The Law of Faith (Romans 3:21-31)

So we are going to be in chapter three, starting in verse twenty-one.

But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the law and the prophets.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

God presented him as an atoning sacrifice in his blood, received through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.

God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.

Where then is boasting?

It is excluded.

By what kind of law?

By one of works?

No, on the contrary, by a law of faith.

For we conclude that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

Or is God a God of Jews only?

Is he not the God of Gentiles too?

Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

Do we then nullify the law through faith?

Absolutely not.

On the contrary, we uphold the law.

And again, Lord, I thank you for today.

I thank you for the blessing of your word.

Fill us with your spirit to rightly divide it and be glorified in your name.

Amen.

Thank you.

Have a seat.

So just to lay a little bit of foundation here, I'm going to give you a little bit of imagery and it'll come into play later.

Maybe.

So picture the idea of this is the trope of every Odyssey, every epic journey from the beginning of literature through movies and beyond.

You have this idea of the hero who needs to go on his quest to reach the goal, to obtain the object that is the goal.

And so picture a huge mountain.

And he traverses, he or she traverses up the mountain to the top, to the temple, where the object is, and must make it to the top and arrive at arrive there and obtain what is inside, which is the object of his or her quest.

We'll get back to that in a second.

But keep that imagery in your head.

There's a whole lot of snow on my mountain.

I don't know if you have this nice springy mountain like that, or if you have this crazy, like epic Nordic mountain.

I'm going over here for some reason with that.

But okay.

Keep that imagery in your head because we'll jump back to that for a moment.

So as we have been talking through the book of Romans, Paul is writing to the church in Rome, which is a church comprised of Jewish believers and Gentile converts.

And so we have used this analogy throughout of the two sides of the room, and I see some of you switching back and forth.

So I think that some of you, it's getting a little weird.

But this side of the room we talked about as the Jewish believer side who is still upholding the law and proud of it, and it goes to self-righteousness of how we are the good ones, we do what is right, we uphold the law, and we hate the Gentiles over there because they're gross.

And then over here we have the licentious side that goes, I have received Christ, and I don't need to make any changes, I don't need to do anything in my life, I don't need to stop sinning, I can do what I want.

And those are the two sides.

So Paul is speaking to believers.

That is something we need to keep in mind as we study the book of Romans, that he's talking to a church of people, and how do I know that?

Because in chapter 1, it says in his greeting, verse 7, to all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints.

So his audience of this letter, this whole letter, is to a group of believers.

And I'm highlighting that because it really helps how we interpret this passage.

Because if we don't keep that in mind, then we can go some uh interesting ways with that.

And so he is talking to people who is a mixed church, the Church of Rome, there is no second church of Rome, there is no Rome Baptist, there is no Calvary Rome, there is no Rome Presbyterian, to where if they don't like what's going on, they just hop to the next one.

They're stuck here not liking each other, having to deal with this.

And so we have talked at length so far where he has gone into not only the problem at hand, which is uh God's wrath against mankind, because of the broken covenant with mankind sinning and deciding, I don't want you to be God, I want to be God.

And the result of that and God's wrath, giving giving them over, letting them experience what that looks like.

And then he addresses the self-righteousness of those who accuse and judge the ones over here, looking at them, going, Man, you guys are sick.

And going, yeah, you guys do the same thing.

It may happen in your heart, but you guys are just as guilty.

And then when last week we talked about how Paul brought together a whole bunch of psalms together into this conclusion that no one is righteous, and this conclusion that the in verse 19 of chapter 3, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God's judgment.

So, in other words, we're at a really awkward scene in this passage where Paul just told these people that everybody has guilt before God.

And we have to break this up into different chunks as we teach through it, because otherwise it would be a really, really long Sunday.

But when we break it up like that, we kind of miss that.

This is just a continued letter through out.

It doesn't just stop in him going, okay, now we're going to stay tuned for our next week when we have the next time of this passage.

It's just continuing forward.

So we just hit that everybody is guilty.

And then here we have the next thing which starts with but.

And that's a that's a very important word here, and a very encouraging word, because if he had stopped at Romans 3.20, it would be really discouraging.

So, having that said, there is a foundational verse to everything that we're going to talk about today, and that is Romans 1.16 and 17.

