If you would, go ahead and turn
back with me to Romans chapter 3. We'll begin reading in 23, but
let me first say a few things in way of introduction. Justice
and mercy. are the pillars of God's throne. And what I mean by that is this,
without both, God ceases to be God. Justice and mercy. The day you try to strip God
of His justice and His right to punish sin, that's the day
that you deny the true and living God of the Bible. When men and
women endeavor to rob God of His right to have mercy on whom
He'll have mercy and compassion on whom He'll have compassion,
it's also to deny God as He really is. You see, both God's justice
and God's mercy make God who and what He is. Very important. Very, very important. Never forget
that God is just, and at the same time, merciful. Now the
Greek word for just, as it's used in the scriptures, means
holy, innocent, and righteous. Holy, innocent, and righteous. That's what it means to be just. To justify is simply to make
one holy, innocent, and righteous. To be justified is to be made
holy, innocent, and righteous. Justification, that's a big word. It simply means the act of being
made holy, innocent, and righteous. The justifier is one who renders
and makes one holy, innocent, and righteous. God is just, He's
holy, innocent, and righteous, and He's also justifier. That is my only hope of being
saved. Justification is the only way
a sinner can be saved. Now in verse 23, we read for
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Every one
of us, every single one of us have sinned. Every one of us
has come short of the glory of God. Do you know what it means
to come short of the glory of God? It means that we come short
of glorifying God. Man was made for that very purpose,
to glorify God, to glorify His Creator. Man was made to glorify
God. And when man was created, he
was capable of doing so. But now, because of his sin,
he falls way short. Verse 19 tells us that all the
world, all the world, every man, every woman, every child born
of Adam have become guilty before God, made in the image of God,
holy, innocent, and righteous. But because of sin, we have all
become, notice the word, become guilty before God. And now we
come short of glorifying our God. And Paul says, every mouth
must be stopped. None can boast of their innocence,
their holiness, or their righteousness. You got to just shut up. We can't
say anything about what we are, what we have, or what we do.
guilty before God forever to come short of His glory unless
God does a work of justification in our hearts. Remember what
we said that was? An act of God making one holy,
innocent, and righteous. Justification. Verse 24, being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. And there's that wonderful word
justified. Did you notice how we're justified? Right here before us in verse
24, look at it. First, we're justified freely. Secondly, by His grace. Freely by His grace. Grace is always free. It's unmerited
favor. It's undeserved favor. Justified
freely by His grace. Thirdly, through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus. Isn't that so plain? God's just
laid this out here for us. We don't have to be Bible scholars
to understand this. We're justified. We're made holy. We're made innocent. We're made
righteous in the eyes of God, freely, by His grace, through
the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Now I don't know about
you, but it sounds to me like the salvation of sinners is God's
doing. Salvation is in Jesus Christ. Look at verse 25. Whom God hath
set forth to be a propitiation. God set forth. God sent His Son. God became flesh and blood. Christ was made sin for His people
to be a propitiation. Now don't let that word throw
you. It means an appeasement. To make peace with. That's what
it means. To make peace with. To amend
and to reconcile the fallen sinner to his God. That's what justification
is. This justification, this act
of being restored to holiness, innocence, and righteousness
is something that God has done for chosen sinners through God
the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice next that it is through
faith in His blood. Elect sinners are saved by grace
through faith. That's what Paul said. You're
saved by grace through faith. It's not of yourselves. We're
saved through faith in his blood, Paul says here. And it's through
believing in Christ's blood that was shed. In other words, by
believing that Christ died, he died the just, holy, innocent
and righteous for the unjust. We're just the opposite. We're
unholy. We're guilty. And we're unrighteous. Christ died the just for the
unjust. Now blood was shed. God's blood. God died. We looked at that in
detail last time. And God died so that the unjust
sinner might be justified. There it is again. Made just
by God. In order to be reconciled, brought
back into fellowship with God, we must be just. We must be holy,
innocent, and righteous. Paul said, that's all I want
to know concerning you. Jesus Christ and what Him crucified. Do you know who Jesus Christ
is? He's God. Do you know what God
the Son Jesus Christ did? He died. Even the death of the
cross. He was murdered. He was executed. The innocent was condemned. The just was condemned, executed,
murdered. His blood was shed so that the
guilty, the condemned sinner who's unjust, unholy, guilty,
and unrighteous might be saved." That is divine substitution. That's the heart of the gospel.
