what's one of the five solas? Sola fide, right? You're saved by faith in Christ alone apart from your works.

Now, we have to qualify what that means. That doesn't mean works aren't necessary. If you've truly been changed by God, you are going to bear the fruit of the Spirit. That's one way we can check and see if somebody has really trusted in Christ.

Has your life been changed? Or are you still living the same way? If you're living the same way, all you've done is make a profession of faith without a possession of faith. Your heart needs to be circumcised.

You need to be changed. Here's how the Baptist catechism puts it. What is justification? Justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardoned all our sin and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.

The way the thief on the cross placed his faith in Christ while he was nailed to a cross, okay? And Jesus looked at him and said, today you will be with me in paradise because it does not depend on what the thief did but what the innocent man on the middle cross did.

It's the depraved heart of humanity that says I need to add something to this in order for it to be right. In other words, I can't trust in Christ alone because that means I'm not good enough. I've done nothing to deserve this.

The human heart says, no, no, no, no. Self, I've done it, right? A long time ago, like when Betty Crocker first started, they put together a cake mix, right? And it was just powder. You added water, you put it into the pan, you baked it, out came the cake.

It was a total flop. So they would do marketing and ask the person, why was it a flop? Well, we didn't feel like we were baking a cake. So what did Betty Crocker do? They changed the directions. Not only do you add water, you add an egg.

You have to mix it and then cook it. Where's Betty Crocker today? All because of the selfish heart of humanity. See the cake that I made? You did the same thing, you just added an egg, right? This undercuts any pride in humanity.

You've done nothing. In fact, you've disqualified yourself. It's impossible to be saved apart from God's gracious gift,.

Right?

That cuts the pride right from out under any human being. That's why Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E, not D-O. And what we try to do as human beings is satisfy God's requirements and say, God, I've done everything you've told me.

You owe me.

We try to put God in our debt. And we can never do that. We can never do that. OK, so what does Paul have to say about this? Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them, he's talking about the Israelites.

This is Romans chapter 10. For them, the Israelites, is that they may be saved. Now, most Jews would tell you, well, we're saved because we're Jewish. Paul says, no, no, no. I pray that you be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

For being ignorant of what? The righteousness from God. What did they try to do? They sought to establish their own. No, no, righteousness of God? Yeah, God's righteous, but I need my own righteousness.

They did not see that righteousness was the gift that God would give them by faith in his promise. They did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Christ is the end of the law. What does that word end mean?

It's over?

No more law?

Whew.

He fulfilled it. The word in Greek is telos. It's the trajectory. Jesus was the point of the law. He was the one that the law pointed to who would come and keep it on our behalf. So the whole law and the prophets pointed to who?

Christ. That word telos is also known as the word goal. He was the goal of the law. So when you see Christ's life, you recognize that's a perfect fulfillment of the law. He kept it perfectly. He is what the goal is.

He's what the law pointed to. All the scriptures were about Jesus. He is the focal point of all of it, not Israel. Jesus is true Israel. Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandment shall live by them.

They will also die by them if they're relying on that to get them into heaven. They did not submit to God's righteousness. They didn't recognize that this was a righteousness that would be given to them from God.

Jesus is the goal, the telos, what the law was pointing to all along. Of course they couldn't keep the law. That's why they had a sacrificial system. And that's what the sacrificial system was designed to show them.

They would continually need a sacrifice year after year after year after year, knowing that the blood and bulls of goats could never take away sin. Galatians 2 .15. I love how many times Paul says that we're not saved by the law in this one verse, right?

Two verses. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus. So we also believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified.

How many times can you repeat yourself in the same two verses, right? And people still don't understand this because they're blinded. They need to add something to the finished work of Jesus. Faith plus baptism.

Faith plus knocking on doors. Faith plus my obedience. Faith plus doing good works. Now doing good works and baptism and all those things, those flow from your faith in Christ. You wanna be identified.

You want to be baptized, but it's not the baptism that saves you. It's Christ that saves you, right? How many people are baptized who are not saved, who do not have God's Holy Spirit living inside them, changing their hearts?

It's an argument. Sure, it's an argument against baptismal regeneration. It's an argument against baptism for salvation, right? It's Christ for salvation. Those other things will follow. Again, as a believer in Christ, you wanna obey Christ.

Jesus says, whoever believes in me and is baptized will be saved, but he who doesn't believe is not saved. He doesn't say he who isn't baptized isn't saved. The thief on the cross, okay? But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven?

