Message - Righteousness Through Faith

We are starting a brand new series this morning called The Full Gospel.

And this is gonna be a study of the last section of Romans chapter three.

We're going through Romans this year or this next few years.

I don't know.

We're gonna take little breaks here and there to talk about other things.

But Romans, if you're not familiar, it's a letter in the New Testament written by a man named Paul.

Paul wrote a huge chunk of the New Testament.

And Romans is probably the most comprehensive detailing of what it really means to follow Jesus, who Jesus is, what Jesus did, what that means for us, and how we live our lives in response.

So much so that if you really understand Romans, you you understand what it means to be a person of faith in Jesus Christ.

And so we're gonna go through Romans, but but Romans, it's dense.

And so we've broken it up into a ton of small series.

This series, it covers the last section of Romans chapter 3, and we're calling it the full gospel because this section really lays out the gospel, which is a word that means the good news of Jesus Christ.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

It lays out the good news for us in a way that is very comprehensive, where we don't miss anything.

Because hear me out when I say this, a partial gospel just won't do.

A partial gospel won't do.

It's amazing how many things in life are worthless if you don't have the whole thing.

Like if there's one component missing, it just doesn't, it doesn't work.

Something that happens pretty often at my house is Megan will be planning to cook something, maybe to bake something.

She's gonna do it for our family or take it somewhere, and right before she gets started, she'll say, Oh no, I just realized I'm missing this ingredient.

Any other husbands in the room have had that happen to you, and you're sent to the store, right?

I hate doing that.

I hate it.

Not because I don't like serving my wife, I'm just really bad in the grocery store.

Like, I'm I'm really bad.

I'm looking around at some guys I know that do a good bit of cooking, like Thomas, this would not be a problem for you, but it is for me.

Like, Megan will send me to the store and she'll give me a list, and she'll even tell me what aisle it's on and where it is in the aisle and what it's next to.

And I can't find it.

And I'll I'll call her, I'll be on the phone, and she's like, Are you looking at this shelf?

And I'm like, yes.

And she's like, tell me what you see, and I'll tell her.

She's like, it should be right in front of your eyes.

And I'm going, I don't see it.

I don't see it at all.

And sometimes that's just because I'm I'm that guy.

Like, I was that kid when my dad sent me into the garage to find a screwdriver, I just never could find one.

And then he'd come in, it'd be like right where he said it was, and I'm like, Dad, I don't know what to tell you, but it's a miracle.

That was not there a few seconds ago.

Like, I'm just that guy.

And so anytime Megan asks me to do that, you know, I always look at her and go, man, do you really need that ingredient?

And she'll be like, Yeah, it will not work without it.

You need flour to bake things, apparently.

So I gotta go to the store.

There's a lot of things in life like that, where if you have most of the ingredients, it doesn't cut it.

It's like that with the gospel, it's like that with the message of Jesus.

A partial gospel, it's not gonna cut it.

What happens when we receive a partial gospel?

When we believe in some of the good news, but not all of it, or maybe we've never even really thought about the entirety of the good news of Jesus, we find ourselves often discouraged, maybe even disillusioned in our faith because we wonder why am I not experiencing the joy and the power and the peace and the love and all the things that I hear about on Sundays and I read about in Scripture.

We're very susceptible to confusion.

We're susceptible to being sort of led astray by other ideas and philosophies that just don't hold up to the gospel because we don't have a full understanding of what the gospel is.

And hear me when I say this, the gospel is so much more than we think it is most of the time.

Like, like, yes, the gospel is forgiveness.

You have been forgiven.

That's good news.

But the gospel is way more than forgiveness because God did not stop, he didn't stop at forgiveness with you.

He's done something called justification, which is more than forgiveness.

We're gonna talk about that in just a few weeks.

The gospel is the love of God, but it's more than the love of God, it's more than what you might think it is.

And what I want for all of us is to experience what Scripture talks about in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 19.

Ephesians 3:19

It says that we're to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

We're supposed to know what surpasses knowledge.