Right after his introduction, he launches into this verse, which is I'm not ashamed of the gospel, because it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and now to the Greek.

In it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous will live by faith.

This is a key phrase, especially in this passage, righteousness of God.

Righteousness.

It comes up over and over and over and over in this passage that we're studying today.

And so that's why we're jumping back to that original statement in 16 and 17, because that is what he says right after his intro, almost as his thesis, that the gospel is the power of God to salvation to Jew and Gentile for anyone who believes, because the righteousness of God is revealed in it, from faith to faith, because the righteous will live by faith.

Spoiler alert, that was pretty much just my whole sermon in two verses.

So there we go.

Get your kids, get out the double.

No.

Um so jumping back, the righteousness of God is this key verse, this key phrase that we see starting in verse 21, apart from the law, the righteousness of God.

Now, what does this mean?

There is actually a little bit of debate on what exactly this means over the last few decades.

And here's the thing.

I very, very intentionally do not preach from Greek interpretation.

I do it in study, but I don't tend to bring it on Sunday for a couple reasons.

Number one, because like it or not, the vast majority of pastors have had at best one semester of Greek.

Doesn't quite make you an expert.

Number two, it creates this authority that you guys cannot check up on typically, apart from just taking my word for it.

So I tend to not dive into that too much on purpose.

So just conclude to say here that the righteousness of God, there's a little bit of debate as to whether this is attributive of God's righteousness, or whether this means the righteousness that comes from God, the righteousness that God imparts, because of the grammar of that.

My conclusion?

Uh both, and who cares?

That's kind of what I boiled down to that, because it's really one and the same in that.

It is the righteousness of God, and it is the righteousness that God imparts to those who live by faith.

And why do I say it's kind of both?

And because the righteousness from God that he gives, which we'll talk about in detail in a moment, is by definition God's righteousness because we just saw that he is the only one who is righteous.

So if he's giving away another kind of righteous, I'd feel a little ripped off.

So it is both his righteousness, because he is the only one who is righteous, as well as the righteousness that he imparts.

And we'll go, how does he do that?

I'm glad you asked.

We're about to hit that.

So, but having that said, what does righteousness mean?

Best way that I've seen it described is you have like a string with a weight on it, a plumb line, that shows because it turns out that gravity works.

So, a weight on a string goes down, and you can see what is aligned.

So you can see if what you are building is properly aligned with straight, so that you're not building it like this and going, ah, well, I kind of want straight to look like this, and it's like, cool, good luck on your house.

And that is why that's important is having that imagery and that picture because God is that line, and God determines that line.

And he determines it by his own character and his own will, because he is God and we are not, which we have talked about in the last couple of chapters.

So his righteousness is the standard, and we have talked in detail about how we can't get it.

So back to that mountaintop picture, we cannot get to the top of the mountain to receive that righteousness.

We cannot get up there to obtain the treasure at the top.

And so when he says it's apart from the law, the law path does not reach the top.

It may go further, it may go here, it may go there, it does not reach the top of the mountain.

And that is that why we have that imagery is that why through the law, through our own works and the obtaining of our own righteousness, we cannot attain to God's righteousness and receive it on our own merit.

And that's what he's been talking about.

And why we see in verse 20 of chapter 3, no one is justified by his sight by the works of the law.

So when he says the righteousness of God is apart from the law, it is impossible for us to get it on our own.

Mountains too high, too steep, the path doesn't reach, no matter how much you want to get there.

And so, basically, the the best you can do through the law is be like the people who like will buy the t-shirt that say, like, I made it to the top of Halfdome when they never even did it.

And that's what it looks like to go by the works of the law and to have our own righteousness.

And it's like, well, you didn't.

You know, it's like, well, I got further than that person.

It's like, that's not the same thing.

So that's what that means.

And so the righteousness of God, we're gonna go through this pretty pretty simply here.

And so, Joshua, if you can put up slide number one, this is what the text says for the righteousness of God.

It is, number one, uh revealed apart from the law.

So the law is not what reveals the righteousness of God, it reveals the law reveals the guilt of mankind.

So, what else is it in verse 21?

It is attested by the law and the prophets.

Now, this is important.

Attested, uh, witnessed, uh declared by the law and prophets.

Paul is not making this up.

This is not Paul coming in going, I've got this really new system here that you need to buy into.

