The Benefits Of Justification - [Romans 5]

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Romans chapter 5 is for tonight, but we're going to do Romans 1 first and chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, kind of jet tour through 1 through 4 and then we're going to hunker down into chapter 5.
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Now certainly it would probably take me on Sunday morning I don't know, five messages to get through Romans, 6, 8,
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I don't really know. And so we're going to have to be moving pretty much at breakneck speed, but I think you're going to be encouraged as we see
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Romans 5, really one of the gems of the book of Romans. William Tyndale, the great reformer, referred to Romans as the principle and most excellent part of the
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New Testament. So out of all the Bible in the New Testament he loved Romans.
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Martin Luther wrote this of Romans, Romans is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word who here has memorized the book of Romans by the way?
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Alright, we have one my wife is I think in chapter 6 so she's taking up Luther's charge as well.
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Good job, Vida. Every Christian should know it word for word by heart but occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of the soul.
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It can never be read or pondered too much and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes.
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Isn't that good? The conference I was at the last two days, Friday night and Saturday night, Grace Bible Church in East Bridgewater, the message theme was six different local pastors,
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Lou Faustino and others, the glorious gospel in the book of Romans and as I sat and listened to the other men preached that was absolutely true.
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Augustine said, I greatly long to understand Paul's epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression the righteousness of God.
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Pondered it day and night just like Martin Luther. So here's what we'll do tonight, fast through chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4, little slower but still pretty fast in chapter 5 but my goal is to teach most of chapter 5 tonight.
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Could somebody give me the key word for the book of Romans? Sunday night's a little different if you wanna just raise your hand and give me the answer.
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One key word, Ferdie. Very good. Righteousness and Paul will go to great lengths to establish that we don't have our own righteousness and we need righteousness provided by another.
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One writer said this is a concentrated vitamin pill designed to cure modern rickets.
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How about that for a good introduction to the book of Romans? A vitamin pill. It's like a protein drink.
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How many people here like protein drinks? If I could drink any protein drink at all it would be one of those $5 isopures with about 40 grams of protein.
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Boy, they taste good. This is even better. Now if I were to give you an outline of the book of Romans just topically before we get into exegetically, here's how
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I would do it. Super simple. Baptistic as well with alliteration. Chapters 1, 2, and 3a, sin.
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Chapters 3b, 4, and 5, salvation. Chapter 6 and 7, sanctification.
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Chapter 8, Wesley, security. Good. Chapters 9, 10, and 11, sovereignty.
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Good, Brian. Chapters 12 through 15, service.
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Chapter 16, salutations. I've also heard it called stuff. Kind of just random things and greetings.
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So sin, salvation. You can just think about this logically. Sin, salvation, sanctification, security, sovereignty, service, and salutation.
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And the theme really if we go to chapter 1 verse 16, if you'll go there with me, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
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And certainly if you wanted to call the book of Romans about, it's a book about the gospel, that is certainly true.
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I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the
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Jew first and also to the Greek or to the Gentile. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
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The NIV even probably gets this right. By faith from first to last as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.
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So here we have a book that's about God's righteousness. How it's revealed, vindicated, and applied.
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At the very beginning, chapter 1 verses 18 and following, we see there is a lack of righteousness.
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All men are sinful, Jew and Gentile, and they need personal righteousness. I could apply it to you.
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You need righteousness. And so if you look at verse 18, not only is righteousness revealed, verse 17, something else is revealed.
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It's the wrath of God. These Gentiles here in verses 18 through 32 are sinful and have no righteousness.
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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress or hold down the truth in unrighteousness.
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Man minimizes sin. God exposes sin through the pen of the
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Apostle Paul. Everyone needs a Savior. That's going to be the point. How can you know you need a
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Savior unless you know you're sinful? Now there's some moralistic Jews. They don't have righteousness either.
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Chapter 2 verses 1 through 16. More than that, even confident, well -taught
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Jews, chapter 2 verses 17 through 38, they don't have righteousness either.
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Let's just look at verse 23. And again, I'm just trying to go through this quickly. I can't talk about every verse. You who boast in the law through your breaking the law, do you dishonor
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God? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, verse 28 of chapter 2, neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.
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But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that which is of the heart by the
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Spirit, not by the letter. And his praise is not from men, but from God.
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And then he gives a conclusion, chapter 3 verse 9 and following. What then? Are we better than they?
