This message is from the Teaching
Ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at www.gracetruth.org and www.anchoringfaith.org. A
people for His glory, by His grace� Romans chapter 6. We've been in and out of Romans
over the last few months, and this is sermon number 33 in our
reading of Romans. So if you turn to Romans chapter
6, I'll give you sort of a little recap of what's happening, and
then we'll continue in this the latter two or three verses, and
we'll close this out, and next week we will be in Romans chapter
7. Paul, from the very beginning
of this letter, wants to establish what is true about us. First
and foremost, that we are guilty before God in our sin, in our
sin nature, in our depravity. We are also guilty before God
no matter who we are, whether we be Jew or Gentile, slave or
free, wise or fool, whoever we might be, all humanity is guilty
before God. And because of that, the only
hope that the believer has is that God has satisfied his wrath
in Jesus Christ, that there is justice in the death of Jesus
because God the Father has found propitiation in Jesus. That means
the satisfaction of his judgment so that he could then be just
in the forgiveness of guilty people like ourselves. And so
as we continue in this letter, we see that that judgment is
there for all people. Whether we have heard the gospel
or not, we are guilty. Whether we believe the gospel
or not, we are guilty. Whether we're born into a Christian
family or not, we are still guilty. It is each person who is guilty
before God, and then we also collectively are guilty before
God, but we who are those for whom Christ died are free. We're
free because of the love of God that He has satisfied His wrath
in Christ, as I've already stated. And that those who follow the
law, those who obey the Old Testament, those who obey to their knowledge,
think they obey the Decalogue, that's the Ten Commandments,
they are no better than anyone else. They are no better in the
standing before God than anybody who disobeys willfully because
perfection is required and perfection is not possible. So therefore
we, no matter how hard we work, no matter how good we are, are
guilty equally before the Lord. God even shows us through the
teaching of Paul in Romans 4 and 5 that Abraham, sort of the patriarch,
not sort of, the patriarch of Israel, was not justified because
of his obedience, nor was he justified because he had such
a strong faith, but even in disobedience and some 13 years before he was
circumcised and called a Jew or called Israel, if you will,
I know that's not technically true, he was justified by faith
through the mercy and the grace of God. so that he believed the
promises of God and he trusted in the finished work of God,
whatever that might have been. And we know that in these days
we have the full revelation of that gospel, which is Jesus Christ. So then Paul argues that though
all men have died in Adam, then all who believe have been made
alive in Christ. But the argument is so hard and
so strong for grace, grace, grace, that some people would say as
they read this and as they hear the teaching of Paul, oh, so
grace is so amazing. We are so free and we are so
saved by the work of God alone that it doesn't matter if we
sin. But that's not what Paul teaches. He says that's a logical
and a theological absurdity that we are not to run into sin and
to love sin. And we also know what Paul teaches
to the other churches that he writes to in the New Testament,
that those who continue in sin are what brought under discipline
through which they are measured. discovered and corrected and
sometimes rebuked out of the fellowship. He argues that we
then are, in chapter 6, slaves to righteousness, not slaves
to sin. So let's start there in verse
20 as we close out this text today. For when you were slaves
of sin, you were freed in regard to righteousness. But what fruit
were you getting at that time from the things of which you
are now ashamed? For the end of those is death. But now that
you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God,
the fruit you have leads to sanctification and its end eternal life. For
the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So let's talk about this for
just a moment. You see in verse 20 that Paul says, for when you
were slaves of sin, what he's saying there is, thanks be to
God that we were once slaves of sin have now become obedient
from the heart to the standard of teaching. to which you were
committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves
of righteousness." Verse 19, he says, I'm speaking in human
terms because of your natural limitations, but just as you
once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness,
leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as
slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. 4. When you
were slaves of sin. When you were slaves of sin,
you were free in regard to righteousness. So let's think about that for
a moment as we look before 21. Free in regard to righteousness.
What does that mean? Some people would say, see, we
didn't have to obey. That doesn't mean that at all.