Why? Because I should have been executed.
You should have been executed. That's what crucifixion was.
It was an execution. God killed His Son in His chosen
people's place. God wasn't caught by surprise
when man sinned and said, oh, now what am I going to do? Christ
was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Our
justification comes from the Just One dying in our place. That's being made just. That
is in Christ alone being made restored to the holiness, the
innocence, and the right standing before God that we lost in Adam. Look at verse 25, for God has
set Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to
declare his righteousness. for the remission of sins that
are passed through the forbearance of God. Now pay close attention
here to what Paul is saying. Christ is our propitiation. He's our appeasement. Meaning
that Christ is the one who appeases God's wrath against us. Christ appeases God, how? By the shedding of his blood.
That's what we have to believe in. Have faith in His blood. So we now declare what? What do we declare? What do we
preach? His righteousness. His righteousness for the remission
of sins that are past. We declare, we preach, we proclaim
one thing and one thing only as the grounds of the chosen
sinner's redemption. What is it? The righteousness
of Christ. And that righteousness is imputed
to us. He was made sin for us that we
might be made, what? The righteousness of God in Him. He took our sin and He gave us
His righteousness. That's our message, plain and
simple. That's what we declare. We declare
His righteousness. We declare His righteousness
for the remission of sins that are past. You remember what that
word means? Remission is the cancellation
of a charge, a debt, or penalty. We are charged with sin. Isn't that what we just read?
All have come short of the glory of God. There's none that doeth
good, no not one. All the world become guilty before
God. We're all charged with sin. We owe a debt that we cannot
pay. The penalty for our charge is
death. The wages of sin is death. The shedding of Christ's blood
cancels all three. He is charged with my sin. He paid my debt and he paid my
penalty. How? By dying in my place. The
shedding of Christ's blood. All my past sin, cancelled. All my present sin, done away
with. All my future sin, cancelled. All my sin, gone. Gone, gone. All this through the forbearance
of God. God by and through His own patience,
long-suffering and forbearance, deferred. He suspended the executing
of His holy justice on sinners like you and me, and He saves
them through justification by making them what? Holy, innocent,
and righteous. I hope that you never forget
after I'm done today, what being just is, what being justified
means, what justification is, and what and who the justifier
is. Verse 26, to declare, I say,
at this time, again, Paul says His righteousness. Paul reminds
us again that it's Christ's righteousness imputed to us that justifies
us before God, not by works of righteousness that we've done.
We don't have any. We have nothing that we can bring
before God and offer God as the appeasement of our sin. Those
are filthy rags. Filthy rags. That's what our
righteousness is compared to before God. It's the righteousness
of God that enables God to be just. The righteousness of Christ. God executed His holy justice
on sin. God remains just because He punished
the sin of His people. How so? On His darling Son. And God in all His wisdom, He
devised a way to be both just and justifier on him or them
which believeth in Jesus. Isn't that amazing? That's amazing
grace. That's amazing love. The hymn
writer wrote amazing love. How can it be that thou, my God,
shouldst die for me? Amazing it is. And even amazing
falls way short of a proper adjective to describe it. God is just and
God is justifier. That's the gospel. And that's
just the same as saying that God is right and God is merciful. This is how God could be merciful
to chosen sinners and still at the same time be just. This is
how God could be merciful to me and His justice still be satisfied. Oh, do you see that? Do you rejoice
in it? God is so just that because of
man's wickedness, because of the thoughts of man's heart,
which was only evil continually, he drowned a guilty world. Yet he was merciful because Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Do you see that? God's
justice and his mercy. God is so just. His justice is
so strict that because of man's wicked depravity, his sin, he
reduced Sodom and Gomorrah to mere ashes. But yet God is merciful,
so much so that He spared Lot. And Lot is described in the New
Testament as just. You look it up. It calls him
just. Lot. It didn't mean only Lot. It meant
He was holy, innocent, and righteous. God made Him so. This just and
holy God is going to once again destroy this wicked world in
which we live. But be assured of this, child
of God, that He will again in mercy and grace deliver those
whom He's made just in Christ. Who does God justify? Who does
He justify? Well, Romans 4, 5 says that He
justifies the ungodly. He justifies the unjust. Blessed
be His holy name. Christ died for the ungodly. Chapter 5, verse 6, For when
we were yet without strength and due time, Christ died for
the ungodly. Has God shown you that you're
ungodly? Well, if He has, then here's the best news that I could
ever tell you. Christ died for the ungodly.
