But Now . . . From Guilt To Grace

This is the reason I'm standing. Good morning. Good morning. Good timing. Raj. Got back just in time. Saw you walk away there for a second. Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday to you this morning. See, I think I see a new face. Caleb Rat. I don't know if this is your first time on here. Welcome aboard, brother. We gather every Wednesday morning we have for the past five years where we pray for 30 minutes, take about an hour, go through God's word verse by verse. We're currently in the the book of Romans. We've been working through the first couple chapters the last couple weeks. And as I mentioned to everybody on the the prayer call, I am home. I got not snowed in, but iced in down here in. In Plano and wasn't able to get out to Tennessee for work this, this past week. So working from home as much as I can and yeah, just praying everybody is safe, warm and the storm. As Sunny said, this too shall pass. Gita, I want you to throw that book link in the chat once again. I clicked on it already. I, I love Kingdom mindset. That's wonderful. So Gita's got a book released today and Raj, I, I don't even know. I don't think I sent it to you. I should have sent it to you. If you're on our email list, you got an email last week, last Thursday, saying that Riley's new book, Riley and my new book, I'm listed as a co author now, is coming out tomorrow. It's the third book in the Kingdom Entrepreneur series and I think it's the best one. And again, it's not because my name is now on the book as a co author. It's the best one. And it took some time between books number two and three, but I think for good reason, it, it, it's good. But click that link. Let's support Gita today and, you know, buy a couple extra copies for anybody who might benefit from this book and then you'll get an email today with a link for tomorrow. Tomorrow our book will be on Kindle for free. So it'll be on Kindle for free tomorrow. We will. I'll probably text it to all of you as well if I have your number, because we want to get as many downloads of that free Kindle version as possible. You know, little let you in a little bit. That, that's kind of how you get that bestseller tag. You know, you release it for free a day and then you become bestseller of the the Christian entrepreneur list that day, whatever it may be. So we'll get that out to you. But with that said, I'm excited to continue through the book of Romans. One thing that I, I, I hope you guys do as well, just take some time when you know the passage we're going to cover, take some time to, to read it, take some time afterwards, so start, certainly take some time to read it more. But one of the things that, that's always been beneficial for me has been, you know, getting in the word early in the morning and then throughout the day just kind of chewing the cut. Right? We, we kind of, we're, we're, we're sheep. Well, you know, not in a derogatory term, you know, I know not sheep, like, like UC all the sheep and like Minneapolis right now just following, doing stupid stuff because other stupid people are doing stupid stuff. But as far as the Lord being our shepherd, you know, the, the Bible compares us to the sheep where we're helpless without our shepherd, we're helpless without our Savior. And sheep, they, they graze in the morning, then they chew the cud, you know, they regurgitate the food, chew it again and then like fully digest it. And that's helpful for me doing that throughout the day. So we'll get into the word here. We didn't quite finish chapter two last week. Roger just threw the notes in the chat here for, for this week. I mentioned the last couple weeks as we started through the book of Romans, that Paul kind of breaks up the book of Romans in four categories. And we've been working through that first category starting in chapter one, verse 18. And we're going to get through it today. Chapter three, verse 20. And that's the wrath of God. Remember, Paul's laying out the bad news, our unrighteousness, how there's a universal guilt. Doesn't matter. Your, your background, doesn't matter what category you fall into. As far as the category of just the unrighteous, the immoral, the one who says I don't need God in my life, that one, what Paul is saying is like, well you, you don't measure up before God. And you're also without excuse because God has revealed himself to you through creation. And then last week we got into that second category. The, the, the moralist, right, the, the, the self righteous one. The one that says I, I don't need God, I'm good enough. And they're the ones who want to live their life apart. You know, they're living their life apart from God because they feel like they, they hold themselves, they, they establish a standard at which they hold themselves to. And they compare themselves to everybody else. And Paul says to this category you don't measure up before God either. And then the third category we started getting into a little bit last week, but we're going to conclude this last passage here in chapter two, get into chapter three. And this is a. The, the morally those who are more the religionists, right, the, the legalist. And we talked last week how the Gentiles saying hey, you know, we, we don't even have the law, right, that was given to the Jews. So if God didn't even give us