That's just absurd. As a matter of fact, Paul's already
established in chapters 1 and 2 that the wrath of God is coming
upon all ungodliness. in all disobedience, and it's
just for Him to do so. So what does it actually mean?
Some would say, well, we're not counted as sin if we do not know
the law. Paul says that's not true for
all are without excuse, he would say, and that God makes Himself
known. were free in regard to righteousness,
meaning that there was nothing the natural man could do in action
or word or deed or affection that is good or righteous. Indeed,
not only those dark and wicked expressions of depravity like
sexual immorality or lying or stealing or murder or hatred
or adultery or whatever it might be, but also false religion,
false belief. self-righteousness, all sorts
of wickedness that we would look at and say is actually not wickedness
for the unbeliever who was a slave to sin. He is free from righteousness
in that he has no righteousness at all. Even when we do good
as lost people, there is no righteousness in us. There is nothing except
wickedness. Any attempt toward God in a manner
of, quote, working, just like Nicodemus, as we see in John
chapter 3. Nicodemus was the teacher of
all Israel. He was a Pharisee. He was a very
obedient person. Paul himself gives his own testimony
in Philippians, where he was, according to the law, blameless.
with zeal, love, and affection for the things of God, so much
so that He persecuted the way, the Christians of His day. None
of that counts toward righteousness. Jesus would tell Nicodemus that
you cannot see Him nor enter into Him except that you are
born of God. So if that be the case, then what in the world
are we to do when we come to the idea of being free from righteousness?
That means that it is not a part of who we are. We cannot see
it. It is not there. We are condemned,
and we cannot enter in Christ except we be born again. We were
enemies of righteousness, is a better way of understanding
that statement. Without being born again by the
Lord and by His mercy and grace, we were friends with sin, and
in being friends with sin, we had no relationship with righteousness
whatsoever. And so because we had no relationship
with righteousness, we were indeed slaves to wickedness. We were
owned by our flesh. We didn't own it, it owned us,
and the sin that came out of it was the natural outcome, the
natural fruit of that which is expected of someone who is guilty
as a sinner, being free from righteousness in every way as
being under the wrath of God, that the condemnation of God
stays and remains on us. It is what the natural man is.
He's free from righteousness. Another way of looking at that
is to say, if you see something that is free of sugar, it means
that it has no sugar in it. In this same sense, free of righteousness
means that there is no righteousness in it. There is no righteousness
no matter how hard one may work, no matter how much affection
one may muster, no matter how much obedience one may follow.
There is no righteousness apart from faith alone in Jesus Christ,
for Christ imputes His righteousness to us. It is an alien righteousness. We are standing before God in
right standing, not because of what we have done, but because
of what Christ has done. Paul asks then in verse 21, what
fruit were you getting at that time for the things of which
you are now ashamed? See, as we were enemies of righteousness
and friends with sin, the question Paul says, what fruit did you
have? What outcome? When you think of fruit, I want
you to understand that fruit is the natural outcome. The natural
consequence, better yet, the yield of something that is healthy. If we have a tree and it produces
fruit, it means the tree is doing that which it is supposed to
do. If we put money in a savings account with interest, then the
interest will yield, will be the yield of our deposit. So
in the same way, the fruit then that we see that Paul asked,
what fruit came from unbelief? What fruit came from living both
in wickedness and disobedience in our flesh, in evil things,
and then also from the context of his teaching to the Jews that
are in the audience of this letter, what fruit did you have? What
actually did you produce? What harvest came from your obedience
to the law? What does Paul say? Death. You
planted obedience, you received the fruit of death. You planted
wickedness, you received the fruit of death. You planted whatever
you planted in your natural state, whatever you did, whatever you
harvested, it was death. At every turn, it was death. What came from that? Living in
unbelief, living in guilt, living in condemnation, it is death.
Death, death is the fruit. of the natural man. It is what
he breeds. It is what grows from him. It
is what he deserves. It is the only thing that he
knows. Death is what is born from living in unbelief, no matter
the practice of our lives, no matter the practice of the work.
And Paul says, but you were ashamed. You are now ashamed of that.
