The title of this message is
really taken right from the scripture, and that's found in verse 5 of
chapter 4, where it says, speaking about Abraham and all those who
believe like him, it says in Romans chapter 4, verse 5, "...but
to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth
the ungodly." The title of today's message is, Him That Justifies
the Ungodly. Now, justification is a big word,
and I don't think I understood justification when I was growing
up in the church. I'm sure I did not. I don't think
I even heard a message on justification in all of the first 17 years
of my life. The first time I ever heard a
message on it, I believe I was saved. That is by the grace of
God that he would make known what he has done to justify his
people to us. Now, the title of the message,
Him That Justifieth the Ungodly, really contains the two points
I want to make in this message, which have to be made in every
sermon about the gospel. Number one, we are the ungodly,
every one of us, and this is going to be proven as we look
at just a couple verses in Romans 3. Secondly, God is the one who
justifies the ungodly, and this is God's glory. Now, just to
give you some motivation here, first of all, the teaching or
the truth of justification is at the center of the gospel,
is at the center of all of the Bible. If we understand the truth
of how God justifies sinners, then we can understand the entire
word of God. If we misunderstand this truth,
then we misunderstand the entire word of God. And this is seen
today in almost every religion. The reason I was thinking along
these lines is partly and due to a question I received from
my nephew Christian in his letter about the difference between
those who believe the truth and those who do not. And I think
that this is the one doctrine that separates the truth from
the error more than any other doctrine in all of scripture.
How does God justify his people? And how do we? What do we know
about this truth? What is it about this truth that
we understand that causes us to believe rightly? Because not
believing God correctly is to not believe God at all. We naturally
trust. When we're born, we trust our
parents. We learn to trust physical things, chairs, floors. We can
walk right next to the cliff and look over as long as we're
standing on a rock if we have the confidence that our physical
abilities in that rock are going to keep us safe. As young people,
we tend to take more dares and more risks because we're confident
in our ability and confident in those physical things. We
trust certain things. We're naturally inclined to trust
things. But trust doesn't save us. unless we trust what's true,
unless we trust the One who is true. We can trust God incorrectly
and we can end up in hell. The Jews are a classic example
of that. Cain tried to come to God trusting
Him incorrectly through his own works. So it's essential that
we understand the truth of justification in order that we might understand
God, that we might understand the Lord Jesus Christ, that we
might understand the Spirit of God and ourselves in relation
to Him. What is our relationship to God?
It's all determined by this truth of justification. Now the second
motivation, and this is probably the one that I think motivates
sinners more than anything, it's not so much to get their doctrine
correct, is to get their relationship to God right. God has told us
that the one burning issue that we have is how do we stand before
a holy God. That's it, isn't it? How do I
stand before God today? That is what sets my mind at
ease or gives me trouble throughout the day, throughout my life.
It causes anxiety to not know for certain how do I stand before
God. Doesn't it? Haven't you experienced
it? I have. I've experienced it day in and
day out, year in and year out. And there's only one truth that
has set my heart at peace, is how God justifies sinners. That's
it. And so the big question we have
is the question that Job raised is how can man be just before
God? How can man who is unclean? How can man who is born of woman
be clean before a holy God? How can God justify the ungodly? Because this verse claims that
God justifies the ungodly. Last week we talked in the sermon
about sin and grace and this This verse, doesn't it contain
both of those sin and grace? The ungodly and God's justification
of them. So this motivation, how can I
be just? How can I be right with God?
How can God accept me? How can I find approval in God's
sight? How can I know in my conscience
that God will look upon me with favor? That's the question, isn't
it? And not just today, but particularly in regards to the final judgment.
Isn't that the main question? How will I stand before God and
how will I give an account to God for myself? Because we will
have to do that. And so these are serious questions.
