In Romans chapter 4, verses 23
through 25, there's a phrase in verse 24 that is one of those
phrases that is so full of gospel truth that it really opens up
a key to understanding the New Testament, the gospel ministry. And most people don't realize
it, they just read past it. And the phrase is verse 24, but
for us also. And I've entitled this lesson
for Abraham and for us also. Look at verse 23, now it was
not written for his sake, that is Abraham's sake alone, that
it was imputed to him, but for us also. So it wasn't just to
Abraham alone. but it's for us also. And that
phrase is so profound. And like I said, people just
read over it. But let me tell you what it's
all about. What he's showing here in these
last three verses is that everything that he had said up to this point
concerning how God saves sinners, by his grace, through the righteousness
of another, the imputed righteousness of Christ, how God justifies
sinners. That's a promise from God that
is given to everyone who believes. Not just Abraham, not just to
Abraham's physical descendants, but to anyone and everyone who
believes that specific promise. Now understand now, it's not
just everyone who believes anything. It's not just everyone who claims
to believe in Christ. Go back to Matthew chapter seven
and understand, they preached in his name. They claimed to
believe in Christ. But it wasn't the true Christ
of the Bible. It wasn't the Christ of the gospel,
which is the power of God unto salvation. wherein the righteousness
of God is revealed. They imagined that they were
righteous before God, but it was because they preached in
his name. It was because they cast out demons. It was because
they did many wonderful works. It wasn't because of Christ crucified
and raised from the dead alone. Why am I right with God? Somebody says, well, I'm right
with God because I believe. Well, now wait a minute. What
is it you believe? There's all kinds of different
beliefs. Abraham believed God. It says up here in verse 20,
he staggered not at the promise of God. Well, what promise did
God make him? Well, if you go back and read
the Old Testament, you find that Abraham was given many promises
from God. Several promises, not just one.
He was given a promise to have a physical child with his wife,
Sarah. He had the promise that his posterity
would have a piece of real estate on earth, the promised land. So those were promises. But the
main promise that Abraham had, the eternal promise, the spiritual
promise, was of salvation by the coming Messiah, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And that's what Christ meant
in John chapter eight, I believe it's verse 56, when he said,
Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. That's
the main promise. And that's the promise that Paul
was talking about here in Romans chapter four. He's talking about
the gospel promise. He's not talking about Palestine
here. He's not talking about an earthly
temple. He's not talking about an ethnic
people here, a national people. He's talking about spiritual
things, eternal things. He's talking about how Abraham
was justified. Abraham, that sinner whom God
called out of Ur of the Chaldees, who was an idolater, who was
just like all of us by nature, sinners, who deserved nothing
and who earned nothing from God. who would have gladly stayed
as an idolater in Ur if God had left him there. And that's us. We would have stayed in our depravity,
in our sinfulness, in our idolatry, even in false churches, false
religion. We would have stayed there and
been very happy if God had just left us there. Isn't that right?
That's what God, but God picked out Abraham. He chose him before
the foundation of the world. Abraham was one of God's elect.
And God came down and pulled him out of Ur of the Chaldees.