See, he's not talking to people in a manner of saying, this is
how you become a Christian. No, he's saying, brothers, sisters,
you are in Christ. So therefore you are now ashamed
of who you once were. You are now ashamed of your self-righteousness. You are now ashamed of your wickedness.
You are now ashamed of those things of darkness. You are now
ashamed of your self-glory. You are ashamed. But see, when
we were lost, when we were sinners, when we were friends with evil,
we were not ashamed, but moreover, we boasted in those things that
we enjoyed. We boasted in our idolatry. We
boasted in our religion. We boasted in our self-righteousness.
We boasted in our adultery. Look at the world around us,
beloved. So many who profess Christ boast in their wickedness.
This is the context that Paul wants to drive home. We are no
longer boasting in our wickedness. Yet even in our obedience, it
doesn't bring any more merit before God. Even in our striving
to obey the Word of God, it doesn't make us more loved by God. It
doesn't make us more saved by God. It doesn't cause us to be
more set apart by God, because Christ is our sanctification.
He is the one who has set us apart for the Lord. What fruit
came from that? That which you are now ashamed? Death, he says. The works of
evil. Good things that you tried for,
but they count for nothing. Everything we do, in other words,
is wicked. Friends, I know this is not a
popular teaching, but the Bible teaches, even in Romans 3, that
all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All are
Wicked, all are guilty before God. None looks after God and
seeks after God and runs after God. Not one is righteous. No,
not one. As a matter of fact, the very
thing that we are is wicked before the Lord. The fact that we breathe
is an abomination to God. The fact that we exist as sinners
is an abomination to God. I want you to understand that.
Because when we lived in that way, we were not ashamed. But
now, because we have been given new life in Christ, we are ashamed
of who we were. But as Paul will say in Romans
7, and as he lands firmly in Romans 8, there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we don't live and wallow in
our shame, but we rejoice and we stand bold before the throne
of God, because it is the throne of grace, because of what Christ
has done. We are condemned in our very
essence. In other words, we are condemned by nature before God
saves us as humans deserving of wrath. And that's what Paul
wants to help us have in mind as he closes out these passages.
But what fruit are you getting at that time for the things that
you were now ashamed? For the end of those things is
death. See? Death. At the end, no matter
how hard we work, it's all death. But now, see verse 22 as we continue. But now, so there's a contrast
there. But now that you have been set
free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you
have leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. Let's
think about these things for a moment, this contrast in our
standing. This is where we are now, where
we were, was living in shameful ways, living as a slave to sin,
living as someone who did not love righteousness but loved
wickedness. But now we're no longer there.
We have been set into the rightness of God through the finished work
of Jesus Christ. We are indeed and in every way
righteous before the Lord because He has satisfied His judgment
against us through the person of Jesus. This contrast. This contrast has no condition.
There's no condition being taught here. Paul is not saying, you'll
stand this way if this is what you do, if there's certain types
of things that we see in your life, then therefore you are
standing before God. He says, no, but now, but now,
but now, this contrast to the dead life before, but now, look
at the next word, you have been. This is where we are right this
moment, beloved. We have been. dead. We have been sinful. We have
been evil. We have been objects of wrath,
like Paul would teach so clearly in chapter 2 of the letter to
the Ephesians. But now we are the beloved. But now we have
been. And what is it that we've been?
Well, this current state of affairs is the state affair of our nature.
This is who we are. We've been made into a new creature.
We've been recreated by God in our countenance, in our natures,
that we might love Him and see Him. He's granted us repentance.
He's gifted us faith. It is all a work of His doing
through the finished work of Jesus Christ. It is our current
state before the Lord. Now we are. And what is it that
we are? Set free from sin. And it says
we have been set free from sin, so we are set free in Christ.
