Romans chapter five, and I want
to read from verse one. Therefore, being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein
we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not
only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation
worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. And hope maketh not ashamed,
because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost, which is given unto us. For when we were yet without
strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely
for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good
man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward
us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified
by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if,
when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death
of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved
by his life. and not only so, but we also
joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received
the atonement. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. There are many, many wonderful
truths. in this book that we are here
considering this evening, this holy scripture that the Lord
has given to us. Many wonderful truths and many
glorious revelations which God has granted to his church and
people, things that we could never have discovered not by
all the wisdom of humankind, and yet they have been revealed. God the Holy Spirit taking men
and teaching them and showing them and causing them to write,
inspiring them to bring a message of revelation to his church,
to his people. Profound messages which make
up this Word of God which we hold in our hands. God grant
that we never become inured to the sense of miraculousness that
this book should inspire in our hearts and minds. And yet, no matter what portion
of scripture I read and try to understand, Invariably I come
away thinking that I've only just scratched the surface and
there is so much more to learn. The Word of God is not complicated. The scriptures are not difficult
to understand. The language is straightforward
and easy. And some people might say, yes,
but it's 16th century language in that old authorised version
that you use. You should use a modern version.
There's nothing in this authorised version that a few moments of
thinking. won't give us the meaning and
understanding. And these words, which have blessed
the church for hundreds and hundreds of years, will still, we believe,
bless the church today. So we feel no reason to have
to change the glory and the loveliness of our translation here to go
somewhere else. We've become familiar with these
truths and these words, and we've learned to love them. But it's
a simple message. It's a direct message. A wayfaring
man, though a fool, can understand these things. The message is
direct. The message is honest. And it is forthright. And as
we come to it and we read it and we study it, if we come to
it with any degree of conscientiousness about what we are about, the
Holy Spirit will lead us into truth. And you don't need a university
degree to understand and to read the Bible aright. Someone could actually make a
good argument, I think, that you would be better off not having
a university degree. because invariably it makes things
too sophisticated and brings too much of man's learning and
man's ingenuity to the clear and straightforward words of
Scripture. I want to read to you a few verses
from 1 Corinthians 2. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians
2 because I want this to be a platform for what we're about to say this
evening. And just to show you what the
Apostle Paul's view of this gospel message was, this message that
he was commissioned to take to the nations and particularly
to the Gentiles. And remember that this was a
message that the Apostle was preaching, was teaching. This
message, for example, that went to Rome, this message of which
he said he was not ashamed, that was going to people who probably
had very little in the way of the education that people have
today, who may well have been illiterate, who may well have
been labouring men and women, who may well have been servants
and brought up in servitude all their days. And even if they
had some religious background, some religious understanding,
If it had been in Judaism, then they were, in some senses, blocked
out from understanding the true beauty of free grace. And if
it was in heathendom, then they were all mixed up with views
of idolatry and polytheism and strange and mystical ideas. The Apostle Paul was bringing
a message, and we've been reading in the early chapters of the
Book of Romans, and some of us will scratch our heads and say,
wow, this is deep stuff, this is difficult stuff. It's not!
It was written to a people who didn't have anything like the
educational backgrounds that we've got. And we should be careful
to understand and thoughtful as we bring our attention to
these truths that we don't think, oh, this is for somebody else.
No, this is for us. and it's for us because God the
Holy Spirit knew that you and I needed to hear these truths. Listen to what the Apostle Paul
says when he's speaking to the church at Corinth. Okay, it's
not Rome this time, but the principles, I'm sure, are the same. He says,
and I, brethren, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 1, And I, brethren,
when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or
of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined
not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness
and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak
wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world,
nor of the princes of this world, that come to naught. But we speak
the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which
God ordained before the world unto our glory. which none of
the princes of this world knew, for had they known it, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written,
I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that
love him. But God hath revealed them unto
us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth
the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him?
Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the
spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that
we might know the things that are freely given to us of God,
which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom
teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual
things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
unto him. Neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth
all things. Yet he himself is judged of no
man. For who hath known the mind of
the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of
Christ. The Apostle Paul is telling the
people here that there is a definiteness in the message that
we have to give to this world. The word of God isn't complicated,
and yet it requires spiritual insight and understanding to
grasp its true message. and of all the wonderful truths,
and of all the glorious revelations, and of all the profound messages
that are contained in this book. It is this message of the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is most sublime. That's the message. That's why
Paul said, when I came to you, I determined not to know anything
among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And that's what
the gospel of Christ is about. That's the gospel of which Paul
in writing to the Romans said, I'm not ashamed of this gospel
because I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation. People come and they say, Shouldn't
you be preaching more to people's needs? Shouldn't you be preaching
more to people's circumstances and applying it to their lives
and the problems of their lives? Shouldn't you be teaching your
congregation how to be godly, how to live godly lives? Shouldn't
you be teaching them about holy living? And I say, If you go
to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, you will learn there
all you need to know about holy living. Well, shouldn't you teach them
about family life and marital relationships? And I say, if you have been to
the cross, if you have sat at the cross, If you, metaphorically
speaking, have watched as the blood of the saviour dripped
from his toes, you will know something about
relationships and how you should treat one another. Shouldn't you teach people about
what's going to happen Shouldn't you be telling them about judgment
to come and the end times? And what's going to happen with
the Jews? And what about this beast that's coming? And what
about 666? I tell you this, the cross of
the Lord Jesus Christ puts all of man's weird and wonderful
ideas to bed. If you understand the death of
Christ, then you understand everything that is important. You understand
what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. And you may not get a degree
from an Ivy League university for what you know, but I tell
you this, you will know more than the United Theology departments
of those universities. You will know more about God.
You will know more about yourself. You will know more about what
it cost the Lord Jesus Christ to suffer. If we know who died
on that cross, if we know why he died on the cross. If we know how he died on the
cross, if we know for whom he died on the cross, and if we
know what resulted from his death on the cross, we will know sufficient
to understand what this plan of salvation cost and how precious
it truly is. When the Apostle Paul has been
speaking here in these early chapters of Romans, he has been
speaking about our free justification by the imputation of God's righteousness
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now please don't think that that
is such a mouthful that you can't possibly get your head around
it. What we've just been talking about is the fact that you can
get your head around that if the Holy Spirit leads you to
understand these truths. These are the building blocks
of comfort that your salvation is built upon. The Apostle Paul
has shown us that men and women are by nature fallen and sinful,
that we are under condemnation by a holy God, that that's just
our state in Adam. And the Apostle Paul, in a sense,
has challenged men and women to be faithful and honest about
it. And he has said that it doesn't
matter whether you're a Jew with the finest theological revelations
that could possibly have been given and gained, or whether
you are a heathen idolater who's never come across the one true
God in all of your life. It doesn't matter, you are both
regarded as equally guilty before a holy God. And man knows it. He knows it in his heart, and
he knows it in his conscience. And he might deny it, and he
might be deceived, and he might pretend that he is worthy in
some element and aspect. But the reality is, says Paul,
that we are all guilty before a holy God. And then he goes
on to say, but God found a way of recovery. God has a plan of
salvation and he has taught us something of the facts of that
plan, how it is of grace, how it isn't in any way dependent
upon the works of the individual, how that the testimony of scripture
in the examples of David and the examples of Abraham prove
that the promises of God for the good of men were established
before anyone ever believed in them, or had faith in them, or
did anything towards gaining them. And these are the gifts
of God's grace, whereby he makes us fit for his presence. How is it done? not by giving
us a new jacket, not by giving us a new morality, not by giving
us some sort of external covering, but by giving us the very righteousness
of God himself. And so we call that justification,
that we have been made right with God. It's justification
and it's free because it doesn't depend on anything that we do. It's God's will to give it and
he gives it freely. And he gives it to us by imputation. He gives it to us by reckoning
it to us, by saying you have it and I view you as being under
the benefits of that righteousness because I see you in my son,
Jesus Christ. And so when we make a phrase
like the free justification by imputation of God's righteousness
in the Lord Jesus Christ, that's a summary, right, of an amazing
message which has been accomplished by our God in the triune of his
persons. Justified because the elect are
made acceptable to a holy God despite their sin. free because
it's a gift of grace, it's a gift of his goodness, utterly independent
of man's deserts, what they deserve. By imputation because reckoned
to our personal account by God himself. Reckoned to us personally by
God himself. It's God's righteousness that
he gives us, not a legal righteousness, not righteousness under the law,
but his divine righteousness. And it comes to us in the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is the Lord, our righteousness. And Paul has
shown in these verses that the elect of God, those chosen people
whom God is pleased to lay these blessings upon, are justified
everlastingly in the eternal covenant and purpose of God.
