Please turn with me to Romans
chapter 3, if you would please. Romans chapter 3. What is grace? Here we call it
sovereign grace because we feel the need to distinguish God's
grace as it's described, as it's shown in the Scriptures. We feel
a need to distinguish it from what most in this religious world
think it to be. We distinguish it by saying it's
sovereign grace, meaning that it was initiated by God, that
this was God's doing, salvation. There really is no grace other
than sovereign grace. Pretty much anyone and everyone
that is at all interested in salvation today will tell you
that their salvation is by the grace of God. Yet it becomes
quickly apparent, as we say all the time, that what most people
think grace to be is actually God wanting and desiring to be
gracious to everyone, but can only be gracious and can only
save those that will allow Him or let Him do so, giving them
their heart or so on and so forth, making Him Lord. We've heard
all of the things. Sadly, that pretty well negates
everything that grace claims to be. Everything that grace
defines itself to be in this book, that pretty well negates
that kind of thing. Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is God being undeservingly
merciful to us. My English dictionary defines
grace as the free unmerited favor of God manifested in the salvation
of sinners. That's a good definition. My
Bible dictionary defines grace as God's divine influence upon
the heart. Are you interested in the grace
of God? Here in Romans chapter 3, Paul
tells us, verse 20, he says, Therefore, by the deeds of the
law, by the works of the law, the keeping of the law, that's
what he's talking about, he says, there shall no flesh be justified. You see that? No flesh. Nobody's going to be justified.
Nobody saved, nobody made just and righteous in God's sight. And then Paul tells us why. He
says, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Now Paul did not say
here, for by the law is salvation. You're not going to obtain salvation
by the keeping of the law. No flesh should be justified
by keeping the law. The law was given for the knowledge
of sin. That's very important. God gave
us His law to show us some things. First of all, how far we've fallen,
just how sinful we are. That's what the law shows us.
God gave us His law so we could know how holy He is and how ungodly
we are. Please understand that this is
not my opinion of you. This is God's evaluation of us. That's what Paul's saying here.
For by this law, in this law that God gave us is the knowledge
of sin. It's how we know that we're sinners. God revealing it to us through
His law. It's how we know that God's holy.
It's how we know that God requires perfect holiness and righteousness
from us. It's how we know and are made
to see that we cannot provide what God requires of us. For
by the law is the knowledge of sin. And that's why Paul tells
us that the law is our teacher. He said it's our schoolmaster.
That's what a teacher is, a schoolmaster. To bring us to Christ. You see,
the law teaches us that Christ is the only one who can save
us. And it's that knowledge that
brings us to Him. Oh, if you want to be saved and
desire to be saved, and you see that Christ is the only way,
you'll find a way to get to Him. And when all is said and done,
we have to know that Christ is our salvation. We have to know
something. We can't keep the law. Only Christ
can keep it for us. That's what we have to know.
You can't satisfy God's justice. Only one who is God and who is
man can do so. And that's what we see in verse
21. But now, the righteousness of
God, that perfect righteousness that you and I must have to be
reconciled to God, the very righteousness of God, God's own righteousness
without the law is manifested. Now did you hear what Paul said
there? Now the very righteousness of God can be obtained another
way than by trying to keep the law. Salvation can now be obtained
without the law, without the keeping of God's law by us. But understand me when I tell
you that God's holy law still has to be kept. It has to be
kept in order for God to remain just. It has to be kept in order
for sinners to be justified. It has to be kept perfectly by
someone if anyone is to be saved, if anyone is to be justified.
Yet God's law was never, I repeat, never given for us to keep. It
was given to show us that we couldn't keep it. That's so important. This is the very thing that the
Old Testament Scriptures was telling us. Paul says here in
verse 21 that this is the very thing that was witnessed by the
Law and the Prophets. That's speaking of the Old Testament.
Every sacrifice in the Old Testament, in the book of Moses, in the
Law, in the books of the Prophets, minor and major, all of those
sacrifices made year after year, those repetitious sacrifices
that the high priest made again and again for the covering of
the sin of God's people, every single one of them point to the
Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for sin. And the glorious gospel
news is that we now obtain this perfect righteousness that Christ
worked out for us by simply believing on Him. Nothing else to do. Look at verse 22. Even the righteousness
of God, which is by what? Faith. By divine persuasion. Total reliance. That's what faith
is. Total reliance on Christ. trusting
in Christ alone to do everything for you that God requires of
you. And it's the faith of Jesus Christ
unto all and upon all them that what? Believe. Is this grace
and this righteousness for the whole world? No, it's for those
that believe. And those who believe are revealed
to be those that God chose before the foundation of the world.
