Now I'd like for you, if you
would, turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter three. I've entitled
the message Salvation for Real Sinners. The first point is this. The truth about what happened
to you and me in the fall of Adam. All of us here are real
sinners. So this message is for everyone
here this morning. This is salvation for real sinners. All of us are completely sinful. Everything we do, everything
we think, everything we say is pure sin. Look here at Romans
3 verse 9. What then? Are we better than
they? No, and no wise. For we have
before proved both Jews and Gentiles, they're all under sin. That's
all of us, we're all under sin. I don't care who you are, what
your background is, whether you're Jew or Gentile, whether your
background is a religious background or whether your background is
a heathen background. I don't care who we are. We are all completely
lost in sin, ruined by sin. Now we can't have any good news
from God until this truth is established. We're all completely
lost in sin. God's got to get us lost before
he'll ever save us. Now here in verse 10, here's
our actions. Everything we do is sin. As it's written, there's
none righteous. No, not one. There's not one
son or daughter of Adam who's righteous. Adam by his sin made
us unrighteous. And there's nothing we can do
to change that. Because everything we do is sin. Look at verse 11. There's none
that understandeth. There's none that seeketh after
God. The nature that we receive from our father Adam is spiritually
dead. So we can't understand anything
spiritual. Just like all of us have been
to a funeral home. There's a loved one laying there,
their body laying there in the casket, they're dead. No matter
how much you say to them, no matter how well you explain something
to them, no matter how well you explain something to them that's
going on in the news right now, they cannot understand, can they?
They can't understand. They're dead. The same thing
is true of us spiritually. We can hear the words, but we
cannot understand anything spiritual. We can't understand who God is.
We can't understand who we are. We don't understand what sin
is. We certainly can't understand how God saves sinners because
we're dead in sin. And since we're dead, we don't
know who God is. We don't understand him. We will
never seek God, never. Isn't that what he says here?
There's none that seeketh after God because we're dead. You know, God's got to choose
a people to save. He's got to elect a people to
save. He's got to come where they are
and seek them and find them. God's got to save them because
we'll never seek him, will we? You've heard this explanation
of election and false religion. They say God looked down through
the telescope of time, and he saw who would choose him, so
he chose them. That can't be so, can it? When
God looked down on mankind, you know what he saw? There's none
that seek after him. None, there's none that would
choose him, because we're dead in sin. Oh, there's life, there's
mercy, there's grace, there's salvation to be found in God,
but we won't seek him, because we're dead in sin. Verse 12,
they're all gone out of the way. They are together, become unprofitable. There's none that doeth good,
no, not one. All of us are gone out of the
way of God. We're gone out of the way of
truth. We're gone out of the way of life. We're gone out of
the way of holiness. You just add us all up together,
and you know what we are? All together, we're unprofitable. There's a, I don't know what
you call this, but it's a math rule or law. Zero plus zero is
always zero. It can't be anything else. Add
us all up together, know what you got? Zero. We're unprofitable. Our way is
not the way of profit. Our way is not the way of life.
Our way is the way of death. Look down at verse 16. Destruction
and misery are in their ways. That's our way. Trying to earn
salvation our way, trying to come to God our way, trying to
live our way, is death, destruction, and misery. Now that's what we
do. Now here's our nature. Verse
13, our nature is dead in sin. Their throat is an open sepulchre.
with their tongues they've used to see. The poison of asps is
under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Now our bodies are not dead,
but our nature is. Inside these living bodies, there
is a dead nature. And we prove it when we open
our mouth to talk about God. When we open our mouth by nature
to talk about God, it's like opening up a grave, and the stench
and the filth and the decay comes out because inside of us is a
dead nature. Man's thoughts and man's ideas
about God are always deadly. You hear this phrase, and any
time you hear this phrase, somebody in false religion, well, I just
think you immediately, Put your hands over your ears, because
I'm promising you what's going to come next is a way of death.
It's not going to be the way of life. They'll never lead to
life. Our nature's dead. In verse 15, here's our ways. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. Our ways, what we do, must be
directed by our nature. I use this illustration at home
every day. A cow eats grass. I don't eat
grass. A cow eats grass, because that's
the nature of a cow. I eat the cow, because that's
my nature. And I can't change it. I mean,
I can't change it. Darwin, you were talking the
other day about putting that big old T-bone that fills up and just overflows
the platter and doesn't eat any vegetables. That's my kind of
meal right there, because that's my nature. What we do spiritually
is directed by our nature. We can't go any other way but
away from God. Our feet are swift to shed blood. And the most clear example of
that you'll ever find to prove how hateful and deadly our nature
is, how much we hate God Almighty, is the first time for just a
few hours, God put his son in our hands, what do we do to him?