So he is Paul's like the gospel is not a fad diet.

It is attested by the law and the prophets.

It is from the very, very beginning.

Now we could spend all week talking in detail about how the gospel is revealed in the law and the prophets, with which the law and the prophets, law, prophets, and the writings is the Old Testament.

That's just another way of, it's an idiom for that.

So it's revealed in the Old Testament there.

And just a couple of things we see when Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees in John 5.

He says, You search the scriptures because you think in them they have eternal life, and they testify of me.

That Jesus is telling them, you're looking at the scriptures, looking for the answer.

I'm the answer, and they're talking about me.

So, and the one that I also want to highlight here, because it's just a foreshadow for the rest of this book, Genesis 15, 6.

Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

Belief, righteousness attributed.

So that is really relevant to what we're talking about today.

So, and that's going to come up over and over and over in the book of Romans and the rest of Paul's writing.

So, just a teaser of that.

And so I challenge you to look through and see for yourself for how many times the gospel pops up in the Old Testament.

That's a really good study and a really good way to consume large quantities of Scripture.

So, through faith in Jesus Christ.

The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ or through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, depending on that interpretation and that translation.

Either way, the path to this is Jesus.

There's no other path.

It is through faith in Jesus and through the faithfulness of Jesus, is the only way to obtain God's righteousness.

We still haven't seen how, but he's laying the groundwork here.

To all who believe, for there is no difference.

There's no distinction.

So the righteousness of God, apart from the law, attested by the law and prophets, Paul's not just making this up.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus, to all who believe, because there's no difference.

Now, this is an important or no distinction.

This is an important phrase because what we've been talking about from the very beginning, over and over and over, is distinction.

Jew, gentile, Jew, gentile, self-righteous, licentious, over and over and over.

Here, Paul is taking this room that is split and saying, like it or not, you guys are in the same room.

You are all part of one body through Jesus.

You may try to split, that's not okay, because you are all in the same room together.

So that's the first statement that we see about God's righteousness here is that it is apart from the law, but it is witnessed by the law and prophets, through faith in Jesus, to all who believe, because there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile.

Okay.

Then we hit Romans 3.23.

And so we're gonna do a little bit of work here.

Gonna tease this out a little bit.

And so we're gonna we're gonna go, hey, this is not controversial.

Okay, can everyone say that really quick?

This is not controversial.

Cool, we're laying some groundwork here on where we're about to go with this.

So here's the interesting thing about these kind of verses.

Romans 3.23.

All of sin and fall short of the glory of God.

You learn that very, very early on because it's an important verse in understanding, and especially in terms of the what we talked about, the Romans Road, where we can see kind of head, like basically blips and headlines of what Paul is talking about here in salvation, which is good.

The problem with these verses, which are sometimes the coffee cup verses, which are like, I mean, I've never seen someone with that verse on the coffee cup.

You've got to be real committed to that.

But uh, or the vinyl thing on the church walls, to things like that.

That's usually in the timeout corner.

Uh but with that, the problem with these kind of verses is that they tend to start out really, really good, and then everyone becomes really, really familiar with them, and then they become weaponized for tribal goals.

And that's the issue, is that I have heard this passage taught in so many very, very strange ways that have nothing to do with this passage.

So my goal here is to tease out what I see in this passage and to say what I mean and what I don't mean and to not get stoned in the process.

So, having that said, verse 22, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there's no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

The plainest reading that I see this in terms of biblical interpretation is that the all in verse 23 is defined by the all in verse 22.

Stay with me.

I'm not saying what you think I'm saying.

So, when he says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, the all was defined in verse 22 as all who believe, since there is no distinction.

Now, why am I saying that?

Because he says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

So, what he is saying here is that everybody in this room, theoretically, the the whole Jew, Gentile believers, all in the same room under sin, all in the same room under justification through Christ Jesus.

That is why it's important to see this and to see why it means, why to interpret that way, because that is consistent with the whole context of the book thus far and heading forward, because it is in these distinctions that they're going to keep on trying to divide, whether that be through in a little bit when they're talking about I'm just gonna keep on sinning on this, I'm talking to you, this side of the room, uh, that idea, or I'm just gonna keep on my own self-righteousness, or uh, I don't want to act like a body in my gifts.

