I've, in going through the book
of Romans, which I have many times and you have many times,
I've decided that the start, how you start, determines how
you finish. And I wanted to deal with this
issue of the bondservant of Jesus Christ, Paul. Verse one, a servant. That word servant is the word
that's commonly used in that time for a bond slave, a bond
servant of Christ. And that is a, it goes back to
Exodus chapter 21, if you want to turn there. You know the Lord
in his sovereign purpose, in his providence, and in his wisdom,
as he chose the Hebrew people through Abraham to be the instruments
of the human genealogy of Christ. It was imperative that he keep
them together throughout the 1,500 year period of history
that they were together from Sinai to the cross, about 1,500
years. Now it was rare for any civilization, any culture,
any nation like that in that day and time to be kept together,
held together for that period of time because of all the conquering
and the marauding, all of that. But God determined to use them
in the land of promise so that he might bring salvation to his
elect, Jew and Gentile, through Christ. And he kept them together
in spite of himself, or in spite of themselves, rather. Because
if it were totally left up to the Hebrew people, the Israelites,
the Jews, they would have been obliterated long ago. And they
would have lost the land. In fact, they did lose the land,
but not permanently, during that 1500 year period, but not permanently,
because God always had a remnant. that he brought back to the land.
They lost it for 70 years, for example, you know, in the time
of the Babylonian captivity, but then he brought them back
and he held them together. But he also, in order to understand
the purposes of God and the ways of God, you have to understand
that God also uses means to accomplish his purpose. And one of the means
is he gave them laws that would help them to retain the land.
Now you remember the law of Jubilee, the year of Jubilee, where if
anybody had lost their land, the land returned back to them.
You had the Sabbath years, you had all that. Well, one of those
laws was the law of bond slavery. And listen to what it says here
in Exodus 21, just a few verses. It says, now these are the judgments
which thou shalt set before them. If thou by an Hebrew servant,
Six years he shall serve and in the seventh he shall go out
free for nothing. Now the issue here is somebody
who got in debt and could not pay their debt. And so they hired
themselves out to the one to whom they owed the debt. And
it says they, instead of losing their home and losing their land
and all of that, they served six years and in the seventh
year they went out free for nothing. Now the term free for nothing
sounds a lot like grace, doesn't it? Because that's how God saves
us. And the reason I wanted to spend
some time here is this is a beautiful illustration of how God saves
sinners through Christ, by his grace. It says in verse 3, if
he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he were
married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master
have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters,
the wife and her children shall be her masters, and he shall
go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly
say, I love my master, my wife and my children, I will not go
out free, then his master shall bring him unto the judges." They
went before the court to make sure that everything here is
done legally. The law had to be satisfied. There could be
no breach of the law here. And it says, he shall also bring
him to the door, or under the doorpost, and his master shall
bore his ear through with an awl. Put a hole in the earlobe,
that's what happened. And he shall serve him forever. Now that's the law of bond slavery.
And that's what Paul calls himself here. Paul, a servant of Jesus
Christ. When one found himself in debt
but could not pay the debt, he could hire himself out to the
person to whom he was indebted, serve for six years, go out free
for nothing. And then, remember what it said,
he went before the judges. Law had to be satisfied. Then
his ear was bored. And there was a mark, you see,
that was a mark that people could see. And that mark indicated
that this servant was not a legal forced slave. serving unwillingly
or trying to pay a debt. That mark was the mark of a person
who was serving his master willingly, lovingly, not because he owed
a debt. His debt's already been paid.
His ear had been bored through. And that mark indicated that
he was a willing, loving bondservant, bondslave of his master. Now,
spiritually speaking, that's the case of every sinner saved
by the grace of God through Christ Jesus. As we fell in Adam, as
we personally sinned against God in Adam, we were all under
a legal debt to God's law and justice, and it's a debt we couldn't
pay. We didn't have the first penny
to pay that debt. But what happened? Before the
foundation of the world, even before we fell, God chose a people
to save, and he gave them to his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God chose a people to save, but he had to do it. In order to
save this people, God had to do it justly. He had to do it
on a just ground, you see? That's the key issue of the gospel. is not just God's love, but God's
justice, God's righteousness, God's truth. He can by no means
clear the guilty. And yet the Bible says he justifies
the ungodly. So when God chose a people, he
chose them in Christ. And he did it before the foundation
of the world, but he had to do it on a just ground. He made
Christ to be their surety. Now what is a surety? Now we
think of a surety like this. We think, well, if somebody stands
surety for another person, like if somebody buys a car, or buys
a house, and maybe his credit's not so good, so he has to have
a cosigner. And that cosigner is the surety
who says this, that if that debt's not paid, if he can't pay the
debt, I'll pay it. But now a surety, at Christ as
surety, It was different because there never was a time that we
could pay the debt, the sin debt to God's law and justice. So
when he was made surety in the everlasting covenant of grace
before the foundation, it was always, it was always on his
shoulder to pay the debt. It was never like Christ saying,
well, Father, if they can't pay it, I'll step in and pay it.