How crazy is that?

To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with the fullness of God, filled with the fullness.

That is your destiny.

That is what you're meant for.

You are meant by God to be filled to the brim with his fullness, with everything that he has.

And as a pastor, I find often when I when I meet with people, when I talk with people who aren't experiencing the fullness of God, it's often because they they've settled for a partial gospel or an incomplete gospel.

And we need the whole thing.

That's what this series is all about.

It's gonna take us four weeks.

And without saying anything else, I just want us to open up this section of Romans, read it.

If you have the His Hands mobile app, you can follow along with all the scripture we have, either right now or afterwards.

I'm gonna read this one out of the English Standard Version, which is not the normal version we use at His Hands.

We usually use something like the New Living, which is a little bit more modern day language.

But there's some terms that we need to know.

And sometimes the more modern language versions will take some of those terms and use a word that's more natural for our vocabulary, but maybe it doesn't really fully mean what the original word meant.

And I want to make sure we get all these terms.

So we're gonna read Romans chapter 3, verses 21 to 31.

Romans 3:21–31

Let's go.

It says, now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

There is no distinction.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and 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 had passed over former sins.

It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of our boasting?

It is excluded.

By what kind of law?

By a law of works?

No, by the law of faith.

For we hold that one is not justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Or we hold that one is justified, rather, but that's a big difference, by faith apart from works of the law.

Or is God the God of the Jews only?

Is he not also the God of the Gentiles?

Yes, of Gentiles also.

Since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

By no means.

On the contrary, we uphold the law.

All right, there's a lot there.

I know it, I get it.

A lot of you are like, I checked out after the second sentence.

But sometimes that's what happens when we read scripture.

Guys, scripture's deep.

God is deep.

He's deep.

He's nuanced, he's complex.

And sometimes when we read scripture and there's a lot of words, and we just kind of go, ah, he loves me.

And that's true, but it's more than that.

And so we're really gonna look at four concepts over the next few weeks that are laid out for us here.

And honestly, we could make this like a 10-week thing easily, but we're gonna we're gonna do it in four, and I think this will work.

Number one is righteousness through faith.

Righteousness through faith.

We saw that listed out.

Number two is justification by grace.

Number three is propitiation, which is a word I will absolutely mispronounce multiple times.

Propitiation by atonement, and finally the fourth week will be the ability to uphold.

And I think if we understand these concepts, we have a really good grasp on the full gospel.

Today we're gonna start with this idea of righteousness through faith.

Let's go back to verse 22.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

We very often see righteousness and faith connected in Scripture.

Not just in the New Testament, but also way back in the old, in the earliest writings that we have, for example, Habakkuk 2.4 says, Behold, his soul is puffed up.

It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by faith.

Habakkuk's describing a proud person who's maybe boasting and saying, like, I've got it, I'm good.

And he says, No, no, no, the righteous shall live by faith.

We see a connection there, a link between righteousness and faith.

Genesis 15, 6 says that Abram, who's later called Abraham, believed in the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.

He was counted as righteous because of his faith.

So let's understand this term.

This is important, righteousness.

The word righteousness in Scripture, what it ultimately means is right standing with God.

In other words, if someone is righteous, that means that God looks at them and says, Yes, that's right.

That's good.

And all of us can relate to this because all of us have seen something, we've looked at something in our world and we've thought that ain't right.

Like that's just not right.

That should not happen.

All of us have seen someone wearing something and thought to ourselves, that's not right.

Something needs to change.

Right?

Like we understand that.

And there's a lot about our world that isn't right.

It isn't, it's not actually hard to look at the world and say that's not right.

And actually, what's interesting is a lot of times people have this conception of God, it's a misconception, that he's super pessimistic and he's always looking at the world being mad at this, mad at that, that's not right, that's not good.

Trust me, it's it's not in God's nature to condemn.

It's not his nature.

When God creates the world in Genesis, he looks at almost everything he creates and he says, it's good.