First of all, How, what is my relationship to God? How can
I be right with God? And how can I know that I'm right
with God? How can I know that? And secondly,
how can I even begin to understand the scripture and to prevent
myself from, or be prevented from falling into serious and
grievous and soul-damning errors The answer is understanding the
truth of how God justifies sinners, because that's what we are, isn't
it? Sinners. If you're anything but a sinner,
then justification is not for you. God says, the Lord Jesus
Christ says this in Luke chapter 5. I'll just read this to you. Matthew, who was one of the apostles,
was a publican, a tax collector, someone who earned their living
by taking money from others and having to take more in order
to enrich himself. But in Luke chapter 5, he's sitting
there collecting taxes. And it says this in verse 27,
these things, after these things, Jesus went forth and saw a publican
named Levi, Matthew also is his name, sitting at the receipt
of custom. And Jesus said to him, follow
me. And he left all, rose up and followed him. And Levi made
him a great feast in his own house. And there was a great
company of publicans and others that sat down with him. I can
see it, publicans and Others, these were the ones who were
the friends of Matthew, Levi. But the scribes and Pharisees
murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do you eat and drink
with publicans and sinners? And Jesus answered, said to them,
They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are
sick. That's it. Christ came for the
sick, spiritually sick and dead and dying. I came not to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance." And the repentance
he's talking about there is a repentance with regard to how God justifies
sinners. That is the truth that we must
understand, that we must rest our souls upon in order that
we also might be just before God. How is it that God does
that? The revelation of that is contained in Scripture. And
I want to take you to a couple of verses as a preface to reading
Romans chapter 3. If you would please turn with
me to Isaiah chapter 53. And these verses are plain and
clear. of how God justifies sinners. But unfortunately, they're neglected
or they're misunderstood or something that leads to our own falling
into doubts and troubles of heart and mind and even leading to
our own physical sickness and things like that as believers.
But worse, as unbelievers, we might stumble at these things
to our own our own eternal damnation. But he says here in Isaiah 53,
look at this, Isaiah 53 in verse 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to
bruise him. This is God speaking about his
son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He hath put him to grief, and
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. See what God did? God
made Christ an offering for sin. He shall see his seed. He shall
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in
his hand. God's will, his pleasure, would
be successful because of what Christ did. He shall see the
travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. God looked upon
the Lord Jesus Christ in his suffering, and was satisfied. And then it says about our Lord
Jesus, By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify
many." You see that? "...by his knowledge shall my
righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities."
What is the knowledge of the righteous servant? Here the Lord
Jesus Christ is the righteous servant. What knowledge is it
by which he justifies many? It's this knowledge. What did
God require to save His people from their sins? The Lord Jesus
Christ knew what that requirement was and He fulfilled it in every
part. And it was that knowledge, His
understanding of the will of God, and his doing and accomplishing
the will of God that actually justified his people. And it
says so in the next phrase, for he shall bear their iniquities. Do you see that? So if you start
here and understand the way the person justifying is God, The
way he justifies is through the Lord Jesus Christ, who is his
servant, his righteous servant, and the way he would do that
is he would bear their iniquities. Then we won't go too far astray.
Look at Acts chapter 13. Acts chapter 13, the justification
of a sinner. He says here in Acts chapter
13 and verse 38, a sermon being preached by Paul, and he says,
Paul was one who formally trusted in his own law-keeping, and thought
that he was blameless before the law, until the gospel came
home to him in power, and he realized through the righteousness
of God, which is revealed in the gospel, that he was the worst
sinner of all, the chief of sinners. He says this in verse 38. Be
it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through
this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." Forgiveness
of sins. Are you interested in that? The
forgiveness of sins? The complete forgiveness of all
your sins. I'm interested in that. Before
a holy God, to know my sins are forgiven in your conscience.
Do you know what that means? It means liberty. You know what
bondage is? Bondage is owing something and
not being able to pay, especially in a moral debt. A moral debt
to God is a bondage in your soul, in your conscience, and it's
actually a bondage to God's justice. But here, the forgiveness of
sins. The Lord Jesus Christ, by this
man, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. That's liberty.
That's the result of a ransom paid for the redemption of us,
his people. When God, in the Lord Jesus Christ,
pays the ransom price to His justice of the death and blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that ransom price frees His people
from the debt of their sins and enables God to forgive them of
all their sins. And that's what He's preaching
here. Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through
this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And
by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which you
could not be justified by the law of Moses." Now, the first
thing I want you to see about justification, besides those
things we've mentioned, that it's something God does, that
it's something He does by Jesus Christ, This verse tells us something
about the meaning of the word justification because it says
that by the law you could not be justified. You could not be
justified. The first thing that people misunderstand
naturally, and we do this naturally, is what would justify me before
God is if something about me changes. Something about me personally. Something that I do or something
that I am. The way I think. The way I feel. Something I experience. Something
I can become in myself. that would justify me before
God. And that's why this burning question is raised in scripture.
