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Please open your Bibles to the
book of Romans. The book of Romans chapter five.
I will be reading the first five verses and in the sermon actually
we will only get through verse one. And so I think we have about
three weeks to get through this amazing passage of God's gospel. This is God's Word, it is His
holy, perfect, infallible Word. It is His Word that He has given
to us as a gift, that we might know Him, that we might love
Him, and that we might experience His love. Hear God's Word. Therefore, since we have been
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Through him, we have also obtained
access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice
in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice
in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
and hope does not put to shame. because God's love has been poured
into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to
us. Let us pray. Our Father, Lord,
as we consider the heart of the gospel, Lord, may we see Jesus,
and Lord, may you draw us close to you. Apply your salvation
to our hearts. Redeem us, increase our faith,
cause us to grow as only you can. In Jesus' name, amen. Justification. It is the article
of faith on which the church stands or falls. And this was
first said by Martin Luther. And if you know something of
the torment that Martin Luther felt over his sins, then you
understand how Luther felt when he finally grasped the gospel. Luther was reading through Romans
1, verses 16 and 17. And he read, for I am not ashamed
of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation, to
everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith
to faith. As it is written, the righteous
shall live by faith. Luther was a man greatly troubled
by sin. Now he wasn't a great sinner,
perhaps by a lot of standards, but he saw his sin very clearly. And he knew that sin was against
God. And so Luther said that when
he read this passage and he understood that the righteousness of God
revealed in the gospel was not the righteousness which he had
to achieve on his own, but it was the righteousness of God
by which God saves sinners who cannot achieve righteousness
in themselves. And he said, the revelation was so startling.
He said he was born again. He was set free from the law
of sin and death. And he felt that he was brought
in to the kingdom of God's marvelous light. And so today, I want to consider
the gospel in Romans 5.1. And it is my prayer that we might
experience together, as Luther did, the glorious power of the
gospel to set us free from the law of sin and death and to bring
us in to God's kingdom of his marvelous light. And we will
consider this passage in three sections, the need for justification,
What is justification and the results of justification? So
firstly, we consider our need for justification. Now think
with me for a minute. What does God hate? Well, God
hates idolatry and every false god. Exodus chapter 20 verse
3 in the Ten Commandments. God says, you shall have no other
gods before me. You shall not make for yourself
a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven
above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water
under the earth. You shall not bow down to them
or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am
a jealous God. visiting the iniquity of the
fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of
those who hate me. You see, God made man, male and
female, to worship him alone. He designed us to find all our
joy, all our satisfaction in him alone. He designed us that
the very meaning of life might be in God alone. And idolatry
is always a substitute for God. You know, addiction, which is
rampant today, is a modern day idolatry. The addict finds relief
from the stress and sorrow of life and intoxication rather
than in the love of God. It is a substitute. And the problem
with idolatry, the problem with every substitute for God, is
that God designed human beings to become like what they worship. When we worship the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, we become more and more like the
image of God. And it is a beautiful thing.
