We have lifted our voice in song.
I told Winston, I like that song. We ought to sing it more than
just Easter time. It's beautiful, isn't it? Glad to see y'all out
this morning to hear the gospel. As you can see, the title of
the message is The Righteousness of God, Part 2. Let me comment
on that a minute, because somebody already said, when I see Part
2, I wonder, what did I miss last week? These messages will
all be self-contained messages. So, if you missed it, you can
get it on tape, or you're not really going to need to have
it to understand what's going to be said here. So, I just subtitled
this one, God's Redemptive Glory, because I'm going to talk about
three points, three more reasons. reasons why the righteousness
of God is perhaps the single most important doctrine in the
scriptures. Reasons for that. And of course
the righteousness of God, it upholds everything we believe
in the gospel. It's the foundation of everything
we believe. So let me just remind you of
what we looked at last week on this subject. the righteousness
of God, why it's important that we understand it. First of all,
it's God's standard of judgment. He said in Acts 17.31, God has
appointed a day in which He will judge this world in righteousness
by that man whom He's ordained. So it's God's standard. Second,
it's important that we understand it because God's righteousness
is the only righteousness that can be communicated to sinners.
It's the only way we can have righteousness. It's communicated
by imputation. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputes righteousness without works. Romans 4 and verse 6. And then the third reason we
looked at, because this righteousness is the source of spiritual and
eternal life. Now I want to go back to this
last point here with just a few additional comments. Look back
with me at 1 John 2 and verse 28. John writes to the church
here and he says, Now, little children, abide in him, that's
abide in Christ, that when he shall appear, we may have confidence
and not be ashamed before him at his coming. If you know that
he is righteous, you know that everyone that doeth righteousness
is born of him. If you know that he, if you know
that Christ, alone in all the world is righteous. He's the
one that upheld God's standard. He's the one God counts righteous.
And only those found in Him are counted righteous with Him. Christ
died under the penalty and punishment of sin imputed, but His death
put away sin. His death satisfied the law and
justice of God. His death brought in that everlasting
righteousness. And God testified of that when
He raised Him from the dead. Alleluia! Christ is risen. He
lives because the righteousness that He established demanded
His life, and because it demands the life of every sinner He lived
and died for. He's the source of life. Christ's
righteousness imputed to the sinner is the ground and very
source of eternal life. Now why did Christ come to this
earth? Why did He come? He came to save His people from
their sins. He didn't come to make His people
savable. He didn't come to make a way
for sinners to be saved if they'd do something. No, He came to
save His people from their sins. He came to save His people from
the end that we deserved based on the best we can do. And He
came to save His people from the eternal death that we would
be facing, except He came and stood in our place and obeyed
the law and suffered and bled and brought out that righteousness.
What did Christ do to save His people from their sins? He upheld
God's standard of judgment. He established righteousness
in the earth. Why did He need to do that? Because
it had never been done before. No man had done it. Adam was
upright in his creation, but he fell. And since then, there
is none righteous. No, not one, according to the
Scriptures. So without Christ coming, there was no righteousness. There is no righteousness in
the earth. From Adam to the present, there's none that God can look
to, look at his obedience, and say to him, you're righteous
based on what you've done. There's none like that. From
eternity, when God looked forward to fallen humanity, all He saw
was this, none righteous, no, not one. That's why Christ had
to come. That's why salvation has to be conditioned on Him
and Him alone. Now, here's what I want to reemphasize
as we lead into this message. Why must Christ's righteousness
imputed be the source of spiritual and eternal life? It must be.
Why must it be? It must be because before God
can give a sinner eternal life, before the Spirit of God can
impart to a sinner life, He must first pronounce that sinner righteous
in His sight. Now that sinner is spiritually
dead, so it can't be anything found in him. So the basis of
life, the basis of eternal life, must be Christ's righteousness
imputed. For God to declare a sinner righteous on any basis but the
imputed righteousness of Christ alone would be unjust. Nothing else, like I said, nothing
in us, nothing done by us, nothing we're enabled to do measures
up to God's standard of righteousness. And God is just. He can't give
life to a sinner. He can't justify a sinner on
any basis but righteousness alone. A just God and sinner would not
be glorified in a salvation that was based on anything but the
imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. God's chief
design in salvation, as it is in all things, is His glory.