I want to do my own thing.

Or uh with even more with that, or I don't want to, like, you need to do it how I do it, and I'm not gonna care if I stumble you.

You have to do how I do it, I'm not gonna care if I stumble you.

That's the division over and over and over again.

And so I see here in this passage that it is very clear, because context, yes, all means all, and context means context, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace.

He's bringing the room together.

Now, here's what I have to say, because warning bells are going off.

I already see that.

The warning bells are going off, going, wait a second, what are you trying to say here?

Because this verse has been used and weaponized in very strange ways, in arguments against different beliefs and that are just don't have anything to do with this.

So, am I saying that not everybody has sinned?

No.

You'd have to not be paying attention because we just talked about verse 20, where he says, there is the whole world is guilty before the Lord.

So, scripture is clear on that.

Everybody has sinned and needs salvation.

Am I saying justification is only for believers?

No, and neither is this passage.

And honestly, I don't believe that's what the Bible says either.

So I so with that, I see that God is not willing that any should perish, but all come to the knowledge of Him.

That He does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked.

That whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.

The context of Scripture, in my understanding of it, is yes, everybody is guilty under sin.

Everybody is in need of salvation through Jesus, and everybody has the opportunity to be saved.

That is how I interpret Scripture.

So I'm not saying anything of those warning bells that are going off that that scripture is so often weaponized against.

What I am saying is that this passage is very well indicating.

Jewish believer wants to hold on to the law, Gentile believer who wants to hold on to your sin.

If you are a believer, like it or not, you're in the same room in Jesus.

And that's cool.

Justified freely in verse 24 by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Justified is another important word.

We know it, we see it, all these words that we see that are, and yet defining it and going, what does justification actually mean?

Because we say justification, it's like, what does that mean?

Jesus! And that's our church answer.

It's like, yes, but uh, what does that mean?

Justification is the impartation of God's righteousness.

So, justification is taking that thing on the top of the mountain, the righteousness of God, that we could not achieve on our own, that we could not get to.

And it is God taking that and bringing it down and handing it to us.

That's justification.

It is the passing over and the ignoring of our guilt, and instead seeing the righteousness of Jesus reckoned to us.

So, justification is the impartation of his righteousness to those who have faith in it through the person and work of Jesus.

We could not reach the top of the mountain, there's no path to reach his righteousness, and so God took his righteousness and offers it to us.

Through Jesus.

Those are two very important words.

Through Jesus.

So justification.

Do you mind putting up slide two, buddy?

Thank you.

They are justified freely.

Freely, it's difficult in our culture because it's not easy to equivocate because we think of freely and we think of it as like, oh cool, it's not a discount.

It's like a coupon.

Things like that.

Freely, hilariously given.

Just like, why would you do this?

It would be like the equivalent of a, in in the crassest sense, a billionaire rolling up and handing you a check for a million dollars.

And you'd be like, what's the catch?

There's no catch.

And you'd be like, there's always a catch.

But that's what freely implies.

That it is just given, hilariously, without strings, and handed and imparted.

By his grace, by his giving, his gift, his nature of giving.

Justification happens freely, it happens by his grace, and it happens, happens through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Redemption.

I'm getting all the words today.

So redemption is a word that connotates a slave market.

That the Roman church would be very, very familiar with.

They would pass by it every day.

And it would be the price that is paid to purchase somebody who is enslaved, to redeem them, a ransom payment in that sense.

And so this is a word that we go, huh, that's not a word that I use every day.

That's a word that they would understand very, very, very well.

This redemption.

It is the idea of somebody in bondage and servitude being purchased.

And that is what this justification is.

They are freely justified by his grace through the redemption.

What is that payment that is in Christ Jesus?

He is the payment.

Seeing, continuing forward, in verse 25, God presented him as an atoning sacrifice in his blood.

So God presented him.

He publicly presented him exhibit A, Jesus.

There is no exhibit B.

So he is publicly presenting him as an atoning sacrifice.

See, and this is the thing where you say that word atoning sacrifice, and this side of the room, the Jewish believers get really excited because they're like, I know that one.

That it is a sacrifice for the purpose of appeasing of wrath.

So different sacrifices in Levitical law.

