It is good to be in God's house and appreciate Brother Drew leading the singing this morning and Brother Robert with our prayer requests. The passage this morning if you want to open your Bibles is Romans chapter 3 and verses 19 through 31. Romans chapter 3 verses 19 through 31. I'm going to begin just by reading the entire passage and then kind of tell you where we're headed this morning out of this passage of scripture. Romans 3 beginning in verse 19, Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing it is one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith. But we then, do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish the law. Now, what I just got through reading to you, many commentators would say, and I would agree, it's if not the most important paragraph in the Bible, it's one of them. It's one of the most important paragraphs in the Bible. And I'm also going to admit something else to you right from the beginning. It's really difficult. It's not easy. You could probably just tell from the reading, especially in King James, English it's kind of difficult to really hear what Paul is saying in this passage so it's it's a very useful thing for us today to try to unpack what it is that Paul is saying here in this this passage in Romans 3 verses 19 through 31. So if you've ever been out to a lake before and there's gravel kind of on the shore What do you do? Y'all know, what is a kid gonna do if there's gravel beside a lake? You're gonna start skipping rocks, right? That's pretty much what we're gonna do this morning, okay? This passage, except instead of a lake, it's an ocean. There is more here than we could preach about in a year. And we're gonna try to kinda unpack this passage all in one morning, and don't get worried, it's not gonna be a two hour sermon. Some of y'all may have seen, I put on Facebook that the clock's rolled back, so that means we get to preach an extra hour this morning. I didn't mean that literally. We're not going to do that. It's not going to be two hours. But we are going to try to unpack, but it's really going to be skipping a rock across the surface of this ocean of what Paul is unpacking of here about the justification of sinners. So the title of the message is The Justification of Sinners. And we're gonna have three main points, and you can either write these down now or as we go through. But the first major point is gonna be in verses 19 and 20, that we are guilty before God. And then I have in parentheses, justification by works. Guilty before God, and then in parentheses, justification by works. And then in verses 21 through 27, the righteousness of God and redemption. And then in parentheses, justification by faith. And then our third point will be in verses 28 through 31, obedience follows faith. And in parentheses, the law established. The very last thing Paul says is we establish the law. So what does that mean? So as we go through, there's going to be some themes that you're going to see come up. And one of those is, and I'll say this right from the beginning, I'll probably repeat it multiple times as we go through. You remember, as we've gone through the book of Romans, it began in Romans 1, and then it kind of continued in 2 and 3. Paul has been developing this idea that all men are sinners, that he began with the Gentiles in 118 after he, those two key verses that I told you are the thesis of the whole book of Romans, Romans 1, 16 and 17, where he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first, also to the Greek. Then he said, for it is the righteousness of God revealed through faith. That is basically the thesis of the whole book of Romans. But then right after that, in verse 18, he said, for the wrath of God is on those who have fallen short, who do works of unrighteousness. Well, he was kind of saying that about the Gentiles, but then you remember in chapter two, he said, wait a minute, Jews, if you're going to be judging and you're going to try to judge based on that, you're also sinners. You've also fallen short. And then he summed all of that argument up. If you remember our last message in Romans 3, 9, Paul sums up the whole point of what has gone before and he says, all men, both Jews and Greeks, All are under sin. And that was the title of our last message, All Under Sin. All men have sinned and are under the awful sway of sin. They're slaves to sin, it says in Romans 6.16. So we are all guilty before God. So our first point as we get into this is we're all guilty before God. And then I said in parentheses, justification by works. Because this is where Paul begins to shift his argument. He's been proving that we're all sinners. Now he's going to be talking about that in a little bit different way. You haven't heard me talk a lot about guilt or about being justified. We've talked about men being sinners. But now we're going to start using legal terms, things like guilt and justifying and justification. He's going to begin to talk about how it is that we are justified before God. So the first point is we are guilty before God in a legal sense. We are guilty before God. And in that same passage in 19 and 20, he's also going to tell us that there's a way that we cannot be justified. So this is the one that is not true. So let's go back just to refresh our memory. In verses 19 and 20, he says, Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." So, when he says this in verse 19, all people, regardless of race, are personally accountable to God, that all the world may become guilty before God. Every single person in the world that's ever been born, that ever will be born, is guilty