It's good.

This idea that a lot of people get, especially from the Old Testament, because they just don't read the whole thing, that God is cranky, that he's easily angered, it's not true.

The number one word used to describe God in the Old Testament is kindness.

God is kind, he is patient, more patient than any of us would ever be.

God looks at the world that he creates and he says, it's good.

That's his nature.

He loves what he creates.

But at the same time, God is just and he's true, and he's not a God who looks at something that isn't right and just goes, eh, whatever.

And we actually see that before sin enters the story.

If you know the basic story of scripture, God makes the world, he says it's good, he makes us, he says we're good, and then the way the story typically gets told, we mess it all up, and that's when the bad things start to happen.

That's the first time that God would look at anything and say, that's not good.

But that's not actually true.

There is something that God looks at and says isn't good before we ever sin.

And it's that man is alone.

God looks and he says, you know what?

Something's not right.

It's not good that man is alone and he creates, he creates a woman.

He upgrades.

And uh and here we are, thankful for it, right?

You guys can clap for that.

Even us men should be like, yeah.

And if you're wondering, like, hey, how are women upgrades, can you grow a human being in your body?

And if the answer is no, all right, you're the first model, you know?

That's you're the first version.

But God looked at the world and he said, that's not right.

And he fixed it because God is in the business of making what is not right right.

That's what he does.

He's just.

We'll talk a lot more about that next week.

It's God's nature to look at what he creates and say it's good, but but at the same time, if something isn't good, if it's not right, God, he's not gonna be fooled.

He's not gonna ignore it, he's gonna look and say, it is what it is.

It's not right.

And that gets really tricky when it comes to us.

All we have to do is look at the very next verse, verse 23.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Naturally speaking, left to our own devices, by our own strength, we're not quite right.

We're not.

We try really hard to be, but no matter how hard we try, we just, we, we all fall short.

The word sin uh is often connected to a term in the Greek language that had to do with archery.

It just means to miss the mark.

The idea is that no one's hit the bullseye.

No one but Jesus.

Some people didn't even try to hit the target.

Some people were like, that's the target, I'll shoot in the opposite direction.

Others have tried their absolute hardest, done everything in their power to hit the mark, but just fell short.

That all of us at the end of the day that we're not we're not right.

And I think here's what's really interesting.

Deep down inside, I think we all know that.

It may not be a happy thought to have to deal with, but I think deep down inside we all know that.

In fact, if you look at history, what has united almost every culture that has ever existed, and honestly, one of the things that unites pretty much every faith that has ever existed is the recognition that man is not as we ought to be.

I heard a pastor say it's not that we're as bad as we could be, it's just that we're we're never really as good as we should be either.

That man is not as we ought to be.

Now, that statement has become much more loaded in the last 50, 60 years in America.

Because there's this worldview called secular humanism that stands very opposed to the idea that we're not as we're ought to be, and secular humanism says, no, no, we are everything that we ought to be.

That our greatest achievement as people would simply be to be ourselves.

We've all grown up in a culture that tells us that.

Just be your true self, find yourself, be yourself, you're good.

And so in that culture, the idea that we're not as we're ought to be, those two things stand opposed.

But what's interesting is right now we're living in a time where that worldview that no, no, no, we're good, just be yourself, the cracks are really starting to show.

I want to read a statement that was written by uh a person in government.

I'm not gonna name the person, because you know, we've got an election coming up, and it was it's not one of the two people running for for president.

I'll say that.

But here's the thing: it has to do with with a lot of the stuff going on right now related to racial tension in our country and a lot of the protests and things and the aftermath of that.

I want to I want you to take a moment and lay aside whatever your thoughts and opinions on all of that is.

Not that that's not important, that those thoughts and opinions aren't important.

That's just not the point of what I'm talking about.

Lay that aside for a second.

Don't let yourself go like I see where they're going with that, I don't like it.

I want you to just see what this statement is saying and think about it for a moment.

This is written down by uh, I got this off a website from this particular politician.

