we'll turn to now. So let's turn to Philippians 3. I have a couple different texts that I'm going to read or go through again tonight in the sermon. And we'll read Philippians 3. And I'm not going to go through everything here, but I'm going to use a couple phrases in the sermon. And let's see. We'll start on Philippians 3, verses 3 through 11, and I'll just mention a couple of these verses in the sermon we'll look at, but I'll read this whole thing for the context. Okay, God's Word, Philippians 3, verses 3 through 11. Look out for the dogs. I'm sorry, verse 3. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh, though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. As to the law, a Pharisee. As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead." God's word. What good are your good works? Or, what role do your good works play in life? Or, what standing do your good works have before God? Now, different religions are usually actually similar on this, questions to those answers. Most religions say, if not all religions except for the true religion, the Christian faith, most religions will say that your works get you something with God, or the gods. If you obey your God or God's, He will reward you with something. So if you talk to Muslims, if you talk to Jehovah's Witnesses, or even people who hold to Native American religions, they'll say that God will reward you for doing something and possibly reward you with eternal life or their version of heaven. And that's the average American belief, isn't it? It's not just different religions, but all people in their roughly religious bent will say, if you do many good things, God will reward you some way. We've talked about that before. But in the Christian faith, the true religion, we say, no, our good works don't help at all in our justification. My standing before God does not depend upon my deeds and my works. That's what we talked about last week. We learned that justification is to be declared righteous by God, accepted by God. And we learned last week from Scripture that the moving cause why God would justify a person is grace alone. And we learn the grounds or the foundation of our justification is Christ's active and passive obedience. His obedient life and his suffering on the cross. That's the grounds of our justification. And so that truth, that righteousness of Christ is received by faith alone. We learned these things last week. Double imputation and things like that. And so as I mentioned last week, and as you know if you read any Reformation documents, that justification by faith alone is a very essential and important truth in the Christian faith and life. We don't want to mix the law and gospel here. When we talk about justification, we don't want to mix justification with sanctification. We want to get these things straight. So last week, again, we mentioned that we're justified by God's grace alone through faith alone because of Christ's works, and not our works. So then the question comes in the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a great one, and here's what we'll be looking at tonight. Why can't our good works help towards our justification? In your standing with God, as He accepts you or doesn't accept you, why don't our good works help or count in justification? Not even in part. Well, I have some different answers from Scripture, and I'll give them as we go. So the main question for tonight is, like the Heidelberg, why can't our good works help towards our justification? Now the first one that we'll look at is because even our best works are imperfect. God demands perfection. If we want to be accepted by God, we need to be absolutely spotless and perfect in His sight. We need a perfect track record. There's a perfection test. It's kind of like in school, you'd need all A's on all of your tests, on all of your quizzes, and all of your papers, and all of your assignments, in every class ever. That's a perfection test. We need that kind of perfection if we want to be accepted by God. This is what Jesus was doing with the rich young ruler in Matthew 19. The rich young ruler actually went up to Jesus and said, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? Remember what Jesus said? Keep the commandments. Then what did the rich young man say? He said, well, I've kept them since I was a kid. And Jesus answered and said, there's something you lack. Sell everything you have and come follow me. And the man went away very sad because he was very rich. In other words, he loved his money more than Christ. He was not a law keeper. Now Jesus was not teaching there that a sinful person can earn eternal life by works. But Jesus was using the law to show that this man who thought he was righteous was actually sinful and he broke the law. He used the law to show the man his sin. So we can't be justified by our works because none of us is perfect like that rich young man. We might think so, but then the law comes and says no. And there's other clear scriptures on this too. Galatians 3 verse 10, cursed is everyone who does not abide by everything written in the book of the law. You gotta be perfect. I mean, your works have to be absolutely blameless. You can't have done anything wrong in your life if you want to be justified. Or James 3 says, whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. There's the perfection test in Scripture. If you want to be justified by your own works, you've got to be perfect. You can never have had a sinful thought, you can have never said a sinful word, and you have to be perfectly obedient to all of God's commandments. And