Nothing can be laid to the charge of God's elect. It's God that
justifies, Romans 8.33. It's God that justifies. It's
God who makes holy, innocent, and righteous. God is just and
justifier. Boy, you're being redundant this
morning. I mean to be. I want this to be burned into
your heart that God is just, He's holy, He's innocent, He's
perfectly righteous, and He's justifier. He makes you who are
ungodly to be just like Him. Just like Him. Brother, why don't
you go on and preach the deeper things of God. Is there anything
any deeper than that? Is there? Turn back to Isaiah
chapter 45. In Isaiah chapter 45, I want
you to look at verse 21. Isaiah 45 verse 21. says tell ye and bring them near
yea let them take counsel together who hath declared this from ancient
time who had told it from that time have not i the lord and
there is no god else beside me and look how he describes himself
here a just god and a savior There's
none beside me. There's no other just God. There
is no other Savior. There's none beside me. Sinner,
do you see that God is just? And God is merciful. He must be both. He must be to
be God. Being reconciled to God, now
hear me, is not that the chosen sinner's heart was changed toward
God. What? That's right. Being reconciled to God is not
that the chosen sinner's heart was changed toward God. Being
reconciled to God is that God's heart was changed toward chosen
sinners. God's the first cause. God is
not changed by us. We're changed by God. God changed
His heart toward chosen sinners by the work, sacrifice, and substitution
of His beloved Son. And in all reality now, in all
reality, Christ did not shed His blood for sinners. What? No, Christ shed His blood for
God. That's true. That's exactly right. Christ shed His blood to appease
God. and make a way for the chosen
sinner to be justified without compromising God's justice. With Christ as our substitute
for sin, God remains just and also the sinner's justifier. And I just love that. I just
love that. Don't you? In Christ, the sinner's
sin is put away, and Christ's perfect righteousness is given
to them. And God is just. He's a just
God and a Savior. God is just and merciful. He's both. He's both. Those are the pillars on which
His throne, sovereign throne stands. The exercise of God's
goodness to sinners is limited only by Himself. Now God must
be just to all. And He's going to be. God owes
all justice. But a sovereign God exercises
mercy and grace to some as it seems good to Him. And this is
where, oh, this is where folks get mad. This is where folks
pick up stones to throw them at you. You see, God owes it
to all men and women to be just. He must be just to be God, but
he owes no one mercy and grace. He didn't owe you anything. And
the child of God says, that's right. He don't owe me anything. all he owes me is that that i
deserve and that's death and eternal condemnation and separation
from him but he delights to show mercy he said i will have mercy
on whom i will have mercy and the child of god says thank god
he's gonna have mercy on somebody might as well be me Might as
well be me. Oh, He owes no one mercy and
grace. That's His to give as it pleases
Him. You know, the Lord Jesus said
just that. He prayed one day, it's Matthew
chapter 11, I believe, but He prayed and He said, Lord, I thank
Thee, Father. I thank You, Lord of heaven and
earth, my Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise
and the prudent. Those who are wise and prudent
in their own eyes, and has revealed them unto babies, to babes. Christ said, you've hid these
wondrous truths from some, and you've revealed them to others.
