If you would, turn to Romans four, making our way through this book. It's a, uh, been called like the Constitution, the Christian faith, it sort of contains most of what as New Testament believers we hold true about issues such as salvation, but a lot of other issues that are here. And last time we're talking about salvation by faith plus absolutely nothing else at all. And so I've tried to emphasize, and it may sound a little like a broken record, but Paul goes on at length because this has been under attack forever. In the first century, the way the attack worked, Paul would plant a church, and people would come in after that, who we sometimes called Judaizers. They are those who say that Paul had about half the truth. And the rest of the truth is, though, you need to basically be Jewish. in terms of being circumcised, in terms of dietary restrictions, and other aspects of the Law of Moses. Those people have not gone away, by the way. And I've not long ago dealt with that with someone that I was asked to come and kind of meet with them. And they had gotten into some stuff where it was exactly what Paul had dealt with. where you're told you can't eat certain things and there are certain regulations in the Old Testament that still apply. And of course, what happens is people pick and choose. No one brings an animal to church, but they tell you, Well, you can't do this and you can't do this. They're out of the Old Testament, particularly about eating things or about keeping the Sabbath, which sometimes they'll say is on Saturday, which in fact it is, or they'll say it's on Sunday, which is a common misunderstanding, and they'll say you have to keep the Sabbath, and they'll attach certain things to that. And regardless of whether we're supposed to do all those things, they have nothing to do with how we become just before God or justified. And yet these things get added on. Paul's entire book of Galatians, if you haven't read Galatians, you should know this, is addressing specifically these Judaizers, the whole book of Galatians. is about people coming in after Paul planted a bunch of New Testament churches and trying to, in essence, make them Jewish. And the first thing, of course, is that they would have to be circumcised. So this is a big issue, and Paul belabors it some. He needs to prove his case. He says it in chapter 3, but now he needs to prove his case that you're justified by faith alone. He uses Abraham as an example, and we started that a little last time in chapter 4, verses 1-3. He introduced Abraham in verse 1. He says, you know, what shall we say then that Abraham, our father, as pertaining to the flesh, has found? That is, if you're saved by faith, and it's not in addition to anything else, it's just faith, what did Abraham get for being circumcised? The answer is it had nothing to do with his justification. In fact, Paul's argument's a basic timing argument. If you'll look in your Old Testament, he says, Abraham is a believer in Genesis 15, and he's not circumcised until much later. And the law of Moses doesn't come for centuries later. If you put it on a Bible timeline, Abraham will have his family, not him personally, But Jacob, his grandson, and then Jacob's children will go into Egypt for 400 years before they come out and get the law of Moses. So if you need the law, and it has anything to do with getting you, if we'll say, quote, saved or justified, then how did Abraham get by hundreds of years earlier? So it's a very easy argument in a way. And the answer, of course, is Abraham was not saved through the law or through a circumcision. So, here in chapter 4, verse 3 says, For what sayeth the scripture, Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness? That's Genesis 15, 6. It's a very important passage to sort of put in your pocket on this issue of salvation because Paul will go there James talks about that passage in his epistle. It's just an important passage. It's the first time in the Bible when God affirms that somebody has been justified by faith. Now, there were people alive before then. They would have been saved by faith as well. But this is the first recording in the Scripture that someone had their faith result in imputed righteousness, which is Genesis 15, 6. So, verse 4, new stuff. Now, to him that worketh is the reward, not reckoned of grace, but of debt. This is an obvious thing. If you work and you get something in return for that work, that's the payment of a debt. We call it a paycheck. It is not grace. So he's giving a very simple illustration, but he wants to make it clear that Abraham wasn't called righteous by God because he had worked for it. If he had, it wouldn't be grace. It would be something else, but not grace. Verse five, but to him that worketh not, but believeth. It's real important. If I had a highlighter, And by the way, I'll mention this as an aside, because we're kind of being informal here. You do well on studying the Bible to get yourself a wide margin. I've said this before, I just wanted to mention it again. You can't read my handwriting, but I can. That's all that matters. But it has wide margins. These aren't easy to find, by the way, but they've become in vogue lately. The one warning about the Bibles you can get at a Lifeway bookstore, they shrink the font in order to make space for the margins. And so there tends to be good margins, but a little too much text, and it's hard to find one that's the right balance. But get