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Not at all, for we all, excuse me, for we have already charged that both
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Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Man is corrupt, depraved, sinful, and what are we to do?
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Well, if we were angels and sinned, nothing happened, yet God had a plan for humans.
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And so we see the righteousness revealed in chapter 3 verse 21 and following.
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Justification by faith alone. Righteousness of God, from God, credited to our account so that we have righteousness that's not ours.
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Chapter 3 verse 21, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God, that's what we need, that's what we're lacking, has been manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets.
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Even the righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus for all who believe.
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For there is no distinction, for all have sinned, both Jews and Gentiles, and continually fall short of the glory of God.
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Who could tell me, give me a good definition of justification? By the way, there was a Christian booksellers conference and two out of 100 people could give the definition of justification.
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I think the odds are better here, but I'm not a betting man, even though I drove past the dog track the other day in Rameth.
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Pardon me? Yeah, there it is. Is it still open? Alright, Jonathan, justification.
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Okay, do you like that? I didn't hear any infused kind of language. Is there more to be said,
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Vida? Okay, received by faith alone. Would anybody else like to add anything to that?
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Yes, Bruce? Okay, good.
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Many times people say, just as if I've never sinned. That's only partially true, although it's true when
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God declares us righteous. It's just He sees us as if we just have never sinned ever, and just as if we perfectly obeyed the law of God, what
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God has commanded. Good. I like preaching to you. Wesley? Okay, and really if I was thinking about justification,
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I would think of three particular components. I would think about my sin credited to Christ's account.
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I have my personal sins, but Jesus never sinned, yet He got credit for them. Christ's righteousness credited to my account, even though Jesus was perfect.
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I was not perfect, yet I have His righteousness credited to my account, and then the third component is confirmed by or vindicated by the resurrection, and that would be found in Romans 4 that we're going to look at in just a minute.
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You did so much better than the Christian booksellers conference. You know how
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Michael Horton does that at the White Horse Inn? He'll go up and ask people, what are the Ten Commandments? What is justification by faith?
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Is theology important? Very, very interesting. So what Paul does in chapter 4 is he gives an illustration of something.
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Abraham. Abraham was justified by faith apart from works.
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A legal declaration. It's like the judge's gavel goes down, and the judge says what?
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Based on the work of another, what? Not guilty. I had Kim find me at the antique auction a gavel, and it sits on my desk, because I like to think about forensic justification, legal justification based on the work of another, an alien righteousness.
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Not of an alien Martian, but of someone who's not like me. God. So Paul says in chapter 4, verse 2, here's a man who models this justification by faith.
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For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. Abraham believed
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God, verse 3, and it was credited, or reckoned, or imputed to him as righteousness.
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Faith was the non -meritorious instrument done by God, done outside of him, credited to Abraham's account.
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Certainly not justified by works, verse 4, not of the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but what is due are, but what as is due.
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And so now we move to chapter 5. Here's what we'll call chapter 5, verses 1 to 11, the benefits of righteousness.
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Righteousness has many benefits, and that's exactly what Paul is going to talk about right here.
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And I could turn it into a sermon if I told you these are some of the things that you should be praising God for.
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You were made to praise God and to extol Him. I think about the world, I think about my grandparents, and for them, their life wasn't one of praise, it was complaining and bitterness, and the world is horrible, and here we have been redeemed, we have been declared righteous, and we have lots of reason to praise.
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Thomas Watson said praising God is one of the highest and purest acts of religion.
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How many people here remember what sandwich boards were? Right? Some remember, some have studied, some have googled it.
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I can see some of the younger ones googling sandwich boards. Jowett said, a little while ago
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I saw a half dozen sandwich men walking through the streets of London, looking thoroughly pinched and starved and wretched, and their boards carried the advertisement as to where the onlookers could get the best dinners in London.
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These emaciated people with the sandwich boards. And here's what Jowett said, famished wretches advertising the best dinners.
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And then here comes the knife. Cheerless men and women advertising the joy of the
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Lord. I wonder what your neighbors think of you. I wonder what your friends think of you.
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I wonder what people who are your family members who aren't Christians think of you. I wonder if they look at you and say, you know, like with Psalm chapter 1, that particular person, as they look at you, they say,
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I'm envious. I wish I had their God. I wish I had the blessings that they had.
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I wish I had the joy that they have. I wonder if that's how people think of you. So what
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Paul does here is he gives some benefits that you receive upon justification. It's great enough to have a pronouncement to be accepted and treated as just based on the work of another, but there's more.