And on the other hand, when we worship idols, we become like
the idols that we worship. You know, it's interesting, Israel,
when they went into the land of Canaan, they adopted the gods,
the idols of the people of the land of Canaan. And those were
very cruel gods, demanding even child sacrifice. And so as the
people of Israel worshipped these false gods, they became a cruel
people, even offering their own children in sacrifice. 2 Kings 21, verse 12. Says Manasseh, king of Judah,
has done more evil than all the Amorites did who were before
him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols. He sinned
with his idols. He caused the people to sin with
idols. Every human being who has ever
lived always worships something. Today, people worship the idols
of freedom, identity, reason, prosperity. And every one of those idols is heartless, impersonal. And the end of that worship is
evil, isolation, and death. And we see it all around. We see it in the chaos and the
sin and the trouble of the world. And so here's the point. God
hates idolatry because it steals his glory. which God says he
will not share with another. And in this way, idolatry destroys
the human soul. And God would spare you from
that ultimate destruction. We were made to worship God and
to worship God alone. Anything else leads a man or
woman into ultimate evil, to destruction and death. You see,
God's glory and your good are interlinked. God's glory is your
good. Idolatry is war with God. And we know that many people
in the world today are at war with God. God also hates injustice. Psalm 89, 14. says of God, righteousness
and justice are the foundation of your throne. Oh God, steadfast
love and faithfulness go before you. God rules by righteousness
and justice. All that he does is good and
right and true. The sinful human beings can be
very unjust. Amos 2, six through seven, speaking
of the people of Israel. Thus says the Lord, for three
transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not revoke the
punishment. Because they sell the righteous
for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. Those who
trample the head of the poor into the dust and turn aside the way of the
afflicted. You see, the people were afflicting
the poor. They trampled them underfoot,
and yet God had commanded them to care for the poor among them. Someone suffered a tragedy, well,
too bad. Pay up or be sold into slavery. See, this is the kind of injustice. Well, that comes from a sinful
heart. It's the kind of injustice for
which God says over and over again, Israel was exiled into
judgment. It's the kind of injustice we
see around us today. You know, amazingly, even after
Israel was exiled, precisely this kind of injustice, when
they returned after 70 years, injustice continued. the poor
had to bring a complaint to Nehemiah. In chapter five, verse five,
they say, yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to
be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but
it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields
and our vineyards. Injustice. Nehemiah 13.10, Nehemiah
also found out that the portion for the Levites had not been
given to them. God appointed the Levites to
give up owning land so that they could lead the people in worship,
so that they could teach God's word. And God commanded the people
to care for him. To fail in this duty was injustice. And the New Testament says the
same. The end of letting sin go in life is described in Romans
1 verse 29. Says they were filled with all
manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are
full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are
gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful,
inventors of evil. Disobedient to parents, faithless,
heartless, ruthless, And for this cause, the justice
of God, the judgment of God rests on such as do these things. God also hates divorce, and of
course he would. To divorce is to defraud someone
who has pledged their love to you and whom you have pledged
your faithfulness to. God hates hypocrisy and all forms
of lying and deceit when the people brought the very worst
from their flocks, but claimed that they brought the very best.
God said he hates such dishonest worship. He hates deceit, for
it is the means by which men defraud both God and neighbor.
Satan is called the father of lies, a murderer from the beginning. Proverbs 6.16, there are six
things that the Lord hates. seven that are an abomination
to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent
blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to
run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one
who sows discord among brothers. And we could go on with what
God hates, but here's the point. God's law and God's rule is always
good and right and true. God's goodness is a blessing.
You know, it's not just, well, here's the law, you violated
it, and so you're out of here. No, see, God's law reflects God's
character. And God's character is good and
holy and perfect. And God created his children
that he might love them, that he, they might love him. And
so he created them to enjoy his goodness. And ultimately, that
we might be in the very presence of God's goodness for all eternity. You see, sin doesn't just violate
an arbitrary law. Sin violates God's very character
of goodness. And so sin, all sin, is war with
God. to violate God's law is to declare
conflict, war with God himself. It is against all that God desires
for his children. And this is not an arbitrary
thing. It is the only standard for what
is good and beautiful in the universe. And so, brothers and
sisters, every one of our sins is war with God. And God cannot
be just and good and not judge sin. He can't simply turn aside
and say, sin doesn't matter and let sin reign among his people
and on the earth and for all eternity. Romans 6.29 says, the
wages of sin is death. and that is to truly be cast
from God's presence and from all that is good. You know, I'm
not sure that we always see clearly the evil of sin. After Adam and
Eve sinned, one son murdered the other. Zero to 60 evil in
one generation. This is the fruit of human sin. You know, I once read a story
about a woman who was fed up with the violence in the city.