We were swift to shed blood. We couldn't wait to torture him
and put him to death. Swift to shed blood, because
by nature, we hate God. And our way is a way of war against
God, verse 17. The way of peace, if they not
known. We have declared war on God and Adam, and we don't have
any idea how peace can be made. Even if we would want, we don't
want the war to stop, but by nature, we do not want that war
to stop, but even if we did, we wouldn't have the first clue
how to make peace with God. We think, well, I'll make my
peace with God. No, we don't have any idea how
that's done. Verse 18. There's no fear of
God before their eyes. We are dead in sin, and we don't
know God's God. We don't have any reverence for
God. We have no respect for God. We have no love for God. That's
what happened to you and me in the fall of Adam. Here's a summary
of what Paul's told us. Because of Adam's fall, I need
a righteousness, but I don't have any. I need wisdom to know
God, but I don't have any. I need a way of salvation, but
I refuse to walk in it. I'm going to insist on walking
in my own way. I need God, but I refuse to seek Him. I need
life, but I'm dead in sin. I need peace, but I don't know
where it's found. Now that's what all of us are
as the result of Adam's fall. And then, after Adam fell, You
know what God did after Adam fell now? He rebelled against
God. He declared war against God. He had a nature that hated
God Almighty. Then God gave man the law. Now that seems strange, doesn't
it? Why would God give man the law, knowing man's incapable
of keeping it? Here's my second point. This
is the natural man's relationship with the law. and we've gotta
see this, or we'll never be saved. If God doesn't teach us that
our relationship with the law, we'll never be saved, because
we'll always be trying to save by keeping the law. Verse 19,
now we know, that whatsoever things the law saith, it saith
to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped,
and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore,
by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in
his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. God never
did give man the law so man could earn a righteousness by keeping
it. God gave the law to man, knowing that man could not even
for one second ever keep the law. Then why would God give
man the law, knowing we could never make God happy with us
by keeping it? Well, I'm sure God had many reasons
for doing that, but let me give you three. Number one, God gave
the law to show man our guilt before God so that we'll just
shut up, so that we'll just shut our mouths, so we'll quit making
excuses for ourselves and just come before God pleading guilty. I'm guilty. I've got no excuse.
It's not Adam's fault. It's not my mama and daddy's
fault. It's my fault. Just shut my mouth, I'm guilty.
Second, God gave the law to show man the depth of our sin. It's not just I've broken a few
rules that are inconsequential. No, the law shows me the depth
of my sin. This is the hopelessness of my
situation, that I cannot keep the law. Sin is not just what
we do. Sin is what we are. And that's
what the law shows us, that we can't stop sinning. All the law
can do, no matter how many times we keep the law, all the law
can keep showing us is our sinfulness. The law can only keep showing
us how much we fail to keep the law, how far we are from righteousness. And then thirdly, this is why
God gave the law. to shut us up to Christ. So we
see our situation is so hopeless. The only hope of salvation I
have is the Lord Jesus Christ. The law gave us, God gave us
the law so that we'd run away from it and we'd run to Christ. Now that's the only right relationship
any man, woman, boy or girl can ever have with God's law. That
the law shows me I'm guilty. Just makes me shut my mouth and
run to Christ. That's the only right relationship
we can have with the law. Now you and I are real sinners
and that's why God gave us the law. To show us that we're real
sinners. Well thirdly, here's the good
news. Here's how real sinners are saved. Real sinners are saved by the
righteousness of another. They're saved by the obedience
of another, and that other is our Lord Jesus Christ, verse
21. But now, the righteousness of
God without the law is manifested. Be witness by the law and the
prophets. Now Paul says when he talks here
about the righteousness of God, he's not talking about the righteous,
holy character of God. He's talking about the only righteousness
that God will accept. He's talking about the righteousness
that God produced as a man, when the Lord Jesus Christ became
a man. The Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man,
perfectly obeyed God's law, not just outwardly, in thought, in
his heart, in word, indeed, in every way, he obeyed God's law. And then God gives that righteousness,
that righteousness that Christ earned as a man, God gives it
to his people. That's what we call imputed righteousness. And we say God imputes the righteousness
of Christ to his people, it means that God reckons, or he charges
that obedience that Christ had as a man, and God reckons it
to his people. He counts it to be, he gives
it to them, so that it is their righteousness. It's theirs because
God gave it to them. Not because they personally earned
it. It's theirs because God gave it to them. That's the only way
a sinner can ever be righteous. It's by God giving us the obedience
of Christ. Sinners are made righteous without
us keeping any of the law at all. That's what Paul means here
when he says without the law. Now that doesn't mean that God
saves his people apart from the law, that he does an end around
the law, or he'll just ignore the law for the people he chose
to save, no. No, the law must be obeyed. God's
holy, God's just. He's not gonna set aside his
law for anybody. The law must be obeyed. But real
sinners are saved without our obedience to the law. Real sinners
are saved by the obedience of Christ. He kept the law for his
people as their representative. And God gives his obedience to
them so that it's theirs. That's the only way a sinner
can ever be made righteous. And Paul makes this clear, let's
not ignore this. This is witnessed by the law and the prophets.
