What is the Gospel? Part 5: What are we saved from?

Colossians 1:13-14

Looking at Romans from 1:18-3:23 we see that salvation is from the wrath of God (cf. Isaiah 53:10-12 / Galatians 3:13 / 1 Peter 2:24). Jesus Christ is the answer to sin, and His death appeases the wrath of God. Many other things presented as “gospel” do not require God to become incarnate, live a sinless life, die on a cross and rise again. Is it necessary for Christ to have been crucified? That is one good criterion for understanding if a message is about the true gospel. Some add Christ into the mix but their messages are just like they would be without Him, motivational talks, moral exhortations, feel good seminars. If you took out the biblical references or even added them it wouldn’t make any difference to the content of the teaching.

What kind of savior do we really need? The bible defines that need. We are saved from God by God. The Law had to be fulfilled by humanity. Only God could save us; only a human being should save us. God can’t die, so the Son of God entered into humanity so that He could die and pay for our sins. Until that broken Law was fulfilled by humanity we were still dead in our sins. We needed a new federal head, a second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45 / Romans 5:12-19). To redeem a people He had to be fully God, so as to give the atonement an infinite value, and He had to be fully man to perfectly satisfy the requirements of God’s Law, thus becoming an acceptable substitute for sinners (1 Timothy 2:5 – the man Christ Jesus) . It is not how many bad things you have done, not how many sins you have committed, but actually how bad sin itself really is. God’s glory was demonstrated at the cross by showing that God’s Law really did require a penalty for transgressions against it (Romans 3:25-26).

The missing ingredient in many gospels or gospel presentations is the fact that we are bound by sin, dead in sin, and slaves to sin. Salvation is from sin and to the Savior. The great problem of humanity is sin, not a lack of knowledge, not a lack of power, but a lack of purity. No amount of power and no amount of knowledge can erase that. Only the blood of Christ can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus can make me whole again. The only way we can have peace with God is if our sins are forgiven, and in Christ they are (Romans 5:1).

Some use the world’s methods of marketing to “sell” the gospel, being more concerned with numbers than with presenting the true gospel. Some water it down so there is no call for repentance from sin. This may produce large numbers of “converts,” but very few genuine believers. The message isn’t healing, helping needs or even simply that Jesus is the Messiah; it is the cross and the resurrection. We do not change it, modify it, grow it, shrink it or do anything to make it better. Our task is simply to take it the way it has been given to us and to believe in its power to affect lives. The fact that so many try to make the gospel into something else shows the nature of it as a stumbling block (1 Corinthians 1:18-24, 2 Corinthians 2:14-16).

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

What is the Gospel? Part 4: What is justification?

Luke 18:9-14

It is being declared righteous before God based on the merits of Christ. Often overlooked is the fact that when the Pharisee prayed he was thanking God. He was not saying how great he was by himself. He knew he was not able to do good works on his own, but felt that this infused righteousness he worked with justified him. God does indeed develop righteousness in everyone to whom He imputes righteousness, but we never achieve perfection in this life (Philippians 3:4-19). Works are the fruit, not the root of justification (Ephesians 2:10). This is the great danger, the teaching that the imparted righteousness whereby we can indeed do good works is the grounds of our justification, instead of the imputed righteousness of Christ to our account.

For some to justify means to make righteous rather than to declare righteous (cf. our sermon A Nail Pierces the Darkness). The Roman Catholic Church talks of grace and being saved by the merits of Christ alone. However, they teach that we receive the grace of God, and the merits of Christ, and are made righteous based on our participating in the sacraments of the church. Yet the Bible is clear that the gospel which saves the soul (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) does not include sacraments such as water baptism (1 Corinthians 1:17).

Also the Roman Catholic version of Communion (Eucharist) is turned into a righteous act on the part of the participant in which they maintain or continue their saving relationship with God. They believe that the real physical presence of Jesus is in the bread and wine and that it is the continuing sacrifice of Christ over and over to assist the participant in the continued removal of personal sin. The Bible is clear that this cannot be the case (Hebrews 9:24-28). The Bible clearly teaches that we receive the grace of God by faith alone, and not faith in any work, including a sacrament (John 5:24 / Romans 3:20-24 / Galatians 2:16 / Ephesians 2:8-9).

The difference is the difference between a saving faith that relies on an external atonement for sin and a misplaced faith that relies in an internal abatement of sin. We should be thankful that we have been given a measure of freedom from the power of sin in this life, but we must be careful to never equate this with our righteous standing before God.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

What is the Gospel? Part 3: Why do both Jesus’ Life and Death matter?

Matthew 3:13-15

In order for sinful human beings to have eternal life, the guilt and penalty of sin must be removed. Jesus does this not only by dying the death we justly deserve but by living the life we should have lived. If Jesus simply needed to impute the righteousness of God from His essence, there would have been no need for him to live for 33 years. However, in order to become a perfect high priest and lamb without blemish, Jesus not only had to die for us but He had to live for us. It is clear that the Scriptures speak of God’s people not only being justified by His death (Romans 3:25, 4:25, 5:9) but also as being saved by His life or obedience (Romans 5:10, 19). On the cross, God treated Jesus as if He lived your life so He could treat you as if you lived His life. That’s the Gospel.

Hebrews 4:14-15, 5:7-10 – this does not mean that Jesus was merely sinless in His essence as the second Person in the Trinity, but that He overcame temptations as a man. He revered and obeyed God. It says He was made perfect. Now if only His essence were needed for our righteousness there would be no need for Jesus to be made perfect since He already was. What this is speaking of is the same thing Jesus meant when speaking to John the Baptist. He was made perfect as a man (fulfilling all righteousness) so that He could become the source of salvation. Jesus was not lacking in any godly quality, but in the full experience of having lived a perfect human life. Jesus obeyed the Father in everything without sin (John 8:29). The lifelong perfect obedience of Jesus (Hebrews 5:8, 7:26-28) provides the basis for eternal salvation (Hebrews 2:10-18, 10:14).

Matthew 5:17 – Jesus did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it. Jesus does for us what we cannot do for ourselves (Romans 3:20). Romans 8:3-4 – the problem is not with the Law, but that it was weakened by the flesh and therefore could not do what it intended (i.e. do this and live, Deuteronomy 8:1, etc.). Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin but without that weakness so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be met (fulfilled) in us.

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What is the Gospel? Part 2: How does God accomplish the Gospel?

