Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I began last couple of weeks preaching through
the book of Romans, chapter 4. Romans 4. The two messages before
were parts 1 and 2. concerning a primer of grace. Today I'm going to continue that,
but the title of the message will be a different. What I want
to talk to you about today is grace and faith. Grace and faith,
that's the title of this message, but it's a continuation as going
through Romans four of this issue of a primer on grace, because
the thing that we need to do as we study the Bible, And I
would venture to say that most of you who are listening to me
would claim to believe salvation is by grace. I quote just about
every message. I'll quote Ephesians 2, 8, 9,
and 10. For by grace are you saved through
faith. And see, I'm gonna be talking
about grace and faith today. For by grace are you saved, through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Now that
verse tells us that all of salvation is by grace, even the faith that
God gives to bring a sinner to Christ, to believe in Christ. But just as grace is so much
misunderstood today, faith is too, and I want to talk a lot
about that today. But for by grace are you saved through faith,
that not of yourselves. Some say that verse was referring
back to salvation, but not to faith. It's referring to the
whole of salvation, including faith. Faith is a gift of God.
Repentance is a gift of God. Perseverance is a gift of God.
It's all a free gift. There's no conditions put upon
sinners in order to attain or maintain salvation. That was
all put upon Christ. And He fulfilled those conditions,
and what we receive in salvation is the gift of God through Christ. So with that, not of yourselves,
it's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And then it goes on in verse
10 to say that we are His workmanship. That's what a sinner saved by
grace is. That's what a sinner who believes
is. He and she is the workmanship
of God. Created in Christ Jesus, Christ
is the foundation. Christ is the source. of all
this grace, this faith, and all the blessings and benefits. So
created in Christ Jesus unto good works, not because of, not
based on, not conditioned on, but unto good works, which God
hath before ordained that you should walk in them. What does
that word ordained means? It means appointed. This is the
appointment of God. Sometimes the Bible uses the
word foreordained, which means that God appointed these things
before, the foreordination of God. And Ephesians 1 talks about
that, Romans 9 talks about, Romans 8 and 9. But back here in Romans
4, as we go through it, and I'm taking my time through it, I'm
not gonna try to hurry. because this message is a Bible
study. And I dealt with this in the
last two messages, how the Apostle Paul, by inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, had made it so clear in the first three chapters of
Romans that salvation is totally, 100%, by grace, based upon the
obedience unto death of Christ as the surety, the substitute,
the redeemer, the preserver of his people, all conditioned on
Christ. And so it's not based on our
law keeping. Salvation is not conditioned
on us keeping the law. In fact, he told us back in Romans
3 and verse 19 and 20 that all the law can do to a sinner based
upon that sinner's best efforts to keep the law is condemn him. So we understand that. You see,
God requires perfect righteousness, and that's gonna be spoken of
here in Romans 4 also. And the perfection of righteousness
cannot be found in our works or our doing or within us. The
perfection of righteousness can only be found in Christ through
his obedience unto death on the cross. He died, he was buried,
he arose again the third day. What does that mean? That means
the sins of those for whom he died are put away and cannot
be charged to them, and righteousness has been established, which is
charged to them. And that's what this book, this
Romans 4 is about. And Paul goes back to Abraham,
he uses two of the most prominent men, in Jewish history, the history
of Israel, to make his point. Abraham and David, mainly Abraham
in chapter four, but he mentions King David too. And the issue
here is this. This is the gospel issue. This
is the issue of salvation. The heart of the gospel and the
ground of salvation has to do with how God justifies sinners. And that's a mysterious question
that man cannot answer, only God can answer it. You go all
the way back to the oldest book in the Bible, which most scholars
say is the book of Job. And that was the primary question
in all of Job's dealings as God dealt with Job. How can a man,
a sinful man, a sinful woman, a sinful person, how can such
a sinful person How can such one be justified before God? Now, what is it to be justified?