Now, how was Abraham justified? Well, he was justified based
upon a righteousness that he had no part in producing. He
was washed in the blood of Christ. He was justified by the righteousness
of Christ. So that's the promise that Paul
was talking about in Romans 4, a specific promise. Now to whom
does that promise pertain? And the gospel promise, which
is the promise of God to save his people by his grace, based
upon the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, it wasn't
just given to one man named Abraham. It wasn't given to one nation
called Israel, one physical nation called, it was given to anyone
and everyone who believes. Who believes. Now, the Bible
tells us that man by nature will not do what? He will not believe. Man by nature will not Receive
Christ if left to ourselves if left to himself Abraham Like
I said, he would have been just as happy to stay in Ur of the
Chaldees as an idolater But God chose him before the foundation
of the world and gave him to Christ made Christ his surety
and and justified him through the righteousness that Christ,
in Abraham's time, would come in time and settle on the cross,
redeem him by his blood. And Christ said, all that the
Father giveth me shall come to me. Well, that was Abraham. And
if you're a believer, that's you, isn't it? But he also said,
and all that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him
that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. That's who the
promise is to. Now all of this, the blessings
of sinners being justified before God, was not just for one person,
wasn't just for one nation, wasn't for one ethnic group, wasn't
for one economic group. There was no human boundaries
or fences that would bar anyone from coming to Christ and receiving
the benefits and blessings of this promise. But a lot of people
are confused about this now because you look at this, it's not for
Abraham alone. But it's for us also, what does
he say in verse 24? To whom it shall be imputed if
we believe. Now some translations translate
that since we believe. And I'll deal with that in just
a moment. But some people are confused about this. Now we know
the Jews, the unbelieving Jews, let's put it that way. They imagined
that they were right with God, and I've told you this several
times, basically they had three grounds upon which they boasted
of being blessed of God, being right with God. And their main
one was their physical connection with Abraham, we're Abraham's
seed. And then the second one was their physical act of circumcision,
the males being circumcised and the males representing the whole
family. And then the third one was they claim to keep the law
of Moses. Well, and Paul is very adamant
here that your physical connection with Abraham means absolutely
nothing as far as eternal matters are concerned. Nothing. And you remember John the Baptist,
he knew well what their ground was there. You remember when
he was preaching there, and it said right before Jesus of Nazareth
came up to be baptized, remember what John said? He said, bring
forth fruits, meat for repentance. And he said, and think not. And
he's talking, and repentance mean that change of mind, that
change of heart. And he says, now don't think
this way. Don't say Abraham is our father. That'll do you no
good. You need to repent of thinking
that way. That's repentance of dead works, an idolatry. You
see, when a sinner believes that God saves him or blesses him
or keeps him or brings him to glory based upon anything that
he is or anything that he does, that's dead works. And that's
idolatry because the God who you imagine accepts such things
is an idol, because the God of the Bible won't accept that.
So that's why we talk about repentance of dead works and idolatry. And
that's what John the Baptist was telling the unbelieving Jews,
the Pharisees, the Sadducees. Don't think that way. How are
we to think? Well, we're to think of God as
being so holy that if he were to judge me based upon who I
am or what I've done or what I do, I'd be damned forever.
That I have nothing to recommend me unto God, my best. is an abomination
before God. That which is highly esteemed
among men is an abomination to God. That's the way I'm to think.
And I'm to believe that the only way that I, a sinner, can approach
God and be accepted, be saved, be justified, be blessed, is
by His grace, undeserved, unearned, based upon the righteousness
of His Son, the blood of His Son, the imputed righteousness
of Christ. and I'm to forsake everything
else as forming any part of the ground of salvation. Now the
only way that I'm gonna think that way and you're gonna think
that way is if God intervenes in a powerful, sovereign, invincible
way by the Holy Spirit to bring us to be convinced of sin and
of righteousness and of judgment. That's why Christ said you've
gotta be born again or you can't see this. You've got to be born
again. You can't enter into the kingdom
of God. You can't see it the way it is. You've got a skewed
view of things. And so this is the way that people
were thinking, you see. People will get confused when
they read the Old Testament. For example, you'll read, I've
got cited in the lesson here, Isaiah 45, 17, and 25, where
it says, Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting
salvation. Paul quoted that in Romans 11,
26, when he said, all Israel shall be saved. And people say,
well, that's referring to the Jews, the national Jews, and
it's not. We talk about the elect of God,
and then people say, well, that's just referring to Israel. Well,
I'm gonna show this morning in the message that that's not referring
to Israel. It's referring to spiritual Israel,
but not national Israel. And so they'd ask, well, all
right, think about this. If God's gonna save all of national
Israel, and the majority of national Israel rejected the promise,
Then is God unfaithful to that promise? And the answer's no.