2 Corinthians 5:18-21

We see the main thing here in this text, imputation (see also Isaiah 53) – both sin to Christ and righteousness to us. This is the ministry and message of reconciliation. Everybody has a sin problem (Romans 3:23) and we’re given the responsibility to proclaim the cure. That’s the main reason we are left on earth after we are born again, because fellowship with God, fellowship with each other, and triumph over sin will all be complete in heaven. There is one thing we do here that we cannot do in heaven and that is the ministry of reconciliation.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin – this means that God the Father punished Jesus as if He were the sinner, not that He was now actually a sinner. Jesus was our substitute. We see a type of this in Leviticus 16; Jesus became the “scapegoat”. The scapegoat wasn’t guilty, but the priest symbolically laid all the sins of the people on the scapegoat and sent him away. Jesus was without sin, but sin was credited to His account as if He had personally committed it, and then God punished Him, though the fact is He never committed any of it. Christ was made sin in the sense that our sins were accounted to Him. God treated Him as if He was guilty but He wasn’t. You were guilty, but God poured His wrath on the innocent Christ who was in our place as our substitute (Isaiah 53:10). The passage in Isaiah 53:6-7 is directly applied to Christ by Philip in Acts 8:32 (cf. John 1:29).

So that in him we might become the righteousness of God – this means God accredits the righteousness of Christ to our account. God rewards us as if we are the righteous, not that we are actually righteous. We see imputed righteousness also in Luke 22:37 (what was written about ME) where Jesus connects Isaiah 53 (see vs.11) with Himself (cf. Jeremiah 23:6).

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What is the Gospel? Part 1: The Basic Facts

The gospel message is the good news of salvation, the word of truth offered to mankind by grace through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ; most especially the message of the cross. We naturally think that the gospel starts with people, but the Bible reveals that the Gospel starts with God. Those that don’t know God place people first and believe that individual insight into our own selves is more important than God. This leads to pluralism, in other words, choose your own path and it is okay, because the frame of reference is people centered instead of God centered. This is against the Biblical Christian faith, as revealed by Jesus Christ, who said that there was only one way to be justified before God, and that was through Him (John 14:6). Peter said that Jesus was the only way men might be saved (Acts 4:12). Paul told Timothy that there was only one mediator between God and man, that being Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5).

We either believe what Jesus said about Himself and the kingdom of God, and its exclusivity, or we have to invent some other way, which inevitably leads to pluralism (many paths), universalism (all people are saved), pantheism (all is God), or panentheism (everything has God in it). All these things are invalidated by the testimony of the Bible, which Jesus validated as the words of God (recall session 2, “A Biblical Foundation”). So, it is either Jesus or something else, you cannot have both, although many claim a Jesus that is not the Jesus of the Bible.

Jesus said He was God. This is why the Jewish leaders were trying to kill Him in the first place, because He was asserting that He was the Son of God. To the Jewish mind of the day it was clear that Jesus was saying He was equal with God (John 5:18, 10:24-33). Jesus said to them that if they did not believe He was who He said He was that they would die in their sins, i.e., they were not going to heaven, but would be damned (John 8:24).

Think of it this way: all roads do indeed lead to God, but only one road leads to God justifying you, and all the other roads lead to God judging you. If you are in Christ God has already judged your sins, He punished Jesus in your place, but if not, then you will be punished for your own sins with your own soul, and you cannot pay for sins against God.

What are the basic facts of the Gospel? – 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 gives us the gospel in a nutshell – Christ died for our sins, was buried, and He rose again on the third day. We see that it was Jesus, the Messiah, who is the Christ, the Son of God, and the perfect One, who had to die for our sins. We’ll develop the significance of that as we go on from here. We also see that the resurrection is central to the gospel message (cf. Acts 17:31 / Romans 8:34-39 / 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 / 2 Timothy 2:8-11 / 1 Peter 1:3-9, etc.). Paul goes on to develop this in the rest of the chapter (cf. our sermon Where are your Easter Eggs?)

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Will He Make It? (Radio / Podcast)

For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
(James 1:7 – ESV)

Can a "saved" individual spend his life submitting to his old man, and have hope of spending eternity with the Father?

If that “saved” person was actually saved then obviously the answer is yes, but the question is if this so called “saved” person is really saved at all.

These are age-old questions in Christianity, regarding the matter of degree. Where is the line, if any, to be drawn regarding sanctification? Is someone who never even sets foot in a church once, who never gives up any of his old life of sin, a genuine, born again Christian? If the answer is no, where do we draw the line? Is it up to us anyway, and if not, do we just let anyone into our church fellowship, even the stubbornly and defiantly unrepentant person who says they are a believer? Perhaps it might be more suitable for us to ask what degree does the light of Christ need to shine from a person in order to reveal that the Light is actually within a person?

Now to get back to the originally worded question, I imagine he could, but he wouldn't have any earthly assurance. This might be akin to a drunk who makes it, but all his works in terms of rewards are as nothing. He makes it on God's grace alone like the rest of us, but since he didn't live a sanctified life, he forfeits blessings on earth and rewards in heaven, and his assurance was shaken while here in this life, perhaps. It is a good question, and one in which I fear too many rest on some "decision" earlier in life.

Perhaps there are some who never realize the release from the shackles of sin at all in this life and will still make it to heaven. I believe it certainly is possible. To do justice to the question however, we must look at the full picture. We don't know for sure how many might be like this, and there are going to be more that are the other way around. They lead bad lives that don’t reflect the light of Christ to any visible degree, and yet they think they will be in heaven based on some “decision” that “they” made earlier in life. They were only fooling themselves. They need to ask the real question, “If you didn’t like who God was and want to love Christ, and by extension want to live a life pleasing to God on earth, why in the world would you want to have to live that life in heaven?”

So the answer to the original question or any similarly worded question is this. In theory, yes, some will make it, but in practice, many won’t.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Addressing the Ultimate Issue (Radio / Podcast)

He will render to each one according to his works… There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil…but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good…
(Romans 2:6,9,10 – ESV)

We all must address the ultimate issue. Paul has just told us that all the Gentiles are under the wrath of God and has indicted the Jews and the moralists as well, saying that none of us are righteous and that all of us are without excuse. But now he tells us that we need to pursue goodness and the path of righteousness in order to inherit eternal life, and that if we do not, we will have eternal wrath. Is Paul saying that we are all going to hell? Yes, unless there is a remedy, and that remedy is the gospel, the righteousness we need to inherit eternal life. We need to face the ultimate issue, and we can do so without fear if we have Jesus.