There are thanks offerings, there are praise offerings, there's the first fruits, there's the ingathering or harvest, all these different sacrifices, and then there's a sacrifice for sin.

And that culminating in the Day of Atonement, that idea for the sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.

And so the atoning sacrifice is a Levitical phrase that they would be like, oh, I know what that means.

And the best way that I've heard this described is that it's like a sponge.

The sacrifice is a sponge that is absorbing all of God's wrath, so there's none left for us.

Really cool imagery with that.

So the sacrifice, all of the wrath went to the set to that atoning sacrifice.

Who is that atoning sacrifice?

Jesus.

This is the easiest call and response church week ever, because almost every answer is Jesus.

So with that, righteousness of God we cannot obtain on our own.

Cannot be purchased through the law.

Cannot be ignored through sin.

It is there and must be grappled with.

So that it does not come to us.

For those who believe.

Received through faith.

This is in his blood.

Hebrews 9, all about this.

Good thing to look up on your own and to see how his blood is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

And it is received through faith.

What good is it if we don't receive it?

If God offers it and we don't take it.

And we don't take it on the terms to which it is given.

So imagine, again, crass analogy, but a billionaire wants to hand you a check for a million dollars, and you go, Can you just Venmo it to me?

I mean, this is really inconvenient how this works out.

I really, that's crazy.

You'd be like, okay.

And so the importance of uh taking it by his terms, and that is the law of faith, which we will talk about in a moment.

So God presented him as this atoning sacrifice, but God also in verse 26 presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time.

First in verse 25, as an atoning sacrifice in his blood received faith, to demonstrate his righteousness in verse 25.

Because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.

And once again, the Jewish believer side are getting real excited, like passed over, Passover, got it.

I know where you're going with this, Paul.

And atoning sacrifice, lambs-laughtered by his blood, passed over.

And like this side of the room, hypothetically, is just like, I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm just glad to be here.

This is good.

I'm really freaked out that you're saying it's not by the law, but this is really good.

And God is demonstrating his righteousness because in his restraint he passed over the sins previously committed.

God is demonstrating his uprightness in pouring out wrath against sin.

That is his due, that is his right, that is his uh part of his role, in a lack of a better way to say it.

And to not punish sin is not righteous.

To say wrong is right is not righteous.

And so he's not doing that.

And you ask, well, why didn't God just smoke everybody?

Why didn't he destroy everybody in the flood?

Why didn't he just kill Adam and Eve at the beginning?

That would have been really like the most efficient way to do this.

Why doesn't he do that?

He is patient, gloriously so.

And so he has waited, he's passed over the sins previously committed, he has not destroyed humankind from the face of the earth, but has offered Jesus as that as that sacrifice.

With all the scriptures bearing witness and attesting to that, pointing forward in the Old Testament and here pointing back to the cross.

So he presented him in verse 26 to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so that he would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.

So, uh, can you go to slide three, buddy?

Thank you.

So here he presented him as an atoning sacrifice by his blood, received through faith, and he did that so that he can, or you might, your version might say the just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

He is upright in doing what is right, punishing sin, not calling wrong right.

And yet he's demonstrating his righteousness by justifying the one who has faith in Jesus.

He is showing his mercy and his graciousness in doing so by allowing a way to be saved from his wrath.

And that is the mystery of salvation we see throughout scripture revealed in the person of Jesus, is that salvation comes not through the working of the law, so that you can avoid God's wrath because you can't get to the top.

It comes from the receiving of Jesus' righteousness and doing so and forsaking old way of life and following Him and letting Him regenerate us.

So He would declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.

This keeps coming up.

It's almost like that faith in Jesus thing is important in this whole justification process.

So we have seen thus far that everybody here, Jewish believer, gentile convert, like it or not, all guilty under God's wrath as determined by the law, all justified freely by Jesus, through faith in Jesus, apart from the law and apart from works.

And I see in 2 Corinthians 5 21, Paul says, He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

That's that beauty of justification here, is that we are trading places with Jesus, him in his perfect sinless life in righteousness, and us being guilty under his wrath, and him saying, We're gonna trade jerseys here, for lack of a better way to say it.

And he got the fullness of God's, of God's wrath on the cross, the punishment we deserved, and we get the righteousness that he earned in his perfection that we could not.

