Justification By Faith & Peace with God , Pt. 2

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Is Protestantism Heresy? Pt. 3 - The Pope | Collision w/ Jeff Durbin

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If you would open your Bibles to Romans chapter three, Romans chapter three,

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New Testament book, after the book of Acts and the Gospels. As you get there, we call this often the

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Apostle Paul's inspired systematic explanation of the gospel.

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If you wanna know what the New Testament church about the good news and peace with God and how

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God has accomplished this in history, you can't do better than understanding Romans.

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Not very long, I encourage you to bury this book into your hearts and minds. Romans is the

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Apostle Paul's explanation, systematic explanation of the good news. In Romans chapter three, we're gonna just read a single verse here as a start.

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Starting in verse 27, Romans 3, 27. Hear now the word of the living and the true

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God. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.

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By what kind of law? By law of works? No, but by the law of faith.

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For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together as God's people. Lord, thank you for the gift of your word.

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Lord, we recognize that we're creatures and that this is the word of the transcendent, holy, everlasting, incomprehensible

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God. But we know that when you've spoken, God, you've spoken with clarity.

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We can know what to believe. These are the words of God.

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And so, Lord, we trust you. We ask that you would, by your spirit, please teach us. Guard us from error.

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Make us passionate about your glory and your gospel. Renew within us,

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God, a love for you, a love for your gospel.

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And, Father, please, by your spirit, a love for the lost. I pray with all of my heart,

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God, through this message about your gospel and justification that you would allow these words to go forth from your people like fire and that the world would be wood, that the world would be filled, as you promised, with the knowledge of God, like the waters cover the sea.

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We know that, God, you do that through your gospel. So we pray that you'd put it on our lips and let it go forth from us with power and passion.

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We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. There it is, Romans 328.

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Now, we're gonna get to it in a moment. We had last week's message laying some foundations about why this is such a vitally important topic, the topic of justification by faith alone and Christ alone.

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But today we're unpacking the text and now we're in the middle of the apostle Paul explaining the gospel.

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He's just explained how is it that God can be holy and we're sinners, everybody's a sinner,

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Jew and Gentile, none righteous, not one. How is it that God can remain just and be the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus?

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How is that possible? He just explained Christ and his work on the cross, the meaning behind this symbol behind us and on my chest right now.

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Why is this something that brings us to peace with God? Paul's explained that and he said that it's never been by works, it never could be by works.

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The works that we do in the law, they expose our own sin because we see that we are sinners and in light of the law, we violated

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God's law, we rebel against God, we're not righteous, not good, but not one of us and then

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Paul explains it's all a gift of God's grace through faith in Jesus. This is something that God has done.

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He is the one who's accomplished it. He's the one that gets the glory for it. This is all the work of God, it's not in us, it's not because of us, there's nothing in us and so it sort of brings us to a place where we realize

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I don't have anything to do with this. This is all of God, it's all faith and so Paul says on the tail end of that discussion,

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Romans 328, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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Now we oftentimes can talk about the gospel by way of eternal life, we can say that.

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Jesus uses that terminology a lot. Just read the Gospel of John, you won't get 10 chapters in without seeing it over and over and over.

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Eternal life, eternal life, believe in Christ, eternal life, we can see also that it's described by way of salvation, right?

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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. So we have eternal life described, saved described but for the

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Apostle Paul, he centers in upon the key issue of justification which is within it the same word that's used in just and righteous, same word, the dig word group in the

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Greek. It's all there, so Paul's explaining how can God who is righteous say that somebody that is not righteous is righteous?

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And so Paul then says, we maintain, we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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Now this is key, he has just explained the law can justify nobody, it never has.

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And now he says, and this is how God has done it through the cross of Jesus and it's all a gift and so he says, we maintain, who's we?

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Do you ever stop to consider that? The Apostle Paul, an inspired apostle, once tried to destroy the

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Christian faith, he confesses that in Galatians, he tried to destroy the faith, he was opposed to the Christian faith, he wasn't open -minded to the message of Jesus.

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He has an encounter with Jesus Christ, sees him alive from the dead, his life's totally transformed and now he goes into spending his life preaching the gospel and now he's seen as one among the apostles who is an inspired apostle.

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The Apostle Peter refers to Paul's writings as scripture. He talks about untaught and unstable men who twist the scriptures, distort the scriptures, but he's referring to Paul's writings.

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So Paul is seen in the early church as giving the very words of God and this is his summary statement after he explains grace, grace, faith, faith, not by the law, he says, we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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You'll oftentimes hear in our communion, in our tradition, you'll hear us talking about the solas.

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Solus Christus, Christ alone. Sola gratia, grace alone. Sola fide, faith alone.

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And you might ask the question, we're like, well, where's that doctrine come from? Well, it comes from the very beginning of the Bible and it's throughout the

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Bible and during the time of the Reformation when they were really trying to dig down on the defense of the gospel, they of course talked about faith alone, faith alone.