And that justification, that bestowing or imputing or reckoning
to be righteous flows from the love of God, which is itself
everlasting, for God doesn't change. And it is a love which comes
to the elect. So that these verses before us
in Romans chapter five, the Holy Spirit is showing us that we
have seen God's love in action as we have seen the plan of salvation
and redemption in his covenant purpose set before us in these
early chapters of Romans. This is the message of God's
love in action. And we should not be discovered,
brothers and sisters in the Lord, to discover that once again the
Apostle Paul takes us to the cross of Christ to show us these
facts. He says in verse 6, Romans 5
verse 6, For when we were yet without strength in due time,
Christ died for the ungodly. You want to know about the love
of God? People talk about the love of God all the time. You
want to know about the love of God? When we were yet without
strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Without strength means that we
were impotent. Impotent means we don't have
any power. We were powerless. There was nothing that we could
do. When we were without strength, it was then that Christ died
for the ungodly. We were sick unto death. We were
incapable of doing anything that would please a holy God or earn
his benefits. We were Adam's heirs, and as
Adam's heirs, we were already separated from God. And an angel,
cherubim with a fiery sword, placed in the gap that we could
never approach unto him in his holiness. We were lost. We were without hope. And in that moment, the Lord
Jesus Christ died. That tells us something. That
tells us that it was God, the God-man who died. It was the
Lord Jesus Christ who died. He did really die. God came into this world and
died for the ungodly. Ungodly means sinful. Ungodly
means a people that were at enmity with him. that were opposed to
him, that were rebellious against him, who had no time for him,
who wanted to go their own way, who looked at God and raised
their fist and said, we will not have you rule over us. And the apostle says that it
all happened in due time. It all happened according to
a plan. It all happened according to
a schedule. It all happened according to
this covenant purpose of God. Due time as prophecy foretold. The Lord didn't come early and
he didn't come late. He came in due time as prophecy
had foretold he would. He came when the law that had
been given to Moses had fully been tried and tested by men
throughout the ages and showed them to be incapable of reaching
its standard. And it came when sin was at its
height and the consuming power of sin take men and women to
a lost eternity forever under the judgment and condemnation
of God. And I want to make this point clear, please, to us this
evening. Christ died for the ungodly. That was their condition when
he died for them. Now, the religion of today will
say that the Lord Jesus Christ died for everyone. And then it
will say that the provisions of his death will be applied
according to men's faith. So if we come believing, then
the benefits of the death of Christ will be given to us. And
as it were, we will make them effectual. We will give to the
death of Christ an effect because we have believed. Now, if we
are believing in Christ, are we ungodly when we believe? Or
are we doing the will of God in believing? We're doing the
will of God in believing. Then we're not ungodly. But Christ
didn't die for the godly. He died for the ungodly. And
it's his gift to the ungodly. That's the reason why it also
says in chapter 4 verse 5 that God justifies the ungodly. God didn't justify the people
that he saw. when he looked down through the
ages of time would believe when they heard the message of the
gospel. That makes his justification dependent upon their obedience. And if their obedience is their
godliness, then how could he justify the ungodly? We have
to take Scripture and we have to turn it all around if the
modern day view of the free will preacher is to be given any credibility. Rather, Christ died for the ungodly. And the day that you come to
confess yourself as ungodly is the day that you will be able
to say, Christ died for me. Are you godly or are you ungodly? People will say, well, everybody's
ungodly. Oh, really? Let me give you some
verses here. I kind of resort to these verses
because I find them just so beautiful. They're from a hymn writer and
a preacher called Joseph Hart, and he wrote these words. To
understand these things are right, this grand distinction should
be known. Though all are sinners in God's
sight, there are but few so in their own. To such as these our
Lord was sent. They're only sinners who repent. What comfort can a saviour bring
to those who never felt their woe? A sinner is a sacred thing. The Holy Ghost has made him so. new life from him we must receive
before for sin we rightly grieve. This faithful saying, let us
own well worthy it is to be believed that Christ into the world came
down that sinners might by him be saved. Sinners are high in
his esteem. and sinners highly value him. When we were yet without strength,
in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Verse seven, the apostle
gives us an example from the world of men and he shows us
something of the rarity of self-sacrifice. He said, for scarcely for a righteous
man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man, some would even
dare to die. Sometimes in war, sometimes in
battle, men would give their lives for their country or their
comrades, sometimes for honor. sometimes for applause, sometimes
for those that they love, for their family, for their children.