How can man, who is unclean, be just before God? Guilty and
corrupt, how can I cover my guilt? How can I remove the How can
I endure the punishment from God against my guilt, and how
can I change that corrupt nature that's in me? Those two things
have to be dealt with. How can I, who am sinful, be
righteous before God, so that God can look on me and justify
me? And the first answer is, you cannot, in yourself, be just
before God. In yourself, there's no possibility
of you being just before God. This is the hardest thing in
the world to come to grips with. God will spend years working
with us. beating us down, driving us to
despair, leaving us with a feeling of utter impossibility and hopelessness
and helplessness before God, before He reveals to us the answer
of how we're just before God. And the process may be painful
and long in our experience. Or it may be short. He may just
simply declare to us the gospel and give us the grace of faith
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But whatever the case
may be, if God is going to be merciful to us, He's going to
reveal to us that our justification is not by what we do. The Law
of Moses could not justify us. Now, why couldn't the Law of
Moses justify us? For this simple truth, the law
merely requires of us, merely states to us what God requires
of us. The law commands us to do things,
but it gives us no ability. And the law doesn't remove sin.
The law doesn't take away our sin. So if we miss one point,
James, in the book of James said, in James 1, around verse 12,
he says, or chapter 2, whichever one it is, he says, if you Keep
the whole law and yet offend in one point, you're guilty of
all. Guilty of all. That's what we
are. We're guilty of all because we've
sinned. But the law can't justify us because the law only condemns
sinners. It only condemns sinners. And
so that's the first thing we must realize is that we're guilty.
Now turn please to Romans chapter 3 and take a look at these verses
here together with me. Because this is the good news
of the gospel. The gospel is good news. Why
is the gospel good news? That's a question we might ask,
and it's a good question to ask. The gospel is good news. According
to Romans 117, he says this, In verse 16 of Romans 1, he says,
I'm not ashamed of the gospel. And when you read the gospel,
it really is a synonym for the good news from God. I'm not ashamed
of the gospel. Why would I be ashamed of the
gospel? The gospel is the pinnacle of God's purpose. It's the thing
that magnifies God's glory. It's the thing that God delights
in. It's what saves sinners. Why would I be ashamed of that?
God isn't ashamed of it. And to be ashamed of what God
is not ashamed is to show my utter wickedness. But here he
says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Why? For it is the power of God unto
salvation. I as a sinner don't have to be
ashamed of the gospel either. I might be ashamed of the law
as a sinner because I can't keep it. Or I'm ashamed of myself
because I can't keep the law. But I cannot be ashamed of the
gospel. I cannot be ashamed of the gospel. Why? Because it's
the power of God to salvation to everyone that believeth, to
the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 4. This is why it's good
news. For therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the
just, those who are righteous, those who are justified before
God, shall live by faith. The gospel is good news for this
one reason, because the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. Now, we use those words, and
the Bible uses those words, the righteousness of God. And we
might use them frequently. We might quote them. We might
read them. We might see them and hear them. But if we don't
understand what they mean, then it won't be good news to us,
will it? And that's the problem with the scripture. Sometimes
we hear phrases which in themselves are true, but without understanding
the meaning of those phrases, it means nothing to my soul.
It means no comfort, no peace, and no strength to me. But in
the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, and that's
what we want to understand. Look at Romans chapter 3 here.
In verse 19, we know that what things soever 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. You don't have to be a theologian
to understand that verse. It means that everyone in the
world is guilty before God. Do you see that? Everyone in
the world is guilty before God. We have to let those words sink
in. God says in Psalm 14 that He looked to see if there were
any that did understand. And he came to this conclusion,
they're all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable.
There's none righteous. No, not one. And that means that
he examined my heart and my standing before God. And he came to this
conclusion, not righteous, not good, unprofitable. All the things
that God declares about men, He declared that about me personally. He looked to make sure there
was none, because when He says none, He means literally there
is not one, none righteous. Jesus told the rich young ruler,
there's none good, but one, and that is God. And so He says here,
the law declares and reveals our guilt. Every mouth may be
stopped. That's what the law does. It
reveals our guilt. It declares what God requires,
and it condemns those who do not keep what God requires, and
therefore it pronounces us guilty. Guilty. And since we're guilty,
and we go to the law to try to bring to God something by which
he can justify us, the law is only going to beat us down and
say, guilty, get this leper out of my sight. He's unclean. Take
him outside the camp and leave him outside. Tell him to put
his hand over his mouth and cry, unclean. Do not let this sinner
in. That's what the law does. So
by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in
his sight, which is what the next verse says. Therefore, by
the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified." No flesh
means not one person on earth. Not one person. No flesh fallen
in Adam can be justified by the deeds of the law. Because the
law serves this one purpose, to reveal our sin. To reveal
our sin. That's what it does to fallen
sinners. It reveals to us our sin. And it cannot justify. Now, this is very important that
we understand this. The law is going to do this to
us on a first level. And this is not the most, this
is not the way, the highest level in which God condemns us as sinners.