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And that's just like the Lord. He just gives and gives and it's over and above. And so there are privileges because of justification.
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And so he says in verse 1, therefore having been justified by faith, he gives the first benefit.
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We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. You can make that a praise point if you want to praise the
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Lord for something. You have peace with God. Now what's the opposite of peace? Now I don't want you to think kind of eagles, easy, peaceful feeling.
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I don't want you to think of tranquility. I don't want you to think of the Pacific Ocean, even though I'll be there in a couple days, pacified ocean compared to the roaring
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Atlantic. This has nothing to do with feelings. This has nothing to do with Philippians 4.
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Where when you pray, there's a peace that passes all understanding. This is, you used to be an enemy, of course
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I was too, and now you are friends. That's what this is. This is objective peace.
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This means the guns used to be pointed at you until Armistice Day and now they're put away.
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Used to be war, now there's peace. People say, well I was never at war with God. Well you think that, although you were, but worse, he was at war with you.
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Every person has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It's either that of friend and brother, child, or it is that of enemy.
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The bazooka of God has you in its sights and because of what Christ has done, God is faithful and just, so he's not going to try to punish us and punish
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Jesus. Jesus has already been punished for us, so we have peace with God. Hostility has ceased.
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Colossians 1 says, having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him. There's no peace, said the
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Lord, for the what? For the whom? Wicked. They might have tranquil feelings, but God is after them.
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Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. He's the high priest, order of Melchizedek, who grants us peace.
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Actually, the Greek text is, we have peace facing God. In the presence of God. Remember Jude, you can stand in his presence, sort of cowering down and on your face, this is peace facing
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God. Ever watched a criminal? This didn't happen with the Sandusky case, but I thought it might. They walk out to the police car to get taken to the jail and what do they do even trying, with their handcuffs, handcuffed behind them or in front of them, what do they try to do?
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They try to hide their face. That's exactly right. And here now, because of Christ's work, in the presence of God, no hiding your face, no cowering.
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Well, there's something more than that. Second benefit could be the second praise point, if you will, in terms of justification's benefits found in verse 2.
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Through whom you also have obtained an introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand.
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Now we have permanent access to God. Before, no trespassing sign, just like with the seraphim guarding the
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Garden of Eden, can't get back in, Adam and Eve driven out, just like Cain driven away from the sight of Eden.
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But now, God has brought us toward Him, introduced us through our mediator,
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Christ Jesus. The French word for this, I'm told, is entrée. This is something that one person brings another and now you're favorably disposed towards God.
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Philippians, excuse me, Ephesians says, we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
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Hebrews chapter 4, let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.
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Well, Paul goes on. The third thing is, we have a reason for hope.
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Look at verse 2, and we exalt in the hope of the glory of God. Peace takes care of the past.
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Entrée takes care of the present. I said, the present? I wish it would. I think
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I need a vacation. Peace takes care of the past issue.
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Entrée takes care of the present issue. And now there's hope. We can be very, very hopeful people because we have the righteousness of Christ credited to our account.
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How great is it when I read verses like John 14, and if I go and prepare a place for you,
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I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, therefore you may be also joyously realizing that God has determined the course of all future history and you will be with Christ Jesus.
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Well, he keeps going. Verses 3 through 5, he talks about how you can rejoice even in trials.
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In the world we're going to have tribulation, but God does something with the trial of the Christian, of the justified one who has the righteousness of God credited to his account.
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And not only this verse 3, but we also exalt in tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance proven character, and proven character hope.
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Hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
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When we experience trials, we can remain under them. Actually, the Greek is bearing up under pressure.
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I want to say more about this, but I need to get to chapter 5, verse 12 soon. So let's just go to number 5 here.
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God gave you himself in love. God demonstrates his love towards you by giving his
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Son as a sacrifice, found in verses 6 through 8. By the way, before I read this, true or false?
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Put your thinking caps on. Love is blind. You should probably say to me, it just depends what the context is.
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Our society likes to say love is blind. You fall in love with some person, and if you don't have elders to help you, and friends to help you, and yourself to help you, and the
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Word, sometimes you should see things in the other person that should give you warning signs. But as you think about the love of God, God's love for his people isn't blind.
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Just imagine God knew every sin you would ever commit, and he still loved you.
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God's love isn't blind at all, and he gave himself in love. Verse 6, For while we were still helpless at the right time,
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Christ died for the ungodly. One will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man, someone would dare even to die.