the law, how could we be held to those standards? And what, what Paul says to them is no, God still holds you accountable because just like those who are totally, even if they've never read the Bible, been to church, heard the name Jesus, they're accountable because they see God. God has revealed himself in his creation to that self righteous person. God has, has revealed himself through their own conscience. God has given us all a conscience and a general sense of right and wrong, good and bad. That's why when an atheist, you know, talks about good and bad, it's like, well by whose standard, right? You do have something inside of you that, that declares good and bad. And your conscience is what Paul is saying God has given you. And God reveals himself through our conscience. And then that religious person that we're going to speak about now, they're the ones that says I've earned it, right? And we know Jesus had a lot to say about those religionists, those legalists, those Pharisees. Woe to you, you hypocrites. So chapter two, starting in verse 17 and it reads indeed you are called a Jew and rest on the law and make your boast in God and know his will and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law. You therefore who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you not steal? You who say, do not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you as it is written. Well, Paul is saying is you're, you're hypocrites. And what he's referring to here. For the name of God is blasphemes among Gentiles because of you. As it is written in Isaiah and Also in Ezekiel 36, the Bible says is that God was made a mockery by the Gentiles because they're looking at all these people who had God's law. And they're so religious, they're so superior because they have God's law. They're God's chosen people. And what God revealed to his own people in Isaiah and Ezekiel is like, do you not understand that the Gentiles are choosing not to believe in me even more? Because you're saying these things, but you're not actually doing them. This is just like hogwash to those Gentiles because you're saying you're declaring the law. But then like Paul says, he said you're teaching all these things not to steal, but then you steal, you know, poor idols, but then you're robbing the temple yourself. Verse 25. For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law. But if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has been. Has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? And will not the physically uncircumcised if he fulfills the judge? You who even with your written code and circumcision are a transgressor of the law. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly. Nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew. Or really what he's saying, a true Jew is one who inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart and the Spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men, but from God. So we know Genesis 17. The. The. The covenant between God and Abraham. The mark of that covenant was you go and circumcise the. The males in your household, right? And that was the. A mark of the covenant, a mark of God's people. And what Paul is saying here is. Hold on now. Now, just because you're circumcised, like it shows that you have this covenant, but you're not. Somebody could look at your life and be like, yeah, he's not a true Jew. Because a true Jew, you could tell by their heart. Similar today, somebody may get baptized in water, right? The, the baptism is somewhat comparable to what circumcision was in the Old Testament, it's. It, it's an outward expression of the inward change. But in the Old Testament, you had so many of these religionists that are just walking around, you know, they're circumcised and they're holding themselves high and mighty, but their hearts are still wicked. Their hearts are far from God. And today, baptism, baptism, baptism doesn't make you saved, right? Baptism is just a representation. It's an indication and, and just an expression to the world of what's going on in your heart. Anybody can be dipped in water. Doesn't mean you're saved. Back in the day, anybody could have gotten circumcised. Doesn't mean that now, you know, you're in, you're established in God's covenant. And so what Paul's declaring for all, all these people groups, he's now declared universal guilt, right? Doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, what your perspective is about God, there's universal guilt. And as I mentioned earlier, is what he establishes is that you've been weighed before God and you come up wanting, you come up lacking. And as I was reading this, really just this morning, I threw this in my, my notes this morning. It reminds me of Daniel Chapter five. If you guys are familiar with Daniel Chapter five. Well, even if you aren't, you're probably familiar with something that's in Daniel Chapter five. And maybe you didn't even know that. Wow. We get this, this terminology from Daniel Chapter five when. And I don't know if it popped into my spirit today because, you know, at the end of the NFL season, like every NFL season, coaches get fired, right? And I did see a headline like you do usually every year. The writing's on the wall for these coaches, right? These coaches are expecting to get fired. And that writing on the wall, you