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And so I'm gonna ask the question, where does the Bible teach faith alone? Well, I would say in so many places, but in particular, if you want a place where Paul teaches the doctrine explicitly,

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Romans 328. We maintain, who's we? Him, the apostles, the leadership of the early church, the early

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Christians, we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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So we have faith and we have works, faith and works. There's a dispute amongst the religions of men, faith plus works.

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Is it half faith, half works? Is it a combination of the two in some sense? Is it just works?

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We gotta pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, as people say, and we gotta live righteous enough so God accepts us throughout our lives?

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Or is it faith? Paul says, you've got faith, you've got works. Works of the law. Faith over here, works.

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We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. What is faith apart from the works of the law?

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What is it standing by itself? What is it? Faith alone, sola fide.

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Here's the apostle Paul explaining the gospel and saying justification is through faith and faith alone.

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He's just taken pains to explain that it's a gift of God's grace. You can't earn this. There's nothing in you that's gonna accomplish this.

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It is faith apart from the works of the law. Let us stand with the inspired apostle who says, we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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That is the heart of the gospel. Now, here's what

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I wanna do. There's a way to do this discussion via necessary proof texting.

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And what I mean by that is the doctrine of justification by faith is so filled throughout the entire scriptures that it is possible to simply say, here's the doctrine of justification by faith and here are a bunch of different proof texts that demonstrate that doctrine.

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And that's semi -appropriate to do at times to give somebody a listing of proof texts to say, here's your texts that prove the doctrine.

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They're all in context. Go make sure they're in context, all the rest. But what I would rather do is if it's my duty as your brother and as your pastor to serve you and to teach you so that you know this truth,

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I think the better thing for me to do is actually to walk us through the apostle Paul's argument so that we understand why we believe it.

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Not via proof text, but to say, follow the apostle Paul's argument through. And so to that we go today.

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So here's what we're gonna do. We're not gonna read through all of Romans. We can't do that. But let's just pick up in chapter three and talk about briefly the context.

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What has, this is, I want you to join in today. Don't be too disruptive, but just help me here. What has happened in the first three chapters as we're in Romans, the first three chapters,

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Paul gets to the third chapter here. What has he done in the first three chapters before this?

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Let me just, we'll do it by raising a hand. Let's make sure we're all in this. What has he done? You gotta say it nice and loud, like a preacher.

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Be like Whitfield. He shuts the mouth of everyone who says that they're good enough.

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How's he do it? Louder. Whitfield, Whitfield.

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There you go. He establishes that it's both the Jew and the Greek. To the Jewish first century mind, that's the world, right?

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That's Jew and Gentile, that's Jews and every other tribe. That's everybody else. It's a way, it's a loose way of saying the whole world.

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In chapter one, he's indicted all of humanity and he says that everyone knows the true God. They don't want to know

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God. They don't want him in their knowledge. They don't want to think about him, Romans one. They suppress the truth in what?

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Unrighteousness, that's an active holding down of the truth and then they switch God for the false

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God because they'd rather worship something that looks like them than the true God. The reason why is not because there's a lack of evidence for this

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God, it's because they literally hate him. It says in Romans one, they are enemies of God, haters of God.

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And that's the identification of humanity. And of course, in chapter two,

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Paul does what? He deals with the Jewish person who thinks because they simply have the oracles of God, they've got the scriptures, that they're right in God's eyes because they're

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Jewish and they've got the Bible. They could say, oh yes, Paul, get those awful

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Gentiles, those haters of God, those people who are separate from you, they're enemies of you, those pagan idolaters who worship the creation rather than the creator and Paul turns his argument on them.

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And he says, you don't do it either. You tell people not to steal and what do you do?

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You steal, you tell people not to do this and you do it as well. So he says, you're not going to be justified because you simply have the law, you'd have to actually do what's in the law to be justified by it and the answer is, you don't.

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Nobody does and so now Paul has taken his hand, he's wiped out the Gentile world, he's wiped out the

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Jewish world and he's shown that every single one of us is level at the foot of the cross. All have sinned, that's

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Romans three, right here. Verse nine of chapter three says, what then, are we

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Jews any better off? No, not at all for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin as it is written and here's

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Paul. Ready, this is key, don't lose this. Here's Paul now showing you that his gospel, his explanation of how we have peace with God is not some weird

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Christian novelty. This isn't some new thing. Paul's demonstrating that this is what the scriptures have always said about us.

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The first century Jew had missed that. They thought they had some special place with God because they were born physically

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Jewish in this Jewish line with Jewish parents, with a Jewish upbringing, going to synagogue and they actually get to hear these scrolls when they're unraveled and the word of Yahweh preached them.

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They thought, hey, God trusted us with his word, that makes us pretty special. See, we are, in God's eyes, very special and in some ways you could argue that, of course, the chosen people of God, I get it, but God didn't choose them based upon their good works.

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He didn't choose them based upon their blood and their flesh, it was all a gift of his grace and so Paul now pulls this katina of verses from the

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Old Testament, he pulls it together now and he has this stream demonstrating to the

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Jewish person and to the Gentile, we're all a mess, we've got nothing and so he says, none is righteous, no, not one.