Now, what does that mean, His glory? That's a big word. It
means the honor of His character. It means how is He honored in
what He does. His glory, His honor, that's
what He's talking about. God is not just seeking to save
sinners in this matter of salvation. In other words, He's not just
looking to populate heaven. No, He's looking to glorify Himself
in the hearts of a multitude of sinners. That's what His goal
is. His goal in salvation is to have
a people in whose hearts He's glorified. In other words, to
have a people who can worship Him as a just God and Savior,
who can worship Him based on a righteousness they had no part
in producing, who can worship Him based on the righteousness
of God alone. A people who will honor Christ
as the one righteousness imputed, who enables God to be just and
justifier. Now, we're looking at reasons
in this message and last, why the righteousness of God is the
most important single piece of information that we need to know
and understand. And our first reason today is
this. Because the righteousness of
God is the only way every attribute of God's character can be honored
in the salvation of ungodly sinners. In other words, the righteousness
of God is the only way God's redemptive glory can be upheld
in salvation. It's the only way he'll be honored,
is for salvation to be conditioned entirely on the righteousness
Christ worked out, that imputed to the account of sinners and
that alone. Now God's greatest glory is His
redemptive glory. God's glorified in creation.
I mean, there are attributes of His character that are honored
in the creation of the earth. His wisdom, His power, His faithfulness. We see these things in creation.
He's glorified in providence. He rules in the armies of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth. Everything that happens
in this world is by the providence of God, is by the hand of God.
His hand is on this earth. There's nothing happening by
chance, as people call it. He rules here, as He does in
heaven. So He's glorified in creation
and He's glorified in providence, but His redemptive glory, that's
what identifies Him. That's what distinguishes Him
from an idol of our imagination. Look at Isaiah 45 and verse 21. He said, Tell ye, and bring them
near, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient
time? Who hath told it from that time?
Have not I the Lord? And there is no God beside me,
a just God and a Savior. There is none else beside me.
You see, that's what identifies and distinguishes God from any
would-be idol in the minds of men. He's a just God and a Savior. Fallen humanity has no interest
in God's redemptive glory. We have no interest in whether
God's character is honored in salvation or not. Look at Romans
3 and verse 18. Now this is a discourse that
starts back in verse 10 where he says there's none righteous.
No, not one. It goes on to say there's none
that seek it after God. No, not one. And this is the
bottom line on the indictment against fallen man. There is
no fear of God. before their eyes. There's no
reverential respect for the honor of God's character in the salvation
of sinners. In order for God to be glorified
in salvation, the righteousness Christ has established, that
righteousness by which God declares sinners, must be made known. It must be revealed because the
righteousness of God is not something that the natural man has ever
heard of. It's not something he has any
interest in. It's not something he has any
value for. Now, I know that by experience
because that's me. in my religious experience before
I came to the gospel. I had no interest in God's redemptive
glory and how He could be just and justifier. I had no interest
in an imputed righteousness. I didn't know anything about
it. I didn't care that I didn't know anything about it. I was
just going my happy way, and I thought I was okay. I was going
my merry way wherever I was going. Thank God He stopped me in my
tracks and didn't leave me going that way. I would have gladly
gone on until God brought me to the Gospel and revealed the
righteousness of God to me, and then by His grace revealed it
in me in regeneration. Universal Atonement is a common
teaching in this world. In fact, it's the prevalent teaching
among those who name the name of Christ. Now, Universal Atonement
says that Christ died for everyone, but Everyone he died for is not
necessarily going to be saved. You're not going to be saved
unless you meet that condition of faith or repentance or walk
in that aisle or whatever. So that's a denial of God's glory
because believing that any sinner Christ died for will perish denies
what this Word says Christ's death accomplished. This Word
says Christ's death purged and put away sins. It says that he
came to this earth the first time to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. It says that his blood, by his
blood, not by the blood of bulls and calves, but by his own blood,
he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption. So a message that says Christ
died for you, but you could perish anyway, it's a denial of the
glory of Christ revealed in the scriptures. God the Father is
just to justify every sinner Christ died for, because Christ
worked out a perfect righteousness for him. Christ put away that
sinner's sin, and that righteousness imputed to the account of a sinner
enables God to justify that sinner, to declare him righteous in his
sight. So God the Father is just to justify every sinner Christ
died for, and the Spirit of God is just to impart eternal life
to every sinner Christ died for, based on, because of, Christ's
righteousness imputed alone. That's the salvation that honors
God as a just God and a Savior. That's the salvation that exalts
Christ as the Lord our righteousness, and that's the salvation that
excludes boasting and men. We've got nothing to brag about.