that's why the Heidelberg Catechism says the only righteousness that can pass God's test or judgment must be 100% perfect and in every way measure up to God's law. But the problem is even our best works are imperfect and stained with sin. Remember what Isaiah talks about even, you know, our works, they're like filthy rags. Or Ecclesiastes 7 says, Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. And doesn't your own experience teach you this? If you think, man, I need to be perfect before God to be accepted by Him, I'm not that. In fact, I'm very far from it. If I look back even on this past week, I failed in almost every way to measure up to God's law. Even sometimes when we help someone, or we pray, or sit in church and worship, these are good things, but there are blemishes in them when we do them. So if you think that some of your works might pass the perfection test, you don't understand the strict demands of God's law, nor do you understand the sinfulness of your own heart. We can't keep God's law perfectly. Therefore, our works cannot count in justification. And that's why Paul said in Philippians 3 what we read in verse 3, put no confidence in the flesh in what we do or what we try to do. So that's one reason. We'll get to application pretty soon, but we can't be justified by our works because even our best works are stained with sin and imperfect. We don't have a perfect obedience. Now another reason then that scripture teaches why our good works can't help in justification is because it would be an insult to God's grace. Does that make sense? Last week we learned in Romans 3 verse 24, being justified freely by his grace. And so it's a gift that's not earned or not deserved. It's grace alone we said from scripture. And Paul goes on to say in Romans 4 that if a person works, his wages are not a gift, but what's due to him. So Paul in Romans 3 and 4 is saying, look, there's grace alone that's just a gift, or there's working for a reward. And Paul says that justification is a gift of grace. So it makes sense, I think, if you think of an illustration. Let's say you work for five days, you'll get paid for five days. And that's not a gift. You earned it because you worked for it. Even if you only worked one day that week, and even if you still, for some reason, got paid for all five days, you still earned it because you worked to some extent. But if you didn't work at all, and they just gave you payment and you didn't work, that's a free gift. That's grace. And so this is what is the moving cause of justification like we said from scripture, free grace. You're justified by grace. It's not earned. It's not a reward. It's not because of your works. So if you start to think it's because of your works, it's an insult to God's grace. We know some of these verses. In Titus 3, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. Or Romans 11 verse 6, if it's by grace, it's no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. So in justification, it's either our works or God's grace. You can't have both. You can't mix them. And we know that it's grace alone and not our works. Maybe sometimes we have this where, maybe you have a good friend, just for an illustration. You have a good friend, and you know that she likes antique cookbooks. And you're at a garage sale, she collects antique cookbooks. So you're at a garage sale, and you see a bunch of antique cookbooks. And you buy them for her, and you bring them to her house, and you say, look, I've got all these cookbooks that I thought you would like. And you can just have them. I like to see how much you enjoy them and things. If your friend insisted on paying, you'd say, no, no, it's a gift. And it's almost an insult sometimes to try to be paid for a gift. And so when it comes to justification, if we try to work for it or think it depends on our works, it's an insult to God's gracious gift. Remember what the scripture says, it's a free gift of grace to be justified and accepted by God. So don't come up to God and say, I have all these works. Accept me. No, you come, as we said last week, with an empty hand of faith and take that gift that God graciously wants to give you. Take it with an open hand of faith, the righteousness of Christ for your justification. And here's some application for this. The more you understand this grace, that it's not by your works at all, that you're not justified by your works, not even 1% at all, the more you understand grace, the more it kills the legalist in you. You know what a legalist is. Someone who needs to be more strict with rules. Try harder to please God and add all these extra rules to scripture. But legalism is like going back under the covenant of works in a way. Do this and live. But then grace comes and you say, wait a minute. I don't need all these rules and laws and regulations for justification. I'm not justified by my works, but freely by God's grace. So when it comes to justification, you can just quit working. and accept it as a free gift of grace. You can stop and rest, open your hand of faith and accept it as a gift. So that's another reason why our works don't count in justification because it would be an insult to God's free gift of grace. Now there's another logical way to go here. Another reason why we can't be justified even in part by our works is because it would be an insult to Christ's work. And does that make sense as we think about justification? I'll use an illustration again. Let's say a very wealthy person was building a beautiful, massive home for this homeless guy who lives under the bridge and he drinks too much