But it's the very first and primary level. God condemns us as sinners
because He tells us what He requires of us. He tells us the consequences
of failing to meet His requirements. And He pronounces us guilty when
we fail to meet those. And we're all guilty. We're all
guilty, and we cannot meet those requirements. And until we come
to that fact, personally convinced of it, I cannot please God. I cannot keep His law. I'm not
subject to His law. I cannot be. I'm carnal, I'm
sold under sin. Until we come to that realization,
there's no hope for us to know the living God. We can't know
the living God until we come to that realization. That's the
first thing God teaches us about ourselves. But even so, even
though the law pronounces our guilt, we will not truly understand
our guilt until God shows us the gospel, the gospel. Because
as I said earlier, If you don't understand how God justifies
a sinner, then you're going to mess up. You're going to misinterpret
the rest of the Bible. Understanding how God justifies
His people, who are sinners in themselves, explains everything
about God. It's the answer to every question. Really, it's the answer to every
question, which we will dive into here in a minute. But look
at verse 21. It says, Let's read verse 20 again. Now
this is very important. This is very important. When God teaches us our guilt
and our corruption before Him, He doesn't tell us how we can
change in order to be right with Him. He doesn't tell us how we
can be made better in order to be right with Him. He doesn't
tell us what we can do, what we can experience, something
we can feel, some sincerity we can bring, an attitude or change
in us that will make us right before God. He says, no, no. Take everything that you are
in the pit of your corruption, The mess you've gotten yourself
into, and realize this, none of that is going to help you.
Let me change the whole subject. The righteousness of God. The
righteousness of God. You see, God takes away... He
takes away, I mean He leaves us in the guilt and condemnation
of our sins and He takes our eyes away from that and He points
us to the righteousness of God. In this verse, now the righteousness
of God, in light of the total failure and helplessness and
wickedness of man, yet now the righteousness of God is revealed.
This is the good news. Yes, we're sinners. Yes, we're
corrupt. Yes, we're helpless. We're guilty
and damned before God. Yet, God has given us this good
news, the righteousness of God. Do you see the change here? This
verse is the pivot of the whole book of Romans, this little word.
But now, the righteousness of God is the turning point in the
whole book. And now he says this, even the
righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto
all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference, for
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." And now
I want to get right to the heart of the matter here. Look at verse
24. There's several things I want you to see in verse 24 through
26. And we're going to start here
with these little words. Being justified freely by His
grace. Do you see that? Being justified
freely by His grace. The word justified here doesn't
mean that God makes you righteous in yourself. And this is something,
again, this is so hard for us to accept as religious people. God is not going to make you
righteous in yourself in order to justify you. What God does
to you, what God does in you, is not what justifies you before
God. Now, if we could understand this,
again, it would set straight all of the of the entanglements
that we've gotten ourselves into with misconceptions about religion
and about God over the course of our life. That God is looking
to, first, that God is looking to me for the answer, a reason
to justify me. And now we think, oh, but if
God could just change me, somehow His grace could work on me and
in me to produce something so that, and sometimes we even pray
that way, Lord, Make me different. Change me. Make me new. Give
me a new heart. Do all these things in order
to set me straight. But that's not the first step
at all. That's not the first step. The first step is this,
take your eyes off of your sin-bitten, dying condition and look at the
one whom God commanded to hang on the cross and bear the curse
of your sin and shame and fulfill all his will and establish for
you a perfect righteousness. That's the answer. And until
we see that, We're going to be in the quagmire of looking introspectively
at ourselves and wondering, where will I ever find some cause in
me to be able to have peace with God and any confidence to stand
before God in the day of judgment? I'll be asking, what can I come
up with? What can I answer with? There
must be something I have to do or be or think or something,
right? And none of the answer's there.
