Only Sinners Need Apply

Only Sinners Need Apply

Romans 5:1-8

istening to the news surrounding the release of the Starr report in Washington, Lynda and I listened to an interview with a former independent counsel.  The commentator made reference to the amazing speech the President of the United States had delivered earlier that morning before the National Prayer Breakfast.  That newsman observed that it was an emotional speech followed by an emotional response which the ministers accorded the President.  Then he asked the man being interviewed (Mr. DiGenevo), if he had any comment on that observation.  That former independent counsel responded to the newsman’s inquiry, It is the business of ministers to forgive.  That is not the business of the American people.

That former independent counsel is wrong.  While ministers should quickly extend forgiveness to the repentant, forgiveness is not their business.  Their business is to correct, rebuke and encourage.  This is to be conducted with great patience and with careful instruction while preaching the Word, prepared in season and out of season [cf. 1 Timothy 4:2].  It is in the process of confronting men and women with their own fallen condition that their ministry is accomplished.  Broken people are willing to cast themselves on God’s mercy, knowing that they are sinners deserving of condemnation.  God is gracious and He does forgive, but only sinners need apply.

In order to explore this vital truth, join me in study of a passage of the Word which is too easily ignored in this day.  Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.  And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.  Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us [Romans 5:1-8].

The Benefits of Salvation – Salvation is so much more than avoiding judgement.  The passage before us begins with a reminder of some of those benefits: peace with God and access into the grace in which we now stand.  These benefits in turn result in joy as we contemplate the glory of God, even though we may be called upon now to suffer.  Let’s place the benefits before our eyes then: peace; access; joy.  These are present benefits of God’s salvation and each of these characteristics should mark the life of the Christian.

Far too many of our fellow saints live without reflecting the presence of salvation.  Their souls are in turmoil and peace is distant.  Peace distinguishes the redeemed from the wicked.  Let me make that contrast by reference to Isaiah, the first of the Major Prophets.  In Isaiah 26:3 we read a singular affirmation.

You will keep in perfect peace

him whose mind is steadfast,

because he trusts in You.

In the 57th chapter of Isaiah, there is a contrast between those who accept the invitation of God and those who reject that invitation.

“Peace, peace, to those far and near,”

says the LORD.  “And I will heal them.”

But the wicked are like the tossing sea,

which cannot rest,

whose waves cast up mire and mud.

“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

[Isaiah 57:19b-21]

Should it be any surprise that peace is the result of receiving God’s salvation?  After all, is not our Lord known as the Prince of Peace [Isaiah 9:6]?  Thus, those submitting to His reign should live lives marked by peace.

I encourage you to reflect on this distinction between the saved and the lost.  The saved, those who trust in God, possess a mind which is steadfast, reflecting the peace which comes from confidence in the Lord God.  I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day, is the affirmation which the Apostle makes [2 Timothy 1:12].  It is the statement of confidence which marks each Christian because their future is settled and they have been delivered from all guilt.

Consider this assessment of Christ which Paul provides in Ephesians 2:14-18.  Christ himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.  His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.  For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Because our minds are infected with the virus of sin associated with this fallen world, we somehow distort the peace God offers.  His peace is not characterised by a lack of awareness of our situation.  His peace does not lead us to be unconcerned for others.  His peace is a settled confidence in His forgiveness, a certainty that He has set aside our sin and that He now calls us His dear children.  Perhaps it is more accurate to speak of confidence than it is to speak of peace.  Underscore this one great thought in your mind: a believer is not responsible for having peace in the sense of making it, but in the sense of enjoying it.

Paul also speaks of access into the grace in which we now stand.  We believers are recipients of divine grace.  We have been shown mercy and kindness beyond that of common grace.  Paul seems especially to be focused on the fact that Christ is the means by which we receive access into God’s grace.  Grace is freely given us in the One God loves [cf. Ephesians 1:6].  Through Christ we have access to the Father [Ephesians 2:18], and in Him and through Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence [Ephesians 3:12].

The privilege of being called a child of God, the freedom to come into His presence knowing that we will be received as a beloved child, the confidence that He loves us and welcomes us … all this is the result of salvation.  Consequently, it is only in Christ that we possess this access.  It is only in Christ that we receive this grace.  There is no possibility of such grace outside of Him.