The Jews and the Gentiles are in the same boat. The judgment of God will be applied in the same way using the same standard. God will be just. It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or if you are a Gentile, all persons are going to be judged according to the same standard. That standard is perfection (Acts 17:31 / Romans 2:16). No amount of goodness by any individual in history is enough to justify them. No one has been or will be holy enough to merit eternal life; only Christ was and is perfect. Man left to himself can never climb his way out of his own heart. He will sink into the depths of his own depravity, unless God in His common grace restrains him, and until God in His saving grace rescues him.

Paul is showing us once again the need for the gospel; “each” means all individuals regardless of class, race, gender, location, nationality, or the like. The eternal life of everyone depends on the kindness of God, not our goodness. But it is not something we can presume upon. He gives it to those whom seek it with repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21).

This text is saying the only path to eternal life is the path of righteousness. But what Paul has said before this and in the New Testament and our lives and the world all reveal to us that none have or ever will walk it except Jesus. But we can follow Him on that road by faith. We will not walk it perfectly, but His walk not our walk is what saves us. That is the gospel and out of gratitude for it and love for Him we attempt to walk that same path, knowing that our walk will be imperfect and that we will stumble and fall, but that God will pick us up and if we will get up and want to walk again He will empower us to do so. Like a child learns to walk so too we learn to walk and we grow stronger as we walk, but we must be careful to keep our eyes on the One who walks before us and that is what under girds us and keeps us from stumbling. Humbly look at the goodness of God, and repent of straying from or staying off of the path. Follow Jesus.

Someone who is saved does not presume upon the goodness of God, they act in accordance with it. The Jews whom Paul was chastising here were God’s called out people, they knew about God; they weren’t like those people in Romans 1. They knew they were called out ones, and yet they presumed this meant that they could just coast along, and they are wrong, dead wrong. God is calling you out; you must answer the call with humility and repentance and not with hypocrisy. Just because you know the truth doesn’t mean you are trusting in it. Those that do not walk the path at all are saying that they have no faith. Wrath or mercy, which do you want? Follow Jesus, and you will have mercy, follow your heart and you will have wrath.

THAT is the ultimate issue.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Supernatural Lies

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
(Galatians 1:8 – ESV)

People think they are special to God because they avoided danger in some fantastic way, or they think that they are on the right path, that everything is going to work out fine, and that they are “going to heaven” or something like that because some supposed supernatural occurrence happened to them, but they take that as above and beyond the bible in authority. They may even say they believe in Jesus or perhaps speak of some vague notion of God, but when discussing their faith what they talk about is in contradiction to the scriptures. They are placing their faith in that experience and not in God’s Word. Paul tells us plainly that no matter what supernatural things have been revealed to you, no matter how fantastic an experience you have had, if it is not in accordance with the gospel and biblical truth, they are not of God, not to be trusted and can be damning if your faith is in them not the true Jesus Christ.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Addressing the Ultimate Issue

He will render to each one according to his works… There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil…but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good…
(Romans 2:6,9,10 – ESV)

We all must address the ultimate issue. Paul has just told us that all the Gentiles are under the wrath of God and has indicted the Jews and the moralists as well, saying that none of us are righteous and that all of us are without excuse. But now he tells us that we need to pursue goodness and the path of righteousness in order to inherit eternal life, and that if we do not, we will have eternal wrath. Is Paul saying that we are all going to hell? Yes, unless there is a remedy, and that remedy is the gospel, the righteousness we need to inherit eternal life. We need to face the ultimate issue, and we can do so without fear if we have Jesus.

The Jews and the Gentiles are in the same boat. The judgment of God will be applied in the same way using the same standard. God will be just. It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or if you are a Gentile, all persons are going to be judged according to the same standard. That standard is perfection (Acts 17:31 / Romans 2:16). No amount of goodness by any individual in history is enough to justify them. No one has been or will be holy enough to merit eternal life; only Christ was and is perfect. Man left to himself can never climb his way out of his own heart. He will sink into the depths of his own depravity, unless God in His common grace restrains him, and until God in His saving grace rescues him.

Paul is showing us once again the need for the gospel; “each” means all individuals regardless of class, race, gender, location, nationality, or the like. The eternal life of everyone depends on the kindness of God, not our goodness. But it is not something we can presume upon. He gives it to those whom seek it with repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21).

This text is saying the only path to eternal life is the path of righteousness. But what Paul has said before this and in the New Testament and our lives and the world all reveal to us that none have or ever will walk it except Jesus. But we can follow Him on that road by faith. We will not walk it perfectly, but His walk not our walk is what saves us. That is the gospel and out of gratitude for it and love for Him we attempt to walk that same path, knowing that our walk will be imperfect and that we will stumble and fall, but that God will pick us up and if we will get up and want to walk again He will empower us to do so. Like a child learns to walk so too we learn to walk and we grow stronger as we walk, but we must be careful to keep our eyes on the One who walks before us and that is what under girds us and keeps us from stumbling. Humbly look at the goodness of God, and repent of straying from or staying off of the path. Follow Jesus.

Someone who is saved does not presume upon the goodness of God, they act in accordance with it. The Jews whom Paul was chastising here were God’s called out people, they knew about God; they weren’t like those people in Romans 1. They knew they were called out ones, and yet they presumed this meant that they could just coast along, and they are wrong, dead wrong. God is calling you out; you must answer the call with humility and repentance and not with hypocrisy. Just because you know the truth doesn’t mean you are trusting in it. Those that do not walk the path at all are saying that they have no faith. Wrath or mercy, which do you want? Follow Jesus, and you will have mercy, follow your heart and you will have wrath.

THAT is the ultimate issue.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

I BELIEVE

People have a lot to say about and who they think Jesus is and what His coming into the world means, but the authority on the matter is the Bible.

