Her text addresses actually the haunting problem that every person throughout every age of history has experienced. Whether they could accurately and categorically state it or not, there is this sense of dread, this question, this wondering of how can I be justified? How can I possibly be righteous? How can I stand as righteous before God? The God who made me, how can I stand and pass His scrutiny? Guilt is the existential evidence of this perpetual problem. Guilt runs multi-billion dollar agencies in our present world. People do all kinds of things in a vain attempt to do something about their sense of guilt. and thereby to justify themselves. Meanwhile, of course, only the gospel of Christ provides the answer to this crying human need. And the good news is, as we are seeing, that we actually can be justified. We can be justifiably acquitted of sin. We can be declared righteous. And the righteousness of God is provided for us, and it is provided to us. Now, Paul's describing the entire story of that provision here in the book of Romans, and we need to frequently read the whole scope of this in all the chapters in context so that we don't get off track as we break it down and study its mining parts. But Paul's telling us that story, and at this point in our study, we see very clearly the declaration that God has made This is a promise. He has declared that all who trust in Christ are covered by Christ's shed blood, which serves as atonement for those people, and all those people are justified, are righteous before God. And such a legal, official pronouncement is absolutely righteous. It is the right thing to declare. It is holy to declare this. It is absolutely justified to declare this justification. It is justified in the courtroom of God Himself. And that is because of the depth and the extent and the intensity of the work of Christ. So this thing is declared even before it is experienced by a person. It is promised before it is experienced. And in fact, we enter this new life with this declaration about ourselves right up front. And faith in this is the key ingredient of the rest of our lives when we come to Christ by this gospel. So forgiveness of sin is justified not because God arbitrarily overlooks it, but because Christ paid for it. He paid the penalty for all of our sin. But no Christian life Having said all that, no Christian life is composed only of that fact or of that declaration. That declaration must be fulfilled. It must be demonstrated. And we've seen repeatedly, and we will see it consistently. There are three classical ways to say it, but what we see in Romans, Paul's favorite way of saying it is that those who are justified are those who are walking by faith. That's quoting Habakkuk, the Old Testament prophet. This is also called a walk in the Holy Spirit. It's also called John, one of John's favorite, John the Apostle's favorite ways of putting it is just walking in the light. So no Christian life is composed only of a declaration. The fact is borne out and it stands in the judgment of God. That is also the extent and the depth and the intensity of the work of Christ and the ongoing work of Christ. There is Christ's work of justification that is absolutely finished, which is the work with regard to the old nature that we were born with. The work of the new nature is ongoing, as we put on the righteousness of Christ, as Paul instructed the Ephesians. So our confidence and our faith and our hope are in this declaration of fact, but God proceeds to finish that work which He begins in us. So that all those, as John Stott says it, all those He declares righteous, He proceeds to make righteous. Now technically, we separate these things into subject headings in order to study them, these doctrines. And that is just as risky as is taking just a sample of verses out of a context and just studying those verses apart from the context. You can get into just the same kind of trouble. But we separate these into the subject headings of doctrines. Classically, we call it justification. and then sanctification, and then glorification. And these are three different things that happen. Paul will say later on that every person for whom God does one of those things, He does all of those things. These are inseparable actions and works of Christ. These are parallel. They are synonymously in play, though the balance between the three is always changing and tilting toward glorification. They are sequential on paper. They are sequential in our understanding. And they are sequential in the preponderance of the priority that is given as we experience them. but we really don't want to put a clock on them or a measuring device in application to them. They are separated in doctrinal discussion for our understanding, but they are parallel in development and in application and in progress. So we don't dare as we go through this study of Rome and set up a base camp in isolation on any of these singular doctrines. We must have the context in mind as we discuss and as we talk about the one at hand. The development of godly character and godly impulses and holy behavior, which we saw Titus recently exhorting the Cretans to acquire, all that is separate from and subsequent to the Declaration of Righteousness. But it is inevitable to that declaration. So don't isolate it. Don't limit the meanings of any of these three great doctrinal words. They overlap powerfully, and they dynamically support each other, and you can't have one without the others. They don't exist alone. They dynamically combine in process and progress in the life of a saint of God as we are moved toward eternal life in fellowship with God and we are moved in accord with our perseverance in faith. So remember that the core of what is needed and what is happening in salvation involves the state of being of each individual, not just the Mickey Mouse things we have done or not done according to what we've had opportunity to do or not do. That's not the main equation here. It is our state of being that is the great problem and requires such a great salvation. Christian schizophrenics, we do not have in Christ two persons in one body, so don't make that mistake in your thinking. By natural birth, we are one person with one nature, and the problem is that is our state of being because it is a sinful nature. It is an anti-God nature. It is an evil nature. It is dead toward God and anything God wants and God desires. That's why Jesus said you must be born again. Something has to happen to that. You've got to be born again. You need a new start. And Jesus said the new birth is a work of the Holy Spirit of God. And the new birth provides a new nature to the one person that each individual is. If you try to picture that or diagram it, and you probably should in order to understand it, but when you apply the new nature to the one person, in the one body, in the one container, or the one tent, or tabernacle, however you want to describe it, the old original nature, which is vitally connected and responded to sin, continues. It doesn't go away immediately. Thus, if you are in Christ in this present mortal bodily life, you are one person with two natures, and that gets complicated. Much of the world's work on mental illness would describe you, if they knew all about you, if they knew all about this. It doesn't make you schizophrenic, it would make you what