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Now, here's the danger, here's the danger. You're in the context that we're in today where we've tried to consistently proclaim the gospel, we've tried to consistently talk about the gospel and at times you could hear these verses and it just becomes rote, right?

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It's just sort of, I know that verse, you just don't think about the implications, you're not letting the weight of it really set, right?

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It sort of goes over the head. None is righteous, no, not one. Paul didn't need the rest of the verses.

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This explains the gospel well enough. There's none righteous, no, not even one. So nobody is righteous in God's eyes.

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So how in the world, explain, does a holy God now declare people who are not righteous to be righteous, to be continued?

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Paul's gonna explain that. There is none righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God, nobody.

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And here we are, a room full of believers who love Jesus, people who profess the faith in Jesus Christ, confess him as Lord, wanna honor him, wanna glorify him, wanna pursue him.

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How'd you get there? How'd you get there? Why are you in this room right now?

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See, we lie to ourselves about God as being far off, not concerned with us. We lie to ourselves and we paint the portrait of God as some absentee landlord because the text says there's not anyone righteous and no one seeks for God.

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And here we have people all over the world today worshiping the true and living God because of Christ, who pursue

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Christ, however messy it is. You love God, you're pursuing

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God, you're seeking God. How'd you get there? It's all of grace, that's Paul's point.

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All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave.

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They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

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Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery. And the way of peace they have not known.

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There is no fear of God before their eyes. Here's what I love. I do, I really love this.

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Did you notice that in this section where you have a universal indictment upon everybody, that's me and you and your children and your parents, nobody is missed by this.

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The target is landed squarely on each and every one of us. Do you notice that in this universal indictment there's not a specific catalog of sins, right?

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Like your particular favorite sin. It's not the category of, and these are the lists of their particular sins.

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It's a generalization that is a full indictment upon everybody and it's complete.

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It lays everybody low. Not righteous, not one.

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No one seeks for God. Ruin and misery, poison of asps. No fear of God before their eyes.

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That's everything. That's you, the adulterer. That's you, the drug addict.

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That's you, the drunkard. That's you, the liar. That's you, the person who is consumed by lust.

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That's you, the covetor. That's you, the thief. That's you, the murderous person. That's you, the disobedient wife.

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That's you, the unloving husbands. That's you, the disobedient child. See, there's ways you can actually bring out the different lists of sin, but here we have the apostle

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Paul just generalizing, saying it's worse than you think. It's not just anyone's particular sins.

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And I do love that in the ministry of Jesus too. You've heard me say this before, right? When Jesus has crowds of people come to him, one of my very favorite things is he's not highlighting the special nature of their sin.

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Like he doesn't say, okay, I have a crowd of 5 ,000 here. Can I have all my drunkards sit over here to my left?

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All my liars, I want my liars right here. I want all my adulterers to sit in this group over here.

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But see, we love to create special little groups to say that our sin is really special, right?

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Our sin is really special. Ours, you just wouldn't understand. I'll tell you, you're probably wondering what exactly you mean.

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The area of addiction, the area of addiction. We just think we're so special.

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You don't really understand my struggle. You don't understand I have the disease of addiction.

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You don't understand my special group. We struggle in a way that takes some extra special sauce.

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Like this takes some extra work and we need to go beyond the Bible and the gospel and Christian discipleship because our sin is really special.

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Were there drunks in Jesus' day? Were there drug addicts in Jesus' day? Oh, you bet there were, absolutely.

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And yet Jesus doesn't sit people down in the category of their really special struggle.

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He just simply deals with people as sinners and as lost. And he says, come to him for the waters of life.

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And here Paul follows in that with this general indictment. You're all not righteous. You're all not good.

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In no way are you seeking God. And yet he has the message of salvation.

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So he says, verse 19, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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So Paul is giving you an explanation here about what the law can do. Here's what it can do for the

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Jew and Gentile, ready? Shut your mouth. It'll shut you up. Everybody who wants to brag on their good deeds, who thinks in some way that God accepts them because they're obedient in some way to his law, to whatever degree, the apostle

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Paul here shows that the law will only do for the person who is not righteous. What they really should be fearful of and that's shut your mouth.

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It'll close your mouth because you take a look at the perfect law of God and you see his righteousness.

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You see his perfect love and you see his standards. And what does it show? It shows that you are not loving. It shows that you are not just.

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It shows that you are the liar. It shows that you are the adulterer. It shows that you are the murderer at heart.

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It shows that you are the idolater. It shows all your sin. The law is only gonna indict you.

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What we should say if we truly understand God is holiness and the gospel itself is

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God, I don't want your law in my works on display to any degree.

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May it only be Jesus. May it only be his righteousness forever and in every way.

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The apostle Paul says, the law will shut your mouth. Now real fast, this is a side note for those of you guys that love to talk about deep theological things in terms of the law of God.

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Does it say that the law of God will shut the mouth of the Jew or what does he say?

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The whole world may be held accountable to God.

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So today when people try to negate the use of the law of God to say somehow, well that was for Israel.

