Steve Lawson Romans 5

Justification Benefits, Part I – Romans 5:1

OnePassion Ministries October 11, 2017

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We’re in Romans 5. We are just plowing through this book of Romans at a record pace. We’ve come to chapter 5. We’ll see how many verses we work our way through but we’re going to be in verses 1-5 today. I think it would be good if I just read these verses, just kind of set them out in front of you. Romans 5 beginning in verse 1 this is where we’re plunging in, “Therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand and we exalt in hope of the glory of God. And not only this but we also exalt in our tribulations. Knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance proven character and proven character hope and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” These are great verses. Just reading these verses is an encouragement to our hearts. What these verses are all about are the benefits of justification. Every salesman knows that you bring out the benefits to the buyer if you want to close the deal. Paul is bringing out the benefits to us of our buying in to the gospel and to justification by faith. In these verses, verses 1-5 we have five benefits of justification. This is what has come to us as a result of justification. Now in chapters 3 and 4 where we have been Paul has made his case for justification. What it is and how we come by it. Now in chapter 5 he wants to talk about the package. What all comes with justification by faith? You go buy a car and the salesmen tells you the package, well you get this and you get that, you get this, you get that, that comes along. You get all the bells and whistles with it. Paul wants to give us now the package the benefits that come with justification by faith. Just to remind us all here, justification is when God declares us to be righteous in his sight. When God imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ to our account in heaven. Now he does not make us righteous he declares us to be righteous and there’s a difference. If he were to make us righteous then we would be sinlessly perfect right now. He has not made us fully, completely righteous in the practical sense. And starting in chapter 6 we’ll get into sanctification and God’s working out now this salvation. But he has declared us to be righteous. Like a judge would declare a guilty man to be innocent based upon the righteousness of another which is Jesus Christ. As we look at this now and I want you to think about your own relationship with the Lord. I want you to think about your own walk with the Lord what all has come to you. The first is in verse 1 and it is peace with God. PEACE WITH GOD In fact, let me just walk you through this real quick. In verse 1 it’s peace with God you see that. We have peace with God. In verse 2 we have access to God. It says, “We have obtained our introduction into this grace.” And we’ll unpack this a little bit more. Your translation may even actually have the word access but that’s the idea. I’ll bring that out as we’re there. We have access to God, peace with God, access to God. And then third at the end of verse 2, hope in God. And that extends all the way down to the first part of verse 5. The end of verse 2 to the beginning of verse 5 is hope in God. Just to remind you this hope is not wishful thinking. It is a guaranteed certainty about your future. Then fourth as we’re in verse 5 the love of God. Verse 5, this has been poured out in our hearts and it’s an experiential love of God that we experience inside of us. The smile of God upon us. Then finally we have his spirit within us at the end of verse 5. Those are five incredible benefits that have come to us as a result of justification. Let’s just enjoy walking our way through this. I don’t know if we’ll be able to cover all five or just the first couple it will depend on how fast you listen. The first is peace with God. So look at it there in verse 1, “Therefore,” and when he says therefore he’s connecting it to everything that has preceded. Specifically justification which he began in chapter 3 verse 21 and has extended now to the end of chapter 4. On the basis of having built his case for justification. I mean he laid a foundation a skyscraper could easily rest on. It was an extraordinary case for justification. He says having been justified by faith. Now let’s just pause there for a moment. Please note the verb tense that you have there in your bibles. Translate it as a past tense it’s actually what we call and aorist tense that in context is translated as a past tense. I just want you to note when it was we were justified. We were justified the moment by faith we laid whole to the Lord Jesus Christ. There are some bad teachers out there who have a strange gospel that say we’re not justified till the last day. In fact our works will have to be examined on the last day and if the scales tilt in the positive direction then you will be justified. Well that’s just a cruel message. That’s a cruel gospel and it’s not gospel at all because the bible teaches as you can well see in your bible that we’ve already been justified and that happened at the moment of saving faith. Now there are also on the other end of the spectrum some hyper, hyper, hyper Calvinists who say we were justified in eternity past. No we were not justified in eternity past. We were for known and chosen in eternity past but even the elect are under the wrath of God until the moment they believe in Jesus Christ. We want to be very clear that we are justified in the moment, it’s an immediate transaction that occurs between God and the sinner. The moment we by faith believe in Jesus Christ we are instantly, immediately declared to be the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. It won’t take place on the last day and it didn’t take place in eternity future. It takes place at the moment of our conversion. This text screams this. And also please not we’re justified by faith. The next word is not and. By faith and good works. By faith and water baptism, church membership, tithing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We are justified by faith alone. There are no good works before faith and there’s no works attached to faith and there’s no good works after faith it’s just faith alone. Sola Fide by faith alone. And we understand that faith is the commitment of our life to Jesus Christ. It is trusting in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. In order to trust Jesus you have to turn away from the world, you have to turn away from your life pursuit of sin. You have to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and you have to believe in him. This is a finished transaction and it’s an irrevocable transaction. Once justified always justified okay. Having been justified, now what comes with this. Well number one he says, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The we refers to everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. This isn’t an upper tier, executive platinum level for certain Christians to get into once you have obtained whatever, whatever. No if you have believed in Jesus Christ the we refers to every genuine true believer. He says, “We have,” please note the verb tense here. This very moment, present tense, now, “You have been justified therefore you now have peace with God.” Now there are two kinds of peace and we need to make this clear distinction. There is subjective peace and there is objective peace. And we’ve talked about this before but it’s worth noting again. Subjective peace is a feeling. It’s the peace of God. Not peace with God but the peace of God. And it’s the inner calm within the heart and soul because our faith is in the Lord and the midst of the storms of life and the tribulations that we face and the difficulties we still have peace, the peace of God. Now there are other verses that teach that. John 14:27 Jesus said, “My peace I give onto you. Peace not as the world gives. My peace I give onto you.” And in Philippians 4:6-7, “Be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made done into God and the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Now that would be a benefit but that’s not the benefit Paul’s talking about here. He’s talking about peace with God. And this is a bigger deal than the peace of God. This is objective peace. This is not a feeling. This is a fact and to have peace with God means the war is over. To have peace with God presupposes that we were at war with God. Now you may not have realized it when your mom was taking you to church and you’re a little kid but you were unsaved and unconverted you were at war with God. Or it may have been that you never went to church as a kid and you just sowed your wild oats and were praying for crop failure and you just lived a wild life and I don’t have to convince you that you were at war with God. Now what is worse than us being at war with God is the fact that God was at was us. And there’s more to the story than smile God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. God did demonstrate his love toward us and that’s why we as sinners Christ died for us but the fact is as Romans 1:18 says we were under the wrath of God. Let me just remind us back in Romans 1:18 you remember the last decade when we looked at this, Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is,” present tense, “is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” So even the elect were under the wrath of God before they believed in Jesus Christ. And the unbeliever this very moment still has the tip of God’s arrow pointed at his chest cavity ready for the arrow of his wrath to be unleashed. Now we’re in Romans 5 just peak ahead for a moment at verses 9 and 10 because I want to convince you of this. Verse 9, “Much more than having now been justified,” that sounds familiar doesn’t it, “by his blood we shall be saved from the wrath of God.” Even we who are believers, we’ve been saved from the wrath of God. That means the wrath of God was threatening us. Verse 10 says, “For if while we were enemies,” we were enemies. The we refers to believers. We had declared cosmic treason against God. Whether it is active rebellion or passive indifference or somewhere in the spectrum in between however it was played out in our life we were enemies of God. We were on the other team, on the other side. John 8:44 says that we were sons of Satan, children of the devil. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of son, much more having been reconciled we shall be saved by his life.” The fact that we now have peace with God that is enormous. That God is no longer angry at us. That God is no longer full of vengeance towards us. I want you to turn back to Psalms just for a moment and I want to just draw your attention to a few cross references because I don’t want this to pass over us lightly. I think sometimes we are just so lulled to sleep with the love of God and we’re going to get to that in verse 5 but this needs to sink in. This is a big deal that we have peace with God. In Psalm 5 – I didn’t tell you which Psalm, it’s a big book. Psalm 5:4-6 – it’s right after Psalm 4 – verse 5:4, “For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness.” Well if he doesn’t take pleasure in wickedness he takes the opposite. “No evil dwells with you,” now that’s because God is so Holy, “the boastful shall not stand before your eyes, you hate all who do inequity.” Now please note it’s not just that God hates their inequity but he hates the person who does, who commits inequity. Verse 6, “You destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the man of blood shed and deceit.” I’ll tell you what it’s a big deal for that to be over. “God abhorred and hated us in our sin.” Look at Psalm 7:11, turn to the right to Psalms, “God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day.” Please note it’s not just on the last day that God will have indignation it’s every moment of every day God has indignation. Now verse 12 pictures God as the divine warrior, verses 12 and 13 and verse 14 will be the target of his wrath. Note verse 12, “If a man does not repent,” well that’s every unbeliever right, “he God has sharpened his sword. He has bent his bow and made it ready.” Meaning it’s already locked and loaded. Verse 13, “He has also prepared for himself deadly weapons.” Not a flesh wound but to take down the object of his wrath. “He makes his arrows fiery shafts.” This is God. As Spurgeon said God never misses the mark. He never misses the target. The next verse, verse 14 is the human target that the divine warrior is ready to sink his arrows into their soul. Verse 14, “Behold he travails with wickedness,” the he refers not to God but to the sinner, “and he conceives mischief”, that’s obviously not God, “and brings forth falsehood”, that is obviously not God but the object of his wrath. Let me just give you a couple more very quick, Psalm 9:7-8, “For the Lord abides forever he has established his throne for judgement.” God is a God of judgement and he will judge the world in righteousness. He will execute judgement for the peoples with equity. Now look at Psalm 11 beginning in verse 4, “The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lords throne is in heaven. His eyes behold.” In other words, he sees it all. His eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked. And the one who loves violence his soul hates. Upon the wicked he will rain snares, fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. This is the God of the bible. He is a holy God and because he is holy he hates all that is unholy. Not only in the sin but also the sinner as well. Now I know what some people are thinking, “Well that’s Old Testament Dr. Lawson. We’re in the New Testament.” And right you are. So let’s come to the New Testament and see its second verse same as the first. John 3:36 and what I want you to see is every unbeliever, every unbeliever is under the wrath of God. In John 3:36, this is the same chapter as John 3:16. John 3:36, I did all the talking I need to get to it now, “He who believes in the son has eternal life. But he who does not obey the son will not see life but the wrath of God abides,” please note the verb tense. Present tense abides on him. You’re either under the wrath of God or you’re a believer. It’s one of the two and nothing in between and the unbeliever, even the elect unbeliever before he comes to faith in Christ is under the wrath of God. The wrath of God is his smoldering fury and his vengeance and his indignation and his fierce anger towards all that is contrary to his holy nature. Now let me just give you a few more verses. Come to Ephesians 2. And I just really want to anchor this in our understanding that there’s more to the story then smile God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. No God is angry with the wicked every day. Now in Ephesians 2 you’re very familiar with this passage beginning in verse 1, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formally walked.” Now the you refers to the elect. In chapter 1, “He chose you in Christ for the foundation of the world and love he predestined us to the adoption of sons.” Just so that we’re clear on this the you is referring to believers. This is our autopsy. This is the report of what we were when we were dead in trespasses and sin. He says, “You formally,” so these are our BC days, Before Christ, “You formally walked according to the course of this world.” That means you were just going with the crowd. You were just going with the flow. You just fit into the world so nicely because you were a part of the evil world system that was anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-truth. Then he says, “According to the Prince of the Power of the air.” We know who that is that’s Satan and we were held captive be a personal devil who was the God of this age and the prince of this world that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Every unbeliever is a son of disobedience and every true believer is a son of obedience or you’re not a son of God. I mean it’s so simple. Now look at verse 3, “Among them we too all,” so it’s true of every believer whether you grew up in church, didn’t grow up in the church, whether you grew up in a pagan temple. Whoever you are whatever your background, “We to all formally lived in the lust of our flesh indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind and we’re by nature children of wrath.” That is a Hebraism for children deserving wrath, children under wrath, children who are the object of wrath, “even as the rest.” We were in that same stream going according to the course of this world under the wrath of God. When Paul says we have peace with God. Mercy. There’s nothing bigger that’s happened in your life then for you to go from being under the wrath of God to now having peace with God. As long as we’re in Ephesians, look at chapter 5 verse 6. I just want to firmly establish this in our thinking, “Let no one deceive you with empty words,” okay so don’t let some slick talking television preacher come along and tell you otherwise. “Let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes,” present tense, “upon the sons of disobedience.” This is the state in which we were once in. If you’re taking notes I’ll just give you a couple more verses. We won’t turn to them. 1 Thessalonians 1:10 and Revelation 14:9-10. Revelation 20:10 and 15. It’s just an irrefutable case that the scripture makes that we were once under the wrath of God in this world and the moment we believed in Jesus Christ we went from being an enemy of God to being a friend of God and being a child of God. The change in status was monumental. We went from God having the arrows of his wrath pointed and aimed at us to now his arms are open and he’s drawn us in and we are in his bosom as his children the object of his affection and love. Now all of this, come back to Romans 5, I know I’ve been taking you around the block but come back to Romans 5:1, I know we’ve kind of pulled over and parked here but every so often you just need to pull the car over to the side of the road and look out and look at the Grand Canyon and see what it is we’re passing by. In verse 1 we have peace with God, pause and meditate on that, the warfare is over. I was reading a sermon by RC Sproul a couple days ago and he was talking about when he was a little kid. I can’t remember if he was like six or seven years old. I know he was born in 1939 so maybe we’ll say six and he’s out in the street playing stick ball and the man hole cover is home plate and he’s out there with his buddies and he said he’s up to bat and everyone just comes running out of their houses and apartments and his mother comes out just her arms above her head and just all but dancing. And it was the announcement that the war was over. World War II was over. And they went from being in a state of dread to now the war is over and father can come home and we’re no longer in this stressful situation. That’s what it is to be justified. It’s that the war is over permanently with God. Now at the end of verse 1 he tells us how this has come about. It’s another prepositional phrase. In fact it’s the third prepositional phrase in this one verse and Christianity has been called a religion of prepositional phrases. You see by faith with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The value of the prepositional phrase is you can have so much truth just condensely packed into just a couple of words. He says through our Lord Jesus Christ. Please note he doesn’t just say Jesus and he doesn’t just say Christ nor Jesus Christ this is such a major point. I mean he throws out all three names, “Our Lord Jesus Christ.” I mean I knew whenever my father said, “Steven James Lawson.” Whatever is following is a big deal. Usually I’m in big trouble. Well Paul wants to underscore this, “Through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The entire mediation of this piece has been accomplished through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And let me just tell you this there’s not one drop of peace with God outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s all through the Lord Jesus Christ or we’ll never have peace with God. Now just to remind you Lord is his sovereign name, it’s Kurios in the Greek K-U-R-I-O-S. Kurios it just means sovereign, despite, king, supreme being, the one who’s in control of everything in the entire universe. He is the sovereign one whose will is supreme. That’s what Lord means. The moment that you are saved you submit and surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine some enemy crossing sides and just saying well I believe you as savior but I’m still going to be your enemy and I’m not going to surrender to you? I’m still going to be against you. No saving faith has in it the recognition of the lordship of Jesus Christ. You’ve been on the other side. Satan has been your master, sin has been your master and when you now enter into the kingdom of God there is a recognition, you have a new Lord, you have a new master, you’re under new management, you’re under new ownership. Everything is new on this okay so you can’t come up with some crazy message that you can come into the Kingdom of Heaven but you’re still going to have your old loyalties and your old allegiances and your old master you just want fire insurance. It doesn’t work that way. It’s a packaged deal. Our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s all or nothing. Can you imagine if I came to your house, knocks and you go, “Who is there?” “Steven James Lawson.” “Well Steve come in James Lawson you stay out.” “Well I can’t come in what do you want me to cut off my arm and slide it under the door and you get a part of me? No I can’t come in until you say, “Steven James Lawson come in.” Okay now the whole of me can come in.” Well you don’t get a part of Jesus. It’s our Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord means something and it means that he is the sovereign one who now you have a new loyalty and a new allegiance to him as king over your life. And you now are a son of obedience. You’re no longer a son of disobedience. You spent your whole life a son of disobedience. You now are a son of obedience to a new Lord. Now Jesus is his saving name. Lord is his sovereign name, Jesus is his saving name and it means the name Jesus means Jehovah saves and that’s exactly who he is and why he came. He is God Jehovah in human flesh who has come on a mission of salvation to save sinners. Jesus. Mathew 1:21, “You shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.” And then finally Christ is his strong name and that means the anointed one. In the Old Testament it’s Messiah, Mashiach in the New Testament it’s Christ. And both Messiah and Christ mean the same thing just two different languages, Hebrew and Greek. And Christ means the anointed one. And you anointed with what? Anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit. The person in power of the Holy Spirit which at his baptism the spirit came upon him to empower him in his enterprise of salvation. Jesus in his humanity was empowered by the spirit to triumph in his sinless life and in his substitutionary death. Now through our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s all three. Now how did Jesus provide what we need to remove us from being under the wrath of God. Two things, his sinless life and his substitutionary death. In his sinless life Jesus obtained and secured a perfect righteousness under the law of God. He obeyed for the sons of the disobedience. He obeyed on our behalf that he could secure the righteousness that we need because we have broken the law of God again and again and again. And it’s that righteousness through his active obedience to the law of God that’s what deposited into your account as if you have perfectly obeyed the law of God every moment of your life. In this sense not only did Jesus die for you Jesus also lived for you. It’s the whole package. Then not only a sinless life but his substitutionary death and by his death Jesus shed his blood. I’m going to give you two theological words here that were found back and one of them in chapter 3 and one of them here in chapter 5 and I want to just dwell on these two words for a moment, propitiation and reconciliation. Those are two gigantic realities that Jesus accomplished for us. In Romans 3:25 it says, “That we have propitiation in his blood.” Propitiation it means the satisfaction of the wrath of God. That the wrath of God towards believers was fully, freely, finally appeased by the death of Christ on our behalf. When Jesus was hanging upon the cross he bore our sins and the father unleashed all of his wrath upon his son Jesus Christ. There is not one drop of wrath left for you and me. Jesus was crushed under this tsunami of wrath that the father unleashed oceans of wrath upon his son that was deserving you and me. What you and I the wrath we would experience in a million, trillion eternities in hell it was all dumped upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The physical suffering was nothing. We talked about that last week. The spiritual suffering was everything as the father crushed the son. He came down hard upon the son. By his death he has now, let me give you the synonyms, satisfied, appeased, placated, propitiated. Pick your word. The wrath of God toward us. When he took the cup in the garden and drank it there was not one drop left. That is why Romans 8:1 says, “There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Jesus took it all to himself. I mean God didn’t just dump it in the ocean, all of his wrath. God didn’t just snap his fingers and extinguish all his wrath the father dealt with what is due us in a real way by transferring it to his son. Jesus suffered the wrath of God in our place. Listen, we can never come to the Lord’s table the same again. Our hand ought to shake when we hold the cup and when we hold the bread that he was crushed under the fierce vengeance and fury, the smoldering wrath of God that was due us Jesus suffered it upon the cross. The second key word is in chapter 5 and it found in verse 10, it is the word reconciliation. First there had to be the propitiation then there was the reconciliation. And reconciliation means you stand in the middle between two parties who are in conflict with one another and who cannot get together. The one who stands in the middle is often called a mediator. It’s two parties who are at odds with each other and the mediators brings about terms of reconciliation where he takes both parties, one in one hand, one in the other and brings them in essence to the table and removes the enmity that was between then and reconciles them together. The bible says that Jesus has reconciled us through the blood of his cross, Colossians 1:21-22. It was the high price of the reconciliation. He took Holy God in one hand – I know I’m raising my voice but this is good stuff – he took Holy God in one hand and sinful man in the other hand and brought the two together and there’s no way they could have ever been brought together except the mediator in the middle bring them together. God’s too holy and we’re too wretched for us to ever be able to meet in the middle. Only through the blood of Christ and his death upon the cross can the two be brought together. To be a mediator you have to be impartial to both sides. To be a mediator you have to be equal to both sides. That is why Jesus had to become a man. He had to become a man yet remain fully God. He was the God man. Truly God, truly man. Therefore, being truly God he could represent God with man and being now truly man he became one of us. He got into our skin. He entered the human race. He was actually born of a virgin. He can now represent us before God. There is no one else who could have been this mediator, Moses, Abraham, David, Paul, Peter, none of them could have been the mediator between us and God. It had to be someone who was fully God, truly God and someone truly man who could stand in the middle and bring the two together and he did that through the blood of his cross through his substitutionary death. In Romans 5:1 there is a library of theology in this one verse. I had a feeling you weren’t going to listen fast enough. I had a feeling that we weren’t going to be able to press beyond this but this is one of the mountain peak verses in the entire bible. This is a towering Mount Everest. This is a verse you need to memorize. This is a verse you need to tell others about, “Therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other words Jesus went to war on our behalf and he entered into the conflict on our behalf. That we could be released from the war with God. I can’t imagine a more terrifying state to be in than to be at war with God and have God at war with you but Jesus through his sinless life and his substitutionary death which accomplished propitiation and reconciliation. There’s more that he accomplished but those are the two biggies as it relates to having peace with God. I’ll just throw out one more word while we’re on it, redemption, which means he bought us out of the slave market of sin. And if the son shall set you free you shall be free indeed. He paid the price with the silver and the gold of his precious blood. He ransomed us. He bought us. So now get this we now belong to him. We are his possession. He paid the price he bought us. That’s why none of us are free to do our own thing just live however we want to live. That’s theological insanity. He paid the price by the shedding of his blood. He purchased us from under the curse of the law and we now belong to him and we now go where he sends us. We do what he requires we are under his lordship and his mastery and his authority because we’re his possession. It’s a big deal to be justified. It’s a really big deal. This is only one of the five benefits that Paul mentions, peace with God. There’s a reason why it’s number one on the list because the rest of it just kind of falls in line. He leads with the biggest benefit. When we leave here in just a little bit, when you get in your car and you drive to work or you walk down the hall and sit down at the desk you need to just really exhale and breathe a sigh of relief with thankfulness and gratitude to God that you once were an enemy of God. You once were under the wrath of God. You once were dead in your trespasses and sin. He had his arrows pointed at his chest cavity and the arrow of his wrath was in the bow and he was ready to unleash it and Christ stepped in between you and God. The father unleashed that arrow and it hit Christ instead and he suffered on our behalf and none of us can even begin to comprehend what that staggering blow must have been for him at the cross to bear the sins of all of his people but to suffer the wrath of God upon the sins of all of his people at one moment. Basically from high noon when God snuffed out the sun and it became pitch dark black as he hung upon the cross at 12:00 noon until 3:00 when he cried out, “It is finished.” It’s been paid in full. There’s not a drop of wrath of left for anyone of us who are in Christ. Now there are oceans still reserved for unbelievers. There is going to be a dam break at the end of the age like we have no comprehension. And right now the dam of his mercy is holding back this building river of wrath and it’s just building and building and building and the pressure is mounting and mounting and mounting and at the end of the age when God pulls back his hand of mercy that wrath will be unleashed and it’s been building since Cane and Able. It’s been building and building. And it will sweep sinners into the bowels of hell forever and rightly so. That we have escaped all of that and have been rescued out of that is ginormous. And we need to come back to verses like this again and again and again as we kind of skip our way to work and whistle that this reality has come to pass in our lives and everything else is dwarfed in comparison to this. I mean whatever fingernail problem you’ve got going on is nothing compared to the fact that your soul has been spared the wrath of God which it justly deserves. I need to land the plane, park it in the hanger here for a moment. Let you breath. I need to let you talk. As you’re hearing this verse, these texts, expounded, opened up what comes to your mind? What strikes you? What do you think? What do you feel? What do you do? Audience Member:      So you could teach on this several weeks because it is so deep. One of the applications is that God as one of the puritans says God justifies a man through the conduit of faith. The means by which – how is this appropriated to an individual? By faith. The way that God credits, reckons, imputes this righteousness is by faith. And so then you Paul will write in chapter 10 verse 17, “So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.” So the application is that we have to tell others about Christ because that’s the means by which God will use to impute righteousness to his people. The second part is – Can I add a footnote to that? Not just tell them but persuade them. Like if your house is on fire and you’re asleep I’m going to do more than just tell you, send you a text. I’m going to come shake you. You got to get up. You’ve got to get out of here. This thing is going up in flames. All right go ahead. Audience Member:      And yeah I mean it’s eternal consequence. The second part is that the mediator is the object of our faith. The mediator is the Lord Jesus Christ. I had to look it up. It’s Job 9:33 where Job says there’s no umpire between us. There’s no one who can lay his hand on God’s shoulder and my shoulder. Well there is and it’s the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah he’s the only one that can be equal to both sides. Fully God, fully man and stand in the middle. Audience Member:      In all this you said earlier, we concentrate on love and I was listening to actually S Lewis Johnson and he made the comment that we don’t focus enough on God’s holiness. Oh yeah. Audience Member:      Which is all this context. That’s the one attribute that’s raised to the third power in the scripture. Audience Member:      I know this could be another whole hour but to those who are non-believers you said it was an irrevocable transaction. So going back to like some religions or denominations that believe in the age of accountability and some like as Methodists they believe in prevenient grace when they baptize or as an infant. God can’t be where there’s not grace that proceeds him. And so how do you like what about a child that hasn’t had the chance to make the knowledge to make that transaction. And what about the child who as a really young child made a profession of faith as they thought maybe they did and then now they call themselves an agnostic. I know John 28 says I am the sheep and no one can snatch them out of my hands. Well to start at the very beginning I think a baby that dies goes to be with the Lord. I think that’s one of the Lord’s. There are many verses that we could pull together to build a case for that. I would start there. The second thing I would say is we don’t know what this age of accountability is. In the book of Jonah it’s knowing the difference between your right hand and your left hand whatever that signifies that there is some sense of moral discernment. I think what about a child who says they believe in the Lord and then they go live like the devil? Audience Member:      Maybe or maybe not but then later on in life they say that made a profession of faith they were baptized but then later on I’ve known people that say, “Well yeah I was baptized as a child and I don’t know why I did that because I don’t believe that now. Well then, they never truly believed. They were just going through the external motions. They’re one of those that say Lord, Lord but don’t know the Lord. It becomes real – it is real when your life changes. You can’t hop on board without you going in a new direction now. And it starts with the heart and works its way out to the actions. Listen there are so many people who just parrot a prayer as a kid and it’s never real and they continue to just live like the world and run with the devil’s crowd and there’s no life change. Well Jesus said you’ll know them by their fruit and if it’s bad fruit that means there’s a bad root. And you’re not rooted and grounded in Christ. Now there’s a lot more that can be said as far as variations and shades on this. I’m speaking in black and white terms but you will know them by their fruit. You tell me what the fruit is and I’ll tell you where the root is. There is an inseparable connection between the root and the fruit. There will be a life change. There will be a change of affections, there will be a change of mindset, there will be a change of direction, there will be a change of priorities, there will be a change of choices that a person makes when they are genuinely born again. And the book of 1 John gives depending upon how you slice it either eight or nine evidences of the new birth and it’s not you get to pick three out of the eight. It’s across the board. All eight of these will be present, this fruit will be present in a person’s life when the root is in Christ. Jesus said you’ll know them by their fruit and not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. That’s one of the eight evidences is now a heart of obedience to keep the word of God. That’s why unbelievers are called sons of disobedience. Shall we not say in them that day Lord, Lord did we not prophesize in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not perform many wonderous works in your name? And I will say into them in that day depart from me you who work inequity I never knew you. You were just living a charade. You were living in a masquerade world. You have so convinced yourself that you were saved that you actually thought you were casting out demons, you actually thought you were serving me when in reality the whole thing was just a charade it was just a game. You were self-deceived about your relationship to the Lord. Depart from me I never knew you it’s not that I once knew you and then didn’t know you. No I never knew you from the beginning. That’s why Jesus says enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is board that leads to destruction. In other words you can just weave all over the highway. You can just live however you want to live. I mean nothing is out of bounds. It’s just wide open but it’s headed for destruction. It says the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and few are those who find it. And the gate and the way match up. You can’t go through a narrow gate and then go down a board path. It’s a narrow gate, narrow path. Broad gate, broad path. You can’t mix and match. The narrow gate means you have to leave your baggage on the outside. That’s called repentance. You turn away from the idols and the worldliness and you enter through the narrow gate and it’s so narrow you can only enter one at a time. And it only leads down a narrow path which is a path that is lived and 1 John gives you the eight characteristics. You now are one who confess sin, you are now one who obeys the word of God as a lifestyle. It’s not the perfection of your life it’s the direction of your life. You now practice righteousness, etc, etc. I wish I had time to go through 1 John. That’s why he then says, “Truly, truly I say to you he who hears these words of mine and acts upon them.” It’s like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. And when the rains came and the winds blew and beat against the house it did not fall because it was built upon the rock. He who hears these words of mine and does not act upon them is like a very foolish man who built his house upon the sand. When the rains came and the winds blew and beat against the house great was its fall because it was built upon the sand. Now they both went through the motions of building a house. If you just stood there that day and you saw them both in church. You saw them both in bible study. You saw them both helping old ladies across the street but one built upon the rock and the other built upon the sand and the sand is a false conversion. The sand is just an emotional feeling that you had or some head knowledge that you had. But there was never the submission of your will to the Lord. You stayed behind the steering wheel and you kept the Lord in the trunk. Well you’re one of those who will be saying Lord, Lord you know me don’t you? Remember me? No I never knew you. Depart from me. You who work inequity. I know I’m kind of half way answering your question and more than answering your question at the same time but that’s why Jesus said you will know them by their fruit. The fruit will tell you what the root is. The root and fruit are inseparably connected. Good root produces good fruit. Bad root produces bad fruit. You want to know what your root is look at your fruit. The fruit will tell you what the root is. And the fruit is the lifestyle the root is either a genuine or a false confession in a faith in Christ. He’s the one saying Lord, Lord, you know me. You remember me. Lord, Lord. I mean it’s repeated twice like a sense of like hey, hey you know me and Jesus said no I never knew you. Not that I once knew you. I never knew you from the beginning. Your whole supposed Christian life was just a charade it was just a game. There was no reality in the heart because if there had been the reality in the heart there would have been the fruit that would have accompanied it. You can know what the root is just by looking at the fruit. The root is under the surface the fruit is wide open and it’s an inseparable connection between the fruit and the root. Well I’ve run 12 stop signs. I’m looking at the clock there but thank you for the question and he who has ears to hear let him hear. Because it’s like the old spiritual song not everyone talking about heaven is going there. Guys we need to wrap it up. Next week we’re going to be right here on Wednesday and it’s going to be verse 2. But verse 1 we just had to pull over and park and get out of the car and walk around a little bit. We’ll look at verses 2-5 next time. Let me just end by saying this, this is why 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, “Examine yourself whether you be in the faith.” Just because you prayed a prayer, walked an isle, signed a card, joined a church, sing in the choir whatever that doesn’t mean you’re in. You need to examine yourself whether you be in the faith. There’s an inseparable connection between the root and the fruit. If you want to know what your root is look at the fruit. All right let me just close, Father thank you for this study. Seal it to our hearts, use this around the world as people watch. In Christ’s name, Amen.