a habit of making some notes, and get a habit of highlighting things. And with a wide margin, usually the paper's just a tad thicker, and that helps. And in addition to you know, that. I mean, you know, other ways to take notes. And nowadays, you know, computers and stuff, and iPads have these Bibles, and you can keep your notes on there. But one of the things that gets argued by a bunch of folks today, we've talked a little about Reformed theology the last few weeks, is that believing is a work. And they will say, yes, you're saved by faith without works. But faith is a work, and so in order that you could be saved with no works, God has to give you the faith, and that's the heart of Calvinism, as we've talked about this church before. And I'm just saying right here in this verse, to him that worketh not, but believeth. There's only one way to take that. Paul thinks believing is not a work. And I get that asked, well, isn't believing a work? No, it's not, why? Romans 4, right? Now, other things, like being baptized or circumcised, which is what he's dealing with expressly here, those are works. They're outward deeds of the flesh, and they don't do anything toward your justification. But believing is not a work, and that's important. So, but to him that worketh not, but believeth, Abraham exemplified that in Genesis 15, believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Think about what he's saying. He's not saying that you've done enough good stuff to merit God's favor. He's saying that God has looked upon you as righteous because of your faith. And that's the imputed righteousness, which is why no one can boast, because He's taken someone who, and it's every one of us, who isn't really a good person, but at a moment in time, they've put their faith in Christ, and He's declaring them righteous. Has nothing to do with anything but their faith. No other work is hatched to it, no other commitment, just their faith. And he gives another Old Testament example. He spoke already of Abraham, but now he talks of David. And of course, David wrote a lot of the book of Psalms. So when writers in the Bible will talk of David, they're frequently speaking of the book of Psalms. This is specifically Psalm 32. So he quotes from Psalm 32, even as David also, described the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputed righteousness without works. He says, you can go to Genesis 15, verse 6, and you'll see the imputing of righteousness without words. Now you can go to David in the Psalms, specifically Psalm 32, 1 and 2, which he now quotes in verse 7. He says, saying, so this is David's words when he wrote that Psalm, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Now that's 32, 1. That's part of the Psalm. That's not enough, because Paul's making a point. This is critical. Ankerberg. Justification? You realize up to now He hasn't said anything about forgiveness? Not a thing. And we confuse forgiveness. It gets thrown into the mix a lot when we talk about forgiving your sins. And that is spoken of elsewhere. And he speaks of forgiving. But, you know, in David's time, David would go and worship at the temple. And they would take an animal and make a burnt sacrifice. Or at Yom Kippur, the priest would go into the Holy of Holies. And we talked about that a week ago. And he'd make a sacrifice once a year. That didn't take the sins away. But they were, I think, as it were, forgiven and covered. That's Psalm 32, 1. Jesus did something more than that, and I think David looked forward to a time when the sins would finally be dealt with. Verse 8 says, and it's quoting Psalm 32, 2, blesses the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. That's a much stronger statement. See? Because I could be forgiven and then mess up tomorrow. Then I'd be forgiven all over again. Blessed is the man whom God doesn't impute sin. If he doesn't impute sin, then you don't have the wrath of God on you, which was the subject of chapters 1 and 2 and 3, that the wrath of God is poured out on unrighteousness. except now you've been declared righteous. You have no sin imputed to you at all. From God's perspective, now you are sinless." See, that's the idea. Now, not that you will, in fact, experience that, but he'll start talking about that in chapter 5. But just understand what he's doing. This is a legal declaration. So, he's proved it from David. He's proved it from Abraham. But look at Psalm 32 for a moment. Turn back there. halfway through your Bible, Paul didn't quote something there that may be interesting to us. Psalm 32, verse 1 and 2, I'll read straight from the psalm, but he quoted it, "...blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputed, if not iniquity, and in whose spirit is no guile." Okay? If your spirit has no guile, now we're talking about someone whose sins have been removed. Guile is deception. Jesus said in John chapter 1, when a man named Nathanael came to him, he said, here's a guy in Israel who has no guile, no deception, a true heart. Verse 3, actually I think I just wanted that verse too, that part about no guile. Here's our problem, right? Our sin nature stays with us. God doesn't impute sin to us, but there are consequences for sin. And there will be a time when not only the power of sin is removed, but the actual presence of sin from us. That's when we're with the Lord in heaven. And that's the rest of that Psalm 32, too. David is kind of looking forward when he writes in 1000 B.C. because, you know, David was alive a long time ago. And he's dealing with the Levitical system when he looks forward to a time of there being a basis for imputing righteousness, okay, which is through Christ on the cross, and to a time where sin is removed altogether. So, anyway, David knew a lot. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Well, verse 9, back in Romans 4, He asks the question, Paul does, cometh this blessedness, the blessedness of what? God not imputing sin to us. He says, does it come upon the circumcision only or upon the uncircumcision? Is it on Jewish people or on Gentiles? Or is it both? For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness, right? That's Genesis 15, 6. We say that. course, Abraham wasn't circumcised yet. It's real important, again, because this is the big issue in the early church. We've had a lot of issues in history since then that have come and gone, and in just sort of different periods of time when people were fighting about the deity of Christ and different issues, or the Holy Spirit, and it took centuries for these things to sort of come up and be worked out to some degree. But at first, it was Jewish people coming into the churches saying, you've got to be Jewish. In fact, in Galatians 2, Paul says, I withstood Peter to his face. There's Paul in Antioch, in the church in Antioch, and Peter is there with him, and they're with Gentiles eating. The implication is eating their food. which is a no-no for a Jewish person who's going to keep the dietary restrictions. And Paul says, people came from Jerusalem, and it got so bad that even Peter and Barnabas had sort of went after them. That is, they separated from the Gentiles, because you weren't supposed to even sit at the dinner table with a Gentile and be close to their food. You imagine Peter with that ham sandwich hanging out of his mouth, and those guys come from Jerusalem, and they see him, and, oh, my God, you know. And then you have a big problem. Paul says, I stood into his face. Meaning what? Publicly reprimanded him. And Peter got into line. But this was a big issue. So he's dealing with it. And verse 10 says, how was it then reckoned? That is, how was righteousness reckoned? when he, Abraham, was in circumcision or uncircumcision. He's telling the Jewish people in the audience, just go read your Bible. Go back to Genesis 15. Was he circumcised or not in Genesis 15? The answer is no. Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. So just understand his argument. His argument is really good. It's really tight. It's not a hard argument, but we do need to understand the timing of Genesis. If Father Abraham was saved and he wasn't circumcised, then Gentiles can be saved the same way. That's his point. So, he received the sign of circumcision, Abraham did, a seal of the righteousness of faith, of the faith rather, a seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had yet being uncircumcised. He had the faith, in Genesis 15. He didn't get circumcised until later in Genesis 17, if you read those first 14 verses there, which is a number of years later by, you know, we're reading the Bible, it's two chapters later, but some time passes before he's circumcised. He has the faith before then. The circumcision becomes a sign of that covenant, that promises that God will make to Abraham, and there's a lot of those there, and I don't want to get off on all that. The key one that Paul will come back to is that Abraham would be a blessing to the families of the world. The sign of that promise was the circumcision. But for Abraham, that didn't make him righteous. It's a sign that he had been made righteous. Just like our baptism ought to be. It doesn't make us righteous, but it ought to be a sign that God has imputed his righteousness to us because we've already expressed faith in Christ. So he says, back in verse 11, he received that sign, a seal, a seal, not, didn't make him righteous, but is a seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had, yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father, now think about this, you know, he's the father of who? Abraham's Jewish, and he's promised a lineage. At this time, he had no children. And, of course, that's when, you know, he has Ishmael and all these things happen. But God says the child of promise will be Isaac, will be the one that you'll have with your wife. And he will have a physical lineage. Isaac will have a child. That child is Jacob. Jacob will have children. And those sons will be the heads of the tribes of Israel. One of them will be Joseph. Joseph will go to Egypt, become the prime minister. We kind of know this history. That's a physical lineage. All those people are Jewish. That's not what he's talking about. He's a father in a different way to all those who follow his example of faith. And he becomes the father of Jews and Gentiles. That's why he says, the father of all them that believe. All Jewish people, as his lineage, will not fulfill the promise to be the blessing to the nations of the world. It's the promise to all those who believe. Those children The spiritual children, the faith children, are the ones that will fulfill that blessing that all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, Gentiles, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also. It was important for Paul the timing, not just to speak to a Jewish audience, but to speak to a Gentile audience, and