Or if they pay part of it, I'll pay their, no, that's not what,
As our surety, Christ became the sole responsibility, the
sole responsibility of paying our whole debt to God's law and
justice was put upon his shoulders. And you remember you read in
Isaiah chapter nine and verse six, for example, the government
was on his shoulders. That's what that means. That
means the whole welfare, The whole debt, sin debt, of the
whole election of grace was placed squarely upon Christ, conditioned
on Him. Not on you, not on me. If it
were conditioned on you or me, we'd fail. That's what the Bible
teaches. And that's what amazing grace
is all about. So the whole debt of the sins, technically speaking
now, The whole debt of all the sins of God's chosen people was
never really imputed to them personally, but it was imputed
to Christ. And that's why the Old Testament
is all about Christ and his future coming to pay that debt. That's why it is said that Abraham
was justified He was declared righteous in God's sight, based
upon what? The sure and certain promise
of Christ's coming to fulfill his obligations. The obligations
that the Father put upon him before the foundation of the
world, the obligations that he willingly took upon himself.
He was a willing servant, but there was a debt to pay. All of it was imputed to Christ
as our surety. Now, as our surety, the Bible
teaches that he obligated himself to come and pay the debt. And
how did he do that? As our substitute. He came and
took our place under the wrath of his father. That's the debt
that had to be paid. Justice had to be satisfied.
And in order to pay that, he had to come to this earth and
take upon himself a sinless humanity. And he had to be both God and
man in one person. That's the name Jesus Christ
that we talked about last week. And as our substitute, he had
to pay our legal debt. with the price of his own blood.
So we see that one major difference that we have to understand considering
the law of bond slavery as it pertained to the Israelites is
this. You know, when a man, when a person got under debt in the
economy of the law, the Israelites, then the debtor, he had to work
six years to pay his debt and went free in the seventh year.
But when it comes to us, the elect of God and eternal salvation
and the payment of the debt. As sinners paying our debt to
God's law and justice, we're totally unable to pay. We could
work six years or six million years and never pay that debt.
You have to understand that. See, God, listen, as the debt
of God's elect had already been charged to Christ, He came and
did the work. So in other words, in the law
of bond slavery, if you want to look at it as an illustration,
the person who had the debt and worked the six years, it's not
us, it's Christ, our surety. He worked the six years. And
you remember it says here, look in verse three of Exodus 21.
It says, if he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If
he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. Well,
Christ had a bride. And who was that bride? That
was his elect. That was his church. The bride
of Christ. The bride of Christ is not some
special group of, quote, Christians, unquote. It's not people who
are on the inner circle of of the kingdom. The bride of Christ
is made up of every sinner for whom Christ stood as surety and
substitute and paid that debt in full by the price of his blood.
That's redemption. He had to redeem his bride. We
were a bride like Hosea's gomer, you remember that? Who had prostituted
ourselves out to a false god. who had taken sides with Satan
against God. That's what we are by nature. That's how we fell in Adam and
were born dead in trespasses and sins. And so we have no knowledge
of, no desire for the true and living God. And that's the bride
of Christ by nature, but he came and he paid our debt. He worked
the six years. And then on the seventh, He went
out free because he satisfied justice by the price of his blood,
but his bride goes out with him. He represents us. He's our substitute,
our surety. And you know that seventh year,
what year is that? That's the Sabbath year, isn't it? You know
what that means? That means the debt's paid. That
means the work's done. It is finished, Christ said in
John 19 30. The payment for the debt is paid
up in full. And then he endows his bride
with righteousness. You know how I often use the
illustration of debt, banking, to teach about the doctrine of
imputed sin and imputed righteousness? You're in debt, you owe a bank
a million dollars, you don't have a penny to pay it, so you
go to the banker and you say, I'm gonna cast myself upon his
mercy and beg for mercy. And the banker opens up the legal
books, the account book, and he looks for your name and he
sees by your name that you don't owe a penny. Somebody had come
in and paid that debt. You didn't know about it. You
don't know about it until you're called and separated. That's
where we're at in just a moment. You went through your life thinking
that you did owe a debt and trying to pay that debt with your religion
or your work, your charity, trying to establish a righteousness
of your own. And then you finally found out
that somebody paid the debt. So you feel relieved, don't you?