and he's very rough around the edges. The wealthy man hires the best contractor in the country, the best plumbers, the best electricians, and he finishes this house. It's a beautiful house. It's 100% done. The carpets are in, the curtains are there, the outlets are all in, and it's completely done in every way. He goes and gets this homeless man, and he brings him to this brand new mansion, this beautiful house, and the homeless man grabs a toolbox and goes in and starts working on it. You say, what are you doing? It's finished. And it would be an insult to the builder, because the man, this homeless man, who's drunk a lot of the times, he's trying to improve upon this perfect house that this guy built. That's maybe not the perfect illustration, but it's similar. If our works play some part in our justification, that means, even if some of our works played a part in our justification, that means, what does that mean about Christ's work? That's not enough. And that's an insult to Christ's work, because we know from scripture it is enough. You see how that works? If you think that your justification depends even a little bit on your works, then you're saying that Christ's work was not enough. And that's a terrible insult to our Savior's perfect obedience and his hellish suffering on the cross. And here's the biblical text to think about. There's another one too, but Galatians 2 verse 21. If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. If righteousness, you know, your acceptance before God, could be gained through the law, Paul says, then Christ died for no reason. If our works play a part in our justification, what did Jesus mean when he said it is finished? Paul doesn't play around with fractions in justification. It's not Jesus works plus mine equals justification, but Jesus works alone, we receive him by faith. Or we could put it this way, the robes of Christ's righteousness that we wear by faith don't need our merit badges sewn on. Like the Lord's Day 11 of the Heidelberg says, either Jesus is not a perfect Savior, or we have in Him all that we need for salvation. It's not Jesus did 99% and you did the rest. Now another good text to think about the completeness and the perfection of Christ's work that doesn't need any of our works is Philippians 3 verse 8, what we read. It's always been one of my favorite verses. He says, so he gives, by the way, before verse 8, he gives his list of how much of a Jew, an obedient Jew, he was. A Hebrew of Hebrews. I have all this stuff, he said, but then look in verse 8, I count everything, all of this stuff, as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And then he says, for his sake, for Jesus' sake, I've suffered the loss of all these things and I count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and here's the key, and be found in him, not having my own righteousness or a righteousness of my own that comes from the law or obeying it, but that which comes through faith in Christ. So Paul throws away his own righteousness when it comes to justification and receives the righteousness of God in Christ. And that's where his confidence is. So imagine Paul had this huge pedigree of being a Jew's Jew and he just tossed it all aside and held on to the righteousness of Christ to be accepted by God. And in verse 8 there's this word rubbish. That word, it's in the ASV and it's in the NASB as well. He says all of these things that he had, all of his former merits and good deeds as a Jew, he counts them as rubbish. That work in the Greek is skubalon, and it's a barnyard Greek word. And one in my Greek dictionary said fecal matter. And I probably will never say this again in the pulpit, but it's poop. So do you see what Paul's doing though? He's using this barnyard language on purpose to show the people all of what he did as a Jew, all of this obedience to the law, memorizing the Old Testament, being a Jew of Jew, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He counted it as dung, fecal matter, so that it could be found in Christ and hold on to the righteousness of Christ. So don't miss that, what Paul's doing there. He's making a big, strong point. So Christ works. His perfect obedience and his suffering on the cross is perfect in every way. It's finished. It's all that we need. Jesus doesn't need my works. God doesn't need my works for me to be justified. Jesus kept the covenant of works in our place and he took the curse of the law in our place. He did everything for us. So again, we don't work for justification at all because Jesus did that for us. We receive it by faith as a gift. And I love that hymn. Thy work's not mine, O Christ. Speak gladness to this heart. They tell me all is done. They bid my fear depart. Thy righteousness, O Christ, alone can cover me. No righteousness avails save that which is of thee. That's a good biblical teaching. So that's another reason why we're not justified by our works at all, because it would be an insult to the work of Jesus. Now another angle here is that if our works counted even a little bit in justification, it would rob God of glory. Now again, can you see how I'd say that? You know that Reformation theme, sole deo gloria, SDG, to God alone be the glory. This means, this is a biblical teaching, that God is to be glorified in all things. He is to receive the glory. So the prophet Jonah said, salvation belongs to the Lord, and Psalm 115 says, not to us, not to us, there's a repetition, but to your name be glory. So how this has to do with our justification, if our justification depended on our works at all, it would rob God of glory. Because