says, Abraham essentially was justified as a Gentile, and he's the progenitor, spiritually, of all those, including Gentiles, who believe in Christ. So that's his idea. Verse 12, and the father of circumcision to them who are not of circumcision only, but also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. So, being a child of Abraham by walking in his steps of faith. This is a common expression in the Bible. Peter would say in 1 Peter 3, he talks of Abraham's wife as an example of a godly woman. And he says, you can be a daughter of Sarah. And it has nothing to do with being justified or faith, but if you follow her model of how she acted toward her husband. So to be a son of something or someone can be literal, but it can be in a different sense. In John 8, Jesus calls them, they say, we have Abraham to our father. And he says, no, the devil is your father. Yeah, because that's who you act like. Well, if we act like Abraham in faith, we're his children. So that's the idea. Well, verse 13, for the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. He got the promise to be heir of the world in Genesis 12, when God said, I want to send you out from Ur of the Chaldees, in modern-day Iraq, I want to send you out, and you're going to go to a land I'll show you, and I'm going to bless you in certain ways, including the real estate. But one of those blessings is to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. Paul understands that blessing to be fulfilled in those who have followed his example of faith. But it's a little more than that. there will be a time when there'll be, as we know it from other revelations where he's getting, Christ's kingdom on this earth when Christ returns. Who will be there? Well, people who have faith, people who are justified. And they're following Abraham's example. And so when he says, Abraham, you're going to be heir of the world, it's your lineage who are going to inherit the world to come, the kingdom to come. He's looking forward. It wasn't that he's speaking of his physical lineage, just Jewish people inheriting the whole world. That's not going to happen. But his spiritual lineage, Jew and Gentile, will inherit the world to come. You see that play out in Revelation 19 when Christ returns and lots of other places. But that's what I think he's talking about, about being the heir of the world through those who will be in the kingdom. Now, the promise that he should be heir of the world, he says it wasn't to Abraham or to his seed through the law. It had nothing to do with the law of Moses. It would come later. But it was made way back in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 on the basis of faith. For if they which are of the law are heirs, in other words, if they who are simply following the law is Jews, he's picturing unsaved people, but they're Jewish and they're following the law, if that would make them heirs of the world to come, then faith is made void. All that stuff in Genesis 15 becomes meaningless. Why would God have to go through in Genesis 15 and say, I've imputed righteousness to you because you believed, But then you become an heir by the law. He says the Bible would have an inconsistency, is what Paul's really arguing. And that can't be. Faith would be made void, and the promise made of none effect. Which promise? The one back in Genesis. You can't take the law hundreds of years later, as the Pharisees are teaching, and you keep the law, and you're in the kingdom, and invalidate the promises to Abraham earlier. So it's still a timing argument. Let me pause there. Is there a question? I mean, I know this is dense, but it's just what's there. Thought, question? It's dense, but it's also important. Therefore, so he comes to a conclusion in verse 16, it's a faith that it might be by grace, right? The promises to be heir of the world, to justified people who follow the example of Abraham, it's a faith that it might be by grace, that is God's gift to us, not our earning or deserving or any of that stuff. To the end, the promise might be sure, to all the seed, and you'll see references to seed in the promises to Abraham, even like in Genesis 17, Genesis 22, you'll see some reference to that. He says that the promise might be sure, or certain, it's going to come to pass, to all the seed, spiritual seed, not physical lineage, not to that only which is of the law, Jewish, but to also that which is of the faith of Abraham, who's the father of us all. strong statement. As it's written, I've made thee a father of many nations, he says. Verse 17 is quoting from Genesis 17, verses 5 and 6. I've made you a father of many nations. It's not just physical because he would have, as we know, Ishmael becomes sort of the lineage of the Arab people, but that's not it. Not everybody sprang from Abraham. but every tribe, tongue, and nation is who we see in the book of Revelation, the throne of God. That's the many nations that he's talking about, a father of many nations. Before him whom he believed, even God, talking about Abraham standing before God back in Genesis 15, And this God he stood before quickens the dead, that is, he raises people back to life, and he calleth those things which be not as though they were. He tells the future, and it is certain to happen. He calls those things which be not, they haven't happened yet, Abraham becoming heir of the world. being a blessing to the nations. That didn't happen in his lifetime. That