guys know what that means? If the writing's on the wall for these coaches, it means they're about to get fired, right? That writing on the wall comes from Daniel chapter five. And that was the night that, that God actually made the fingers appear and write out an expression on the wall. And King Belshazzar, he was the king at the time. He was. He was Nebuchadnezzar's grandson. And what, what it says in chapter five, it says in the same hour, the fingers of a man's hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall. So there was no voice, no warning, just handwriting. And the moment that King Belshazzar sees it, everything changed. It says that his countenance changed. His thoughts troubled him. God was speaking to his conscience. He didn't even know what these words meant. And he called in, you know, his astrologers, his religious experts. Nobody knew what these words meant. And then he called in Daniel. And Daniel revealed what these words are, what they. They mean. But Belshazzar no, knew because of conscience, right, that something was being measured. And Daniel is summoned in, and Daniel delivers it, this indictment. He says, the God who holds your breath in his hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified, right? So this is five centuries before Paul is writing about all this. But God shows his heart not just in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament as well. And what Daniel was basically saying at that time is the same thing Paul's saying now. You're guilty because you knew better than to do this. You knew better than to not glorify God. And the, the inscription that was actually written on the world parson, right? The interpretation, it tells you, right, in scripture what it means. The, that God has numbered your kingdom and finished it. You've been weighed in the balances and found wanting, and your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians. So Belshazzar could have been. He wasn't, but he could have been the, the greatest of all kings in Babylon. But what, what Daniel is saying here and what Paul is ultimately saying is that we're not graded on a curve. We're not measured up. You know, we're not compared to other people, even us in our walk as believers. Now, the way we're graded, it's not like, okay, I'm more righteous, I'm gonna get more crowns in heaven, because I'm pretty sure I'm doing more godly things than that person there. That there's no, there's no curve when it comes to this, right? And not to say that you're not going to get the crowns in heaven and rewards in heaven for, for the works that you do, you absolutely will. But we're speaking to that, that heart where we, we tend to set our own standards when it comes to how good we are. And ultimately, Belshazzar fell short against God's standard. So when we see Romans 1 weighing the immoral and finding them wanting, and then Romans two ways, God weighs the more of this and founds that finds them wanting. That. That weighs. Like, think about how they weigh things back in the day on those scales. So God's weighing us and it's finding. It's like, oh, man, you are lacking quite a bit Right? And now this, this religious insider, this legalist, their way just, just the same. And they're, they're found wanting. So different lives, different excuses, same scales, same outcomes, right? And the conclusion is unavoidable. Paul's going to say this in chapter three here that all have sent, all have fallen short. All are weighed, all are found wanting. And at the end of the day, if, if all of humanity is on a cruise ship and the. The ship sinks, some of us might be able to swim longer and further than others, right? Some of us may be able to get pretty close to shore, but none of that doesn't make us better than the next person. The fact is, is that we're helpless, right? And we're all in need of that Savior. We all have been measured. We're all weighed. But what I love about God with that, that writing on the wall now that night Babylon was conquered by the Medo Persian empire, but with God even giving that, that warning, right? And we do take it more as like that, that warning. But it's an inevitable what, what God is inevitably going to do because I screwed up, right? So we kind of, kind of see that as judgment. But I think there's been times in my life, and I'm sure there has been for you all as well, where like God gave us that warning, right? It wasn't that inevitable judgment that was right around the corner later that night, but that writing on the wall where we could look back, it's like, man, God was really trying to get my attention. God was really trying to reveal himself to me and God. It's not God's will that any of us should perish. He goes out of his way, right, for, for the, for the, the. The filthiest of sinners, the dirtiest of rags. He goes out of his way to, to draw us to him, to get our attention. But at the end of the day, the, the verdict is clear. We are all guilty as charged. And Paul again is. He's laying out this bad news so he could now get into the good news. Like, wait a second, there's. And when we read this here, what I love about it is it's so simple. Like, like this thing we call Christianity. We convolute this thing so much, it's. We're unrighteous, were deserving of God's wrath. God is righteous. He's the one who, who makes rules, sets the