That'd be a freedom, wouldn't it? Somebody in debt can't pay
the debt, he's in bondage. When he finds out the debt's
paid, now he's free. Boy, what a feeling. He's free. And you get up to leave and the
banker says, hold on. First of all, you wanna know
who paid that debt. You wanna go thank him, don't you? You wanna
go serve him. And then when you get up to leave,
the banker says, hold on, there's more here. He says, somebody
put a million dollars to the good on your account. And that's
what Christ did for his bride. That's what he did for his people.
That's the willing, loving bond-servant. So as our surety and substitute,
our sin-debt was paid in full, and we're set free from the law.
Paul dealt with that in Romans 6 and verse 7. We're freed, meaning
justified from the law. The law cannot condemn a sinner
who stands in Christ. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ. who walk not according to the
flesh but according to the spirit. But we've also been, and that's
our legal freedom. The law has no hold on us. But
there's also a spiritual freedom that comes. when God reveals
what Christ accomplished as our surety and substitute to us in
the preaching of the gospel. Now look, Paul, a servant of
Jesus Christ, that means he's been made a willing, loving bondservant,
called to be an apostle, separated under the gospel of God. Now
Paul was called to be an apostle. He was divinely appointed and
called to be an apostle of Christ. The word apostle means one who
is sent out. He was sent out with a message.
Now Paul was first called by the Holy Spirit to salvation
through the preaching of the gospel, and he deals with that
in passages such as Philippians 3 that we went over before. Galatians
1, he said, when it pleased the Lord to reveal his son in me. When God gives, that's the new
birth. You must be born again. It's
like I'm saying, Christ paid the debt in full on Calvary.
But we don't know about it until God the Holy Spirit reveals Christ
to us and in us in the new birth. You must be born again. And so
what happens here is God brings us to convict us of our sins,
showing us that we are totally, totally spiritually bankrupt.
That even our best efforts to serve God, to obey God, to do
good fall short. And that if God ever gave us
what we deserved or what we earned, it would be eternal death and
damnation. Isn't that right? And that stands true even today
for a believer. If God gave me what I've earned
and what I deserve, it would be eternal death and damnation.
That's conviction of sin. You see, repentance. He brings
us to faith in Christ and repentance of dead works. And that faith
in Christ is the revelation of Christ to our minds, our affections,
our wills, our consciences, spiritual life given by the Holy Spirit.
And he brings us to repentance of dead works. And that repentance
is a change of mind. It's not just feeling sorry for
your sins. Yes, we're to feel sorry for
our sins, even sorrier than we are, but that's not repenting. Listen, there were times when
I was a lost person and I felt sorry for my sins. Somebody said,
well, not sorry enough. Well, do I feel sorry enough
now? Not as sorry as I should be. How do you know that? Well, have you ever done something
really bad wrong and you start justifying yourself? Well, you
know, just like a fellow often told me, he said, well, you don't
know what I've been through. Well, that certainly justifies
that kind of behavior. No, it doesn't. What was Job? He was trying to justify himself,
saying that God, I don't deserve what you're doing to me, what
you're putting me through. And even his old miserable three
friend comforters came along and said, well, Joe, we got to
figure this out some way. There's something you've done
bad that wasn't the case at all. So in salvation, in blessedness,
in the benefits, in preservation, we're not getting what we deserve.
We're not getting what we've earned. It's mercy. It's sovereign
mercy that comes to us in Christ. So Paul was called to be a believer. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation to everyone that believeth, the scripture says,
for therein is the righteousness of God revealed. But then he
was called of God to be an apostle, a God-delegated ambassador and
messenger of Christ sent forth to preach the gospel. Now an
apostle, was one who was personally and immediately called by and
sent by Christ himself. On the back of your lesson here,
I've got the office of apostle. It was for the beginning of the
New Testament church. There are no apostles today. I don't care what people say.