they call neurotic. This is parallel to Romans 8. Paul is going to explain. This is parallel with what God is doing with all of His creation. Just as this present age involves the first days of the kingdom of Christ, and at the same time, the last days of this present world system, even we are experiencing, Paul calls those, birth pains. He says the whole creation is experiencing birth pains. until a new heavens and a new earth are installed, until all is transformed into that. And even we ourselves are experiencing this, Paul says in Romans 8. We live in the first days of the new creation that we are in Christ, and we also are experiencing the last days of the old nature which was natural to us at our first birth. And so that confluence of two natures in one person is very trying, as you know if you have any experience at it. It's very trying. But this is how God has chosen to install sanctification in His people. This is how He has chosen to bring them from justification to glorification. And that's what Paul is explaining as we study Romans. And in chapter 8, he starts to summarize what he has explained, and that's exactly how he will summarize it. Make sure, as you study along the way, that the theories and doctrines you come up with as you wrestle with the text do not yield conclusions that disagree with the conclusion of the writer himself when you get farther along in the context. So the new birth gave us the new nature. And eventually it is going to give us a new body. Then resurrection will be total and complete. This great work of Christ in our text is dealing with the problem of the old nature, which is the complete person that we are prior to new birth. That's all there is to us. The new nature doesn't need to be born again. doesn't need to be redeemed. Christ doesn't come to people who are born again and say, you need to be born again, again. He doesn't say that. It wouldn't make any sense. The new nature doesn't need born again. It is the product of the new birth. So the new nature doesn't need to be redeemed. But we need to be redeemed. And the great theological issue is, how is it justified to redeem our old natures and to give us new natures which we don't deserve? How is that justified? And our text is affirming how important it is, as we said last week, to God that He justify Himself and show that He is acting righteously in everything He does, that He is holy and just in all His ways. So how is it righteous for God to give sinners a new nature? And it wouldn't do any good to give them a new nature if you didn't take care of their old one. That's why we're always saying there are two parts to salvation. And in our recent consideration of Titus chapter 3, Paul makes it very clear that Titus should tell the Cretans that God is the one doing the saving of people. And there are two things involved. Regeneration is involved. And justification is involved. So how is it righteous for God to give sinners a new nature and to declare them righteous and to remove the guilt and the sin of their old nature even while residual sin seems to continue and seems inevitable? How is that justified? Well, that's the story of the gracious work of Christ. That is the story of the Gospel. We should understand you would have to work to do it. You can't be a lazy Christian as we were speaking in the Sunday school hour. You have to be motivated and moved by this to understand the nuts and bolts of how the gospel is true, and how it applies, and how it fits. Because just a simple, cherry of Jesus loves you, and has a wonderful plan for your life, doesn't explain that. Doesn't apply it to people. Now, merely adding new life to old life would be unthinkable. That would be counterproductive. That would be an abomination of purity. And God is also pure. Purity simply means the absence of impurity. A hundred percent pure anything is nothing but that thing that is pure. Well, if you had it do like us, you would not have a person who is pure at all. You would have an insult to glory. You remember that when they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, an angel with a flaming sword guarded the Tree of Life. Nobody was going to partake of the Tree of Life while living in sin. And so that would be unthinkable, as well as illogical. With the work of Christ on a sinner's behalf, sin is defeated. And the gripping power that sin has over a person is destroyed. Now you see, depraved sinners, in a sense, do have an excuse for their sin. And you should pity sinners. Christ did. They have an excuse for sin. The reason they sin is that they are sinners. What do you expect them to do? You would no more resent a sinner for sinning if you can get over the ignominy of the fact they've become sinners and there's no need to be. That's what makes God so angry. But being sinners ourselves, we should have great pity for sinners. They sin because that's what they are. Believers, however, being new creations, by the justified grace of God, have now a new state of being. And they are never called sinners after they are in Christ. Because the root issue is the state of being that that person is. They are called saints. Even the Cretans that we studied a few weekends ago were not called sinners. The Corinthians. with the horrible problems and sins they had, and they were called upon with all diligence to quit and cease those sins. But they were called saints. In fact, it is the fact that they are saints that makes their sins so intolerable. If they were sinners, it would be understandable that they would be sinners. But Paul writes to the Corinthians and says, you're not sinners, you're saints. Your state of being is new if you're in Christ. That's why you should quit acting like hypocrites and quit doing these things. So they're called saints, even as they are castigated and corrected for their vile and abominable behavior. They are stated to be in Christ. Therefore, they're being hypocrites. They are acting. They're pretending when they sin. And so are we if we're in Christ. We're acting out of character to what we are. A sinner, on the other hand, is acting hypocritically when they do a righteous action. And they get quite proud of themselves when they do some good things. But that action is entirely false to their nature. It might be good for their community, but it is false to their nature. It is false to who they are. It deceives them, and it will actually help them go to hell. It will help keep them blind and ignorant, because they don't know the truth. In fact, in God's sovereignty, He has to allow a person to sin enough to get the point. So when we come to Christ, when we are given a new nature, the old nature continues and it is habituated to sin. It's only comfortable with sin. And we're this new person, we have this new nature, we're trying to learn how to adapt and adjust and live with all of this, and it's not easy. You need to be surrounded by the whole family of God with every spiritual gift you can muster. You need the entire scrutiny day by day of every believer you have, that you can get. And God provides all that, but you have to use it or you do without it. So we're still acclimated to the old nature and we're told to walk in nudists of light. And we don't know any more about how to do that than anything unless we hear from God about it and walk by faith. and are supported by the family He put us