I BELIEVE IN…I BELIEVE JESUS IS…

Light (John 1:9, 3:19, 8:12, 11:27, 12:46 / Philippians 2:15 / Matthew 5:16)

Promise (Genesis 3:15 / Isaiah 7:14, 9:6, 11:2 / Micah 5:2 / Romans 1:1-4 / Galatians 4:4)

Righteousness (Romans 3:25-26 / 2 Corinthians 5:21 / 2 Peter 1:1 / 1 John 2:1)

Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30 / Colossians 2:3)

Mercy (Matthew 9:27 / Mark 5:19 / Luke 1:50 / Ephesians 2:4-10)

Love (John 3:16 / 1 John 4:10-11 / John 15:13 / Romans 8:35-39)

Joy (Luke 2:10 / John 15:11, 17:13 / Hebrews 1:9)

Peace (Luke 2:14 / Mark 4:39 / John 14:27, 16:33 / Acts 10:36 / Romans 5:1 / Ephesians 2:14)

Hope (Romans 15:12-13 / Ephesians 1:12, 2:12 / Colossians 1:27 / 1 Timothy 1:1)

Grace (John 1:14 / Acts 15:11 / Romans 5:15)

Truth (John 1:14, 14:6)

Purity (1 John 3:2-3)

Revelation (John 1:18 / Matthew 1:23 / John 10:30 / Hebrews 1:3)

God the Son (John 1:3, 14 / Philippians 2:5-11 / Colossians 1:15-19 / Revelation 1:8)

Forgiveness (Ephesians 1:7)

Redemption (Romans 3:24, 8:23)

Resurrection (John 11:25 / Acts 24:15)

The Vine (John 15:5) a lifeline (Galatians 5:22-23 / Colossians 1:10)

Salvation (Matthew 1:21 / 1 Timothy 1:15)

Investment (Ephesians 1:3-14 / 1 Peter 1:3-9).

He invested in you, made you valuable, worth something to God. God gave His greatest, most precious and valuable thing, His Son as the asset, invested in you, with the Spirit as the down payment. The return on that investment was not a risk, it was a guaranteed harvest. I believe in your dream, because I believe in His reality. I believe in God’s investment.

What came into the world? It was and is something to believe in, and something worth sharing.

I BELIEVE! The question is, do you believe?

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

God So Loved

For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
(John 3:16 – NET)

Many bible versions render the opening words of John 3:16 as “For God so loved the world”. Of course this is true, but the way that this is worded can confuse the primary meaning for some folks. When the bible says, “God so loved the world”, it is primarily speaking of the manner in which God loved the world. It is not simply that He loved the world “so much” as in the degree, but also the manner of that love, that He loved it in this way, that He gave His Son. John is emphasizing the manner in which He chose to express His love to the world, through the giving of His Son, which itself portrays the degree to which God loved the world as well.

Hebrews 11:17-18 uses the same Greek word for “only son” – Isaac wasn’t Abraham’s only son, but he was one of a kind, the heir. The Apostle John uses this word to differentiate Jesus from the other children of God (John 1:12). We are sons (children) of God by faith, but Jesus remains unique. 1 John 4:10 – In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

You see, you can love someone so very much but still not be able to help them overcome that problem they may have. Our love may be absolutely pure and sincere, and we may muster all the power we can, but it still not be enough to save someone from their situation. Yet God loves us so much and was and is able to overcome our greatest problem, our only problem in being reconciled to Him, our sin. And so in this way, through the giving of His Son Jesus Christ, God loves the world and whoever believes in Christ will be reconciled, redeemed, in right standing before God. They will not perish in eternity but have everlasting life. His love is enough.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

In the Palm of His Hand

by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
(Colossians 2:14 – ESV)

There was a real record of our sin debt. There was a real record of transgressions made by you, sins against God. They are real, and God the Father took those out and said, “Who’s going to pay this bill?” God the Father told Christ it must be paid. If that sin debt weren’t paid then no one would be allowed to enter into heaven.

Our Savior told His Father that He would pay, and God handed His Son the record with its legal demands. Jesus Christ accepted His role as redeemer; He agreed to pay the sin debt of humanity with His own life, given for His own people who would call to Him in faith. Jesus wrote the check that paid for our sins with His own blood signature. God put the record of our sins in the palm of Christ’s hand and then He put a nail through it! Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands (Isaiah 49:16).

Now being pronounced spiritually pure doesn't remove all the temporal consequences. God forgives us for the sin, but we might still have the broken heart, the addicted body, and we still have to care for the child out of wedlock. We still have repentance to do, restitution to seek, restoration to build upon. However, we act from forgiveness, we don’t act for it.

Often we want forgiveness to be a magic pill that does away with all the consequences of our actions. We often fall into this trap especially with "personal" sins that no one else knows about. We need the integrity to deal with the consequences of the sin that no one sees. But remember, we act from forgiveness, we don’t act for it. We are truly guilty, but we have been declared righteous, and God brings us to Him after we see both sides. Remember that when you feel like you are in the devil’s grip. Satan has no power to control you, he only fools you into thinking you are his instrument, but instead yield yourself to be an instrument of Christ’s righteousness. Jesus has got you in the palm of His hand.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Mother’s Day Gift

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
(3 John 4 – ESV)

We treat Mother’s Day as special and it is but it only becomes personally special when we put our person into it. A mother can know it is Mother’s Day and know her children love her but she can only feel their appreciation if they make the effort to let her know about it. Their mother may be special to them but on Mother’s Day they let her know that they think she is worthy of special recognition. People set aside special things for that special day. Mother’s Day is for us to remember that the relationship with our mother, although different now if we are married, older, and have children of our own, the relationship is still valuable and precious.

In a sense, Mother’s Day is actually a celebration of children; that is what makes a mother a mother, after all. You are her Mothers Day gift. Give her you; she gave birth to your life and/or life to your years, now bring your life back to her. Mothers want their children to be safe, to be happy, to be healthy, and these are all good things to want for our children. But to be holy, to know God, this is the greatest true safety, the greatest true satisfaction, the greatest true rest that any mother could ever wish for her children. If your mother is a Christian then the greatest Mother’s Day gift you can give to your mother is to let her see that you are walking with God. To see you saved would provide her the greatest comfort, the greatest joy, and the greatest peace.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Where the Wind Blows

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
(John 3:8 – ESV)

The word used for wind and the word used for Spirit is the same in this verse. Truly, the Spirit blows where He wants to, He is sovereign over who is born again. Remember this fact: the Spirit blows where He will, not where we will. No one knows where the wind blows, yet we can know in a sense, because where the true gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, there the breath of God will surely be felt among those whose dry bones now live. We are born again by the Word of God (James 1:18 / 1 Peter 1:23-25), which is empowered by the Spirit (2 Thessalonians 2:13), so where there is true gospel preaching, the wind of the Spirit is sure to blow.

