How is a Sinful Man Made Right with a Holy God?

Alright, good morning. We are going to continue on our theology course, and today we are going to be looking at taking a closer look at the doctrine of justification. As you guys know, it's a 12-week course.

Every week we do a different study, and then we... Usually when I finish the 12 weeks, we take a little break and do something different for a week or two, just to give my brain a break, and then we come back and jump right into it.

So if you're here, and you're new, this is week 9, so we're almost to the end of the 12 weeks. We started out with theology proper, then we went to Christology, Pneumatology, all the different disciplines of systematic theology, and today we are doing a subsection, because last week we looked at Soteriology.

Anybody remember what that means? No? Not Holy Spirit? Not anointing? Huh? Doctrine of salvation. The word soter in Greek, or sotso, means saved or salvation. You put the word, you put the L-O-G-Y on the end, it means the study of something, so we are doing Soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation, and in the doctrine of salvation, there are three subsets, or three subcategories, we talked about last week.

Does anybody remember what those three things are? Oh, come on, y 'all woke up this morning, you know what I'm talking about? I can't hear everybody at once. Justification is number one. Justification.

Sanctification and glorification. Justification, sanctification, and glorification. That's right. So, when we talk about salvation, or being saved, justification is saved from the penalty of sin. The penalty of sin is death, right?

The wages of sin is death, and we're not just talking about physical death, but spiritual death. We're talking about eternal hell. We're talking about damnation, punishment. So, the act of justification is saving us from the penalty of sin.

Sanctification saves us from the power of sin. Because sanctification is about giving us the power to live for Christ in this world. Once we are saved, we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to live for Christ.

That is sanctification, and that's a process that lasts throughout our life. It's not something that happens automatically. Nobody immediately becomes a perfect Christian. In fact, you'll never be perfect until your body is redeemed and you receive a glorified body.

And so, when we talk about justification, that's the salvation from the penalty of sin. Sanctification is the salvation from the power of sin. And what's glorification? The presence of sin. That is the one day that's coming when we will no longer be in this sinful flesh.

And we will have a glorified existence where we will no longer yearn for or desire sin. So that was last week's lesson. Bring everybody up to speed. And today we're going to focus our attention on just this one subset of salvation, or the doctrine of salvation, and that is the doctrine of justification.

It is my opinion and it is just an opinion so it's not gospel. But it is my opinion that it is the doctrine of justification that is most misunderstood and most falsely proclaimed. In fact, if you go and look in various cult groups, you look in various religions, it is the doctrine of justification where you have the biggest problem.

Because the doctrine of justification seeks to answer a question. I'm going to erase this. The doctrine of justification seeks to ask, or excuse me, seeks to answer a very important question. The most important question in life.

Can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? How can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? You know what the most frightening reality about God is? What is it? Not knowing. Well, the most frightening thing about...

What were you going to say?

He's just as he came without Christ. Yes, that's true. Who said he's just?

Yeah, I would even go simpler than that. The most frightening thing about God is that He's good. Everybody says, God is good all the time. He put a song of praise in this heart of mine. You guys know that song, right?

God is good all the time. Well, the problem is we sing that as if it should make us happy. The problem is God's goodness is kind of a scary thing. Because if we say God is good and we are not, then that creates a divide between us.

You see, what most people do is they elevate themselves and they try to diminish God. They try to build up their own goodness and they try to bring down His goodness. And the reality is His goodness is so infinite and our badness is actually so depraved that our divide is very wide.

And so the question of how can a sinful man be made right with a holy God, really you have to understand the two categories. The category of sinful man and the category of holy God. And I've used this expression before.

I've said, imagine the worst person that you could possibly think of. I don't know who that is for you. Maybe it's Adolf Hitler. Maybe it's Mussolini. Maybe it's Saddam Hussein. Jeffrey Dahmer. That was a freaky guy.

Yeah, okay, we use Jeffrey Dahmer. He's kind of odd. John Wayne Gacy. John Wayne Gacy. I mean, again. Stalin. Well, we're getting there. Because what I want to do is I say, if you imagine you put the worst person over here, right?

And you say, this is a scale. It's a sliding scale. And you say, okay, over here I'm going to put Jesus Christ. Right? Perfect man. Never did anything. Never sinned, thought, word, or deed. Here's Jesus.