in. But the old nature is no longer inevitably in control of the person. We're going to see that in Romans chapter 6. It now has opposition in the person. The old nature persists, but it is being eradicated. It is under a death sentence. It has in a sense died with Christ. And Paul tells us to buy into that. dying with Christ. We can never die with Christ in order to atone for our sins. If we did, then we would be declared pristine as we are, and we would have done our duty, and now God can get off our backs because we're fine. We can't die for our own sins. Dying for our own sins would only eliminate us. It wouldn't regenerate us. The old flesh is to be eradicated. It is destined to be destroyed. That is the sense in which we died with Christ. And we're even called upon by faith, and it is necessary that we crucify the old nature every day, that we voluntarily do that, that we make choices. You can't tell a person to make a choice they don't have the ability to make. It may be true that they must make it or else, but they cannot operationally make a choice unless they have the means to do it. And you can't tell a sinner to live righteously, because they can't do it. But you can tell a saint to live righteously because they can do it. God said they can. He said, I gave you the power to do it. That's how you can do it. You have to walk by faith and you can do it. So that's the power of the new life. We're to crucify the old nature and turn away from it. Put it down. Paul said, I die daily. He described his walk as saying, I pound on my body all the time. That's his figure of speech. I beat myself up all the time. He says, I serve notice to my old self, you're no longer the boss around here, you don't tell me what to do. You don't give me an impulse and then I jump and go to it. I oppose that. And I put on instead of it the righteousness of Christ, which was the big concept of his application to the Ephesians. So our calling and necessity by faith and walking by faith, we need to learn to tell the difference in the influence on our persons of our old nature and our new nature, and which one to choose and which one to lose. Your new nature is supreme. That's the real you. That is all you want to be in the future of your life. And you need to eliminate the old nature because Christ has paid the penalty for its sins. There isn't anything good or nice about it. There's nothing credible about it. It needs to be eliminated, not tolerated. Certainly not accommodated. Your new nature is supreme. It is eternal. It has affinity and fellowship with the divine nature of God Himself. That's how Peter described it. You're a participant in the divine nature of God if you will walk by faith according to His great and exceedingly precious promises. And so the new nature is to dominate. It is to rule. And eventually it's going to be 100% all that you are. But not in this present mortal body. It would be impossible in the present body. As Paul explains that at the end of his letter to the Corinthians, the first letter. So the new birth provided us with this new nature. The work of Christ on the cross dealt with our old nature, which is all that we were by natural birth. That's how we were constituted. That's what there was to us. The goal is that we're going to be constituted righteous in the long run. That is declared up front based on the work of Christ, and then it is worked out in the life that follows, in the life of every saint that follows. So this is where justification applies, and it deals with the reality of our state of being apart from God. It deals with who and what we are and what we have done in the old nature. The new birth is a resurrection of the person we are, in that it provides the new nature that is of God, that is in fellowship with God, that is in tune with God, that is oriented to God. is the restoration of what Adam and Eve had in their natures before they chose to go into sin. Eventually, the body is going to be resurrected and the whole story will be completed in glory. And then the new person we are will be complete in Christ. And we will once again be suited for and equipped for fellowship with God and for work in service of God in the eternal Eden of the future. But our text singularly declares that righteousness is provided. We've got to understand that Christ's righteousness covers the righteousness we lack, that we have failed to produce, being the old self that we are. We must also understand that God's holiness and God's righteousness are not only provided for us, they are provided to us. Not by the justification of the old self, not by the same action. The righteousness of God is provided to us in the new nature. by regeneration, by new birth, by the birth to the nature that has an aptitude for and an interest in the Word of God and the will of God and will hear it and receive it with faith and believe it and act on it. Therefore, we say, the complete story of the Gospel is God's righteousness provided for us and God's righteousness provided to us. That's how Paul says in his grand introduction of this in chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, and in his reintroduction of it here in verse 20, God's righteousness is provided. That is the good news. The bad news is you need it and don't have it. The good news is God has provided. We need to understand how. So that we can receive it and so that we can walk in it and glorify Him. So as we live, And as we assess behavior, both our own and each other's, we must always analyze and cultivate an awareness of these two natures, and how they function, and how they differ. You need to know how to recognize them. Evidently, the Corinthians couldn't even tell the difference. They were doing extreme things in the Holy Spirit of God, and then committing adultery, and didn't see any controversy. They didn't see any problem with that. And Paul says the answer is to call them what they are and to use that state of being to call them to how they ought to be acting. That's a whole different approach than the law takes. The law would say, oh, you did that, you're dead. That's the end of you. That's not how it is in Christ. Because Christ is the one who was dead for those sins. That's a whole different ethic. But we need to know the difference in the two natures. And we need to know what we're supposed to do about each one of those natures. And a lot of times when you're trying to do spiritual business, or make spiritual progress, and you're using the tools of the old nature, good luck, it isn't going to happen. That's why it isn't going to happen. There'll never be a breakthrough spiritually when you're using the tools of the carnal flesh. The Ephesians were told to put on the new nature. You have it. God gave it to you. You were born again and acquired it that way, but you have to put it on. Now, when you're outside of Christ, you're not told any works to do in order to become righteous, because there aren't any. You can't do anything to get righteous. You must receive Christ. And you even receive Him by the faith God gives you. But once you are in Christ and have the new nature, that is a commandable nature. That's why it's new. What would be the good of it if it wasn't any more commandable than the old one? The new nature is how you walk in Christ. It's how you walk by faith. It's how you walk by the Spirit. So they're told to