And they wrote, we must recognize implicit bias and harmful stereotypes for what they are, and work to combat the biases that exist within each of us.

All I want you to see is that that is a spiritual statement.

Do you agree?

That's a spiritual statement.

To say that there's something within us that isn't quite right, and we gotta figure out how to address it.

That is a far cry, and by the way, the person who wrote this would not be someone who would classically be considered a believer.

But that's a far cry from all of us are good the way we are, just be ourselves.

It's a spiritual statement.

And it aligns with so many of the statements that we have throughout history.

There was a man named Seneca who was a Roman philosopher, he was a contemporary of Paul's, and he talked about people, and he said that all of us have a weakness and inefficiency in necessary things.

And he once wrote that all of us are in need of a hand let down from above to lift us up.

Those are spiritual statements.

What I'm saying is there's something about us, something about us that recognizes that we're just not as we ought to be.

That doesn't mean we're self-deprecating, it doesn't mean we hate on people, it just means we recognize, man, something's off.

And the question is, what do we do about that?

What do we do about that?

And here's where the world falls short.

Is the answer for the world is always some type of external process.

You know, we're supposed to go through a training, we're supposed to take a class, it's some type of external conditioning.

In fact, that's that's often what religion becomes: external conditioning to deal with an internal problem.

It just doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

That's why, for example, in Isaiah 64, verse 6, it says that we are all infected and impure with sin.

Isaiah 64:6

When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.

Isaiah is writing that our righteousness, that our best efforts, he calls them filthy rags.

Philippians 3, 5 through 8, Paul, who also wrote Romans, said, I was circumcised when I was eight days old, eight years old would be a different experience.

Um, I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

A real Hebrew if there ever was one.

I was a member of the Pharisees who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.

I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church and asked for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.

He's basically saying, like, if you want to measure someone based on how religious they are, I win.

He said, I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage so that I could gain Christ.

He's saying all the religion, all the external conditioning that we do to try to make up for our unrighteousness, it's just not enough.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't cut it.

All it does is mask the deeper problems.

We see that the way Jesus talks to the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day.

I mean, he has some choice words for them.

He looks at him and he says things like, Hey, you guys are just whitewashed tombs.

On the outside, it looks great, but on the inside, it's it's bad.

God sees the heart.

I have kind of an embarrassing story to go along with that.

I'll pull the curtain back and just know that my life is pretty much an open book to you guys, and uh sometimes that means that you just know the dirty things about my life.

I have a car that has what I would call character.

Um mainly what I mean is that it smells bad.

Uh it's just it's just the result of having a car that you've owned for like 13 years, and you know, when I go to the gym and work out, I don't shower after that, I just get in my car and go home, and then you know, years and years of that, it just sort of soaks in and become, you become like I've become one with my car in smell.

Does that make sense?

I know it's gross.

Um, and then it's you know, how often do I clean my car and how deeply do I clean my car?

And so about a year ago, we were we were moving, and I took my oldest son with me.

We went to rent a truck so that we could load stuff up.

And the lady who uh who was renting us the truck said, Hey, I want to apologize.

That truck just got back to us, and I haven't had a chance to clean it.

It might smell kind of bad.

And so she handed us an air freshener, like a little, you know, pine tree air freshener to hang on the dashboard or on the mirror.

She said, This will help.

And so we get in the car and we're like prepared in this truck to experience a pretty intense smell.

And we sit down, and my son Liam just goes right away, Dad, this car doesn't smell nearly as bad as your car.

It was like an upgrade.

You know, it's funny because I I could put a little pine tree air freshener in my car, and it might mask the smell, but I think I just need a new car, you know?

Or at least new upholstery or something.

It's just, it's not gonna cut it.

That's what religion at its core, apart from faith, apart from a real relationship with God, just following the rules.

It's just external conditioning.

The Pharisees, the ones who opposed Jesus, they were masters at that kind of religion.

And Jesus said, Yeah, it's worthless.