Over there on the other side of the scale is the most evil person that you can think of. Where would you be on the scale? Most average people would put themselves somewhere near Jesus. Or at least in the middle.

But the reality is when we compare ourselves to Christ, we would be shoulder to shoulder with the most evil person. The same seed of evil that was in Adolf Hitler resides in me. The same Adamic nature, the same sinful nature that rests in John Wengesey rests in me.

I know this because I know my heart and mind. I know the things that I've thought of. I know the things that I've fantasized about. I know the things that have crossed my own lips, have come out of my mouth.

And the Bible says what comes out of the mouth is shows what's in the heart. Right? I know myself. And so I know that when I ask the question, how can a sinful man be made right with a holy God, the two most important words in that sentence are holy and sinful.

Because that's what separates me from God. The Bible says our sins have separated us from God. So when you ask the question, how can a sinful man be made right with a holy God, and you go out in the world and you talk to other religions or you talk to other teachers, you get all kinds of different answers.

Three False Views of Justification

I want to give you three wrong answers to this question as we begin. Three wrong answers to this question. How is a sinful man made right with a holy God? Number one is the answer of what is called universalism.

Universalism is justification by death. Say, what does that mean? This is the person who no matter what they did, who they were, what they believed when they died, oh, she's in heaven. Oh, he's with the Lord.

That's what we do, right? That's how we do. Doesn't matter, right? Because we have this weird notion that everybody is right with God. This weird notion that everybody is justified on their deathbed. Somehow, someway, everybody gets to go to heaven.

There is no qualification. There is no stamp of approval. There is no requirement. It's just everybody gets to go. You ever heard of the universalist church? Usually, it's called the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Do you know why they're called Unitarian? Because they deny the Trinity. Trinitarian is biblical Christianity. They're Unitarian because they deny the deity of Christ. They deny the Trinitarian nature of God.

So they call themselves Unitarian and Universalist. Universalist means that God is going to justify every man and every man will have his place in the kingdom of heaven. It's a direct denial of what Jesus said because Jesus said, unless a man be born again, he will not see the kingdom of heaven.

Right? So Jesus gives a requirement. Unless he's born again. They say not a requirement. Jesus was wrong. Yes?

Yeah. Everybody goes to heaven. Like I said, I do.

I was 17 years old 16 years old. I got my first job working at a funeral home. I worked for a funeral home for a couple years and then I thought I was going to be a funeral director. God had a different direction.

Took me into ministry and I became a pastor. But now I still work with a funeral home. And I've done over 150 or so funerals over the last few years. Especially now recently I had, a few weeks ago, I had five funerals in one week.

Just every day was boom, boom, boom. A couple days I had two in a row. Like I had one at 10 o 'clock in the morning and one at 3 o 'clock in the afternoon. People are dying all around us. 150 ,000 people die every day.

If we stop talking for five minutes and just let the sound of the air conditioners lull us, what we're listening to is the silent cry of death, which is happening all around the world. Happens all the time.

People die. The idea of justification by death is that every one of those people is going to go to heaven. That is not true. As much as we might like to hope for it. And the reason why I brought up the funeral home is because everybody says that.

I go in to meet with the family. Okay, we're going to talk about Johnny. Johnny died. Tell me about Johnny. Oh, Johnny was a good man. Johnny didn't give his shirt off his back. I can't. Everybody gives their shirt off their back.

I've never seen a person with no shirt on walking around, but everybody does it. Because that's what they always say. Johnny gives his shirt off his back. Johnny feed anybody, help anybody. Johnny, you know.

I don't know. Maybe Johnny was a good dude. But if he didn't have Jesus, he's lost. And that's the reality. So, universalism is justification by death. The second one, which is, I would say, even more prominent than universalism even though it is pretty common is what we call legalism.

Legalism is justification by works. Justification by works. Save the Lord from death. Well, you could put Catholics into that category in a sense that they do believe that there are certain things that have to be done.

You know, a lot of people, even people who call themselves Christians, fall into this category. Because they begin to put themselves into the category of do's rather than done's. And you say, what does that mean?