put on the new nature. And you're always told both things at the same time. You can't just do one of those. You put on the new and put off the old. If you try to put on the new while keeping the old, you're actively courting impurity. And that's an abomination of what God has provided. You put off and you put on. That's the concept of how we deal with behavioral issues in life. So the old nature is not being reformed. It can't be. It's being eliminated. So you're going to have to fall out of love with it. It has some good things about it in terms of physical pleasure and emotional pleasure, but it's taking you to hell. So it has to be eliminated. It's serving a purpose now as the residential opposition to God to test and try and prove that you actually choose Christ. And that's actually who you are and what you want to be with all you are, with all your heart. So the old nature is dying if you're in Christ, and you're actively seeking and craving that death the more mature you get in Christ. So since Christ died for the old nature and its actions, we die to it. We can't die for it. We can die because of it, but we can't die for it in any redeeming way. But we can die to it since He died for it, or because of it. Paul's going to cover all this as we go on in this book. But we need to keep in mind where we're going so we see how our present text fits in to the greater picture as it unfolds. So we, the person we are, need to be redeemed. The new nature that we get at the new birth does not need to be redeemed. What it needs is a new house. Because it's really stressed and strained and groaning to be in this old house. Romans 8, that's what Paul will say. We're groaning within ourselves because of this relationship, this tightness between the old and the new in one body. That's intolerable. That can't go on for long. But it goes on productively in God's plan of salvation. The old nature is not going to be redeemed. It's going to be eliminated. But we are going to be redeemed who had the old nature. And all of its works and evidence are taken away in Christ. Justifiably taken away. and we're going to be freed from it. But if you ask the question of a lot of Christians, do you really actually want to be free of the carnal old nature, and you list all these attributes and pleasures, they would have to say, well, I don't know if I really want to be free of that right now. Well, that's your problem if you don't, because that's what Christ died to do. If you're saying you don't want in, then you'll have to say that, but this is involved in the Gospel. The old nature is to be eliminated. We're to be freed from it. This is what freedom and liberty are about for a Christian. You're being freed from the old nature and the destiny to which it was taking you. That of course includes some of the fun of it, if you want to call that fun. But usually it's people who in sin are sick and tired of what they used to call fun that were willing to come to Christ. And so, we're freed from the old nature, And we're already in Christ freed from the power of sin, which has that old nature captive, but does not have the new nature captive. And sin has a real sales job to appeal to the new nature. It can't do it. It has to deceive you into resorting to walking in your own flesh instead of walking by faith. And then it can cause you to trip up and stumble and fall. But that's what has to happen. Because sin is dead to a believer. There's a sense in which sin is dead. Now sin is not dead in the world. And there's probably a better way of saying it is we're dead to the sin, though you can't use that absolutely either because we still contain an old nature and any lazy moment and any lazy day, it can start making your feet move and your thoughts move and your brain cells operate. You have a choice about that, and you need to learn to be mature and to grow strong in Christ and by faith make those choices, but it can still happen. It's inevitable. John says in 1 John, if you say you're beyond sin, then you're lying and you're calling God a liar, because He says He left you in this flesh for that purpose of sanctification. So sin is dead in a sense, but it still proceeds in the world, and it is still powerfully attractive to the old nature. And that won't stop, that attraction won't stop until the old nature stops. And that won't stop until they have your funeral. Or until Christ returns and transforms you. So the Bible says the last enemy, Paul says, the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Once there's no more sin, there won't be any more death because sin causes death. Sin is why people die. So the old nature will of course resist being put to death. And it will resist it in you, and you will feel the resistance. But by faith, you must do it. Cain experienced that early on. When God says, sin lies at your door, you must defeat it. Well, that's what He says to us. Nature resists, does not cooperate, but we have the power to do it anyway. And we're going to prove who we are as a state of being by either doing so or refusing to. by faith were to reject the old nature and reject its impulses, reject its temporary chaos, it is no longer the one who rules over us. Unless you really want it to, and if the person you really are really wants it to, then you are not in Christ and you're just playing a poetic game with all this religion stuff and you're just impossibly confusing your life. Because if you're in Christ, you're a new creation. Old things are passing away, everything is destined to become new. And if you don't want that, then you don't want Christ. And there's a lot of false Gospels, of course, being taught that don't break down things like Paul does, that don't explain all this, and all you've got to do is think you can be happier with Jesus and sign yourself up. But that's a false Gospel. That doesn't cover what's really required. So the old nature no longer rules us if we're in Christ. In other words, we're not on automatic pilot with sin at the controls. That is not true of a believer. You can call on a believer to make a choice about sin because God said so. You cannot call on a sinner not to sin unless you can put some kind of a payoff, some kind of a law in operation that says, I'll give you ten bucks if you don't do that. Well, that might work. You can set up some relativity of sins, but that's a poor substitute for righteousness. That is false righteousness. Discipline might work, but that's a poor substitute for righteousness. So Christ has Himself, as we said last week, He is the mercy seat. He's the meeting place of God and man. He is where new life is justified and is justifiably provided as new wine put into old wineskins. And didn't Jesus say that presents a problem? You can't really ultimately do that. That can't be the whole story, because the new wine is going to burst the old wineskin, and that's the story of your life if you're in Christ. The old nature, the old you, is destined to be gone, to be eliminated. The new wine of the gospel will destroy it eventually. Meanwhile, it's just swelling and fermenting and boiling inside and stretching and stretching, and you're experiencing all that, and that's a normal Christian life. Normal Christian life. Normal to experience it and feel it, but you ought to be walking by faith. And you ought to be turning your attention from the world to Christ, looking