It's all based on the work of Christ. It's all His righteousness
accounted to us. That's our hope of salvation,
and that's the only hope a sinner has. If any sinner has an interest
in God's redemptive glory, how God is just to justify, it's
because God has given them that interest. Like I said, none of
us start out with that interest. Look at 2 Corinthians 4 and verse
6. It says, for God who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. Now, just like in creation, God
who commanded the light to shine out of darkness in creation,
just like in creation, before God shined that light in the
world, it was dark, it was void, nothing appeared because there
was no light. And that's the same way it is
in salvation. Before God shines the light of the knowledge of
His glory, we're spiritually dead. We have no vision of God's
redemptive glory. We have no view of how He can
rightly, justly show mercy to a sinner and be right in doing
so. We don't know that. The righteousness of God is the
most important single piece of information sinners can know
because the only way every attribute of God's character can be honored
in the salvation of ungodly sinners is based on the righteousness
of God, the righteousness of Christ imputed. All right, how
do sinners know that Christ alone in all the universe is righteous?
If you know that he is righteous, how do you know that? Where do
sinners hear about an imputed righteousness? Where do sinners
hear about the righteousness of God being the only thing making
the difference between saved and lost, blessed and cursed,
justified and condemned? Where do sinners hear about the
redemptive glory of God? Well, you know where it is. It's
in the gospel. The righteousness of God is the most important
single piece of information sinners can know and understand because
the righteousness of God is what makes the gospel, the power of
God, unto salvation. Look at Romans 1, 16 and 17. Paul writes, for I'm not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and the
salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to
the Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed
from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall
live by faith. The gospel of Christ is the power
of God and the salvation for one reason. You see it there?
Therein is the righteousness of God revealed. The most immediate
need of sinners is to hear the gospel. That's the most immediate
need a sinner has in this world. The most immediate need of sinners
is to hear what Christ has done that makes it right for God to
show mercy to sinners, sinners who've done nothing to deserve
it. The most immediate need of sinners is to hear that righteousness,
which is only revealed in the gospel and which is always revealed
in the gospel. And I can make that statement
so clearly that I can say this, if you don't hear the righteousness
of God, if you don't hear what makes it just for God to show
mercy to a sinner and be right to do that, if you don't hear
that, the message you heard might have been Somebody looking at
the Bible, talking about the Bible, but it's not God's gospel.
It's not that gospel unless the righteousness of God is revealed
in that message. The gospel, you see, it's a unique
message. It's one of a kind. It's unique
in who it reveals. It says it's the gospel of Christ,
you see. It's a declaration of Christ's
unique person. He's a unique person. He's a
one-of-a-kind person. He's the God-man. There's no
other like him. He's the only person that has
two distinct natures. This person is both God and man
in one person. Not part God, not part man, but
fully God and fully man. His two natures are not co-mingled,
they're separate. He's God and He's man in one
person. In Him, infinite deity and true
sinless humanity exist in perfect harmony. Look at one context
of Scripture that shows us these things to be true. Look at Romans
1, verses 1 through 4. Paul begins his letter here to
the Romans. He said, Paul, a servant of Jesus
Christ, Paul called to be an apostle, separated into the gospel
of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in the
Holy Scriptures, concerning his son Jesus Christ, which was made
of the seed of David according to the flesh, that's Christ's
humanity, and declared to be the son of God with power according
to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
That's His deity right there, declared to be the Son of God.
You see, He was made of the seed of David, but He wasn't made
to be the Son of God. He was declared to be the Son
of God. He always was the Son of God. This is the second person
of the triune God. And therefore, He's the eternal
Son of God. That's His deity. He's God and
man in one person. And it's the resurrection that
declared Him to be the Son of God. If you remember Acts 17.31
from last week, God assures all men that Christ's righteousness
is God's standard of judgment. And His resurrection is what
assures men of that. His resurrection declares Christ's
finished work. It declares that He made an end
of sin and brought in everlasting righteousness like Daniel prophesied. Christ's resurrection declares
that His sheep are justified on the basis of His righteousness
imputed along, Romans 4 and verse 25. Only the God-man, only one
who is God and man in one person could put away sin, sin's demand
for eternal Everlasting punishment. Only the God-man could do that.