And so she moved to the woods. I'm sorry, I can't remember her
name. Only to find violence everywhere in nature. Insects eating insects. Animals eating animals. And,
well, it was despair. You see, God says all of creation
was subjected to futility because of our sin. There is no escape. You know,
the problem in our day, as a culture, we think that we are enlightened
beyond sin. And I know there is great sin,
horrendous sin, But without God, it never seems to be called sin. Psychiatrist Carl Menninger once
wrote, the very word sin, once it was a strong word, an ominous
word, a serious word, but it has almost disappeared. the word
along with the very notion. C.S. Lewis once said, the barrier
I have met over and over again is the total absence from the
minds of my audience of any sense of sin. Jerry Bridges wrote a
book called Respectable Sins. He was trying to break down the
barrier that modern people have raised against sin. He was trying to break down
that barrier that people say, well, those are just little sins.
They don't really matter. He was trying to show that all
sin is the root of evil. He writes this, sin is a spiritual
and moral malignancy. Left unchecked, it can spread
throughout our entire inner being and contaminate every area of
our lives. Even worse, it will often metastasize
from us into the lives of other believers around us. He writes,
if I gossip, I both tear down another person and corrupt the
mind of my listener. In other words, sin is not content
to stay home. It spreads like cancer. And so
Jerry Bridges sought to show that anger, lust, anxiety, unthankfulness,
envy, judgmentalism, selfishness, gossip, pride, a lack of self-control,
you know, they're not just part of the human condition. They
are a great evil that are at war with God. They are at war
with God's very goodness expressed in his law. And scripture says
that all these things lead to enmity, strife, rivalries, dissensions,
divisions. They are a blight on God's good,
loving, and just rule. You know, if I look back to the
Jesus movement of the 60s and 70s, it was very, prevailing
attitude was, sins that you committed before you become a Christian,
okay, they're all gone. But sins you commit after you
become a Christian, those are on you. Don't think you can escape. You see, they missed entirely
that sin is a matter of a corrupt heart. It's not what you do,
it's who you are. And so sin lost power. And so
the gospel was crippled. So by the way, don't think that
this kind of legalism is new or is confined to Reformed churches. And I often think perhaps that's
why many parts of the Jesus movement faded away. The sin nature in our heart is
at war with God, and at war with the very goodness of God. You
know, one illustration that helped me see
the evil in my own heart, someone said, well, what if all of your
thoughts, all of your words and actions in private were projected
up on a movie screen? Ooh, that would be bad. and not one of us could stand.
Our facade would fall. And the mere thought of such
a thing is enough to break through any sense of self-righteousness. Romans 3 says as it is written,
none is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks
for God. All have turned aside, together
they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And there it is. Over here is
the corruption of our heart. And over here is the beauty of
God's goodness, His holiness. And in between, there is a great
chasm that we can never cross on our own. Let me read from
verse one again. Therefore, since we have been
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. You see, here's the point that I'm trying to bring across.