only to Him. So that's the steady process of new life taking over old life. The new nature we have is going to take over the old nature and become the only nature we have. That's our destiny. That's our joy. That should be what we crave. Should be what we desire. And so God is creating by this a people for Himself when He began that creation in Genesis chapter 1. And He's eliminating the old wine skins that we've become. So Jesus Christ is now where we meet and fellowship with God. He's our peace. He made peace. He is our confidence. He's our hope. He is our joy. Paul's saying to the Philippians. He is the place where God's mercy and grace are provided because of the justified atoning sacrifice of His own blood. By that, God's wrath against sin, which Paul emphasized in chapters 1, 2, and 3, early on in 3, God's wrath against sin is appeased. Peace is made with that wrath. His judgment is satisfied. Our guilt is removed. Even our conscience is cleansed. The writer of Hebrews, if you've done some parallel reading there, our conscience is cleansed, which the old system never could do anything about. We're declared righteous before Him. We're invited to go boldly to His throne of grace because of who we are in Him. We're destined to become righteous before Him entirely by His grace. in providing us new nature and in providing us atonement, redemption. Now the fact is that as long as any vestige of the old nature remains, as long as the old flesh continues in any form and the old body, we cannot be said to be constitutionally righteous. But that is our destiny because that word is going to be used by Paul very shortly in our text. That is our destiny. That is going to be true. We hope in that. We work toward it. Everyone that has that hope purifies himself according to the purity of Christ and the purity of the new nature. And so we strive for that. And we even work for it. Working out our salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who is at work in us. And He will complete in us the work that He began. So as John the Apostle was trying to behold, how great is the love that the Father has lavished on us that we can be called children of His. And that's exactly what we are, he says. That's what Christ has made us. And God is justified in doing that. Justified in showing mercy. Justified in providing new life. Now the provision of new spiritual life, that aspect of salvation, is not in Paul's present argument. It's only assumed. It's not in the logic right now in this immediate text. It's assumed. But we need to know how it fits in. God is justified in giving us new nature. He is also justified in forgiving our sin. All of that is justified by the atoning work of Christ, laying down His life as a sacrifice for our sin. And God accepted that sacrifice, and thus when Jesus returned to heaven and was received with glory and praise and worship and adoration, He poured out His Holy Spirit to give us new life. It's all freely given. But don't ever think for a minute it was freely obtained. It was not freely obtained. It was the most expensive thing you can imagine. It was of enormous cost, but it's freely given. Don't take the wrong attitude about freely given. The rhetoric in verse 25 is actually quite unusual. We ought to point this out. Very unusual. This is the only place in all of Paul's writing, and it's extremely rare in Scripture. But it's the only place in all Paul's writing that he says that faith should be placed in a thing rather than a person. The only place. Faith in a thing rather than a person. He says here, faith in His shed blood. That's unusual. That's exceptional. But the point is so profound that it has to be asserted. And the reason we need to assert it And we should probably use this kind of reference a whole lot more than Paul needed to in our day and age. The reason is because there is no use and no purpose and no sense and no power in placing your faith in the person of Jesus unless that activity involves the specific shedding of His blood by necessity for your sin. You're wasting your time putting your faith in Jesus if this is not the context of it. And our world is just chock full of parallel alternative Gospels calling on people to put their faith in Jesus. But it's been disconnected from His shed blood and that makes it a false Gospel. And you really have to be razor-sharp to discern this anymore. That's a full-time job. We use a lot of energy to just discern. That was what the elders' calling was, you remember, when Titus instructed the church in Crete. So it is shed blood by absolute necessity because of the sinner we are. That has to be the object of your faith, the direct object of your faith. That is entirely part, constituent part, of your faith in Jesus. People do all kinds of goofy things, supposedly relating themselves to Jesus and relating Him to themselves, but without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin, and without the remission of sin, you're in deep trouble before God. So each person has to come to Christ as a helpless, hopeless sinner with no other means of hope, no other means of rescue, no other salvation. You cannot improve yourself by self-effort before God. You might make yourself a better citizen, but you can't make yourself a better saint. You can't make yourself a saint at all. So even though this is a technically unusual way of describing faith, we need to make sure that faith that is stated to be in Jesus is vitally and humbly acknowledged to be dependent upon His sacrifice and His substitution and His blood. And somehow those are becoming offensive words to people who say they are Christians in our day. And they've got a big problem. And we've got a big problem if we are deceived by them. But no matter how many degrees or initials they have after their name, they're dead wrong if they let that out. John wrote in 1 John, and it's interesting, this may be a good parallel reading would be in 1 John. John wrote that God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all ungodliness, and that justifying faithfulness of God is itself justified both historically And presently, according to verse 25 in our text, by the magnificence of the work of Christ in whose grace we stand. It's free to us. It is grace to us. It was work to Him. But that's our standing before God. That's our status before God. That is our calling. All the animal sacrifices in the world did not change the sinful character of the sinner. Did not at all diminish the fact that they'd be back tomorrow with another sacrifice. Didn't change the nature of a single person. That is why those sacrifices were no help to the consciences of those people. God in His mercy would be justified only by Christ's work. That's how and why He bypassed those sins and placed them aside pending further action. Justification never was and never will be provided by the law or by its rituals or by its ceremonies or by our works. But now through the blood of Christ and by the work of the Spirit we are experiencing the removal of sin the removal of sin's guilt and the removal of sin's power. And we who were born in sin are experiencing the transformation of our characters and our natures and of our entire state of being. We're being, in other words, justified, sanctified, and glorified because Christ's shed blood has lifted our sins from us and has freed us from our sinful