The righteousness of Christ is not God's plan B of salvation.
God didn't first give the law to man and say, well, that's
a failure because they won't keep it. Well, I better come
up with another plan. Almighty God rules this earth.
And he does not rule this earth by reacting to what we're doing. No, God rules this earth by working
out everything he appointed to happen before he ever created
anything. This is not God's plan B. This
is his eternal plan, his eternal purpose of salvation. It's in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is our righteousness. I always want to be careful not
to talk about righteousness as a thing. Righteousness is not
a thing God gives you. No, righteousness is a person.
Christ is our righteousness. The law and the prophets give
testimony to that. What did Jeremiah say? Behold,
here's the Messiah, Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord, our righteousness.
Jeremiah 23, you look it up this afternoon. And if you do that,
when you read that Jeremiah 23, behold, this is his name, whereby
he shall be called Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord, our righteousness.
And then flip over a few pages to Jeremiah 33. He'll say the
exact same thing, but here he'll say, behold, this is her name,
Jehovah Zikinu, the Lord our righteousness. That union with
Christ, that marriage to Christ is so real. He is our righteousness. We bear his name, the Lord our
righteousness, so that when the Father looks at me, He don't
see me at all. Oh no. He sees his blessed, glorious
son and I'm accepted in him. That's the only way a real sinner
can ever be made righteous. Second, how's a real sinner saved?
A real sinner is saved by faith in Christ. Verse 22, even the
righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ. unto
all and upon all them that believe, for there's no difference for
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now you
go back and begin at Romans chapter one, and this is the whole point
that Paul has been building up to for three chapters now. None
of us can be justified by what we do because everything we do
is sinful. The only way we can be justified
is through faith in Christ. Now this is such good news to
a worthless, real sinner. Christ is everything we need.
He's all you need. You ever wonder why all your
pastor ever preaches is Christ? I've never heard him preach anything
but Christ. You know why he does that? Because Christ is all you
need. Remember, because of Adam's fall,
we need a righteousness, don't we? Christ is our righteousness. We need understanding. We need
wisdom. Christ is our wisdom. We need
a way of salvation. Christ is the way. He's the way
of life. He's the way of truth. He's the
way of salvation. We need to seek God. We can come
to God boldly through our Lord Jesus Christ. He's the way to
God. We need life. Christ is our life. We need peace
with God. Christ is our peace. He made
peace by the blood of His cross. He is our peace. We need a sacrifice
to pay for this horrible sin that we are. Christ is our sacrifice. He's all that we need. And the
way a sinner receives everything that Christ is, is by faith in
Christ. Sinners receive everything that
we need, everything that God requires, everything that Christ
is through a union with Christ. The old timers call that a vital
union with Christ. It's a vital union because there's
no salvation without it. We have that union with Christ
by faith in him. Now we can't do anything to save
ourselves. We can't do anything to help
save ourselves. We can't contribute anything
to our salvation. A sinner, Paul says here, is
made righteous by the faith of Christ. Remember what he says,
verse 22, being even the righteousness of God, which is by the faith
of Jesus Christ. Not only is there faith in Christ,
there's no salvation without faith in Christ, but our salvation
was accomplished by the faith of Christ. Saving faith relies
upon the faithfulness of Christ our Savior to do everything,
every last detail that's necessary to save a sinner like me. And
the Lord Jesus Christ was faithful. He was faithful to do everything
the Father gave him to do. He was faithful to obey all of
the law of God. He was faithful. He set his face
like a flint He would not be deterred. He knew what was going
to happen when he went to Jerusalem and you couldn't turn him from
it because he was faithful. He was faithful to go there and
suffer everything my sin deserves so that I'd be washed in his
blood. Oh, he's faithful. And if Christ our Savior If he
left one minor detail, left undone, that I had to do to make this
thing effectual, I'm going to hell, and you are too. But he
didn't leave anything undone. He was faithful to do everything
that was required to save his people from their sins. Now,
what must I do to be saved? Believe. Simply believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That's the only way
a sinner can be saved. There's no difference. All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. And there's no
difference in this either. I can boldly say this without
fear of contradiction based upon the authority of God's word.