Now true gospel preaching will make much of the fact that we can bring nothing to the table to bargain with God. No matter how good we have been, no matter how much sacrifice we have made, no matter how little we have injured others, and no matter how we think we have served God, we have nothing with which to enable us in any way to advance our case. We must have the righteousness of Jesus Christ accredited to our account or we will never be forgiven, never be reconciled to God, never be redeemed, and never enter heaven. The only thing that can count for salvation is the righteousness of God Himself (2 Corinthians 5:21 / Titus 3:5), that is the only thing He requires, and we must have it or we have nothing.

We might think we have something to say, but we mustn’t speak of our own merit when approaching the bar of God. Even those gracious acts of God wherein He has allowed us to pursue some measure of righteous action in no way constitute saving power. Anything He gives us as an instrument is still only something to use for His righteous glory, and it is not His righteous glory itself, which we must have or we will not have what we need the most. Save your sanctimony or you won’t be saved. The wind blows on those who know they have no breath, and that they must have the breath of God Himself in order to truly live.

The gospel has been largely lost today, and we need men and women who have a passion for the gospel, people who feel the power of the Word of God in their own souls. Believers who believe that the gospel is what we need today, and every day, and people who will stop looking for answers everywhere but where the One True answer is. Most Christians would say they know the gospel but we need people who have a real grasp of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We need people who are possessed by the gospel, who are controlled by its grip. We need people who know that God is sovereign in salvation, people who have been knocked down from their pedestal and onto their blinded faces by the glory of God like Paul on the road to Damascus. We need people who realize that the only reason they have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ is because they have felt the icy chill of the windy Spirit on their dead bones. We need people who have felt the power, who have heard where the wind blows, who know that salvation is all of God or it is none of God.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Will He Make It?

For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
(James 1:7 – ESV)

Can a "saved" individual spend his life submitting to his old man, and have hope of spending eternity with the Father?

If that “saved” person was actually saved then obviously the answer is yes, but the question is if this so called “saved” person is really saved at all.

These are age-old questions in Christianity, regarding the matter of degree. Where is the line, if any, to be drawn regarding sanctification? Is someone who never even sets foot in a church once, who never gives up any of his old life of sin, a genuine, born again Christian? If the answer is no, where do we draw the line? Is it up to us anyway, and if not, do we just let anyone into our church fellowship, even the stubbornly and defiantly unrepentant person who says they are a believer? Perhaps it might be more suitable for us to ask what degree does the light of Christ need to shine from a person in order to reveal that the Light is actually within a person?

Now to get back to the originally worded question, I imagine he could, but he wouldn't have any earthly assurance. This might be akin to a drunk who makes it, but all his works in terms of rewards are as nothing. He makes it on God's grace alone like the rest of us, but since he didn't live a sanctified life, he forfeits blessings on earth and rewards in heaven, and his assurance was shaken while here in this life, perhaps. It is a good question, and one in which I fear too many rest on some "decision" earlier in life.

Perhaps there are some who never realize the release from the shackles of sin at all in this life and will still make it to heaven. I believe it certainly is possible. To do justice to the question however, we must look at the full picture. We don't know for sure how many might be like this, and there are going to be more that are the other way around. They lead bad lives that don’t reflect the light of Christ to any visible degree, and yet they think they will be in heaven based on some “decision” that “they” made earlier in life. They were only fooling themselves. They need to ask the real question, “If you didn’t like who God was and want to love Christ, and by extension want to live a life pleasing to God on earth, why in the world would you want to have to live that life in heaven?”

So the answer to the original question or any similarly worded question is this. In theory, yes, some will make it, but in practice, many won’t.

Saturday Sermon: Why Christianity?

Today is Father’s Day and I want to honor our Heavenly Father. We are continuing our look at Romans 3:25-26, and we have seen in the last two weeks that this passage shows the righteousness of God, His ultimate worth and holiness, and the incredible justice and mercy of the Almighty. We titled our sermons “The Value of God”. Now we want to show you why this passage proves that Christianity is the true religion, and that our God is God.

In doing this we will also reform, revitalize and revolutionize the way you worship, and what you are thinking about as you worship. You have probably heard it said that you become like what you worship, and that is true as far as it goes. However, even if you worship the true God, the Christian God, if your conception of God isn’t high enough, no wonder your condition isn’t as high as it ought to be. Not just “I think He’s great”, but fully informed as to why, and able to ponder that mediate on that.

Therefore, we want to lift up the name of God as high as we can, today and everyday, not simply with our voices, but in our minds and hearts. We need to raise our conception of God, to see Him as majestic and merciful as He is, in our thoughts. I want you to think great thoughts today. That isn’t an intellectual pursuit it is a spiritual one.

When we think of how beautiful He is we tend to think on how thankful we are, and we need to do that, but to do that while focusing on how great He actually is. It is not in what His plan accomplished for us, but what this plan means about God Himself, that is what raises our worship to a new level. Concentrating on the perfections of God is what begins to perfect us.

A renewed mind will lead to a renewed life. Not simply changing our minds about what is right and wrong, and trying to find some key to make us act better, but thinking God’s thoughts after Him, entering into the realm of His majesty as He has shown us in the scriptures, seeing just how valuable God is.

My aim today is to show forth our God as beautiful as He is, and to get you to think of God with a fuller understanding. If we see Him with an understanding, not a feeling but an understanding of how glorious He is, we will be lifted up towards that glory in our worship. Then we can have more fully deep and developed feelings. Let us endeavor to lift our thoughts upward. Let us discover the highest worship today, let’s talk about why God is great.

In answering the question of “Why Christianity?” over other religions, we need to answer an important question. Which religion exalts God the highest, which places the most value in God? That God, the One who is the most powerful, the highest, the most worthy, that is the One I want to worship, that is the only One worthy of worship. Any God who is less than fully God is no God at all, only someone or something more powerful than us, but still not all powerful, and so that dismisses with many religions right from the start.

A true God isn’t just the most powerful being in the Universe, but the One who created it all and the One who sustains it all, only such a God could actually be God; the others are only greater than us, but not greater than everything. They may be godlike, but not God. Which God is the greatest, the most powerful, the highest and most different from us? This God is the Highest; this God would be the most worthy of worship.