Which is amazing, and that really that's the kind of thing that really bothers those of us given to self-righteousness because we really want to earn it.

And that's something that sounds really, really good to those of us who want to just keep on sending it until we realize it don't work that way, because the rest of the book.

So, but having that said, jumping into the next chunk here, we get the therefore of what this means for us.

Verse 27.

Where then is boasting?

It's excluded, it's shut out, it is inadmissible in the court here.

Boasting does not count here.

You can't say, no, no, look what I've done, I'm righteous, I'm upright.

We see again one of those verses that many of us know, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

It's by grace you've been saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

And he says here, it's excluded by what kind of law?

By one of works?

No.

On the contrary, by a law of faith.

That phrase law of faith is such a strange thing to say.

There is a standard.

And it's not the stand, the standard of salvation is not the works of the law.

The standard of salvation is faith.

And that means you can't bypass it through the law, and that means you can't avoid it through sin.

In order to have life with Jesus, you're going to have to wrestle with and grapple with and accept and receive and submit via faith, right in the middle.

That is the law of faith.

And that excludes us from taking credit.

We don't get to boast on that.

So, this law of faith here.

Uh, slide four, buddy.

Thank you.

We see this justification.

The conclude, his conclusion, Paul's conclusion, ain't my conclusion yet, uh, is that a person is justified by what?

By faith.

Apart from the works of the law.

So he's justified by faith, justified apart from the works of the law.

And he's and we sit there and go, yeah, you said that already.

It's like, that's because we need to hear it that many times.

By faith, apart from the works of the law.

You must wreck, they must grapple with faith and receive by faith, they must grapple with the fact you can't earn it.

So, or is God a God of Jews only?

Is he not a God of Gentiles too?

Yes, of Gentiles too.

Same room gathered together, since there's one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

So, one God.

He is not split in how he deals with them.

It's not like, here's your rule over here, here's your rule over here, we'll make it all work out, and it's really confusing and you can't see.

He reveals it here through Jesus, and it's one God revealing salvation in one way through faith in Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile, because you're all in the same room together.

Do we then nullify the law through faith?

Absolutely not.

On the contrary, we uphold the law.

We talked about this a little this this past week.

We're gonna talk it about a lot more in upcoming weeks, so I don't want to preach someone else's sermon any more than I already do.

But with that, here's a little teaser for what that means.

I heard a pastor who uh had brain surgery, he had brain cancer.

And went into the MRI, and the MRI said, You have cancer.

Did the MRI create the cancer in his brain?

No.

Did the MRI cure him of his cancer?

No.

What did it do?

It diagnosed him and he told him that you have cancer, and if you don't, if you continue this way, you're going to die.

Now he could have ignored it and bypassed the MRI, and he probably would have died.

But instead, the MRI is a good analogy of the law.

It shows you and me there's a problem.

It is powerless to solve the problem.

But without the diagnosis of the problem, we won't go to the doctor in the first place.

Because we think we're fine.

Does that make sense?

So that's a teaser moving ahead into later passages.

So learning the plane a little bit.

Salvation, justification, being rendered the righteousness of God through Jesus, through the work of Him, to all who believed, received through faith, apart from the works of the law, apart from the works of the law, also apart from the works of the law received through faith, through Jesus, apart from the works of the law received through faith.

Jesus.

Here's my question.

If justification is free and is a gift, why do we keep trying to earn it?

Why do we keep trying so hard to earn what we could not earn?

We keep trying to rebuild, and I'm including myself in here with this.

We keep trying to rebuild another version of the law on top of the gospel.

And say, okay, yeah, salvation, cool, but now, here's what it is, here's what we do now as Christians, all these steps.

This doesn't work.

Something, a really good way of understanding the book of Romans that also can create a headache later, is our typical Romans robe, or we see Romans Road, where we see sin, salvation, sanctification, sovereignty, service, all these different things.

That's a really good tool, and I'm not knocking that because it shows a process for the gospel.

However, it can very easily lead us to believe that we graduate from the salvation step to the sanctification step, to sovereignty, into the service step, and that's how you become a real Christian.

Now, you can't outgrow the gospel.

And why do we keep trying to earn it?

By building on top of it.

By saying, yes, Jesus and if you don't have this little peace, then you don't have Jesus.