I've done enough. That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss? I haven't done enough. That is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith we proclaim because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. No mention of baptism, by the way.

For with the heart, one believes, trusts, and is justified, declared righteous in God's sight. And with the mouth, one confesses unto salvation. See what that's saying? Your heart needs to be changed.

Faith, Christ's Fulfillment, and the End of the Law

In contrast to a legal earned righteousness is the righteousness that is by faith. This is Douglas Moo, he wrote a commentary on Romans. Paul uses a figure of speech putting words from Deuteronomy 9 .4 and Deuteronomy 30 .10 through 14 on the lips of this type of righteousness.

The general point he wants to make about the righteousness by faith is clear enough. Through Christ being brought down to earth, in other words, his incarnation, and him being brought up from the dead, his resurrection, God has made righteousness readily available.

One does not have to ascend into heaven or plumb the depths of the sea to discover it. All one needs to do to attain the righteousness is to respond in faith to the gospel as it is preached. By faith alone, you trust in what Jesus has done for you.

That will change your life forever. You need to repent, change the way you think about your sin, turn from it, and cling to the only thing that can save you. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew or Greek, Jew or Gentile, for the same Lord is Lord over all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Who's the Lord? Jesus. Jesus is who the whole Old Testament pointed to in fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. So when we talked in the beginning about Adam and Eve when they fell, and God says, I'm gonna send one who's going to crush the head of the serpent, right?

And I'm going to judge the world with Noah. And then with Abraham, he says, your seed, through your seed, the whole earth will be blessed. It's all pointing to him. This is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant.

Through your seed, Jesus, all of the nations, not just Israel, all of the nations will be blessed. Galatians 3, six through nine, Paul says, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, this is the illustration that Paul uses in Romans chapter four to tell us how somebody is made right before God.

Abraham, not a Jew, Old Covenant. He's not part of the New Covenant. He looked forward to the coming of the New Covenant and trusted in the promise that it was coming. Know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham, not those who were circumcised.

And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel, good news, beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Is that making sense? Everybody tracking any questions to this point? Paul goes on in Romans four, for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted or reckoned to him as righteousness.

This is an accounting term. So we went from debits to credits. You had a big debt. Jesus paid that debt. Now it gets credited to your account. You're good before God. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted to him as a gift, but his due.

So anyone who wants to work their way into heaven, that means salvation is not a gift. That means you've earned it. That means you've done exactly what Jesus has done. And you haven't, just to let you know.

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. He doesn't wait till you're good enough and then he justifies you, which is the system of Romanism.

You have to wait to the end of your life to see if you're good enough, then he'll justify you. So you need to be good in order to be justified. Paul says, God justifies the ungodly and your faith is counted as righteousness.

Here's a beautiful quote by Steve Lawson. Eternal life is not a reward for the righteous,.

It's a gift for the guilty.

Praise God. Yes.

If you're waiting to the end, you don't have faith in Christ. That's the point, you have faith in you.

Why?

Because you're waiting to see how you did. All I do is read the scriptures and see how Jesus did. I want that.

I want that.

The scripture over and over says, these things are written so that you may know you have eternal life. When you tell a Romanist that I have eternal life, that's presumption, that's the sin of presumption.

No, that's what John wrote several times, mind you. That's a lack of faith. I shouldn't say a lack, it's a lack of faith in Jesus and a ton of faith in yourself. It's exactly where it shouldn't be. Just as David also speaks of the blessing to the one whom God counts righteousness apart from works, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count them. You wanna ask a Romanist or anyone else after reading that verse in Romans chapter four, who's the blessed man? Who's the blessed man whose sins are forgiven and whose deeds are not counted towards him?

Who is that man? I heard a Roman Catholic priest say, oh, that's Jesus.

Really?

So God's not gonna count Jesus' sins against him. You couldn't get further from the truth on that, right? That's us. If your faith and trust is in Christ and you identify with his death, burial, and resurrection, you're the blessed man whose sins are not gonna be counted against you.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised? In other words, is this just for the Jews or also for the uncircumcised, the Gentiles? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

Ah, so his salvation came before his circumcision. Circumcision is not what puts you into the covenant. Faith is what puts you into the covenant. Circumcision is the sign that you are in the covenant.

In the New Testament, faith is what puts you in the covenant. Baptism is the sign that shows that you're in the new covenant. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised.