Now Paul deals with that in Romans chapter nine. The promise is salvation for
anybody who wants it. The problem with us is we don't
want it by nature. Not God's way now. Oh, we want
salvation. We want good things. We want
eternal life. We want to live forever. We want
that, but we don't want it the way that God has prepared them
and set them up and promised. We want them our way. We want
them in a way that gives us room to glory. And we'll either glory
in our heritage, our pedigree, where Abraham's seen, or we'll
glory in something we do, keep the law of Moses, circumcise
the eighth day. You remember Paul said that?
See, we want to boast, and what do people glory in today? They
glory in their decision. I rose above, now they don't
say it this way, but this is essentially what a person is
saying. When they believe that Christ died for everybody and
that the ultimate destiny, my ultimate destiny is left up to
me, and so what they're saying, they say, well I rose above,
in a revival meaning, I rose above the crowd, walked the aisle,
made my decision for Christ, and that determined my destiny.
That's boasting. Boasting in your will, boasting,
it's boasting in your goodness is what it's doing. Well, they
won't admit that, but you see it, don't you? You see that,
don't you? Now, why do you see it and they
don't? Because God's given you eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts
and minds to understand. And that's it. So now, and I've
got, you know, when I do these lessons, I do my best to proofread
them. But sometimes, because of circumstances
and distractions and age, something gets past me. And if you look
at the first paragraph, Romans 423, the first paragraph. Down
at the bottom, you see where it says the main promise of eternal
and spiritual life. And the words eternal and spiritual
are capitalized. And it says the main promise
of eternal and spiritual life in Christ Messiah. It says was
made. It should say was not made. Put a big not there, okay? N-O-T,
I'll change it in the computer. But it just got past me. The
next sentence clears it up, actually. but I meant to say was not made
to any of them due to their physical connection with Abraham. So there
was no promise given to any Jew based upon their physical connection
with Abraham. Okay? And when he says in verse
23, it was not written for his sake alone, that carries over
into every one of those physical descendants of Abraham. It wasn't
just given to Abraham alone. Abraham had a promise and he
believed the promise and he did so by the power of God, by the
grace of God, by the will of God. It wasn't Abraham's free
will decision or any inherent spark of goodness in Abraham.
But it wasn't just for him alone. And then it says in the next
sentence there in that first paragraph, the gospel promise
of eternal salvation was given to spiritual Israel. And that
includes God's chosen people out of every nation, Jew and
Gentile. And these are the spiritual children
of Abraham. Galatians 3 there. Now this is
why, and here's what you need to understand why this is so
profound and why it's a key to understanding the New Testament.
And you see this probably more in the book of Acts than any
place else, historically. There was such a struggle When it came time, when the time
of the Gentiles, what we call it, came in, there was such a
struggle between professing Jewish believers, accepting Gentile
believers. And you see this, and I've got
all kinds of scripture here cited, and you can turn to those in
your own personal study. What it was, you had a lot of
the Jews who claimed to be Christian, but who wanted to impose the
law of Moses onto the Gentiles before they were brought into
the church. And you see several passages like that. You see it
all through the New Testament. It was a struggle. And the whole
theme of the Book of Acts really is the gospel going out to the
Gentiles. crossing over the barriers that
men, Jewish people, tried to put into unbelieving Jews who
claimed to be Christian. I think it's in Acts chapter
15 where you see the big conference where Paul came to Jerusalem
and And those who came down from, the conference wasn't in Jerusalem,
but they came down from Jerusalem saying that it was imperative
that the Gentiles be circumcised and that they keep the law of
Moses before we would accept them and receive them, you know,
as far as being true Christians. And Paul said, absolutely not. He said, if you be circumcised,
Christ will profit you nothing. That's Galatians. Remember, he
called it another gospel. In other words, whenever men
or women impose any condition upon sinners for salvation, other
than all the conditions that Christ alone has met in his obedience
unto death, you're preaching another gospel. That is not another. So if I stand before you and
I say, well now, God'll save you if you do this, or if you
do that, Putting conditions on you, especially in the context
of the heresy of universal atonement. Christ did everything he could
do. Now the rest of it, my friend, that's another gospel. That's
not just gospel light. That's not just ignorant brethren,
that's another gospel. Because it's conditional salvation.