Think about it, the best religion would be the one which places the most value in its god, and the one who derives the value of everything else based on the worth of its god, it would base all its morals and standards on that. It isn’t just about which supposed god is the most powerful, but which is the most pure, the most perfect. Not just in claim but in demonstration.

A people never rise above their conception of God; if your God is just like you, or if your God is small, then your life will be small, your morals will be small, and your people will live far below the standard of a people whose God is lifted up to the heights. If your god is a lying, malevolent, and reckless being, no wonder its people are the same way; that is what they worship. So, again, which religion exalts God the highest, which places the most value in God?

My belief is that Christianity is the true religion because its God has the highest majesty and holiest mercy. This passage, Romans 3:25-26, proves that. Only Christianity has an infinitely valuable God who is infinitely holy and takes out infinite justice against infinitely bad sin and gives us infinite mercy, which can lead us to heights of infinite worship. Christianity has the highest conception of God. In this light, lets consider the other major religions of the world.

Is the religion with the greatest god the ones who have a god patterned after every human emotion, like Hinduism? Considering the human heart, as we have seen in Romans and we see all around us and in us, how ridiculous and vile. Is it the ones say that god is in everything, again how awful, or that god is everything, how unholy is that? God to them is just a part of everything good or bad, and their god is just like everything else. How does that exalt God?

Closer to Christianity, but still so far away, are the other two monotheistic religions: Judaism and Islam. They all speak of God as Creator and Sustainer, but two of them don’t go all the way in valuing God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all claim to speak for the same God, that is, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. But they say very different things about Him.

How about Islam, whose god isn’t all that holy, and to whom sin isn’t all that bad, as we saw last week? Judaism seems better but it isn’t developed into the place Christianity is, their notion is that God pardons based on our own repentance, a notion of sincerity, which is in a sense matching the rest of the world while still calling on God. How about the forms of so-called Christianity that make the decision of man the determining act in salvation, or that claim God has to act in faith, as if faith is outside and greater than God?

No, none of these is Biblical Christianity, who exalts God to where He is, and sees sin for what it is, and God holiness for what it is, or at least in concept, even though we cannot fathom it. Christianity sees our sin as having to be paid for by the ultimate worth of God Himself, and God pouring out His wrath on His Son. How great is His love seen to be then? He meets His own holiness, the bar of His justice and delivers us in His mercy because of it.

Notwithstanding the intended lessons of Old Covenant typology, Judaism today doesn’t get it. They view God as directly accessible, without a Mediator. There is no longer even a typological atonement, but Judaism replaces it with human prayer, repentance, and affliction of soul.

Islam does the same thing, only differently. If we pursue the question, “How does Allah show mercy?” it begins to look a lot like justice, possibly justice “graded on a curve”: Allah judges intentions and efforts. In Islam, there is mercy, but you need to earn it. You don’t need to be perfect, but you need to merit the mercy. But mercy is by definition that which is undeserved. Mercy in Islam looks a lot like justice. And their god has a level of holiness that lets you pay for your own sins. That doesn’t seem all that exalted to me.

We still have a sense of justice and a sense of mercy, but sin has greatly perverted them. Justice is no more justice (since sin must go overlooked), and mercy is no more mercy (since you do have to merit having your sins overlooked, be it the merit of your intentions or of your overall performance). We’d rather blaspheme God’s perfections than confess that our condemnation is just and His mercy, if granted, is undeserved.

Biblical Christianity says that before the foundation of the world, God, who is perfectly just, perfectly merciful, and perfectly holy and wise, planned for the salvation of sinners, while displaying His own righteousness. He would justify the ungodly, the condemned. And He would remain perfectly just. How? It is just as we have been studying in Romans 3:25-26. God’s justice was not bent, diluted, circumvented, or anything of the sort. It was satisfied. God had been an enemy, but now He is a friend. He had been angry, but now His wrath is spent. Christ bore it.

It couldn’t have been just anyone, it had to be God the Son Himself, and that shows us how offensive and bad and serious sin actually is, and how much value God places on His own holiness. Our lives aren’t worth the offense. Considering that, what other way to pay for sins could there be? If God is absolutely holy and absolutely just, what other fate than hell could we hope for, unless God Himself paid the debt for our sins?

Only Christianity exalts God’s holiness and His infinite worth to this level, where it takes a God to pay for even one sin. Only Christianity steps forward with a historic person whose whole purpose in life is to die, whose worth is so great He can pay for all sin.

This may sound like the same old thing, but it is much, much more, much fuller and richer than perhaps you have ever heard. This understanding is what exalts God and places ultimate value in Him. This is what will bring you to a new level, the highest levels of worship, worshipping God with an understanding, a more full understanding of His worth, the more fully understood, the higher the level of worship, much higher than a few songs and a good feeling.

Those things are okay, and strong waves of emotion are wonderful, but if you think that is the height of spirituality, my friend, you are still in the kiddie pool of Christianity. Unless you understand just how bad your sin is, up against just how holy God is, how powerful His judgment is, and how great that means God’s mercy must be, then you don’t have it yet, and none of us are all the way there yet, but think of Christ on that Cross versus anything else you might want in life.

Let me give you a clue. The better you actually and truly understand this the less you sin, period. Now tell me you understand what I am talking about, you master of the emotional release. That is no guilt trip; that is the gospel truth. You don’t do it out of fear, you don’t do it out of gratitude, you don’t do it out of trying harder; you do it out of worship, because nothing else looks good at all compared to Him.

It is time to go into the depths of God, true worship, not emotional worship, and to swim there, not in an emotional rush, but in a fullness of understanding and a grasp of His true majesty, our true depravity, and His awesome mercy. I’m not trying to give you a downer about your feelings; I am trying to get you to see God without them leading the way. They aren’t to play the lead part, only the accompaniment. Then you will have feelings of depth you have not known before. And if you have been part way before, and had these feelings of depth, have you continued on in the journey to see God as holy as He is, or have you stopped with how good it feels? Is God getting bigger and more beautiful in your eyes?

A.W. Tozer – We need to improve the quality of our Christianity, and we never will until we raise our concept of God back to that held by apostle, sage, prophet, saint and reformer. When we put God back where He belongs, we will instinctively and automatically move up again; the whole spiral of our religious direction will be upward.