before God. We have not kept the law. We have fallen short, he's going to say later in this same passage, we have fallen short of the glory of God. And our problem of guilt is not owing to the fact that we have failed our fellow man. I think a lot of times we think of sin in that way. But that's not the point. The point is that we have failed God. We have fallen short of God's standard and we have offended a holy God. Our guilt is before God. Our guilt is not to our fellow man. We are guilty before God. And what Paul says here is that we can preach that message in America, and in Africa, and in Russia, And in anywhere in the earth that we go, we can preach that message because he says, all men everywhere are guilty. The world may become guilty before God. It's true of all men and women in the world. And I think he's really kind of aiming that at the Jews because, you know, they kind of felt a little special. They're guilty before God, just like the Gentiles are guilty before God. Every person in this room is accountable directly to God and God deals with you as an individual. And one day you will have to give an account to him of your life. And if you're like me, That should be a very frightening thought to you. I don't think that's wrong. I know that we understand salvation and most of the people in this room understand salvation and I know that you know the Lord and that you've been saved. Even with that, even with that knowledge, it ought to be a really sobering thought that one day we're going to have to stand before God and give an account for our life. We're going to have to give account of all the things that we've done. should be a very frightening thing if you feel like that you could do that on your own effort or your own merits. So that's what Paul is going to deal with here in this passage. No matter how virtuous that we may appear, we're accountable to God and there's going to be a reckoning for what we have said and thought and felt. Now the thought part really is the one that always gets me. I mean, you just think about that, even if you don't act on things. I mean, how many bad thoughts have you had in your life? Just that clock that's always going in your head, that's just kind of that inside narrative that's going through your brain, you're accountable to God for that. One idle thought, one thing that is not directed towards the worship and praise of God. So we're going to be accountable for all those things, and we're guilty before God. It is His law that we have broken, and it is His glory that we fall short of, which is what He says in Romans 3.23. So we're all accountable to God, and we'll meet Him someday, and we'll either be guilty and condemned or acquitted and destined for joy. And Paul is going to begin to tell us now about how that happens and on what basis that we are either acquitted or determined to be guilty before God. Paul has now started to insert the language of justification into this discourse about our sin. Like I said, the words guilty and the word law and the word All of those things are going to come into the context of this passage now. So the main point of verse 19 is that if we are judged by our works, all the world would be declared guilty before God. So if you are depending on, like we kind of mentioned earlier, if you're depending on the idea that when you get to the end, and when you have to stand before God, that there's going to be a giant set of balances, and that as long as you've been a pretty good fella, that God's going to say, well, that's OK, then you are sadly mistaken. All it takes is one sin to tip that balance, and you're going to be declared guilty before a holy God. And that's a very sobering thought. That's what he says about justification by works. If justification was by our works, all the world would be declared guilty before God. All mouths would be stopped. Now what does he mean by that? All mouths would be stopped. Well, you imagine yourself in the courtroom before God. God is the judge and you're standing before him having to declare, standing at the bar. They would say in old England, you're standing at the bar and you've got to make a defense. He says all mouths will be stopped. There is no loophole. There's no legal defense team. There's no high-priced lawyer that can prove your case to the judge and obtain your acquittal. You are guilty. Every mouth will be stopped and a verdict of guilty must be declared if we are to be justified by our works. So what does it mean to be justified and what is Paul saying about it here in Romans 3? Well in verse 20 he's going to begin to explain that just a little bit. He says, therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight for by the law is the knowledge of sin. To be justified means to be acquitted by God, to be declared free and innocent or just, to be made right in relation to God so that his indignation is removed and our rebellion against him is taken away. So the point of this verse is that acquittal can never be achieved by the works of the law. You cannot obey God to a point that you could be forgiven of your rebellion before God in your natural state. So that means if a person does not trust God and come to Him in faith, and yet undertakes to make himself right through the works of the law, he will always fail. And the effect that that will have on such a person is just to reveal their sin all the more clearly. So that's what Paul's really saying here. He says, Therefore shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." So if you try to justify yourself by works, all that that's going to do is show you to be that much more