Because we have peace with God and because we recognise that He is our access into His grace, we are called upon to rejoice.  Quite literally, the term means to exult in the purest sense of the word.  We are to boast in Christ.  I mention this with some trepidation because the human heart is prone to distort the purity of the Word.  By encouraging boasting in Christ, I do not mean to ridicule those outside the Faith, nor do I mean that we are to use our standing in Christ to injure or hurt another.  We are, however, to eagerly anticipate the time when we will share Christ’s glory.

In this world you will have trouble [John 16:33].  Trials and testing mark the life of the Christian.  The world hated the Son of God, and the inhabitants of that world crucified Him.  There is little doubt that were Jesus to present Himself to this fallen world today, they would again crucify Him.  Jesus warned His disciples: if they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also.  If they obeyed My teaching, they will obey yours also.  They will treat you this way because of My Name, for they do not know the One who sent Me [John 15:20b, 21].  Despite these pressures, the child of God can, as was true of the Psalmist, say, my heart rejoices in Your salvation [Psalm 13:5b].  All who seek the Lord are encouraged by the Psalmist to rejoice and be glad in Him; those who love His salvation are urged to always say, “Let God be exalted!” [Psalm 70:4].

The encouragement Paul gives is similar to that which James writes in James 1:2.  Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.  In neither instance are we called to stoic endurance, but we are encouraged to look beyond the moment, knowing that we shall share in the glory which is to be revealed in Christ.  God employs the pressures we now face to prepare us for eternity.  The trials we now endure are transient, momentary; and our suffering produces perseverance.  The perseverance we gain makes us men and women of character; and the character formed in us creates hope.

Permit me to take a moment longer to put these pressures we face in perspective.  We do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.  Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.  For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.  Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.  We live by faith, not by sight.  We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.  So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it [2 Corinthians 4:16-5:9].

Rejoice in your pressures, child of God.

The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

[Psalm 118:6]

The Necessary Criterion for Salvation – One must be a sinner in order to be saved.  If God’s salvation did not include Heaven, it would still be a glorious possession now since it provides peace with God and access into the grace in which we now stand.  Because it does promise that we shall be transformed into His likeness and suited for Heaven, the benefits provided are glorious beyond imagination.  However, just who can be saved?

The clause which begins our text speaks of those who are justified by faith.  We know, then, that faith is necessary for salvation.  Some may contend they have always believed, but the Word of God is quite definite in presenting the truth that we each came to a point in life when we were required to believe.  To be born again implies a transition at a point in time.  It speaks of a rebirth at a point after the first birth.

David, when he had sinned so horribly against the Lord God by committing adultery and killing an innocent man to cover his sin, wrote the 51st Psalm under inspiration of the Spirit of God.  In that Psalm he confesses:

Surely I was sinful at birth,

sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

[Psalm 51:5]

Since sin taints each member of the race from conception, from the moment life begins, then it follows that one cannot always have been a believer.  There was a time for each of us when we began to believe.  Prior to that time we were sinners.  That is the bad news.  The good news is that only sinners may be saved.

On a news program Lynda and I watched a man surrender to police.  He had brutally terrorised small convenience stores in San Diego for over two months.  Robbing the clerks at gunpoint and brutalising those who did not respond to his demands quickly enough, he had at last been taped during one final robbery.  The tape of that robbery was televised and several people phoned police with the name of the man.  Realising that he was discovered, the man phoned a television reporter and offered to surrender to him.

As he came out of his house, that big, hulking man was crying and sobbing.  Multiplied protestations that he would never hurt anybody were interspersed with one recurring statement: I’m not a bad person.  Months later, as he was sentenced to a long prison term mandated by California’s “three strikes” law, he blustered and threatened.  Despite his many protestations to the contrary, he demonstrated that he was a bad person!  That is the point: each of us is bad!  Perhaps we are not bad when compared to others of this fallen race, but in the sight of God we are wicked and under sentence of death.

The evidence stands dark against each of us.  John, in the Gospel which bears his name, writes of the contrast between sinners and saints.  This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God [John 3:19-21].