Well, the Bible tells us that what was done for our salvation is completed. Jesus said it is finished. It is done. D-O-N-E. But then you meet people and they say, well, this is what you've got to do.

And then you get into the religion of do rather than done. Rather than trusting in what Christ has done, it's about what you've got to do. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. You've got to do the other.

And there's all these things you've got to do. That is legalism. And here's how you know someone is a legalist. You say, if you died today and God said, why should I let you into heaven? And their answer is anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because here's their answer. Well, I'm a good person. God should let me into heaven because I'm a good person. That's justification by works, right? I'm a good person. God should let me in. Or they'll say, I went to church.

I was a member of 1st Baptist this. Or I was a member of 1st United Methodist that, right? I'm on the church roll. Justification by works. I took communion every Sunday for 40 years. Man, I got the blood of Jesus flowing through my veins.

Right? Again, justification by works. It's always something I did. Rather than the finished work of Christ. You are either trusting in the finished work of Christ or you're trusting in something that you have done.

And that's justification by.

Works. Yes? I knew a guy who had a scale tattooed on his chest. Like the scale of the and he goes, I don't believe in Christ. I don't believe in I'm not religious. I just know I believe that if I do more, I know I've done a lot of bad stuff.

That's why I do good stuff too. And so I know as long as I keep the scale balanced and maybe before I die, if I balance it a little bit more on the good side and the bad side, I know I'll make it. But when I was like, oh my gosh.

You know what's funny? Last Sunday in my sermon, I talked about that very thing. I talked about people who believe that there's a cosmic scale of justice. And as long as my good outweighs my bad, then I'm going to go to heaven.

Here's the problem with that from a legal perspective. Because God is just, right? What does just mean? God is righteous. He has a standard which is a legal righteous standard. If you spent all of your life being a choir boy, never did anything wrong.

You helped old ladies across the street. You fed the homeless. You did all these things. But one morning you woke up and you said, hey, you know what? I'm going to take this 9mm and BAM! Blow his brains out.

Guess what? You're still going to prison even if you lived 39 years as a good dude. That one example of your depravity is going to send you to jail. And no judge worth his salt is going to say, but you know what?

You did good for 39 years. That outweighs your bad. No, you're going to prison. Right?

And that's only one sin. That's a pretty big one. But.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever committed only one sin? No. Have you committed only five sins? How many years you lived? 41? 27. Okay, 27 years times 365 days. That's a lot of days. I can't even do the math.

If you only sin five times a day, you'd have hundreds of thousands of sins that you would have to account for. The idea that that's how God's going to judge us is our good outweighs our bad. That's not how justice works.

The Bible says even one sin separates us from God. This is why when Adam and Eve ate of the tree, it separated them from God. You say, well, it's such a small thing. It wasn't a small thing. It was high treason against the judge of the universe who gave them everything that they needed for joy and happiness and comfort and they spit in his face and they ate from the one tree he said do not eat from and why are we saying God is unjust?

No! They're unrighteous and they deserve anything God chooses to give to them. And the fact that he covered them in animal skins and he didn't destroy them the very moment that the fruit went down their throat is mere grace.

That's the point. Now I get excited about this. If the point is when we deal with the subject of justice, God is just and there's no scale because if there were, number one, your good's not going to outweigh your bad because the Bible says God knows the very intents of the heart.

So your good's not going to outweigh your bad but even if it did on some miracle it doesn't pay for your bad. Your sins have to be paid for by someone who never sinned. That's how Jesus can pay for your sins because he never sinned any of his own.

He didn't have to make atonement for himself because he was perfect. Alright, I didn't get all excited, sorry. I can't do that at church. I get to have fun with you guys. I teach the youth on Wednesday night.

I'd scare them all. I'd never have them come back. But you guys are adults. You're mature. And you're all men. I can talk about stuff here that I don't talk about with mixed company. Ladies get a little tender.

And that's fine. What's that? You said the mature thing. Well, I meant... Maybe not. We haven't matured. Number three is this one is kind of like a part almost like two but a little different. Number three is what I call religionism.

And this is justification by the church. Or you could put synagogue or the temple you know whatever. It's a form of justification by works, but it's more specific because these are the folks who would say, of course I'm saved.