See, he's gonna be talking about this. Abraham justified, David
justified. To be justified means that all
of my sins are purged away so that God cannot and will not
charge me with my sin. I'm a sinner now. There's no
fake here, there's no pretense here. But God has taken the debt
of my sin off of me. Many times in the scripture,
the word sin oftentimes refers to a debt, a debt to the law. We talk about that in our society,
in our human laws, that when a person commits a crime, They
owe a debt to society, a debt to the law. And that debt is
to be paid, whether it's time spent in jail, even unto capital
punishment. Well, you see, we fell in Adam
into sin and death and depravity. And by nature, we owe a debt
to God's law and justice that we don't have the first penny
to pay. But God, before the foundation of the world, chose a people,
gave them to Christ, and made Him their surety, that is, putting
all the debt of all their sins upon Him, charging it to His
account. And that's what imputation is
about. We'll talk about that. And so that's what just to be
justified means that all my debt has been paid, and who paid it? Christ did. And what was the
cost? His blood, His death. justified by His blood, as Romans
5 says. And then to be justified is to
be counted righteous before God. As my debt was charged to Christ,
His worthiness, His value, His righteousness has been charged
to me. Now, how do I know if that applies
to me? that my debt was put upon Christ. Some people today say, well,
he did that for everybody. Well, if that's true, everybody's
gonna be saved. But that's not true. The Bible
doesn't teach that. Christ laid down his life for
the elect. And it's not because they were
some kind of a special person or special people. It's just,
that was God's sovereign will. And he's God, he's the potter,
we're the clay. You say, well, I don't like that.
Well, man by nature doesn't like that, but God's in control. But
who did Christ lay his life down for? Who did he pay the debt
for? Who did he give righteousness
to? Those who believe in him by the gift of God. That's how
we know, that's how I know that he put away my sins, because
God has given me the gift of faith. to believe in him and
repentance to turn away from everything else. Turn away from
my sin, turn away from any hope other than Christ. And so the
apostle uses Abraham as an example of this. Now remember what the
unbelieving Jews would do. They had three, basically three
things that they pointed to as their hope and ground of salvation. Number one was their physical
connection with Abraham. And so Paul goes on, he says,
well, let's talk about Abraham then. How was Abraham saved?
How was Abraham justified? The second thing they would boast
in was their circumcision, the circumcision of the males representing
the whole family. And they'd say, we're circumcised,
we're not uncircumcised. And of course the apostle puts
that argument, the Lord himself put that argument to rest because
he says physical circumcision does not have any bearing on
a person's relationship with God. Paul wrote in Galatians
6, 14, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And he said, by whom the world
is crucified unto me and I unto the world, for in Christ Jesus
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything but a new creature,
a new creation. Now that's circumcision of the
heart. And that comes by the will and power of God through
Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit. to circumcise the heart,
and the evidence of that is faith in Christ. Have I been born again
by the Spirit? Well, do you believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ as your only hope, your only righteousness before
God? Because if you've been born again,
that's the evidence of it. You believe in Him, you rest
in Him, you trust Him, you follow Him. He's your only hope and
ground of salvation. You have no righteousness but
Christ. And then the third thing the Jews would boast in was their
law keeping. They said, we have Moses, we
believe in Moses, we follow Moses. Well, first of all, they didn't
keep the law. They scaled it down and tweaked
it and perverted it, turned it into the traditions of men, but
they didn't keep the law. Christ told them in John chapter
five, you boast in Moses, but Moses will judge you condemned.
You see, what Moses did is he spoke of Christ. The law was
given by Moses to show them their sin and depravity and the impossibility
of keeping the law for salvation and drive them to Christ in types
and pictures and shadows through the priesthood, the tabernacle
and the sacrifices and all of that, the feast days. So Paul
writes here in verse one, what shall we say then that Abraham
our father as pertaining to the flesh hath found? In other words,
it's kind of like this. If you're going to boast in your
physical fleshly connection, your pedigree, your birthright
through Abraham. Well, let's start with Abraham
then. Let's find out what Abraham found in his own self physically. And he says in verse two, for
if Abraham were justified by works, by law keeping, he hath
whereof to glory, to boast, that's what that means, to brag, to
have confidence, but not before God. Now you can boast, before
men about your works. about how you appear outwardly.