He's instructing this church to understand their place and
to recognize what God is doing and what God has done and what
God will continue to do in their salvation, that it is a finished
work from the beginning to the end. And they as the beloved,
we as the beloved, church, we are free from sin. Now, we've
already seen in Paul's argument that he's not saying that we
are free from sinning. As a matter of fact, we should
put to death our flesh, we should see temptation, we should strive
to run from it by the grace of God and the power of God, the
gospel of grace. But in the times where we are
not able, in the times even sometimes when God permits us to continue
in some aspect of struggling to overcome sin, that He might
grow us and teach us and help us to understand that it is His
power. Even in those moments when we feel like we've been
caught up, we will not face sin, the judgment there of sin, the
consequence there of sin. We will not face the fruit of
sin. We're no longer guilty before God. Even when we sin, as John
would say, I write these things that you may not sin, but if
you sin, you have an advocate with the Father, who is Jesus
Christ the righteous, who is our propitiation. That means
that when sin enters our life, when we fall temptation to our
flesh and to other things in this world, and we sin before
the Lord, we're not backing up two squares trying to get ahead
of another. We're not coming back to the beginning of our
relationship with our Lord and Savior. We're not going again
to the cross and saying, Oh Lord, have mercy on me. I need salvation. We rejoice in the salvation that
we've been given in Christ Jesus. We know that we are God's elect.
We have stood on the foundations of the work of God who grants
us a new mind and who gives us the gift of eternal life evidenced
through the faith that we have in the finished work of Jesus.
So it is there that we hold to the cross more than ever when
we see our own flesh rise up and sin against God. We do not
snuggle with our sin, but beloved, we will be in a struggle with
our sin. We will fight the good fight
which is victorious in Christ alone. as we continue to have
faith in Jesus Christ. So to be free from sin is where
we are. You have been set free from sin.
We no longer face the judgment of God. That is a opportunity
for rejoicing. We no longer fear death. We don't
have to wonder and worry, am I going to be condemned by God? Am I going to be right before
God? Is God going to hold me until
the end? Beloved, if we trust in the work
of God through Jesus Christ, we have eternal life. And the
Spirit of God, as we'll see in some weeks before, will testify
to our spirit through the written Scripture that we are indeed
the children of God. We are totally free from the
curse of sin in Jesus Christ. Completely free. There is nothing
that will hold us in the grave. There is nothing that will throw
us before the judgment seat of God. There is nothing that will
cause us to be condemned. We are able to stand fully justified
before God the Father because of the finished work of the Lord
Jesus Christ forever. This moment, if He called us
out of this body, and a thousand years from now, if we hold out
unto the judgment of God, innocent before the Lord. We are not guilty
before the Lord. We will never be separated from
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And that's how
Paul closes out these arguments when he says those words in the
very latter part of chapter 8. For I am persuaded, I am certain
of this. I have confidence of this. I
am sure of this, that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor rulers, nor things in the past, nor things in the present,
nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all of creation shall be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have security. Last Wednesday
night, I spoke on our assurance in Christ alone, that we have
assurance in Christ alone. And it was a way of getting Romans
to where we are, to where we're going to close out this chapter
tonight. I pray that if you weren't able to be here last week to
listen to that on our church website, go there and hear it,
so that you may be in the same mind that Paul is teaching us
here. But we are set free from sin,
as it says there, and have become. See, we're not just not going
to suffer the wage of sin, not going to suffer the consequence
of sin. We also have become something. We have become something, and
as Paul reiterates and recapitulates continually throughout this chapter,
he goes and says it in the closing statements of this particular
portion of this argument. We have been set free from sin,
and we have become slaves of God. We have become slaves of
God. Now, I want you to think about
being a slave differently than most people think about being
a slave in our culture. I want you to think about being
a slave not as doing that which you are told to do. That would
not be a false statement, but in this context, Paul is talking
about being a slave in a different point. A slave is someone who
does not belong to themselves. A slave is someone who is not
free. A slave is someone who is owned
and is property of something. So we have been, what, freed
from sin and have, what, become slaves of God. Beloved, we are
owned by God. He has purchased us through the
finished work of Jesus Christ, by the blood of the Lamb. He
bought us on the cross of Calvary. We belong to Him, and we who
are the ones He owns are the object of His affection. Friends, if we're a slave, we
are owned by the object of which we are a slave to. How is it
that we who are slaves of God, owned by the Lord Jesus? Now,
you might not like that term. And yes, we're also called the
friends of God. We're also called the children
of God. We're also called the beloved. We don't need to look
at the ownership that God has for us in a negative light, for
it is a beautiful thing. Without God's redemption, without
His purchasing us through the cross of Christ, through the
blood of His Son, we would not be anything but slaves to sin.