The answer is in the righteousness of God. And so he says, being
justified freely by His grace. And here we see the action of
God the Father. And I want you to see this because,
again, understanding this doctrine of how God justifies sinners
is to understand all of the doctrines of Scripture. Here he says, being
justified freely by his grace. Now understand, this is kind
of a redundant phrase, but God in his mercy has used redundancy
to teach us the truth of how we're justified. Freely, it means
without cause found in us. Freely, he says, they hated me.
Jesus says, they hated me without cause. That's what the word freely
means. Freely, without cause found in us, God justified us
by His grace. This is the grace of God the
Father. What prompted God to set Christ up as the head of
His people in place of their first father, Adam, and have
the Lord Jesus Christ act as the second Adam, the last Adam,
in order to fulfill for them all that God requires of them
What prompted God to do that? His grace. His grace. His grace towards sinners. And
of course, ultimately, His glory. But grace. When you're speaking
about us and ourselves, we're unacceptable. Grace treats with
kindness those who are in themselves totally unacceptable to God. But grace doesn't act in a way
that's contrary to justice and contrary to the law. Grace acts
in accord with the law. And God is... He's not like a piece of... You know, you might take a piece
of Play-Doh and stick together the green and the yellow and
the blue and all these different colors and it looks like a mixture
of things. God's not a mixture of things.
His grace, His justice, His love, His truth, His mercy, they're
all one and they can't be compromised. So when God shows grace to sinners,
He also magnifies His justice in doing so and His love and
His mercy, all these things. God found a way in his wisdom
to freely be gracious to sinners. And isn't that wonderful news?
How? I don't know how he did it yet,
because we haven't read the rest of the verse. But he says he's
found a way to do it. Now, as a dead dog sinner, deserving
his wrath and punishment for my sins, I'm very interested
in this. Remember, how can I have a right
relationship with God? How can I stand before God, accepted
in His favor, and enjoy the smile of His eye? I just want to know
that. I want to hear those words. Enter
thou into the joy of the Lord, good and faithful servant." Have
you ever thought that those words, I don't know how, they're going
to be spoken to some people, but not me. If I get in to heaven,
it'll be some surreptitious, covert way where, oh, excuse
me, okay, let that person, we won't talk about that. That's
not the way it is. God does everything publicly.
Every sinner going into glory is going to be let in with a
glorious triumph of perfect righteousness. The robe of His righteousness
covering us. God has found a way to be gracious,
and it's a free way. Nothing moved God to do this.
Nothing moved God to do this but what He found in Himself.
He didn't find something in you. He will never look for something.
He didn't look down through the ages of your life to see what
you would do, finally come out. He's going to mess up at the
beginning, but at the end, He's going to get it straight. Therefore,
I'm going to grant Him grace. That is not grace. That's some
perverted, twisted view, both of God's sovereignty and what
grace is. Grace is freely giving us favor
when we deserve wrath. Grace is the greatest thing for
sinners. God's grace. We're saved by grace. Thank God we're saved by His
grace. This is God the Father. And he says, we're justified
freely by His grace. Now again, the word justified,
and I didn't probably mention this clearly enough, but the
word justified doesn't mean that God's going to make us righteous
in our own person. In the book, the Gospels, it
says when the people heard John, the harlots and the sinners,
when they heard John the Baptist preach to them, they justified
God and they were baptized of John in Jordan. They heard God's
message condemning them. And they heard God's message
to them to repent and be baptized. And so they repented and they
were baptized in the River Jordan. And in doing that, God says,
they justified God. Now, did the sinners change God
when they did that? Did the sinners who believed
John's message, did they make a change in God when they justified
God? Absolutely not. All they did
was say, God is right, God is just, He's true in all that He
says. When God justifies a sinner,
He declares him to be just. He doesn't make him just. And
we'll see this more in a few verses. But understand this.
It's a declaration. It's a pronouncement of what
is, and not a change to the sinner himself. But look at this. He
says, this is how God did it. It was motivated by His grace,
which was free, but It was through, or on the basis, or on the ground,
the foundation of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Do you see that? Verse 24 is
a very, very important verse. Being justified freely by God
the Father's grace, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, but
primarily God the Father. Through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. That's God the Son. Not only
is this the redemption that's in Christ Jesus, God the Son,
but it's the redemption that he's been referring to. This
redemption he's referring to is the working out of God's purpose
of how he would save his people. Redemption, that's everything.