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By the way, this kind of language does not sound like poor Richard's almanac, does it? God helps those who help themselves.
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That is such bad advice. I'll go on the record now and say that shouldn't come from poor Richard's almanac.
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That should come from little Richard's almanac. All right. See, some don't even know, which is probably better.
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But God continually makes conspicuous, verse 8, his own love towards us.
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And that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Christ dies for the ungodly.
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Christ dies for the helpless. Christ dies for sinners. Christ dies for enemies, we'll see in a second.
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You know the way I do weddings and officiate weddings, don't you? I do the same thing every single time because I want to preach this passage.
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And what do I end up doing? The bride -to -be and the groom come into my study, and I love to just talk a little bit.
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This is what we do for pyramidal counseling. You meet with the elders. You do this, you do that. The part that I love to say to them, I love to say,
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I'm going to give you a couple books to read, and I'm going to give you some assignments of premarital counseling, and then
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I want you to do your paperwork. And if you do those, I'll show up for the wedding. And I'm not kidding.
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If you don't want to do it, I won't show up. Of course, they always get their homework done. It's exciting.
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And then I look to the groom -to -be, and I'll say, tell me four reasons why you love your fiancee.
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Why you picked her. And you know what? It's classic. I love it. Because as this man begins to say things out loud, maybe the lady hasn't even heard some of these things.
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They say all kinds of wonderful things. They say she's pretty. They say she's smart.
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They say she's godly. They say she serves other people. One person said she's a five -point
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Calvinist. So, wow. Pretty romantic. They say all these things.
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And some are just things that God has given us when we're attracted to someone of the opposite sex.
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And you just think, that's just beautiful and nice. Some are very spiritual. And then I think about this passage.
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Because when God sees us eternally, God sees us when we are on the earth, there was nothing good in us.
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There was no good reason he should pick us. We weren't pretty. We weren't smart. There was nothing there in a romantic sense, obviously, but there was nothing there because God picked us when we were, what were those words?
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Helpless, ungodly, sinful, and enemies. Now, there's nothing wrong for a husband to pick a wife because she's godly on the inside and pretty on the outside.
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Not that's not wrong, but it's better love when God, you can think of Hosea and Gomer, where for the sake of the other people and for the sake of his own glory,
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God picks the worst. Christ dies for sinners.
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He renders that conspicuous. That is his love. And if that wasn't enough, if you look at verses nine to 11, basically the point here is there should be assurance for your salvation.
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If you struggle with assurance, this will be good for you. Verses nine, 10, and 11. Someone came into my study the other day and they said,
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I'm struggling with assurance. I'm trying to do things to get my assurance.
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I'm trying to stop from doing things to get my assurance. And with Spurgeon, I'll tell you what
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I told him. When you try to grab the dove of assurance, it flies away.
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But Spurgeon said when you focus on the person and work of Christ, the dove of assurance just comes and sits on your shoulder.
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Am I saved? Am I saved? What do I do? I've got to feel saved. I want to feel saved. That's not bad.
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When you struggle with your assurance, but what's bad is the continual myopic focus on trying to get your assurance.
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So you go straight to Calvary, straight to the cross. How about straight to these verses? Verse nine, 10, and 11.
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Much more than, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.
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For, now get this, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son.
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Much more. See the much more in verse nine? Much more. Now in 10, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
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How is God going to treat us now as children if he loved us when we were enemies? How does God treat you as a child?
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And not only this, but we exalt also in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received the reconciliation.
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Now, Paul is a master at anticipating questions. What's the anticipated question that he's going to hone in on in chapter 5, 12 through 21?
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You can just see somebody go like this. I've got a question, sir. What's the question Paul's going to ask in one of the greatest, wildest passages of all time?
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That's why I picked it yesterday to preach at the conference because it just, when you focus on who
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God is, there's nothing like it. And what he does, there's nothing like it. What's the question Paul is trying to get across?
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The answer. Here's the answer. Or let me give you the question. How can one man save so many people?
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How could one person, how could one person, Jesus, rescue a whole slew of people?
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And so Paul is going to talk about that. And let's look at federal imputation, representative salvation found in verses 12 and following.
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Christ's triumph over Adam's sin. Now I asked you before what was justification and some answered and collectively you got it right.
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Too bad you weren't judged at judgment day by collective knowledge. Just kidding. No, you did a good job.