Only the God-man could establish an everlasting righteousness
of infinite value. Only the God-man could honor
God's redemptive glory in the salvation of ungodly sinners. So the gospel is unique. First
of all, it's unique because of who it reveals. It's also unique
because of what it reveals. Look back at Romans 1, 16 and
17. For I am not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ, for it is the power of God in salvation to everyone
that believeth, to the Jew first, also to the Greek. For therein
is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is
written, the just shall live by faith. The gospel reveals
something that no other message preached in this world reveals. It reveals the work, the unique
work of the God-man. It reveals the righteousness
of God. Therein is that righteousness
revealed. The Gospel is a declaration of
this unique work by Christ. It's a declaration of His accomplished
salvation. The Gospel is not an offer from
God to sinners to do something to be saved. Do something and
get yourself saved. That's not what the Gospel talks
about. The Gospel is a declaration of
what Christ has already done to save His people from their
sins. Christ has already put away the sins of those He was
given. He's already established the everlasting righteousness
by which God declares His people righteous. He alone upheld God's
standard of judgment. He alone brought in the only
righteousness that can be communicated to sinners by amputation. He
alone has produced the righteousness by which the Spirit of God imparts
spiritual and eternal life to every sinner Christ was given.
Every sinner that He redeemed by His blood on the cross. Now
this is the Savior, and this is the salvation sinners need
to hear about. This is the salvation the Gospel reveals. It's revealing
the person and work of Christ. And Christ is the object of true
God-given faith. This Christ, the one I'm declaring
to you here, is the object of true faith. Sinners must hear
about the God-man. We must hear of His finished
work. We can't worship Him till we do. We can't trust Him till
we do. We can't know Him till we do.
Romans 10 says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. But how are they going to call
on Him in whom they've not believed? How will they believe in Him
of whom they've never heard? How will they hear without a
preacher? How will they preach except they be sent? Sent with
the gospel. Before we hear of Christ, the
God-man, this person who is the object of true faith, God-given
faith, before we hear of Him, we're like the woman at the well.
We worship, we know not what. The Gospel is unique because
of who it reveals. It reveals the God-man. And it's
unique because of what it reveals. It reveals the accomplished salvation
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's unique one more way.
The gospel is also unique because of what is accomplished under
this message alone. The gospel alone, it says, is
the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Under
the gospel message alone, sinners learn of a just God and Savior.
Under the gospel alone, sinners learn of the object of God-given
faith. And under the gospel alone, sinners
are saved. Look back at Romans 117. It says,
for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. The gospel is the power of God
in salvation because it reveals the righteousness of God. It
reveals that righteousness from faith. That means out of faith,
out of the faith. That's the gospel. The gospel
has to be preached before you can understand these things that
I'm telling you about God and about Christ. Without this revelation,
without the gospel and it revealing the righteousness of God, sinners
don't know God. Without this revelation, sinners
are not worshiping God. And they can't know or worship
God because they've never heard of the true and living God. They've
never heard a just God and Savior distinguished from the would-be
idols of our mind. They've never heard how God can
show mercy to a sinner who deserves nothing but his eternal wrath
and be doing right when he does it, be just. Sinners must hear
this body of truth, this faith. But the gospel also reveals the
righteousness of God, not just out of this faith, but into faith,
into Holy Spirit-wrought faith. Only under the gospel are those
whom God has saved Revealed. They are revealed. Those whom
God has saved are revealed. Those whom God the Father has
chosen and justified by Christ's righteousness alone. Those whom
God the Son has redeemed. Those whom God the Spirit has
imparted spiritual life to and called are made known. They're
made known under this gospel message that reveals God as a
just God and Savior. Look at Mark 16 and verse 15.
Christ is speaking to His disciples here after His resurrection,
and He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach
the gospel to every creature. He that believeth that gospel
and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be
damned. The gospel is the light. It's
the light that shines in the heart, the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ. It's light. Light, the primary
use of light, it reveals. It reveals what's already there.