You must get a hold of this passage until it gets a hold of you. Read it, pray over it, study it, and meditate on it until God unleashes its power and His presence in this text upon you. If you have not seen this, no matter how much you have felt before, you have not known the depths that you are being called to, and you haven’t experienced anything like this before. It is not simply joy, it is not merely sorrow; it is more than thankfulness; it is awe and wonder. Awe and wonder at His majesty and His mercy. The renewed mind that dwells on God’s greatness will result in great lives.

That is true worship. You can find it in this passage; you will find it nowhere else but in Christianity. Only Christianity has an infinitely valuable God who is infinitely holy and takes out infinite justice against infinitely bad sin and gives us infinite mercy, which can lead us to heights of infinite worship. That is the highest worship, and it doesn’t start with a feeling, it starts with an understanding. You are now informed; will you be transformed by this truth? Do you understand the value of God? Do you understand why Christianity must be true?

Saturday Sermon: The Value of God

Romans 3:25-26

My aim today is to get you to see salvation from God’s perspective, and to begin to get a real feel for what a God entranced view of things is, and the best, most powerful place to start, the most clear yet misunderstood place for this is the very text we are looking at today. If you can get a hold of this idea it will revolutionize your worship of God and the way you see God and the way you read your bible. It will also help you to become a more discerning believer who can spot heresy much quicker than you used to. It is all about God. Now that seems easy enough for us to say, and we say it because we think it is right, but we don’t really know what that means. He is the starting point, which is why, way back when we started this series in the book of Romans, we titled it “the righteousness of God, the redemption of man”. We must get the order of things right, and then everything else will have a much greater chance of falling into place as we encounter it. It is a tall order, and so may God grant us the grace to hear and believe.

It is all about being God entranced in our thinking, which is the biblical way, the renewed mind, not a self centered way of thinking, which we know we still have to deal with or else Paul wouldn’t tell us to renew our minds. Peter describes growing in grace by saying we must grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). With this text, when we start with a man centered, “what’s it mean to us” then we cannot appreciate the “what this means about God” aspect. If you can see this, you will see the value of a God entranced worldview, not one where we say it but we actually have it, and we can see with God’s eyes. We will begin to learn the value of God, not simply as someone who gives us the treasure of forgiveness, but as the very treasure itself. Today I want to unpack these verses and unleash this treasure.

whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

1 John 2:2, 4:10 – Propitiation – a sacrifice that satisfies the wrath of God against sinners. Jesus on the cross not only reveals God’s justice and His righteousness but it actually saves sinners. By expiating (removing the problem of) sin, God was made propitious (favorable) to us. Instead of leaving all consigned to hell, He showed His love to those whom He calls to Himself.

There is a major difference between pardon and justification. Pardon says that you are guilty but suspends the penalty of that guilt. Justification declares you to be righteous and without guilt. How can God do that? By Christ paying the price of redemption. If God were to simply pardon or forgive based on our bits of penance then that would say that the sins weren’t really all that bad and that God was not really all that holy. Think about Islam and Allah in light of this. Because for them, Allah just forgives: not only there is no payment for our sins, there is none needed. However, if God can forgive without payment for sins, then he's no god. If God is not holy and just, then He does not deserve any worship. But the angels cry holy, holy, holy.

Propitiation is set against the flawed notion of penance. Penance is used to pay for the bad we have done, or to offset the bad we do. In other words, since we are going to do bad, it is justified by the good we do, kind of like how many people who do bad things think they can get off the hook because they start a foundation or give to charity or whatever. It is kind of like the carbon offsets of today, it is the old medieval idea of penance brought forward to today, and so many religions do this same thing.

These things may appease our conscience but they do not appease God’s wrath. Your payment isn’t enough. Penance never excuses your own excess. In the New Testament, the act of propitiation always refers to the work of God and not the sacrifices or gifts offered by man. The reason for this is that man is totally incapable of satisfying God’s justice except by spending eternity in hell. Even there he cannot make a full payment and that is why it must continue on. There is no service, sacrifice or gift that man can offer that will appease the holy wrath of God or satisfy His perfect justice. Psalm 51:17 – the sacrifices God wants are a broken spirit and a contrite heart, but these are repentance not propitiation. The only satisfaction, or propitiation, that could be acceptable to God and that could reconcile man to Him, had to be made by God. For this reason God the Son, Jesus Christ, came into the world in human flesh to be the perfect sacrifice for sin and make atonement or “propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:14-17).

This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Hebrews 9:15,26 – in His forbearance He passed over the former sins, made during and before the old covenant, knowing justice would be served by a new covenant.

In this passage Paul’s emphasis is not so much on the righteousness that God has provided in Christ as the righteousness that God has demonstrated through Christ. This distinction may seem subtle, but it is one of great significance. Our minds like to avoid this truth, and we much rather focus on what He has done "for" us. It is too easy to fall into the trap of sentimental thinking about the Gospel, and we need to be reminded that the love of God makes absolutely no sense apart from the wrath of God. Take away the latter, and all you have is the image of a kindly old man who wouldn't hurt a fly, much less punish sinners, and then we start thinking that maybe our own sins really aren't that bad. We cheapen His love by downplaying His wrath.

When we choose to look at salvation from a merely human perspective, we see salvation from the standpoint of what it does for us. God becomes the One who “meets our needs.” While God does meet our needs, the focus is wrong. At its core, this focus is selfish and self-centered. God as the Giver should not be our focus, but God as the Gift. Paul thus portrays God’s provision of righteousness from the divine point of view, fixing our attention on God’s purpose for saving men: the demonstration of His righteousness.

The death of Christ proved God’s righteousness. People just want God to pardon but that doesn’t demonstrate His righteousness. That would be saying that sins are really no big deal to God, and it would also mean that offending God and despising Him isn’t all that important. The sins are real and they must be paid for, and yet God seemingly overlooked them before. The problem in God's passing over sin (which the natural mind does not grasp) is that God's worth and glory and righteousness have been despised, and passing over it makes him look cheap. God would be unrighteous if He passed over sins as though the value of His glory were nothing.

God’s worth and His name is dishonored by our sins, but rather than vindicating the worth of his glory by slaying His people, He vindicated His glory by slaying His Son. That is how valuable His glory is and how awful sin really is and what it requires. It is not that we were worth it, that we were worth saving, but that God’s glory was worth vindicating, and that Christ was the only payment that could satisfy the justice of God for us offending and despising His glory. That is what sin is, falling short of and devaluing God’s glory. We have done violence to the throne of God. That is why hell must last forever because you can never pay it back, your worth is nothing compared to His, no amount of penance can offset the terrible injustice you have done against the infinite worth of God.