There's no difference. All who believe on the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. Just believe on him to
do it entirely. That's the only way a real sinner
can be saved. Thirdly, how is a real sinner
saved? Brethren, we've got to be saved
by grace. Verse 24, being justified freely
by his grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Now God
must give us this gift of salvation. He's gotta give it to us freely,
because we can't earn it. Now justification is not just
as if I'd never sinned. No, it's not. That sounds cute,
but it's not so. Justification is I have never
sinned. God didn't deal with things as
if they were. God deals in reality. His people
are made so that they have never sinned. Now the only way that's
possible for a real sinner, who's nothing but sin, who can't do,
say, or think anything but sin, the only way that's possible
is if God gives me this obedience of Christ. If He gives me a new
nature. If He gives me not what I earned,
but if He gives me what His precious Son earned, that's grace. God giving me not what I earned,
but what Christ my Savior earned for me. And that gift of grace
has got to be free. You can't earn, you can't pay
for something that's free. It's a free gift. You cannot
earn salvation by your law keeping. Don't think, well, I know I can't
keep all the law, but if I keep some of it, it'll be easier for
God to save me. No, God's not gonna have that. No, it's gonna
be all Christ. all his obedience, and nothing
we contribute to it. Because if we contribute to it,
we're going to mar the whole thing. And don't think this. I want you young people to listen
to me. I remember what it was like being your age at a conference.
There's a lot of preaching in it. Listen to me for two minutes. Would you listen to me? I got
something for you. I know what it's like to be your
age sitting in the surface. And I wish, oh. I wish I could spare you the
grief and the agony that I caused myself. I thought, I'm better than all
my friends. They either don't go to church
at all, they go hear this awful stuff, you know, but I know the
gospel. And up here I did. I did. Brother
Henry said about me one time, he said, from the time Frank
could talk, he's a five-point Calvinist. He could recite the
five points of Calvinism, come down the stairs, backward on
his head at midnight, and I could. What then? Are we better than
they? Oh, no. Oh, no, no. Our religious activity
can't make us savable. Knowing the right doctrine doesn't
make us savable now. It's faith in Christ. God must
save us by His grace. Not because we deserve it, because
we don't. But because He's gracious. Because He's gracious to sinners.
That's how a sinner is saved. By grace. By God's free and sovereign
grace. You can't earn what Christ already
earned. If we're going to have it, God's
going to give it to us freely. Alright, here's the fourth way a real
sinner is saved. A real sinner saved in justice, verse 25, whom
God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to
declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are
passed through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say at
this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. God has set forth his
son for all to see. And when God saves a sinner,
he's gonna do it in a way that God still remains just. And it has to be that way. God's
just and holy in all his ways. So God's not gonna set aside
his holy character for the likes of you and me, is he? So he set
forth his son for all to see. He's setting forth as the propitiation.
Now you know what a propitiation is. The word means mercy seek,
sin covering. You remember in the tabernacle,
they had the Ark of the Covenant. One of the things they put in
that ark was the broken law. Moses, he came down from the
mountain the first time. He had those tables of stone.
He saw the children of Israel worshiping that calf. And in
anger, he threw it down, shattered it into pieces. And God said,
Moses, you come back up here. And he wrote those tables of
the law again. But he said, Moses, you can't
be trusted with this law. You take it and put it in the
ark. That ark is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was
made of incorruptible wood, the perfect humanity, sinless humanity
of Christ, covered with gold, picturing the deity of Christ.
That law was put in Christ, the God-man. That's where it's kept
safe, in Christ. Then they put a lid on top of
that mercy seat, or on top of that ark, and the broken law
was covered. The lid was the mercy seat. That
mercy seat was made out of pure gold. One day a year on the Day
of Atonement, the high priest would come into the Holy of Holies,
and he'd sprinkle the blood on that mercy seat. And they did
that for thousands and thousands of years. There's the broken
law kept safe in Christ. He kept it perfectly. That law
is covered with the mercy seat, covered with the blood of the
sacrifice. You know why they did that for
thousands of years? Every year God was setting forth
a picture of Christ our propitiation. That God's eternal purpose is
to save His people by sending His Son to keep the law for them. And for His Son to pay for their
sin, to blot their sin out with the blood of His sacrifice. And when Christ actually died,
fulfilling the picture of the Day of Atonement, the Father
accepted the blood of Christ as payment in full for all the
sin of His people. The debt was paid, wasn't it?