rules. Sin must be punished. Sin must be dealt with. And the fact that God actually sent his son to walk this earth as man, to Live that sinless life. The only person, although he was God himself, the only person who walked this earth that actually could say he earned his way to heaven, right? Because he did not sin. He, he, he, he didn't break any laws for that, that man, Jesus Christ, to go to the cross to bear the wrath of God for us, where God's righteousness can now be imputed upon us and we're deemed righteous, that's just, that leaves me in awe. And we're going to see here in chapter three, like part of the issue is that there's no fear of God before their eyes, right? So, so those who, who walk around like they have this relationship with the Lord but their, their hearts are truly far from him. And this could be somebody who actually is saved, right? They've had that, that moment with the Lord. They, they've had that encounter. They surrendered. They, they believed in the Lord, they placed their faith in Jesus Christ and they been sealed by the Holy Spirit, right? And, and we're not going to get into a talk this morning about like can you lose or relinquish that salvation if you get saved and you just live a life of debauchery after that, right? But for the person who is just, you know, they, they have a relationship with the Lord but they're not, they're not close to the Lord, they're not drawing near to him. They're, they're not praying. They're not seeking him for that person. At the end of the day, there's really a lack of fear of God. And I think all of us could say there's at least at times we lack reverence and fear of God. Because if we could actually see God for the holy God that He is, we would fear him in such a way where we would be in awe and have this reverence. And not out of that fear, but more of that love that I have from this holy and righteous. God chose me, right? Because yes, I, I made a decision, but God, God chose me just like he chose you and he chooses all of humanity. You know, Calvinists will say that, you know, only those who God wants to choose. God will, will choose. But God chooses all of humanity. He wants us all to be drawn near to Him. He wants us all to repent to, for none of us to experience everlasting damnation, that that's his heart. And when we, like every day, it's like, God, help me with my, my fear of you. That story of who was it? Jim Baker? Who that tele evangelist that, that went to prison. And you know, he, he was defrauding people and doing all sorts of shady stuff with money. He went to prison. And when John Bevere visited him, he, he, he asked him, he said, when did you fall out of love with God? And Jim Baker said, I never fell out of love with God. I stopped fearing him. He said, I always loved him just the same, but I stopped fearing him. So that fear and reverence for the Lord is so important. So important. So at the end of the day, even though Paul wrote this 2,000 years ago, the modern day equivalence of this with these religious people is just because you're circumcised, that doesn't mean you truly know the Lord. With us. Just because you own a Bible doesn't mean you're saved. Just because you go to church every week doesn't mean you're saved. Just because you tithe doesn't mean you're saved, right? All those things will, will naturally be there, right? If you truly are saved. But just because you get dipped in water doesn't mean you're truly saved. Paul, in verse 21, he's going to lay out exactly what is required to be saved. It's our faith in Jesus and it comes alone by God's grace. Alone by God's grace. We can't take credit for it, we can't boast, it's God's grace. But it's so simple. It's just faith. That's it. That's it. Every other religion, it's man working to get closer to God. Closer to God, closer to God. With us. Our, our scripture is blatantly explicitly says no, it's not our effort, it's our faith. And God established that back in Genesis 15. And we will talk more about that next week when we get into chapter four of Romans that. It's faith. We're deemed righteous. We're justified by our faith, right? We're spotless without a blemish, without a fall before God's eyes because of our faith. That's remarkable and it's super simple and it's like totally miraculous and amazing that it's that simple. But we do complicate the heck out of it as just still hard headed humans. But anyhow, Romans 3 I'm going to read now. Remember that, that first section that Paul lays out here. The wrath of God from chapter 18 of verse one all the way through, through chapter, through chapter three, verse 20 here, right? All talking about the wrath of God. The wrath of God, the wrath of God. The bad news and Then comes the glorious good news. So I'll read these first 20 verses. What advantage then has the Jew? Or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. Sa. Life I've seen, not having to actually go through scripture to find every scripture that. That pops into my head. The these last two verses here of this passage. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. How much of the world? Oh, all of the world. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in a sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. So therefore he's wrapping up this whole passage starting in, in chapter one, verse 18. And I mean, it looks pretty bleak for humanity, right? All the world is guilty before God. This is Paul's whole point of writing all this out. And he's so elaborate to establish this universal guilt that we have. And then therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. So he's saying, wait a second. The law you could. Even if starting right now, you obeyed every single law, Are you earning your way into heaven? You still can't earn your way into heaven because no person, even if you start now and you somehow, I mean, it'll probably take about, you know, 30 minutes before you break some law, right? God's written law. But even if you manage to live the rest of your life fulfilling God's laws, you well, guess what? You still broke the laws prior to this moment. So you're still, you're still doomed, right? You're still worthy of God's wrath. You're still unrighteous because all it takes is, is one sin at any given time. Now, when it comes to the, the law, the law was never meant to save anybody, right? The law is like a mirror. It shows your dirt, it shows how you do fall short. It's like an X ray that shows disease. It's a measuring scale, right? We're talking about. God measures us and we're found wanting, we're found lacking, we come up short. That's what the law is intended to do for, for man to, to see, to. To be revealed. To be revealed to that we come up short. Now, one of the. That's one of the biggest misunderstanding of the law. And that's why all these Pharisees that we read about in the gospels that, that Jesus was calling them hypocrites because they're, they're, they're looking externally like they're fulfilling the law when Jesus knew their hearts were far from. And you know, all the things that they were doing when nobody was watching, things like that. Paul is ultimately going to say in verse 20, by the deeds of the law, no flesh. Or he did right here, by the, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. So the law reveals our knowledge of sin that we do fall short. And Jesus himself taught in Luke 24, he said, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself in John 5, these are they which testify of me. He's talking about the, the Old Testament. And Jesus is, is not missing from the Old Testament. The Old Testament, you know, we talk about the law, the, the Pentateuch, those first five books of the Bible, but we have the entirety of the Old Testament. Right? But when we're talking about the law, now we're talking about the entirety of the Old Testament. And I have in those notes that, that Roger posted. But Christ is revealed in every book in the old Testament. All 39 books of the Old Testament, Jesus is revealed. I'll go through a couple. Genesis, Jesus is the seed of the woman. Exodus, he is the passover lamb. Leviticus, he's our, our great high priest in Numbers, he's the cloud by day, the fire by night. In Deuteronomy, he is the prophet like Moses. Get to the history books. Joshua, he's the commander of the Lord's armies. Judges, he's our judge and deliverer in Ruth, he's the kinsman's redeemer. First and Second Samuel, he is the anointed prophet and king. First and Second Kings, he's the reigning king. First and Second Chronicles, he is the glory in the temple. Ezra, he is the restorer of worship and truth. Nehemiah, he's the rebuilder of what is broken. Esther, he's our advocate and defender. I'm about halfway through the list, but you get the point if you want the rest of those. But, but Jesus is revealed in every book in the Old Testament. The, the Old Testament points towards the cross. Everything in the Old Testament points towards Jesus. Points towards Jesus. Points towards Jesus, points towards the cross. Everything in the New Testament points back to the cross. The work that was done on the cross. Right, it's all about the cross and the work that was done on the cross. And that work being the, the sacrifice. The Jesus being. And we'll read it now that the propitiation of our sins. So again, the law does not save, it exposes. But God never exposes without pointing, pointing you in the, in the direction as to where to go. And I love that like God will correct us in Hebrews, we have to question if we're actually legitimate children of God. If God does not, if he doesn't discipline us, right? So God will, will say he'll tap us on the hands. Nope, nope, nope. Doing it wrong. Nope. Then he does point us in which direction to go. And then here's the words that we talked a little bit about last week. But these words every time says this in the Bible, like but now. Right? And we're going to read in chapter five, but God, but now. So Paul tells this long story over the first three chapters, right? We are depraved. We're universally guilty. We are deserving of God's wrath. He is righteous. There's none like him. And we're super unrighteous. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, right? So now the righteousness apart from the law that this righteousness of God is in Jesus Christ, right? The, the law and the prophets all pointed towards Jesus Christ, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe, through faith in Jesus Christ to all and not all who believe. Like, wait a second, this righteousness that I fall so short of, I, it could be mine now. I, I could actually be deemed and seen as righteous in God's eyes. By, by what? It's just simply by through faith in Jesus Christ. And it's, who's it for? It's for all, anybody who believes that word. Faith and belief is the same in the Greek. When you see faith and believe, you know, for, for us, usually we're like, yeah, I, I believe that, but I don't really trust it. I, I, I could almost believe it as if it's something that's true, but I don't have faith in it. Right? But it's the same word in the Greek, right? For, for, for all who believe are, are saved. And it's a Greek word, pistis, right? Pistis. The, the, the best explanation of the Greek word pistis because he, when we talk about faith, when we talk about our belief in Jesus, like all right, well even the, the devil believes, right? But he clearly doesn't like trust in Jesus as Savior. The word pistis like covers it all. It means to trust in to rely on, to cling to. Right? That's what that word. So whenever you see faith in the Bible, it's talking about this Greek word, pistis. And sometimes the form is pistuo, right? For God so loved the world that he, Eve, is only begotten Son for all who believe. Right? It's the word pistuo, root word, pistis. And it means to trust in, to rely on, to cling to. That. That covers like all your bases. It's not like an intellectual belief. Because I can't cling to anything or anyone without releasing something else, Right? So that's the repentance piece. I can't turn to Jesus unless I turn from something else. So the word pistis isn't, you know. You know, people talk about, well, I just have to believe in Jesus and what, what about repentance? It's like. No, that's all encapsulated in this word. Pistis is to trust in, to rely on, to have a dependency on, and then to cling to. And think about it, if you're actually clinging to Jesus. If I'm clinging to this pen right now, I can't do. I can't hold on to anything else, let alone cling out to anything else. If I'm clinging to Jesus. Think about clinging on to something for your dear life. If you are clinging on to Jesus, you're not holding on to those past sins. You know, you're not dabbling in those other things. If I truly put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ, I am clinging to him as my Savior, as my Lord, as my King. Then Paul goes on, for there is no difference. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness. Because in his forbearance, God had passed over the sins that previously committed to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith. And Jesus. Now again, Paul, though drawn on sentences, it's a mouthful right there, but it, it's so. These words are so impactful, what he's writing right now. Now these words and the fact that he starts. But now. Right, but now Paul has shown us the righteousness of. Of the righteousness of God. Well, the unrighteousness of us and now the righteousness of God, meaning this righteousness of God is apart from the law. It means it's not Earned. It's not achieved, it's not deserved. Right? The law exposes the disease. God provides to cure and is revealed. God is not hiding from the solution. Hey, bud, hang over there for a minute, all right? Almost done. God's not hiding from the solution. As I just mentioned, from Genesis to Malachi, God is revealed in the law. And how do we do this? Through our faith that, that pisses. To trust in, to rely on, to cling to. It's our faith in a person. It's our faith in a savior. Jesus lived the life we couldn't live and he died the death that, that we deserved. And he rose to offer what we can never earn. And Paul literally makes it crystal clear this is to all and on all who believe that there's. It doesn't matter where you're born, what color your skin is. Doesn't matter if you grew up in church. Doesn't matter if you never heard the gospel until later in life. Doesn't matter. We're all on the same playing field. If and when you believe the, the way that word believe is truly meant in its original Greek, you will be saved. That for the, the sinner on his deathbed, that, that last minute confession, right? That. That guy's going to heaven. He's going to heaven, right? And it may not sit well with some people. It's like, man, that guy was awful. He was a murderer. He, whatever, name the sin. If that guy truly believes the way that that word believe is meant, truly puts his faith in Jesus Christ, trusts in, relies on clings too, that man or woman is going to be in heaven. And Paul says, for there, there's no, there is no different. We all have different sins, right? And you may say, well, he. Why should he get in, right? As opposed to, you know, my mother's, up until, was it three years before she died, she thought she was good enough to, to make it to heaven, right? Well, you're good enough when you compare yourself to other people. My mother was a great woman. Good values, good morals. But she didn't, she didn't place her trust in Jesus Christ. But that's what people do. We judge ourselves and we establish our own goodness, right? And as we spoke of last week, we typically judge others based on their actions and we judge ourselves based on our intentions. So even if we're not really that good, we'll deem ourselves as good because we intended to do the right thing, typically. But we're justified freely by his grace. And that word justified means a formal acquittal by God, whereby he pronounces a sinner to be righteous because of