is, he couldn't see it all. But God calls the things that haven't happened yet before they happen, and then they do. And it's an interesting way to put it, because it's emphasizing the certainty that it will come to pass. In Abraham it says, who against hope believed in hope. Hope is not hoping in the sense in which we usually use the expression, you know, hope to do this or that next year, or take a vacation, or what it may be. God gives you a promise, and it may be of something in the future, and your life is now changed and reoriented around his promised future blessings. That's what it is. It's hope in that sense, and it's rooted in the certainty of God's promises. God comes to Abraham, who is an old man. He's on Social Security, right? I mean, the man's 100 years old. His wife's a little younger than him. He tells him, you're going to have a child naturally. He doesn't mean without some help, but it's not going to be someone else's child that you adopt. You're going to biologically produce a child. He's looking at his wife, who's getting older, and himself, who's getting older. You can't even fit the candles in the cake no more. And he's looking at reality, right? And it doesn't matter. That's why Abraham's a man of faith. He's this extraordinary example of faith, because he looks at circumstances that anyone else would look at and say, it ain't going to happen. It ain't going to happen. You're not going to have a kid, right? That's like the people that would have laughed at Noah in his day, talking about rain. It hadn't rained yet. He said, it's going to be a big rain, and the rain's going to be so deep that you're all going to have swimming pools in your backyards. And if you don't get on the ship, you're going to die. Nobody believed him, right? Because it was so extraordinary. This is what it means that he, against hope, against what he sees with his eyes, He believed in hope. He believed in what God said. That's what's so remarkable about Genesis 15. It's an extraordinary thing that he's believed, that he might become the father of many nations, again, through his spiritual seed. According to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be. And so, in being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead. He's a man of strong faith, but the circumstances all say it can't happen. One of those circumstances is he's physically impotent. That's what it's saying here. His body's now dead. The man's not dead. He'll live for a lot more time. He can't make babies. That's his point. It's not just that Sarah's barren, which has been a problem their whole marriage. Sarah was always barren. He can't make babies. It's his fault, too, from a natural perspective. They can't make a child, and even though he knows that he's unable, He's not weak in faith. He didn't get all hung up in the fact that they're old, and considered not his own body, now dead. When he was about 100 years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb, he looks beyond the circumstances to the promise, which is what the people did in the conquest. And they come up to the river, Jordan, the first time and send spies across. And most of the spies say, we can't take the land, they're too big and tall and all that stuff. But when Joshua brings them to the river the second time, they don't look at the river, they look at the promises on the other side. And that's Abraham, looking to the future promises in its hope because it doesn't matter what I see, God said it. That's his way of thinking. It says, he staggered not at the promise of God. We can stagger at the promise of God so easily. The Bible, if we start taking it as it's offered to us, has grand promises about the future. I don't know how all that's going to work out, but it really does talk about streets paid with gold. Are we really believing it in such a way that it changes us, or do we stagger with the promises? Abraham, I think, at a time in his life probably would have staggered, but he grows as you read the story in Genesis. He staggered not the promises of God through unbelief. This is remarkable. It's the kind of stuff that paves the road of Hebrews 11 when you read it about Abraham and others. Staggered not, he was strong in faith, giving glory to God. Giving glory to God now for what God would do later, because he said he would. That's the idea. And being fully persuaded that what he had promised, that is what God had promised, he was able to perform. That's why you always have to ask questions. Is God there? Does he care? And is he able? This answers all of those questions, right? Therefore, it was imputed to him for righteousness. So he's coming back to the same issue he's been talking about, but he just wants to get us into there to see that it's just faith. and it was nothing else. He didn't stagger in unbelief. He just believed God. It didn't matter the circumstances. He believed God. Did we believe God? God said, I'm going to resurrect you, just like Jesus. I mean, those are promises. See, those things ought to change us if we don't stagger at them. And that was where Abraham was such a strong example. Now, it was not written for his sake alone. His Old Testament stuff was not just for him, but for us. Not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him. He's actually suggesting that Genesis 15-6 was written so that people centuries later would read it and understand it, that salvation has always been by faith alone through