Remember the children of Israel and Egypt? What happened to them?
How did they get out of Egypt? They were redeemed. How did God
redeem them? He paid for them to be gotten
out. But how did He pay? Well, He
paid with the life of the firstborn or with the blood of the Lamb.
Someone had to pay to get them out. God paid. He compensated
Pharaoh and all the Egyptians all the way down to the lowest
slave by killing the firstborn and he accepted the blood of
the lamb for his people and they all went out and he delivered
them. He set them free. He paid the ransom and he set
them free. They were in prison in bondage
and he let them go. Christ is through the redemption
that's in Christ Jesus that God lets us go pays the price, fulfills
all righteousness, and then God declares us to be just. And so,
when he says, through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus, he's
really talking about the same subject that he started in verse
21. The righteousness of God. The
righteousness of God. What is the righteousness of
God? Well, it's the complete fulfilling of God's work of saving
His people, which the Lord Jesus Christ did in His obedience unto
death. Philippians chapter 2 brings
this out. It says that to keep this mind,
to let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus, and
I'll read this to you so I don't misquote it, who being in the
form of God, Verse 6, "...thought it not robbery to be equal with
God, but he made himself of no reputation, and took upon him
the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men."
Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Do you see
that word? Obedient unto death? That is
the redemption he's talking about here. How did he redeem his people? Jesus said, I came to give my
life a ransom for many. A ransom. He paid the price of
his life. We're purchased, the church was
purchased with his own blood. And so, the price of our redemption is
the exchange, an equivalent exchange of the
Lord Jesus Christ in the place of His people. Substitution.
Christ died for us. You know what the gospel is?
It's recorded in 1 Corinthians 15, in the concise words of 1
Corinthians 15. He says this, he says, Moreover,
brethren, I declare unto you, verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 15,
I declare unto you the gospel which I preached to you, which
also you have received, and wherein you stand, by which also you're
saved, if you keep in memory that which I preached to you,
unless you've believed in vain. For I delivered unto you, first
of all, That which I also received, how that Christ died for our
sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that
he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. That's the
gospel. What the Lord Jesus Christ did to save his people according
to the scriptures. He redeemed them by his own blood.
He obeyed God as a servant. He took their nature and in that
nature fulfilled the law God required them to fulfill. He
did it for them. And so that's why the Lord Jesus
Christ is called our Redeemer. He was our near kinsman through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Now this being redeemed
in Christ Jesus is brought out more carefully in Romans 5. Look
at this, Romans 5. Romans 5 and verses 12 and following
to the end of the chapter revealed to us the way we became sinners. You and I, all of us without
exception, became sinners when Adam sinned in the Garden of
Eden. And the reason we became sinners
then is because Adam was our father. He's the one God said,
what Adam does is going to determine whether you are righteous or
whether you are a sinner by what he does. And he sinned. We became sinners. Because he
represented us. We were in Adam. In our father
Adam. We sinned in Adam. We fell in
Adam. Because of that we became condemned
and under the wrath of God. So he says this. Look at verse
17. Romans 5, 17. For if by one man's
offense, that's Adam's sin, death reigned by one, Death came on
all men. Remember? All the people who
weren't in the ark. What happened to all the people
who were not in the ark in Noah's day? They died. Why? Because they were sinners. Death
reigned by that one man, Adam, who sinned. And we all sinned
in him. And their own sin. Well, He says, "...if by one
man's offense death reign by one, much more, they which receive
abundance of grace..." There's that grace again, it's abundance. "...and of the gift of righteousness
shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ." You see how righteousness
comes to us? It's a gift. It's a gift. "...and
we which receive it reign in life." That means we live to
God. The law promises life to those who keep it. None of us
keep it. We're all doomed to die. The
gospel promises life for all those who keep the law perfectly
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what this is speaking
about. Therefore, as by the offense of one, judgment came upon all
men to condemnation, even so, listen very carefully, by the
righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification
of life. Do you see that? And now look
at this next verse. Very, very important. For as
by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. Were you made
sinners like you became a sinner and you were forced to be a sinner
because Adam sinned? Were you made a sinner like you
were, because Adam's eating the forbidden
fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, were you made
a sinner in that you became right then, in your own person, a liar
and a thief and an adulterer and a blasphemer and all the
things that sinners are? No, it means that you were You
were credited, or you were charged, really, with his sin, so that
what he did, you did, and God charged you with the guilt of
his sin. You were condemned by the imputation of his sin. God charged you with his sin.