Paul said it's worthless.

Isaiah says it's filthy rags.

External conditioning does not solve the righteousness problem.

So how do we solve it?

And the answer is by faith.

I want to go back to Romans 3.21 and 22 again.

It says, now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

I need us to understand this.

God cares tremendously about faith.

Faith is so important to God.

It's more important than we realize.

It's like currency to God.

It moves him, it gets things done.

In fact, there's only two times in the story of Jesus that we see Jesus being amazed.

And I always think about this.

How interesting would it be to amaze Jesus?

It should take a lot to blow him away, right?

He's Jesus.

So if he's amazed, something amazing has happened.

There's only two times in the story of Jesus where he's amazed.

Once is when he's amazed at the amount of faith that an outsider has in him, a Roman soldier who shouldn't really have been someone who put their faith in Jesus.

He was amazed at how much faith this man had.

And the only other time he was amazed is when he was amazed at how little faith his own people had in him at one particular moment.

The only thing that ever amazed Jesus was either the amount of someone's faith or the lack of it.

I want us to read a section of John chapter 20, verses 24 through 31, and you'll see in this, Just how much God values faith.

John 20:24–31

What's happened at this point is Jesus has been crucified and he's been resurrected and he's appeared to some of his disciples, not all.

One particular was Thomas.

We don't know why, but he just wasn't there when Jesus reappeared to his disciples.

And so just imagine being Thomas.

And like you show up, and they're like, dude, you will not believe what just happened.

Jesus was here.

And where were you?

He's like, My wife was missing an ingredient.

She sent me to the store and I couldn't find it.

You know, like that's what happened.

We don't know.

We just have to fill in those blanks.

But Jesus shows up again.

He says, one of the twelve disciples, Thomas, nicknamed the twin, was not with the others when Jesus came.

They told him, We've seen the Lord.

But he replied, I won't believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands and put my fingers into them and place my hand into the wound in his side.

Words he probably regrets.

He's like, I'm not going to believe unless unless I have that much proof, I will not believe.

Eight days later, the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them.

The doors were locked, but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them.

Peace be with you, he said.

Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and look at my hands.

Put your hand into the wound in my side.

Don't be faithless any longer.

Believe.

My Lord and my God, Thomas exclaimed.

And then Jesus told him, You believe because you've seen me.

Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.

The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs, in addition to the ones recorded in this book.

But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him, you will have life by the power of his name.

You see how many times the word belief shows up?

Thomas says, I'm not going to believe unless this happens.

And Jesus says, Thomas, blessed are those who believe without seeing.

And then he commands him.

He says, believe.

Believe.

And then we're told that we're blessed when we believe, because by believing in him, we will have life by the power of his name.

Faith matters to God.

So much so that even a little bit of faith goes a long way with him.

We have this amazing story.

You can read it in Mark chapter 9.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

In Mark chapter 9, there's this man who brings his son to Jesus, and his son needs healing.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

And he says to Jesus, please heal him if you can.

And Jesus is kind of like offended.

He goes, What do you mean if?

I can't.

And the man says, I'm so sorry.

And Jesus says, Look, with faith, anything is possible.

If you believe, anything's possible.

And so the man says, and I love his authenticity, he says, I believe.

Help my unbelief.

He's divided.

He's torn.

He says, I believe, but but help my unbelief.

I know many of us struggle with that same thing.

We do believe, we do have faith in God, but then there's part of us that doesn't, part of us has doubt.

What do we do when that's the case?

We'll trust that the belief that you have is enough.

Especially if you have the authenticity just to look to God and say, Hey, I believe, but but but help me when I don't.

And Jesus didn't look at that man and say, hey, because you don't fully believe, I'm not going to heal your son.

He didn't say, because you only half believe, I'm going to half heal your son.

That amount of faith that the man had put in Jesus was enough.

And his son was healed.

Because faith is so valuable to God that even a little bit goes a long way.

That's why, by the way, Jesus said to his disciples, even if you have just a mustard seed's worth of faith, you can move mountains.