A man would dare to give his life. But in the natural realm, there
is reason and there is high moral codes and virtues involved in
such a self-sacrifice. But says the Apostle, God commendeth
his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. Commendeth means shows or reveals
or introduces. It displays the true character
and the nature of the love of God. While we were sinners, Christ
died for us. He didn't die to be an example
to us. He didn't die to attract us or
to woo us in some way. He didn't die to shame us into
following after God, but he died to justify us. He died to take
away our sin. That's the message that the Apostle
is giving to us here. The Lord Jesus Christ died to
cleanse us from our sin, to redeem us from the law, and to reconcile
us to God, to take away that condemnation which legitimately
is ours as disobedient people and under the condemnation of
Adamic sin. and to reconcile us and make
us to be at peace with God. That's why Jesus died. That's
the purpose of his coming. And the reason why the Lord God,
the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost sent the Lord
Jesus Christ, the God-man to the cross, was because of his
love for his people. God commendeth his love towards
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And so here is the love of God
being revealed. And men can talk about the love
of God all they like. They can talk about feeling it.
They can talk about gaining it. They can talk about having it.
They can talk about it as some principle that they use to justify
all their conduct and all their activities while God still loves
us. How many people have gone to
their grave with the words of a minister or a priest ringing
in the congregation's ears, well, God loved them, or God loved
her. Well, God commendeth his love
towards us in that when we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us, and that's where the love of God is to be found. Love is
particular, and it's as particular as is redemption. God loves those
that Christ died for, and Christ died for those whom God loves. And God has never loved anyone
for whom Christ didn't die, and Christ didn't die for anyone
who God never eternally loved. It is coextensive. The love of
God and the death of Christ cover exactly the same individuals. Verse 9 goes on to tell us that
this is a definite love. It's a love upon which personal justification,
personal Reconciliation with God through imputed righteousness
is founded and it is witnessed in the Lord Jesus Christ's death. It is applied to us in our salvation. Much more then, being now justified
by his blood, by his death, we shall be saved from wrath through
him. The love of God sent the Lord
Jesus Christ to die on the cross for the justification of his
people. And that justification, that
love will emanate, will end in the salvation of his people. Justified by his blood means
justified by his death, by his substitutionary work, and by
his representation of us on the cross before the holiness of
God. It was his blood, his death,
and it was the God-man's alone His death, Christ's death, the
animals that died in their thousands and their hundreds of thousands,
all through that sacrificial system, never could blot out
one sin from a man's soul. It was a picture of the efficacy
that was required in the blood of Jesus Christ. So we have justification
by Christ's death. We have cleansing. We have reconciliation. We have acceptance with God by
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is all our salvation. Do you want to be saved? Do you
want peace with God? Then go to the cross. Go to the
cross and look at the one who is hanging there. Go to the blood, go to the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it's there that we can be saved
from wrath against our sin. Only in and through the Lord
Jesus Christ is such a way of acceptance and salvation to be
found. This world is full of religions.