That's what it means to be condemned in Adam. We were charged with
the guilt of his sin. We weren't corrupted, although
we received sinful nature from him later when we were born.
But at that time, we weren't corrupted, but we were charged
with his sin. And so, look at this verse, verse
19. Huge, huge truth. Or, as by one
man's disobedience many were made, or constituted sinners,
charged with his sin, so by the obedience of one, that's the
Lord Jesus Christ, shall many be made righteous. We're constituted. We're credited with the obedience
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's how we're made righteous. It's not because we do what's
good. It's not because God gives us
grace to do what's good. Or that He even infuses in us
His own nature that we're good. It's because He credited the
obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ to us For no reason found in
us, but only for His grace, according to His election, giving us to
the Lord Jesus Christ, setting Him up as our Redeemer so that
Christ actually paid for our sins and fulfilled our obedience. And He did all this according
to God's will for us. That was the grace, but it came
through Christ's redemption. His obedience is my righteousness. His death is the payment of all
my sins. Together, Both of those magnify
God's justice and His law, and they set me free from the condemnation
of sin, and they enable me to receive from God life, life. Do you know what happened when
Adam died? We all died in him, as in Adam, all died. Do you
know what happened when the Lord Jesus Christ obeyed His Father
in all things? in Christ shall all be made alive."
All of God's people, when the Lord Jesus Christ obeyed His
Father in going to the cross and laying down His life, they
fulfilled all of that law and God rewarded them with life. Life. And not just a temporary
life, eternal life. Eternal life. That's the work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the righteousness of
God. Notice, back in Romans chapter
3, the righteousness of God is revealed. It's revealed to us.
It's witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, and it's made known
now, and it's made known because Christ came was born in our nature,
fulfilled the law in our nature, and rose again in fulfillment
of that law in our nature. And then in verse 25, whom God,
the Lord Jesus Christ, God set him forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood. You see that? Faith in his blood. In the first part, we saw God
the Father. In the second part, we see the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this third part, we see faith in his blood. Where does faith
come from? Faith comes from a gift. It's
a gift of God. But who gives it? Well, God gives
it. But specifically, God gives faith in the new birth. When the Spirit of God gives
us life, He gives us faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So here
you see all three members of the Godhead. God the Father in
His grace, God the Son in His redemption, and God the Holy
Spirit giving us faith. Remember, and I don't want you
to turn there and look at it carefully right now, but do this
sometime in your own time. Remember John chapter 3? The
first 16 verses of John chapter 3. Probably one of the most well-known
places in all of scripture. John 3.16. What does it say in
John 3.16? For God so loved the world. Who
is that? That's God. Specifically, it's
God the Father. God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son. Who is that? The Lord Jesus Christ.
That whosoever, what? Believeth. And how do we believe? By the Spirit of God. You see
all three of those together? But in John chapter 3, Nicodemus,
in himself, he thought he was a righteous man. A ruler of the
Pharisees, he comes to Jesus by night, because he was darkened
in his soul. He comes to Jesus by night. He
says, Master, we know you're a teacher sent from God. Who
could do these miracles that you do, except God be with them?
He was completely blind to salvation. Completely blind to how a man
could be just with God. Completely blind. And Jesus said,
unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.
He was not even in the kingdom of God. He was outside. He was
excluded from it, even though he was born into what he thought
the kingdom of God was, the nation of Israel by Abraham. And he
was completely in the dark. And Jesus says, you've got to
be born again to be in the kingdom of God. And he says, how can
these things be? Can I enter my mother's womb
a second time and be born? And Jesus said, no, the wind
blows wherever it will. You hear the sound of it. You
see the effects. But you don't know where it's going. You don't
know where it's coming from. So is everyone that's born of the
Spirit. And Nicodemus said, but how can these things be? Because
when the Lord said, you have to be born again, what was that?