There's nobody that loves the doctrine of election more than
me. But I'll tell you a doctrine
that I love more than the doctrine of election, and that's the doctrine
of Christ. When I fall in love with the
doctrine of Christ, I see that it's all because God chose me
before the foundation of the world. And He gets all the honor
and all the glory. It didn't have anything to do
with me before I was ever born, before I had done any good or
evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand,
of God that calls, God that saves. That's my only hope. Verse 23 tells us about the group
that we're all in. It says, for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. All have come short of what
this law requires. What does the law of God require?
You know the answer. Perfection. It must be perfect
to be accepted. You hear me say that all the
time. It's the heart of the gospel. If God requires perfection in
order for me to be saved and I can't provide it, then how
am I going to be saved? You see, that's the question
of all questions. I have to obtain that righteousness
some other way because I cannot, in and of myself, keep the law.
Why? Because the law is weak through
the flesh. That being my flesh. If I'm unable
to provide the perfection that God requires, how then can anyone
who has sinned and come short of the glory of God be saved?
That's a very valid question. In verse 24, Paul tells us how. And again, this is the Gospel.
Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus. Oh, I tell you friends, if I
had but that one verse engraved on my heart, everything would
be alright. How are we saved? How are we justified? How are
we made just and righteous before God? This verse tells us. First, we're justified freely. That means without a cause. That
means there's nothing for you to do. Matter of fact, that means
there's nothing you can do. God can't accept what we do because
it's not perfect. Thank God that we're justified
freely, without a cause. No reason within us that would
cause God to make us just and righteous. It's done freely.
It's done without a cause. God is gracious to some because
it simply pleased Him to do so. Whatever the Lord pleased, that
did He inhabit. And among the inhabitants of
the earth. It pleased the Lord to make you His people. That's
why you are. God is gracious to some. God is never gracious because
of something within the sinner or done by the sinner. Everything
we do comes short of God's glory. And some will say, well, that
don't seem fair. You know, I was thinking yesterday,
I just imagine that's what Esau thought. God loved Esau's twin
brother Jacob. God said, Jacob have I loved
and Esau have I hated. Do you think that for one moment
that Esau thought that that was fair? After all, Jacob was the
worst of the two. Jacob had conned him out of his
birthright. He's like, you're going to love
him and not me? You know he didn't think it was
fair. And God says that he loved the worst one and he hated the
other before either of those two twin boys were ever born
before they had done any good or evil. That's the same with
us. And God tells us in Romans chapter
9 verse 11, so that the purpose of God, according to election,
might stand or be true. That's what it means. This truth
stands as truth. Not of works, not of the works
of the law, not by the deeds of the law, not by the keeping
of the law, but of Him, of God, that calleth. So first we see
that we're justified, we're made just, we're made righteous, we're
made very righteousness of God freely. God for no reason outside
of himself chose to be gracious to us. And then secondly we see
that to save sinners justification is free only by God's grace. You see that? We're justified
freely by His grace. Justification It's free to us,
but it costs God dearly. It's free to us, but it sure
wasn't free to God, and it sure wasn't free to the Lord Jesus.
He died in our room instead. And all the sin of all God's
elect throughout all time was put on Him. And He put away all
of that sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And God's now satisfied
with you, child of God. That is the Gospel. It's free
to us. This is the grace of God. This
is what grace is. God freely giving us justification. And He does so by His grace.
We are justified freely by His grace. Everyone that is thirsty,
the Scripture says, come ye to the waters. And he that hath
no money, come ye buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without
money and without price. Now, how do you buy something
if you don't have money? You ever thought about it? You
charge it. That's something that I learned
early on. I wish somebody had told me as a young man. But I
found out the hard way that if you charge something on a credit
card, you've got to pay it back. Nobody told me that. I have to
pay it back. But here's the good news. Our
salvation, our redemption, our justification before God is freely
ours. freely ours because God imputed,
God charged all the sin, all our sin to the Lord Jesus Christ
and then charged His perfect righteousness to us. And then
thirdly we see in verse 24 this redemption that we have, this
salvation that God freely gives us by His grace is found only
in one place and that's in Christ Jesus. This is why the gate to
life eternal is so narrow. There's only one way to get there.
The road to salvation is not wide, it's narrow. Wide is the
gate that leads to destruction, but narrow is the gate, narrow
is the road that leads to life. And few there be that find it.