The Final Argument – Romans 5:18-21

OnePassion Ministries January 18, 2018

So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:18-21). We are in Romans 5:18-21. These last four verses in Romans 5 bring to conclusion a massive section on justification by faith alone. This section began in Romans 3:21 and now concludes in Romans 5:21. For two and a half chapters, Paul has belabored the cardinal doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is one unit of thought and it is the heart of the gospel. As we come to these last four verses, Paul makes his final appeal in this argument. Paul is very lawyer-like as we look at these verses. He is precise and persuasive in making his argument of justification by faith alone in Christ alone and fully developing it. As we come to Romans 5:18-21, Paul has already presented his case. He has called to the witness stand two chief witnesses, Abraham and David, in chapter four. They both testified that justification is by faith alone apart from any works. Paul called additional evidence into the courtroom, making one point after another, after another. He has presented an airtight argument for this doctrine. There is no possible mistaking what he said. He used negative denial and positive assertion. He showed how justification does not happen, and how it does happen. He has shown what justification is. It has been a masterful presentation. In fact, it is the most comprehensive presentation of the doctrine of justification in the entire Bible. As we come to the last four verses in chapter five, Paul is like the lawyer who has one final opportunity to address the jury and judge and present his summation. This is what we will call the climactic presentation. It is his final argument for justification by faith alone. To remind us all, justification is, very simply, when God declares the guilty sinner to be righteous under the Law. He does not make us righteous in our present day-to-day lives – we continue to sin. But God declares us to be righteous, such that our status is dramatically changed. We have gone from a position of condemnation to one of justification. There could not be a more dramatic change in our position before God. It is based upon what Christ has done for us in His sinless life and substitutionary death. We will begin reading in verse 18. This is Paul’s final argument for justification by faith alone. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:18-21). There is a wealth of truth packed tightly into these verses. In order to break this up, I will give you three main headings. In verse 18, we have the summation. In verse 19, we have the explanation. Then in verses 20-21, we have the conclusion. I think it makes it easier to deal with these verses when we break them down into smaller units. I. The Summation of the argument (5:18) Looking at verse 18, Paul gives the summation of this section on justification. He begins with, “So then.” This signals that we are coming to the bottom line. He is going to pull everything forward and summarize what he has just said in verses 12-17 and in this larger section on justification in Romans 3:21-5:21. He states, “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.” Paul is making a comparison. The first part of the comparison is the transgression of Adam. Then the second part, which is in the second half of the verse, outlines the act of Christ on our behalf. “As through one transgression…” The word for “transgression” means ‘a false step, departing from the path, departing from the way, to go astray.’ This refers to when Adam first sinned in the garden in Genesis 3. This whole argument presupposes the historicity of Adam. He was not a mythical figure or an imaginary person. The whole argument would break down if Adam was not a real person. He was a real person. He was the first man that God ever created. He was as real as Jesus Christ was real. If Adam was mythical, then so was Jesus Christ mythical. To say that is blasphemy. As Paul begins, his argument is built upon the historicity of Adam and the reality of the first man. Adam’s Sin “As through one transgression…” That “one transgression” is when Adam took the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God had set a prohibition that Adam could eat from the entire garden, except from this one tree. Adam had the entire world at his disposal, except for one tree. He had it all. He had everything. Satan drew him in and lied to him, saying, “God is not good to you. He is holding out on you.” If Adam ate from this tree, Satan said, he would have the knowledge of good and evil. But we are to be innocent of evil. It was the goodness of God that put the fence of prohibition around this one tree. Yet Adam was lured in, and he took the fruit. It was the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life (I John 2:15-16). He saw it with his eyes, he desired it in his heart, and as an act of flagrant, defiant disobedience to God, with his eyes wide open, Adam took the fruit of which God had said, “You shall not eat of this fruit.” In that act, he transgressed against God. “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation.” There was the immediate condemnation imputed “to all men,” to the entire human race. Adam’s one sin was charged immediately to the account of every person who would ever be conceived in their mother’s womb. That is what Romans 5:12 says, “just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” It is as though we were in Adam and participated in that sin. That is how real it was. God imputed his sin to all men as though we had committed the disobedience. This imputation happened immediately, it happened vicariously, and it happened forensically, all at once. Six thousand plus years ago, Adam’s sin was credited to your account. Before you were even conceived, before you ever committed an individual act of sin, you were already a sinner. That is what this text clearly says. It indicates how holy God is. How many sins must one commit before they are condemned before God? . Just one sin before a holy God brings condemnation. This condemnation is not temporal, it is eternal condemnation under eternal judgment. It is not the case of the proverbial scales, where God balances righteousness and sin, and if our sin outweighs our righteousness, then we stand condemned before God. Paul reinforces this solidarity of the human race in Adam. He acted as our representative before God. Whatever Adam did affected the entire human race. If you want to know what is wrong with the world, I can give it to you in two words: original sin. When Adam sinned, the floodgates of sin and death were opened. This is what is wrong with the entire world. The second half of verse 18 reads, “even so,” meaning ‘in like manner,’ “through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.” This obviously refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. In the original language, it literally says, “even so by one accomplished righteousness.” This speaks of the entirety of Jesus’ life and death. Not just to His death, but to His entire incarnation, both to His sinless life and His substitutionary death. “All Men” “There resulted justification of life to all men.” Justification is God declaring the guilty sinner to be right under the law. When Paul says, “to all men,” some take “all men” to mean the entire human race, paralleling the beginning of the verse. Adam’s sin brought condemnation to all men, and, they claim, Christ’s one act of righteousness brought justification to all men. But this needs some clarification. Theologians must make careful distinctions. The “all men” here does not refer to the entire human race. If it did, then we have departed from the teaching of sound doctrine taught in the rest of Scripture. If such was the case, we have emptied hell of every unbeliever. “All men” does not refer to every human being who has ever lived. That would be called universalism. There are some rankly liberal theologians, if you can even call them that, who believe that everyone will be saved in the end. They believe that God is so loving and His mercy is so wide that no one will be condemned in the end. They point to this verse to back up their thinking. That is insanity. The “all men” refers to all those whom Christ came into this world to save, and all those for whom He died upon the cross. It refers, not to Adam’s fallen race, but to a specific group out of Adam’s fallen race. It refers to everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone who exercises personal faith in the Jesus Christ is represented here by the phrase “all men.” This refers to all the elect of God, all those whom the Father chose in eternity past. Paul will develop this thought in chapters 8-9 with crystal clear precision. “Those whom He foreknew, He predestined. Those whom He predestined, He called. Those whom He called, He justified. And those whom He justified, He glorified” (Romans 8:29-30). Standing behind this are the doctrines of sovereign election and divine predestination. In Romans 9, Paul will open the lens up even greater and talk about Jacob and Esau. “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.” Before the twins were yet born, God had already made a distinguishing choice. That is hardball theology, but it is the truth. To recap, the “all men” does not refer to the entire human race. It refers to all men within the elect whom the Father gave to the Son in eternity past. Some would say, and you may even have a Study Bible that has this at the bottom – if so you will want to whiteout this footnote – that Christ did this “potentially” for all men. That is, hypothetically, potentially, based upon man’s faith, He died for the whole world, yet it is made real only in the lives of those who believe. That interpretation defies the language used here. Please note the word “resulted.” That is not a hypothetical consequence. That is not a potential effect. There was a definite result that came from the sinless life and substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ. That definite result was “justification to all men.” There is nothing hypothetical or potential there. It was a definite transaction that occurred between the Son and the Father on behalf of all who would receive it. We have to make that distinction. There are so many places in the Bible where the word “all” does not refer to every man who has ever lived. The word “all” simply means ‘a large group’ in many different contexts. This is the summation Paul makes as he recaps what he has been saying in verses 12-17. We have to know that the entire world is found either in Adam or in Christ. There is not a third or fourth category. Those who are in Christ are those who have been taken out of the first category, out of the entire human race of those who are in Adam. II. The Explanation of the summary (5:19) Paul, being the master teacher that he is, gives an explanation for what he stated in verse 18. He begins with the word “for,” which assigns a reason for what he just said. “For as through the one man’s disobedience…” Notice that Paul uses the word “disobedience.” In verse 18, the term “transgression” was used, and here it is “disobedience.” Adam’s act of transgression was a willful, volitional, choice of his will in disobedience. It was a flagrant act of disobedience against the holy, sovereign God who had created him and placed him in paradise. It was disobedience against the very command of God in Genesis 2:17. Paul continues, “the many were made sinners.” “The many” refers to the “all men” in verse 18. It shows the vastness of those who were made sinners. They were constituted to be sinners in the eyes of a holy God. This is an important point of theology for us. It is a cornerstone truth. Everyone with sound doctrine is very clear on this point. However, this is one of the departure points for those who end up with a weak theology. If you tell me what you believe about Genesis 1-3, I can tell you what you believe about the rest of the Bible. It is that foundational. The Active Obedience of Christ “Even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” The word “obedience” parallels “disobedience” in the first half of verse 19. Paul introduces a very important truth here regarding the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. Theologians who are very careful in their teaching of Scripture make a distinction in the obedience of Christ. There is what is called the active obedience of Christ, and there is the passive obedience of Christ. Both are critically important. The active obedience of Christ is Christ’s sinless life, in which He lived in perfect obedience to the Law of God and to the will of God, throughout the entirety of His earthly life. This is very important, because where we have broken the law, where Adam broke God’s law, Jesus Christ triumphed and succeeded in keeping the law. This is the active obedience of Christ. It has secured the perfect righteousness that is imputed to us at the moment of justification. It is a real righteousness that Christ achieved through His active obedience to the Law of God. Galatians 4:4-5 supports this idea of active obedience. It says that Christ was “born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were born under the Law.” To be under the Law is to be in a position of direct accountability to the Law. It means to be responsible to the Father to obey the Law. When Jesus came into this world, He was born of a virgin under the Law of God, meaning He must obey the Law of God, just as you or I must obey the Law of God. Jesus obeyed the Law perfectly in our place. It is that perfect obedience that secured perfect righteousness, which God deposits into our account when we believe in Christ. This is a very important distinction. It was accomplished by His obedience to the Law of God. That is the first part of this obedience, Jesus’ active obedience throughout His entire life. The Passive Obedience of Christ The second part is what we call His passive obedience. By passive, we do not mean that Jesus was involuntary. We mean that it involved the passion of Christ in His death as He submitted Himself to the cross. The passive obedience of Christ speaks of Him laying down His life for us at the cross. He was passive in that He laid down His life. Because He actively laid down His life, His life was not taken from Him. He freely gave Himself at the cross for us. That is why theologians stress that the word “passive” emphasizes the passion in which He did this. Jesus sweat drops of blood in the garden. He hung in agony upon the cross, that cruel torture chamber of a crucifixion. It was in His passive obedience upon the cross that our sins were transferred to Christ. He bore our sins in His body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24), and carried our sins far away as our scapegoat. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). His blood was shed even before the cross. Jesus’ blood was shed at His own circumcision on the eighth day of His life. It was shed as He sweat drops of blood in the garden. But it was the blood that was shed upon the cross in His passive obedience that washed away our sins. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” An Entire Life of Obedience The phrase “obedience of the One” in verse 19 is very important. It includes Jesus’ active obedience throughout the entirety of His life, as well as His passive obedience upon the cross. This involved His entire life of obedience, not just His six hours upon the cross. R.C. Sproul brings out this great point that if all that was necessary was the six hours of obedience upon the cross, Jesus could have saved us in one weekend. Redemption could have been accomplished in a weekend mission. But instead, it required an entire life of obedience to the Law of God for us to be made righteous. Not only did Christ die in our place, He also lived in our place. He not only died bearing our sins in our place, He also lived being obedient to the Law of God in our place. “Even so, through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” The “many” is as wide as the “all men” at the end of verse 18. It is not simply a few who will be declared righteous, it is many who will be declared righteous. We see this in the enormous crowd of saints gathered around the throne in Rev 5:8, which has come from every tribe and tongue and people. There is a vastness of those who will be declared righteous. III. The Conclusion of the Section (5:20-21) We now come to the last two verses. Paul returns to where he began this section. At first glance, verses 20-21 may seem to be an awkward addition to the argument he is making. But in Romans 3:21, Paul says, “now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested.” He now concludes this section on justification exactly as he began it. This is a literary devise that we call inclusio or inclusion, where a phrase is used as bookends on both ends of a segment. In other words, it concludes as it began. Some books are very effectively written like this. The opening pages and the closing pages mirror each other. This is what Paul is doing. In Romans 5:20, he comes back to where He began. He returns to the Law. Paul says in Romans 3:21, “the righteousness of God has come” apart from the Law. We might ask then, what is the purpose of the Law if the Law cannot save us? Paul tells us in Romans 5:20, “The Law came in so that the transgression would increase.” This does not mean that God gave the Law so that there would be more sin in the world, implying He is the author of sin. James chapter one is very clear that God is not the author of sin. “The Law came in,” the Greek work for “came in” (pareiserchomai) is a word that begins with the prefix ‘para’ from which we derive ‘parallel.’ The Law came in next to the transgression, so that it would increase in this sense. It entered so that we would have a heightened sense of awareness of sin. The Law brings the knowledge of sin, and even provokes our flesh to sin. The Knowledge of Sin Paul will say later in Romans 7:6-7 that he would not have known sin except by the Law. The Law gives us the knowledge of sin. You might ask why God would want to give us the knowledge of sin. It was so that we would run to Christ for salvation. No one is saved until they know they are lost. You do not go to the doctor until you think something is wrong. With only a little knowledge that you are sick, you put it off. But a greater realization that you are sick and something is wrong with you drives you to get into the car to go to the doctor so that you can be examined and have the remedy applied to you.  The Law operates just like this. If we only had a little knowledge of sin, we would think we could overcome it. We would think we could do more good things to balance our account with God. We would assume, wrongly so, that we will be fine with God. But if you see that you have a Mt. Everest of sin standing between you and God, you realize you need a Savior. You need justification by faith. You need to be declared righteous. You desperately need the righteousness of the One who has, by His obedience, met all the requirements of the Law, and can give to you a perfect righteousness, thereby giving you a right standing before God. It is this increased knowledge of sin that drives you to Christ. That is one of the proper uses of the Law. An Ally to Evangelism The Law is an ally to evangelism. The Law is a partner with us in trying to reach people for Christ. We have the saving remedy in Christ. We have the life-giving solution in the gospel. But the tragedy is, nobody wants it because they think they are fine before God. We need the Law to reveal to them their huge debt of sin that they have incurred before God. When the rich young ruler came before Jesus in Matthew 19:16, he said, “What one thing must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus preached the Law to him. This young man was so smug in his self-righteousness that he thought he merely needed to do something to add a plus to his A, and he would be fine with God. That is why Jesus read the second half of the Law, which is the easier half to keep. The young ruler said, “I have kept these since my youth.” To which Jesus replied, “Then go and sell all you have.” Jesus saw that he had idols in his heart. It is not wrong to have possessions, but He saw that his things had taken possession of him. He lived for this world and the things of this world. It was the Law that brought the knowledge of sin. But he was not willing to give it up. He walked away, and Jesus was sad. We, too, should use the Law to show people that they have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. They are not to be comparing themselves to anyone else horizontally. They must compare themselves to the holiness of God vertically. They must see that they have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. That is the idea that Paul is getting at here. The Function of the Law The Law defines sin for us. The Law reveals sin to us. The Law exposes sin’s power. The Law unveils sin’s deceit. The Law does all of that. The Law is like putting a microscope over our heart and revealing the wretched depravity within our heart. The Law is also like a measuring rod, by which we measure ourselves and see that we have fallen woefully short of God’s standard. The Law pronounces the curse of death upon everyone who breaks the Law. The penalty for breaking the Law is contained within the Law itself. That is why, in verse 20, Paul comes back to the Law, which is where he began this section on justification. The purpose of the Law is not to save you, but to show you your need to be saved. It drives you to Jesus Christ, the only One who ever kept the Law perfectly. That is another reason why Jesus had to become a man. He had to enter the human race so that He could keep the Law that we had broken. “The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but,” – and here is the good news – “but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” This is the superabundance of grace that is able to save the chief of sinners. The word “abound” (huperperisseuo) has a prefix (huper) in front of it meaning ‘above, beyond, superior to.’ Grace ‘hyper-abounds’ above and beyond our sin. We could translate it as ‘super-abound.’ Our sin is great, but the grace of God is even greater. We gain more in Christ than we lost in Adam. We gain more by grace than we have lost by sin. Some might say their life has been so wretched and sinful that there is no way God could save them. The response to this is that they have now idea how super-abounding is the grace of God. John Bunyan: A Sinner Like Me This is the very text that God used to convert John Bunyan and bring him into the kingdom of heaven. Bunyan was a wretched sinner with a foul mouth. He was rough and crude, he ran with the worst reprobates in town. One day, he overheard some women talking in town about how he was such a rebel. He was struck with the reality of his foul mouth and wicked heart. He saw this verse and realized that no matter how much sin increased in his life, the grace of God super-abounded all the more. There was hope for a sinner like him. God used that as the converting text to bring him into the kingdom of heaven. One day, Bunyan would write the book that would become the second greatest best seller in the world after the Bible itself, Pilgrim’s Progress. He became a great preacher of the gospel. He spent twelve years in prison, and they never locked the door. He could have left at any point, but he said that as soon as he left, he would be preaching the gospel again. They would arrest him and put him right back in prison. So there was no point in leaving. He had a blind daughter and could have rationalized that his wife and family needed him, and, therefore, he should no longer preach. But he refused to think like that. He stayed in prison for a dozen years and wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. Charles Spurgeon said that every page of Pilgrim’s Progress has the smell of the prison in it. God does His greatest work when we are squeezed in the vice grip of adversity and difficulty. That was the testimony of John Bunyan. John Owen, the greatest theologian of the Puritan Age, said he would give up all of his learning if he could but preach like the tinker of Bedford, John Bunyan. For Bunyan, Romans 5:20 was the greatest news he had ever heard in his entire life. He became painfully aware of his sin. He had a heightened sense of awareness that he was a foul, wretched, guilty sinner before a holy God. He knew that he needed super-abounding grace to make him right before God, to wash him, and to cleanse him. That is what he found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is what you and I find in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Two Kingdoms, Two Kings “The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that” – here is the purpose – “so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life” (Romans 5:20-21). Verse 21 tells us that there are two kingdoms, and two kings who reign over these two kingdoms. Everyone is in one of these two kingdoms. There is the kingdom over which sin reigns in death – physical death, spiritual death, and eternal death. Sin is the cruelest tyrant that there has ever been. Sin is far more malicious than Hitler, Stalin, or anyone who has ever walked this earth. In fact, sin – the great tyrant – reigned over those evil tyrants and drove them to do what they did. Those who are in this kingdom obey their king. That is why someone who is unconverted and lost obeys sin. This tyrant has a death-grip on their heart, on their will, and on their mind. Death reigns in sin. You and I were born into this kingdom when we entered this world. Sin reigned over out life, and we had the stench of death upon us. But praise God for the reign of grace. “Even so grace would reign through righteousness.” The reign of grace is the antithesis to the reign of sin. Grace is loving, gracious, kind, and has our best interest at heart. Grace reigns over a kingdom of purity, righteousness, and love. Paul says, “even so grace would reign through righteousness.” The reign of grace is a strong, powerful force in the lives of all believers. Jesus Christ Our Lord Then Paul concludes verse 21 saying, “to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Paul mentions all three names of Jesus to be emphatic. Each carries a specific meaning and reveals a unique aspect of His saving work. “Jesus” is His saving name, which means ‘Jehovah saves.’ Jesus is God in human flesh come to save sinners. Matthew 1:21 says, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Jesus has come to save. We need to ask the question, “Saved from what?” The answer is that we are not saved from loneliness, or personal insecurity, or bad in-laws, or a boring job. Jesus has come to save us from the wrath of God, which is the curse of the Law. He has come to rescue us from eternal destruction, and in that sense, He has come to save us from Himself. The name “Jesus” means He is a Savior of sinners. The name “Christ” is His strong name, which means the ‘anointed one.’ He is the One who has come in the power of the Holy Spirit, with the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He has been endued with supernatural might to triumph in this mission of salvation. That is why Jesus was anointed in the River Jordan at the inauguration of His public ministry. It was so that within His humanity, He would be supernaturally empowered to triumph in His mission of salvation upon the earth. Then the name “Lord” (kurios) means the ‘sovereign One, despot, ruler, king.’ That is His sovereign name. All three names bring out a different aspect of the Lord Jesus Christ and who He is. Paul comes down with a strong, validating stamp. He ends this section on justification by strongly emphasizing the One who has secured our righteousness. The One who has kept the Law on our behalf. The One who has died in our place, Jesus Christ our Lord. The apostle Peter proclaimed in Acts 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else; for there in no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” No one else has kept the Law on my behalf. No one else has died bearing my sins. Salvation is found exclusively in the Lord Jesus Christ. The only way to leave the kingdom of death, over which sin reigns, and enter the kingdom of life, over which grace reigns, is through the new birth and through justification by faith alone. God has provided the way of escape from the kingdom of sin and death, enabling us to enter into the kingdom of grace and life, and it is through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Only Way of Escape If you have never believed upon Jesus Christ, I want to say to you that God has provided the remedy to escape His wrath upon your life. He has provided the solution to your dilemma. It is in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You were born into this world as a resident of the kingdom of death, held in the grip of sin. There is only one way for you to escape and to enter into a right standing before God. It is to throw yourself upon the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came into this world on a mission of salvation. He was born under the Law in order to keep the Law that you have broken again and again. You are a violator of God’s Law. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. There is only one way for you to have a right standing under the Law before God, and that is to believe in the One who kept the Law for you, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only one way for your sins to be taken away. You must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore the sins of all who would believe upon Him when He hung upon the cross, dying in our place. By that death, He satisfied the holy demands of a righteous God. He offers salvation to you as a free, prepaid gift. There is nothing that you can bring to the table to add to what Christ has done. Salvation is apart from your attempts to keep the Law. It is by faith alone in Christ alone. If you have never believed upon Jesus Christ, it is no coincidence that you are hearing this today. I urge you and plead with you to give your life to Christ. Believe upon Him. Confess your sin to Him. You will find much grace, forgiveness, and perfect righteousness in His saving arms. I urge you to flee to Christ, run to Christ, and in Him you will find the treasures of eternal life. May you do so this moment and this day, right where you are. Four Takeaways By way of application, I want you to see four things from this study. First, I want you to see the power of sin. I want you to see how powerful sin is. As you think of your life, I want you to be aware of the devastating power of just one sin in your life. Second, I want you to see the effect of sin. I want you to see how one sin can affect so many people. Sin does not happen in isolation on a deserted island. Sin always affects other people. It affects your family, it affects your friends, it affects the people around you. We see this in today’s text. Third, I want you to see the importance of obedience. There is such a downplaying of obedience in the young, restless, and reformed arena. I hear people talking negatively about the “duty” of obedience. You are in neglect of the clear teaching of Scripture if you downplay obedience. It was important for Christ, and it is also important for your Christian life. Romans 6:17-18 says obedience must come from the heart. We should not have a cold, legalistic, ritualistic obedience, but an obedience motivated by love for God and a passion for the obedience of Christ. Fourth, I want you to see the greatness of grace. It is able to overcome the greatest sin and give salvation to the greatest sinners. In summary, remember how powerful just one sin is, how one sin affects so many people, how important obedience is, and how great grace is. Response We have a few minutes before we wrap up this study. Tell me what you have learned and what has stood out in these verses as Paul brings his summation argument. Audience:        You stated, “although made righteous, or justified, we are still sinners.” Are you addressing original sin and the sinful acts one might be committing today, yet we are still saved striving not to sin but being thankful for God’s grace in sanctification. Dr. Lawson:    We are forgiven of every sin past, present, and future. We are justified before God. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We will continue to sin, and starting in our next study, we will move into the section on sanctification. We will see that we are dead to sin, but sin is still alive in us. Audience:        Are we still sinners because of the original sin, or are we still sinners because of the sin we are going to do after salvation? Is there a difference? Dr. Lawson:    I will have to think about that question. I need to give some careful thought before I give a quick answer. Proverbs has more to say about the tongue than any other subject. I just preached on the tongue at The Master’s University. It has more to say about the restraint of the tongue than any other part of the use of the tongue. It has more to say about what we do not say than it addresses on what we do say. So I will ponder that question for a moment. Let us close in a word of prayer. Father, thank You for this study. I pray for those around the world who are watching, that You would minister to them in a very real and personal way. For us in this room today, my friends that I have gathered with for this Men’s Study, use these theologically profound, rich verses to make us stronger in the faith and have a greater realization of this so great salvation that the Lord has brought to us. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The R.C. I Knew