I know there are people who claim to be apostles. And they say,
well, we're sin of God. Well, we are, if we're preaching
the gospel. But here's the qualifications
of apostleship. Number one, he had to be a witness
of the resurrected Christ. And then he had to be explicitly
chosen by the Holy Spirit, and then he had to preach the true
gospel of God's grace, and then he had the ability to perform
signs and wonders, the miracles. And that was the role of the
12 apostles that was very unique in the beginning of the New Testament
church. And the scripture says, for example,
in Revelation 21, 14, referring to the New Jerusalem, it says,
the wall of the city, that's talking about the city of God,
the Holy Jerusalem, had 12 foundations and in them the names of the
12 apostles of the Lamb. And then read there, I've got
listed out Ephesians chapter two, verses 20 and 21. Now listen
to this. He's talking about the saints
who make up the household, the family of God, that they are
built, that's the church, they are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone in whom all the building fitly framed together
groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. Now, you know a lot
of people, there's a lot of mythology and religious false doctrine
that rise up in light of the apostles. Look, kind of like
the angels. For example, there are people who pray to the apostles. Well, that's idolatry. You're
never to pray to an apostle. You're to pray to God through
Christ. Some people even worship him. And I know when they talk
about naming their churches after them and all of this and things
like it. This is the church of the living
God. This is the church of Jesus Christ.
It's not the church of Saint Paul or Saint John. No more than it's the church
of Saint Bill. It's the church of Jesus Christ. He built the
church. The apostles are not mediators. You say, I've got to pray to
Saint Christopher because I'm traveling today. No, no, no,
no. Saint Christopher will do you
no good. You pray to God through Christ. It's kind of like the Catholic
Church, you know, they pray to Mary. Well, that's idolatry,
folks. And really, it's a false view
of it. There's one God. And how many
mediators between God and men? One, the man Christ Jesus. And we're never to give any human
being the place that only Christ can hold. That's why we don't
call anybody father in a spiritual way. I call my earthly father
my earthly father. But talking about spirituality,
You know, I'd have a tough time appearing before a crowd, you
know, like with a Catholic priest, because they all want to call
him Father so-and-so, and I'm not going to do it. Because the
Bible says that God alone is our Father. The Pope is not the
Holy Father. There's only one Holy Father.
You understand that? One mediator between God and
men. So when it talks about the foundation of the prophets and
the apostles, it's not talking about those men personally as
if they themselves, like a lot of people believe that Peter
was the rock upon which the church was built. Not so, Christ is
the rock. We're gonna sing a hymn this
morning. My hope is built on the solid rock, not Peter, Peter
was just a sinner saved by grace, and I thank God for Peter and
how the Lord used him in ministry and how the Lord used him in
writing the book of 1 and 2 Peter. But Peter's not the rock. Christ
was referring to himself, what Peter confessed about Christ. He's the rock of the church.
He's our righteousness. And so you understand that now.
So when it talks about the prophets and the apostles being the foundation
of the prophets and the apostles, you got to understand one grand
truth is that these men were ambassadors of Christ. What they preached was founded
upon an authority higher than themselves. And that's what it's
talking about. What is the foundation of the
prophets and the apostles? It's Jesus Christ crucified and
risen from the dead. He's the foundation. The prophets
and the apostles, they built upon the foundation. Read about
that in 1 Corinthians chapter three. All right, so now next,
separated, Paul says, separated under the gospel, separation.
What does that mean? It means to be marked off and
distinguished by a boundary. Well, what's the boundary? Well,
you ladies, don't cut your hair. If you've got a TV in your house,
go home and throw it away. Don't watch TV. Don't go dancing. Don't drink alcohol. Don't do
any of that stuff, because you're separate. Now, is that what our
separation is? Absolutely not. You know, Paul
dealt with that in the book of Colossians. You know, he mentions,
you know, that people talking about worship, service, they
talk about being accepted with God, and the world immediately
goes in a religious way to taste not, touch not, handle not. And Paul said, why are you involved
in junk like that? Because that makes you worldly. That's what the world thinks.