I want to find it. How about you? There's only one
way to be reconciled to God. I want everything between God
and me and God and you to be alright. Adam lost three things
in the Garden of Eden, and we lost them in him. It's because
of these things that we now hate God without a cause. By nature,
I'm talking about. First of all, Adam lost the way
to God. After Adam sinned, after he fell,
God put him out of the garden. And God closed the gate and He
put flaming swords and cherubims to guard the entrance. Adam was
cast away from God. Secondly, Adam lost the truth. Adam believed a lie of the serpent
and he rejected God's truth. Now as a part of the curse, natural
man can't believe God. The natural man doesn't understand
the things of God. They're foolishness to him. They're
spiritually discerned. The things of God's Spirit are
just foolishness to the natural man. Neither can he know them,
the Scripture says. He can't know the things of God's
Spirit. They've got to be spiritually discerned. They've got to be
divinely revealed. You've got to be born again.
You've got to be given spiritual eyes to see. Unless a man's born
again, he can't even see the Kingdom of God. God has to first
give life where we can see. Adam lost the ability to even
recognize the truth. Why? Because he died. And a spiritually
dead man can't understand spiritual things because he's dead in his
trespasses and sin. Thirdly, Adam lost his spiritual
life, and in doing so, he lost hours. Oh, he lived on physically,
Scripture says for 930 years to be exact. But he died immediately,
spiritually. And I was thinking this morning
that so far God's been pleased to give me 64 years here on this
earth. But every single one of us born
into this world, into this life, are born spiritually dead. And some of you are still spiritually
dead. And you will remain so unless
God gives you life. And that's just the truth of
the matter. Salvation's of the Lord. If God
doesn't give it, You won't get it. Unless God gives you an interest
in the things of the Spirit of God, you'll remain spiritually
dead. And that's why the Lord Jesus
said, you must be born again. You'll never see the Kingdom
of God if you're not. That's why we must be made new
creatures, a new creation in Christ Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5.
God told Adam, in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely
die. And Adam ate, and Adam died,
and we died in him. But here's the gospel. Now in
Christ, in, by, and through God's free grace in him, the elect
of God, those that believe, and those that trust in the Lord
Jesus, have all the things that Adam lost restored to them, and
even more, The way to God is restored. Christ is the way to
God. The life of God is restored. In Christ I have life, eternal
life. This is life eternal that they
might know Thee, the only true God, in Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent. The truth of God has been restored
to me. I've been given spiritual light. I now see spiritual things. I see what I am. I see who Christ
is. In the law I see I have the knowledge
of sin. I see that man fell and man broke
the law of God and I see that in order for man to be justified,
man has to keep that law and man couldn't do it. And I now
see that what the law could not do and that it was weak through
our flesh. God sending His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh condemned sin in the flesh. That's my hope
and that's your hope. Christ became a man, took on
flesh and blood, just like you and me, yet without sin. And
He was tested, and He was tried, and He was tempted, in all points
the Scripture says, yet without sin. That's the difference. Why did Christ become a man?
To do for man what man couldn't do for God. And that's to work
out the perfect righteousness that God would accept. Christ
not only took our sin, but He took our guilt. And He took our
sins and His own body on the tree and it was there that the
justice of God was satisfied and both God's law in His life
and God's justice in His death were satisfied. And that's the
only way that you and I, the sinners that we are by nature,
the confirmed sinners that we are by practice, and the pathetic
wretches that we are by choice, can now be accepted by God. It's in, by, and through the
beloved Savior, Christ Himself. Accepted and the beloved. Oh,
I love to hear it. I love it. Accepted freely. Accepted by God's grace. Accepted
in Christ Jesus. And here's the reason, verse
25. Look at it. Jesus Christ whom God has set
forth. Now if you have a marginal Bible,
you may see that the phrase God has set forth here means foreordained. God foreordained Christ to be
a propitiation. Jesus Christ has been foreordained
and purposed to be an atoning victim. That's what the word
means. A mercy seat for the people that God gave Him. If you look
up that word propitiation in your concordance, it actually
means the lid of the ark upon which that sacrifice was made.
And upon which God accepted that sacrifice. What a picture that
is of Christ. He is the mercy seat. And He
is the propitiation for our sins. This is where Christ expiated. He made restitution for our sin. And if God the Son makes restitution
for your sin, oh, hear me on this, please. It has to be for
all your sin. And that means that the sin that
He made restitution for never happened. And this is what we
can't get our minds around as we talked about in the first
hour. Your justification is not just as if you never sinned. I've said that for so many years
and it seemed correct at the time. But justification is this. You've never sinned. Just as
Christ has never sinned. Because my righteousness is His
perfect righteousness. It's imputed to me. That's why
it's the faith of Christ that saves me, not my faith in Christ.