OnePassion Ministries December 15, 2017

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I am very privileged to have known Doctor Robert Charles Sproul. We know him as R.C. This titanic figure was an evangelical Atlas, a formidable theologian, prolific author, and endearing pastor who will long be remembered for his substantial and significant contribution to the course of evangelical Christianity over many decades. A FIXED NORTH STAR In our day, there have been many Christian leaders who have been a flashing meteor in the sky. They have appeared for a brief moment on the scene, and then disappeared. But few men have been a fixed north star, who year after year and decade after decade, have provided gospel light from their many sermons, lectures, and books. R.C. Sproul has done just this. This gifted man has given the Christian world a lifetime of treasured resources that have shaped our knowledge of God. The books authored by Dr. Sproul are far too numerous to list, but they include: The Holiness of God, Lifeviews, Chosen by God, One Holy Passion, Pleasing God, Surprised by Suffering, The Glory of Christ, Following Christ, The Soul’s Quest for God, Faith Alone, The Invisible Hand of God, Grace Unknown, Willing to Believe, Getting the Gospel Right, Saved from What?, Defending Your Faith, Scripture Alone, What Is Reformed Theology?, The Reformation Study Bible, and A Taste of Heaven. RECLAIMING THE HIGH GROUND These works written by Dr. Sproul are not your normal Christian books—they are not mere fluff. These are not books that have compromised the Christian message in order to be popular. These are books that have clearly articulated the God-exalting truths of the Bible that the evangelical world has so desperately needed to recover. For over forty years, Dr. Sproul dusted off the high ground of a biblical Reformed theology—and took his stand there. We, his many students, have been pulled up by him to this lofty mountain peak and have seen God as we have rarely seen Him. Through these many books, Dr. Sproul is, I believe, the one man most responsible in this generation for the current resurgence of Reformed theology. He has brought the theology of the Reformation out of the ivory tower of the academicians and made it accessible to the average person in the pew. His doctrinally-sound books have influenced two and even three generations of Christians with a high view of the holiness and sovereignty of God. A GUARDIAN OF THE GOSPEL Dr. Sproul has been a guardian of the gospel at all costs. He has been a staunch defender of the faith. He has safeguarded the ‘queen of the sciences’—the robust theology of Scripture—and has protected her ‘crown jewels’, the doctrines of grace. He has faithfully upheld the grand truths of the supreme authority of God, the mystery of His providence, the depravity of man, the definiteness of the atonement, the supremacy of Christ, the purity of the gospel, the necessity of justification by faith alone, and the irresistibility of regeneration. In all of this, Dr. Sproul has fought the good fight. He has run the course. He has kept the faith. He has contended for the gospel against its many foes. He has not entertained us, but has exposited, expounded, exegeted and explained the biblical text, and in so doing, he has edified and equipped us. What is even more amazing is the winsome way in which Dr. Sproul has done this. He  has spoken and written with much grace and dignity. He has been engaging with his words and endearing in his manner. No man in our times has exposed so many to the doctrines of grace as R. C. Sproul. Moreover, no man has done so with such a broad appeal and wide acceptance. R. C. has impacted the world without bells and whistles. He has been armed with simply an open Bible, a renewed mind, and the power of the Spirit. ELECTRIFYING IN THE CLASSROOM I can vividly recall when the book, The Holiness of God, first hit my spiritual life in 1986 with the force of a category five hurricane. It rocked my world and revolutionized my  life. The effect was so profound that when it came time to pursue a Doctor of Ministry degree, there was only one choice for me. I was compelled to sit under the influence of this distinguished professor at the seminary where he taught. When the time came for my first class under this formidable figure, the growing anticipation of experiencing Sproul did not exceed the reality. The classroom was filled with a buzz of excitement as we awaited his arrival. Every student was seated long before he walked in. Not one of us would have dared to be late for this class. When the door swung open, striding into the room, Dr. Sproul. On one side was his vivacious wife, Vesta. On the other side was the beaming president of the seminary, showing off his prized faculty member. This grand entrance felt more like a heavyweight champion entering the ring, escorted by his entourage. He was passionate, powerful, persuasive, provocative, and penetrating. I want you to know, it was electrifying! My life and my character were forged upon the anvil of that class, and Dr. Sproul was the skilled hammer. UNDERGOING INSPECTION The first matter of business for Dr. Sproul that day was to have us stand to our feet. He then began pacing back and forth, inspecting all of us, assessing how each man was dressed and presenting himself. This was akin to a five-star general inspecting his troops. His penetrating eyes sized up each student from top to bottom. Nothing escaped his gaze. He examined what each man was wearing. He analyzed how our hair was combed. He scrutinized our glasses. He commented on any facial hair. He then critiqued – out loud, mind you – how each man was presenting himself. He even made fun of some men who wore tasseled loafers. He called them “fruit loops.” This assessment was given publically in front of the entire class. This class was called “Communication,” and this master communicator was giving us our first lesson. Not all communication is verbal. We were being schooled, that much of what we convey is non-verbal. He stressed that we are communicating before we ever open our mouth. Point made. MOBILIZING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Dr. Sproul then proceeded to lecture us on the proper use of the English language. If we are to preach effectively, he maintained, we must employ well-crafted words and phrases in our sermons. We have little more going for us as a preacher, he affirmed, than what comes out of our mouth. So, we must choose our words carefully and use them strategically. Hence, his emphasis upon English. This was exactly what I had never wanted to hear. What my father, who was a professor, and my high school teachers had belabored with me. But I had refused to listen. However, Dr. Sproul was saying it, and I was buying everything he was selling. This master communicator demanded that we not repeat our words when we stood in the pulpit. He preached that the law of diminishing return is in effect when we use the same word multiple times. So, he reinforced with us with the need to acquire an arsenal of synonyms at our beckoning call. He underscored that we must discard our tired words for stronger ones. He demanded that I stop saying “very” in order to prop up a weak word. He stressed that I must use a more potent word that would better communicate. Yes, sir. IDENTIFYING “THE UNIFORM” He was also known to give a lecture on old-school attire, which was a tour de force in understanding the proper presentation for a leader. He explained how there is an unofficial, but recognizable uniform that respected leaders wear. To which people sub-consciously respond. That day we heard about when he attended the International Council for Biblical Inerrancy. He claimed he knew exactly who the chairman would be. He wrote down the name on the backside of a piece of paper and kept it concealed. Sure enough, his insight was correct. The one man in the room wearing the uniform was James Montgomery Boice, and he was named the chairman. What more proof could we want? Dr. Sproul challenged us to present ourselves as a leader. The businessmen in our congregations, he chided, are often hesitant to introduce us to their work associates. He said we look more ready for a junior high lock-in than for an adult conversation. On one occasion, Dr. Sproul stood in front of us and demonstrated how to properly tie a men’s tie. By this point, he was becoming more like a father figure to us. After he had tied his tie, he looked down at his bulging waistline and snapped, “I need to start buying ties with a bump in them.” His self-deprecating humor disarmed us. It drew us even closer to him. 📷 SPEAKING WITH YOUR HANDS Soon the time came for each of us to preach in class. Dr. Sproul assigned me Daniel chapter 5 and the account of Belshazzar’s drunken feast. When I stood before the class, he was sitting in his customary place—in a chair in the back of the class, rocking back and forth on its back two legs. Trust me, I was well aware of where he was. As I progressed in my sermon, I reached the verse where the divine hand mysteriously appeared in the midst of the drunken orgy and began writing on the wall. As I was explaining this dramatic scene, I gestured with my right hand, as though it was the finger of God writing on the wall of the banquet hall. Like he was shot out of a canon, Dr. Sproul bolted out of his chair and flew up the center aisle to the podium where I stood. Abruptly interrupting my delivery, he barked, “Who told you to motion like that?” Fearing his reprisal, I apologized, “No one, sir. It just seemed like the thing to do.” I knew my dress-down was coming. Publically. Before my peers. But he turned to the class and snapped, “That is exactly what I want to see each one of you do. Gesture with your hands. Now, continue the message, Lawson.” He spun around and marched back to his chair in the back of the room. MAKING EYE CONTACT I worked up my nerve to continue to preach. But it was not long before Dr. Sproul interrupted my sermon a second time. He did not like that I was using sermon notes. This mastermind never used notes. He grabbed my manuscript from off the podium and stomped back to his seat with them. He asserted, “Now preach.” He wanted better eye contact from me with the listeners. He wanted greater freedom of expressions. These were all things I desperately needed. To make his point, Dr. Sproul stood before the class and challenged us to throw any topic at him. He would spontaneously preach on whatever subject without any notes. Only he could have pulled this off. Someone in the class yelled out, “the sovereignty of God,” which was like lobbing him a softball down the center of the plate. He swung hard and knocked it out of the park. He pulled out of the back of his mind the illustration of a sign that was posted during the American Revolutionary War that read, “We will have no sovereign over us.” He used that to indict fallen man’s aversion to this truth. He explained that the nature of our flesh never wants a sovereign God ruling over us. But then, he explained, divine sovereignty is God’s favorite doctrine. He said it would be our favorite doctrine if we were God. I could hardly write down these one- liners fast enough. ENCOURAGEMENT ON STEROIDS One particular assignment that Dr. Sproul gave us was to write a theological paper. The topic I chose escapes my memory, but I will never forget what he wrote at the top of my paper. When it was returned to me, he wrote plain as day at the top of the page, “Steve, you can write. I want you to pursue writing.” I would have been otherwise reluctant to pursue this. But if Dr. Sproul says I can write, then I surely can. If he had told me I could run through a brick wall, I would have taken a running start. I took his word as gospel and began a ministry in writing. That brief comment, written in his virtually illegible handwriting, launched me in the direction of writing. I would have never done so on my own initiative. The mere fact that I am writing this reflection about him is simply the direct result of his influence upon me. That classroom and those memories became an Upper Room for us. The Lord met with us through this one man’s dominant presence. So impactful was it that whenever I would return to my home church after classes, the lay leaders told me that I always preached better after having been with Dr. Sproul. Truth is, it has always been that way. I have always been better at whatever God has called me to do as a result of being with him. OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM That was 30 years ago, and I would have never dreamed that I would know Dr. Sproul in another light. It has since been my privilege to serve with him at Ligonier Ministries as a teaching fellow and a member of the board. This has allowed me an even closer access to him. The influence that he has exerted upon me has only grown. I have been able to play many rounds of golf with him, and he has loved to instruct me in my swing. You have to know that in his heyday, R.C. was a scratch golfer. Even into his 70’s, he regularly shot his age. This is a remarkable accomplishment that few are able to do. He liked to take me to the practice tee and give me instruction. I lovingly called him, “Coach.” My term of endearment for him, “Hey, Coach.” 📷 📷 No one could go from being so serious about the holiness of God to laughing so loud that all around could hear him. One night at dinner, he laughed so hard with Sinclair Ferguson and me that he literally pulled a muscle in his rib cage. I am serious. We had to call my brother, a physician, to come to the restaurant and attend to him. How many people do you know who have hurt themselves laughing? R.C. did. Having a meal with RC was always quite an event. He was always on some new diet. The way he would work around this was to order my meal for me. This way he could eat what he would have ordered for himself off my plate. He was the smartest man in the world, yet he always thought that Vesta could not see him eating off my plate. Even though she was seated right next to him. Not only would he eat my steak, but he would also eat out of my baked potato. He would then order crème brulee for me and eat a sizable portion of it. All because he was on a diet. THE PRACTICAL JOKER It was also my joy to travel with RC on various church history trips. I’ll never forget our leading a group through New England to visit the sites of the Pilgrims in the Great Awakening. During the course of that trip, I mistakenly pronounced the word indefatigable. It was somewhat of a tongue twister for me, and I could never say it right. RC naturally love to jab at me for this. He would not let it rest. When we came to Philadelphia, I was excited to lead us to the statue of George Whitefield on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. As we were standing there with our entire tour group, RC asked me in front of everyone to read the back engraving at the base of the statue. I was so overwhelmed that R C, my esteemed professor, would ask me to read this. As I began to read the engraving, with my head held high with this new affirmation from RC, I soon came to the word I could not pronounce. R C had sent me up. There was that word, indefatigable. I all but swallowed my tongue trying to say the word, RC threw back his head and gave the loudest laugh that I have ever heard in my life. I had stepped right into his trap. And how he loved it! And I loved that he loved it. (the picture below captured that very moment) 📷 A  LASTING INFLUENCE Dr. R. C. Sproul will always be my professor. I will always be his student. In eight years of seminary, I had many different professors. But, in my heart, I only had one. To this day, I still carry his influence in my life and ministry. He still sits on my shoulder and speaks into my ear. He still sits on the chair in the back of the classroom and gives me his evaluation and guidance. The lessons he taught have not been forgotten. They are permanently lodged in my memory. Like no other person, the Lord used this amazing man in my life. He took me several levels higher in ministry skills – how to think, write, and speak. He taught me that it is not only what I say, but how I say it. Moreover, he taught me that it matters how I live the truth. How I stand for it. And that I defend it. The impact of his penetrating words is safely deposited with me. A sacred stewardship has been entrusted to me. Dr. Sproul made a significant investment in me that I must now deposit into others. I now serve as the dean of the Doctor of Ministry program for another seminary. I rarely enter into the classroom without thinking of that first encounter with him. Though he is no longer with us, he nevertheless continues to multiply himself through his lasting influence. Long live the legacy of this extraordinary life. 📷 ANOTHER LUTHER HAS RISEN Several years ago at The Shepherd’s Conference, John MacArthur introduced Dr. Sproul by saying, “He is the Martin Luther of our times.” This is true—R.C. Sproul is the Martin Luther of our times. His books have been the Wittenberg door upon which he has nailed the truth to our minds. Some 150 years ago, Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “A reformation is as much needed now as in Luther’s day and by God’s grace we shall see it, if we trust in Him and publish His truth. But mark ye this, if the grace of God be once more restored to the church in all its fullness and the Spirit of God be poured out from on high and all its sanctifying energy, there must come such a shaking as has never been seen in our days. We want  such a one as Martin Luther to rise from his tomb.” Another Martin Luther did rise from his tomb. His name was the Reverend Doctor Robert Charles Sproul.