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That was just for Israel or those are particulars for Israel and Israel's time. It's not an indictment upon humanity universally.

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It actually says here that the whole world may be held accountable to God. The law of God will be used to indict all of humanity because it expresses the very character of God.

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It says this in verse 20, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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What do you and I get when we look at the law of God? We get a little surgery, right?

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We get a little digging in to show we're broken. We're sinners. We need

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Christ and Paul's point there is that through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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He says this, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, there it is, it's not new what

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I'm saying to you. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who, what?

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What's the word? All who believe. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

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Very important words here. If we're not righteous and we need a declaration of righteousness, we need to be justified.

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How does it take place? Paul says you are justified. You are declared righteous by his grace as a gift.

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It's not as easy to see in the English, but basically if you look in the Greek language,

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Paul is stuttering here. You've heard me say this before. He's repeating himself. He's basically saying it's a gift gift.

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You are declared righteous as a gift gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

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Redemption, that language is buying something, purchasing something and the transaction is complete.

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You are redeemed. I've taken you out of slavery. I've freed you. You are redeemed.

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I've purchased you. The transaction is complete. So God's people are not seen as righteous, declared righteous through the law.

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The law exposes your sin. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and you're justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. Stop. When the

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New Testament uses the terminology by his blood or uses the word blood, it's shorthand for his death, that great exchange, his dying.

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by what?

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By what? Faith. Faith in works, faith in obedience, to be received by faith.

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

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

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So what has Paul done here? He's given the universal indictment. You're all done. Okay, that's a problem.

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So what do I do? Fix myself, obey God's law. He says the law will only shut you up. It'll only expose your sin.

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And so what God has done in Christ is provided redemption. You're enslaved to your sin. You're lost.

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You're dead in your sin and trespasses. You've fallen short of the glory of God. And so God has provided a way through that cross and that death for God's wrath to pass over you, to maneuver away from you, to be fully absorbed and exhausted in Jesus so that he could declare you just, so that he could declare you righteous through faith in Jesus Christ.

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And so watch, this puts a little bit of a prick into the person that thinks that somehow through obedience to law in whatever degree that they're gonna be right with God, he says, then what becomes of our boasting?

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It is excluded. By what kind of law? By law of works? No, but by the law of faith.

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And here's where he gets to the verse we were at today. We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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

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Since God is one, he will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

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Now, pause, because this is key. What is the automatic response to somebody hearing what

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Paul just said? I want you to imagine or think back to the times where you've given somebody the gospel and you've explained that this is a gift of God's grace.

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It's eternal life through faith in Jesus. Repent and believe the gospel. You will have peace with God.

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You'll have the gift of eternal life. When you preach that and you say it's not through your good works, it's not through your obedience, what's the first response of the religious -minded person who thinks that somehow their peace with God comes through their obedience?

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What do they say? So you're saying we don't have to obey God's law, right?

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Your message is this message of grace and it's free grace and it's a gift of God.

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And so what, we can just sin all we want and just not obey God's law? Or, or, this is worse to my mind because we're dealing with it in droves today, the modern evangelical in the

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West who thinks that because we have this gospel of grace and peace with God through faith, that the law of God is somehow defunct.

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It's over. It's no longer necessary. We have the big meany God of the Old Testament.

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He's all about law and justice and righteousness. And then you've got

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Jesus who comes along and he saves us from the big mean law God, right?

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The law doesn't matter anymore. We're saved by grace. The law is irrelevant. We're saved by grace.

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Is that where Paul lands after he explains we're saved by grace through faith in Christ apart from the works of the law?

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How does he end this discussion? He knows they're in the background. He's dealt with them.

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And if you preach the gospel faithfully, so have you. If you preach it faithfully, then you will be like Paul in having that person say, oh, what, so now we don't obey the law because we're saved by grace?

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Paul then says, verse 31, do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

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By no means. On the contrary, we establish the law.

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Let that set, especially in the context we live in today.

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The discussion, listen, this is important. The discussion about theonomy today is in a really good place.

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And what I mean by that is 12 years ago, 13 years ago, we were preaching this.

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We were teaching the goodness of God's law and how do you apply God's standards to our families today in modern society today?

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And I gotta tell you about maybe eight years ago, we were in a period of like being really vilified because Apologia Church is that church that believes in theonomy and that God's law has abiding relevance today.

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And I love the fact that now it's like the big topic of discussion. Like, wait a second, like what are the limits of civil government?

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And these are actually good laws that God has given to us. And this is actually a good standard of justice.

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What we've been saying, and we're only standing on the shoulders of giants, believe me, we're not the first to do it.

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The Puritans, you've got Rush Dooney, Greg Bonson, we have some giants behind us. What we've been saying is we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus alone.

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And now we are new creations, the law of God's now within us and now God's people want to obey

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God's law. We love the law of God, which God says is eternal and it is good.

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Are there differences in the law of God and its administration from the Old Testament to today?

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Yeah, like for example, yesterday, I ate a lot of bacon, praise God for bacon, okay?