guilty. That's what he's saying. That's really what Paul's saying here. You want to be justified by works and you want to try to do it that way? All that's going to reveal in you is how much of a sinner that you really are. You are not going to be justified in that pursuit. So the connection between verses 19 and 20 is basically this, when people try to use the law to get right with God, the law brings to light their sin and condemns them. And since this is true of all human beings, all Jews, all Gentiles, he said all the world, their mouths are gonna be stopped. We know that when the law speaks to the Jews, it has the whole world in view, that every mouth may be stopped and all the people held accountable. So the first point is simply, that all people are sinners and personally accountable to God, and that this relationship of guilt cannot be set right by works of the law. Now, that sounds really simple, and I think everybody in here agrees with that. I think if I were to ask you, well, how do you believe salvation happens? Do you believe salvation by works or salvation by grace? I think everybody in here, without hesitation, would say, oh, well, I believe in salvation by grace, right? But practically speaking, I think we fall into this so many times, we say the right thing, but really deep down inside somewhere, there's a part of us that truly just really doesn't understand that, and we really kinda still feel like, I heard one person talk about it one time called the debtor's ethic. They said it's like, we feel like that we're gonna repay God by our actions, and we're gonna kinda even the slate a little bit, and we're gonna do better so that we even the scales up. It's almost a subconscious thing. But Paul's reminding us that in reality, in the truth, there is no justification by works. None. Now, there's also some people, and I'll go ahead and say this, and I don't want to harp on what others believe too much. I want to focus really on what we believe more than that. But I think it's worth saying here that some people also say, well, yeah, I believe in salvation by grace. I don't believe in salvation by works. But you have to do this. Or you have to do this, or some even have as many as five things. Well, if you do these five things, you'll be saved. That's justification by works, folks. That's what it is. It's either of the Lord, and it's by grace, or grace is no more grace. If it's of works, then grace is no more grace. So we can't mix the two. And so many in Christendom today, that's what they want to do. They want to take a little bit of both. Well, yes, salvation is by grace, but you must believe. You must exercise faith. And if you do that, then God does all the rest. Well, that's salvation by works. Then if that is what you believe, then you are in the first category here in verses 19 and 20. And what does Paul say about that? He said, there is no flesh that will be justified in that way. None. Nobody is justified in the way that they provide works to earn justification So this is really an important topic now secondly and moving on In verses 21 through 27, we said we're going to talk about the righteousness of God and redemption and justification by faith. So what is, if it's not by works, then how are we justified? Well, Paul's going to begin that discussion. He's not going to end it in chapter 3, by the way. This is going to go on for a while. So like I said, remember, this is the You know in college when you took intro to biology instead of biology? This is intro to justification by faith. It's not the full course. We're just getting just the very beginnings of it. But Paul's going to begin to tell us how we are justified by faith. Verse 21 he says, But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. Verse 26 to declare I say at this time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus Where is boasting then it is excluded by what law of works nay, but by the law of faith So he begins to tell us it's not by works, so it is by faith. We are justified by faith, justification by faith. Now the passage that I just read to you, it mentions his righteousness or the righteousness of God four times in that one passage. That's important, that's important for us to point out. So it says, the righteousness of God is something that has to do with our justification by faith. It uses the words, by faith of Jesus Christ, upon all them that believe, through faith in his blood, and which believeth in Jesus. Four times, faith, is mentioned in this passage. That we believe in Christ, that's important. It also says that there is no difference for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So there is a scope issue here in this passage. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is no difference. We are all saved in the same way. Some people aren't saved one way and other people saved a different way. We are justified by faith. And then he wraps up basically what I just said about what others believe. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law of works? Nay, but by the law of faith. If you believe what we believe about salvation, then there is no room to boast in yourself. And that is extremely important. We take the human being out of the business of salvation. You cannot get to heaven and say, I'm glad I made a decision for Christ. I'm so glad that I'm here because I made the right decision. That is not the way that that's going to work. That's not the way that that's going to be. There's not going to be any boasting in us All the boasting is going to be on Jesus Christ. Anything that you would have to say that's positive is all going to go towards Jesus Christ on that day. So the glory of the gospel is that one before whom we are guilty that we just established and condemned has himself undertaken to replace our guilt and his indignation with righteousness and reconciliation. So that's the gospel in a nutshell, is that we are guilty before God. We have no way to recover that on our own. We cannot do it through our own works, but God himself has intervened and has stepped in and has undertaken to secure our justification through faith in the work of Christ, what Christ has accomplished for us, not what we have accomplished for ourself through our own works. So God's holiness and righteous glory, our guilt is that that holiness and righteousness of God has been desecrated and defamed by our sin. We have fallen short of the holiness of God. That cannot be stated enough. There can be no justification and no reconciliation unless the holiness of God is honored and the defamation of His righteousness is repaired. In other words, you cannot even come into the presence of God until you have been cleansed, you have been justified, you have been made right with God. And we just established that you cannot do that by any works of your own. You cannot be justified by works. You see, one of the problems with a lot of theology today and a lot of what people believe today is that we live in a day more so than ever before in the history of the world, and I think that's just because we're living now. It started a long time ago, and it's just been steadily getting worse, what I'm about to say, but we live in a day that's worse than ever, that has an inflated view of human potential, and such a horribly inadequate view of God's holiness, that many people today, because they have this inflated view of human potential and a lack of respect and awe at who God is and His holiness, that they cannot understand the real problem of our guilt before a holy God. You see, the problem is not, and I've heard this question asked so many times, y'all, so many times, And I'm not making fun of those people, they're seeking and they're asking and there's an answer to their question, but yet it's really a foolish question. People will ask this, how can God be loving and yet condemn people who are pretty good folks. They're sinners, but it's not real bad. They're not murderers. They're trying to live a good life. How can God be loving and good and yet condemn people with such little sins who are really good people? You see, the real question we should be asking is, how can a righteous God acquit such miserable sinners as I am? That's the question to ask. That's a completely different mindset on two things that are really important, our view of ourself and our view of God. And really, theology can be boiled down to this, a proper view of God and a proper view of man. And if we get those two things right, then all the rest of it has to fall into line. I mean, there's only one way then that things can be. So that's the real problem and the real question that we should be asking. There can be no lasting remedy for our guilt before God that does not deal with God's righteous indignation against sin. In other words, what that means is God is not going to just say, well, that's okay. It's all right. You know, we do that sometimes, right? We do. You know, I'm in administration at a school, and sometimes, you know, kids, they'll do something wrong against the rules, and sometimes it's not worth dealing with, and you just say, you know what? Just move on. Let's just move on. I'll just forget about it. We're not going to deal with that today. Let's just move on. You know what? God can't do that, because God is just. And there must, he must be true to himself and his own holiness. And so because of that, there cannot be any remedy for guilt. There cannot be any justification that does not deal with God's righteous indignation against sin. So in this one, we're going to have three sub points. And these are three things in this passage that I think are really of utmost importance for us to understand. The first one is the righteousness of God. Like I said, repeated four times in this section. The second one is redemption and propitiation. What does that mean? And how does that come into play with our justification? And then the third one is justification by faith, just a very surface view of what that means that we are justified by faith. So the first one I said is the righteousness of God. As we have already established many times in our study of this book, we do not have a righteousness of our own. We are all under sin by nature and by action. If you go back to chapter one, you remember it says that the gospel that he's not ashamed of is the righteousness of God revealed. through faith. So that is the righteousness of Christ. It is not our own righteousness. We must have, as some of the old divines they called it, an alien righteousness. and a righteousness outside of ourself. The perfect and sinless life of Jesus Christ that he lived as a man here in a sin-cursed earth in his active and passive obedience are essential to the justification of those given to him by the Father. That's so important, I'm gonna repeat it again, okay? The righteousness of God that is mentioned here, the perfect and sinless life that Jesus Christ lived, He has a righteousness that you must have to be justified before God. Christ did that by coming and becoming flesh, that's an amazing thought, that Jesus Christ Himself became flesh, He lived a human life, imperfection, without sin, without one idle thought, without one thing, never a word that he spoke was spoken out of