You can brag a lot about that. You can talk about your confidence
in yourself, but when you stand before God, all of those arguments,
all of those hopes and dreams that you have of salvation or
any part of it based upon who you are or what you've done or
what you've tried to do or what you've promised to do, all your
hopes and dreams will be shattered Because you see, God's standard
of judgment is the perfection of righteousness that can only
be found in Christ. And therefore, my only hope of
salvation, your only hope of salvation, is to be found in
Christ. Not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, Paul wrote, have his righteousness imputed
to me, charged to me. So he says, not before God. And
then verse three, he says, what saith the scripture? What does
the word of God say? Abraham believed God and it was
counted unto him for righteousness. Now we're gonna talk about grace
and faith. We're gonna talk about righteousness.
Well, think about this. Now this is quoted from Genesis
15. This is one of the three times that God renewed and spoke
his covenant with Abraham. And what it's saying here is
Abraham believed God. And it, now that word it, that's
a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. That
means they refer to something. If I say he went to the store,
who am I talking about? Well, if I'm talking about myself,
I'd say Bill Parker went to the store. I'm the antecedent. Sometimes
it's hard to figure out what the antecedent is in a particular
sentence. But here, what the it refers
to, most commentators, or many commentators, let's say, would
tell you it's referring to Abraham's believing, his faith in Christ. But that's not what is counted
righteous here. Our faith is not our righteousness
before God. Our faith, our believing, does
not justify us. You see, it's not our believing.
You know, God gives the gift of faith. Faith is necessary. Nobody's gonna be saved without
faith because it is the gift of God that comes through Christ
by which God connects us with Him spiritually. It is the first
evidence of the new birth. and all for whom Christ died
and was buried and arose again, all for whom he died and put
away their sins and imputed righteousness to, they must be born again.
And to be born again is to have spiritual life given from above
and evidenced by the gift of faith. So faith is necessary,
faith is important, but a lot of people are confused about
this thing of faith. Now grace and faith, think about
it. It says here in verse three,
for what saith the scripture, Abraham believed God and it was
counted to him for righteousness. Verse four, now to him that worketh
is the reward not reckoned or accounted or imputed of grace,
but of debt. In other words, if you have to
work for it, it's not grace. Grace and works do not mix. Salvation
is all of grace. And just like I quoted in Ephesians
chapter 2 and verse 10, we're His workmanship created in Christ
Jesus unto good works. Good works are the fruit. John
15, Christ said, I am the vine, you're the branches, you bear
fruit. And so he says, verse four, now to him that worketh
is the reward, the reward of salvation, justification, not
reckoned of grace, but of debt. Verse five says, but to him that
worketh not, that is not for salvation. He works not for salvation. I'm not working for my salvation.
Christ did all that work. We work out of salvation. That
is, we begin bearing the fruit of good works out of salvation
that has already been accomplished and sealed and assured and guaranteed
by the work of Christ. And so he says, but to him that
worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly,
his faith is counted for righteousness. Now, sometimes this language
can be confusing if you don't know what faith is. What is grace? Grace is salvation conditioned
on Christ and on him alone. The gospel of grace shows us
how Christ as God manifest in the flesh. That's who he is,
the person of Christ. His person shows that he has
the ability to do what he was sent to do. He's God. manifest
in the flesh. He's God-man. Every bit God and
every attribute of His nature, every bit man and every attribute
of human nature, yet without sin. Christ was never a sinful
man. Even when he was made sin, according
to 2 Corinthians 5, he did not become a sinner. He was not corrupted
or contaminated with our sin. That's just simply saying that
God made him sin in the sense of putting him in the place of
sinners and offering for sin and sin imputed to him, charged
to him. did not corrupt him in his mind,
his affections, his will, his desires, his motives. He was
always pure and perfect. But he's God-man, the Word made
flesh, dwelling among Emmanuel, God with us. And that's the gospel
of grace. Grace is in Christ. That's what
the Bible teaches us. It comes from Christ. The grace
of God, The Bible says, reigns through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord. It doesn't reign by you or me
or even our believing. It reigns and controls and is
effectual because of Christ. And then the gospel of grace
speaks of Christ's finished work, where he died on the cross to
put away the sins of his people and establish a perfect righteousness
whereby they could be saved and justified and sealed into the
promise of salvation. And so what it's talking about
here is faith. Now, faith sometimes can refer
to the gift of faith whereby God brings us to believe in Christ. And then faith can sometimes
refer to the body of truth that believers believe. The basic
word, the basic translation of the word faith would come down
to this one word in our English language, knowledge. And it's
a knowledge revealed by God. Now that doesn't mean that in
order to have faith in Christ, you have to be a super intellectual,
a genius, no. It just means you're going to
know some things because God teaches you and he does it through
preachers, through the word. But He teaches His people, they
shall be all taught of God. But in the Bible, one thing you
need to understand about faith, grace and faith, is that you're
never to separate the believing faith that believes from the
knowledge that is to be believed. Many people have the idea that
faith is some kind of an esoteric, elusive butterfly out there.