Do you see what I'm endeavoring to say? How does this justification
come? Verse 25, through faith in His
blood. We're back to that known truth
by believing and trusting in Christ alone to have provided
the perfect righteousness that God demands of us. I suppose
one of the most recognized verses in all of Scripture that has
to do with the grace of God is Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9. For by grace are you saved through
faith. And that's not of yourselves.
It's the gift of God. And it's not of works, lest any
man should boast. That's what Paul is saying here
in Romans chapter 3. Grace is God's undeserved, unearned,
unmerited favor to men and women who do not deserve, who do not
earn or merit any grace or mercy, and they certainly don't work
for it. To portray God's sovereign grace to be nothing more than
just a stepping stone for the will and work of man is to misrepresent
God. to simply declare that God's
grace makes salvation possible, makes God's grace nothing more
than something man can accept or reject, and it cheapens God
and it cheapens His grace. God's grace is so unmerited and
so undeserved by us, and the proof is that grace is actually
given to men and women who by nature hate God. And I know that
some are going to say, well preacher, I've never hated God. Well, this
much is true. Men and women don't hate the
little G God that most preach today. I'll give you that. He's
too pitiful. Folks feel sorry for Him. The
God that most in religion love is lovable in an unloving way. What do I mean by that? Well,
men and women love Him because they imagine Him to be altogether
such a one as they are. That's what God said. God said,
you thought. You thought I was altogether
such a one as you are. That's when we get in trouble,
when we think. You know it? God said, you thought
I was altogether like you. Nothing like you. You know, when
we think, that's when we get in trouble. Naaman, I love that
story, the captain of the host of Syria. He was a great man
with his king. His king loved him. He was somebody. He was a mighty man of valor,
the Scripture says. He was a war hero, a man of action,
a man of authority. Just one problem, God made him
a leper. What a picture leprosy is of
our sin. So Naaman hears about the prophet
of God through a young handmaid that had been captured and brought
into Syria from Israel. She said, there's a prophet in
Israel. He can help you. So the king
of Syria, he sends word to the king of Israel to help Naaman
out. After all, he's somebody. Somebody
in the eyes of the world. So the scene changes and we see
Naaman pull up with his kingly horses and chariots. I'll tell
you, the best that this world's riches could buy. And Elijah,
the prophet of God, he's sitting in the house and he don't even
come outside to greet him. Elijah, God's prophet, he sends
his little messenger boy to the front door where Naaman waited. The great Naaman waiting? That's
unheard of. And that young boy said, go wash
in the Jordan River seven times and your flesh will be clean.
And that just made Naaman mad. The scripture says that he was
wroth, and that word means in a rage. He wasn't just angry,
he was in a rage. And you remember what he said?
He said, Behold, I thought. Behold, I thought. I thought.
I can assure you that things are not as we think they are.
Naaman said, I thought it'd be different. He said, after all,
they stand in line to see me in Syria. I'm somebody there. But Naaman, he isn't in Syria.
This is where God's prophet dwells. And God's not impressed with
Naaman, and neither is God's prophet. Naaman said, behold,
I thought. But it's not how we think. We
think God's like us. It's not like that. Naaman said,
I thought this would be a big to-do, a big fanfare. After all,
the great Naaman of Syria has come to town. And Naaman so proudly
and pathetically said, I thought at least this man would come
out to me and stand and wave his hand and say a prayer and
maybe anoint me with oil or do something. Doesn't he know who
I am? Yes, he knows. But he knows who
God is too. And Naaman failed in comparison
to God. Naaman arrogantly said, there
are cleaner waters where I live. Couldn't I have just washed in
those waters and been made clean? And recover from this leprosy?
Nope, you couldn't. Because these were the waters
that God had prescribed. Now here's the Gospel message
in all that. And it was delivered by a servant
of Naaman. Isn't that what a preacher is?
Just a servant, just a messenger? One of the servants of Naaman
came near to him and he said, My father, or my lord, or chief,
it was a greeting of respect. He said, If the prophet of God
had bid you to do some great thing, wouldn't you have done
it? You see, by nature, we want to do great things, don't we?
We in our flesh want to do great things, but this is what grace
is. There's no great thing for you to do. And you can't do no
great thing to be saved. Just get into the water. Just
shut up and get in the water. Wash in the waters of God's fountain. Christ is that fountain that
shall never run dry. Lord, let the water and the blood
from Thy wounded side which flowed be of sin a double cure, and
save from wrath and make me pure. No great thing for me to do.