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I'm going to ask you another question. What is imputation? Now some of the things we've already described in justification, but how about imputation?
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What is the word imputation? You say, I don't even need to know, why bother? How about this? How about 10 times it's in Romans chapter four?
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That'd be good to know. Give me a synonym for imputation. Credited, excellent.
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What else? Reckoned, nice. Do you look at NAS? Does ESV say reckoned?
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Okay. It means to charge, to credit to your account, to attribute to your account, to set something to someone's account.
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Remember Paul talking to Philemon? Ferdie, you should know this. Your home
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Bible said he did Philemon in 25 weeks. Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.
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If he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, charge that to my account. Imputation.
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Charge that, reckon it to my account. This doctrine, imputation, is at the heart of justification.
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If justification is at the heart of the gospel, the heart of justification is imputation.
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Thomas Askew said if justification is the heart of the gospel, then imputation is the heart of justification. And by the way, this is just the way
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God does things. If you drop an apple and it falls down, you say to yourself, gravity, that's how
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God has designed the world. How does God design the world of people? By the principle of federal representative imputation.
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When Gehazi sinned, the leprosy went to his posterity. God deals with people through imputation.
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The sins of the fathers, Exodus 20, verse 5, are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation.
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The Egyptians get wiped out because of Pharaoh's federal representation.
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Israel, true or false? I know John has been preaching in Samuel. Suffered for David's sin.
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The answer is yes. Federal representation. You say,
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I don't know if I'm liking this. I'm kind of feeling this isn't too good. Do you have senators? If you're an
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American citizen, you have senators. How many do you have? Two American senators. They are your representatives.
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And when they vote for something, it affects you. This is the way the world goes, for evil or for good.
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Federal headship isn't foreign. When our government says America is going to war and they vote for that, you go to war with them.
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And imputation is found in the Bible a lot. And if you get imputation, it's going to be good for you. So going to chapter 5, verse 12, we're going to see how
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Adam's sin is going to be imputed to his posterity. And so here's the big picture so you get it.
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How can one man affect so many? He's going to get to Jesus, but before he gets to Jesus, he's going to show you how
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Adam, one sin, affected many. And then there's going to be a greater Adam. So Paul is going to answer the question and he's going to say, you know, imputation isn't anything new.
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That's really what he's saying in chapter 12, chapter 5, verse 12, 13 and 14. He compares the saving work of Christ with the condemning work of Adam.
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And he's talking about one man, one work affecting many.
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When we have preaching class here, I pull the guys in and I'll say, all right, let's go over to your message before you preach it.
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Shut your Bible, shut your notes, and tell me the sermon in one sentence. And if you can't do that, you can't preach.
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Many of the guys give me the answer. Some kind of do the son of flubber stuff. You know, I don't know what they do.
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Here's the distillation. One man, one act affects many people.
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But he starts off with Adam. Solidarity in Adam. The New England primer for the letter
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A. In Adam's fall, we sinned all.
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But the question is, how did we sin in Adam? Were we there? Federal representation is going to be the answer because God is going to have it wisely decreed that Adam's sin was not his alone, but it was placed to every person's account including yours.
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One sin, one man affected many people.
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Now, I have never done this before, but I'm going to do this right now. I'm going to quote the American Atheist Journal.
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And you're not going to forget it, I'm sure, because when I read it, I thought I'm never going to forget that. Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason
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Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the
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Son of God. If Jesus was not the Redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then
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Christianity is nothing. There is an attack on Adam. Why?
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Because there's another Adam, the last Adam, Christ Jesus. And look at verse 12 of chapter 5, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.
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Now, think about the account in Genesis for a minute. Did Paul ascribe to literal Adam, literal
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Eve? Very much so. Adam was the federal representative.
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He was the head. When Eve sinned, it was bad for her. But as S.
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Lewis Johnson says, all hell breaks loose when Adam sins. The text reads, so when the woman saw the tree was good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
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Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked. Sin in the world,
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Satan sinned, yes, but he wasn't the covenant head. Eve sinned, she wasn't the covenant head.
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Adam sinned, affected everything. Now, I read something funny the other day, and it was a little quip, and it said, the problem of evil wasn't found in the apple on the tree, it was found on the pear on the ground.
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But that's not right, because it wasn't found on the pear on the ground, the federal representative was the one man,
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Adam, and he didn't believe God. That's the essence of all true sin.