that sinner's faith in Jesus Christ. So to be justified means you're declared righteous, you're legally acquitted, right? Not guilty. If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit, right? Not guilty, right? You're off the hook. No charges. No charges remaining. And again, the, the word that Paul uses to, to just like wreck your human pride is being justified freely by his grace. So God, it was free. You didn't do it, you didn't deserve it, you didn't earn it. This is freely by his grace. And probably all familiar with Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by his grace, you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, right? This is, this is God's grace. Unmerited favor. That, that's what grace is, unmerited favor. And then through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. What is redemption? Redemption means to buy back, right? And we were enslaved to sin. And Christ paid the price, like he bought us back, he freed us. And think about the cost of that. There's no great, there's no monetary value that could come close to sacrificing your own life. You can't pay a billion dollars for, for salvation, right? Sin is dealt with through, through sacrifice, through shedding of blood. There must be punishment for sin. And Jesus took that sin, that punishment for us. And then in verse 25, it says, whom God set forth as a propitiation. Propitiation, Great word. Try to throw it into situate. And it's hard to like just throw it into everyday conversation unless you're talking about Jesus, right? But what propitiation means is a sacrifice that fully satisfies God's righteous wrath. And again, God's wrath is righteous for all those who, who end up in the lake of fire for all of eternity. That's in God's righteousness. That he's still a just God. That's God's righteousness. And, and he is just. And it's not wicked. Because as we see, as we've talked about countless times on this Bible study, God is, is after our hearts and when we reject him that we're, we're making our own bed. So it's only because of that propitiation, a sacrifice that fully satisfies God's righteous wrath. That's only the only way we could be reconciled to God. The only way. And again, it's, it's super simple. Like, this gospel is good news. It's super simple, but it's, it makes your jaw drop. It really does. How is it possible that, that God could love me so much? Because when I, I read in the Gospels about Jesus going to the cross, right? And, but when I read that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, like, I, I actually, I know that Jesus had me in mind, right? He was God. He knew I'd be born May 22, 1981. He knew that, you know, I'd injure my back, get hooked on painkillers, be a drug addict. He knew I would blame him. He knew I would curse him out. He knew I would blaspheme his name, right? Yet he still willingly went to the cross for me so that one day, when the truth is revealed to me, I could be reconciled to the Father. It blows my mind. I'm getting goosebumps. Like I'm so unworthy of God's love. Like, I'm so unworthy. Like, Jesus died on a cross for me, and he died on the cross for all of humanity. But personalize it. When you talk about Jesus going to the cross, personalize it as if he went to the cross with one person in mind. That person is you. Not. Not even going to be born for another 2,000 years. He thought about you. And then if you want to kind of like take a step back and look at it, it's like, look at all the, the evil, wicked, rebellious people. I mean, just look in today's culture, but throughout all of humanity. And Jesus went to the cross and was a propitiation for all of us. He was, He. He was the, the sin offering, right? He took on God's wrath. It's remarkable. And it doesn't matter how many times you read through Scripture, you can never get enough. Because every time, no matter how much I've read this, right, And I'll be honest with you, I've probably focused on this little passage here that we just read more than I. I've gone through verse by verse, you know, because these passages are the uplift, uplifting ones. But every time I read it, I'm just like, oh, my gosh. Oh my gosh. And we talked about that fear of God that was lacking, like that universal guilt. There's just no fear of God. For all these religious people, it's like, yeah, they're going to church, they're checking off the boxes, but there's no actual fear of God. This, like, heightens my reverence and fear of God exponentially. When I read this because I'm so unworthy. I'm so unworthy. But all these like, churchy words, like grace, justified propitiation, all these churchy words, it's like man, when we talk about them, it's like, oh my gosh, God is that. I. I can't even believe a love like that exists. That God would. Would send his son to the cross for us. So this. But now I want to open it up. I've saved at least nine minutes here. I want to open this up. Well, I'll read these last couple verses in the chapter. That way next week we can start chapter four afresh. Where is boasting? Then? It is excluded. By what? Law of works? No, but by the law of faith. Again, that word testis. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Or is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If you checked off all the boxes, it doesn't matter. Guess what? You get saved today and die tomorrow. Never be baptized in the interim, and you're still going to heaven. It's not the baptism. It's not getting dipped in the water. It's not your church attendance, not the tithing. It's not that. It's. No, it's simply by faith. But then again, faith without works is dead. So all these things that, that come, all the. The fruit of true salvation, these things are going to be there. Yeah, we're gonna have a Bible. Yeah. We're going to go to church. Right. God says not to forsake the assembling of the saints. We're going to go to church, we're going to fellowship, but going to get baptized. That does. Does God explicitly say you need to be baptized to be saved? Absolutely not. But when I read that Ethiopian eunuch in the Book of Acts, when Philip ministers to him and he gets saved, the first thing he did when he saw a body of water was get baptized. Right. It was like he wanted the world to know, no, I'm getting baptized. I want the world to know that I'm a new man, I'm a new creation. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not. On the contrary. We established the law. Right. So this is the law. Jesus is the law of faith. He didn't come to abolish the law. He came to fulfill it in our faith in Jesus Christ. It's like, guess what? It's a pretty tedious day if you're making sure you're not breaking any of those laws. Those seven. Was it 783. Levitical laws. Whatever it is, somebody will probably correct me on that. Whatever that number is. It's a pretty tedious day to try to not break any of those laws. But guess what? I. I'm. I'm not guilty of any of them with my faith in Jesus Christ. And we're going to get into. Does this give us, like, license to sin? By no means. By no means does not give us license to sin. We're going to talk about that in the coming weeks. But when we grab hold of this, when we grab hold of this, it's like, man, my. My fear of the Lord heightens my love, my reverence for him. I. I want to seek him. I want more of him. This is the. The God that, that sent his son dying across for me. I want to know him. David didn't even, like, obviously, Jesus just talked about how all the Old Testament points towards Jesus, but David lived in a time before Jesus was on earth. Right. God told him to seek my face. He said, seek your face, I will. Because he wanted nothing more than to be in the presence of the Lord, nothing more. So with that said, was it Yugita that had your hand up?

Yep, universally. But no, seriously, this is great. Wow. Christian. It's. I love Romans. And it's funny because the Holy Spirit has been just nudging me to read Romans again, you know, and just study through the book, like, pretty much since December. And I just hopped on here today. This is incredible. Thank you so much. You know, and a lot of the stuff you said, you know, repentance is encapsulated in salvation. A lot of people don't realize that. And look, there's nothing you can do to ever be good enough. And this is something me and Vijay talk about as you guys have been praying for. My brother Vijay, he got saved. He still has some repenting to do, but he understands this, you know, the whole Romans of, you know, the concept of Jesus Christ versus the law, you know, works versus grace. There's nothing we're ever going to do to be good enough. And I think the world comes at it from an angle of they are many gods. And we come in as an angle from, you know, we have universal guilt from, you know, Adam and Eve were stained with sin but now we're made righteous through Jesus Christ. And now we know we're in a. We have a different identity, but they're doing it all in their own strength. And, and, you know, I really talk a lot about this in my book, because the Hinduism doesn't have a savior, right? And. And they. They're caught. They're perpetually in works. And, and the funny thing is, if you look at them. And again, I'm not. I'm not here to discredit people. My family's Indian. But they're always unhappy or it's almost like unsatisfied or unfulfilled because it's that next thing they have to do or, you know, we're going to finally attain it. But we are. We're in it. Like, we are the righteousness. We're in real time. And it's just such a difference. And it's just so. I'm just so grateful that the Lord chose me out of that. And, you know, and in hearing you reiterate this today, thank you so much. I'm grateful for my identity in Christ this morning. Amen.

Amen.

Oh, and there's 430 laws.

430. Sean wrote 6, 13.

Oh, sorry, maybe I'm wrong. Thank you.

Yeah, I got a lot of numbers in my head right now. I don't know. I don't know what else I. I want to ask you guys. Has anybody had that, like, proverbial moment of, like, the writing on the wall? Because a lot of times, like, when, when we're distressed, when tragedy strikes us, when bad things happen, it's like, oh, we're. We're. That's all of a sudden those, those foxhole prayers, right? Especially for those who don't know the Lord yet, those foxhole prayers. But can anybody recall. I want to hear what you're going to say, Sean, if it doesn't apply to this question I'm posing. But do you remember, like, that writing on the wall moment where God was really getting your attention, Sean? Yeah, definitely can. Nick and I were dating and living together, and I came to Christ in that place. Like, it doesn't really matter how deep the hole is.