nature which used to be the only nature we were, but it's not anymore. We're freed from it. And by His poured out Holy Spirit, He is making us just and righteous, so that we are destined to regain the fullness of the image of God in which we were created, but from which we have fallen. So, John's Gospel, chapter 1. Early on he says, but as many as received him, he precedes that by saying most don't. Most do not. They still don't. Most don't receive the gospel. But as many as received him, to them he gave power. To them he gave the right. To them he gave the authority. In fact, this word, exousia, includes the meaning of justified. That's one of the ways you could translate that word. This word and its root, existi, deny the presence of any hindrance to what is being said. There's no hindrance that has any power. The old nature, in other words, has no power to prevent this. These words combine the two concepts of the right to do something and the might to do it, the power to do it, the ability and the strength to do that something. So you have a justified right to it and you have the power to do it. Now you still need the effort. That's assumed once you're in Christ. So as many as received Him, that's the question. You're included there. Have you received Him? If you have, you're included. If you have not, then you're not yet included. But if you've received Him, to them, to every single one of them, to you, God gave power. God gave the right. God gave the justification. for you to become the child of God. That power, John says, is given even to those who believe on His name. Now, who will do such a thing as that? He explains it in the next verse. Verse 13. Those who believe on His name are those who were born Not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man. In other words, they weren't just born to their mother and father and then decided to believe on Jesus. Or decided to receive Jesus because of their old nature. Nobody does such a thing as that. You can't do such a thing as that. You can become religious. You can powerfully mess up your understanding of the gospel by doing such shenanigans as that, but that's not how this happened in John's explanation. Rather, it says, the ones who will do this have been born again. He says directly, they have been born of God. And so we've got to add this to our picture of the gospel in Romans. That's what Paul is explaining here. This is what the Holy Spirit is explaining. We add to the picture of how they believe and how they acquire faith and how they use faith. We add to that, how are they justified and forgiven of sin? How are they delivered from the sin they've already done? Well, that's the main thrust of our present text. So you don't have one or the other, you have both dynamically, powerfully working together. Given the gospel, you see, Now hopefully we'll understand, we'll be so gripped with all this and blessed by it and enjoyed by it by the time we get into chapter 8 or so. But given the gospel, if you've been born again, if you've been justified by the work of Christ, you have the power to become a provable, functioning, typical representative, holy child of God. God gave it to you. Now you may not be doing much with it and shame on us if we're not. But you've been given it, and it is your destiny. That is the process, the purpose, that's the reason for your life. That's why you take every breath you inhale. That's why you live, if you are in Christ. But if you've shoved all the other things that accommodate your old flesh and your old nature, which you're supposed to be getting rid of, and you crowd that into your life, and you're not doing much with this, then you're dishonoring the Christ who shed His blood for you. Because this is why you live. For you, sin's powerful grip has been broken. Your problem, if this is you, your problem is not sin. Because your state of being has changed. Your problem can't be sin. Your state of being is not totally depraved sinner. You don't have that excuse anymore. You may have that love, but you don't have that excuse. If you have that love, you're loving the thing that shed your Savior's blood. And you're going to have to come to an emotional grip with that. Your problem is not sin, your problem is faith. If you're in Christ. Your problem is not sin, your issue is faith. And trust. And the God-pleasing works and efforts and obediences that flow from faith. That's what produces what you should desire in your life. The carnal flesh won't produce anything but chaos. And obstruction. Justified people are people who are living by faith. That's how they live. They don't necessarily live in academic, perfect explanation of how they got to be who they are, but they're living by faith in God. They're like Abraham. God talks and they listen. Their attention is riveted to God. They have a Godward heart. They can't just walk away from Scripture. They can't walk away and endure and tolerate an ill state of affairs between them and God or between them and another believer. It's intolerable. If you can live with that, you've got a problem. If you're in Christ, your problem is not sin, your problem is faith and obedience. So we're called, as we read last week, to focus on, to fix our attention on, to look to Christ. Look to His works, His words, and His promises. And that means that to look to Him, you have to look away from Him. all alternatives. You have to refuse to give your attention to anything sinful and evil and contrary to His will and His kingdom. You cannot receive as the person you are, the one person, you cannot receive simultaneous data together and have it do anything but be impurity. You have to do one or the other. Joshua said famously, as for me and my house, we'll serve God. But you have to make up your mind the same as the Israelites did. If you're in Christ, You don't have an excuse for sin and rebellion. Your guilt is gone. You ought to think like it's gone. You ought to feel like it's gone. And you ought to act like it's gone. If you're in Christ, your humility does not come from your guilt. Does not come from your guilt. That's a game the world plays. Your humility doesn't come from guilt. Your humility comes from the truth and from the price that someone else paid for your redemption. Your humility comes from Christ and what He did for you. And the joy that is your liberty and is your freedom comes from the exact same thing. So the world would call that neurotic. We call it wonderful, given reality. So He's caused us to transfer and to transition from spiritual death and darkness to spiritual life and life. That's what He's caused. And we need to live like it. And we have the power to live like it. He's given us the power for such a change. It is a progressing change. It is in continuation. We must persevere. It takes our effort of faith, but we have that power. Now, it's not power for instantaneous, supernatural, do it instead of you kind of work. That kind of power got you born again. That kind of power doesn't teach you to walk by faith. But it doesn't please Him to do it that way. He wants you to do it by effort. So you learn to follow Him and affirm it with all the resources of your mind that He's created in you. Only with faith in the shed blood of Christ can you put even your own conscience back into its proper subordinate place when it signals your feelings in opposition to