And that's what they were doing here. So what, and especially
you see this in the book of John. John emphasizes that Christ,
the Lamb of God, beareth away the sins of the whole world. And he talks about the world,
for God so loved the world. In 1 John 2, he's the propitiation,
not for our sins only, but for the whole world. John didn't
mean that Christ died for every individual without exception
there. That's not what he meant at all. The context tells you
that. But because people have been taught so wrong and because
we're naturally depraved and ignorant, we latch on to things
like that because it puts salvation conditioned on us and leaves
us room to glory. But that's not what John meant
at all. What they were saying is, look, God has a people, not
just among the Jews, he has a chosen elect people, not just the Jewish
people, but out of the Gentiles too, all over the world, out
of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. And so this gospel's
for anyone who believes it, but who's gonna believe it? Well,
the Bible tells us only the elect will. Isn't that right? And that
by the power of the Holy Spirit. And this also, look at verse
23 again. Now it was not written, that promise, the gospel of salvation
by the grace of God in Christ, was not written just for Abraham's
sake alone. That it was imputed to him. What
is the it? Well, it's what God promised
him. And what did God promise him? Justification based upon
Christ, righteousness imputed. The righteousness was imputed.
And we've read through all those verses before that teach us that.
But he says in verse 24, it's for Jew and Gentile, it's for
us also. To whom it shall be imputed if or since we believe
on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. So he emphasizes
the promise of eternal salvation to everyone who believes this
specific promise. this gospel promise. And what
is the promise? That all of my salvation, I'm
a sinner, I cannot save myself, if left to myself, I'll gladly
go to hell. That's right. I won't be glad
when I get there. But if left to myself, I'll go
there thinking all the time that I'm okay. Isn't that right? Haven't we seen that? So if left
to myself, I would not choose God, I would not choose Christ,
would not receive Him. Anybody who does is born of God.
So if left to myself, I'm a sinner. I deserve nothing but condemnation.
And I'll say it right now, right now today, if God were to judge
me based upon my efforts, I'd be damned. Right now. My only hope And this is what
God promises, that he has chosen a people, gave them to Christ,
and put all of the conditions, all of the responsibility of
their whole salvation, their whole justification, their whole
preservation, their whole glorification on the Lord Jesus Christ, who
is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto the Father
by him, because he is God, man, God in human flesh. because he did a work as my surety
and my substitute and my redeemer. He put away my sins. My sins
were charged to him and he did everything required, everything
necessary to cancel that debt, to satisfy the justice of God. He fulfilled all the conditions
of my salvation and I received the benefits of it. That's what was promised. And
that's the promise to be believed. Now, he says, if we believe. The if here is not a condition
we meet in order to be saved. It's an evidence. This since
we believe, I believe, is a good translation. But remember how
you look at the ifs of the Bible. They're either conditions that
you must meet in order to obtain the blessing, or they're evidences
that you have received the blessing from God. And that's what this
is. So in other words, here's what
he's saying. The only ones who can claim to be, let's go all
the way back to the beginning. The only ones who can claim to
be chosen of God before the foundation of the world. The only ones who
can claim to be justified before God based upon Christ's righteousness
imputed. Am I one of God's elect? Am I
justified? Has Christ's righteousness been
imputed to me, charged to me? The only ones who can claim to
have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, the only ones who
can claim truly to have been born of the Holy Spirit, are
who? Those who believe this promise.
Those who believe this promise. And the promise is said again,
it's described again in the last line of verse 24. Believe what? Believe on him that raised up
Jesus our Lord from the dead. Now why was Jesus, why did he
die? Well he was made sin. He was
the surety of God's people. That means all of our sins were
imputed to him. And in order to attain the goal
of glorifying the Father, He had to what? He had to be our
substitute. The surety had to take our place.