Three Great Contrasts – Romans 5:12-17

OnePassion Ministries December 14, 2017

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We are in Romans Chapter 5, and I am so excited for these verses. I am excited because I understand them now. I have read them over and over and trying to punch on them and probe, and am glad to be able to have them in focus. I am going to begin by reading this, and I probably need to begin just with a word of prayer too, so let me just begin with prayer. Father, thank You for letting us gather this morning and thank You for the food that we have already had, and we know it’s come from You and we now want living bread for our souls. We pray that You would feed us the truth of Your word, and that as we take in Your word, that you would nurture us and cause our spiritual muscles to grow and to be developed so that we can be strong in the faith. We need strong doctrine to have strong faith, and so I pray that this morning you would bring that to pass. I pray for those who are watching by way of livestream. I pray that they will feel a part of this study and that you will minister to them wherever they are around the world. And in whatever set of circumstances they find themselves, may they draw great encouragement and strength today from this study. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Romans Chapter 5. Today we want to look at verses 15 through 17, and it may seem like we are on a little bit of a snail’s pace, but these verses, I’m telling you, are so rich and profound that you just can not hydroplane over them and bounce on to the next verses. This is a Bible study, and so in a Bible study, we study the Bible. That means we have to dig down into the text, and it’s worth the effort. As we say in football, “No pain, no gain,” and the same is true in Bible study. If you want a superficial Bible study, then you will have a superficial faith; and if you want to have a strong, deep faith, then you have to go down deep into the word of God. We are going to have to linger here just for a little bit, but we are in verses 15 through 17. Just to remind you, the larger context is dealing with justification. When we get to Chapter 6, we are going to be moving to sanctification, which is our progressive growth in grace. But we are still in the section on justification and our being declared righteous by God the Father on the basis of the merit and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are still laying this cornerstone. Verse 15 begins, “But the free gift is not like the transgression,” and I want to draw your attention to “not like”. I’ve drawn a circle around it in my Bible. “For if by the transgression of the one, the many died.” Now, these next two words – I’m trying to circle around these next two words – “much more did the grace of God and the gift of the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.” That is the other important word: abound. There are five key words, and we are going to come back to this. Now, verse 16: “The gift is not like” – and I’m trying to circle around not like – that which came through the one man who sinned, for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation; but on the other hand, the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.” There is a lot packed in there. Now, verse 17: “For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one much more,” and you can just draw a circle around much more. “Those who receive the abundance” – draw a circle around abundance – “the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” There is a lot packed in here, and this is why we just can not hit this like a speed bump and just hydroplane over it. I mean we have to pull over, and park, and look at this. Now, last time at the end of verse 14, we read that Adam is a type of him who was to come. Adam and Jesus parallel each other. Adam acted on behalf of all humanity and became a type, meaning a pattern, a model of the one who is to come, who is Jesus Christ. Now, as soon as Paul says this, lest we think that Adam and Christ in this parallel type are on the same level, Paul goes off for three verses – it’s like a parentheses and he’s – he can’t just leave this on the table for us to think, “All right. Adam and Jesus: okay, equal footing.” In verses 15 through 17, he actually draws a contrast between Adam and Jesus, which is interesting after he just said they are alike. He now says, no, they are not alike. He will say that Jesus is much more than Adam. He accomplished much more than Adam. There are five key words here that I really want to draw your attention to that will unlock our understanding of these somewhat dense verses. The first two words are ‘not like’ in verse 15. He says ‘not like’ at the very beginning: “But the free gift is not like the transgression.” At the beginning of verse 16, “The gift is not like.” Paul is deliberately wanting us to know that, although Adam is a type of him who is to come, they are alike in that they both represented a large group of people and what they did affected that whole group. Nevertheless, they are not alike. They are alike – they are alike, but not alike. Now, the next two words, and I have already drawn this to your attention, is in the middle of verse 15 and the middle of verse 17, ‘much more’. They’re not alike and Jesus is much more than Adam. He accomplished much more than Adam, and that is going to be very important to us, because here is the point: we gained more in Christ than we lost in Adam. As much as Adam sunk our ship, Jesus did more than just raise the ship. Jesus, by His obedience to the will of God, has done more than just bring us back up to the surface. I mean he has in essence elevated us all the way to heaven. So much more. The other key word that I just want you to know by way of introduction is at the end of verse 15, and it is the word abound; and in the middle of verse 17, abundance. The idea there is really super abound to an excess, to a surplus – that Christ has provided far more grace than the guilt we have incurred from Adam. He will say in verse 20, and we will get to that– he says at the end of verse 20 where sin increase, grace abounded all the more. This is really good news; really good news. Verse 12 – you will note at the end of verse 12, in your translation there’s a long dash. Do you see that? That means the long dash was not in what Paul wrote. That’s a translator’s addition. There’s no punctuation in the original language. It is supplied to help us now as English readers get in the brain and in the mind of Paul as he’s laying out this case. He comes in verse 12 – you see the just as? “Therefore, just as…” This sentence is supposed to end, “…even so.” “Just as; even so,” but there is no even so, and we do not get to the even so until really verses 18 and 19 when he finishes his train of thought. Verses 15 through 17 is like an excursion. It’s like a parenthesis. Okay? Now, verses 13 and 14 is the first parenthesis that explains verse 12, and we looked at that last time. Now, verses 15 through 17, if you’re ready for this, is a parenthesis inside of a parenthesis; and verses 15 through 17 explains the end of verse 14. Paul is making – he makes a statement in verse 12, and then in verses 13 and 14 he just hits the pause button. Sometimes like we do in a conversation, we just go off. That is what Paul is doing here in verse 13 and 14. He is like, “I need to explain some things before I move any further,” and he gets to the end of verse 14 and he goes, “Well, I need to explain what I just explained,” and so that is where we are in verse 15 through 17. He will pick it back up in verse 18 and 19 and complete the sentence of verse 12. What verses 15 through 17 is – and I’m explaining all this, just because I am so excited to kind of unravel the mystery here. Fifteen through seveteen that we are looking at this morning is the explanation of Adam is a type of him who is to come, but it is like Paul just immediately said, “Not so fast. I don’t want you to think they’re on the same level, because there’s a great contrast to Adam and Christ in what they have accomplished.” Let us now look at this, and there are three contrasts. In fact I’ve titled this study Three Great Contracts. One is in verse 15, the second is in verse 16, and the third is in verse 17. Paul is very methodical, he is very logical, he is very linear here, if you will. I.               DEATH AND GRACE The first great contrast is in verse 15, and it’s the contrast between death and grace. Death and grace. So verse 15 begins, “But,” and that word ‘but’ really ought to capture your attention. That’s one of the most important words in the entire Bible. I mean ‘but’ should just scream for your attention. When you read an epistle and you come across the word ‘but’, that means Paul did not just tap on the brakes. He is standing on the brakes and this now needs to have some explanation. “But the free gift,” referring to the salvation that is ours in Christ – and this free gift really refers to verses six through 11. Pauls’ just bringing everything forward. This free gift is how we were justified in verse nine, how we were reconciled in verse 10, how we were reconciled in verse 11. That is the free gift. The free gift is not like the transgression. Now, please note Paul does not use the word sin that he used in verse 12. He now calls it transgression, and the word transgression means a false step in the wrong direction. It means to stumble and fall, because you have left the path. You have heard of this expression the fall of mankind, the fall of Adam, the fall of the human race when we refer to original sin. It is this word transgression where we get the idea fall. It means that Adam was walking along the path as God wanted him to when suddenly he just left the tracks. When he saw that forbidden fruit and his wife handed it to him, hey, he just literally tripped and went headlong into a fall. He did more than trip. He went headlong off the ledge and he pulled every one of us with him. It’s like he was the engine and we were all the box cars, and the engine left the track and he just pulled the entire human race with him, and we went crashing down. Now, some theologians see it just simply as Adam stubbed his toe and very little effect on us, and there are a lot Arminian Bible teachers who do not understand what this is teaching, that Adam literally went headlong down into spiritual death and he pulled the whole train with him, and we went cascading down. Verse 15, “The free gift is not like the transgression, for if by the transgression of the one” – that refers to Adam’s original sin when he took that fruit that God said, “You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and that was so gracious of God, because God did not want evil inside Adam’s brain and inside of his thought patterns. You just need to stay pure and clean. You do not need evil in side of you. Adam took it, that transgression. Look at the result. The many died, and the verb tense there on died mean we all died at once before we were even conceived. Before we were even born, we had already died. We came into this world already dead. This is the reason why infants die. This is the reason why there are miscarriages. This is the reason why some babies are born stillborn. Death is already in the womb before any – that person has done anything, performed any act, said anything, did not say anything, done anything, did not do anything. Adam’s sin has already brought death, and this happened the moment Adam died. We were all doomed to death, however many thousands of years ago that was. That’s how drastic of a situation the world was. He says, “For it is by the transgression of the one the many died,” and the many here refer to everyone whom Adam was representing as their federal head, as their federal representative, and that was the entire human race. Every single person who would ever be conceived in their mother’s womb, whether or not they were ever delivered, death across the board. Devastating. If you weaken at this point, your theology is going to be so off the rails that you are going to be wrong about 30 other places in doctrine. You have to be right here. Notice how verse 15 continues: “Much more.” Now, that’s very interesting. “Much more did the grace of God,” referring to the salvation, justification, reconciliation, “and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to the many.” Now, let me tell you what is going on here. Adam started out at ground zero. God told him, “You may not eat from this fruit,” and there was a probationary period – we don’t know how long it would have been – to see if Adam will obey God. If he will obey God, then God will confirm eternal life. Adam disobeyed. He sinned and he threw us all into sin. Now, we need more than forgiveness. Forgiveness is only half the story in salvation. If the preacher only preaches forgiveness of sin, he only has one side of the blade of the two-edged sword. All forgiveness does is wipe away the debt that’s been incurred, but all that does is bring your checking account back to zero. You have to have a positive deposit into your account to go to heaven. I have told you before zeros do not go to heaven. Adam started out at zero. He sinned. He goes bankrupt. God now must, even with Adam as well as with us, do more than just wipe the debt clean. There has to be now deposits of righteousness into Adam’s account and into our account in order to find acceptance with God in heaven. If all we have is forgiveness, all that does is just bring the checking account back to zero. There has to be the positive acquisition of righteousness, so that is why he says in verse 15, “much more.” There had to be much more than the removal of the transgression. There had to be an abounding of more than just forgiveness, and that is implied in these words much more and abound, and he will tell us at the end of verse 17. Do you see in verse 17 the gift of righteousness? Do you see that? Forgiveness deals with the negative side of salvation. Righteousness deals with the positive side of righteousness. It is the heads and tails of the same coin. You have to have not only your sins taken away. That’s only half the story. You also have to have a positive righteousness to find acceptance with God in heaven, and that’s what justification provides: the positive deposit, the positive imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ to the account of everyone who believes in Him. That is why we are saying we gain more in Christ than we lost in Adam. If we only gain in Christ what we lost in Adam, we’re just back to where Adam started. We have to have more than where Adam started. The contrast you see in verse 15, death, that’s one side, but on the other side is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is making this contrast. Yes, Adam and Jesus are alike in one sense, but they’re not alike in another sense. In this other sense, Adam brought death to every one of us. Christ has brought more than just forgiveness. He has brought the grace of righteousness to us. That is the first contrast. Remember I said three great contrasts? II.             CONDEMNATION AND JUSTIFICATION Now, in verse 16 he gives the second contrast between Adam and Jesus, and it is the contrast between condemnation and justification. You will see it here in verse 16. He begins verse 16, the gift referring to the gift of forgiveness and righteousness. The gift is “not like”– that’s how he began the previous verse: “not like”. He does it again in verse 16: not like. If you want to emphasize something in the original language, you put it at the beginning of the sentence to just get everyone’s attention. It is like putting it on the front porch. As soon as you walk into the house, there it is. You are looking at it as you walk in. “The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned,” and the word sinned means to miss the mark; like aiming an arrow at a target and it just totally goes haywire and does not even come close to hitting the target. That is what the word sin is. You totally missed the mark of the glory of God, the holiness of God, the commandments of God. Adam sinned. “For on the one hand” – and so he’s making this comparison here. “On the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation,” and this judgment is the divine verdict upon sin. It is the judge’s gavel coming down and the judgment of God coming down hard, because God is a holy God. The judgment is upon not just Adam, but the entire human race that Adam represented. On the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression. You say, “Wow. Why judgment of the entire human race on just one transgression?” Because God is perfectly holy and one sin against a perfectly holy God is more than enough to sentence anyone to eternal damnation. It’s like this 51:49, the scales, and like how good do you have to be to go to heaven. One sin is enough to damn a human soul to hell forever. Adam was representing all of us at the same time. His one sin against a perfectly holy God was more than enough to bring the judgment of God down, and the judgment of God was condemnation. The judgment means to render the verdict, and the verdict was condemnation. If there is no grace, it will result in eternal damnation. It shows how serious it is to be right with God. “So on the one hand, the judgment arose from the one transgression resulting in condemnation.” It always results in condemnation. In Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death. I think so many times we fail to realize just how holy God is and just how sinful we are. Notice in verse 16, “But on the other hand, the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.” Now, just to remind you, justification is where God does not make us righteous; He declares us to be righteous. Sanctification will be how He progressively over our entire Christian life will make us more and more and more practically righteous. In the act of justification, God simply pronounces, declares, charges to the account of, imputes to the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. Adam’s one act brought condemnation to every one of us around this table; every single one of us. Jesus’s act has removed the many transgressions and has brought righteousness to everyone who will believe in Him. That is the second contrast that Paul is making, and Paul is just so careful in his teaching that, after he says, “Adam is a type of Him who is to come,” he in essence is saying this: I need to clarify that. Theologians always clarify things, and Paul is clarifying here. Now, in verse 17 is the last contrast to show us that Adam and Christ, though they are alike, they are nevertheless not alike in what they accomplished. It is the contrast between the reign of death and the reign of life. Now, that’s a big contrast. III.           ADAM AND CHRIST Verse 17, “For if by the transgression of the one,” that would be Adam, “death reigned through the one,” and death became such a cruel monarch who reigned ruthlessly over the human race and has brought sin, and sadness, and sickness, and suffering, and physical death, spiritual death, eternal death. Sin is no friend to anyone around this table. A friend of sin is your avowed enemy, and death reigns in this world through Adam’s sin, and that’s just the way that it is. You want to know what’s wrong with the world? This is what is wrong with the world. You want to know what’s wrong with every one of us? This is what is wrong. In the middle of verse 17, “much more those who receive the abundance of grace,” and grace here is representing really just the entirety of the salvation that is ours through the gospel of Jesus Christ. It includes propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, justification, union with Christ, communion with Christ, adoption with Christ. It is the whole package of salvation is bound up in this grace, the abundance of grace and of the gift. He uses “gift” here to remind us that we receive this gift with the empty hand of faith. We bring nothing to the table. We have nothing to offer God. I mean we are spiritually bankrupt paupers who have nothing in our account to withdraw to bring in our hands before God. It is just the gift of righteousness, and this righteousness refers to justification, because in justification, God declares us to be righteous. He says, “The gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” You and I have passed out of the reign of death and we have entered into the reign of life. We have gone from darkness to light; we have gone from death to life. It could not be any greater juxtaposition than what we have experienced. These are the great contrasts. Now, before I open it up for our discussion, I just want to nail down a few more theological points here with you, and we are in the deeply theological portion of the Book of Romans, and I mean this is what puts meat on your bones is strong doctrine. A couple things to mention: number one is the historicity of Adam. Adam was not a mythological figure. Adam was not an imaginary person. There is no such thing as evolution. That is off the table. God created the first man and everything began with the first man, Adam. If you equivocate on the historicity of Adam – meaning he was a real person created in the image of God, that God breathed life into him – then the whole argument of justification, redemption, reconciliation, propitiation, everything comes crashing down, which is why the devil is always trying to promote this false teaching of evolution. Listen, just mark it down. If there was ever a time when there was nothing, then there would be nothing right now, because out of nothing, nothing comes. There had to be God, and God created the heavens and the earth in six consecutive days. That’s just what the text says. On the sixth day, he created Adam, and it – this whole argument is built on two men: the first Adam and the second Adam. The first Adam, the real Adam who was married to a real woman named Eve; and then the second man, Jesus Christ. This is another reason why Jesus had to come in the flesh. There had to be the incarnation. I mean this would make a great Christmas message, that Jesus had to step into the human race in order to undo what the first man did. He couldn’t just snap his fingers in heaven. He actually had to come down and get into our skin. He had to enter into the human race to undo what the first man did. If you remove the reality of the first man, you remove the necessity of the incarnation and Christ becoming a man. In these verses, it clearly states the man Christ Jesus. Look in verse 15. “By” – at the end of verse 15, “By the grace of the one man Jesus Christ.” Why would he say the one man? Why didn’t he just say Jesus Christ? Because he is emphasizing something. He’s emphasizing the humanity of Christ, which is absolutely necessary to undo what the first man did. It’s two men. That is the first theological doctrine that we see here that we have to embrace. I can give you more reasons. When you read Luke 3:38, the genealogy of the human race, the thing ends up with Adam, the son of Adam after going through all of these people. You just can not go “people, people, person, person, person, person, person, person,” and all of a sudden go “myth.” You are so inconsistent, you are a walking contradiction. No, person, person, person, person ends up person. Also, in Matthew 19:4, Jesus, as he teaches on divorce and remarriage, bases his whole argument that God – from the very beginning, God made them male and female. The whole argument is based on that it was a real man that got married to a real woman, and God performed the service in the Garden of Eden. God tied the knot. That was not a figment of someone’s imagination. You are also going to be undermining the institution of marriage as well to remove the historicity of Adam. There are a lot of chips on the table here, and so we just can not carelessly say, “Well, you know, it just seems like to me that ought to be just kind of a fictitious story.” Well, you just bargained away more than you realize. It is critically important, the historicity of Adam. The second main doctrine here that we just have to have some meat on our bones spiritually is the federal headship of Adam and Jesus. We have to not only understand it, we have to believe it. It is clearly taught in scripture that Adam acted for all humanity and Jesus acted for a new humanity. What Adam did effected the whole human race; what Jesus did effected the new race of believers in Jesus Christ. And just another little theological point here, the too many, M-A-N-Y, are two different groups. The many that Adam represented was every single person who would ever be conceived in their mother’s womb. The many that Jesus represented were all who would believe in Him, all the elect of God. If you say that Jesus represented the entire human race, then you have just taught universalism and that Jesus now is justifying the entire human race, and Jesus has emptied hell. To keep this parallel clear, the many of Adam is the entire human race; the many of Jesus are all His people, all who are in Christ. That is who he represented. Now, the third thing, again, is this doctrine of imputation, and RC Sproul, who is has said, “You know, we just can’t keep calling ourselves evangelicals, because that’s such a wide spectrum – a wide swath that, within evangelicalism, there’re so many crazy different things that people say they believe.” And so RC said, “From now on we are going to be called Imputationists.” Imputation – Adam’s sin imputed to the entire human race, charged to our account. Our sin imputed to Jesus Christ. He bore our sins upon the cross, and Jesus’s righteousness imputed us. We talked about this last week and I know I’m repeating that, but as we pass through this section, we have to understand imputation, to be credited to the account of. Then also we see here the fall of Adam and the human race, a big time fall into death. Now, death means something, not that we just fall into sickness. We didn’t fall into having the sniffles. We fell into death, and this death is immediate spiritual death. Remember what God said? “And the day that you eat of this fruit, you shall surely die?” and Adam continued to live? Oh, let me tell you, he died the moment he took a bite out of that fruit. He died spiritually, and there was now a severance between him and God, and he suddenly realized he was naked and he had to cover himself. There was an immediate spiritual death and it was the beginning of a progressive physical death, and the aging process immediately began. He would eventually die physically, but that process began the second he sinned. Then if it had not been for the grace of God to cover him with that animal covering, a foreshadowing of the lamb of God that would take away the sine of the world, it would have brought about the third death: spiritual death, physical death, eternal death. The second death, which would be confinement in hell, eternal punishment, ever perishing yet never perishing. The fall of Adam was huge. Again, by way of analogy, it was a fall. He didn’t stub his toe. He went down and he took us all down into the grave of death such that when he bore his children, Cain and Able, they were born with his sin nature. It says in Genesis 5:1, I think it is, “Adam gave birth to a son in his image.” You remember Adam was made in the image of God? Now Adam has a son in his own image, in his own likeness. Think about this: mind, affections, and will. His children and everyone who’s been born since were born with a mind in darkness: cannot see the truth, cannot know God, born in the ignorance of darkness. The affections also greatly affected, the heart defiled; but more than that, the will now is dead towards God. It is the Biblical teaching of the bondage of the will. Now, if you believe in the fall, you believe in the bondage of the will. It is all a package deal. If you think Adam merely slipped and became sick, then the will can still be active towards God. If you believe he fell into death, then even the will is dead. The gravity of what is being said here is enormous. Then the last theological point that I wanna make here – and this section is just so rich in theology, and I know we need to get to the application. But we are just trying – we are just pouring concrete into the foundation and we have to have a sturdy foundation. This idea of the abundance of grace, that we now have received through Christ such a surplus and such an excess of grace that we have gained far, far more in Christ than we have ever lost in Adam. It is good news. We are not just brought back up to ground zero and now we have to live up to a certain standard, like where Adam was to see if we get in. No, the whole thing has been covered in Christ by Christ, so we are now completely justified before God, so this is liberating. I am excited just to sink my teeth into these verses and to sort this out in my own mind and in my own heart, and I hope for each of us this morning – I hope in a sense that this is eye-opening. I am sure in one sense I have not said anything that you did not already know, but maybe you now see in these verses the truth that you already knew, but you see how it’s laid out in Paul’s argument. When we pick it back up in verse 18, it is actually completing the thought of verse 12 where the long dash is at the end of verse 12. Paul has flashes of genius that even as he brings truths up, he is so out ahead of everything that he is clarifying and explaining things, and he is even explaining his explanation and clarifying what he has clarified even with a parenthesis inside of a parenthesis so that he can be crystal clear in what he is teaching. Having said that, we have got 10 minutes here. Let me just open this up, and I don’t even know what question to ask you other than just jump in and comment on what, out of this that we have looked at, is a game-changer for you, has great impact and influence in your thinking. What of this tightens your thinking? What of this changes your thinking or even how you live? That’s just hugely open-ended. Yes? Male:                           What would you say – without getting in an argument with this other person, they were making the comment that people who are living in sin, right, either through homosexuality, or having an affair, or whatever they’re doing, at one time in their life they had accepted Christ as their Lord and savior, and they still proclaim it. Okay? But they’ve got an addiction of sin, okay? And so I mean how would you handle that? I would say – obviously I would need more information. I can only make a categorical response, meaning a generalized response. I would say they have never been converted, and that they are still under the reign of death, and they have never entered into the reign of life, and they still have the old master of sin dominating their life, and that they have not begun with a new master, the Lord Jesus Christ. Where we will eventually get to in the first of the year is justification is inseparably connected to sanctification. Everyone who is justified immediately begins the process of sanctification. Now, that does not mean that you can never sin. That does not mean that sin could never establish some kind of a beach hold in a particular area of your life. However, it does mean that there will be the break of the reign of sin in that person’s life. Sin will still be present, but it will no longer be president. You are under new management now and you are taking new orders from a new master, and if Jesus really is your new master, you are going to obey him. If you’re living in just open disobedience to your new – to supposedly your new master, this is telling me there’s a strong case to be made you still are working for your old master, which is sin. Now, let me just give you a verse. Romans 6 in verse 16, just to get ahead of ourselves, verse – Romans 6:16, we’ll let Paul answer this, “Do you not know.” Now, as soon as he says that, that means, “Hey, if you’re breathing, you know this.” Okay. This is Kindergarten. This is Christianity 101. This is so basic. Paul begins, “Do you not know? Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?”