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Unbelief leads to rebellion, which leads to immorality. This has nothing to do with the medieval people saying, it was sex, or it was grapes.
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No, it was unbelief. You say, I don't like this because I wasn't there.
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I didn't do it, I didn't deserve it, I didn't merit it, I didn't eat it. If it was an apple, I didn't eat it. If it was a pear,
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I didn't eat it. I didn't do anything. I have a question for you. Would you have fared better? If you would have been there, how would you have done?
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And I would submit to you that me, with you, we would have sinned faster.
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We would have sinned quicker. How about God's arrangement?
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One man determines the fate of the many. And I would imagine, along with the commentators that I have read, that if we all got together, we were all alive at that time, and we got together, and God said, by the way,
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I wanna have somebody represent you, you guys go ahead and pick. You guys vote.
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We would have all voted for Adam. That's who we would have voted for.
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Charles Simeon of Cambridge said, preferred to be judged in Adam or in himself, every thinking person would answer, in Adam.
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He had all his mind, he had his faculties. He had a perfect wife, a perfect environment.
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He was older. How would you like to stand before God as a federal head? As a little baby, a little creatura, an infant, a toddler.
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Adam was maybe a day old, or five days old, or 10 weeks old, however old he was, but he was fully developed in his mind.
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And if Adam would have succeeded, we would have been singing, praise Adam from whom all blessings flow.
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Federal representation isn't new, it isn't novel. How can one person affect so many?
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How can Jesus die for lots of people? Well, Adam affected a lot of people too. Adam was what the Puritans called a public person.
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He didn't act as a private person for his own sin, he acted as a public person in our place, in our stead.
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And again, you said, I wasn't there, I didn't deserve it, I didn't merit it. Sneak peek right here at Calvary.
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Were you there? Did you merit salvation? Did you earn salvation? Pretty soon you should start saying to yourself,
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I kind of like federal representation. I like it a lot. Adam did something bad, but Christ did something better.
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Now, if you look at the passage there in verse 12, because all sinned, one man sin entered the world, death through sin, death spread to all men because all sin.
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What does that all sin mean? And it's a huge theological question. For time's sake,
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I won't give you every detail, but here's what I will tell you. Here's how you solve the question. So if you wanna make extra emphasis, sometimes you can yell louder as a pastor, you can repeat it.
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I'm gonna stand over here for a second to get your mind going. Some of you are having a hard time staying awake, that's okay. I'd probably be falling asleep too, but I'm the pastor, it's when you're preaching, you're awake.
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If you think symmetry, you'll get this. If you think symmetrical, you'll understand what's going on.
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So if I take my hands like this and I open them and I close them, it's exactly the same, right?
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There's symmetry. If you take a parallelogram and a piece of paper parallelogram and fold it in half, it's equal.
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I'm gonna use a word I haven't used from this pulpit I don't think for years. If you have a rhombus and fold it in half, the rhombus is not symmetrical.
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So what happened in the garden, you have to think about Calvary because symmetrical thinking is going to help you solve the problem.
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I guarantee it. So when it says all sin, Pelagians say, Adam was a bad example.
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And we all sin by example. I have a couple of questions.
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How did Adam sin? Who gave him the bad example? Now let's think symmetry for a second.
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Adam sin, bad example. Jesus was righteous.
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And if Jesus was a good example and I follow him, I'll get to heaven.
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Paul's been smashing that down in chapters one, two and three you can't earn your way to heaven. So you can't say to yourself, we all sin by bad example because if we follow the bad sin of Adam and now we think symmetrically we follow the good obedience of Christ, then we'll get to heaven.
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No, that can't be. That destroys the force of the analogy. Well, there's another way to try to describe this and this is called hereditary depravity.
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I think we do have Adam's nature, Ephesians chapter two, of course, we're children of wrath.
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But that's not what Paul's talking about here. Paul's not talking about hereditary depravity here.
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He's talking about federal representation. I've got a question for you.
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If you think it's hereditary depravity solves a problem or what people call seminal or realistic view somehow we're organically united to Adam.
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Why aren't we credited with Adam's later sins? We get credit for the first sin of Adam, but if we're linked somehow seminally, why don't we get credit for the other sins?
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The way to keep symmetry is federal imputation. One sin, one man affected many.
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Jesus, one man affects many. Take a look, by the way, in verse 15, if you will.
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15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and look for the words one. One man, one sin credited to everybody, but the free gift is not like the transgression for if by the transgression of the one, the many died.