I went forward and I received Jesus. But the life was not changed. There was no heart change. And you know there was no heart change because two weeks later they went back forward again. And then two weeks later they went back forward again.

And it's just over and over and over and over and there's no heart change. There's no life change. This is justification by I did what the church told me to do. Whatever it is. I took the sacraments. I went and got wet.

That's what most people do. Baptism is good, but some people just get wet. Right? So justification by church. When Jesus returns and He rides that white horse into this world and He splits the eastern sky and the sword comes out of His mouth and He comes to bring judgment against His enemies, He's not going to go down to Sister Sarah at the local church and say, Sister Sarah give me the church role.

I want to see who's mine. No, that ain't how it works. You can be a member of a church and still be lost. You can be doing the things that the church tells you to do and still be lost. And some people rely on their religious observances and they think that that is what saves them.

It's not. I wrote a church for Wednesdays and Sundays. Oh yeah. Absolutely. That's right. Yeah, a lot of people say that. I don't need the church. It's always something that they find in themselves. Something that I have done, whether it's I went to church, or I helped old ladies across the street, or I fed the homeless, or I was a Boy Scout, or I helped this person or that person.

It's always looking inward. I did this, or I did that. And these are all false views of justification because none of these will save. What?

I stayed sober and set free for five months.

Yeah, I stayed sober for five months. Right? Whatever. I want to present to you now that I've presented to you the false view, or at least some of them. We could spend all day looking at different perspectives.

But I've presented to you three false views of justification. Now I want to present to you the biblical view of justification. How is a sinful man made right with a holy God? And by the way, that word is justification.

No, no. We're talking about how is he made right? To be justified means to be declared righteous. Because what are we? We are sinful. How can we be made right with a holy God? We have to be made holy.

We have to be declared righteous. Right? We have to go from here to here. Right? And the only way to do that is through the process of justification and the Bible says we are justified not by works, not by religion, and not by simply living and dying, but we are justified by faith alone.

And I'm underscoring the word alone. The Latin is sola sola fide. Sola fide. You guys are familiar with the Marine Corps Semper Fidelis. Right? Which means what? Always faithful. Well, it's the same root.

Fidelis is the same root as fide. It means faith or faithful. And so we are saved, justified by faith alone. Open your Bibles with me. And we're going to look at two passages. This is here. What did he say?

Yeah. Yeah, it's over. That's right. Huh? Romans 4. Actually, let's go to Romans 3 21 and we'll read to Romans 4. We're going to read through the chapter. Romans 3 21. It says, but now, by the way, the first three chapters of Romans is all about how sinful we are.

Romans 1 talks about the sinfulness of the Gentiles. Romans 2 talks about the sinfulness of the Jews, those who had the law. Romans 3 brings it all together and says, what shall we say then? Are the Jews any better off?

No. They all are under sin. Everybody's a sinner. There's none righteous. No, not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. This again. Sinful man. How is a sinful man made right with the Holy God?

Right here. Verse 21. But now, the righteousness of God is manifested 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.

Through what? Through faith. In who? In Jesus Christ. Understand this. Faith requires an object. People will say, I believe. What do you believe in? I don't know. But I believe. You think I'm lying. I'm telling you.

I go out and talk to people. Do you believe? Yes, I believe. What? I don't know. I just know I gotta believe something and God's not gonna care as long as I'm sincere. You know what I say to that? I say the guys who flew in planes under those buildings were pretty sincere.

They believe what they were doing. Sincerity don't make you right. So don't tell me that sincerity is what saves you. It's not. Your faith must have an object. And that object must be able to hold you up.

If I said I believe in this chair and the chair is made out of toothpicks and hot glue, my big old behind's going on the ground because my faith doesn't save me what I put my faith in saves me. And if the chair can't hold me, then I'm out of luck.

That's why it says here that it is the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. Not just faith, but through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction for all who have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift.

Very important word there is the word gift because salvation cannot be earned. In fact, the very thing Paul tells us is that if you try to earn your salvation, then it becomes a wage. He says the wages of sin is death.

But the gift of God is eternal life. It's not a wage. You don't earn it. You receive it by faith. You don't earn it by works. Very important distinction. That's right, because you didn't earn it, so it's given.