We would be owned by our depravity. We would be owned by our evil.
We would be owned by our flesh. We would do all, even when we
strive to do what is right, we would only do wicked. We become
slaves of God and the ownership that God has rests in the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus, which as we know is the forgiveness
of our sins. So you see the context here.
We're talking about sin. We no longer are owned by sin,
no longer owned by the flesh. We're no longer slaves of evil,
but we're slaves of God. He has purchased us through the
forgiveness of our sins. So the sins have been washed
away. The guilt has been washed away. The death has been overcome
through the finished work of Christ. We are complete in Christ. God has forgiven us. And the fruit of this. Look at
this next phrase. The fruit you have. Some translations
say the fruit that you get. What do you get? What do you
get by being purchased by God? What do you get other than to
escape the judgment of sin? What do you get? You get the
fruit of God. You get the fruit of God. You
get everything that God has purposed. You get everything that God is. You get everything because He
has accomplished all the work because we are owned by God. Therefore, we are dead to sin. We are alive to righteousness. We have been sanctified. That
means we've been set apart perfectly by God and the Lord Jesus Christ. so that we can rightly remember,
as he closes this here, that we have died to sin, thus it
no longer rules us, it no longer owns us, it no longer has dominion
over us. We no longer have to suffer its
wage. We no longer have to fear the
fruit of sin. It's not going to grow from who
we are. It's not going to be produced
in our vineyard. It's not going to be evident
in our lives. What? Death. Judgment, wrath,
condemnation. It's not going to be there. It
will not be there. It is not ours to bear. It is
not our fruit to bring forth. Our fruit to bring forth is the
fruit of righteousness, who is Jesus Christ. And all that comes
with it. What is that fruit? I'm glad
you asked. The fruit you get from the Lord
Jesus in the end is eternal life. It's the eternal life that comes
from God alone. It's the eternal life who is
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the life. Jesus
Christ is the righteousness of God. Jesus Christ is the lamb
that takes away the sins of his people. Jesus Christ is our sanctification. He is our wisdom. He is our glory. There is no wage or outcome of
our works. I mean, when we work in this
world, the laborer is entitled to what he earns. When we work
outside of faith, when we hold that we are doing something that
brings a fruit of righteousness when it is not faith in Jesus
Christ, we get it's just wage. And what is it? We've already
seen the outcome and the fruit of living in our own power is
what? Death. Unbelief is what that's
called. Not having faith in Jesus Christ.
This is not sound in some sense. Some people say, well, we talk
about the wage, there must be some wage that we earn in our
faith. No. We don't earn a thing with faith.
You cannot earn that which is a gift, and that's where Paul
closes this, see? Because that's where our mind goes, oh, we earn
death if we sin, we earn life if we obey. No, you earn death
if you sin, you earn death if you obey, because even your obedience
is sin, because you've already established that you're guilty. See, that's the point of this
chapter, is to not drag it out to a theological absurdity, logical
absurdity. This is not sound and violates
the very nature of Paul's teaching if we say that we can earn salvation,
that we earn life. You say, oh, it's by faith alone
that we earn life. No, it's not. That's a very poor
statement. We don't earn life through any
means. We don't get to receive life.
We don't take life from God by faith. God gives life. He gives
it. to the praise of His glorious
grace, not to the praise of His glorious opportunity, not to
the praise of His glorious basket full of life that we dipped into,
not to the praise of His glorious cliff that we dived off into
the hands of God and dove into the life that He gives us. No,
it is the gift of God's grace, period. It is all of God to give
us life. Life is not a wage that is earned.