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Verse 16, judgment from one transgression. Not all the other transgressions.
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Verse 17, transgression of the one, death reign through the one.
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Verse 18, so then as through one transgression. Verse 19, through the one man's disobedience.
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The first sin of Adam was credited to everybody except Jesus. By the way, take a look at verse 13 and 14.
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Why would anybody die if they didn't break a law? There's no Mosaic law yet.
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I have another question for you. Why did babies die? They didn't break any laws.
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Wasn't even a Mosaic law there. For sin indeed was in the world, verse 13, before the law was given.
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But sin is not counted where there is no law. Look at the effects of Adam's sin.
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Verse 14, yet death reign from Adam to Moses. Even over those sinning, it was not like the transgression of Adam.
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Like babies who didn't sin like Adam did willfully, they died.
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Why did they die? Because God credited them Adam's sin. Who is a type of the one who is to come.
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You say, I don't know if I like that. I don't know if I like what the Puritan Thomas Goodwin said. All men,
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I'm gonna say, I said rhombus today, and I'm gonna also say another word I don't know if I've ever said in the pulpit. Maybe once. All men are hanging on Adam's girdle.
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I wanna say this before we continue. Is there any reason why? Don't you understand now the reasons why?
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Alleged evangelical scholars are trashing Adam for the sake of evolution.
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Bruce Waltke, Tremper Longman, the whole
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Biologos stuff. Listen to this. Adam never existed. Dennis Lamoureux, Biologos.
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And this fact has no impact whatsoever on the foundational beliefs of Christianity. One man sin.
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It has everything to do with everything. And even Derek Kidner back in 67, talking about pre -Adamites and Adamites.
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Well, federal representation isn't new, but thankfully there's someone who is better than Adam, verses 15 to 19.
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Christ is greater than Adam. Federal representation isn't novel, verses 12 through 14, and now there's a greater one than Adam.
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Now this isn't so bad. This is a type of imputation where Adam's sin was credited to our account, and now
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Christ's righteousness is going to be credited to our account. This is good.
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Adam's act doesn't determine your future destiny if you believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And you know how I love S. Lewis Johnson? You can just get it, because he's not from Texas, but lived in Texas for a long time.
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When a father strikes oil, the children get rich. And we have hit a gusher in the last
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Adam, Jesus Christ. This is one act, although it's a righteous act.
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The acts differ in degree, but they are still acts of another.
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God's law has to be held up. And so take a look at verse 18 for a minute.
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I've read some of the other verses. Therefore, as one trans -trespass led to condemnation for all man, so look at how he just compacts all the life of Christ, including his death.
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How could you separate the two? So one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
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This isn't just talking about his crucifixion. How can you separate his crucifixion from his life?
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I have to tell you a little secret. Here's a preaching secret. Why do pastors quote people? Well, one man said,
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I think Lloyd -Jones says you could use it for filler if you had to. You quote people because someone says it better than you do or more memorable.
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Or you quote people so your congregation says, well, Abendroth's kind of got some kind of crazy idea, but he just quoted somebody they agree with him.
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So for substantiation. So when you look here, the one act of righteousness, it's not just his death, it's his life and his death.
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Schreiner said it's possible that his whole life is in view. Robert Peterson, this reversed to his lifelong obedience.
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Cranfield, by Christ's righteousness, one act of righteousness, Paul means not just his atoning death, but obedience of his whole life as a whole.
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This reminds me of language like Philippians 2, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
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Philippians 2 emphasizes the humility of Jesus, not strictly limited to his death.
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Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded. And we need Christ's righteousness.
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If you turn with me, if you would, over to Acts chapter, Acts, Romans chapter eight, please. Look at Romans chapter eight.
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If I telegraph ahead a little bit, we can see that we need someone to fulfill the law in our place so we can have credit for God's righteousness for God, Romans chapter eight, verse three, has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh.
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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.
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So now let's go back to chapter five and let me read verse 19. For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many were made righteous.
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The law says do this and live. Christ did that and lived. Romans chapter two, the doers of the law will be justified.
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Jesus did the law and now he justifies us. We have no perfect righteousness in our own, but we have it now through faith.
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John Hannah said, the doctrine of imputation of Christ's righteousness, if you don't have it,
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Christianity isn't Christian. So no wonder when we hear about this doctrine, songs are written about it.
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The perfect righteousness of Christ credited to your account. How about this one? When he shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may
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I then in him be found, dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.