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Right, glory hallelujah to bacon, right? Thank you God for bacon, praise God for bacon.

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Shrimp, not so much for me, but you guys go to town, right, whatever. Like, do we have a temple today that we go to and offer sacrifices?

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Nope. Do we do a lot of the ceremonial stuff that was pointing towards Christ? Nope, why not?

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Because it's fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Of course, that part of the law of God is different in the new covenant administration, but guess what?

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We still have a sacrifice, we still have a high priest, we still have a temple in the new covenant, don't we? Don't we?

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But now it's eternal, it's in the heavens. Now it can't be shaken. Now we've got a law not on stone tablets outside of us, but now it's written within us.

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God himself wrote it there. God lives within us. We have a desire to do it. But the point is, is Paul's gospel isn't a antinomian message.

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It's not a lawless message. You can be saved, Paul says, by grace through faith alone in Christ.

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And now, because that grace, you now uphold the law.

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The law doesn't save you, it's just gonna show you your sin, but because of this grace, you now uphold the law.

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That's how Paul explains it. So then Paul goes on to explain justification in history and today.

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Are you ready? Again, I wanted to walk you through it so you see these are Paul's words, these are his thoughts.

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In chapter four, after he just explained that we now uphold the law because of this grace, he then says, verse one, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh?

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For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

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What does the scripture say? Now he quotes from what they would all know and understand from Genesis 15.

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What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, credited to him as righteousness.

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So here's Paul's point. Are you ready for this? Here it is. This is not a novelty. This is

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God's story of redemption. We're just part of this one stream, this one story of redemption that God is doing in the world.

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And his point is, is this is how God has always saved people. If you think that you're a beneficiary of the promises to Abraham, then you need to have the same means of salvation as Abraham.

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And Paul's point is this. How was Abraham declared righteous?

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How? It says this. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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In verse four. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

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Why make that point? Why make the point? Here's why. Because in context, he just explained that this gospel, this salvation that's attested to by the law and the prophets is a gift, gift.

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Redemption by his grace as a gift. And so Paul's point is this.

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If you are working for this salvation, if you're working to be declared righteous before God, if you're working for it, then

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Paul says, that's not a gift. That's a wage. You're earning something.

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And his point is this. The salvation that were promised from Abraham is a gift kind of salvation.

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If you're trying to earn it, it's a wage. And he says this. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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Now, this separates the gospel and the gift of eternal life from everybody else's message.

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Don't miss it. Ready? What's his point? If you're working for it, it's not a gift.

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It's not grace. It's a wage. And here's the offensive thing he says to the person that actually thinks so little of the holiness of God and so high of their own righteousness to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

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Now, how many of you guys are carrying an ESV right now? ESV? The ESV says the word ungodly.

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It's right. It's good. It's not wrong. It's good. But there are other English translations where we could fully understand, like, what do you really mean ungodly?

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Some of the older translations use the word what? Anyone know? Wicked. Wicked.

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Because when I, look, let's be honest, in terms of like the capital each word carries, the punch it carries, if I say, well, you're ungodly, that's one thing.

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It's a strike, right? It hurts. But if I say you are wicked, that's like, whoop, that's up here.

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That's what Paul says. Another way of saying it in the English is he justifies the wicked.

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Now, if you know your heart, you know your life, your thought life, you know your whole life, you know that's you.

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And here's the thing. Listen, if you don't think that about yourself outside of Jesus, if you don't think that's a proper assessment, then you haven't fully understood the holiness of God.

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You don't understand the necessity of that cross. You don't understand your own sin because the truth of the matter is outside of Jesus, we're wicked.

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That's the assessment. So Paul says he justifies the wicked. He justifies the wicked.

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His faith is counted as righteousness. Now Paul goes, that's how God saved

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Abraham. Now he goes, let me get to the other heavy hitter now. The other famous one in our story,

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King David. He says, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

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Pause, grab hold of it. Don't miss it because it's everything, not just about how we're saved, how we're justified, but how you will continuously walk with God with peace.

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David speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God credits, counts righteousness apart from works.

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So ready? There is a positive counting you as righteous apart from anything you've done.

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God says, you're not righteous in yourself. That's not a real assessment of you. You're not obedient, you're not faithful, but I will count you as righteous apart from any of your works.

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That's the gospel. That's how we have peace with God. And then Paul says this, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

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Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

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So think about even the messages today of religious movements that co -opt

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Christian language, counterfeit Christianity, talk about gospel, talk about atonement, and still want you to enter into this hamster wheel of works and obedience to sacraments, this sacrament, that sacrament.

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Oh, I've lost my justification. Oh, I need to get it back. If I cooperate and obey enough, if I receive the grace and cooperate, maybe

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I can get back to this state where God and I are okay again. Maybe I can obey just enough.

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Maybe I've only sinned a little and God will, he'll be kind to me because it's only a little sin, but I'm more righteous than I am unrighteous.

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We have religions all around us that borrow the Christian story of the cross and the resurrection and the ascension, and they still tell you that God will count your sins against you.