It doesn't create anything new. It doesn't add anything to what's
there. You go into a dark room and you flip on the light switch,
light doesn't make anything appear that wasn't already there. It
doesn't create anything. It simply reveals what's in that
room. That's what light does. That's
what the light of the gospel does in salvation. This is how
the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It first reveals
the righteousness of God. It's imperative that sinners
hear the message of the gospel. The righteousness of God is the
source of salvation. It's the basis and ground upon
which the Spirit of God gives life to a spiritually dead sinner.
But it then, having revealed that message of truth to the
minds of men, it then reveals those whom God has already saved
on the basis of that righteousness that the gospel reveals. Under
the gospel, sinners don't become saved as if they weren't saved
when they came, but then they believe and get saved. That's
not what the gospel teaches. Under the gospel, it says, go
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. That is, they'll
be revealed to have already been saved. It's not at this time
that they're coming into something they didn't already have. It's
just something being revealed in them that was already there. The preaching of the gospel will
reveal their justification. It will reveal their redemption. It will reveal their spiritual
life. And it will do all that by revealing
their God-given faith. Their believing, their faith,
will only evidence the eternal life the Holy Spirit has already
imparted to them. They will believe on the Son
declared in the Gospel, and their believing on Him will give evidence
of the life that the Spirit of God gives to sinners, imparts
to them, based on Christ's imputed righteousness alone. Look at
John 3 and verse 36. He that believeth on the Son
hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall
not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. The sinner
believing on the Son, he says, he hath eternal life. He already
has eternal life. That's why he believed. You see,
we got this thing reversed by nature. We think, well, you believe
and then you have life. No, you believe because God has
already imparted to you life, based on the righteousness of
Christ. The sinner believing on the Son,
revealed in the preaching of the gospel is evidence of that
life that he's already been given. Look at 1 Corinthians 1 and verse
18. It says, for the preaching of
the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which
are saved, it is the power of God. The gospel is the power
by which God saves us. It's the power by which that
salvation is evidenced and realized. God's gospel is the means of
salvation in the spiritual realm. There's the eternal realm that
God worked in, in eternity, choosing a people, placing them in Christ,
conditioning all their salvation on Christ alone. There's the... legal realm where Christ came
and met and satisfied all the conditions of his people and
put away their sin and worked out that righteousness by which
God justifies. And then there's the spiritual
realm. That's the realm we're in in this age. That's what the
gospel's doing when it goes out to people now. God is calling
people out of darkness unto light. He's calling them out of ignorance
unto the knowledge of Him as a just God and Savior under the
preaching of His gospel. The gospel is the means of that
salvation. It must go out. Sinners must
hear this message. It's the means by which sinners
learn of the object of true faith. It's also the means used by the
Spirit to bring a sinner from death to life, from darkness
to light, from going about to establish a righteousness of
our own, to resting in Christ alone. The gospel of Christ is
unique for these three reasons. It reveals the God-man. It reveals
his accomplished salvation. And because only under the message
of the gospel will the Spirit grant eternal life. And only
the message of the gospel reveals those who've been given God-given
faith. The gospel is the faith. It's
the body of truth that brings sinners into God-given faith. Sinners are never brought to
God-given faith apart from the body of truth that reveals the
righteousness of God. In other words, no righteousness,
no gospel. No gospel, no revelation of the
object of true faith. No revelation of that object,
no salvation in the spiritual realm. The spirit does no work
of imparting, nor can a sinner give any evidence of believing
one he's never heard of. one that's foreign to his mind.
The righteousness of God is the most important single piece of
information sinners need to know and understand. Second reason,
because it, that righteousness, is what makes the gospel the
power of God and the salvation. One more reason. why the righteousness
of God is important for us to know and understand. Because
the righteousness of God is the one thing that Satan seeks to
keep hidden from sinners. If there's one thing in the world
that Satan wants to keep hidden from the minds of men, hidden
from the interest of men, if there's one thing It's the righteousness
of God. It's the redemptive glory of
God. It's how God is just to justify sinners based on the
imputed righteousness of Christ. Look at 2 Corinthians 4 and verse
3. He says, but if our gospel be
hid, it's hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this
world, that's Satan, has blinded the minds of them which believe
not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the
image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants, for
Jesus' sakes. Satan, you see what he does?