what Christ says He did for you and in opposition to what Christ says He gave you. You need to put your conscience in its place when it yields to Satan's influence appealing to your old nature. Because he always opposes the truth of Christ's work. And if he can cause you to doubt it, then he can keep you on pause. He can keep you on hold. Keep you from walking in faith. Keep you from growing and progressing as you should. He can put you in the tailspin the Corinthians and the Cretans were living in. Which is bad for your representation in the name of Christ and it's bad for your joy, it's bad for your blessing. So John wrote, 1 John again, he is the propitiation. Same language as Paul uses, he is the mercy seat for your sins. Chapters 2 and 3 basically in 1 John. Your sins are forgiven for His namesake. He has promised you eternal life. The anointing which you've received from Him abides in you, remains in you, dwells in you. You're not waiting for that to happen. It does if you're in Christ. You need to by faith act like it, but it's there. If the Gospel remains in you, then John says you will also continue in the Son and in the Father. He says, by this we perceive the love of God for us. How do we perceive that God loves us? In that Jesus laid down His life for us. That's how we perceive it. And that tells us how to regard, you see how John goes right to his application point, that tells us how to regard and how to love everyone for whom Christ died, everyone for whom He did this wonderful work. He's made them all one in Him too. It's awfully hard to slander a person who's on your prayer list. That's why it's hard to do. It's real difficult to be out of fellowship with a person for whom you pray. You have to work really hard to do that. Because you're opposing yourself and the logic of your own existence. And you're opposing the work of Christ. You're betting against it. And John is going to write his epistle. He writes his epistle that you may know that you belong to Christ. And your conduct in Christ's family with love, he says, is the cardinal proof point, the cardinal evidence that you have it. That's the evidence of the new nature. Because the one thing you know about the new nature, it causes you to love God. Well, the other thing is, it causes you to love other people who love God. So it's by our participation, without reading all the verses, it's by our participation in Christ's family of blood-bought saints, and by the reality, and by the presence of. our burden-bearing and burden-sharing love for them that is now part of our very state of being. It is inescapable. That's how we know, John writes, that we ourselves are of the truth. Because if nothing else, we're neurotic about it. We at least feel pulled two ways. A believer doesn't just feel pulled one way. So when a worldly person who is in perfect adjustment Perfectly sane. See, when they get in the food line somewhere, they have a simple task in front of them. Feed themselves. Look out for yourself. Take care of yourself. Make sure you get enough. Make sure your favorite people are taken care of. When a Christian gets in that line, you've got an impossible conundrum. You have an erotic person who is thinking of everybody. Who's not thinking of self. who is thinking of others, who is thinking of the weakest, and the unfortunate, and the one last in line, and the one nearly left out. That is where the criteria point of our warning about taking communion in the shed blood of Christ, the body and blood of Christ, that is where the warning point is made. At this point of, if you have the new nature, you have this love. It might not be much else you have yet, but you have this love. It's supernatural. You can't not have it and be in Christ. And it's a sign of your assurance that you're saved, that you're born again. You can't get away from that grip. You see, that's the same power sin used to have on you is now the power love has on you. But you can read 1 John. This is how we know, he says, that we ourselves are of this truth that we're talking about. It is by this love, His love, that is now ours. The love we have for His people, that's how he says, John says, we assure our own hearts before God. When you are doubting before God yourself, oh God, am I really yours? How can I belong to you? How do I know this applies to me? Evidence that you do is how you're treating even the least of these His people. Much less how you've treated other people who are basically in the harness with you. So if you have your Heavenly Father's nature, here's the point, if you have your Heavenly Father's nature by birth, that's the whole point of your state of being. That's your problem when you start out in life, because you're born in sin, conceived in iniquity. And if you're born again, you are born by the Spirit of God, then you have your Heavenly Father's nature by birth. That means you have His love. and His care for your brothers and sisters in Him who are also His children. So when you wonder if you love God, do you love God's people? How are you doing with that? If you have His love, if you have the obedience of faith, and this is the strong point that John is going to make in 1 John, If you have all this as evidence, and then your conscience rises up and condemns you, your heart stirs up against you and condemns you before God, threatens your status before God, then your trump card is this, John says, God is greater than your heart. Notice how he says the logic here. God is greater than your heart. God is greater than your conscience. God knows all things. Isn't that simple elementary logic? And you're right off the staircase of your problem to the rhyme and reason of the whole universe. God knows everything. Go right to the Court of Highest Appeal. God knows everything. God knows, yes, the facts that your own memory can recite. The facts of your sin when your old nature is all you were. He knows your own heart. He knows all the data your conscience, your own conscience, is referencing and throwing in your face. God also knows the work of His Son that Paul is describing to us in our text. He knows that that work was for you. God knows that He is justified in saving you because of it, and in fact that He would be unrighteous if He did not. God also knows that. You see how John tells us to trump this conscience? The writer Hebrews says you can do that. You couldn't do it under the law with your sheep in tow as a sacrifice for your sins, but you can do it with this sacrifice. So the verdict is, John writes, that even your own heart cannot prosecute you. Cannot effectively condemn you. Paul writes the same way when he writes to the Corinthians. We won't start any verse readings there. We'll be here all day. This is the logic of it. Your conscience cannot condemn you because you have confidence with regard to God. He dealt with your guilt by the work of Christ. He's satisfied with that work. The question is, are you satisfied with it? Are you satisfied with it? The world does and its people do all kinds of nutty things about guilt, trying to justify themselves, trying to do business with their conscience. All in vain. Every one of those alternatives is a direct insult and a rebellion against the work of Christ, because God's only provided one way. There's one way to do something about guilt. That is to confess it, agree with God, repent of it, believe