If you've never seen what a mustard seed looks like, I encourage you to look it up.

They're tiny.

And the reason for that is really simple, guys, is because your faith is only as powerful as what you put your faith into.

If you have a lot of faith in something small, it doesn't matter.

Someone could have a tremendous amount of faith, mountains worth of faith in something puny, and it will only lead to despair.

That is why, by the way, no matter what happens on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or whatever day everything finally gets settled this week, that's why there will be thousands upon thousands, millions of people in despair.

No matter what the outcome is, millions of people will be in despair.

Because millions of people in our country on both sides of the political spectrum have put all their faith, have put all the chips on a political system, on a political party, on a person not named Jesus Christ.

And if you if you have a mountain of faith in something like that, you will be led to despair.

But if you have just a little bit of faith in the God of the universe, that's worth more than a mountain of faith in anything else.

Better to have a mustard seed of faith in Jesus Christ than to have a mountain of faith in anything other than him.

Because he's God, he's the one who died and got back up on his own three days later.

Jesus did that.

We put our faith in him, he doesn't let us down.

He doesn't let us down.

Faith matters to God so much that just a little bit goes a long way.

That's why Romans says that by faith in Jesus Christ, we become righteous.

We receive the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

You cannot achieve the righteousness of God, but you can receive the righteousness of God by putting your faith in Jesus Christ.

That's how much faith matters to you.

It's a powerful idea.

Second Corinthians 5, 21, in the worship team, you guys can make your way out.

It says that he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.

Talking about Jesus.

On our behalf, some translations say an offering for sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

If you put your faith in Jesus, understand this.

My question is, do you believe that?

When you struggle, when you mess up, and you wonder if you're really okay with God, you've got to remember what this says.

Through faith, you are the righteousness of God.

I had some really interesting conversations this last week with a couple of amazing people.

Um, one of them I was talking about, I was talking with, wasn't talking about him, I was talking about him to him.

So that's talking with.

And he was just telling me that he's been struggling a little bit with confidence because he just knows all the things he should be doing that he's not doing.

By the way, show of hands who who've who's felt that before with God.

Like I should be doing more.

I'm not getting up early enough, I'm not reading enough in my Bible, I'm not this enough, I'm not that enough, right?

He's just doing that.

And I just looked at him and I said, dude, do you believe in Jesus?

Do you love him and like without a hesitation?

Absolutely.

I'm like, okay.

Then you are the righteousness of God.

Faith, it's it's the requirement, not faith and.

See, I used to believe that it was faith and, and sometimes I still believe that.

In fact, when I was in college, there was a pastor that was pouring into me.

I was an intern at a church in Kansas City, Missouri, and I was explaining to this pastor how I was feeling and what I was doing.

And he was a very direct person.

By the way, any of you who've ever lived up north, or those of us that are from up north, any northerners in the room, those of us up north, we know what direct communication is like.

Here in the South, you guys smile and you say mean things nicely, but up north, it's just mean, you know?

And uh, and so his name was Roy.

Still is his name, actually.

And uh, and Roy said to me, He said, You know what you ought to do, Justin?

He said, You ought to just picture Jesus on the cross.

So I did.

He's like, You have that locked in your brain.

I'm like, Yes, sir.

He said, I want you to go ahead and just just tell him to come come off the cross so that you can get back up there and finish the job.

Roy was very blunt.

And Roy said, That's exactly what you do, Justin.

That's what you do.

You don't believe that Jesus' death was enough.

You believe that you've got to do a little bit more.

So you walk around with guilt and you punish yourself, and you make yourself do penance for all your mistakes because you don't really believe that the death of Jesus was enough for you to be declared righteous in the eyes of God.

You always think you've got to finish the job.

Guys, for many of us in the room, many of us watching from home, today's the day you need to come off that cross.

Because that cross was not meant for you, it's meant for Jesus.

He did his job, he fulfilled it, it's finished, it's done.