That was a work in Nicodemus. That was a work in him. We're
not justified by the work in us. We're justified by the work
of Christ for us. Please understand this. If you
understand this, it will set your doctrine right. It will
set your heart right before God. It will cause you to say what
God says. You will agree with God. And agreeing with God, you
will have eternal life. Jesus went on to tell Nicodemus,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. First he said
about the Son of Man ascending and descending, showing that
Christ alone is the mediator. And then he says, as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up. He's not even talking about the
new birth now is he? He's talking about what God did
in Christ, and he says, even so. And what was this lifting
up of the serpent in the wilderness? The children of Israel had been
complaining. They didn't like the manna. They were complaining
against Moses, and God sent the serpents and bit them, and they
were all dying. There was no remedy. They couldn't save themselves
from it. They were dying. Lots of them
had already died. And God says to Moses, lift up
a serpent on the pole, and whoever looks will live. And so Moses
did, and the people who looked lived. And Jesus said to Nicodemus,
when he says, how can these things be? And Jesus said, whosoever
believeth. In fact, let me just read it
to you, John chapter 3, verse 15. He says this, he says, In verse 14, "...as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but
have eternal life." You see, the whole focus of the gaze of
the Israelites who were bitten was away from their bite and
looking at the One who was the remedy for their for their sin. The one who represented God's
curse against them. And the Lord Jesus Christ, God
commanded His Son to be lifted up on the cross. And He was made
a curse for His people. And God says, look to Him. Look to Him. Look away from yourself. Sure, you can't be in or into
the Kingdom of God unless you're born again. Can you produce that?
No way. Look to Him, and the Spirit of
God comes, and He gives life, and He gives the look, and He
gives that look in looking to Christ, and looking at Him as
the one God has received for sinners, and knowing that God
accepts, and approves, and is pleased with sinners in Him by
what He did. And so this is the faith that
God gives, God the Spirit gives to us, When God chose His people
to save them, they were already in the purpose of God saved. They were already justified.
And when the Lord Jesus Christ shed His blood, their sins were
removed. Their sins were purged. They
were justified by His blood then. But in our experience, we receive
that justification personally so that we experience the peace
of it and the joy of it in our own souls when we see God's not
looking for anything in me. In fact, he's looking for everything
on my behalf outside of me, in spite of me. Outside of me and
in spite of me. And he tells me to look at what
he's looking at. He receives me because of what
Christ did alone. And when he convinces me, Yes,
you're a sinner. Yes, you're corrupt. Yes, you
have no hope. And there's nothing you can do about it. And yet,
look what God has done. Look what Christ has finished.
By His own blood, He purged our sins forever, fulfilled our righteousness. He's seated in glory. He rose
from the dead because God accepted Him from the dead. And in accepting
Him, He accepted His people with Him. And God tells us, Do not
even consider what you are in yourselves, but look to Christ
only. And when you do that, you know
what? That's the gift of God. That's the gift of faith. And
God says, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the
Spirit of God. You have life in your soul. That's
the evidence of life, is that you're looking to Christ. Him
God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. God
is satisfied. God received full satisfaction
to His justice. And he tells us to believe him.
Look away from yourself because God set him forth to be a propitiation,
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 in order that he might be just
and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Faith is
the only instrument that's suitable through which we can receive
this justification. Why? Because faith says, upon
a life I could not live, upon a death I could not die, but
because Christ has lived and died and rose again for me, I
stake my whole eternity. It never looks to itself. Faith
always looks away to Christ and Him crucified. And in looking
to Christ, faith says, you know what? God saved me graciously. God saved me without my contribution. He saved me without my participation. He saved me in spite of me. He
did it for His own glory. And oh, how great His wisdom
and His justice and His grace and His mercy and His love and
His faithfulness and His sovereignty all appear to me in what Christ
has done. And that's where faith rests.
That's how faith lives. That's how faith walks, is looking
to Christ. Let's pray. Lord, we pray, lift
our eyes, cause us to see the Lord Jesus Christ satisfying,
the demands of all of your justice against us, fulfilling the requirements
of all of your of what you've required of us, every obligation
in our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to fulfill
these things, to do your will, to finish it. And when he declared
it is finished, Lord, help us to find our rest in that and
not look within, but look to you for our acceptance, for our
justification, And Lord, we know that in this we live. We live
by faith, it says. And we know that we're just before
you, not because of what you find in us, but because of what
you found in Christ. Thank you, Lord, for this free
and full justification in Christ. What could be added? to the obedience
of the Son of God in our nature. What more could be required but
the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus Christ in our nature?
Nothing, because you raised Him from the dead and set Him at
your own right hand, testifying to us that all has been received,
everything is done, and glory has been given to Christ and
to God by him. And your people are saved, and
we thank you for this grace. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.