God's holiness shines greatest against wickedness. Peace with God. shows its greatest comfort in
contrast to war with God. When this says, justified by
faith, we have peace with God, that is a significant thing to
say. Sin is war with God, and it must
be dealt with. And so secondly, we consider
the way out of this problem. And the way out is by justification. It is by justification that we
can be restored to peace with God. You know, this is, peace
with God, this has always been one of my favorite verses just
for that phrase. It's so amazing to think about
such a thing. But you know, if we think that
we're pretty good, then it becomes not so amazing. If we don't see
the chasm as wide as it is, then it's loosed as its power. The beauty and the perfectness
of God's character is set apart from the wickedness of human
beings. And it is only the gospel that
can bridge that chasm. Only the gospel picks us up and
carries us over into the presence of God. Only the gospel brings
peace with God. Only the gospel does what we
could never do for ourselves. And so we ask, what is justification? The word justification has a
primary meaning of setting a person in right relationship to another
person. And used here, it means you and
I, as fallen, sinful human beings, set in right relationship to
God. And of course, that's why justification
results in peace. If we're in right relationship,
peace is a characteristic of a right relationship. And so the question is, how does
justification put me in right relationship to God? And the
answer is by putting me in right relationship to God's righteous
character as expressed in his law. In other words, when a judge
evaluates an offender, compares the offender to the law, and he makes one of two declarations,
guilty of transgression, condemned, or justified before the law in
right relationship, set free. And so to be justified is to
be declared by God himself to be righteous. To be declared to be in right
relationship to God himself. To be declared to be in right
relationship to God's holy character, to his law. And when God pronounces guilt
forgiven, he does so righteously. He has a perfect righteousness,
and so he has a good reason for pronouncing justification. And so you might be thinking,
now wait a minute, we just spent, I don't know, 20 minutes talking
about how human nature is at war with the goodness of God. How can God declare such a lawbreaker
of which every one of us are to be forgiven, to be justified, Ah, enter Jesus Christ. And notice what verse one says,
it says we have peace with God through, through, through our
Lord Jesus Christ. Justification is always through
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ stepped up to take
our judgment. He stepped up to take the death.
that we deserve. He died in our place so that
we might be restored to God. You remember the example of a
movie screen of all of our thoughts? Well, that's all wickedness. But what if we saw the movie
screen of all of Jesus' thoughts and words and actions? It would
be nothing but pure love and justice, righteousness, goodness. Jesus lived a perfect life. Well,
he was God come in the flesh. And so Jesus can step up and
take our punishment. There is no punishment due to
him as a man. And so for this reason, when
Jesus stepped up to die in our place, our guilt and our sin
are completely cleared. a great exchange takes place.
2 Corinthians 5.21, for our sake he made him, Jesus, to be sin
who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. You know, I used an illustration
once before that I wanna use again. In college, somebody had
me write my name on this side of the paper. And then, all my
unrighteousness. Okay, that's a pretty bad list. And then on this side, the name
of Jesus. And all of Jesus' righteousness,
his holiness, his goodness, his love. And then he says, this
is what happens. Cross out your name and put Jesus
over here with all these sins. Cross out Jesus' name and put
your name with all this righteousness. And then it says that God casts
our sins away from us as far as the east is from the west.
It says that Jesus took our sins and nailed them to the cross.
Jesus condemned sin on the cross. Now a question. Did God just
wipe those sins under the rug and say no sin doesn't matter?
Doesn't matter that you're at war with all my goodness? No. Those sins had to be judged by
Jesus' death on the cross. And then think about it. What's
left with you? All your sins are gone. What's
left with you is the righteousness of Christ that God imputed to
you. And so God looks and he sees
the righteousness of Christ, and he declares, justified, righteous,
set free. And he calls you his own child.
You know, this is a picture that we'll see in the Lord's Supper.
When Jesus took all of our sins, he died. His body was broken. He shed his blood that our sins
might be forgiven. And so someone will say, but
that's not fair. Jesus died as an innocent man
taking our sin. And that's right, it's not fair.
It's mercy. It's God's wonderful grace in
Romans 3.23. for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God. And we are justified by His grace
as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by
faith. This was to show God's righteousness
because in his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins. And there it is, the righteousness
of God in the gospel. It's not that righteousness by
which we must attain in our life. It is God's righteousness, the
righteousness of Christ by which he accounts us righteous and
calls us to be his own. We are justified by grace as
a gift. You see, if eternity is to be
without pain and sorrow, there cannot be sin in eternity. With sin comes hurt and conflict
and sorrow. It is the very opposite of peace.
The wages of sin is death and it must be death. Sin must be
cast away. And do you think that God created
you and I to have fellowship with him just to let us die in
our sins? Absolutely not. God's love demands
that he pardon our sin. His justice demands that an actual
atonement, an actual death take the righteous judgment for our
sin. You know, Jesus said of himself,
he said, the son of man came not to serve, I'm sorry, came not to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish
but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son
into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him. This is the gospel justification. You know, the very next verse
in John 3 says this. Whoever believes in him is not
condemned. But whoever does not believe
is condemned already because he has not believed in the name
of the only son of God. And so there are only two options.