And you don't deserve it. Amen. So verse 24, "...and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.".

What does the word propitiation mean? Well, that's substitution and it's similar. You're on the right track. It is the word propitiation means to satisfy someone. So let's say I owe a debt to you. Let's say you let me borrow $100, right?

And I pay off the debt. I satisfy the debt. Is that almost like probation? Not exactly. Propitious means to satisfy or appease. It sounds similar, but it's not exactly the same. So as long as my debt is against you, you have something against me.

You have a debt against me, right? But when I pay you, it satisfies you. There's no longer odds against us because you've been paid. We have a sin debt against God. Jesus dies on the cross and He pays the debt for us and satisfies God's wrath.

God's wrath is satisfied by the death of Christ. That's propitiation. The debt's paid. The satisfaction is made. You know what the book of Isaiah chapter 53 says? It says it pleased God to strike His Son.

It says it pleased God to strike Him. You say, why in the world would it please God to strike Christ? Because in striking His Son, He doesn't have to strike us. Because Christ takes the stripes that we deserve.

Christ becomes the one to take our punishment. That's why Isaiah 53 says, by His stripes we are healed. He takes the punishment. All our iniquities are laid upon Him. Isaiah 53 written 700 years before Jesus came and it was about the coming of Christ and what He would do on the cross.

By His stripes we are healed. So Jesus produces this propitiation. This is what it says. It says, who God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness.

How is it showing 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 just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Let me tell you something. Verse 26. Underline it. Highlight it. Do whatever you got to do. Make a note in your Bible that the phrase that God is just and the justifier is so important because here's the thing.

God is the judge and He demands that sin be punished. That's how He's just. But He allows the sin to be punished through a substitute who is Jesus. That's how He becomes the justifier. So God doesn't give up His justice.

He allows His justice to be poured out on a substitute who takes it willingly. Jesus, the Bible says, came to do the will of the Father. He came to save us from our sins. He came willingly to do what only He could do.

Live a perfect life. Die a substitutionary death. And that's how substitution comes in. He substitutes for us and becomes the appeasement or the satisfaction for our sins. So Jesus is now our Savior through His work of propitiation and that is how God gets to remain just but also merciful.

The just and the justifier. God gets to be both. Oh, sorry. No, it's fine. I just couldn't hear who it was. Our sins, right? I would say more specifically for believers, but yes. Why is there still sin, it seems like, on the earth?

We live in a world which has been corrupted by sin. Christ came to save His people from the penalty of their sin and one day He will save us from the presence of sin, but that is not yet. His first coming saves us from the penalty of sin.

His second coming saves us from the presence of sin. That's what we're looking forward to. That's what the Bible calls the beatific hope. The beatific hope is the hope of blessing. The hope of one day a world without sin.

In fact, we sing a song. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning it is now and ever shall be world without end Amen, Amen. We're looking forward to how it was in the beginning because in the beginning there was no sin.

We're looking forward for the paradise restored. Right? There was paradise. Paradise lost. That's the story of the Bible. Paradise. Paradise lost. That's where we are now and we're looking forward to the restoration of what God had in the beginning.

It was corrupted by sin, but it won't always be that way. Sorry to get all into singing, but sometimes I can't think of the words when I was singing them out. But the point is we look forward to that world without end.

That's that paradise to come. You were going to say? So right now Jesus justified we're being sanctified. Glorification's on the way. Right now we're in sanctification. And we may die before it happens.

I mean, Jesus may not come back for another hundred years. And if He waits another hundred years, we'll all be gone. Unless we live to be very old men, which I don't expect. That's why I always tell people, people always ask me about end times.

I say, you're in the end times. Because even if Jesus doesn't come back for another thousand years, you're going to die in the next hundred. You're in your own end times. Everybody right now is in their own end times.

You've got less than 80 years probably to go. For me, I'm 41 years old. I'm more than halfway there, I'm sure. If I live to over 80 with this body, I will be amazed. And so therefore, I know, I'm looking forward to my end time.

I think about it all the time. It's coming. So celestial bodies.

It's like whatever you feel, you're going to feel that. Right? It's that indestructible body.

Celestial bodies. Are you talking about um Are you talking about our glorified bodies? I think they'll be physical. I don't think they're going to be just spiritual. I think they'll be a physical body and a physical new earth.