This is all about the value of God not the value of man, how much He is worth not how much we are worth. Now we square this with John 3:16 by saying that His love for us is so great that He paid the only way it could be done. God, out of His love and justice, renders Himself favorable to us by His own action. He suffers the ultimate offense and yet He takes on the punishment for that Himself. He passed over sins before Christ because He knew the plan, it was the plan all along, and that is why He could wait until it was the right time (Galatians 4:4).

You have heard it said that if you were the only person on earth, Jesus would have come to die for your sins. That is true, but we need to see that in proper perspective. He would do it not just because He loved you so, and He does, but the fountainhead of that love flows because His holiness demanded it, the sin was an assault on the throne of God that must be dealt with, and attack on the infinite worth of God, and it required a payment that you could not meet. He would have done so, not because you were worth saving, but because even one sin is so horrible and such an affront to God’s glory that He must punish it with absolute justice, and since He is of infinite worth, that punishment would be unfathomable, and He would have to pay for it Himself. Think hard and clearly on that. That Jesus had to die shows the worthlessness of any payment we could try and make for sins, and the infinite worth of God.

That statement about Jesus dying just for you makes us feel good about ourselves, and our worth, but we need to realize that we are supposed to worship God, regardless of what He has done for us, He is God Almighty. He died just for His Father, and you as the beneficiary of that plan. This does not diminish His love for us in any way, it lifts up the holiness of God and shows it to be the spring from which God’s mercy and justice can be met together in Christ. His love is grounded in His holiness not in our worthiness or faithfulness and His holiness is that from which His love springs, not vice versa. Hallelujah, I pray you see it, and if you don’t, consider well what I say, and ponder it until God grips you with this truth of His glory.

Did Jesus really have to die to pay for our sins? A Jewish expert addressed this issue. According to him, Jesus’ death was entirely unnecessary. God is perfectly willing and able to forgive us if we are truly and sincerely repentant. No further accommodation or transaction is needed. This sounds wonderful. But is this true? No it isn’t, it devalues God and His glory. The Jewish man was stuck in his OT world where God passed over the sins of the repentant; as if that was all there was every going to be for it, and his messiah is only a political ruler. This man and others who claim it cosmic child abuse to have Christ die on the cross are not looking at this text with spiritual eyes because they are spiritually dead, they have not come forward, as Christ was put forward by God to demonstrate God’s justice and the value of His glory by having Christ be a sacrifice for sins. We make many excuses to repudiate the blood of Jesus. We say, “Certainly we’ve done bad things, but what we’ve done isn’t so bad that a merciful God can’t overlook our failings.” We are wrong on two counts. First, what we have done IS so bad, that we cannot even begin to fathom how horrible it is. Second, God cannot overlook, He cannot wave His hand and let bygones be bygones. He may freely forgive us, but He Himself must bear the cost.

The wrath of God had to be satisfied. God could not simply overlook sin; it had to be judged. And so God provided men with salvation in such a way that He demonstrated His righteousness and satisfied His wrath, all at the same time. God’s forgiveness costs something, He freely forgives but it cost Him something.

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.

The forgiveness of sins is grounded, not in my finite worth or work, but in the infinite worth of the righteousness of God, upholding and vindicating the glory of His name. To pronounce the unrighteous righteous is unjust by itself, yet by the propitiation God is able to justify the ungodly and He is just for doing so (Romans 4:5, 5:6 / 1 John 1:8-9).

What kind of savior do we really need? The bible defines that need. We are saved from God by God. The law had to be fulfilled by humanity. Only God could save us; only a human being should save us. Until that broken law was fulfilled by humanity we were still dead in our sins. We needed a new federal head, a second Adam. To redeem a people He had to be fully God, so as to give the atonement an infinite value, and He had to be fully man to perfectly satisfy the requirements of God’s law, thus becoming an acceptable substitute for sinners. It is not how many bad things you have done, not how many sins you have committed, but actually how bad sin itself really is. The new gospel appeals to those who say, “just let me do what I want but help me deal with the pain”, or “I just want to feel better about myself”. That isn’t the gospel.

The way this redemption worked is that God set Jesus forth as a propitiation. The same Greek word is used in Hebrews 9:5 for the “mercy seat,” the covering for the ark of the covenant, the place where the High Priest would sprinkle the blood on the day of atonement. Jesus is the mercy seat. This includes both expiation (the removal of sin) and propitiation (the averting of wrath). Although there was the wrath of God against sin, it was also God in His love who took the initiative against it. So the Greek term captures both the idea of appeasement of God’s wrath, and the expiation of sin. By this death there is satisfaction of God’s justice and holiness. The holiness of God is preserved by the need for propitiation; the love of God is revealed by the provision.

In the Old Testament age, that is before Christ died, sin was not finally or ultimately punished once and for all, it was only passed over. Yet for the payment for these sins God passed over them until they could all be nailed to the cross in the death of the Messiah, once and for all. In Christ the justice of God is completely satisfied. God wished to harmonize His attribute (righteousness) and His action (justifying). The only way that God could remain righteous and at the same time declare sinners righteous was for God to come in the flesh and die for the sins of the whole human race. Thus, the demands have been met; the sins have been paid for; the way is open for grace to be bestowed on all who believe.

Paul’s words in the first few verses of Romans are an illustration of the great truth he is teaching us here in Romans 3. Paul does not view his salvation as the incorporation of God into his life, he had not added God to his agenda; God had added him to His agenda. The believer must see his salvation as the demonstration of God’s righteousness and himself as subservient to His plans and purposes. When we see our salvation as God’s meeting our needs, we see God as subservient to us. The distinction between these two perspectives is crucial. Ephesians 1:6,12,14 – to the praise of His glory – our redemption was only a part of the larger plan.

The determining factor in God’s choices and actions is not man’s salvation, but the declaration of His righteousness. When we make our salvation the focus, we take the focus from God and put ourselves in His place. Only when we see the demonstration of God’s righteousness as primary, and man’s salvation as secondary, can we see our salvation from God’s point of view.

Is the demonstration of God’s righteousness central in your life? It should be. If believers understood that God’s purpose in the world is to demonstrate His righteousness, would we dare to think it doesn’t matter to God whether or not we live righteously? You have seen the value of God, the question is, what value do you place upon it?