Do not Peel into these things. Do not mold into this teaching
sometimes the words that we use in our vernacular so myopically. Put them in context. See the
contrast that Paul is saying. He's placing the absurdity of
grace and justification being a condition whereby the believer
may run into sinfulness, really is this point. And then love
sin. That's an absurdity, but he's
also placing the idea that one cannot prove or earn or secure
their eternal life. The assurance of the work of
Christ on any fruit is an absurdity, theologically. It is an absurdity
to consider the fact that we earn life by living out our salvation
in a sense that pleases God. We please God because Christ's
righteousness is ours. We get what God has done. That's
what we get. That's the fruit. It's not an
element of works, as most are so profoundly establishing here.
But the wage, that which is yielded because of Christ, is life. And
it's not about what we do, it is life, because that's what
God has produced in us. When Jesus says, it is finished,
the blooming and the blossoming of the harvest of life for the
people, for His elect, has been satisfied. All the conditions
of every condition that God has, all the conditions of God are
satisfied in Jesus Christ. There is nothing that man can
do that God will not produce in him by faith, We live in Christ. The contrast, as we've seen here,
is a life without faith. When we lived before our salvation,
we were, as Paul would say in this argument here, free in regards
to righteousness. It was not part of who we were.
It was not in our heart. It was not part of our lives,
it was not on our radar, it was not there. That was living without
faith, but living with faith, we fully grasp the beauty of
the work of Christ. What fruits did your prior works
yield? He says, death. Then what fruit does God's work
yield? Life. See, it can't say what
fruit does your life yield. That violates everything Paul's
already taught. So we know the scripture defines itself in context. We cannot have something that's
contradictory here of what he's already established that no man
is justified by the works of the law. And so what's happened
in our culture is that we've redefined the idea of fruitfulness.
And we've done it in a great way culturally. We've drawn a
clear line to the Puritans and we've paved it with good intentions
on rest stops all the way on either side. And we've created
a self-righteousness of our own and we call it the fruit of faith. When the reality of the fruit
of faith is Jesus Christ who is our righteousness. That's what Paul's arguing here.
People will hear this sermon and they will laugh and mock
and pull out pretext after pretext after pretext. Beloved, I pray
that God would grant them repentance to see in their mind the truth
of the gospel of grace. And those who continue to argue
over and over and over again, yeah, that's true, but they need
to stop and put their face on the dirt and pray that God would
give them life and a mind to see that the grace of God is
the only hope they have for eternal life. And if they measure themselves
in any, any way, worthy of such an earning of justice, an earning
of righteousness. They are condemned now and the
condemnation of God stays upon them for they do not believe
only in the Son of God who He has sent. This is life and death,
beloved. We must trust in the work of
Christ. We must believe that the fruit
of God is what yields life. He has given life. He has established
life. He has gifted life. He has procured
and secured life. He has set us apart for life. He set us apart for life. The fruit that you get, the fruit
that you have leads to sanctification, leads to being set apart. This is not a progression of
things. It's very dangerous. Learn how
to read, we must. We must see. Listen. Now that you have been set free
from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit that you get
from God leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. You have been set apart. Holy,
you've been moved out of the domain of darkness into the light
of the kingdom of righteousness who is Jesus Christ. We have
been set apart by God for salvation. It is ours in Christ and it is
eternal life. It is eternal life. The fruitfulness unto holiness,
unto sanctification is being set apart by Christ. Verse 23 explains it. You see,
it's easy when we have a verse or half of a verse to say what
we want it to say. But in this context, as we continue
to read, we see 4, verse 23. Because anybody who has in their
mind, see this is what happens, Paul knows he's a smart guy and
the Spirit of God is guiding him all the way. He knows that
people are going to say, wow, that I can really produce some
fruitfulness in my life to guarantee my eternal life. For. For. For what? For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord. But now that you've been set
free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get from
God leads to sanctification. The fruit that you have from
God, He owns you, leads to being set apart. And being set apart
and being owned by God, in its end is eternal life. For the
wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You see the argument? It's so
simple. How many... Centuries have we read that verse
out of its context and decided that what it means is not what
Paul says. The wages of sin is death. Better
put, sin is death. Because we really don't earn
death, do we? We don't earn it. We don't work really hard to
be wicked and then go, oh, there's death. Oh, yeah, you got it now,
buddy. It's not like the parents when they count one, two, no. We don't earn death. When we're born, we deserve it.