Yes, it's Jesus, justified, received through faith, but if you don't have this peace, you ain't gonna get it.

You're gonna get tricked out of it.

God's righteousness is received through justification, through faith, through Jesus, apart from the law.

We see in James 1.20, something that does not accomplish God's righteousness is human anger, which is epidemic within the church.

Myself included.

I'm not gonna throw stones and not point at myself.

But human wrath does not accomplish God's wrath, God's righteousness straight up.

And indignation can make us feel righteous because we're really upset with somebody else.

Hurt, which braids fear, prompts us to build.

And build like a callus over a wound in our own righteousness.

1 John 4, 14 through 18, talks about this idea of perfect love, casting out fear, there being no fear in love.

And when you look at that passage, you can see the salvation process through that and the application to our passage.

We don't have time to dive through all of that together.

This is prevalent in our hurt, we it breeds fear, and we're constantly worried that we're going to lose that which is most precious.

So, this is the imagery.

I want you to picture this, please.

There's those commercials, paper towel commercials.

Yeah, we're going there.

We have this is my paper towel.

This is the leading competitor, right?

And you have wet strawberries or something on top of them, and it's like this, it's about you watching it.

It's like, oh, oh, oh, it's it's about to give way, it's about to go through.

The leading competitor, their strawberry, their paper is about to give way.

You gotta use mine instead.

This is not how we have been saved.

This is not how our salvation is.

We are not in danger in every moment of being unsaved.

And I and again, I'm not criticizing everybody out here, including myself.

I'm criticizing myself because that's what I do, but uh rather I'm pointing out that this comes so often from hurt and fear, and we're led to believe that every moment there is that thing that might pull away our justification that we receive through faith that was not ever purchased on our own in the first place, but that we might accidentally trade it, that we might accidentally do this, or we might accidentally receive the mark of the beast, that we might accidentally fall into these heresies, different things like that.

And again, this is a this is a result of hurt people acting through fear.

And you know how I know that?

Because that was me.

Absolutely 100%.

And I kept trying to please the angry church leader that was never satisfied and always pointing out what's about to take somebody down, and I became that.

This is a little too real for me, and I'm really uncomfortable, but we're gonna roll with it.

So it is so easy to do, and so easy to be owned and driven by the person that's probably not even in your life anymore.

And yet still speaks, you're not enough.

They're not enough.

They haven't figured this out yet, they haven't got here yet.

Okay, you're not enough.

Jesus is enough, and we can rest in that.

Not being lazy, that's not what I'm saying here.

There's a whole rest of Romans here going on here, but what God has joined together, why do we keep trying to separate?

Why do we keep trying to make distinctions?

We have Jew, Gentile, struggling with self-righteousness, struggling with licentiousness, and God, and Jesus says, You are both guilty and you are both forgiven if you have received this through faith.

And we keep going, yeah, but, yeah, but there's this, and this is coming, and this is happening, and it's right out there, and it's gonna happen, and this is why we're better, because we're not just followers of Jesus, we're Protestant followers of Jesus, we're not just Protestant followers of Jesus, we're evangelical Protestant followers of Jesus.

And not only that, but we're non-denominational evangelical Protestant followers of Jesus, who are part of a specific non-denomination, and we may or may not like one half of those denominated that non-denomination more than the other in a specific church, in a specific town in 2022.

And we have the hubris to say, we know, apart from everything that has gone before us.

So, this is a this is a hard saying for those, you know, one of those like he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Salvific issues, that which proclaims that that which pertains to our freedom and our surety, and our surety and our salvation found in Jesus.

This is what is not included in salvific issues.

In times, you can have a different viewpoint and still be saved.

Age of the earth, different viewpoint, still be saved.

Church government method, method of baptism or communion, political party.

I can't believe I have to say that, but I do.

All of these different things are not.

Unsalvific issues.

Are they important?

Yeah.

Are there ways that we find different like that?

We have different church bodies and we have a diversity in the body?

Yes.

Absolutely.

And so I'm not saying, hey, ignore what your passions are.

Just ignore it, forget it.

But that is not entrance into the body of Christ, and it does not exclude you from the body of Christ.

You may get a little uncomfortable if you're if like, you know, if you go to a place that, for example, that sprinkles in baptism, and you're like all immersion, you're like, you may get a little annoyed.