Adam and Christ – Romans 5:12

OnePassion Ministries December 7, 2017

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We have come to Romans 5:12 and this begins an extraordinarily profound passage of scripture that if I had to put three words over this section it would be “Adam and Christ”. If you understand Adam and Christ, you basically understand human history. You basically understand salvation and condemnation and everything that you need to know. From God’s perspective there’s only two men who have ever lived, Adam and Christ. Every person is in either Adam or is in Christ. They were two representative men. Adam represented the entire human race. Whatever Adam did affected you, affected me, effected anyone whoever lived. Jesus Christ is the second Adam. He is the head of another race of people. Those who are believers and those who are clothed in his perfect righteousness. Everyone enters into this world in Adam. You do not have to do anything. You were born in Adam. As we shall see even when Adam sinned however many thousand years ago that was we sinned long before we even were conceived and long before we were even born. We were already charged with Adam’s sin. Then Christ entered the world and where Adam disobeyed, Christ has obeyed. Christ’s obedience on our behalf has been credited to us now for righteousness. In one sense it is very simple and it all revolves around the doctrine of imputation. Imputation simply is the theological word that means to credit to the account of, to charge to the account of. There are three imputations that are taught in the bible. To understand these three imputations you have to put your arms around a lot of theology. The first imputation is the imputation of Adam’s sin to the entire human race. Such that when Adam sinned we all sinned in Adam. You may say “hey that’s not fair I wasn’t there and I did not do it.” Well you think more highly of yourself than you ought to because you would have made the same choice. You are not better than Adam. In fact, you would have probably folded your tent before you even got to the forbidden fruit. Adam acted on our behalf. It’s just like in a football game one guy jumps offsides and the whole team is penalized. So one man can penalize the whole team. That is what happened with Adam. He stood as our federal representative, just like we have people in Washington that vote for us. What they vote affects us. We were not sitting up there, we did not cast the vote but nevertheless it affects us and that is just the reality. That is the way that it is. There are two other imputations and these are positive imputations and you do not want to ever say I do not want imputation because two are positive, only one is negative. We gain more in Christ than we lost in Adam. We come out ahead, far ahead. The second imputation is the sins of all the people who would ever believe, all of those sins were imputed to Christ on the cross. Him who knew no sin God made to be sin for us. 1 Corinthians 5:21, “And he bore our sins in his body upon the tree.” 1 Peter 2 and 1 Peter 3:18, the just for the unjust. All of the sins of all the people who would ever believe upon Christ all of their sins at once were transferred to Christ. Our sins credited to Him and He literally bore them in His body upon the cross. The third imputation is the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ gained through his perfect obedience to the will of God is imputed to us when we believe upon Christ. Adam’s sin imputed to the entire human race. The sins of all believers imputed to Christ. Christ’s righteousness imputed to us. Those three imputations give the over view of really the transactions in salvation. Romans 5 beginning in verse 12 and it really goes down to verse 19, lays this out. It is an extraordinary case to be laid out. Beginning in verse 12, “Therefore just as through one man,” and we know who that one man is, it is Adam. He’s mentioned in verse 14, “Just as through one man’s sin entered into the world. And death through sin. So death spread to all men because all sinned.” Now in your translation there probably is a long dash at the end of verse 12. Does your translation have a long dash? There is no punctuation in the original Greek manuscripts but punctuations are intended to help the reader. Punctuations are good. There is a long dash here to signify that Paul goes off, not on a tangent, but he breaks his train of thought and does not resume it until verse 18. Beginning in verse 13 is really like a dangling thought out on the side. He says, “For until the law, sin was in the world. Sin was not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless death reign from Adam until Moses even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam who is a type of him who is to come. The free gift is not like the transgression for if by the transgression of the one,” that’s Adam, “the many died,” that’s us, “much more did the grace of God and the gift of the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to the many,” that’s also us who believe. “The gift is not like that which came through the one Adam who sinned for on the one hand the judgement arose from the one transgression.” That’s back in Genesis 3 resulting in condemnation. “But on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions, that is our transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one death reign through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” I realize this is very compact. It is somewhat of an awkward English sentence as it is translated but it is going to be worth our effort to get the meat off of this bone. This is really profound. Verse 18, “So then as through one transgression,” and he’s really picking back up now what he said at the end of verse 12, “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men even so through one act of righteousness they resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners even so through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.” I will stop there. Now it’s a little awkward to read it out loud because they are long sentences and there’s parallelism going on here. It is probably a little challenging for you to keep up concentration as I read through this. I understand that but I wanted to just lay out where we’re going to be headed. There is no way we can get through this so let me put you at ease for this. We are going to start on verse 12 and I do remember when I was in seminary one professor saying you can determine how good a theologian a man is by how warn out verse 12 is in his bible. If you get verse 12 you get a major chunk of the bible. If you miss verse 12 you’ve lost your golf ball in the weeds and you just can’t connect the dots. This explains human history. This explains salvation. This explains condemnation. I. THE CONNECTION Verse 12 is a huge verse and I have told you before large doors swing on small hinges. Major truth can hinge on just a small verse like this. Let us look at this. He begins verse 12 therefore and I hate to say this but we’re going to have to stop and talk about therefore. Whenever you see a therefore you’ve got to see what it’s there for. Therefore is a connection. It connects what just proceeded with now with what follows. Therefore is like a bridge between two islands. Why does he say therefore? The explanation lies in this, in verses 6-11 that you just had previous it says in verse 6 that Christ died for the ungodly. He died for the helpless. In verse 8 it says he died for sinners. In verse 10 it says that he died for enemies and the result of this death is in verse 9 he has justified helpless, ungodly, sinful enemies and verse 10 he has reconciled those whom he’s justified. He has reconciled them to a holy God. Here is the question, “how can one man by one death reconcile all these many people and remove that many sins with just one death by one man?” The therefore leads into the explanation. How Jesus Christ hanging on the cross for six hours specifically the last three hours from 12:00 noon till 3:00 when he dismissed his spirit. At high noon is when it became black as midnight our sins transferred to Christ upon the cross, how could he in that short period of time in one act of obedience how could he clean the slate for us and then add his perfect righteousness to our spiritually bankrupt account? We need an explanation for this. Beginning in verse 12 and all the way down to verse 19 as I just read Paul now hits the pause button and he dives into some deep water to show how the obedience of the one man, Jesus Christ reverses the curse of the disobedience of one other man. In one act of obedience Christ would be able to accomplish our salvation and the whole system. The whole economy of salvation is set up in representation that one man can represent the many and what the one man does affects the many. What Pail will now do is open the lens a little bit and not only allow us to see what Christ has done but allow us to see what Adam has done. What Adam did affect the many, what Christ did affected the many, and in reality as God looks at the human race he only sees two men. All he sees is Adam and Christ. You are either in Adam or you are in Christ and what Adam did affected everyone who is in Adam and what Christ did is effect everyone who is in Christ. That is basically the two categories and that’s basically all that God sees. II. THE COMPARISON He begins in verse 12, “Therefore,” to pull verses 6-11 forward, “Just as through one man.” When he says, “Just as,” he’s starting to set up a comparison. Now he will depart from the comparison in verse 13 and 14. He will come back to it really in verses 15-19 but those two words, “just as,” he’s beginning to set up a comparison. Adam and then just as Christ, “Just as through one man,” that one man is Adam, we have already said, “sin entered into the world.” Into the whole world. Adam’s one sin opened the flood gate for the whole ocean of sin to come pouring through that key hole. Adam’s one sin put a crack in the dam and sin entered into the world. With sin and death through sin. The parallels between death and sin are extraordinary and Paul will make the case. I want to show you this. In Romans 6:16, “Do you not know that when you present yourself to someone as slaves for obedience you are slaves of the one whom you obey either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness. What we need to see is sin always results in death. Sin is cosmic treason against God. It always brings the death penalty. You remember in Genesis 2:17, “The day that you eat this fruit you will surely die.” Yet Adam seemed to have lived? No death entered that very moment. The death process began. He would have lived forever if he had not sinned but when he sinned his body immediately became subject to death. The aging process began. Also at that moment spiritual death entered the human race. He became severed in his relationship from God. That very moment. It would lead ultimately to eternal death if it were not for the grace of God that would intervene but the point we need to understand is what Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” Just one sin against God results in physical death, spiritual death and eternal death. It is high treason against the God of heaven and earth and it always brings the curse of the law which is death. Sin may be a small thing to us it is a gigantic thing to God. It brings death. At the end of Chapter 6, Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.” Just one sin brings death. Now just to complete this look at Romans 8:2 because permeates through these chapters. Romans 8:2, “For the law of the spirit of life in Jesus Christ has set you free from the law of sin and death.” Sin and death are twin sisters. They just are Siamese twins. They are inseparably bound together. They are the heads and tails of the same coin. They are inseparable. Wherever there is sin there is death. We see it again in Romans 8:6, “For the mindset on the flesh is death but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace.” Verse 13, “If you are living according to the flesh you must die but if by the spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live.” The flesh they’re referring to the sinful flesh. What we need to understand is that when Adam sinned, he brought sin into the entire human race but more than just sin he brought the death penalty with his sin into the human race. 1. Pelagianism Come back to Romans 5:12, “Therefore just as through one man’s sin entered into the world and death through sin.” It could not be contained it couldn’t be kept with just Adam it spread like a malignant cancer to the whole body to the entire human race. It says, “So death spread to all men. Why? Because all sinned.” Why does anyone die? Because of sin. It’s sin in the human race, in the human body, in the human soul. That’s why we die. Notice he says because all sinned. That is a huge little statement. Now that’s been interpreted different ways down through the centuries. It’s been interpreted wrongly by those who say there is no connection between Adam and the entire human race. He simply set an example or a model and people now sin imitating Adam. That is a totally bogus interpretation. It’s called a pelagian view. 2. Semi-Pelagianism The next is the semi-pelagian view which is what most evangelicalism is that when Adam sinned his sin was charged to everyone’s account but the sin nature that has been passed down from conception to conception to conception to conception has simply weakened human nature. Such that there is now still a moral capacity for man to do good towards God or to be able to exercise his will towards God. That that is what you call and I am going to give you the theological term, semi-Pelagianism. It is a halfway house and it is an unbiblical position. 3. Reformed The third position is what has historically been called the reformed position. Which is code for the biblical positions which means Adam’s sin charged to every person who ever lived immediately and his sin nature has been subsequently passed down to every person born into the human race and that sin nature is totally corrupt and radically depraved that has effected the whole person. Not just their thinking and not just their feelings but even their choosing and their will. Now it is critically important that we understand in verse 12 the fall, what is call the fall of the human race. That it was not a small step down. It was a fall from a 50 story high building and when man hit the ground it totally incapacitate him spiritually speaking towards God. Such that he now is plagued by what we call moral inability. He has no moral ability to act towards God. He can pull out a red tie instead of a blue tie on a horizontal basis that’s fine he can turn left and not go right if he’s trying to get on the toll way. That doesn’t affect him towards God. What does affect him towards God is when he hears the Gospel. Number one he can not really hear it. Number two he can not really see it. Number three his will is crippled and devastated and he has an inoperative spiritual will. It’s what Martin Luther called the bondage of the will. It is important that we understand the full extent to which Adam has plunged the human race into a devastating place of sin. Now when it says because all sinned. Several things I want to say here. We will just cover verse 12. Adam’s sin was immediately charged to the entire human race all at once. Any person who would ever be conceived in a mother’s womb immediately Adam’s sin was charged to every person long before we were ever conceived in our mother’s womb. It was all at once. Second it was comprehensive. In that it effected when we would be born it would effect every part of us, mind, affections and will. There is no part of our human nature unaffected by the original sin of Adam. It was just devastating. This little statement here, “Because all sinned,” is an extraordinary statement and it is all based upon the theological reality of representation. Representation and imputation that Adam represented every single one of us. It was as though we were in Adam. When he rebelled against God we rebelled against God. It has to be that way in order for the other side to be true for us to be in Christ and what Christ did for us, to become our righteousness as well. How we understand verse 12 is it is critically important. It explains why the entire human race is in a state of depravity, corruption and sin against God. It explains why everyone has to be born again. It explains why our dire need is for what Christ will provide for us in verses 15-19. What he says here in verse 12 is that important. There’s a long dash and maybe we will just be able to look for a second ahead for until the law sin was in the world. Of course it was. He just said in verse 12 through one man sin entered into the world. Even before the law was given sin was already in the world but sin is not imputed where there is no law. Well God has already written his law upon the consciousness and has written the law upon everyone’s heart. In Romans 2 and in verse 12 it says all who have sinned without the law will also parish without the law and all who have sinned under the law will be judged under the law. In verse 14, the gentiles who do not have the law do instinctively the things of the law, these not having the law are law to themselves. Long before God gave the law to Moses God had already written the law upon on the conscience and people violated their own consciences to sin against God. What Paul is wanting us to see is that even before Moses gave the law the law was already written upon people’s hearts and people were sinning against the law. So verse 14, “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses.” If death reigned that means sin was reigned because sin brings death. Even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, well the sin of Adam God spoke audible words directly to Adam. It was not a sin against his conscience it was a sin against the actual speaking of God to him. Do not eat of this tree. That is the meaning of that. In verse 14 after he says Adam Paul writes, “Who is a type of him who was to come.” This will lead us into what we will be looking at in future weeks but the word type means a pattern or a model. What he is saying is that Adam is the perfect type of a representative who can affect a large group of people. He is a type of the one who is to come who is Jesus Christ who will be also a representative of a large group of people. Just as Adam’s one act of disobedience effected the many so Christ’s act of obedience effected the many. That is where he begins in verses 12-14 and I think we just stop here and we open it up for discussion among ourselves and I realize these verses are somewhat dense. I realize that. They are rich, they are heavy but they are profound and they are absolutely necessary for us to understand one what’s wrong with everybody and two what’s the only cure there is. It is Jesus Christ. Let me stop right here and open it up. Remember I said, what is the so what? Let me just throw this out. So what? As a result of what we’ve looked at today what is the so what of these verses? How do these apply to us? How do these speak to where we are? How should this effect the way that we live today, tomorrow, this week, as we live our Christian life? What is the practical relevance of these verses. I am going to throw it open for us. Audience Member: I was reflecting on this and it’s really one of those why give it thought but it shows some significance and I was burden with it of how we lead, as men, how we lead the responsible lives that we have in our family when you consider if Adam had corrected, had done the right thing and not allowed – totally just thrown the apple away but no he bit the apple himself. But if his wife had – if he had instructed her she wouldn’t probably have turned back or looked back. The impact that we have on our families on our you know. That’s kind of what I – That is outstanding and isn’t it interesting that God holds Adam accountable for sin entering into the world. Not Eve but Adam and it really speaks to the headship of the man in the home as well as in the human race. That is a brilliant point. Thank you for that. Someone else, so what is the so what on this? Audience Member:      We were dead before we were born. Christ righteousness imputed on it because the imputation of that righteousness on us is just it’s inconceivable it’s amazing. Yes. It’s like how could anyone say that someone is born in a neutral state. That you’re just kind of like in no man’s land and then at age 12 you become a sinner. You become accountable and now you become a sinner but before age 12 you’re just kind of suspended in mid air. This says no we were born spiritually dead and accountable to God because of Adam’s transgression long before we even knew how to make a choice about anything. We were already dead in the water, dead in sin. That is a great point. Audience Member:      When you line that up with past and present where do you put the justification because we were dead in sin before we were born. Christ justified us in the past but we were not reconciled. Yeah you put justification at the split second a person believes in Christ. It is justification by faith. When the faith is exercised is when God applies the righteousness of Christ, imputes the righteousness of Christ to that person’s account. There used to be an old school though among reformed Baptists in England long years ago and it lead to hypercalvinsim which is that you were justified in eternity past. Now the fact is, please note verse 10, we were actually even the elect were enemies of God before we believed in Christ. Even those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. He says in verse 10, “We,” referring to believers, “We were enemies.” In Ephesians 2:1 he says, “We were dead in trespasses and sin.” Even those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world were enemies of God helpless and godless under the wrath of God until the moment we believed in Christ. That is a very important issue you brought up and we want to be very clear in our thinking on that. Even the elect were under the wrath of God until we were declared righteous at the moment of our faith in Christ. Audience Member:      I think it highlights the grace of God because we were so dead. I mean dead, dead, no pulse, could do nothing. And the fact that we know Christ we love Christ. The fact that we have faith gives God 100 percent of the credit. Amen. Audience Member: 100 percent of the credit. Even from a human perspective we are to believe. We preach believe, trust in Christ, put your faith in Christ. Yeah. Audience Member:      He gets all the credit because if we weren’t dead — completely dead – It would be a joint effort. Audience Member:      It’s a joint effort and we get a little bit of the credit. I remember thinking that as a young Christian, “I got this and the next guy didn’t get it and I guess I’m a little smarter than him. I’m a little bit more perceptive than he is and that’s just not the case. No it’s not. All glory goes to God. That’s a great point Kent. I mean dead is dead. I mean what can a dead man do. Audience Member:      Nobody in heaven is going to be walking around saying, “Hey I did this and I did that.” Yeah that’s why we cast our crowns back at his feet because it all goes back to him. He did it all. It was his initiative, his provision. He was the make it happen God at every level of our salvation. Audience Member:      The other thing that just hits me like a ton of bricks is the enormity of sin even before and after we were saved. Even as believers as men walking in this world to play with sin is seriously dangerous. Yeah you’re playing with a cobra. Audience Member:      Even as believers it is still what sin is to God is as you said gigantically evil and enormously diametrically opposed to him. So it’s incredible to think about this. Audience Member:      Echoing Kent’s point too I mean just the vastness of sin and you just minimized it so much, one sin had the effect on all mankind and all the world. And so the proper view of man and the proper view of God just kind of exposes the fact that we probably or we do raise men too high and we lower God too low. Just that. Sin is such an offense to God because he is God. We don’t understand his perfections. Amen to that. That is pretty good for being unprepared. Audience Member:      That was the marble in the head. Audience Member:      We have a question for you. This is Erik from Maryland. He says, “Isn’t this the main point as to why bad things happen even to good people because of sin entering the world, illness, natural disasters et cetera?” Yeah absolutely. Even good people are not immune to – I mean this says that sin and death spread to the whole world. Yes, even natural disasters is a part of a fallen world, the curse of God upon even creation. The man would have to work by the sweat of his brow, it’s a result of a fallen world so yeah so glad to hear from Maryland there that’s great. Anyone else you got there? Audience Member:      We had one other question. This guy said, “Does the sinful nature get passed on seminally? Please explain.” Well seminally is another position that we were actually in Adam. Such that when he sinned we actually in some way participated in that sin. I mean we were actually in the car that held up the bank. We were in the backseat of the car that held up the bank and we’re a participant in it. That’s the seminal view and Augustine held to kind of a seminal view and there have been some other really deep thinkers down through the centuries. I do not think the seminal view really is the biblical view, however some great men who agree with the Gospel and agree with us have held to that position but that’s just kind of it in a nutshell. They use Melchizedek for that argument but I do not think it really holds up in the whole analogy of scripture. It looks like we’ve got one more minute. I mean we have not heard from Chris Cobb and Bilhad knows Chris Cobb by name. He is famous globally. Chris I mean just some gem to just dangle before our startled eyes. Audience Member:      I did not have anything to say. I was thinking that it is profound that we hear people that a loving God wouldn’t let bad things happen. Right? He had the vaccine ready for the disease when it happened. That is what I was thinking this whole time that when Adam sinned he goes “Hey but we have hope right now coming. Don’t get lost in the weeds. You’re a sinner accept it but the good news is I have a vaccine.” In fact he had the cure long before the disease entered into the world. In the plan of salvation though Christ had not yet accomplished it for us, he already had the remedy worked out. Audience Member:      Yeah so people get hung up in the it’s just not fair. Well wait, wait, wait, but he had the cure before the disease. All you have to do is believe. Understand it, listen and you’ll go oh my gosh it’s right. It’s not fair. It’s unbelievably on our side fair. It’s not the opposite. Yeah it is unbelievably merciful. Remember two of them or positive in our direction only one is negative. Audience Member:      It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It is fair to go to hell it is not fair to go to heaven. Audience Member:      Exactly right. That’s what I was contemplating just going you get caught in the – we’re sinners just by association with Adam yeah but we’re saved by association with Jesus Christ. Amen. Audience Member:      It’s an unbelievable rainbow if you just take the time to listen and understand what God sent his son to do for us. Audience Member:      What truly is unfair is that Christ had to die. Yes. Pure mercy. Well I guess maybe one last point of application and then I will close this. I think this should help us be patient with unconverted people as we’re talking to them about Christ that they really do not see it and they do not really hear it and they do not get it because they are in spiritual death. We need to continue to reach out to them and love them and to try to be used by God sometimes over an extended period of time, over a long period of time until the day God resurrects their spiritually dead soul to live and to believe in Christ. This says to me I just need to be long-suffering with unconverted people. Even as we are having to deal with people in the world who are not treating us right. They are really just acting out the effects of Adam’s sin and I just need to have the macro perspective. I need to have the bigger picture. If people are tooling us around or – my little world compared to your world it is like bad treatment at an airport or something. For you it’s a business deal or something like that. I just need to realize I am in this fallen world and I am dealing with people who are just crippled plagued with the effects of Adam’s sin. I am just going to have to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, of his grace. Let me just close in a word of prayer and let me just say if I’ve been a little incoherent at a few points I’m still at 36,000 feet so I am asking for another coffee. I really appreciate everything that all of you all said and in many ways kind of helped land the plane well. Let us just close in prayer. Father thank you for the wisdom from this text the truth from this text and we want to have the right perspective on the human race and upon life and you have really given it to us today. Help us now make the application to live this out in our lives. Help us to be patient with unsaved people who have just fallen on their head from Adam’s sin and are just dysfunctional completely. Help us to belong suffering as we work with them and we pray for their salvation that you would bring them all the way to faith in Christ. Thank you for these men who mean so much to me and for those who watch us around the world. In Christ’s name. Amen.