What have we done to earn it? Nothing. It's the natural outcome
of what comes with guilt before holiness, before God. It's what comes. It's what's
due. It's what's required. It's justice. It's right. It's righteous. It's holy. It's glorious. It's loving. It's loving to correct
wrong. It's loving to bring recompense
on wickedness. It's loving to punish sin. And beloved, there's not going
to be a hell full of murder, and a hell full of lies, and
a hell full of stealing. There's going to be a hell full
of thieves, murderers, and liars, of who we once were. The eternal justice of God, hell,
wrath, this is what all men will receive if God does not save
them. No matter what they do, no matter
what you and I do, we will receive the wrath of God and it is what
is due us if God does not save us, if God does not save us with
the free gift of eternal life. We do not earn death as much
as it is already ours to adorn. Jesus says it very clearly in
John 3 where He says, those who love the Son have life. Those who believe on the Son
have life. Whoever is believing has life. Whoever is not believing
is condemned already. Let's use the King James translation.
Whosoever believeth has eternal life, but whosoever believeth
not is condemned already. See, whosoever believeth not
is not going to earn condemnation. They are condemned already. Jesus
would go on to say that the wrath of God remains on the one who
is not believing, who is not right now believing. Are you
believing? Death is ours to adorn. We are
guilty before our Lord. We are guilty before our God.
We are guilty before our judge. and the wages of sin is death.
However, those who continue in unbelief, who continue in a false
faith, who continue to hold to a false gospel, as I've already
said, are condemned already. This is true. Death will be given
to the unregenerate man. Eternal death. But, but, you see, the free gift of
God is eternal life. The free gift is eternal life. There's the contrast. That's
what Paul's been trying to say. Here we have everything that we deserve,
death, condemnation, righteous judgment, wrath. But in contrast,
the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. There's no ushering in life there,
is there? There's no earning life there,
is there? There is no yield of fruitfulness
that brings life there. There is no opportunity to produce
something that gives security and assurance of life there,
is there? No! There is only grace that
is only the gift of eternal life. There's nothing there blooming
out of the believer. Everything that the believer
is, is because of the love and the grace of God. And they have
life. The gift is eternal life. It's
not the wage of faith. Listen. By grace you have been saved
through faith. And this, that you believe, And
the belief that you have is not of your own doing, it is the
gift of God. The new birth is salvation. Christ is salvation. God gives life to His children
and He will do all that is necessary to keep them. It is finished. It is done. The work of salvation,
the work of redemption is final and it is secure. So, beloved,
as we move into the rest of this letter, know that. Know that. We are not judged any longer. by our ability or inability to
walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel. Because we are Christ's
people, He will work in us that which He desires in us by His
will and His pleasure when He desires it. And the grace that
is given to us to endure in the faith is straight through and
from the Word of God. The grace which is ours in Christ
Jesus comes to us through the writing of the apostles. Grace
to you and grace be with you. So beloved, not only are we able
to hope in the finished work of Christ for our salvation,
we're able to hope in the finished work of Christ for our preservation. All that is needed for life and
godliness. is God's divine power. That's
what Peter says. So in God's divine power, we
rest surely and certainly in Christ. Let's pray. Father, as we hear these things,
we praise you, Lord, for your mercy toward us, for helping
us to see the truth of the gospel, for establishing in us our new
mind through the rebirth, repentance, faith, affections,
all manner of things, all manner of fruitfulness that we surely
do see in many seasons of life. Father, never, never let us to
put our hope on those things, but let us put our hope on Your
fruit. Jesus Christ is righteous. The outcome of your redemption,
Jesus Christ, our righteousness, help us to trust in you, the
gospel of grace, the perfection of all things, for the salvation
of your people. Lord, we pray this in the name
of Christ. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
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can be found at gracetruth.org.