So it's good that we have different bodies.

That's there for that's okay.

That's there for a reason, but it does not exclude you from the body of Christ.

And that is what we keep running into.

Heresy is very clearly defined through church history and usually determined by ecumenical councils over the course of decades, not by me on YouTube.

And this is the thing.

The best way I can find is when someone says this person's a heretic, just simply ask, which one?

Which historical heresy are you talking about?

You're talking about Arianism, Nestorianism, Polynarianism, which one are you talking about?

Because there's actually very clearly defined things, all based around the person and nature of Jesus, God, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God.

Those are heresies.

Me not liking what you have to say is not a heresy.

That may be an issue you need to grapple with, and if you don't like it enough, then you don't need to be there, that's okay.

But define these things according to the Word of God and the historical context.

Because we keep running into the situation where in our fear and our hurt and our holding tightly and going, we're about to give way.

Our faith is about to give way.

We are, this is rough, okay?

Everyone, we are recreating post-500 AD Roman Catholicism, where justification and sanctification are intertwined, and if you lose one, you lose both.

And that is not the way of the gospel.

Tough things, good things to chew on.

And the enemy wants us to isolate, wants us to pull out because of this and that and this and that.

And you may grapple with that, and you may be comfortable here, you may not be comfortable here.

That's okay.

Go to another church, I pray you don't, because we like you guys.

Or someone from another church may not be comfortable and they may come this way, and that's great.

If we have those, there's freedom in that, there's open-handedness in that.

But you know who wants you to isolate?

Satan.

He wants us to isolate, he wants us to pull out, he wants us to not use the gifts, he wants us to not have hard conversation, he wants us to disappear and go, I am, I everything else is too harmful for me, and I am safe here.

And in reality, that's where we're most vulnerable.

And I'm not telling you to give up your convictions in any way, shape, or form.

Please don't hear me in that.

What I am saying is remember what is the gospel, what is not the gospel, and navigate that and feel comfortable navigating that, working through that, but don't constantly live in fear that the next thing that happens might take away you out of the Father's hand.

Um, may we pull the weeds in our own gardens rather than keep giving our neighbors long advice.

And that is the difficulty, and again, once again, I am so preaching to myself in this.

I had to go through this over and over and over again.

I'm like, this hurts, I don't like it.

But it's true.

We are a part of one body.

Not based on any of these other things, but based on the person and work of Jesus.

That is central.

That is foundational.

And all of these other things, if we are putting them in to the God, uh in addition to the gospel, is wood, hay, and stubble that will not survive eternity.

So may we rest in the glory that we are one body through Jesus, through the law of faith that neither allows us to build our own righteousness nor allows us to ignore sin as defined in Scripture.

But grapple with the reality that we have to go through Jesus in order to be justified, have that righteousness of God, the righteousness from God, imparted to us through his ransom payment by his atoning work on the cross because God has passed over our sins because of the salvation offered us through Jesus.

Amen.

We're coming up on Easter this whole week.

We get to think about this and be reminded of all of these things, an amazing thing that Jesus has done all through this, and we can hope in that.

And what I would say, no matter where we are at, you do not outgrow the gospel at any way, shape, or form in your faith, and neither do I.

And we must continue to cycle everything through that, and that involves grace, and that involves going through that and realizing that I cannot earn it, and I'm not about to be tricked out of it in any given moment.

And there is rest in that.

Amen?

Let's pray, Lord.

I thank you so much for how amazing you are in all things.

I thank you that we could not attain to your righteousness.

We could not grasp that on our own.

And you did not simply wipe us out in your wrath, as would be fair, but instead in your mercy.

You have justified us who have received Jesus through faith, by his sacrifice, that you do not look on our righteousness, that it is inadmissible in the court of law, and instead, Jesus' righteousness is what you see and what you judge us by.

And our role is to cling to Him in all things, and to trust that you are good, and you are patient, or it would have been right for you to destroy us all, and yet you offered us all salvation.

That the most aggrieved entity in this whole story is you, and yet you offer forgiveness and you offer grace, and that can only come through your Son Jesus, and not by any other way and any other means.

Help us to grasp that, to circle back to that, grow us, heal us.

Continue to help us trust in your faithfulness to hold on to us in all things as we cling to you.

In your name.

Amen.