some of it would be credited or we could take credit for some of it. We could boast for some of it. But the Bible says God saved us. He justified us by grace. He forgave us. He accepts us. And all glory and honor and praise for this belongs to God. Not me, not you, not at all. Only God. In Romans 4, Paul actually gets this. This is another Bible text to think about. Paul says if Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about. But of course he wasn't, and he had no reason to boast. But you can see how that would make a person proud, right? If you and Jesus make a great team, and because of your work and his work together, you're justified, you'd become proud of what you've done. And you would not have the attitude that Paul had about his works. You'd become a Pharisee and say, thankfully, I'm not like those other sinful people, Lord. That's where pride comes. If you think your works count in justification, that's a source of pride. But then Ephesians 2 comes and says, no, this is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. We don't brag about our justification, about our works in justification, because we don't have anything to add. It's done by Jesus. And what do we boast in? The cross. That's the Bible way to think of it. And that's what Paul said, far be it for me to boast except in the cross of Christ. I'll boast about Jesus' work because it's perfect and complete and finished and I'll give Him all the glory because He's done it perfectly. That keeps you humble. It keeps you joyful and confident in the Christian faith and it also keeps you humble and kills pride. This is the right motives and the right, I'm sorry, the right attitudes and the right fruits in a Christian life. Humility and joy and thankfulness. Justification by faith alone works those in us when we understand it. So another one then, finally, actually two more. Let me just review so we don't forget here. Why can't our good works help towards justification? First, because even our best works are imperfect. Second, because it would be an insult to God's grace. Third, because it would be an insult to Christ's work. Fourth, because it would rob God of glory. And then finally, because it could also lead to sinful despair. Now, again, we have to do some biblical thinking here. If your works counted in justification, if even some of your works counted in your standing before God, that could lead you to despair. Because you would not know if you've done enough. How could you know for sure that you've done enough to earn God's favor? Even if there was this, you know, fraction that Jesus did 99% and you have 1% left, you still would never be sure. Did I pray enough? Did I read my Bible long enough this week? Did I miss church twice in the last three months? Is that going to count against me? And you would be in despair because if it depended on you, you'd say, I can't do this. And it would lead to doubt and depression. And that was partly Martin Luther's problem. In the early Reformation, before he understood grace, when he was a monk, he was uncertain. He didn't know about Christ's perfect work that's received by faith and God's grace. And it was almost like he was, again, living under the covenant of works to some extent. Do this or you're going to die, which would lead to despair. If your works counted in justification, you could never sing, It's Well with My Soul. You couldn't. You certainly could never sing Amazing Grace. It would rob you of this comfort and lead you to despair. Think about it even in deeper terms. If your justification counted on your works, thinking about despair, we would just have to live our Christian life with our fingers crossed and hope we've done enough. And just hope that on the last day that we have a decent enough track record to get in. I'm despairing thinking about that. Because my track record is far from perfect. But thankfully, Christ's track record is perfect, and that's credited to my account, and that frees me from despair. And in fact, it's just the opposite. Then you have confidence. Then you have assurance. Because when you look back at the work of Christ, His perfect obedience, His death on the cross, you think, that's exactly what I need, and that's exactly what I have, and I'm justified. God accepts me because of what Jesus has done. My works will never pass the test. I can't add to Christ's works, but his works have passed the test in their mind by faith. I don't need my own righteousness. Apply that to your Christian walk. For justification, you don't need your own righteousness. That's what Paul's saying. He says in Philippians 3, what we read, not having my own righteousness, not having my own righteousness, but that which comes through faith in Christ. You have the righteousness of God through faith in Christ, and for that reason you're justified. One Reformed theologian, Francis Turton, I think he wrote around 1700, he said, justification by faith alone is the principal foundation of salvation. If it is overthrown or even weakened, all our comfort in life and death would necessarily perish. So he's saying there that all our comfort in life and death has to do with the works of Jesus Christ and justification by grace alone through faith alone. And so you can rest in this, right? You don't have to despair as Christians. You don't have to live in doubt about your salvation because Jesus' works are perfect. He did it for you and he said it's finished and you receive that as a gift of grace, credited to your account so you're justified. And it doesn't change if you stumble. If your prayer life kind of tanks