You just believe strong enough, something that you want. For
example, if you get a deadly illness, Many preachers will
give the idea that, well, if you believe that God will heal
you, and you believe sincere enough and long enough, that
you'll be healed. And if you're not healed, you
didn't believe enough. That's not biblical. That's the health
and wealth gospel, which is a false gospel. Faith is believing what
God said in his word. The Bible says that faith cometh
by hearing and hearing by the word of God. That's what faith
is. If God said it, we're to believe
it. And that's what faith is. But
if you say you believe it without knowing what God said, then what
kind of faith is that? That's not faith at all. That's
not biblical faith. You can believe a lot of things
that are wrong. There are people today who worship
idols. Why? Because they believe in
those idols. But that's false faith. So you
can believe anything you want to believe. You can believe the
moon is made of green cheese if you want to, but it's not.
So when it says here that Abraham believed God and it was counted
in him for righteousness, it's not saying that Abraham's faith
in the act of believing was imputed to him. That word counted means
imputed. And he says here, go back to
verse five, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that
justifieth the ungodly. Believe what? Believe on God. who justifies the ungodly. Now there's the knowledge. God
has revealed here how He justifies the ungodly. And how does He
do it? Through the obedience unto death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, you see, who as the surety of His
people, what's a surety? It's one who takes responsibility
for our debts. and as the substitute and redeemer,
one who took our place, took the place of his people, God's
elect, his sheep, and paid that debt. And that's what God promised
Abraham. Now, if you go back to the Old
Testament and you study the life of Abraham, which begins around
Genesis chapter eight and on, or I'm sorry, Genesis chapter
12 and on, you find that God made Abraham many promises. Some of those promises were physical. For example, the land of promise,
the land of Canaan, that was promised Abraham and his seed,
his physical descendants. That wasn't promised to us who
believe today. It was given to Abraham. And
those physical promises pertain to the physical nation Israel,
who've descended from Abraham. But God made Abraham some spiritual
promises too. And those spiritual promises
that God made to Abraham pertain to spiritual Israel, which is
made up of every sinner saved by grace, Jew and Gentile. The
Bible teaches that. I've preached many sermons on
that, shown through the scriptures. So what is Paul referring to
here about what God said to Abraham? Abraham believed God. Well, he's
talking about salvation. In this portion of the scripture,
he's talking about justification. He's talking about how God justifies
a sinner. He's talking about salvation
by grace. And that's what Abraham believed.
He believed what God promised. And it says that later on as
we go down through this chapter, you'll see that the promise that
Abraham believed. And it's the promise of sending
Christ into the world, the Messiah, the anointed one, to do for his
people, God's elect Jew and Gentile, all whose names are written in
the Lamb's book of life, to do for them what they could not
do for themselves. Now that's what Abraham believed.
And what was imputed to Abraham? What was accounted to him? What
Christ would accomplish on Calvary's cross to save Abraham and all
who believe in the Lord from their sins. That's what was imputed. Our believing is not imputed,
but the faith that God gave Abraham is the content of the gospel.
preaching of Christ in his person and in his finished work. And
that's what was imputed. We'll pick up there next week.
I hope you'll join us next week for another message from God's
word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.