God’s Love Demonstrated – Romans 5:6-11

OnePassion Ministries November 9, 2017

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We’re in Romans; surprise. Romans Chapter 5. And I do want to welcome those who are watching us live stream from around the world. You can go on our website at www.onepassion.org and see my travel schedule and you can see where I’ll be. If you have any questions during the course of this study, there’s something at the bottom of the screen that you can e-mail us and we’d love to hear from you and answer those questions. Even as I’ve been in Orlando, Louisville, Columbus, DC; every place I go, people are watching and come up to me and say how much they love to be a part of this Bible study. We’re in Romans Chapter 5 and in Verses 6-11, and I’m going to put a title on this before I read this, and the title of this is “The John 3:16 of Romans”. And that’s what this is; this is John 3:16 but in a much more definitive, robust, theological presentation of what that most famous verse says. Let me read it and I think you’ll see why I call it this. Verse 6: “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” I just love these verses. Wherever I go to speak, they always put a microphone on me like this one here and they say, “Let’s test your voice.” And when I test the microphone no matter where I am, instead of saying, “Testing, one, two, three, four; testing, one, three, four,” to get a voice tone, I always say, “For God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Just so that anyone who is in the sanctuary, the auditorium, the worship center, that they’ll hear the Gospel, even if they’re just walking through the lobby, they’re going to hear verse 8. These verses really mean a great deal to me and I know they mean a great deal to you. And what they are is an extension of what we saw in verse 5. Last time together, we looked at verses 1-5, and he says, “Because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts, through the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.” The first mention of the love of God in the Book of Romans, and as Paul mentions that, as you know, Paul can just open up a particular thought and develop it more fully, and that’s what he does here. He takes the love of God, and in verses 6-11, he amplifies and extrapolates what this love of God is. And the first word in verse 6 is very important because it’s also the first word in verse 7 and it’s also the first word in verse 10. It’s the word for. And the word for introduces an explanation or the reason for something. I.               FIRST EXPLANTION What Paul is doing is giving the reason why the love of God is so great and so rich and so unparalleled and so unprecedented. He doesn’t want to just say, “The love of God,” and move on. When he says, “The love of God,” in verse 5, he just has to pull over and park and open that up for us the riches. This is something like Ephesians 3 that we would know the height and the depth and the breadth and the length of the love of God toward us and Christ Jesus,” that’s what this little section is. Verses 6-11 is what we call a literary unit. It’s like a paragraph. It’s like a unit of thought. Many of you in your own Bible will have it broken out by the translator into a separate paragraph. That’s what verses 6-11 is. But what I want you to see is that it really is the commentary on verse 5. Tell us about this love of God. As we look at verse 6, it’s the first explanation. verse 7 will be the second explanation. And then verse 10 will begin the third. There’s a three-fold opening up and explaining, describing, this extraordinary love of God. He says in verse 6, “For while we were still helpless – ” the we refers to all believers. This is obviously true of unbelievers. But Paul is looking back as he addresses the believers in Rome that this is true of us because in Chapter 3, remember he went through this long list of total depravity. “There’s none who seeks after God, no, not one. Their throat is an open grave. Their feet run to shed blood,” et cetera, et cetera. “There’s no fear of God in their eyes.” It would be easy just to look at the unconverted world and go, “Yeah, yeah, they are in sin.” Paul here is reminding the Romans that this is true of us as well – once was true of us. He says, “We were – for while we were still helpless –”. Now Paul’s going to use four words here to describe what we were, the way we were before we were converted. I’ve drawn a circle around them in my Bible here. In verse 6 are two of these words, helpless and ungodly. Do you see that? And then in verse 8, sinners; and verse 10, enemies. That’s pretty potent. This is what we once were; helpless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies. It’s a package deal. All four of these represent what we once were. It’s not two of the four, one of the four, three of the four; it’s across the board package deal, all four. He says, “While we were still helpless –” this word helpless means to be totally powerless. The idea is to be weak, to be infirmed, to be feeble, to be frail, to be impotent, to be sickly, to be totally unable to do anything to gain or earn acceptance with God. I mean, there is nothing that we had to even contribute. We were completely helpless. If you’re helpless, you’re helpless. You have no help whatsoever. We were helpless to escape the wrath of God. We were helpless to escape Hell. We were helpless to escape the Second Death. He says, “For while we were still helpless at the right time –” and at the right time; there’s two Greek words that are used for time. One is Kronos, and I’m going to mention it because you’ll hear the English chronology like a timepiece. It’s not referring to, well, at high noon on December the 3rd. This is a different Greek word that’s used for time. It means a strategic opportune moment within time, a time that is ripe at exactly the right moment as it had been designated by God. And in Galatians 4:4, we read that, “In the fullness of time –”. God had set the stage, the world stage, the Roman world, the Jewish world, the political realm. It was exactly in the fullness of time. “At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.” Christ died. He had to die. It wasn’t enough that he shed blood in the Garden. There was more going on. His blood was even shed when he was circumcised as a little baby. He had to die because Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” He had to die in our place if we were to have the salvation that we so desperately need. Christ died for – and I want to make a big deal out of this word for, this tiny little preposition. But there is a world of theology in this little word for. It means on behalf of, for the sake of, for the benefit of, and in that little preposition is contained the truth of the substitutionary, vicarious death of Christ for us. He died in our place and for our benefit. The just died for the unjust. The perfectly godly died for the ungodly. The one who was perfectly holy died on behalf of and for the benefit of those who were unholy. Then here’s the second descriptive word, “the ungodly.” Not only were we helpless and unable to deliver ourselves but we were ungodly. And this word ungodly is not a complimentary term. It means we were irreverent. We were impious. We were without giving the due reverence to God. It’s a matter of the heart. It’s not just that our actions were lawbreaking. It runs much deeper into the core of our being. It was that our attitudes and our hearts were ungodly. We’ll talk about our actions when we come to the word sinners in verse 8, which carries the idea of breaking God’s law. Here, it refers to what was on the inside of us, down in our bones. We were ungodly. We were wicked and we did not revere God and want to give glory to God. II.             SECOND EXPLANTION Then in verse 7 is the second explanation. It, too, starts with the word for, and it’s an intentional kind of staccato fashion; boom, boom, boom; to drive home the point. By the repetition, each – it’s like each nail in the board is just driving it deeper and deeper into our minds. “For one will hardly die for a righteous man –”. And Paul is speaking here by way of human analogy. A righteous man does not mean one who has been declared righteous by God. It speaks to on a human level to be righteous means you’re a just man. You’re an honest man in your business dealings. You treat others fairly. That’s Paul’s argument here. There are rare occasions – the word hardly – “One will hardly die for a righteous man –” I mean, there are examples of let’s say two coal miners in a coal mine and it’s collapsed and one man has a family, a wife, and children, and the other man does not, and there’s only one gas mask or oxygen mask; and there are occasions and stories. Even the Titanic, there were men who gave up their place on the lifeboats so that a woman with children could be safe and be delivered. There are some rare examples of a good person dying for another person or someone dying for a righteous man. So Paul is using this by way of argument, and it’s going to be an argument – it’s a powerful argument from the greater to the lesser. There are examples of someone dying for a very righteous man. Even the Secret Service around the president, I mean they would have to step in and take a bullet in order to protect a righteous man. Then he adds to it. It’s really just an extenuation of the same thought. He’s setting up an argument from the greater to the lesser. “Though perhaps” meaning, well, maybe, “for ” – the good man someone would dare even to die.” And good here is relative from a human perspective. He’s already told us that there is none good, no, not one, when we are compared to God. But the analogy here is on a flat plane comparing one person to another. And there are some good people when we measure it that way. He says, “Well, maybe for the good man someone might die.” And the word good here means someone’s who’s upright; someone who’s moral; someone who is excellent by human standards. But verse 8 is the knockout punch. “But God –” and this sounds like Ephesians 2:4; “But God –” and I’ve told you before, but just to say it again, Lloyd Jones, “Praise God for the buts in the Bible.” “But God –” who is so unlike man, “God demonstrates –” and I want you to note that it’s in the present tense. We would’ve expected past tense to look back to the cross, but it’s in the present tense, meaning it continues to be a present reality through the preaching of the word and through the testimony of scripture, it continues to be demonstrated and set before our heart and our eyes, “that God demonstrates –” and that means put it out in the open, publicly, openly; and that’s what the cross was; it was a public demonstration before thousands of people as Jesus was crucified on Calvary right next to the main highway leading into the city of Jerusalem during the most popular feast of the year, the Passover. “But God demonstrates his own love –”. Now this is the echo of verse 5, this love of God that has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit God’s own love. And when he says “his own love”, it’s to distinguish it from any love that you and I have ever felt towards another person. It’s a higher love. This is God’s own love that has come down from the throne of God. You’re very aware of this word love. It’s agape. It means undeserved, unmerited, unconditional love; a sacrificial love. We could put it this way; that this love sacrificially gives of itself to seek the highest good in the object loved. And the thing about the object that is loved, which makes this so different from our love, is that the object of this love is so wretched and is so defiled. We have this kind of love for our own wives, but we find them beautiful and we find them attractive and altogether lovely. We are drawn to them. We want to give to them. But there’s a lot coming back from them towards us that melts our heart. This love of God is so different. It’s a higher love in that God loves the unlovely. God loves those as we will see here who are sinners. “– he demonstrated his own love toward us-“, and the us – ” and the us here refers to the fallen, wretched, wicked, depraved, corrupt members of the human race, absolutely nothing lovely in us. We were a train wreck when God looked upon us and saw us fallen in Adam. “God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners –” the word sinners here speaks of falling short of the glory of God, falling short of the divine standard, to be a lawbreaker of God’s moral law. God did not love good people. God did not love righteous people. God did not love anyone who brought anything to the table that was in any way attractive to him. God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were polluted, foul, filthy, rotten sinners, how different is God’s love. And it was ” – while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Now think about this. Christ didn’t just give us the shirt off his back. Christ didn’t just transfer something out of one account into another account. Christ had to die the most horrific, violent, brutal, barbaric death that has ever been conceived in the mind of man; it comes from the Corinthians – not the Corinthians, but those who were a part of that Mediterranean era that Rome took this brutal form and perfected it to an art form; to an art form. Christ died, and it involved the shedding of his blood as the following verses will tell us. In verse 9, it involved a shedding of his blood onto death and it was gruesome. And you see the preposition for; again, Paul is emphasizing this. He died for us. This preposition, for the sake of, for the benefit of, in the place of sinners. He says then in verse 9: “Much more then –” even more overwhelming, even more astounding. He continues to escalate his elevation of the love of God. “Much more the, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God –”. Now the first part of that looks to the past. We have already been justified by his blood. That took place at the moment of our conversion when he declared us to be righteous. Now, his argument is – this is where he’s headed with this; if God loved us and justified us when we were ungodly, helpless, sinful enemies, how much more will he keep us saved now that we are reconciled friends and sons and daughters in his family? This is an argument for the eternal security of the believer. If God did all of this for us when we were ungodly, how much more now will he keep us saved moment-by-movement all the way until we reach eternity now that we’re reconciled, which means now we are in right standing with him. If he went to the ninth degree to pull us out of the pit of our own sin and save us from the wrath to come when we were helpless and when we were enemies, how much more now will he keep us saved? Now that the war is over, we’ve been justified and we’re now reconciled to him. That’s the flow of his argument. So much more then –” meaning to add to what he has already done for us when we were justified by his blood, we shall be saved –”. Now let’s just pause here for a moment. Salvation is to be understood in three verb tenses. We have been saved. We are being saved. We will be saved. Justification, sanctification, glorification. We have been saved from the penalty of sin. We are being saved from the power of sin and the practice of sin. We will be saved from the presence of sin. It’s a comprehensive salvation. It’s a packaged deal. It’s all one salvation from start to finish. In Philippians 1:6 says: “Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you shall perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” As Paul says, “We shall be saved from the wrath of God –”. It has this futuristic look into the future that God is going to continue to keep us saved. Even through the final judgment when others will be indicted and then sentenced to Hell, God will continue to keep us saved all the way into glory. The word saved, just to make sure we understand what the word saved means. It means to be rescued. It means to be delivered. It means to be delivered from imminent danger. It means to be rescued. And in this case, from the eternal wrath of God in Hell forever. It’s amazing how people become so riled up when you even talk about Hell. A week or two ago, I posted on Twitter. I just said, “Hell’s a real place populated with real people suffering real pain under real wrath.” That’s all I said. It was unbelievable; not from Christians but how that just provoked the profanity and the ire of people in total rebellion even against the thought of the reality of Hell. And I’m so glad to provoke them. Seriously. Out of love to cause you to think when you put your head on the pillow, a haunting thought that perhaps there is a real Hell. Well, this word saved implies there is a real hell. You and I have not been saved from having a meaningless job or being lonely, our singleness or some kind of brokenness because something bad went wrong in your life. There are far more chips on the table than that. It is to be saved from the torment of the damned. It is to be saved from the fury of the wrath of almighty God. This is the love of God that’s done this that has saved you and me from being pounded forever under the fury of his wrath. In Revelation 14:9-10, especially verse 10, indicates it will be Christ himself in Hell inflicting the wrath. It’s not going to be a self-inflicted wrath. It’s not going to be delegated to the Devil to do it. He will be the recipient of this wrath, not the inflictor. There’s only one who can pour out this wrath, and it is God himself. Let’s look back at this again now in verse 9: “Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God –”. And we need to talk about what this word wrath means. I mean we think we know. This word wrath carries the idea of passion and excited emotions; indignation; and in God’s case, a holy fury. It’s not that God is merely stoicly, mechanically, clinically pouring out his wrath but that the holiness inside of God is in such – has been so offended that God is riled up within himself that he has such a holy violent passion against sinners and against their sin that he must inflict this wrath. The idea of other words that are used for wrath coming out of the Old Testament is the flaring of the nostrils, like a bull or a horse before a horse would stampede into the battle. The horse’s emotions are so riled up that the horse is ready to gallop at full speed into the battle in the day of conflict and that the bull being in heat, his nostrils are enlarged as he prepares to charge ahead and to gore its victim. That is the word that is used here. God is not reluctantly inflicting his wrath but that God has been aroused in his passions with explosive anger yet he is controlled. That’s the scary part of it. It is controlled, violent, explosive anger that is expressed in severe punishment and torment upon unbelievers. That’s where we once stood, under the wrath of God. Romans 1:18: “For the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.” This wrath will be poured out upon sinners and God’s enemies and those who are helpless and ungodly in the lake of fire that burns with fire and brimstone. There will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. I mean, let us revisit that stark reality. We have been saved. This is monumental. The word monumental doesn’t even begin to communicate the level at which this enormous salvation has been demonstrated toward us. It is all through at the end of verse 9 – ” – through him.” The him refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. He absorbed out the wrath that was due us, he absorbed it in his own body upon the cross. What must that have been? The physical suffering was nothing compared to the wrath that was unleashed upon him upon the cross. What you and I would experience in an eternity in hell was compressed down to a short period of time but not just for one person but for all who would call upon his name. R. C. Sproul has said he probably was oblivious to the physical pain of the crucifixion as he staggered under the weight of the heavy hand of the wrath of God that came down and crushed him; to use Isaiah 53:11-12 terms, the heavy blow of the wrath of God came down upon him. There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He took it all to himself such that there is now not one ounce of wrath to be poured out upon us. When he took that cup in the Garden and drank it all the way dry, it was a metaphorical picture. In that cup was the wrath of God upon our sins. He shrunk back from it, not my will but your will be done. He took that cup and he drank it dry. It was but a picture of what would take place when he hung upon the cross. Hallelujah, what a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is where the word propitiation comes into play. It was used in Chapter 3, verse 25. “We had been propitiated through his blood or God has been propitiated through his blood.” The word propitiation means satisfaction or appeasement. Jesus absorbed all the father’s wrath as he became sin for us and this satisfied the Father’s wrath. It placated the Father’s wrath. There is now no further wrath to be poured out upon us because Jesus took care of it all in himself. That is the driving thrust here in verse 9. III.           THIRD EXPLANTION There is one more; there’s one more sentence that begins with for and it’s in verse 10, and it’s a three-fold; it’s just boom, boom, boom; to drive even more deeply into our hearts this reality of the love of God toward us in Christ. Now, in verse 10, he says: “For if while we were enemies –” there is a dissent in going from being helpless to ungodly to sinners now enemies. This isn’t backing off. This is ramping it up even more. This is what we were. Even if you grew up in a Bible-believing church and had Christian parents, before you were born again, you were an enemy of God. That’s just the fact. That’s the reality. Even if you were sprinkled as a baby, even if you were put in the nursery as a baby, whatever your background, you were a card-carrying enemy of God. You lived in defiance of God until the moment you finally bowed the knee and humbled yourself and denied yourself and took up a cross and became a follower of Jesus Christ. I mean there it is in verse 10. It couldn’t be any more clear. It’s black print on white paper. “We – “. Who’s the we? Those who are now believers, every single one of us. “We were enemies of God.” We lived in rebellion. We lived in cosmic treason against God. And it’s true now of the whole world. “If while we were enemies –” and this word enemies means a hated foe. It means an odious opponent. I dug into this word yesterday just to get down to the root word of this. It means you are hostile against God. You had declared war against God by your disobedience, by your selfishness, by your self-centeredness, by your self-righteousness, by your self-pity, by your being self-absorbed. It was just all about you. It was all about me. “If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God – “. God was the offended party. We had to be reconciled to God. You’ll note that we were reconciled – not to get too technical here, but it’s a passive verb meaning we were not actively doing this. We couldn’t reconcile our self. We didn’t want to be reconciled. We were wanting to run away from God with a clenched fist. It was God who had to take the initiative. It was God who had to reconcile. It was God who reconciled us to himself. To be reconciled means that you are no longer at war with God. Let me tell you something else. God is no longer at war with us because God has indignation towards the wicked every day. This is incredible. That is why verse 1 says: “We have peace with God – ” not the peace of God, ” – peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So verse 10: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son – .” God couldn’t just snap his fingers and it’s all taken care of. God is too holy, too righteous, too just. The demands of his holy character and the demands of his righteousness had to be met and had to be satisfied, and we could not do that. Someone else had to do this in our place. And it was the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why he had to come to earth. He had to get into our skin. He had to become a man in order to do this. He couldn’t stay in Heaven and take care of it. He had to come down and enter the human race, yet be born of a virgin to be without sin yet live under the law and go to the cross and die. God cannot die. He had to become a man in order to die, all of this to reconcile us to God. These verses are so profound. He goes on to say here in verse 10: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son – “. It demanded his death. Again, it wasn’t enough that he just go to the Garden and shed blood. He had to go to the cross and die. “Much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” parallels and repeats verse 9 where it says: “We shall be saved from the wrath of God –”. This says: “We shall be saved by his life.” Now his life refers to his post-crucifixion life. it refers to his resurrection, his ascension, his coronation. But most specifically, it refers right now to his present intercession at the right hand of God, the Father. He ever lives now to make intercession for us to keep us saved. Now over in Romans 8; turn over to Romans 8. This is a cross reference wroth turning to. In Romans 8, verse – let’s just start in verse 33; Romans 8:33, but verse 34 is where we’re headed. We just need to get the running start. “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies – “. In other words, it doesn’t matter anything what anyone else says. If God justifies, that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter what the Pope says. Doesn’t matter what the pastor says. Doesn’t matter what your mom says. Doesn’t matter what your conscious says. You or they are not the judge. All that matters is what does God’s gavel come down and say. If God – “God is the one who justifies, who is the one who condemns?” Who can reverse God’s verdict? Now here’s what I want you to see. “Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather who was raised,. Who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” Paul wants to make that clear to us that he is presently interceding at the right hand of God, the Father. Why? In order to continue to keep us saved, that no accusation can ever be brought against us before the Father that will have any validity whatsoever. You’re going to have to come to a couple more cross-references very quickly. 1 John 2:1-2: “My children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins –” and, of course, we will, right? ” – we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he himself is the propitiation for our sins – “. That he is our advocate means he is our defense attorney. Whoever wants to bring a prosecuting charge or indictment against us, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and he is our advocate and he is representing us ad he is our advocate, our defense attorney, and no charge will ever be brought against us as he is living at the right hand of God, the Father. That is what these verses mean. The son continues to represent us at the right hand of the Father. He first made intercession for us at the cross. He now makes intercession for us at the right hand of the Father. His intercession at the cross was him giving himself for us onto death his intercession now at the right hand of the Father is to continue to plead the merit of his death with the Father against any charge that would be brought against us. Now come to Hebrews 7. I just want you to see one more verse; Hebrews 7. And this is just a whole other dimension of the saving ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 7:25 says: “He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Right now this very moment, Jesus is making intercession for you and for me to keep us saved and secured for how long? This says forever. He always lives to save forever. We are doubly saved, triply- saved, I mean exponentially saved. We can never lose our salvation. It is a full salvation. It is a comprehensive, eternal salvation. Come back to Romans 5, and I just want to wrap this up; Romans 5. So finally now in verse 11 – and I love Paul because Paul is like an ascending rocket that’s just going up. I mean he’s just going higher and higher and higher with his – with the case that he’s presenting. And he goes: “And not only this – ” and we go like, “Well, what more could be added [laughs] to this?” Well, “And not only this, ” he says, “but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ –”. In other words, this isn’t just a fact that we contemplate and meditate upon and check a box and go, “Yeah, I believe this.” No. Paul says, “Not only this. We exult in this.” The word exult means to exceedingly rejoice. There should be no stoic believers anywhere. We should all be exulting, rejoicing. This word means to celebrate. It means to glory in. I mean it’s an intensive word that we have deep feelings of high emotion toward God for this. “So not only this, but we also exult – ” and he just used that word in verses 2 and 3. I would just refer you back to that. He says, “We exult in the hope of the glory of God. We also exult in our tribulations,” et cetera, et cetera. Listen. We should be singing the Hallelujah chorus and walking on the sunny side of Hallelujah Avenue about this. We exult in God. There’s some things that just quite frankly are not worth our emotions, that we get all excited about. This is worth being excited about. “We exult in God –” and then Paul wants to have again, “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s all through the work of Christ on our behalf. ” – through whom –” and the whom refers to Christ ” – we have now received the reconciliation.” This word received is an important word. That means we’ve received it as a gift. We didn’t earn it. We didn’t buy it. We don’t deserve it. It was just handed to us. It was purchased by someone else. It was accomplished by someone else. All we did was hold out an empty hand and we received the reconciliation. We received it by faith, by repentance and faith, and I want to say again, it’s not a reward for the righteous. It’s a gift for the guilty. To receive this gift, you just have to confess how unworthy you are of this and what a helpless, ungodly sinner and enemy you have been. He will freely bestow this gift on us. This word reconciliation literally means an exchange. The idea is you completely exchange your status before God. You were previously an enemy. Now you’re a friend. You were previously ungodly. He has now declared you to be righteous. You previously were helpless, and he has now come and moved into your life and brought the power of the Holy Spirit to enable you to live a Christian life. I mean it’s just the exchange of everything. You previously were under the wrath of God, and now there is no condemnation. What an exchange. I mean you gave up the worst about you and received the worst about him. It’s the great exchange; all your sins taken from you and laid upon Christ; all his righteousness now granted to you that clothed you. It’s the great exchange. That is at the heart of this word reconciliation. Now when I normally think of the Book of Romans and we normally think of the Book of Romans, we usually think of – and for what it is; it is Paul’s magnum opus. It is his theological masterpiece. It has so many profound theological and doctrinal words and terms that sometimes I think we become bogged down in just a cold study of these truths. It’s good for us to see this word exult in verse 11, verse 2, and in verse 3. These truths should, must ignite our soul with holy passion and love and excitement and enthusiasm for God. There should be no bored believers in this room, no bored believers in the boardroom, okay. This is a boardroom of a different kind. We are not bored. We are fired up about our God and what he has done for us, and we’re fired up about the Lord Jesus Christ and how he has rescued us from the wrath to come. This is, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that who so ever believers in him might not perish, but have everlasting life.” That is – this is John 3:16 just pushing out the fence posts to enlarge this truth that we can have a richer, fuller understanding of this love. This love is an eternal love for he foreknew us before the foundation of the world. He loved us in eternity past. It’s an eternal love. It is a divine love. It is God’s love for us. It is an initiating love. He loved us when we did not love him. It is a sacrificial love. It wasn’t just a feeling in God but it led to the actions of God giving his son to die for us upon the cross. It is an irrevocable love. It can never be broken. It can never be rescinded. It can never be reversed. He will never stop loving us. There is no love like this. It is an unexpected love. We basically spend our life loving people who are easy to love. There are exceptions, and we do help people at times when they’re down and out, but we certainly don’t give our son to die for them and we certainly – we ourselves don’t die for our enemies. But God gave his son to die for us. There is no parallel to this love. There is no precedence for love like this. I need to stop, land the plane, wind down, pull the ripcord, let the parachute – let me just kind of float back down to the earth. Tell me what goes through your mind. What’s in your heart as you hear this? I wish I had a better vocabulary. I wish I had better powers of articulation and communication to more open this up in a richer fashion. Response: What a great deal. Yeah, what a great deal. I mean this is the ultimate buy low, sell high deal. Response: Well, what’s more important? What’s more important in our lives? Nothing. Nothing. I mean this is everything. Response: Yeah, I like the way you focused on exulting. And we obviously don’t get enough of that. Response: Yeah, I do, too. That’s good. Yeah, that is so true. Response: That’s good. Yeah. I forgot you were back there. It’s great to see. This is my old buddy from college right here. Response: Quite frankly, you were not enthusiastic enough in your presentation. Well, we go to these extremes, and one extreme is it becomes a mindless pep rally. People are raising their hands and saying, “Amen” before the preacher even finishes the sentence, and he’s only making the announcements at that point. [Laughs] I mean, that’s one crazy extreme. The other extreme, though, is that the worship service is like a funeral dirge. It’s like a wax museum and you want to put a mirror under someone’s nostrils to see if there’s any condensation that’s forming. And that’s the other crazy extreme. I mean you are wonderfully masquerading any drop of exulting. Blink your eyes, you know. Give us some response. So I mean that’s just the other crazy extreme. And there’s all kinds of spectrums in between. But this ought to put excitement into our soul. Yeah, Phil, thank you for saying that. I should’ve been looking at you more during this study. Someone else; what else? Response: Well, I think it’s good that you kind of frame this back within John 3:16 because it kind of gives you a way to tell an unbeliever, “From this verse, try these verses.” Yeah. This kind of opens up the offense a little bit more. Response: It gives you another play. It does give you another play. And I think John 3:16, which is a phenomenal verse, but it’s like we’ve heard it so many times, sometimes there’s a certain lulling to sleep like you’re singing Amazing Grace and you know the words so well you don’t even think about them. This gives you something to really think about, you know, put your teeth into this bone. Yeah, no, thank you for that, Bill. Someone else; we still have a couple more minutes. Response: I think _____ ensuring your faith and the fact that unbelievers are enemies, we ought to be diligent in making sure we’re sharing our faith and not stepping on our heels. Yeah, exactly. Response: Because until they are saved, they’re an enemy of God. Response: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, they are. Response: Time is a-wasting. Exactly. And there’s coming a final judgment in which there’s going to be some carnage. Yeah. So I mean we’ve got to tell people. What’s going on in the rest of your minds? I mean just give me 15 seconds. What are you thinking? Response: Give us some verbiage on like what’s happening, like this San Antonio. I mean people are just in such pain. They want to run right to God and say it’s his fault. And I always just say – well, Pastor Graham said a couple of years ago, he said – when someone asked him, “Where was God when my son died?” He goes, “The same place where he was when his son died.” Yeah. And God was in San Antonio as well. Response: That’s right. And I mean just look at Job 1 and when Job lost 10 of his children at once, it was God who said, “Have you considered my servant, Job?” And yet he turned him over to Satan and it was Satan who was the tool and the hand of God that carried that out. But it was God who set the boundaries and the parameters. And at first, you can do everything but you can’t take their life, and then you can take their life. God in his sovereignty has numbered the days that everyone will be here upon the earth. I don’t want to say that God was only present 2,000 years ago when his son died. And that is true, what he said. But I have to believe in the Doctrine of Providence that God was also there and that God had purposes and reasons, and some of those reasons are to bring the attention to the Gospel to cause people to consider the shortness of their own life and the approach of death. I mean God has purposes and reasons in that. I don’t want to say that God is  hands-off. I mean God does take the life of people and even like Pastor Graham said, his own son. I think we have to look to the Lord on that. Directly, it was the God of this age, Satan, the Devil. I mean evil is real. But as Martin Luther said, “The Devil is God’s Devil and God uses the Devil for his own purposes.” I would have to say that God is at work even in a tragedy like that. But there’s an element of mystery in this as well that – I mean I can’t untie all those knots. But it wasn’t – we can’t say, “Well, God was on the outside of the church and it was only the Devil on the inside.” No, God is omnipresent and God was there and God has sovereign, eternal purposes and that’s a closed book that we’re not allowed to look into, Chris. But that’s certainly a great question. And we’re all grieved, horribly grieved at the atrocity of that and our heart just goes out to those families. Response: Just the attacks are coming about praying. It’s like just they’re always looking for an opportunity to take a shot at a Christian. Oh absolutely, of course they are. Response: We need to be ready for that. We are, and I think it’s only going to escalate and become worse. So I don’t know where it all ends. But I do know this; I do know where it ends; us in Heaven however it is, whether we live a long life or we die unexpectedly through a shooting like that. We know where our soul is headed. It’s headed to glory and nothing can circumvent that. And Paul did say for me to live as Christ and to die is gain. We graduate to glory. So – well, men, it’s so good to be with you. We’re not going to meet for a while because as I said, I’m going to be gone out of the country for a while, but as soon as I get back we’re going to meet. Thursday, December 7th we’ll be back here. You can be reading out ahead. Now the next verses, Verses 12 through 21, are some of the most theologically profound verses in the entire book of Romans. I mean it’s almost up there with Romans 9. I mean this is profound what we’re going to be looking at. And one theologian has well said, “You can tell how good of a theologian is if Romans 5:12 is well worn out in their Bible.” I mean you tell me what you do with Romans 5:12. I’ll tell you 40 other things you believe. It’s the pivotal – it’s a key intersection. It’s a pivotal doctrine. And so that’s what we’re going to look at next time. And it’ll take us probably two times to get through it. I want to make sure that we get it. But it’s utterly important. In reality, there’s only been two men in the entire human history; Adam and Jesus. And everyone is either an Adam or in Jesus. And what Adam did affected all of his people, and what Christ has done has affected all of his people. And so to understand everything in a sense is to understand these verses, in Adam or in Christ; Adam’s act of disobedience and Christ act of obedience. And in that sense, Christ is the second Adam and we need to understand how he was the representative of his people just like Adam was the representative of his people, the entire human race. Let me close in a word of prayer. Father, thank you for your love that has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Enlarge our hearts for you that we might more fully feel and exult in your love toward us. Please deliver us from being lukewarm or apathetic. Ignite our soul with holy love in return for you. Thank you for what you’ve done for us in Christ, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.