The Apostle wrote in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  None have escaped that awful sentence.  Each of us is under condemnation as sinners.  Though we may dissent and demur, casting ourselves in the best possible light, we are sinners.  Though we may say we are not that bad, we are sinners none the less and incapable of making ourselves acceptable to God.  As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;

there is no one who understands,

no one who seeks God.

All have turned away,

they have together become worthless;

there is no one who does good,

not even one.”

 “Their throats are open graves;

their tongues practice deceit.”

“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”

“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”

“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

ruin and misery mark their ways,

and the way of peace they do not know.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

[Romans 3:10-18]

‘Ere we can be saved, we must need to be rescued.  Until we realise our need, we shall never receive the forgiveness offered in Christ.  Our fellow townspeople are good people, as this world counts goodness.  We ourselves are good people, but so long as we see ourselves as good, we shall never receive the forgiveness of sin.  So long as we maintain our innocence, so long as we insist that we are in fact good, we will refuse every offer of grace, because we will have convinced ourselves that we have no need.

The Sinners Situation – We are each powerless, ungodly, sinners before God.  You may divide the world into two categories: saints and ain’ts.  When we confess that we are sinners, we are admitting that we have no power and that we are ungodly.  We have neither the capacity to make ourselves acceptable to God, nor are we as God.

When our first parents sinned against the command of God and brought the entire race under condemnation, the lie which Satan used to convince Mother Eve was that she would be like God [cf. Genesis 3:5].  We need not live long in this world before we are assured that we are nothing like God.  Not only are we unrighteous, but we are powerless to stop sinning.  Eliphaz, one of the three friends who came to Job after he has afflicted and who though later rebuked for his attitude, nevertheless spoke truth when he said:

What is man, that he could be pure,

or one born of woman, that he could be righteous?

If God places no trust in his holy ones,

if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes,

how much less man, who is vile and corrupt,

who drinks up evil like water!

[Job 15:14-16]

Man drinks up evil like water.  Man cannot stop sinning.  He is powerless to change.

The term which is translated powerless [Greek ajsqenw'n], speaks of weakness, refers to being feeble or without strength.  An illustration may help in understanding the impact of this word.  In John 5:1-9 is the account of one man whom Jesus healed.  You may recall that this man was lying near the pool which was commonly known as Bethesda.  A great number of disabled people used to lie near the pool, including the blind, the lame, and the paralysed.  There was a legend that when the waters of the pool were stirred, it was an angel entering the waters.  According to the legend, the first one to enter the pool after the waters were stirred would be healed.  In desperation the injured and crippled of that ancient society waited since this was their last hope.

The man whom Jesus encountered had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  That term which is translated invalid is the same word which Paul uses to describe sinners.  He is not even given a name; he is simply called the invalid, oJ ajsqenw'n.  No legend will help such a person.  No fable from the dark mist of myth will permit him to walk.  After thirty-eight years the muscles are atrophied.  Should he have the ability to walk, he would yet have no strength.  Something more than a fairy tale will be required to enable him to walk again … if he ever walked before this!

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up!  Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once the man was cured [John 5:8,9].  It is the power of God, the voice of the Master, which is necessary to give strength and to restore withered limbs.  Just so, it is the power of the Creator, the might of the Almighty, which is necessary to remove the shackles of sin and lend the power to live again.  The point of the Apostle’s choice of words is to emphasise our inability to change our situation.  Our situation is that we are not like God.  Despite the serpent’s lie, we are godless.  Multiply the synonyms and the situation remains the same.  We are wicked, unrighteous, evil, sinful, vile, corrupt, depraved … we are ungodly.  We need the intervention of the Living God to remove the effects of our fallen condition.

The Divine Provision for Sinners – Christ died for the ungodly … Christ died for us.  At this point we discover the character of Christ’s love.  The demonstration of Christ’s love was at just the right time.  He chose to die for the powerless, for the ungodly.  Clearly, His was a substitutionary death.  Clearly He died in the place of others who were incapable of doing anything for themselves.  This is the reason we speak of His sacrifice, an offering of Himself in the place of sinners, as the Apostle has said.  God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God [2 Corinthians 5:21].

The highest expression of human love and devotion must assuredly be that one individual would willingly die that another might live.  We honour such people.  One offering himself as a substitute that a righteous person or a good person might continue living expresses deep love.  However, God’s love contrasts with human love both in nature and in degree.  God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  The continual evidence of God’s love is that Christ died in our place.