for the next month, don't a month and a half from now doubt your justification. Or if you stumble in the Christian faith, and sadly it's not good, but if you fall into sin once again and you're despairing of your salvation, you think, no, no, Jesus has done it for me. His death on the cross covers my sin and his perfect obedience is credited to my account. I'm okay. This leads to confidence and comfort. So use this truth to fight despair and doubt in your Christian life. All right, one more. Another reason, biblically speaking, why our works don't count in justification is because it would destroy the biblical motivation for good works. If our works counted in justification, it would destroy the biblical motivation for Christians' good works. So, once again, let me flesh that out a little bit and give scripture in a moment. If my justification depended on my works, the reason I would do good works is to help in my justification. That would be the motive for my good works. Do you know what I mean? So if my standing before God had to do with my obedience, I would obey God to get something from Him. That would be my motivation. I would look at the Ten Commandments and think, I've got to obey those if I want God to accept me. And again, it's like the covenant of works. I've got to do this and I'll live. If I don't, I'll be cursed. Again, an illustration might help here. You know, if this were the case, that my justification depended on my works in part, and you needed help shingling your roof, I would help you shingle your roof, not because I love shingling or because I love you. I would be doing it so that God would see it and reward me for it. And that motivation is not a biblical one. But once we understand what Romans 3 verse 24 says, justified freely by His grace, then that frees us to obey God out of gratitude and thankfulness. Then the motivation becomes gratitude. Then I help you shingle your house because I'm thankful that God has justified me by grace alone through faith alone and because I love you and I want to help you. It's not because I'm trying to earn anything with God. It would almost be insulting to you if you knew that every time I was helping you, I'm just doing it to get something with God. But once we understand justification by faith alone, it just frees us up to do good works out of gratitude to God and love for other people. We can think of 2 Corinthians 9, thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Or 1 Corinthians 15, thanks be to God who gives us the victory in Christ. This is thankfulness, gratitude. And we'll get into this later in the Heidelberg Catechism, but it's worth just touching on now, just briefly, as we conclude in a moment. If you think about the structure of Romans, big picture, there's three words, guilt, grace, and gratitude. And Romans 3 is where we talk about justification by faith alone. That's kind of in the middle section. Then Paul talks about all these great salvation by grace. And then in the last section of Romans, he talks about gratitude, obeying God out of thankfulness for salvation. So that's what I'm getting at here. As Christians, we don't live under the covenant of works. Do this and live. We live under the covenant of grace. Because you live, do this. It's not obey in order to be accepted, but obey because you've been accepted. There's a big difference. And Rome in the 16th century would object and say, you know what, Luther and Calvin and you guys, this justification by faith alone makes people lawless. It makes them antinomians and not care about obeying God's law. That's what they said. They said, Luther, if you teach grace alone, people are going to live crazy wild lives because they know their works don't matter. But that's wrong, biblically. And that's why the Heidelberg Catechism says it so well. It's impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude. Once somebody has truly been justified, that person will truly show it in the way he or she lives. They'll be thankful for salvation and justification, and it will show up in their life. So once you've received new life in Christ, you're justified by faith, it logically and necessarily follows that you'll produce fruits of thanksgiving, works of gratitude. So good works are not part of our justification, our good works are not, but good works will follow justification, as we say in sanctification. So that's just a couple of different things to think about when we talk about our good works. We need to talk about our good works, and there is a place, we'll get to it later in gratitude, But when you think about your good works and your obedience and your Christian life, those things don't count in your justification. Because even our best works are imperfect. Because it would be an insult to God's gift of grace. Because it would be an insult to Christ's perfect and finished work. Because it would rob God of His glory. Because it would lead to sinful despair. And because it would destroy the biblical motivation for good works. So many people that you know might believe that their good works will earn them something before God. But now that you're starting to think about this biblical doctrine, hopefully it helps you and your own Christian faith and your own comfort, but then it will also help you share the gospel. No, grace, free grace. You don't have to work for this. You receive it by faith in Jesus. That's what the Christian faith says. Let go of your works and trust in Jesus Christ and his works. Receive that as a gift. and be confident and certain that God accepts you now and in the future. Amen. Let's pray.