Now to my Presbyterian brothers, it says without being circumcised. If you think baptism is a counterpart to circumcision, well then how does this make sense? The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being baptized, right?

Oh, that's discontinuity. Well, you can't have continuity and discontinuity on the same exact thing at the same time. That's a contradiction, okay? The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that the righteousness would be counted to them as well and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Clarity, Romans 2 .28. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, in other words, of the flesh, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter of the law.

In other words, not by you keeping the law. His praise is not from man, but from God. God is the one who circumcises the heart, changes you from the inside. Now you are in the covenant by faith in Christ.

God circumcises your heart, draws you to his son Jesus, grants you repentance and faith in his son. It's all the monergistic work of God, not synergistic, man plus God equals salvation. It's salvation equals salvation, salvation is just done by God alone.

Nice and easy, sorry. The need for a substitute is universal. We saw this in Exodus when both Israelites and Egyptians were under God's judgment. All have sinned, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, men, women, children.

No one escapes the curse, and everyone is robbing God of the glory he deserves as our creator and king because of our sinfulness. This means that people are justified, declared righteous before God only by his grace, getting what you don't deserve.

Abraham did not earn the right to be the father of the promised one. The Israelites did not escape from Egypt because they were so much better than the Egyptians. David did not merit God's favor when God promised him an eternal throne.

In the same way, neither you or I, nor anyone you know deserves God's favor. His grace is just that, grace, unearned favor, unmerited favor. God's kindness in the unfolding account of the Bible is amazing.

When you see that it was grace from Adam and Eve to Abraham, and now through Jesus Christ, what is it? It is amazing grace. You've been saved by grace through faith. That, not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by your good works so that no one can boast.

Anyone who says, oh, it's because I did fill in the blank, that's not grace. We should constantly ask ourselves, Lord, why did you choose me?

Why me?

Here's the thing, if you can answer that question, it's not grace.

Why?

He says, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. Never, ever, ever take your salvation for granted. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by how?

Baptism, good works, knocking on doors, keeping the sacraments, doing a mitzvah, doing a dance. No, faith, it's not too hard, faith. This justification, Paul explains, is based on the work of the Messiah, the work of Jesus.

He redeems us by his blood, the same way like the Passover lambs that purchased Israel's salvation temporarily so they would not have to face the judgment that they deserved. But those sacrifices were not finally effective, they were not permanent.

As we saw in lesson 13, Jesus came to finish those sacrifices and pay the debt once and for all, permanently. Romans 3, 24. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins, it was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be the just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In other words, God passed over the sins, not counting them against the people who sinned in the Old Testament, looking forward to the permanent solution in Christ Jesus who would be the sacrifice for all.

That make sense?

Okay.

Paul says in Galatians 2, 15, we ourselves are Jews, and I'm gonna highlight this for a reason. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we, Jews, also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law because by the works of the law, no one will be justified. That's real clear, right?

But if in our endeavor, the Jews, to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, then is Christ a minister of sin? In other words, if we're Jews and we're trying to keep the law, is that what Jesus wants us to do, to be sinners?

Certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law, I die to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. In other words, Paul is saying, if I rebuild a system of legalism, I'm not going to be saved.

I need to place faith in the provision of God on my behalf. I'm not going to rebuild a sacrificial system that God tore down in the temple. I'm going to trust in his final, permanent solution for my sin.

So Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. You recognize you need to die to self and let God, let Jesus Christ live through you and do the works that he would do if he was here,.

Do them through you?

Not my will be done, thy will be done. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. You've been bought with a price. Your body is not your own.

Your life is not your own. I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. Why would God have to sacrifice his only begotten son on a cross if you could get to heaven by doing good things?

Right?

That's why it's Christ alone. It's not Christ plus you. Anything you add to the cross ruins it. My illustration all the time is if you went into the museum that the Mona Lisa is in and you're looking at it and you're like, oh, that's great.

Honey, give me a magic marker. I gotta touch this up. Soon as I put the magic marker on the painting, what happens?

It's ruined.

It's worthless. I've added to the perfect Mona Lisa. You cannot add anything to the perfect cross of Christ and think you're making it better. You can't make it better. It's perfect already. If you touch it, you ruin it.

Paul calls this payment propitiation. We've gone through this in earlier sessions. This theological word simply means, refers to something or someone that appeases God's righteous wrath. While many people don't like to talk about the wrath of God, we cannot really get around it without distorting the message of the Bible.