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When you think about fictions like purgatory and things like this, that somehow somebody could trust in Jesus Christ, receive his grace, and then die and have to have those sins dealt with over time, burned off, or going through punishments because Christ's atonement was not enough.

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Here's Paul's gospel. God justifies the wicked. Apart from their works, God counts you righteous.

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Apart from your works. And if you're in Jesus, you are the blessed man. You're the blessed woman.

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You're the blessed child. He will never count your sins against you. Your lawless deeds have been forgiven.

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He will never hold your sins against you. Now, before I go on, do you believe that?

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Do you trust him? Because me reading this, only genuinely has meaning for you if your eyes have been opened to this truth, your heart has been opened, and you've been crushed by the weight of your own sin, and you realize the glory of Jesus Christ and his atonement in this grace.

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If you have never understood the gospel and how free this grace is, and how permanent this salvation is, if you've never understood it,

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I'm gonna call you to turn from your sin, from where you sit, and put your faith in Christ and in Christ alone and what he's done for sinners.

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That's the call of the gospel. And if you are in Christ and you're trusting in him, then let me challenge you with something.

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And me, this is for all of us. Is this really, do we live in the light of this every day?

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Have you lost your passion for the peace you have with God? Have you lost your passion in eternal life?

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Have you lost your passion for the lost and this glorious message of God's grace?

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I pray that God would restore you and us if that is the case, because God loves you.

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God loves you. And can I, I wanna just, I wanna say this. This has been on my heart for the last two weeks.

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It is common in reformed communions, because we so want to preserve the grace of God in the gospel.

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We so want to properly illustrate the sinfulness of humanity. It is, and we so often want to express what the

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Bible teaches about total inability, total depravity, that it's often in reformed communions, we talk about ourselves in ways that are not actually true, right?

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Like, can I just express what I mean by that? You'll hear the common terminology in reformed communions of, oh,

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I'm such a wretch, and I am, I'm this, I'm the wretch, and I'm depraved, and I'm this.

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Is that true of you in Christ? It's true of you outside of Christ. Practically speaking, yeah, you're a wretch.

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Practically speaking, you're not righteous. But is that true of you in Jesus Christ? Is it true?

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In the Father's eyes, are you the wretch? Come on, you should be able to answer this easily.

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Are you the wretch in the Father's eyes? No. Are you the depraved in the

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Father's eyes? Are you the child of wrath in the Father's eyes? What are you? You're the righteous in the

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Father's eyes. You're a saint in the Father's eyes. You're the child of God in the Father's eyes. You're loved by God in the

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Father's eyes. We need to be talking more in reformed communions about what's true of us with our identity in Jesus.

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Yes, it's true that outside of Jesus, I'm the wretch, I'm the wicked one. I was by nature a child of wrath.

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All that's true, but it isn't true in God's eyes. He doesn't see you as the wretch.

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If he did, you'd be lost. He does not hold your sin against you. He doesn't count you as guilty ever.

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That's the truth. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Blessed is the man against whom the

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Lord will not count your sin. For the murderers in here, you will never be counted guilty as a murderer in God's eyes, ever.

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For the liars in here, you will never be counted guilty by the Father for your lies. For the adulterers, you'll never be counted guilty.

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For the unfaithful, you'll never be counted guilty. He's covered your sin. He will never hold it against you.

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He counts you as righteous. That's the glorious gospel, and it's all of his grace. So then

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Paul says, ready, this is key. Is this blessing, verse nine, then only on the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised?

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For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him?

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Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

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He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

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The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father

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Abraham had before he was circumcised. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

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For if it is the adherence of the law, who are to be heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.

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For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. Here's the point.

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For the apostle Paul, this is his message on justification related to Abraham. You really wanna be a child of Abraham?

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You have to have the same faith as Abraham. How is Abraham justified? By faith. When did it take place?

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Paul said, was it after he was justified or after he was circumcised or before?

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Paul says, before circumcision. And Paul goes on to make a point that he was justified before the law was even given.

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So he believed God and he was counted as righteous. Because of what?

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Faith. Faith. Was it anything in him? Nothing in him. And Paul's whole argument is that if you want to be an heir, you have to have the same faith as Abraham, justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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And then he goes on in chapter five. I just wanna give you some highlights of his discussion. In chapter five, verse one, he says, therefore, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

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And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And then he goes on to explain how this has taken place.

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He says this, in verse six, for while we were still weak, at the right time,

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Christ died for the ungodly. So stop there. He justifies the wicked, he justifies the ungodly.

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Who does Jesus die for? The wicked. He did it again.

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For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die.

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But God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us. Since therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

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For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

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More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

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There's the message of the gospel. That's what Christ has done. He died for the ungodly, he justifies the wicked.

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There's the message of the gospel. And somebody might say, that seems too free. That seems too powerful, that seems too gracious.

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And that's the point. If you're seeing that, if you're feeling the weight of that, then you understand what the apostle

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Paul is teaching here. Which leads us to, of course, we need to be able to answer this.