The debt was not ignored. The debt was paid. God didn't
write it off as bad debt. It was paid in full. So God saved
his people in justice. If salvation's accomplished in
justice, God could never take it away. Now, if he saved you
because you decided to accept Jesus and he just kind of ignored
the fact that you're a sinner, you can lose it. But if God saved
you in justice, by Christ paying all of the debt that your sin
deserved, you can never lose it. So God is just to justify
every sinner for whom Christ died. He's just to justify every
sinner who believes on Christ. You see, salvation's of the Lord,
isn't it? We didn't contribute not one thing to it. Salvation
is of the Lord, from beginning to end, he did it all. God is both just and he's the
one who justifies his people, because he saved them in justice.
That's salvation for real sinners. Now let me give you this quickly.
We saw, what is the natural man's relationship to the law? Well,
what's the believer's relationship to the law? There isn't one. The believer has no relationship
with the law whatsoever. The law is not our rule of life.
Don't you look to the law to find out what you're supposed
to do. If you're a believer, Christ is your rule of life.
You look to him. You just look to Christ. You live looking to him and following
him. He's your rule of life. We don't
have to keep the law to sanctify ourselves, to keep ourselves
holy. God didn't justify His people and then set them down
and said, now run along now and keep yourselves pure, keep yourselves
holy by keeping the law. No. You know what would happen
if He did that? The obvious thing is we'd ruin
it. We'd lose our holiness. We'd lose our righteousness.
But we'd boast about it. Verse 27. Where is boasting then? It's excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law
of faith. See, the law shows us we don't
have anything to boast about. What the law shows us is I'm
ashamed of my works. I want to keep quiet about them.
The only thing I want to boast in is in how Christ saves real
sinners. He saved a real sinner like me. He accomplished it all. So the
only possible conclusion we can come to is in verse 28. Therefore,
we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law. My obedience to the law never
enters into salvation at any point. Before conversion, after
conversion, never. So no matter who you are, this
is right back to where we started, no matter who you are, no matter
what your background is, Jew or Gentile, religious or heathen,
no matter who you are, if you're justified, you're justified through
faith in Christ. Not by anything we do or don't
do, it's all in our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the gospel message
for real sinners. Let me give you this in conclusion.
You've heard this in, I think, every single message. Faith in
Christ. You must believe Christ. What does that mean? I want you
to answer this in your heart. I'm gonna answer it in my heart.
Do you believe, do I believe, do I believe Christ? Now what
does that mean? Does that mean that I believe
in historical fact that Jesus Christ came in this world? Is
it just, is it to believe that yeah, Christ saved sinners, he
died for sinners? What is saving faith? Faith that
believes Christ. It's to rest everything upon
him. I wanna give you this illustration
in closing. In our congregation, we have one of our dear men,
Terry Watts. Terry's a fireman. He's been
a fireman a good while. He's a good fireman. I've talked
to him about fighting fires and the things he does. Wow, he's
a good fireman. Well, suppose Terry shows up
at the, they get an alarm, and they go out in that big truck,
and they get to a house, and that house is engulfed in flames. It's just, I mean, as soon as
they drive up on it, they know this is a lost cause. Terry steps
out of that truck and he looks up and he says, oh no. There's
a window up there and there's a little girl looking out that
window. Terry can't get to her. The house
is engulfed. She can't go back and get down
to him. The house is engulfed in flames. And Terry goes up
to that little girl and he hollers at her. He says, honey, you jump. I'll catch you. If you don't,
you're going to die. Honey, jump. I'll catch you.
That little girl looks down there at Terry. He's going to have
to do some work to convince her to jump out of a window to a
man she's never met. She doesn't know anything about
him. He's going to have to work hard. He's right. Her only hope is
she jumps and he catches her. He's going to have to work hard
to convince her. Now, Terry's got a little girl, a nine-year-old
daughter, Lindsey. Now suppose that little girl
in that window is Lindsey. Let me tell you what I know about
Lindsey. Lindsey knows her daddy is the best daddy in the world.
She knows her daddy is the strongest daddy in the world. Lindsey knows
my daddy is the best fireman there ever was. And she knows
my daddy will not let anything hurt me if he can help it. And
Terry says, Lindsey, honey, jump. Daddy will catch you. You know
what Lindsey does? Eyes into the air. Eyes closed,
arms wide open. You know why she jumps that way?
Lindsey has childlike faith. My daddy's going to catch me.
And she is glad to rest all of her life in her daddy's arms. that saving faith, childlike
faith that just cast it all upon Christ. I'm glad, oh, I'm thankful
to put all of my salvation in his blessed hands. God, give
us the faith to believe him. God, give us childlike faith
to rest it all on Christ our Savior. May the Lord bless you.