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How about the one we sang this morning? Even good Arminians know this doctrine. Wesley wrote, no condemnation now
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I dread, Jesus all in him is mine, alive in him my living head and clothed in righteousness divine.
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By the way, Christian, if God has credited to you Christ's perfect righteousness, can you lose your salvation?
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People ask that question all the time. Well, can you lose a salvation? Now we wanna be nice, right? New people come into the church.
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We wanna be kind. I don't wanna be the guy like Arthur Pink, who when people would ask him when he was super old, how can you kind of reconcile sovereignty and responsibility?
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What about election? What about sovereignty and robots and all that? And you know what? There's only so much a guy can take because people ask you that all the time.
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We wanna be kind to people. So if someone says, well, can a Christian lose your salvation? The right way to think about it is this.
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Can Christ lose a Christian? Can you have the righteousness of Christ imputed to your account?
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And then God says, I take that back based on your sin. By the way, the sin that you committed in time has already been imputed to Christ's account.
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God doesn't love you less when you sin. God doesn't love you more when you obey because you are in Christ Jesus.
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And God can't lose a Christian. It's wrong to ask the question, can I lose my salvation?
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Because then you imply that you came up with it. You didn't come up with your salvation.
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We don't believe in auto salvation. By the way, I can't wrap my mind around how great
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God's wisdom and goodness was that he can justify the ungodly and still keep his law yet show his grace.
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It's an amazing thing. You know what Luther does? When our sins are credited to Jesus's account and Christ's righteousness is credited to our account, that substitution, that exchange,
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Luther is the king of overstatement, but now he goes for understatement. And he calls this what?
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A fortunate exchange. That's a fortunate exchange. I get
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Christ's righteousness, he got my sin. Fortunate exchange. Isaiah 53 says, we'll make many to be accounted righteous and he will bear their iniquities.
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One last passage just for a moment. Turn to Galatians chapter three. We need to finish. I don't know when
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I started, but it's about time to finish. Galatians chapter three, verses 10 to 14.
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Similarly, teaching truths found in Romans. 310, for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law.
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And now Paul puts at the end with climactic stress in a tense that stresses action as an event.
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And do them. A good way to translate it would be, and do them completely.
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And do them always. Who can live up to that? Would you like to be justified by what you do?
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No, you can't. 100 % merit. I kind of learned it from S.
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Lewis Johnson. He said, you know, people give testimonies in churches. How about taking the microphone, plugging it in? And I can even have
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Scott Brown hold up the sunblock too, and then get up there and say, I have merited my own salvation.
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I've perfectly kept the law and I've done it. No one can do that. We are nothing in the sight of God.
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I think of William Newell and W .M. Host of the China Island Mission.
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And they were discussing the question of a Christian recognizing himself as nothing. Mr. Newell, as they were about to part said,
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Mr. Host, I wish you would pray that I may become nothing in the sight of God. Mr.
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Host said to him, well, Newell, there's no need to pray about that. You are nothing.
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Take it by faith. No wonder the songwriter wrote, not the labor of my hands could fulfill thy laws demands.
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Could my zeal no respite, no, could my tears forever flow. These for sin could not, what, atone.
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Thou must save and thou alone. Verse 11 of Galatians three, now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith.
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The righteous doesn't live by doing something, by believing someone. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
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Remember Deuteronomy, cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree. And if that vision of God on a tree from Mosaic law doesn't conjure up a curse, how about the effects of the curse in the garden with thorns on the ground and now there are thorns on Christ's head.
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Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Then he says in verse 14, so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the
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Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward
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I look and see him there who made an end of all my sin, because the sinless
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Savior died, my sinful soul is what? Counted, reckoned, logizimied, free for God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me.
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So, don your sandwich boards this week. And whether you wake up at work tomorrow or you wake up and go to work tomorrow, the joy of the
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Lord should be your strength. You get to go to heaven based on the work of another. That is amazing.
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Let's pray. Thank you Father for our time tonight. Just pray that you would impress upon our hearts the worth of Christ.
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How magnified is your love when you would die for sinners like us? Thank you for giving us your spirit to seal our salvation to the day of redemption.
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Thank you for these dear people tonight. I pray that you would bless them and just give them joy.
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And Father, if someone is here tonight not trusting in Christ Jesus' work alone, somehow they're trying to be good or trusting in baptism,
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I pray Father that you would give them no sleep or rest until they rest in your