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Because listen, if you preach the gospel faithfully, then the response coming back to you, again, should sound like a response that Paul has to deal with.

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So you're saying we just abandon the law of God because of this grace? Or we could just live however we want because of this grace?

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He finishes chapter five by saying, gift of justification, free gift of eternal life, all

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Christ, dying for the ungodly. And then he says in Romans 6, 1, here's the response of Paul to the person who says, so you're just saying that I could believe in Jesus and just do whatever

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I want. Here's Paul's explanation to them. He knows they're in the background. He's dealt with them.

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Verse one, chapter six. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

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That's the summary of our pursuit of holiness as a body here in chapter six.

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This is it. We pursue holiness, we pursue loving one another, honoring

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God, glorifying God, obeying his law because of what's said next here. What shall we say then?

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Are we to continue in sins that the grace may increase or abound? By no means.

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How can we who died to sin still live in it?

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So you've heard Paul explain the gospel justification, declared righteous through faith in Jesus, no sins counted against us, counted as righteous, all a gift of his grace, never through the law.

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And then he moves to speak to the objector that says, oh, so we can just go on sinning now because we have all of this grace.

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You ever heard modern evangelicals talk like that, right? I'm saved. I'll do what

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I want because I'm already saved. Actually, we recently put up an old clip, a piece of a conversation.

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It was of Zach Conover preaching the gospel outside of an abortion mill.

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I'm not sure if you saw that clip just recently go up, just a part of that conversation. She's chastising

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Zach for being out there preaching, and she codifies completely, expresses completely what the modern evangelical mind is towards the law of God and salvation.

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She basically says, I'm saved, and there's nothing that I could ever do that would stop

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God from loving me. And so her mindset is the typical, I'm saved,

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I can do what I want. You ever met somebody like that? You ever talked to somebody like that?

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There's a lot of people out there like that. Paul actually has a different view. He says, if you've been declared righteous, if you're a child of Abraham, if you've received this grace, he says this, how can we who die to sin still live in it?

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His point is this, is if you truly have faith in Jesus, then you've come to die.

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You've come to die and rise again. There's a death of an old person behind you, joined to Christ on that cross.

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And this gets us to a really important aspect of defining faith as Christians. We don't mean, when we say, believe on the

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Lord Jesus, or have faith in Jesus, we don't mean believe simply in the facts, that Jesus is

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God, that he's the Holy One, that he lived righteously and died for sinners and rose again from the dead.

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Do you know who believes that? The demons believe that. They know it's true.

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They would affirm the fact of the resurrection. They would affirm, because they know it well, that Jesus is

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God in the flesh, the second person in the Trinity. They know it's all true. When we say, have faith in Jesus, we don't mean, here's some facts about Jesus.

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Do you affirm those facts as true? Because the devil knows they're true.

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He could affirm their truthfulness, but the devil does not trust in Jesus.

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He does not turn from sin to be saved from sin. Those who have faith in Jesus are having faith in him for what?

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Salvation from sin. If you and I trust in Jesus, it means that we've come to Christ to be saved.

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Saved from what? From our sin, from what has alienated us from God, from what keeps us out of fellowship with God.

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So faith in Christ, clearly for Paul, is something that joins you to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation.

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There's an old self, there's an old Jew crucified and buried with Christ, raised up now to newness of life, which, by the way, is why we do baptism.

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It's that portrait that this person who affirms they trust in Jesus have been buried with him in baptism and they're raised to newness of life.

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Isn't it beautiful that that sacrament or ordinance displays what

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God has done in Jesus Christ? Now here, I want to get you to one point, and you'll notice that today

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I'm doing mostly a lot of reading. There's a reason for that. I want you and I to be able to explain this text and to know it.

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But I want you to see Galatians chapter three. This is a moment where the apostle Paul is actually defending the gospel against error.

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Now, Galatians, as I told you last week, is very short. We're going to end on this today.

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It's very short. The apostle Paul chooses, it's one of the earliest writings of the apostle

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Pauls, to defend the gospel against error, where people were saying,

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Jesus is the Messiah? We need to have faith in Jesus, but you must also keep at least this one aspect of the law, keep the circumcision.

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That identifies the people of God. We've got to at least keep the circumcision. So Paul now is explaining how that's a distortion of the gospel.

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Nobody can be saved through the works of the law. And so in chapter two, verse 15, follow me as the apostle

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Paul defends justification by faith. He says, we ourselves are

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Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified.

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But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners.

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Is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.

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For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ.

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It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Do you see it familiar?

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He says that in Romans six, same gospel, same explanation. We've died with Christ, but Christ who lives in me.

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And a life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

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Now, you need to know this. The Apostle Paul will generally talk in terms that are us, we, the body of Christ, us.

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This is a moment clearly deeply intimate and meaning for Paul. How does he express here when he's explaining what

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Christ has done? He says this. He says, he loved me.

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He gave himself for me. I do not nullify, make void the grace of God.

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For if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

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Now, let's settle on this for one moment. We're almost done here. We all need to understand that this is the consequence of distorting the gospel.