Justification Benefits, Part III – Romans 5:2-5

OnePassion Ministries October 26, 2017

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Father, as we begin this Bible study, I pray that you will cause Your word, that is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, to have great piercing penetration into our minds, into our hearts, and to shape us into the image of Christ.  Help this to be more than just knowledge, but help it saturate our souls and our hearts. I pray for these men, that they will receive enormous benefit as I have already been greatly encouraged as I have looked at these versus. I pray this Bible study today will accomplish Your purposes, and as men and women join us around the world as they watch on live stream, I pray that the blessing will overflow into their lives as well. I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen. We are in Romans chapter five. I want to begin by reading verses one through five. We have already looked at verse one and the first part of verse two. We will be picking it up in the middle of verse two, and my goal is to get us through verse five. Beginning in verse one, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom also we have obtained our introduction” – your translation may have “access” – “by faith into this grace in which we stand.” Here is where we are going to pick up today: “And we exult in the hope and the glory of God, and not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” These verses are all about are the benefits of justification, the blessings of justification that accompany justification. The second half of this chapter, which we will look at in future studies, in verses 12 through 21, is the basis of justification. Paul is laying this out methodically. Carefully making his quintessential argument for justification by faith alone, sola fide. These verses talk about the blessings that accompany justification. Just to remind us, this began in Romans 3:21 and has extended all the way down to chapter five. It is all about justification. Paul began with condemnation, chapters one through three, and now justification. Justification is when we put our faith in Jesus Christ.  At that moment, God immediately declares us to be righteous. It does not make us righteous; we continue to live sinful lives. Though, with regeneration, we have a new heart and a new mind, a new direction, new disposition, and we are now headed in a new direction. But with justification, God legally declares us to be the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. We are faultless as we stand before the throne of grace, fully forgiven. In verses one through five, he adds on – this is almost like a footnote. There are five things that he lays out for us. The first two we have already looked at. I am not going to go back through it, but I am going to remind you of what they are. We have three to go. The first is peace with God, in verse one. I.               PEACE WITH GOD “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Obviously, that implies we were at war with God. God was at war with us. The fact that we now have peace with God is amazing grace. The warfare with God is over – the conflict, the enmity. We have now entered into a state of peace with God. God is no longer angry with us. We are no longer kicking against the goads with him. We are now in the family and we are accepted in the beloved. That is number one, peace with God. II.             ACCESS TO GOD Number two is access to God. This is at the first half of verse two, “through whom” – the “whom” refers to the Lord Jesus Christ – “we” – referring to all believers – “have obtained our introduction by faith” – the idea is privileged access for only a few, and those few are all who believe in Jesus Christ – “into this grace in which we stand.” The idea is that we are presented faultless before the throne of God, we now stand in grace, and we are immediately in the presence of God. We have access to the throne of grace. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week we can pray, we can worship with God. We have this living relationship with God. That is where this begins. III.           HOPE IN GOD Now, we want to build out from this, and the third blessing is hope in God. He says “and.” I want to pause for a moment. That word “and” is a very important word, as every word in the Bible is very important. What this means is that what now follows when Paul says “we exult in the hope of the glory of God,” is inseparably connected to what preceded. This is not a multiple choice – some of us get peace with God, others of us have access, and a couple others have hope. No – everyone who is justified has peace with God, has access to God, and has hope in God. It is a package deal. It is all tied together. When Paul says, “we,” he is referring to every believer. I want to draw this to your attention. This is careful Bible study observation – “We.” In verse one, “we have peace with God.” First part of verse two, “we have obtained our introduction.” Now, “we exult in the hope of the glory.” Verse three, “we also exult in our tribulation.” Verse six, “While we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly.” The “we” connects all this together. It is the same group. Paul is referring to every believer. This would be you and me. Paul says, “and we exult.” Now, that is a word we do not normally hear. Your translation may have “rejoice,” and that is really the idea, but the “exult” is a super rejoicing. We glory in this. We boast in this. Now, this is a very important word because he is going to repeat it at the beginning of verse three when he says, “we exult in our tribulation.” This is all tied together. Verse two, “and we exult in hope.” Now, let us just pause for a moment on the word “hope.” This word has been so deluded today in our conversation. When we say hope, we mean like we hope our football team wins, or we hope it does not rain today. That is not how the Bible uses the word hope. It is not wishful thinking. Hope in the Bible means a confident expectation of what is going to happen in the future. There is no doubt. It is a rock-ribbed confidence. Here is another word, “assurance.” It is a confident assurance. You can bank on this. So “we exult in hope.” And this hope is future glory. We hope in hope of the glory of God. When he says “the glory of God,” Paul is referring to our being in the presence of the glory of God in heaven. He is also referring to our glorified state when we are in glory, when we stand before the glory of God. It is all-inclusive. It is referring to our future. This is saying that everyone who is justified will be glorified. There are no dropouts along the way. It is the eternal security of the believer. Paul will elaborate on this later in Romans 8:29-30 when he says, “those whom He foreknew, He also predestined…and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified.” It is God’s golden chain of salvation. The group Paul begins with is the group he concludes with, and no one is added or drops out along the way. This is sovereign grace. Paul will elaborate further in chapter eight, but for right now, he is tying together justification in verse one with glorification in verse two. This speaks of the certainty that we have of the glory of God – that we are just as certain of heaven as if we have already been there ten thousand years. In fact, it is so certain, that in Romans 8:30, it is put in the past tense as if it is so certain, it is not even future. It is already a reality. We are locked into the eternal purpose and plan of God. It is a done deal.  It has already happened. In fact, in Ephesians, Paul will say we are already seated with Christ in heavenly places. This is yet one more argument for the eternal security of the believer.  Now, I want to draw this to your attention: “Hope” is found at the end of verse two, and at the beginning of verse five. Do you see that? Hope is also mentioned at the end of verse four. From the end of verse two to the beginning of verse three, it is all about hope. Do you see that? This is what we call a literary device that is known as inclusion or inclusio. It is like bookends, like brackets, or like parentheses, and everything in between is talking about one subject. Paul begins at the end of verse two with hope, and he ends at the beginning of verse five with hope, and he throws hope in at the end of verse four. Everything in between here is all about hope. That is very important because when we come now to verse three, it is going to seem as if Paul is bringing a subject out of right field, but he is not. In verse three, Paul says, “and” –again, the word “and” is just sewing all this together. What this is like, if you can picture this, is Paul picking up all these different pearls and stringing them together on one strand to make one necklace. Peace with God, access to God, hope in God, and he will go to love of God, and spirit of God – all these pearls of truth are on one necklace. Verse three, “And not only this, but we also.” This little phrase is used multiple times by Paul in the book of Romans to indicate something very important he is about to say. That is another literary device. It is a manner of expression, almost like saying, “truly, truly I say unto you.” He says, “not only this, but we also.” It is like Paul is gathering everything up in his arms, “not only this, but we also,” and carrying it forward, so that none of us are left behind in our thinking. You will see it again in verse 11. If you will, look ahead at verse 11, “not only this, but we also.” Paul is advancing the argument, like momentum in a little league baseball game, to keep this momentum going forward. Look at Romans 8:23. I want to bring this to your attention. This is a manner of expression by the apostle Paul. In Romans 8:23, “and not only this, but we also.” And then in Romans 9:10 he does it again, “and not only this, but there was Rebekah also.” What Paul is doing is reaching back and then reaching forward and holding everything in both hands, “Not only this, but also.” He is pulling all this together in one unified laser beam of layering out the truth. Now come back to Romans 5:3, “and not only this” – this refers to verses one and two – “not only this,” – it is as if he is saying, “but there is more,” – “but we also exult.” So just as excited as we are about future glory, we also exult and look to see what else we should be excited about. We are very surprised at the next three words, “we also exult in our tribulations.” Wow. Well, every man in this room needs this beginning with me because our tendency when tribulation comes is to coward away. But Paul says, “We also exult in our tribulations.” Now, in order to exult in our tribulations, the next word is critically important, “knowing.” Because you have forgotten something, you are going to have to know this. You may have to write it down just so that you remember it. You may have to underline it in your Bible so that you do not forget it. Before we look at what we have to know, let us look at this word “tribulations.” Please note it is in the plural, not the singular. It is in the plural, many tribulations. It is a Greek word that means to be put under great stress, to be put under great pressure. It is almost like a beach ball that you are trying to hold under water, and there is great pressure coming down heavy upon it. This is not talking about missing a red light. This is not talking about, “Oh, I do not get the parking place immediately next to the entrance into the restaurant. I actually had to park on the next row.” This is tribulations – big heavy, stressful problems in life. What Paul is saying here is very important. Everyone who is justified is going to be under great pressure in life. This is the anti-prosperity gospel. There is no free pass in the Christian life. This is a locked-in guarantee. Just as guaranteed as you are that you have hope in the glory of God, you also have the guarantee that you will have tribulations, and tribulations of every kind – physical, emotional, relational, professional. Whatever it is, it is par for the course. We should not throw up our hands in the air and say, “Oh, what is wrong with me?” This is a part of living the Christian life. God does not guarantee us that there will not be storms. God actually either sends us into the storms, like He did with His disciples, or He sends the storms into us.  One way or the other, they are coming. These tribulations are a part of the Christian life. In fact, Jesus said in John 16:33, “In this world you will have tribulation.” We can all just post that on our refrigerator as a promise to claim. In this world, we will have tribulation. Now, the irony – what I need to hear this morning, what you need to hear this morning – is that when these tribulations come, we need to rise above the fray, and we need to exult in them because we know that God is providentially at work to use them for His glory and for our good. God uses the pruning fork in our life to remove certain things from our life that are un-Christ-like, to conform us more into the image of His Son. Look at verse three. There is a goldmine here in verse three, “And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations.” And the little personal pronoun “our” is just as all-inclusive as “we” in verses one, two, and three. Everyone who is justified has peace with God. Everyone who is justified has access to God. Everyone who has hope in God has tribulations, in the plural. Now, how are we going to exult in our tribulations? This is very practical. “Knowing,” the word “knowing” here means that we must have an eternal perspective. We must have the divine perspective. We must have a certain mindset as we are in the midst of the whirlwind. “Knowing that tribulation brings about” – and the idea is ‘produces’ – “perseverance.” Our tendency when we are in the midst of trials and tribulations is to cut bait and to run, checking into a nice hotel some place until the storm blows over and order room service, not coming out of the room until the storm is over. No – strong Christians have perseverance, they drop anchor and persevere in the midst of their storm. That does not mean that in the will of God, God does not move you someplace. But what it does mean is that we cannot be a spiritual tumbleweed blown about by the wind whenever tough times come, and blown all over the highway. No. God wants to develop our endurance. He wants to develop steadfastness. That comes when He blows storms of tribulation into our life. He is wanting to build up our – listen to this – staying power. We are not supposed to just run away. We are supposed to face it head on. The word “perseverance” is a Greek word, and it is a compound word, “hupomone.” “Hupo” means ‘under,’ like a hypodermic needle goes under the skin. Hupo – under. “Mone” comes from meno. The very first Greek word they teach you how to conjugate in seminary is “meno,” which means ‘to abide.’ It is the word Jesus uses in John 15, “abide in Me and I in you.” To abide means to stay. It means to remain. When you put the two together, it means to remain under the pressure. Do not go looking for greener pasture. You hang tough. You hang in that marriage. You hang in with that demanding boss. You stay put until God moves you because God is up to something. God is working in your life to grow you up and to mature you. God brings tribulation. God also allows tribulation whether He directly blows it into our life, whether He sends us into it, whether He allows it to come through our own bad choices or someone else’s bad choices, nevertheless there it is. The pagan view is that this is just random and there is no purpose to it. Well, the Christian view is that this is all under the administration of divine providence. God has sovereign eternal purposes within time for this storm. It is Romans 8:28, “and we know” – do you hear the word “know” again? – “and we know that God causes” – not God merely is a spectator and watches, but God causes. His hand is on the throttle. “God causes all things” – not just good things, but even bad things, evil things – “to work together for good.” That does not mean that God is the author of evil, but it means that God uses evil, even in our lives. Think of the most evil moment in the history of the world – the crucifixion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That was the premeditated murder of the second person of the Godhead, and yet God foreordained it for our good and for His glory. We would not go to heaven if it had not been for that evil. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28) That is a condensed form of what Paul is saying here in verse three. One more thing to say about this perseverance – it involves patient waiting. I hate patient waiting. I abhor patient waiting. I want it yesterday. Two fast-food drive-thru windows is not enough. Perseverance means that we bear trials patiently and do not have an emotional meltdown. This is a chain reaction here. From tribulation under pressure, heavy pressure, to God trying to build your perseverance. I remember when I used to play football, going into the weight room and the coach coming up and putting more weights on the bar. He is trying to build up my strength. If it was just a bar, we would just be a bunch of sissies.  The more weight, the greater the strength. The greater the trial and tribulation, the more God is building our fortitude and our perseverance. Anybody can be a Christian in good times. An unbeliever could act like a Christian in good times. It is the real Christian who perseveres in the midst of tribulation. But there is more. Notice what is in verse four, “and perseverance” – and please note the word “and.” This is all sewn together. These are all welded together. This is not a multiple choice. It is all of the above. Verse four, “And perseverance, proven character.” There is a greater goal in mind for the tribulation, and perseverance is the means to a greater end. It is going somewhere. Proven character. This word, “proven character,” is just one word in the Greek. When translating it into the English language, some translations, like my New American Standard, have two words, “proven character.” I think the ESV just has “character.” It is a Greek word that simply means to be tested and to pass the test. To be tested and to be approved. The idea is to be put through the fire and found to be real. Like you would put a piece of metal into a furnace to see if it is real or just plastic. If it is plastic, it will melt and evaporate. If it is real gold or real silver, it will withstand the fire. That is actually the word for proven character here, and it is so hard to get it into the English language in just one word, but the idea is tried and true character. We know what that character is from the rest of the Bible – it is Christ-likeness. It is being made into the image of Christ, and Paul will tell us that in Romans 8:29, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.” That is the end. That is what God is about in my life, and that is what God is about in your life, to make you as much like His Son, Jesus Christ, as someone can be, and still be on earth and have a sinful flesh. He is whittling away and pruning back, and melting down and removing things, and what He is using is tribulation. None of us want to sign up for this. This is not an elective course. This is a core course. It is a core, it is unavoidable. We are going to have to do it. But we should be encouraged that God has divine design for this. It is to shake things up in our lives and to deepen the roots, deepen our faith in Christ. There is one more thing at the end of verse four, “and proven character, hope.” Paul just went full circle. We started out with hope, now we end up with hope. What Paul is telling us here – do not miss this – is that it is our tribulations that are weaning us off of this world and making heaven look a whole lot better; trying to cause us to live for the world to come, so that we would have our hope not in this world, but in glory. Just because we are glory-bound, God does not want us to have a cushy ride where we are pampered in a golden chariot to glory. It is going to be a bumpy road, but there is a purpose in every single bump in the road. With God’s sovereign providence, He is causing all things to work together for our good. Our good is not to put us in a soft place. Our good is to make us like His Son, Jesus Christ. That glorifies God. It is preparing us for glory to make us as much like His Son as we can possibly be before we get there. In verse five Paul says, “and hope does not disappoint,” meaning God is going to come through on the hope that we have. There is a purpose for the tribulation, and that is to cause us to hope more in the glory of God. To not have wishful thinking for a soft place here, but to have confident expectation of what is going to happen in glory. What awaits us in glory – and this is just James 1:2-5 – “consider it” – that is like knowing – “consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials.” The word “various” is used in the Septuagint for Joseph’s coat of many colors. All different kinds of trials and tribulations. Again, marital, relational, financial, physical, professional.  All the above. “Consider it all joy, my brethren.”  I am telling you, that is hard for me and it is hard for you, if we forget this. “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when we encounter various trials.” “Knowing” – hear that word “knowing” again? – “knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect” – and the word “perfect’ there means mature. It is the Greek word teleios, meaning ‘mature, brought to maturity’ – “that you might be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives liberally to all men…” This is woven all through the Bible. If we had time, we could go back to Psalms, and starting pulling out psalm after psalm as David wrestles through his trials and tribulations, and ends up on the high ground of hope in God. For example, look at Psalm 42 and 43. “Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Put your hope in God.” Repeated three times – twice in Psalm 42, once in Psalm 43 – which indicates it was probably originally one psalm. Martin Lloyd Jones said “You must preach this to yourself: ‘Why are you downcast O my soul?’” You are preaching to your own soul. You need to remind yourself what you know. You need to preach to your heart what you have already heard preached to you. Why are you so downcast? Why are you falling apart? Why are you unraveling like a cheap sweater? Why are you having an emotional meltdown? Why? Put your hope in God. God will come through. That is exactly what is going on here. The third benefit is hope in God. Certainty in God through the storms of life that God is at the helm of the ship, and this ship is not going down, and no one is going overboard. He is going to steer us into the safe harbor of heaven. Do you think the Christians in Rome needed to hear this? They were not living in Dallas, Texas, with four churches on every corner. They were living in Rome under the heel of Cesar, under the dominance of that pagan cesspool of iniquity. Do you think they needed to hear this? Absolutely, they did. They needed to have their pillars shored up and strengthened in the midst of living in a decadent society. In some ways, we are in a little bit of a cul-de-sac here in Dallas. Great place. I just moved here. I am happy here. But man, we get on a plane and go to some other city – such as San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, or Los Angeles. This is more real than tomorrow’s newspaper. This is where we are living and what we need, but we need it here in Dallas as well. We are not exempt from tribulations. IV.          LOVE OF GOD Number four, we have the love of God also. This is more than just a legal transaction in heaven. If all we do is harp on justification by faith alone and this legal transaction, which it is, I do not mean to demean it, but if it is just an island unto itself, no wonder there is not the dynamic Christian living that there ought to be. This is more than paperwork up in a file someplace in heaven. In a real, living, active way in our Christian lives, this is all tied together, and Paul says now, in the middle of verse five, “because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts.” That is about as real, personal, and internal as it gets. It is not splashed on the skin, on the façade or external wall of our life. God is pouring out His love, and He is not doing it with a little eyedropper, a few drops here and there – no, it is pouring. This is Niagara Falls gushing into our hearts, filled to overflowing. In addition, this is a package deal. If you are justified, the love of God has been poured out, oceans of it, into your heart. This is not our love for God; this is His love for us. The experiential reality of the love of God within our hearts and souls. When we go through tribulations, we need to know that God has not abandoned us. In fact, Paul will conclude Romans chapter eight in a fuller expression of this when he says, “And what shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus?… For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing” – Paul is going north, south, east, west, up, down, all around – “Nothing” – read my lips – “Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Through the storm, through the tribulation, God is pouring out His love upon us in many expressions of His encouragement, His support, His direction, His presence, His provision, etc., etc., etc. This word for love, it is the first time love is mentioned in the Book of Romans, it is the agape love – self-giving, sacrificial love that seeks the highest good of the one loved. God is giving, giving, giving. It is not just sentimental mush – God has warm fuzzies in heaven about us and pours that into us – no. It is God giving of Himself, giving His Son, giving the Holy Spirit, giving grace upon grace upon grace. In fact, giving us everything that we need. Nothing is withheld. And Paul will tell us later in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” If God has given us His Son, do you not think He will give these other little things to us? He has given the greater. Will He not also give the smaller?            God has given us the greater day by day by day by day. He will give us the lesser in full measure. All things. Not some things. Not a few things. All things. If you do not have it, you do not need it. He will give you what you need. I told you I used to drive to seminary when I was getting my doctorate. I was driving through the rice paddies of Arkansas, just Nowheresville. You have to go towards town to go hunting. Out in the middle of nowhere. The city sign says hello and goodbye on the same sign. There was this one general store, I do not even remember what town it was, and on the front of the building it said, “If you cannot stop, wave.” And then it said, “If we do not have it, you do not need it.” Well, that’s kind of what is being said here – if you do not have it, you do not need it because God will give you everything you need. If you will at least ask for it, He will give it. And so the love of God has been poured out within our hearts. It is deep down within our soul. It cannot be any more in the epicenter of your being. V.            SPIRIT OF GOD Let me give you the last one, the Holy Spirit. We get the Holy Spirit too. This is a good deal. It would be nuts not to believe in Jesus Christ. Paul continues in Romans 5:5, “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” First of all, it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to channel this love into us. The way He channels it into us is not by air dropping it.  The Holy Spirit moves in and sets up home within us and distributes everything that we need from the inside. Please note several things about the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit,” Paul says, “who” – please note the pronoun here, “who.” Not “What.” The Holy Spirit is not a what. The Holy Spirit is not an it. The Holy Spirit is not the force. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal energy. It is “who.” It is the person of the Holy Spirit. He is as much a person as Jesus Christ is a person. He has all of the attributes of personhood. He has a mind, He has emotion, He has a will. That belongs to a person, not a rock or the wind. We had the mind of the Spirit. We can grieve the Holy Spirit. The will of the Spirit gives gifts, etc. I do not have time to persuade you and layout the case for the personhood of the  Holy Spirit. But this is how personal it is on the inside. It is not that God has dropped off this thing inside of us. God himself has moved in and will never move out. He is in us to give us every single thing that we need to live the Christian life. Living the Christian life is impossible in our strength. He provides everything that we need to live it, and so Paul says – please note the verb here – “was given.” We do not have to go to church and pray for the Holy Spirit. He was given. You see how it is translated as a past-tense. It is an aorist tense verb which means He has already been given to us. Was given. And please note, we did not earn him, He was given as a gift by God. We were passive; God was active. It is a passive verb. “The Holy Spirit who was given” – and please note the last two words – “to us.” The “us” is as broad as the “we” in verses one, two, three and six. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit who has been given to you. If you do not have the Holy Spirit, I promise you, you are not a believer. Paul will belabor this case in chapter eight. Everything is pointing ahead to chapter eight, and Paul says in Romans 8:9, “if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” That is crystal clear. Paul then says in verse 11, “if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” He is in us, enabling us to cry out “Abba Father” because He is pouring the love of God out within us. We’re responding to the love of God by crying out to God as such. This is what accompanies justification by faith. Justification never rides solo. Justification is always in the passenger seat. Peace with God. Access to God. Hope in God. Love of God. Spirit of God. It is all a package deal and it is related to our daily Christian living. What Paul is preparing us for is this massive theological truth that justification and sanctification are welded together, inseparably bound together, and the moment you are justified, immediately your sanctification begins. It is not three years later at camp or five years later once you get out of college. The moment you are justified, in that moment sanctification begins. Picture a train with all these cars hooked up together. They are all coupled together. Foreknowledge. Predestination. Calling. Justification. Glorification. In the middle is sanctification – being conformed into the image of Christ. When the image pulls out, all the cars are pulled together.  That is the way of the Christian life. What a case that Paul is making here. I am excited about this, and I need this, because who knows what tribulation is getting ready to blow into my life today or tomorrow as I head home, as you head to the office, as you sit down at the desk, as you go home tonight after work. Who knows what tribulation? Are we going to exult in it? That does not mean we rejoice if there is a death in the family, but we do, in a sense, exult because we know that God is at work. I remember the day that my father died. I had the hope that this was God’s eternal purpose and plan. This was the day that God had ordained for my father to go to glory. I had to rejoice in God’s purposes in the midst of my loss and tears and sorrow. There is kind of a both/and that’s going on. We weep, but we also exult because we know that God is working this for His glory and for my good. So that is our study. I have gone a little bit longer, but I just needed to try to get my arms around all this with you and not keep going half a verse at a time. The next time we meet, we are going to look at some of the greatest verses in the New Testament beginning in verse six. I do not even want to start reading them. They are just so great that you cannot stop reading once you start. If there has ever been a Bible study you have been a part of, you are going to want to be a part of the one in two weeks. For those of you watching, please join us. We inventory all these lessons on our webpage at OnePassionMinistries.org, you can access them there. We are beginning to post the transcripts of the studies as well. You can watch, listen, or read. We want to be able to minister to you and to encourage you in your Christian walk. Audience:        While you were teaching I thought it was fascinating, back in Job 19:25, in one of the great statements of the Old Testament, the oldest books, he says, “I know that my redeemer lives.” I love the way you said, “That’s the way to get through tribulations. Stop looking at the hood ornament or looking at your feet, and look up.” That’s what makes the peace of Christ seem to come back into our lives. But it’s fascinating that even Job had to know. That’s why doctrine is so practical. It’s what’s in your head that really can change your life. Dr. Lawson:   You’re exactly right. I think we tend to be, I tend to be, an emotional roller coaster at times. Because I forget certain things, and I’m up, down, all around. When I’m up you can hear me laughing from 12 blocks away, dogs are coming. But when I’m down, I’m playing handball with the curb. I’m just lower than low. I’m looking at the other side of the oriental rug. I must not allow myself to forget what God is about. I need this more than anyone else in the room. We will close in a word of prayer. Father, thank You for these truths. I pray that as tribulations are blown into our lives, and as You send us into the storms, help us to remember and to know this. Give us an anchor for our soul that we can have hope, and to know that you are working out perseverance and producing proven character in us. Continue to pour out Your love by Your spirit into us. Father, we are so leaky, and it leaks out of us. We need fresh outpourings of Your love within us. Thank You that You will never forsake us. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Justification Benefits, Part II – Romans 5:2