And in order to take our place, he had to be incarnate. He had to become incarnate. He
had to God in human flesh, God manifest with us, Emmanuel, God
with us. He had to keep the law perfectly
unto death and die that death in our place, satisfy justice,
pay the debt, redeem us from our sins. and bring forth everlasting
righteousness. Now that's why he died. Did he
accomplish it? Well, we believe on him that
raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Of course he accomplished
it, because as sin demands death, righteousness demands life. So
righteousness was brought in by Christ. That's what the resurrection
is all about. The resurrection is not simply
God bringing life from the dead. You know, that's God. He is life. He created life. He created this
world. The breath you, we talked about
it earlier, the very next breath you take is a gift from God.
He gave it to you, gives it to me. But the resurrection of Christ
is more than just life from the dead. It's righteousness established
that brings forth life. For by grace are you saved. As
sin reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. So
that's what that's all about. With the heart man believeth
unto righteousness. Well, what righteousness? Mine? My decision? My efforts? Believe on him that raised up
Jesus our Lord from the dead. God who justifies the ungodly.
And then look at verse 25. He said, who was delivered for
our offenses. That's why he died. I heard a
preacher who claims to be a sovereign grace preacher in a message about
a month ago say that Christ didn't die for our sins, he died for
his sins. Now his point He was trying to
make a point and he did it in a way that's heretical. His point
was to say that our sins did become Christ's sins. Well, they
did by imputation. They did by imputation and alone,
all right? But he said he didn't die for
our sins, he died for his. No, he died for our sins. Our
sins were imputed to him. They were charged to him. They
became his legally by imputation. Our debt became his. My friend,
make no mistake about it, he was delivered for our offenses. And it amazed me that a preacher
could get up and say something like that in light of verses
like this. What is it, 1 Corinthians 15, how that Christ died for
our sins according to the scripture? Of course he did. He died for
my sins. My sins were imputed in. And
they did become his by imputation, alone. I have his righteousness. by imputation alone. And out
of his righteousness, I have spiritual life that brings me
to believe this promise. So who was delivered for our
offenses and was raised again for our justification, or because
of our justification, some translations say. And that's just as well.
Now let me make this point and then I'll close. He says, He
says in verse 23, now it was not written for his sake alone,
that it was imputed, but for us also to whom it shall be imputed. Now, the way the King James Version
translates that, it's a little confusing because when you see
shall be imputed, it looks like a future tense verb, like it's
in the future. And some people use that verse
to try to preach and believe that what that says is that God
imputes righteousness to you upon your believing. In other
words, when you believe, that's when God does it. In other words,
it's righteousness imputed because of faith. And that's not what
it's saying at all here. My friend, if you believe, righteousness
has already been imputed. The actual verb here, the verb
phrase, is a present tense verb. that is just simply stating a
fact. And here's what he's saying,
all right? I cannot say that righteousness has been imputed
to me until I believe the promise. Then I can say it. Now it's already
been imputed. Christ was made my surety before
the foundation of the world. I didn't know about it though.
And if I claim that I'm justified before God, before I believe
that promise, it's an empty claim. Now, somebody makes this statement,
just like election. If I claim to be one of God's
elect before I come to believe the gospel, all that is is presumption
and pride, isn't it? The Jews claim to be God's elect
and rejected the gospel. But when can I really honestly,
based upon God's word, claim to be one of God's elect, claim
to be justified, claim to have righteousness, claim to be washed
in the blood, claim to be born of the Spirit? When God brings
me to believe the promise. That's what that's saying. In
other words, whatever was said about Abraham, if I believe this
promise, since I believe this promise, I can claim the same
thing that Abraham claimed. I'm justified the same way Abraham
was justified. I have the same righteousness
imputed to me that Abraham had imputed him. You see what that's
saying? It's a present tense. All right, okay.