Just be washed in the blood of the Lamb. What's not to love
about the God that most preach today? He doesn't hold anyone
accountable for their sin. This imagined God just wants
you to do the best you can. Just do the best you can. But
the holy God of the Bible says, the soul that sins, it shall
die. And men say, yeah, but me and the man upstairs, you know,
we've got a good thing going and we have an understanding
and He loves me too much to punish my sin. He knows I'm doing the
best that I can. The God of the Bible says the
wages of sin is death. God says, I will by no means
clear the guilty under no circumstance will I clear those that are guilty. And foolish and ignorant men
say, well, but me and Jesus, we've got a good thing going.
And I gave Him my life, and I made Him Lord, and I accepted Him
into my heart. Is that supposed to be some great
thing? Men and women seem to think that they've done some
great thing for God, when it's God that has done great things
for us. Psalm 126 Do you know what it
means to be justified freely by God's grace? I want to tell
you a little story that Brother Mahan told one time about being
asked to preach to 80 or 85 inmates in prison on St. Kitts Island
in the West Indies. Henry said he didn't know for
sure what he was going to talk about other than he knew that
he wanted to talk to them about salvation, forgiveness, mercy,
and life in Christ. In other words, he wanted to
preach the gospel to them, and that's what he intended to do.
So he asked those men, first of all, he says, do you men know
what it means to be pardoned? And they all nodded their heads
yes. I guarantee you a man in prison knows something about
being pardoned. They shook their heads, yes, they knew what it
meant to be pardoned. Some of them even smiled. Then
Brother Henry told them, he said, even if you're pardoned, you're
still guilty. And then he asked, how many of
you know what it means to be paroled? And all of them shook
their head yes. You see, a man in prison, a man
in bondage, knows something about being paroled. And they all smiled
and they all nodded. And Henry said, you can be paroled
and still be guilty. You're still guilty, even if
you're paroled. Then he asked them, how many
of you know what it is to be forgiven? And they all knew what
it meant to be forgiven. Henry said that if you went to
the people to whom you committed your crime against and asked
them to forgive you and they did forgive you, that doesn't
change the fact that you're still guilty. And it doesn't. And then Henry told them what
they needed in the sight of God was justification. And he asked,
do any of you know what justification means? And they all shook their
heads no. And He told them that justification
means not guilty. It means not guilty. That's what
a believer is in Christ. Not guilty. In Jesus Christ,
we're cleared of all charges. A man can be found guilty and
you can parole him and you can pardon him and you can forgive
him, but he's still guilty. But to justify him? That means
that he's not guilty anymore. Matter of fact, never has been.
You're in Romans 3. Turn over a page to Romans chapter
5 and I'll wrap this up. Look at verse 1, Romans 5. Therefore
being justified by faith. By believing, that's what faith
is, isn't it? We have peace with God. Being
freely justified by His grace. through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. Oh, dear sinner, hear me when
I say, it's then that you can say with Paul in Romans 8, verse
33, who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Why, it's
God that justifies. It's God who pronounces me not
guilty. And again, we have the Gospel.
You're not guilty. You're cleared of all charges.
Who is He that condemns you? It's Christ that died. If Christ
died for you, you have no sin. It's been put away forever. As
far as the East is from the West, the two will never join again.
And it's Jesus Christ, the perfect One, who now sits at the right
hand of God making intercession for you, pleading your cause
for you. I like that. Christ is pleading
my cause for me, Adel. I have no reason not to think
that everything will be just fine, just perfect. What is His
plea for you as your advocate? Not guilty. How do you plead,
David Edmondson? And right as I'm about to confess
my guilt, my advocate stands and says, not guilty. I'm pleading
His cause, not guilty. He's justified. Not just as if
I've never sinned, but I've never sinned. The believer has no sin,
therefore the believer has no guilt. So you see our justification
is by grace and it's not by works of righteousness that we've done.
You can't work off guilt. You can't just work and guilt
go away. Guilt's still there and you can't
work it off. You know, a fellow can be charged with a crime,
and he can pay his fine, and he can serve his time, but he's
still guilty. He's still got a record, and
he still feels the guilt. God's people in Christ had no
record. Been put away. Been done away
with. God says, their sins I will remember
no more. Being justified means not guilty. You can't feel guilty over a
wrong you didn't do. And you cannot feel guilt over
sin you don't have. Rest in Christ. Will you do that? Rest in Christ. He's done it all for you. He's
put your sin away. Rest in Christ's finished work
of righteousness. Oh may God enable you to do so.