OnePassion Ministries October 18, 2017

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Hi we’re live. I want to welcome those who are watching us by Livestream around the world. Wherever you may be, welcome to our men’s Bible study, we’re thrilled that you’re a part of our study. Before we get started I want to pass out a magazine here, which our ministry, OnePassion Ministries produces. This year is the Reformation year; it’s the 500 year anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the Wittenberg front door. Every issue has been on the Reformation, and this issue is on the Scottish Reformation. I have an article on John Knox, the father of the Scottish Reformation. Sinclair Ferguson has a very substantial article on reflections on the pastor/teacher as Reformer. Liam Gallagher, who is at Tenth Presb Philadelphia has followed James Montgomery Bocce, has an article. John McArthur, if you’ve heard of him, has an article. So if you don’t have a subscription to this, I would urge you to get a subscription. For those of you watching on our Livestream, you can go on our website, www.onepassion.org and there’s a special heading to sign up and get a subscription. If you’re watching overseas, you can get it electronically; you can get it electronically here in the States as well. I prefer the hard copy, but we’d love to send you a subscription. I think digitally it’s $15.00 a year; and hard copy is $30.00 a year, or something like that. But it’s very substantial and it will give you a lot of great insight and reading. We’re in Romans 5 guys, so come with me to Romans 5; you know where we are. As we look at this today, I have to tell you the big idea is the blessings or the benefits of justification. We’re looking at verses 1 through 5 of Romans 5, and there are 5 benefits, blessings of justification that Paul brings out. And the first we looked at last time in verse 1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” – that’s the first benefit. I.               PEACE WITH GOD This clearly implies that before we had peace with God we had no peace with God. We were born in to a state of war; we were at enmity with God. And what is worse, God was at enmity with us; He has indignation with the wicked every day. That’s the first benefit: that we have moved from a state of hostility with God to now at peace with God. II.                               ACCESS TO GOD Now today we come to the second benefit of justification, and it is access to God. The first part of verse 2, and we’ll see; this may be all that we can cover today. And every so often, as I study my Bible, I open a closet door thinking it’s just a closet, and I look in there and it’s like Aladdin’s cave. There’s so much in there that I’m in shock that I haven’t pulled over here and parked before. This is one of those cases, so in verse 2 he says, “through whom we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand.” The word ‘introduction’ could easily be translated ‘access;’ and your translation may have ‘access.’ I think in this case that’s probably a better translation of this word. What this is saying is when we’re justified by faith, it introduces us in to the presence of God, and we have access in to a personal relationship with God. In other words, we have more than just fire insurance; we have more than just being clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We actually enter in to a relationship with God. I want us to dig down in to this just a little bit. You’ll note verse 2 begins, “through whom,” and the whom refers to Jesus Christ at the end of verse 1. The only way to have access to God is through Jesus Christ; He has the exclusive monopoly on access in to a relationship with God the Father. He says, “through whom,” and then the next word is important, it says, “also,” which means this is a package deal; this isn’t separable. If you have peace with God, you also automatically have access to God. The order is very important; if we didn’t have peace with God, you would not want access to God. You would be trying to get away from God if you did not have peace with God. But because first we have peace with God, now second what a blessing this is that we can come in to His presence, and we are received and we can come in to His presence with confidence. Now notice the next words, “through whom also we;” the ‘we’ refers to all believers. This isn’t for just some believers; this isn’t for an upper tier level of executive platinum believers. This is for every single believer in Jesus Christ, we all have obtained this. Now notice the verb, he says, “have obtained.” We have already received this; this is a verb tense that indicates this is a past action with continuing result. We have obtained it; we obtained it the moment we exercised faith in Jesus Christ. At that moment we obtained our introduction or our access to God the Father. Now, “through whom also we have obtained our introduction;” that’s what I have in the New American Standard. And this word ‘introduction,’ and we’re going to talk about here in just a second how it can just easily, and perhaps better, be translated ‘access.’ It means a privileged access; to come face to face before someone that previously we had no access to. I want you to keep your finger here and I want you to turn with me to Ephesians 2, and then we’re going to look at Ephesians 3, the only two other places in the New Testament where this word is used in the original Greek language. In Ephesians 2:18 we see the second of the three times this word is used. It says – Ephesians 2:18, “through whom” – excuse me, Him, “through Him” – the Him refers to Jesus Christ. “Through Him we both” – the both represents both Jews and Gentiles – “have our access” – there’s our word right there – “in one Spirit to the Father.” Please note the Trinitarian focus here; we come through the Son, in the Spirit to the Father. That’s essentially how our prayers work; this is how worship works. We come to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. It’s the Spirit who draws us to the Father, and the only way we can access the Father is by coming through the Son. This is a very important verse, and what I want you to see is this word ‘access’ in your translation and the idea of access. The imagery here is of a king who does not allow access to commoners. Farmers, blacksmiths would never be allowed in to the palace, would never be allowed in to the throne room, would never be allowed to have an audience with the king. That would be reserved for a very few, and you would have to be of an elite status; you’d have to be a king from another country. That’s what this word ‘access’ signifies; that we have a privileged access to come before the Father, through the Son in the Spirit. We’ll talk about this later, but we can now come before the Father and bring our prayers. We can come before the Father and bring our praise and our worship. We can come before the Father and have fellowship with Him, and have a relationship with Him. This is a very privileged access to come before the sovereign king of heaven and earth. Now turn to Ephesians 3:12, and I just want you to see the other place in the New Testament where this word ‘access’ is used. In Ephesians 3:12 it says, “in whom” – and the ‘whom’ refers to Jesus Christ, at the end of verse 11 – “in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.” The ‘Him’ refers to the Lord Jesus Christ; it is implied that the access is to the Father as we have exercised faith in Jesus Christ. This is an extraordinary thing that we would have this introduction in to the presence of God the Father. Now introduction in verse 2, back to Ephesians 5:2, “through whom we have obtained an introduction.” It’s only the New American Standard actually that translates it as ‘introduction;’ the ESV, the King James, the New King James, the NIV, the Holman Christian Standard, and the new RSV all translate it as ‘access.’ And that probably paints a better picture in our minds of being able to approach God the Father, and to be received. As we approach God the Father, we may come boldly and with great confidence that we will be received gladly by Him. Now here is the sole prerequisite to have this access, “through whom we have obtained our introduction by faith.” It is by faith alone in Christ alone that we have this access to the Father. And the word ‘faith’ has been the emphasis; you’ll note in verse 1, “having been justified by faith,” as you will recall, the entire fourth chapter of Romans, the whole focus is that we’re justified by faith alone. That was even introduced at the end of Chapter 3. This continues the focused emphasis. Just to draw this to you attention in Chapter 4:24, “those who believe in Him;” and in verse 20, “they grew strong in faith;” verse 19, “without becoming weak in faith;” verse 18, “In hope against hope he believed;” verse 17, “whom he believed.” Verse 16 twice, “For this reason it is by faith;” and then, “those who are of the faith of Abraham;” verse 12, “in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham.” Verse 11 twice, “a seal of the righteousness of the faith;” later in verse 11, “so that he might be the father of all those who believe;” the word ‘believe’ and ‘faith’ are the same. There’s no need for me to trace this back up through the previous chapter anymore. But the only way that we may access God the Father is through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, “by faith into this grace;” now we would expect that it would say, “Access in to the presence of God the Father.” Instead it says, “into this grace.” What Paul is wanting to emphasize is that none of us have any claim in and of ourselves to come in to the presence of God the Father. It is exclusively by grace that we come, and it is in to this grace that we stand as we come before the Father. Grace, as you know, is God’s free, unmerited, undeserved favor that God extends towards unworthy, undeserving sinners. Grace denotes the state or the realm in to which God’s justifying work transfers us as believers. We now have been moved in to the realm of God’s grace. Now you’ll note it says, “in which we stand.” This word ‘stand’ is very important; it means to be made to stand. It means never to be ushered out of God’s presence. It means never to fall away from grace. It means to never fall out of grace. That we will forever stand in this grace. He is able to make us stand in His grace. Now as we stand in His grace, this grace is saving grace; it is electing grace; it is predestinating grace; it is redeeming grace; it is reconciling grace; it is propitiating grace; it is regenerating grace; it is sanctifying grace; it is securing grace. It’s the whole package of grace, from eternity past to eternity future, we now step in to this favored privilege realm of grace as we access God the Father. Now this presupposes that before we accessed God the Father we were on the outside looking in. This presupposes that we were far away from God; that we were strangers; and we were aliens of the kingdom of God. I want you to come back to Ephesians just for a moment, come back to Ephesians 2. In Ephesians 2, beginning in verse 12, I want us to be reminded of where we once were before we were allowed this access in to the inner throne room where God is. In Ephesians 2:12 it says, “you were at that time separate from Christ;” you were separated from Him and there was an insurmountable chasm that separated us from Christ. He says in verse 12, “you were formerly far off,” and very far off; we were so far off there was no way that we could gain any access to God. He says in verse 19 he says, “you are no longer strangers and aliens” – that means we once were strangers and aliens. And that we were strangers – this is a Greek word, [foreign language] from which we get the word ‘xenophobia,’ fear of strangers, fear of foreigners. We once were foreigners; we once were outsiders, strangers, on the outside of the kingdom of God. We had no citizenship in the kingdom of God, and we were also aliens, which is a pretty strong word, and that means we were outcasts. We were without any citizenship in the land. In Colossians 1:21 it also refers – says we were alienated from God; let’s remember that. Even if you grew up in church, even if your parents were believers and they brought you to church when you were a little kid. That’s true in your life; before you were born again, before you were justified by faith, you nevertheless were a stranger to the realm of grace. You were an outcast from the kingdom of God because of your sin. It is only by faith in Christ do we obtain our entrance and our access in to the very presence of God. We were barred from entering in to a relationship with God. That’s why in the parable of the Prodigal Son, he goes to a far country, a faraway country, and that’s where we all once were, before we were justified by faith. But justification, now, gives us this access in to the presence of God, and I want to give you some words now to help us define this access that we have in to the presence of God. a.     RESTRICTED And number one it’s restricted; it is a restricted access; everyone does not have this access. It is only those who are believers in Jesus Christ have this access; all unbelievers are barred from the presence of God. All unbelievers are barred from having any relationship with God, and their prayers have no entrance before the throne of grace. It is only by Christ do we gain this access in to the presence of God. b. DIRECT Second word is direct; we have direct access in to the presence of God. By that I mean we do not need any mediator; we don’t need anyone else’s mediation to get us in to the presence of God. Jesus Christ alone has done it. We do not need a priest; we do not need even a pastor or an evangelist. They can tell us the way to the Father, but they have no mediation whatsoever. We now come directly to the Father through the Son and there are no other access points that we need to enter in through. If you have Christ, you have direct access to the Father. This is really in contrast to the temple in the Old Testament, where as you would enter in, there was the outer courtyard of the Gentiles. The Gentiles could go no further than the outer courtyard, and there’s a wall up. Only Jews could enter in further, closer to God than the court of the Gentiles. Once you got in, then there was a separation; there was a court of women, and the women could go no further. And only Jewish men could then come even closer in the temple. But then there was another wall, and only the priest could go any closer, and the rest of the Jewish men had to stay out. But then there’s another curtain that led in to the Holy of Holies, and only one man could enter in to the Holy of Holies, and that just once a year, and that was the high priest. It was such a privileged access that if the high priest was not right with God, as he entered in, God would strike him dead. They would tie a rope around the high priest and put a bell on him, and as long as they could hear the bell, they knew he was moving around, he’s still alive. But if they stopped hearing the bell that probably meant God had struck him dead, because no one else could go in to the Holy of Holies; God would strike them dead. With the rope they would pull the high priest back out; no one was allowed to go in to this Holy of Holies except the high priest. All of this was an object lesson. You say, “Why would God keep the Gentiles out; why would He keep the women out; why would He keep the Jewish men out; why would He keep the priests out?” It’s all just a symbolic object lesson to show us what a privileged access you and I now have to come in to the very presence of – and to come confidently and boldly, and know we’re not going to be struck dead. This is a privilege that is unspeakable that has been opened up to us, and we must consider the privilege in prayer; the privilege in worship; the privilege in fellowship with God to be a privilege of highest honor. That we can now have this direct access to God the Father. c.     PRIVILEDGED Third, and I’ve already said this but I’ll say it again, it’s privileged access. We’re going in to the very presence of the King of kings and the Lord of lords. This is not an access with our next door neighbor, or a football coach, or a businessman; this is a privileged access in to the presence of the Sovereign of the universe. d. UNDESERVED Fourth, it’s an undeserved access; none of us in and of ourselves have any basis whatsoever to come in to the inner throne room, except through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. e. PERMANENT Fifth, it is a permanent access; we will never be expelled; we will never be cast out. This access has been secured forever; good days, bad days, days when we’re walking in obedience, days when there is disobedience in our life. It is a permanent access. f. SPIRITUAL Sixth, it’s a spiritual access; this is within our own heart. We’re not talking about getting out of this room and walking in to another room, and we would be any closer to God. You can access God spiritually within your heart no matter where you are, whether you’re at church, whether you’re at home, whether you’re at work, whether you’re by yourself, whether you’re in the middle of a football stadium with 70,000 people; wherever you are. g. CONSTANT Seventh, it is constant access; this access is open to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is never a time when this access is not open to us. h. ANTICIPATORY And then eighth, it is anticipatory, meaning one day in our future home in glory, we will come immediately before the presence of God, and before the Lord Jesus Christ. This present spiritual access is anticipatory of one day in heaven when we will come immediately before the throne of grace, and it will not be just in our heart; it will be in our glorified body. And with glorified feet we will approach the throne of grace; and with glorified knees we will bow before Him; and with glorified eyes we will look upon Him; and with a glorified tongue we will give Him praises. This present access within our heart right now is anticipatory of that day when the full realization of this access will be realized. Right now is, in a sense, only prepatory for the ultimate access. When we die, we will go immediately in to the presence of God. So this is an extraordinary access that we have; this should not be taken lightly. And that’s why, as I’ve been looking at this in Romans 5, and I’ve got my notes for the rest of these verses, I just can’t get past verse 2 at the moment; I’m stuck at verse 2. I’m just savoring verse 2, and this is a truth and a thought that has not been at the forefront of my mind like it should be, because this is an unspeakable privilege that we have. It’s not just that there’s been some paperwork that’s happened in heaven where now I’m forgiven, and God credits this in to my account, and this is all taking place in heaven. This is a real experience within my heart, and within my soul. I now know God. I now have fellowship with God. I talk to God; He talks to me in His Word. It is a living vital dynamic relationship that I have with God, just like I know you guys, and like I know my wife, and I know my kids. In reality, we know God even better, because He has opened up this way for us to come before Him. Now I want you to come to the book of Hebrews, and this is an emphasis that the book of Hebrews intentionally makes. There are different threads that run through different books in the Bible, and one of the threads that runs through the book of Hebrews 4:16 is this thread that we can draw near to God and come before God’s presence. In Hebrews 4:16, “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace” – the throne of grace is the throne of God. He substitutes grace for God, again, to emphasize how undeserving we are to be able to access the throne of God. Just as a reminder to us; it’s the throne of grace; it’s not a throne of merit. It’s not a throne of worthiness; it’s a throne of unmerited favor and grace. He says, “let us draw near,” meaning that by faith we draw nearer and nearer and nearer as we grow closer and closer and closer to God. As we do he says, “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Well that time of need is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sometimes we’re more acutely aware of our need, in a crisis or in a trial, but the fact of the matter is we are in great need of God’s sustaining strengthening grace every moment of every day. As we draw nearer to God in prayer, and in communion with Him, we find all that we need from Him. We find grace that gives us the strength to live the Christian life. All right come to Hebrews 7:19; I want to trace this out for us this morning. He says, “there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.” That word ‘near’ is a precious word in the English language. We draw near to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. He has opened up the way for us to access the Father, and He is now seated at the right hand of God the Father. As we come, it is the Son who makes us worthy to approach the Father. Look at verse 25, Hebrews 7:25, “Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him.” There again we see that he says forever. This access to God is permanent; it’s eternal; it is irrevocable. We will never fall away from God, and the reason is, he says, “He ever lives to make intercession for us.” Hebrews 10:1, come to Hebrews 10:1, I just want you to see this theme drawn out. “For the Law, since it was only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.” The sacrifice of Christ has made us perfect that we may genuinely truly draw near to God. Look at verse 19, “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,” verse 20, “by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God,” verse 22, ” let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” Here again we see that we are to draw near within our hearts to God. There are times in our hearts when we become preoccupied with other things, and we’re pulled away in other directions. We must be continually drawing near to God. There need to be times of focused prayer in which we draw near to God. There needs to be throughout the day, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and thinking about how I need the Lord as I’m driving in my car; as I’m sitting at my desk. We need to be making intentional steps within our mind and heart to draw near to God. So that’s the focus here. Now I want to take you to one more verse and then we’re going to open it up. Come back to Matthew 27:51, and this all ties in together, as Jesus died upon the cross, in verse 51, “And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” The veil is what separated the Jewish men, the Jewish women, the Gentiles from being able to enter in, even the rest of the priests. For only the high priest could enter in, and that this veil was torn in two indicates that the barrier has now been removed, and that we may enter in to the very place where the presence of God dwells. You’ll note it’s torn from top to bottom, indicating that God’s the initiator of this; it’s not bottom to top, as though we have done this. It’s top to bottom, indicating it’s God’s work to tear it. You have to be up on top to tear it so that it tears from top to bottom. If you are down below, you would tear it bottom up. It indicates it’s the invisible hand of God reaching down from above that has ripped it open, such that now there is this new and living way to come in to the very presence of God. All of these verses in Romans, and Ephesians and Hebrews, here in Matthew, they all tie together. Say basically one and the same thing: that we previously were outcasts, we were foreigners, aliens, strangers; and through Jesus Christ we now can come in to the very presence of God the Father and have this living relationship with Him; that we can know Him. By way of application, and I’ve already tipped my hand on this, but by way of application, this speaks volumes to prayer. What a privilege prayer is, and that we can only come in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; otherwise there is no access to God the Father. What a privilege it is to bring our burdens, to bring our needs to the Father, and receive mercy and find grace in a time of need. He is there for us; He is ready to receive us; He is ready to hear from us every moment of every day. Second what this says about worship, we should be worshippers, continually praising the Lord throughout the day; bringing our praises to Him. And to realize that we are in His very presence as we do. Third this speaks to our fellowship; we do have vital communion with God the Father. We have a living dynamic relationship with God the Father. We experientially know Him in our heart. It’s not just that we know about Him intellectually, theologically, doctrinally, but that we actually know Him within our own soul. I’m going to add one more here, there was a Latin phrase that came out of the Reformation, coram Deo which means: in the presence of God. And the Reformers understood that we live coram Deo; we live in the presence of God. Therefore, every conversation is in the presence of God; every act is in the presence of God. Nothing is done away from God. When we go to work, we go to work as in the presence of God, even if it’s a foul godless office and environment, we live in the presence of God. Therefore, we must do our work as unto the Lord. Not that unsaved boss, or that unsaved contractor, or unsaved banker or whatever; everything that we do is in the presence of God, as unto the Lord. This should be a great encouragement and it should be a great challenge. It’s a great encouragement that He will never, never leave us nor forsake us; we are constantly in the presence of God in our life. It should also be convicting that He is an observer, He is a listener of every conversation, and of every deed. Just because we walk out of the house and someone in the house can’t hear the conversation, God is where we are any moment of every day. This is a whole new perspective for how we live our Christian lives. We stand in this grace; it is a posture of strength; He makes us strong and He makes us stand in grace in His presence. This is our study this morning, and I could kind of blow on and go on to the next part of Romans 5, and I’m not going to slow down for every verse. I want to have some movement here. But every so often I’m just awestruck by a particular truth that we come across, and it’s very worthwhile for us to pull the car over to the side of the road for a moment. Let’s get out of the car and just look at the Grand Canyon, and observe the beauty of this. We’ll get back in the car and we’ll go on down the road next week. But for today, I want us to think about living in the presence of God. I want us to think about that we have this access to God, and using this access to God, and how privileged we are to have this introduction in to His grace and be able to approach the throne of grace with boldness and with confidence. And not because of us, but because of Christ. I’m going to wind down our study here at this point. I’d love to hear from you; I’d love to know what you’re thinking as we go through this, or have gone through this. What impresses you; what encourages you. What we studied in church on Sunday, talking about citizenship. In heaven, there are walls in heaven, and this is our ID card, this is our get in to heaven card. Because it says in Revelations 12:14 it talks about being aliens. No aliens are permitted in heaven; this is our get in to heaven card. Our citizenship is based on what you just taught us today. Yes our citizenship is in heaven from which we await a savior. When we are – this is our firm affirmation that we are saved and we have nothing to worry about once we get to the pearly gates. This is what we – we’re saved, right? Right. And we are just as certain for heaven this moment as if we have already been there 10,000 years. Because we presently stand in grace; we’ll never fall away from grace; or fall out of grace. Yeah we have citizenship in heaven through what we learned today. Right, exactly. That’s great Chris. Someone else? Don’t make me call on you. Well I like what you said about just how we have constant access and we have it through our own soul wherever we are. Just because you think about today and all the technology innovation, always trying to get more access to different things. But we have the best access we could ever have within us at all times. That we just – I know for myself I don’t use it enough as I should. Yeah, no absolutely, and I don’t either, and I don’t think any of us do. I mean, who among us is gonna say here, “You know, I just pray too much.” Liar pants on fire; none of us do. And to me one great thing about that, Luke, is I don’t have to be in a certain geographical location in order to access God. I don’t have to be sitting in church on Sunday morning in order to access God. Now, I need to be in church on Sunday morning, but nevertheless, at the office Monday morning; at the airport Tuesday, you know, wherever; on the golf course Wednesday I can access God and find grace – the grace that I need to help in time of need. I mean, He’s always open. I was thinking about saying – I went to Africa two years ago, they put me in a hut where I had electricity for only a third of the day. The thought of having 24 hour electricity was just a great blessing to me, and just thinking about this. I mean, God’s throne of grace is always open to us. They’re not banking hours, you know, it’s always open to us. And we need to take advantage of this and use this access. Yes, this guy asked how is the Catholic Church able to continue deceiving people when Romans, as well as other verses, describe our access and citizenship to/with God? Yeah it’s just a whole system in the Roman Catholic Church in which it’s a false system in which they have – they want to keep people under the Law, and keep them bound, and keep people dependent upon them. We have no need for a priest; Jesus is our high priest; and He has made us to be a kingdom of priests. So why does a priest need a priest? He’s made us priest where we have the direct access. And how do they do it? I mean, it’s just very simply by keeping people out of the Bible to keep the game alive. Yeah, yeah? When you were talking about coram deo living in His presence, and nothing we do is out of the presence of God. How do you see when we do sin, is it – like, the Spirit that’s in us, I mean, does God the Father look on sin; does Jesus see sin; or is it just the Spirit? How do you envision how that works? Yeah well we do sin. I mean, ’cause I’ve always been taught God can’t look upon sin. Well God cannot look upon our sin in a judicial sense, for eternal forgiveness. We have to understand there are two levels of forgiveness that we need from God: 1) is judicial; the other is parental. Judicially we have been forgiven all of our sins forever and ever, and in judicially He remembers our sins no more. Now if that’s all that it is, then God would never be able to discipline us and correct us for sin in our life, if He never could see sin in our life. God does see our sin and know our sin parentally, and that’s a whole – once we’re saved, God is no longer our condemning judge. There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But we have entered in to a new relationship with God now and He is our Father. That is why we must confess our sin daily to God, or as often as we’re convicted of our sin. So there’s a hyper grace teaching out there today that’s a total abuse of grace that says, “Well you never need to confess your sin now; they’re all forgiven.” Well yes, judicially, eternally, but I’ve entered in now to a new relationship with God who is now my Father. And I need to confess my sin to the Father; Jesus taught us that in Matthew 6, that we need to – as often as we’re asking for daily bread, we need to be confessing daily sins. So yes, God knows everything, so there are no blank spots in God’s knowledge. It’s not like we know about our sin but God doesn’t. So we know something God doesn’t know? What kind of a crazy doctrine is that? Like we’re omniscient but God’s not? The devil knows about our sin but God doesn’t? So now the devil’s greater than God? No it doesn’t work that way. It’s a metaphor that He’s taken our sins and placed them behind His back; He’s buried them in a sea of His forgetfulness; He can remember our sins no more. Yes and no; yes eternally, judicially; no parentally, daily. So we still have need of confessing our sin to God; He knows all about it. He’s the one who’s bringing the conviction by the Holy Spirit. So just because we’re saved doesn’t mean, “Okay now I can live however I wanna live and God will never see my sin, and I’ll just sin up a storm.” I remember when I was in college, walking in to a friend’s dorm room and he had a poster that said – what did it say, “Sin in liberty; seek forgiveness in leisure,” or something like that. I mean, it was just a total blasphemous thing that he had up just mocking Christian liberty. Be assured God sees your sin and God knows, and God will bring conviction. If you don’t repent, God will bring discipline; and if you don’t repent, there’s a sin unto death. God will just take you home early. He obviously sees what’s going on, and He obviously knows what we know, and He knows more than we know. Thank you; that gives us a chance to say what needs to be said on that. Someone else, what else? So the teaching was just so outstanding that nothing further can be said on the matter? You know when you think about this, if you live your life moment by moment, your thoughts – we get so bogged down in the minutia of life. We get bogged down in the details of life, and it is wonderful to marinate in this great salvation that we have, and all the blessings that we have in this salvation, and what God has done for us and we didn’t deserve it. You talked last week, you used the term bells and whistles, talking about analogy of a car. It’s overwhelming what we have through the Lord Jesus Christ. This salvation is so beyond what we can consider, and I think often in our daily life we take it for granted. And so it is wonderful just to sit and meditate upon who God is and what He has done for us. It’s great beyond our comprehension. It is, which is why when I was looking at verse 2 last week, and looking at verse 2 this week, it’s like you walk past a store window and you do a double take, and maybe even a triple take. I mean, something just catches your eye; as I just kept passing by verse 2, I just found myself turning back and glancing. Last week I had verses 1 through 5 in my notes, and I just couldn’t get past verse 1; it’s just so rich. And I fully intended to do 2 through 5, and yesterday as I’m sitting looking at this, it’s just like they took me by the lapel and just drew me in. And it’s, like, you know, I just really need to contemplate what this is saying. I haven’t been marinating on this recently, and I hope that this is something that you need to marinate on, but I certainly do. Every word in the first half of verse 2 is just loaded, and I hate to slow down to a literal word by word, and we’re gonna pick it back up. But for the moment, I just needed to just try to wring everything I can out of this, and then open up the lens, and take us to some other verses. Yeah so what else? We’ve got maybe one minute. It’s time for us to wind this down, but as we slip out today and we go live our life today, let’s remember, I mean, we live in the presence of God. We stand in this grace, and throughout the day we need to be drawing near, with our thoughts, with our prayers, with our worship of God and have this living dynamic relationship with God. I think Paul wanted us to know here it’s more than just bookkeeping, accounting that’s going on in heaven. That we actually are in the presence of God now. That’s pretty incredible. Well let me close in a word of prayer, Father thank you for this study. Thank you for the reality of what we have looked at. I pray that you would give us an increased understanding of this, but more than that, an increased experience within our own hearts and soul of this. Father I offer much praise and much thanks to you for this, in Jesus’ name, amen.