grace. And that's what he's saying here. It wasn't written for his sake, Abraham's alone, that it was imputed to him. That is, that righteousness was imputed to him. But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe, plus what? Now, notice that the believing doesn't add anything except content, because sometimes we'll hear people say, well, you've got to have faith. And I agree with that, and there's a sense in which we might use that if somebody's kind of down, and we say, you need to have faith. But faith has to have content to have any meaning, to have substance. It's believing on Him, God, that raised up Jesus from the dead. See, that's the gospel message embedded in there, the one that died for the sins so that a holy God could declare a sinner like you and I righteous. He couldn't just do it. There had to be some payment for the sin to do it. But if we believe in this God who has raised Jesus from the dead, so there's our content, but there's not something added on to the believing. It's not believing plus, just believing, but believing as content. Who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justifications. That's the gospel message. He's the substitutionary death, died for our offenses, raise for our justification substitutionary life. See, it's not just that He provided a way to remove our sin from us, but a way to now move forward and live resurrection power. We identify with Jesus by faith, who didn't just die and get buried and stop there. but was raised again." This becomes real critical for Paul later, that his emphasis becomes not the substitutionary death, but the substitutionary life. He'll talk about reigning in life. Well, how can I reign with life? Because when I died with Christ, the sin got left in the grave. I'm freed up. That's his point. With the shackles gone, I can now live. He says, well, how are you going to live now? As a servant of God, as a servant of righteousness. That's what he'll say. Well, we'll stop there. thoughts, questions? Yes, sir? Yeah. That's right. That's right. Well, I think a couple of things. One is when we have these conversations in the Bible that are recorded, you don't have the whole thing, right? I mean, you read, for example, that Paul preached all night and some guy fell out the window and died, but we don't have the whole sermon. I don't know what else he might have told the Roman jailer when that happened. He says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He identifies a specific person, and he identifies them as God, Lord Jesus Christ. And so there may have been more content change. There are those, just be aware of it, who do argue, and it's a very small group, but they make a lot of noise. that you only need to believe in Christ, and there's no other content to it. You don't even really have to know who He is. It seems evident, though, in Acts, as you read the whole book as a unit, which is what you really have to do, that every time there's a message, an actual sermon recorded, Acts 2 is the first example, but you can read Paul himself in Acts 13 when he talks to the Jewish synagogue. In Acts 17, he talks in Athens on Mars Hill. He talks about the death, birth, and resurrection every time. And so does Peter. And so it's sort of, I think you're getting a snapshot of something without the additional conversation that had to identify to him who Jesus was. In fact, just with that one line, you wouldn't even know any content about Jesus. So he had to have said more. So that's kind of how I take it. I've tried not to restrict it and suggest in my thinking that that's all he knew was essentially believe in some guy that you don't really know. But there are those who say it, and they get it primarily from John 6, 44. And they would say, yes, you should believe in the resurrection, but that comes later as a believer. is an unbeliever, just know Jesus promised you life. Whoever he is, maybe an angel, he may be the prophet Muhammad, but he promised you life. And I just don't think that's what's there. There's not a lot of content, because the counterargument is, well, you're saying you've got to have a Ph.D. from the seminary to get saved. There's not a lot of content. The Son of God died for you on a Roman cross. and he was raised again. I mean, you know, he paid that price. It's not a lot of theological content, and I don't think it's complicated as evidenced by the fact that a lot of people at the age of five or six become believers, and they really are. So... Yeah? Isn't the cross a good example in the fact that one belief, one faith believes in Christ, and one doesn't? Yet Christ told the one that today you'll be with me. And there's no baptism, no... Right. So the example of the two thieves of the cross, one is saved and one's not, they don't have time to turn their life around and to do any works. The only fruit in their life was the believing in Christ. And you're right, there could be no baptism. And some people will say, yeah, but they really will. They'll say, well, that was before the cross. I get all that. But the fact is, like Abraham in Genesis 15, it was the faith and nothing else. There could be nothing else. And it was such a strong faith, if you think about it, because there, I mean, he's looking at a guy who claims to be God who's dying on a Roman cross just like him. I wonder what, if anything, Jesus said before that, or if he'd heard about them. We can't know for sure, but it is a good example.