Men are full of ideas and philosophies of what is right and what is
acceptable and what is not. and it all boils down to this.
It's the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Get that right and you
know what true salvation is. Get it wrong and you're still
under the wrath of God and the condemnation of the law of God. In Christ, justification leads
to salvation. The love of God is experienced. outside of Christ, there is only
wrath and judgment. And if you have ever been given
a fear of God's judgment, if you've ever been given a fear
of hell and separation and wrath, then know this. that only in
going to the cross of Christ will these great horrors be alleviated. Outside of Christ there is only
wrath, but in the Lord Jesus Christ is peace and life and
joy. Look at verse 10. For if, when
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,
much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Reconciled when we were enemies. And that shows us that this has
to be God's work. That reconciliation, that peace,
vouched safe in the eternal covenant, was won and accomplished by the Lord
Jesus Christ on the cross. And our salvation is assured
to all eternity because Christ did what was required of him
on the cross. He died in our place, he took
our sins, He bore them in his body and he carried them away. And we have cleansing in him. That's where we were saved. That's where the battle was won.
And it is applied to us when under the sound of the gospel,
the Holy Spirit applies these truths to our hearts and shows
us that that fear of judgment, that awareness of being a sinner,
that sense of unworthiness before God of which Joseph Hart spoke
when he said that a sinner is a sacred thing. is a blessed
work of God the Holy Spirit in revealing to us our true nature
and beginning that process of opening up the way of salvation
to us in the death of Christ. Romans chapter five, verse 11,
we read, and not only so, but we also joy in God through our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. Atonement's a fine word. And here in verse 11 is the only
time in the New Testament that it is used. It's frequently used
in the Old Testament to speak of the day of atonement and the
atonement that was accomplished through the death of the sacrificial
animals. But here it is used in the New
Testament And it carries a sense of appeasing God's wrath, dispensing
with or removing God's wrath by the taking away of sin. So
it has these two elements to it. It's the appeasing of God
or the propitiation of God by the taking away of sin. And that's
the work that Christ accomplished on the cross, atonement. Actually,
it's a word which when the translators of the Bible in the earliest
days, whether it was Wycliffe or ultimately Tyndale, I think
it was Tyndale who came up with the word Wycliffe. I don't know, a century earlier
or so, maybe a little bit more, had said, at one with God. And it was Tyndale who came up
with the word atonement. In order to have a word, because
he didn't have another word in the vocabulary at that time,
which would bring together these two thoughts of God's anger being
removed because the sin which caused that anger had been taken
away, so he called it At-one-ment. Atonement. And it's a manufactured
word in order to explain this point. And that's what Christ
did on the cross. He atoned. He made us one with
God. Brought us together with God.
Making God to be at peace with us by the taking away of our
sin. Christ reconciled us to God when
he took away God's wrath as our sin-bearer, removing it from
his sight. And we joy in God, therefore. We have joy in God. And there's
a sense in which some of these things might appear to be quite
heavy and quite demanding on our minds, but I say to you again,
A wayfaring man though a fool, these things are not complicated,
they are clear and if the Holy Spirit will give us insight and
understanding, then we will find these things to be the greatest
value and comfort to our souls. We will joy in God. because the
Lord Jesus Christ causes us to joy by removing that fear of
legal condemnation, removing that sense of God's judgment
upon us in our consciences. Christ makes atonement. By the
gift of faith, we enter into the blessings which that atoning
work has accomplished. In these blessings, we will find
joy, joy in this world, joy in the Lord, joy and peace that
passes understanding because it will do us good in the face
of all the trials and difficulties that this world will bring. joy
that is eternal, joy that we will have in ages and ages to
come in the presence of our God, whose wrath against our sin has
been atoned and taken away. And we, for the sake of Christ,
for the sake of his blood, for the sake of his cross, are given
that joy in our hearts. May it be our portion, may it
be our blessing, may it be granted to us in our understanding by
God the Holy Spirit through faith to see these things which are
spiritually discerned and lay hold upon them as the only ground
of our salvation and our peace. For Jesus' sake we ask, amen.