in Christ, shed blood for it, as the particularly relevant object of your belief in Christ Himself, according to verse 25. And then consider God to be true in every alternative view, including that of your own old nature, A liar, by contrast. So the point is, if Jesus paid it all, then you owe nothing. And if Jesus paid it all, your brothers and sisters owe nothing either. We owe nothing but love, Paul says. We owe no man anything but love. The only thing you owe is love and loyalty to God and His people. Nothing else matters. You knock down all barriers to that, everything else doesn't matter. The resolution of every other activity in the obedience of faith fits under those headings and that provision of power and identity. The righteousness of God has been made clear in the Gospel. Apart from the law, apart from human works, and this righteousness is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. They are each and every single one justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ. People who are lost, are not lost because all this is too difficult. That's not the reason. That's their excuse, because they're too lazy to wrestle with it and grapple with it, or they're uninterested. But they're not lost because it's too difficult. They're lost because it's too easy. Salvation is freely given. You don't even have to understand all the nuts and bolts to receive it. It's freely given. But the vanity of pride, the vanity of pride keeps most people from the truth. And that steely resilience of sin and pride is frightening. People will actually take their last breath on earth and go out into eternity to meet the God who made them, who they ought to be scared to death of if they have any sense at all, and they'll do that, refusing to bow to the God that made them, refusing His provision, refusing to humble themselves. If we would become like children, that's what Jesus said, unless you become like children, you can't get in. Because you've got to take God at His word the way a child takes a person at their word. We trust Him and believe Him with childlike sincerity, that's what Abraham did. Even with gullibility, that's what it seems like when some of these Bible heroes believe God. That's what the world tells us we are if we read even the New Testament and believe that the Hebrews have been gullible and stupid and how anything works. It would all be so easy and so free and so freeing if we walked by faith. It's for freedom that Christ has set us free, is what he says. But don't we spend fleeting few moments in childhood, even in the old nature, before we acquire a whole universe of information and experience and so-called knowledge and data, and all of it conspires and percolates and works together in us and around us, crushing us into a mold and causing us to oppose and refute faith in God. The book of Romans has told us very clearly that God is angry at sin and sinners, and that every person will give an account before His judgment. That guilt that people have and feel and that drives them cannot be made right by any efforts or by any works of law. God has set forth His Son to provide His own righteousness that people need, but only by this narrow way can a person be justified. And only by this narrow way is God justified in giving mercy and forgiveness and new life to any person. So we've got to reject and turn away from, while there's still time, all this contrary input and influence. All these other things we think we know, all the wisdom we think we've got, we've got to turn away from all that. And the data of the world and a false religion, and as the writer quoted last week said, fix our eyes on Jesus. who is the author and the perfecter and the finisher of our faith. The witness of God, John again in 1 John, the witness of God is greater than the witness of man. What an understatement. And we have heard the witness that God has testified of His Son. He that believeth on the Son has this same witness in himself or herself. He that believeth not God is making God out to be a liar, because he's refusing the record God gave. Not just refusing some ethereal notion about God that he doesn't understand. He's refusing the record God gave of His Son. Romans chapter 1 built the same kind of case of evidence. And this is that record, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. And he that has the Son has eternal life, and he that has not the Son of God does not have life. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 to close. And boy, you could read a whole lot in this passage that would be relevant in summary of what we've said. We'll just skim from 4.13 to the end of 5. 4.13, we have, he says, the same spirit of faith according to what is written. And what is written is, I believe, therefore I spoke. That's how it works for us. We believe and therefore we speak. Knowing that He raised us up, Jesus will raise us up, and so forth. That's why, verse 16, Paul says, we're not losing heart. We don't give up. Even if the outward person is perishing, the inward one is being renewed day by day. We're not looking at things which are seen, verse 18, but at things that are not seen. Because the one is temporary, the other is eternal. We have to make up our mind, which is driving us. And then in chapter 5, we know that if our earthly bodies, he calls it a tent, a building from God, you have it from God. The earthly body is destroyed, but you have another building. You have another body. In this body, verse 2, we groan because we earnestly desire to be clothed upon with our habitation that is from heaven. That will be the new body. We groan, verse 4, sounds like Romans 8, being burdened. Verse 5, now He has prepared us for this very thing, this kind of life, this route of sanctification in old bodies with two natures. The One who is doing that is God. And He is the One who has given us His Spirit as the deposit, as the guarantee. That's why, verse 6, we are always confident, knowing that as long as we are at home in this body, we are absent from God. Verse 7, because we are to walk by faith, not sight. Therefore, verse 9, we make it our aim to be well-pleasing to Him, knowing, verse 10, that we've all got to appear before His judgment seat. Same thing He said in Romans. Verse 14, for the love of Christ is compelling us. We judge that if He died for all, then all died. If He died for all, then those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, verse 16, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we've known Christ according to the flesh. We don't regard people according to the flesh, the old nature. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, verse 17, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away that some translators say are passing away. They say this is a continuous sense. All things are becoming new, and all this is of God who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation. Which is to say that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, He's now committed to us that word of reconciliation. So then, as ambassadors for Christ, as though it were God pleading through us, Paul says, we implore you, we beg you, on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God. Because He made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us. that we who knew no righteousness might become the righteousness of God in Him.