You are righteous in the eyes of God if you've put your faith in Jesus.

It's that simple.

It's that simple.

Yes, there are things we do in response to the cross.

We're gonna get to that in this series, but the righteousness of God is you if you've put your faith in Jesus.

You need nothing else.

I had another conversation with a gentleman who actually is about to baptize his son in just a minute.

And so uh, I didn't ask Scott for permission to share this, but I I hope he'll forgive me.

Um it just it just came to me.

And uh Scott was just, he's always thrilled that he gets to baptize his son.

Like, how awesome to baptize your son.

But in, you know, in the religious world, historically, you gotta be like a priest or a pastor, you know, to baptize someone, which is interesting because Jesus didn't actually baptize the people who got baptized in his name, his disciples did, and they were very much in training at the time.

And so we were talking about it, and uh, and Scott asked me, he said, Justin, are you sure that I'm worthy of doing this?

And and from talking to Scott, he takes his faith in Jesus very seriously.

And I know that because he's humble, and and it's just obvious.

And he said, Are you sure that I'm worthy to do this?

And he specifically said, Is there anything in in scripture that tells me I'm worthy for this?

And I said, Scott, that's an interesting question, but I think you gotta flip it over.

Is there anything in scripture that tells you that you're not?

Because in the New Testament, because of what Jesus did for us, we are told that we are the righteousness of God.

We are told that we are now the sons and the daughters of God, we are called a holy priesthood.

We're told that we're more than conquerors, we're called the beloved, the beloved of Christ.

That we are treasured by God.

We're called masterpieces who have been made new because of our relationship with God.

That's what scripture speaks to us because of our faith.

So, yeah, we're worthy.

And don't let anyone, especially yourself, tell you that you're not.

Because if you put your faith in Jesus, you are the righteousness of Christ.

We receive righteousness through faith.

What that means, guys, is God's looking at you right now, and if you trusted Jesus as your Lord, He's looking at you right now, and He's saying, That's right, that's right, that's good.

You're good, you're good, the Steelers fans are good, everybody's good, everybody's good because you put your faith in Jesus.

There's a family wearing Steelers stuff, and the Steelers are really good this year, so that that works.

But you're good.

Why?

Because of faith.

So when you start to think, yeah, but I've I haven't obeyed and I haven't of this, it's like, stop.

Do you believe in Jesus?

Yes, you're good.

Yeah, but you know, I I I still have this one issue.

There's the sin in my life, and I can't seem to shake it.

Do you have faith in Jesus?

Yes, you are good.

God has said it.

Stop arguing with it, believe it, take it to the bank, because nothing can change it.

It's good news.

This is good news.

Righteousness through faith, it's a part of the full gospel.

I'm gonna stop talking.

We've got someone uh that's gonna get baptized right now, and Scott and Mason, you guys can go ahead and make your way out.

I'm gonna pray.

We're gonna celebrate with them.

Father God, I want to thank you so much for the power of this truth.

That we are the righteousness of God through faith.

It's that simple.

Jesus, thank you for making it that simple.

Thank you, Lord, for paying a price that we couldn't pay.

Thank you, Lord, for being obedient in a way that we can't.

You've earned this for us.

You achieved righteousness, and then you gave it to us as a gift.

We can't achieve it, but we can receive it because of you, Lord, and we're grateful for that.

God, I'm grateful for that.

And I pray right now, Lord, if there is anyone, one person in this room watching online right now that hasn't put their trust in you, that's still trying to achieve what is unachievable.

I pray right now, Lord, that they surrender and they just say, I'm yours, I give my life to you, I surrender, I believe.

That's what this awesome young man, Mason, is about to do.

He's just giving his life to you, saying, I believe.

I'm going all in with you.

God, give all of us in this room the faith to go all in.

Even if our faith is lacking, even if we're struggling, if something's holding us up, Lord, I pray that we would just cry out to you in our hearts and say, Give me the faith to believe.

Because that's all you really ask.

We love you, Jesus.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.