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This is the key. This is why we defend it. This is why we fight so strongly against attempts to add to the gospel in any way or add to justification because Paul says here to people that simply said it's faith in Jesus and just this one part of the law, just keep that identity.

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You've got to keep circumcision. You've got to at least keep that circumcision, that one part of the law.

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He says this. I do not void the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law, then

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Christ died for no purpose. He says this. You do this, you add this work to faith for justification, then you have voided grace.

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You've nullified the gospel and the gospel of grace. As a matter of fact, he says this.

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If what you're saying is true, that you would need to obey this law, he says then

01:00:01

Christ died for no purpose. If you could do it, then Jesus didn't need to die.

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And this is why, brothers and sisters, I've said that this gospel or this explanation of the doctrine of justification is so vitally important because Paul says this.

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You lose this, you've lost the gospel. You lose this, then you've made that cross of no effect.

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The cross is meaningless. If you add anything to justification, Paul says it is through faith apart from any work of law.

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And now watch, this is the challenge to them. And I wanted to read this in your hearing today because here's how

01:00:42

Paul challenges them. He says this. Oh, foolish

01:00:47

Galatians. Watch how he dissects it. Oh, foolish

01:00:54

Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

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Here it is, ready? Here's Paul's dissection of them. Let me ask you only this.

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Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

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Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

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Did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

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Just as, here it is again, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the

01:01:51

Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed.

01:01:59

So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Here it is, here's

01:02:04

Paul's point, ready? He says this. Let me ask you this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

01:02:11

In other words, didn't you just simply hear the gospel and believe? Because that is how people are saved.

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They hear the gospel, they believe. And his point is this. How'd you receive the

01:02:27

Spirit of God? Did you do something for it? Were you obeying the law?

01:02:32

Were you doing stuff to finally get the Spirit of God into your life? He says, didn't you simply hear and believe?

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Wasn't this how it worked? You can see by the way that, if you wanna see it actually happening in a portrayal of a moment in history, read

01:02:48

Acts chapter 10. When the Apostle Peter preaches the gospel, it goes to the Gentiles.

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What happens in Acts 10? He preaches the gospel, the Spirit of God falls upon the

01:03:00

Gentiles, he's within them, they believe, and the response of the leadership is to go, can anybody forbid water?

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Should we forbid water so that those who have received the Spirit of God just as we have should be baptized? All they did was hear the gospel.

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The Spirit of God moved, he was indwelling them, and now it's time to get them baptized. Gospel, regeneration, baptism.

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Sorry, Lutherans. But Paul's point there is he chastises them as he takes them to their foundation.

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He says this, guys, how were you saved? How did you come to Christ?

01:03:43

Was it through your obedience? Didn't you just simply hear the gospel? Wasn't that how this worked?

01:03:49

And this is no foreign concept, that's how Abraham was saved. He believed and was declared righteous, and that's how everybody will be saved.

01:03:59

Brothers and sisters, we've been in the catechism on justification, and I want to encourage you to bury this truth into your heart and your mind.

01:04:08

Because I want to say, if we don't understand the glory of the gospel in justification by faith alone in Christ alone, it will impact every aspect of your

01:04:20

Christian life. Not only can we not be saved if we're trying to climb to God in some other way, but you and I will live as people who have been justified in this state of he loves me, he loves me not.

01:04:37

He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not. Daily, if you think somehow that your peace with God and your forgiveness is based upon your works to any degree, again, we typically understand on the front end, the only way to be joined together with Christ is through faith in him.

01:04:57

It is a gift of God's grace, it is redemption only purchased by Jesus. And oftentimes, as Christians, we're able to articulate that truth to outside of us, but we don't often preach these truths enough to ourselves, do we?

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How often do you go through these spiritual moments of depression?

01:05:21

How often do you sit and lie to yourself about God? How often do you lie to yourself in a single day about how you are with God?

01:05:34

Oftentimes, as I said, you think about God as the angry father, as God is distant, and you're trusting in Jesus.

01:05:45

You've heard me often say, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be sulky in God's presence when he's singing over you.

01:05:52

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense for us to hang our head low in God's presence when he calls you child, when he says that you are beloved, when he says that you're saint.

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The way to destroy spiritual depression in our lives and joylessness is to know and believe and love this doctrine of justification because you can preach this to yourself through the word of God every single day, to have that day filled with joy and praise to God.

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If you feel like God is the absentee landlord, you feel like he's the far -off God, you feel like he's not in love with you, you know this doctrine of justification by faith.

01:06:44

Preach it to yourself daily. Stay in Romans chapter four. Read those texts about God justifying the ungodly, about God counting you as righteous apart from your works, about God never holding your sins against you.

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And then get up, wash your face and walk in joy with God.

01:07:04

Amen? Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the truth that you've given to us about how you save.

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Lord, I pray that you would allow us to have the daily strength to believe these truths that you've promised.

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Lord, to put down our own voices that contradict and to put down the voices of those out there that would contradict.

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Let us love this truth as you call us to, in Jesus' name, amen.