Well, what Paul say about his separation? Well, he says there,
separated unto the gospel of God. Now, just like that bond
servant whose ear was bored and that marked him as a willing,
loving bond slave whose debt was paid. What is it that marks
off and distinguishes the true people of God? It's the gospel
of Jesus Christ. It's the gospel of God's free
and sovereign grace in Christ Jesus, who is the Lord our righteousness. That's it. That's what separates
us from the world. Now I know we're not to be conformed
to the world in a lot of other ways. And that's a whole message
in and of itself, several. But what distinguishes a forced,
legal, unwilling slave or a mercenary from a willing, loving, bond-servant
of Christ? It's the gospel. And you know
what the Holy Spirit did to bring us to that point, make us willing,
loving, bond-servants of Christ? He bored our spiritual ear with
an awl, the gospel awl. And that's why we can't stand
to hear false gospels. That's why we can only feed upon
the truth where God is identified and distinguished and Christ
is identified and distinguished from all counterfeits. And that's
what's brought us to the liberty of grace. Turn to Romans chapter
seven. This kind of summarizes it in
verse four of Romans chapter seven. Romans 7 and verse 4, wherefore
my brethren, you also are become dead to the law. That means the
law's been satisfied. Now how did I get that way? Well,
I joined the church, or I got baptized, or I give my tithe,
or I don't miss a service, or I'm charitable. No, you become
dead to the law by the body of Christ. Now why does it say the
body of Christ? Because that's how he died. He
satisfied him. That you should be married to
another. Remember the bondservant, if he had a wife, he took her
out with him. That you should be married to Christ, to another. Even to him who's raised from
the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. We don't
produce fruit, we just bear it. You know the difference. In verse
five, listen to this. For when we were in the flesh,
that is when we were unregenerate, walking after the flesh, even
in our false religion, the motions or the passions of sins which
were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit
unto death. Now that works, I believe, in one of two ways to an unregenerate
person. The law of God. It either works
in the way of abject rebellion, just somebody who's just such
a rebel that they just don't care about the law, they're gonna
break the law, they're gonna do whatever they want for their
selfish purposes, but most of the time, here's how it works.
In people who try to keep the law to establish their own righteousness
before God, because that's even more sinful. Do you believe that? You know that self-righteousness
is the greatest sin? It denies the glory of God, it
denies Christ, it exalts sinners. And that's what it is, the passions
of sin, religion, false religion, religion without Christ, religion
without grace, religion without truth. It's nothing but sin in
the eyes of God. But look at verse six, but now
we're delivered from the law. That being dead wherein we were
held, that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in
oldness of the letter. Now to serve in newness of spirit
is a sinner saved by grace, chosen of God before the foundation
of the world, justified based on the imputed righteousness
of Christ, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and called by the
Holy Spirit, and made a willing, loving, bond-servant of Christ.
That's serving in newness of spirit. All right, back in Romans
1 and verse 2, he says, which he had promised afore or before
by his prophets in the Holy Scripture. That verse is self-explanatory,
but what he's talking about is this. This gospel's not just
New Testament doctrine. This gospel is Old Testament. This gospel is the preaching
of the terms of the everlasting covenant of grace made before
time. This gospel is older than this world. This gospel declares
a salvation by the grace of God which was given us in Christ
Jesus before the world began. 2 Timothy chapter 1. This gospel
was first revealed in the revelation of Christ as the seed of woman
to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 15. And the way that the seed of
woman, who is God in human flesh, Christ, the Messiah, would accomplish
this, but would be as our surety giving himself unto death, illustrated
by the fact that God removed their fig leaf aprons and slew
an animal, Genesis 321, and made them coats of skin. Law and justice
satisfied, righteousness established, and imputed to his people. That's
what that's all about. And everything in the Old Testament,
that's what Christ told the Pharisees. You search the scriptures, for
in them you think you have eternal life. They are they which testify
of me. He told them Moses wrote about
me. He wasn't just writing about the law and the prophets and
all that. He was writing about Christ.
And he said, had you believed Moses, you'd have believed me.
He said, Abraham, rejoice to see my day. And he saw it and
was glad. That ark. The ark of Noah, it
was Christ. He's our ark. The Sabbath, Christ
is our, all of that. It's all about Christ from Genesis
all the way to Revelation. It's the gospel of God's grace
wherein the righteousness of God is revealed. Okay.