And then he tells us why even so. Father, it seemed good in
your sight. That's the only reason. Why did you reveal it to these
babes? Because they were holy, innocent, righteous? No. It just simply pleased you
to do so. That's mercy. And that's grace. And that's sovereign love. The
teaching of sovereign grace is not some newfound doctrine. You
know, there are a lot of folks that think that. Oh, what about
this sovereign grace stuff, man? It's always been the truth of
Scripture. God has gracious dealings with some and just dealings with
others. It's always been that way. This
is not some new doctrine. God's going to be just to all
men and He wills to be merciful to some. That's the way it's
always been. Only a sovereign God has a right
to do that which pleases Him and that which seems good in
His sight. God's exercise of mercy and grace has always been
optional to and within Himself. He's God. He has the right to
do what He will with His own. And puny, ignorant men say that's
not fair. Sure, it's fair. It's not only
fair, but it's right. God does what He wills with His
own. It's His. It all belongs to Him. Thank
God He chose to have mercy on some. Contrary to what men and
women believe today, God's sovereign grace has never been an enemy
to evangelism. And that's what men say, well,
if I believed what you did, I wouldn't preach. Then you don't know the
Scriptures. Men say if God chooses and elects
some and justifies only them whom He elects and chooses, then
why even preach? You know why? Because God's means
of saving and calling His elect is by preaching. That's why we
preach. God's election makes us want
to preach because He's got some elect that He's going to call
and save by the preaching. The foolishness of preaching
is called because men think it to be foolish, but it's the power
of God unto salvation. Modern day religion proposes
to men and women the question, well, what are you going to do
with Jesus? The question is what is Christ going to do with you? That's the question. That's the
real issue at hand. What's He going to do with you?
Oh, that God would enable those of you who are yet without Christ
to see that God is just. He's holy. He's innocent. He's
righteous. No means clear you who are guilty
except by a sovereign work of grace." By justification. By justifying you. By making
you holy, innocent, and righteous. No other way. And this book declares
that it's appointed unto man once to die and then judgment. Judgment. One day every man,
woman, child will stand before God to give an account of their
sin. Oh, I'm telling you that if we
really, I mean really believed that like we should, I believe
we'd act differently than we do. This world's heading for
judgment. I believe that, but not like
I should. If I believed that like I should, I honestly, I'm
telling you, I honestly believe that I'd act differently than
I do. Well, what do you mean you'd act differently? If I truly
believed, like I should, that this awful day of judgment is
coming, I would, like the Apostle Paul said, with tears, warn sinners
day and night of the impending doom that lies ahead. I just
wonder how, knowing what I know, how can I be so calm and so dry-eyed
in my preaching? Do we really believe that God's
going to punish sin? I wonder, am I so afraid of offending
and alienating my children? Are we in fear of alienating
our family, our friends, that we just become content and just
let them go on to hell? or do we with tears warn them
day and night? Judgment's coming. Judgment is
coming. Oh, that God might enable us,
the small handful of believers in this place, to come together
in our hearts, in our prayers, in our supplications to God and
beg Him to visit sinners in mercy and grace in these awful hours
of unbelief. And unbelief is not simply ignorance. There's a big difference between
ignorance and unbelief. Unbelief is a willful rejection
of the truth of the gospel. And this is the condemnation,
the Lord Jesus said, that light has come into the world and men
loved darkness rather than light. Men refused to walk in the light
God gives them, so God doesn't give them anymore. Unbelief is
not ignorance and faith is not just believing. Faith is not
just believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who is the
Savior who died for sinners. Faith is acting upon that belief
and it's committing your very soul to Him as your Lord and
Savior. Do you see that? Faith without
works is dead, being alone. that by faith Noah being warned
of God of things not yet seen, he moved with fear. Noah moved
with fear and he preached 120 years. He preached that God's
angry with the wicked, that God's coming and He's going to punish
this world. And the whole time he was preaching. He was building
that ark. He was building that ark, preparing
it for the saving of Him and His house. That's what Hebrews
11 tells us. He was moved with fear. His faith
took action and His preparing of the ark condemned the world
because they did not believe Him. Now let me tell you something. That message that Noah's hammer
beat out for 120 years. God's coming. He's going to punish
sin. God's coming. He's going to punish
sin. The message of the cross is the
same. God's going to punish sin. Why
did God hang His Son on the cross? Because He's going to punish
sin. And He's either going to punish you or He's going to punish
the substitute that He's provided for you if you belong to Him.
Either way, Holy justice by a holy God is going to be served. God
is too just. He's too holy. He's too innocent. He's too righteous to just excuse
sin. His holy justice demands death. That's sin's wages. The wages
we must pay for our sin is death. And only our death will provide
the justice that God's law requires. But here's the Gospel. I'm going
to leave you with this. Here's the gospel. The good news
for sinners is that Christ in the room, in the stead, in the
place of his people, as their substitute, died. He's just and justifier. He's a just God and a Savior. That's the gospel. God is both
just and justifier.