He blinds the minds of them to what? To the gospel. And what's
always revealed in the gospel? The righteousness of God. What
Satan wants to do, contrary to the thinking of a lot of people,
they think he wants to get you out on the riverbank. And it's
okay if you go out on the riverbank, he doesn't mind that. But you
know where he would rather have a sinner sitting today, on this
day? Sitting in a church just like
you and I are sitting, but where the gospel that reveals the righteousness
of God is not preached? That's exactly what he'd rather
have them do it. He wants to keep sinners from
hearing about what honors God in the salvation of ungodly sinners. And he binds even the elect.
There's an elect people. God's already justified them
based on the righteousness of Christ imputed. Christ has already
redeemed them. They owe no debt to God's law
or God's justice. But before they come to the gospel,
they're just as blind as any other. Satan blinds their minds
just like everybody else. Christ's purpose in coming was
to break Satan's hold over his sheep and to deliver them from
this blindness. Look at Hebrews 2 and verse 14.
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood,
he also himself," he's speaking of Christ here of course, "...he
also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death
he might destroy him that had the power of death," that is
the devil, "...and deliver them who through fear of death were
all their lifetime subject to bondage." That word destroy there
in verse 14, it means to render powerless. To take away the power
of something. It doesn't mean to destroy in
the sense of just annihilate him. Christ destroyed Satan. He rendered him powerless to
condemn his elect by the work he did on the cross. And it says,
He came to deliver them who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage. You see, the elect in this world,
are just like everybody else, going about to establish of their
own, a righteousness of their own. We're trying to work out
our own salvation before God sets us down under the gospel.
And Christ came to deliver us from that bondage. That's bondage. Trying to work out your own salvation,
which you can't do, is bondage. And Christ came to deliver His
sheep, and He does deliver each of His sheep in time and each
generation when He brings them to the gospel and persuades His
sheep that what Christ alone has done to save us and to keep
us unto final glory. We give glory to God in our salvation,
and we enter into that deliverance of Christ. by resting in Christ,
by resting in his imputed righteousness for all our salvation. And we
enter into that deliverance continually by looking to Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before
him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is sat down at
the right hand of the throne of God. We enter into that deliverance
by looking to Him who keeps us in this world. Having saved us
and having brought us to the gospel, He keeps us in this world.
Look at John 16 and verse 33. These things I have spoken unto
you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall
have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world."
A lot of things happen to us in this world. They're tribulation
to us. They make us anxious. They cause
us grief. But those resting in Christ know
that whatever tribulation befalls us in this world, our final end
is certain. And it's not because of anything
we're doing. It's because of the work of Christ Jesus, our
Lord, on our behalf. We enter into that deliverance
by looking to the One who will preserve us unto final glory.
Christ will preserve His sheep. Christ prayed for the preservation
of His church in the world. Look at John 17 and verse 14. Now, this context, he's praying
for his immediate disciples, and also those who will believe
on him through their word, as that gospel goes out. He says,
I've given them thy word, and the world has hated them because
they're not of this world, even as I am not of this world. I
pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but
that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of
the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through
thy truth, thy word is truth." The church, the body of believers,
is made up of sinners who are sanctified, we're set apart by
the truth, the gospel. We're in the righteousness of
God, that gospel that we believe and come to hear week in and
week out. The church is made up of regenerate
sinners gathered where that gospel is preached, where Christ is
lifted up as the Lord our righteousness, where God is glorified as a just
God and Savior. Our preservation is Christ. We're delivered from this world,
though we're in this world. We're not of this world. We have
another world we're looking for. The world that Christ has ordained
for us by his work. We look to Christ. We look to
his blood to cleanse us. We look to his righteousness
to clothe us. We look to his word to preserve
us as we move through this world. Let me do a quick review and
I'm done. The righteousness of God is the most important single
piece of information sinners need to know and understand because
the righteousness of God is the only way God's redemptive glory
can be upheld in salvation. No other way but by His righteousness
imputed. Second, because the righteousness
of God is what makes the gospel the power of God and the salvation. And third, because the righteousness
of God is the one thing that Satan wants to blind men's minds
to. May the Lord bless us to understand
the righteousness of God and the work of Christ on our behalf,
which saves us and keeps us in the final glory.