Though I can perhaps provide a few examples of individuals who willingly died in the place of some other whom they judged to be righteous or good, Christ went so far beyond that as to beggar all comparison.  Christ died in the place of the powerless.  He died for the ungodly.  He gave Himself for sinners.  Christ Jesus even died for His enemies [verse 10].  Whoever heard of another dying for the powerless, for the ungodly, for sinners; and especially, whoever heard of one dying for his own enemies.

If you consider yourself to be a sinner, without God and without hope in the world [Ephesians 2:12], think what it means that Christ the Lord would take your punishment upon Himself.  Think what it means that the Son of God would give Himself as a sacrifice, taking your judgement so that you might be free.  This is the message of life with which we Christians are entrusted.  We have a message of life that no one need die, that no one need suffer divine wrath, that no one need perish.  We call this the Gospel, the Good News.  Life, and all the benefits which accompany that life, become yours at the point you believe this message of grace.

The verses which follow our text are indeed relevant to the message today.  I invite your attention to verses nine through eleven.  Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!  For it, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life.  Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation [Romans 5:9-11].

By Christ’s sacrifice sinners may be justified … declared free of guilt and forever free of condemnation before God.  This being true, how much more are those same sinners delivered from God’s wrath through Jesus the Christ!  Sinners may be reconciled to God through the death of His Son, and because He lives we shall assuredly be saved through His life … for He is risen from the grace and lives forever to intercede for His own.  This is the message of the author of the Hebrews letter.  Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood.  Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them [Hebrews 7:24,25].

You see it is one thing to speak of the sacrifice of the Son of God; it is quite another thing to acknowledge that He lives.  As Paul began this same Roman letter, he wrote astonishing words.  He declared that he was set apart for the Gospel of God — the Gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding His Son, who as to His human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead [Romans 1:1-4].  Scope in on that one indisputable fact: Jesus Christ our Lord was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.

Immediately prior to His passion, our Lord spoke these words to His disciples.  Because I live, you also will live [John 14:19b].  Though His sacrifice was atonement for our sin, though we are saved by His death, it is by His life that we live.  The guarantee that we shall be delivered from the wrath to come is that He lives and that His life is revealed among us.  This is the reason we say that all who have submitted to Him as Lord are responsible to identify with Him as He commanded and openly unite with His people.

The Divine Call to Salvation – The Word of God pleads with sinners, inviting them to believe the Good News and place their faith in the Risen Son of God.  This is the language which challenges each sinner to believe Him.  If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.  As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”  For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [Romans 10:9-13].

Those who confess Jesus as Lord, believing that He has raised from the dead, will openly stand with Him.  This is the point of Paul’s quote of Isaiah 28:16 in which he states that anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame.  Those who love family and friends more than Christ are ashamed of Him.  They hold back from open identification with Him for a variety of reasons.  Though I would never disparage those reasons, I am nevertheless constrained to confront each professing believer with the knowledge that He calls us to a witness which is both bold and open, beginning with baptism and continuing through uniting with His people in open fellowship.

I invite you to believe this Good News that you may have peace with God, access into His grace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  If you have yet to believe this Good News, do what the Word invites you to do.  Confess with your mouth, “Jesus is my Lord.”  Believe in your heart that He died because of your sin and that He is raised so that you may be declared just before God.  You who have believed are to openly confess Him through baptism, just as He commanded.  We are not baptised in order to be saved, but because we are saved we will be baptised.  Having believed and having been baptised, have you united with a congregation of the Spirit’s choice?

Why will you resist the mind of the Spirit?  What excuse will you give God on that day He visits us?  When called to give reason for your refusal to believe, how shall you answer?  You have heard the message of grace.  You have received an invitation to faith in the Son of God.  Won’t you heed the warning which attends that gracious invitation?  If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.  Anyone who rejected the Law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace [Hebrews 10:26-29]?

You who profess His Name, why do you hesitate to obey His call to be baptised?  Why do you delay openly uniting with the church of His choice?  We issue an invitation today for all who hear the Spirit’s voice to believe the Saviour, to obey His command, and to be identified with his people.  Amen.