So yeah, we'll have feeling. I think it's going to be a lot like Eden. I don't think it'll be exactly like Eden. I think it'll be better. The picture that we get in Revelation, Revelation 21 and 22 is of a new paradise, a new Edenic state, but it's it's better than Eden.

But it's like Eden in the sense Adam had a body that was physical. He could eat, he could drink, he could enjoy life and he had no desire for sin. You know? Which is amazing because he still sins, which is weird.

But in the new heaven, there's no opportunity for sin. There's no opportunity for that. Alright. So I kind of lost where I was. Okay. Alright. So when we look at Romans 3 it tells us that we're justified through faith.

And this is where the if you ask anybody they'll say, yeah, sure, we can be justified by faith but that's not all we're saying. We're saying justified by faith alone. Not just by faith, but by faith only.

Not by faith plus anything else. In fact, there's a, you've probably seen this before, but just in case you haven't there's a little math thing. You say Jesus plus nothing equals salvation. Jesus plus anything else equals being lost.

Because you can't add anything to Christ. You either trust completely in what He has done alone or you're lost. And that's what people want to add. They want to add, well, yeah, I believe in Jesus, but I also believe I did good works I did this.

This is why I asked that question. If you died today and you faced God and you went into the throne room of God and God said, why should I let you into heaven? If it's anything other than Jesus if it's anything other than the finished work of Christ, then you're trusting in the wrong thing.

That's the scary part because people want to add things to what Christ has done. You don't need to, you need to trust Him. Yes. That's right. Absolutely. It becomes all about Him. And then your life changes because your life becomes all about Him.

The one who set me free. The one who loves me and saved me. He's my Savior, but He also becomes the captain of my ship. He's the head of my personal army. He's the captain of my eternity. He's everything to me.

That's right. If it weren't for Christ, I would be lost. Therefore, people say, this is why Jesus says that my commands are not burdensome. Why does He say my commands are not burdensome? Because when you realize how much He loved you, that He came to die for you, anything He asked for you is not too much.

Anything He asked from you is not too much. That's why He says when you put your hand to the plow, you don't look back. Why? Because you've got your eyes set on the One who saved you. And you know what He said?

He said, remember Lot's wife? You know why He said, remember Lot's wife? Because she had the opportunity to be saved. The angels were pulling her out of Sodom and said, go towards the mountain. Don't even look back.

Go towards the mountain. But her heart was set in the world. Her heart was set in Sodom. Jesus said, remember her. Because she did not keep her eyes on God, but she set her eyes on the world. Boy, I mean, just a powerful thought, right?

Jesus said, follow me. Genesis 19, yeah. That's right. That's right. We focus on the water rather than on Jesus. Alright, so I want to show you one other passage if you have your Bibles. Go to Galatians 2.

I'm sorry, Galatians 3. Galatians 3, 5. Because I'm making the argument that we're saved by faith alone. Go to Galatians 3. Well, we got out of Romans 3. Romans 4 continues Romans 3 and it goes on to talk about how Abraham was saved by faith alone.

That's the point I was going to make and I'm sorry, you're right, I should have read on. He says, how was Abraham saved? Was he saved by what he did or was he saved by faith? And he quotes Genesis 15, 6.

Genesis 15, 6 is one of the most important Old Testament passages because it says this, Abraham believed God and he was counted righteous. Abraham believed God and he was counted righteous. How was Abraham saved?

By faith alone. He believed what God told him and he was counted righteous. Okay, now we get to Galatians Notice what he says, beginning in verse 5. Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Again, citing Genesis 15, 6. Know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham and the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying in you shall all the nations of the world be blessed.

So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham the man of faith. For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. For as it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide in all the things written in the book of the law and do them.

Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith. That's it. That's it. Now before I answer your question, let me just say something very important here.

He says this. He says we are saved by faith. He doesn't use the word alone but notice he's not giving anything else to go with it. So that's why we stress the idea of faith alone. We are not saved by anything but our trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now does that change our life? Absolutely. Does that change who we are? As I just said, hand of the plow, looking at the Savior, following the captain of our salvation. Absolutely. James talks about this.