Human beings are at war with God. Their war is a war of evil
against good. of wickedness against God's righteous,
perfect holiness. Whoever believes in him is not
condemned. And so let's consider the effect
of justification. And we see that justification
is entirely the work of Jesus. And so how does God apply justification
to us personally? How can we receive the justification
that Jesus accomplished? And the answer is, it's by faith. And that is first by believing
the content of the gospel, that Jesus was born. He lived a perfect
life. He died to atone for our sins.
He was raised from the dead. This was an actual occurrence
in history. And second, by believing that
this great truth is for me personally. It's not abstract, it's not irrelevant,
it's not out there. The gospel is for me in my life,
right here, right now. And third, by placing my full
trust in Jesus. By casting my life into his care. By saying, Lord, be merciful
to me, a sinner. In other words, by seeing your
helplessness and trusting entirely in Jesus to pick you up from
the pit of sin and to carry you across the chasm into the righteousness
of God. Now, why would you trust in Jesus
to redeem you? Well, because God is good. Because God is perfect and loving
in every way. Because an eternity with God
is to be desired. Because of who God is. And because
an eternity without God would be a terrible thing to contemplate. It would be an eternity surrounded
by evil. You know, I will tell you that
when I became a Christian, I understood that I was a sinner. I could
see the condition of my heart. And I could see the condition
of the world. But the primary thing that compelled
me to put my trust in Jesus was that I saw the beauty of God's
holiness. I saw that I wanted what was
good and right and true. Excuse me. I wanted to be in
God's presence. He was the only true God, the
only good God. And that's what I wanted. And
by God's grace, that's what comes through the gospel, that we can
not only in this life, but for all eternity be assured of being
in God's holiness, in his presence. Now, let me just conclude with
this. In the 1970s, there was a very popular poster. And on
this poster, it was along a seashore, there was, well, two sets of
tracks, and then one set of tracks, and then two sets of tracks,
and one set of tracks. And those tracks represented
a man's life. And the second set of tracks
was the Lord Jesus walking alongside. And the man looked and he says,
Lord, but right here and right here at the very most difficult
times of my life, there's only one set of tracks. Why did you
leave me? And Jesus answered, well, those
were the places I had to carry you. And that was a comforting
thought at the time. But I've come to see that reality
is a little different. In real life, Jesus has to carry
us every step of the way. There is no place where I can
walk on my own. I must rely on the Lord Jesus
always. There is no part of me that can
walk on my own. And so my appeal to you today, trust. call upon the Lord Jesus
in trust to forgive your sins, to carry you across the great
chasm between your sinfulness and God's perfect, holy righteousness,
and do so today. You do not want to miss eternal
peace with God in the beauty of His holiness. Let us pray. Our Father, Lord, you are all beautiful. You are all holy, all righteous
in every way. And it is your decree by your
good heart, by your love, by your grace, that Jesus died,
that we might be picked up and carried into your presence. And
that we might be there not only in this life, but in all eternity.
And Lord, that is the great desire of our heart. Lord, grant us
faith that we might turn and trust you, that we might turn
our lives to you in every way. Lord, that we might be saved
by your grace through faith in Jesus.
The Need for Justification
Series Romans
Martin Luther said that justification is "the" article of faith on which the church stands or falls. If this is true, and certainly justification is central to the gospel, then justification is also the article of faith on which our lives as Christians stand or fall. That God can declare us righteous such that we can have peace with God is the most incredible of blessings. Literally, justification is a matter of life or death, blessing or curse.
| Sermon ID | 211242227186664 |
| Duration | 41:09 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Romans 5:1-5 |
| Language | English |
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