turn. You think about that. I can't go five minutes with that being the case. It's just the truth. In our best intentions, in our best moments, so many times, at least one word is a miss. Christ never spoke one word that was a miss. In his perfect and sinless life, that he lived as a man here in this sin-cursed earth, in his active and passive obedience, That is essential to the justification of those that are given to Him by the Father. We're going to talk about redemption in a minute, and I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I think a lot of times when we talk about our being saved, most of what we think about is redemption. We think about that Christ paid for our sins on the cross, and it's very important. But there's a whole other aspect about the righteousness of God that we must have to be in God's presence that is about the sinless life of Jesus Christ and that his righteousness is imputed to us just like our sins are expiated away from us. So we've fallen short of the glory of God and we must have that alien righteousness or a righteousness outside of ourselves to be reconciled to fellowship with a holy God. Now secondly, Redemption is important. This word redemption and propitiation is also very important in our passage. So we go up and say, well, where is that in the passage? He says, in verse 24, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. So we have no righteousness of our own to present to a holy God, but instead we are all under sin and we've fallen short of the glory of God and that is why there had to be a sacrifice. Because it's not just that you don't have a righteousness that's worthy, you also have a sin nature and you are piling on to that with sins over and over and over again. How many people here could say that you went through the last week without committing a sin? None of us. I'm going to tell you, if you thought you could, you're wrong. That's not true. This idea of people that reach sinless perfection, that's just false. That's not true at all. In this life, sanctification is an ongoing process that's going to continue. And if you think the older you get, the easier it gets, that's wrong too. We're going to be continuing to be conformed to the image of Christ until the day that we go to meet Him. Because of that, there must be a price paid to pay for our sins. When Jesus died for our sins, taking our place, he satisfied the wrath of God for our rebellion, for our sin. Satisfaction was made. So that brings us to the word propitiation. Because I'm going to give you a definition of propitiation that's a little bit longer, but it really means the satisfaction of God's wrath. It's really what it's about in propitiation. Expiation, that I mentioned earlier, is the removal of sin and guilt that comes with that sin. So God is taking away or removing our sin because of the perfect life and the sacrificial, atoning, substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. So our sins have been removed from us because of what Christ did on the cross. I think that's really important. I think it's also important for us to understand that that work was completed. It was done. It's not that there's a potential out there for your sin to be removed from you, and if you make the right decision, then that gets applied. Christ knew who he was dying for on the cross. All that the Father gave him, that's who he died for. He literally took their place under the wrath of God. So, you know, it's like I've said before, you sub somebody in a basketball game, the other person comes out, right? It's not random. One person goes in, one person comes out. You are taking the place of another. Christ took your place under the wrath of God, and so expiation is that that sin is removed from us because the penalty was paid for our sin. He paid the fine. He paid the fee. Because Jesus didn't just come to die, He also lived a perfect, righteous, law-keeping life. able to make that payment for us because He was perfect in all that He did. He was the only one that could do that for us. The Atonement of Christ didn't just make salvation possible it actually applied and accomplished salvation for God's people. So expiation is God's removal of sin and guilt that accompanies our sin culminating in the death of Christ on the cross. Now propitiation is a different word And we have to define it, of course, according to what the Bible says and what the Bible means by it. The word propitiation really means satisfaction. It means that Christ, in his perfect life and atoning substitutionary death, that he satisfied the wrath of God against our sin and against us. It wasn't that he simply satisfied God's wrath against sin. He assuaged God's wrath against us. You see how that's different? It's not just some random... He didn't satisfy a vague group of sins from the whole world. That's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible says He satisfied the wrath of God for His people. He took their place personally. So, propitiation is a personal thing. It means that God satisfied the wrath against your sin personally, not just some random idea of sin of the whole world. Righteousness was demonstrated by Christ in his life. Payment for sins was made in his death. Henceforth it is clear that when God by grace freely justifies the ungodly, he is not indifferent to the demands of justice. So this is an important phrase. Let's go back to our passage and read this section. This is an extremely important part of this text. Paul in verse 26 says, to declare I say at this time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. That's a strange, it's a strange sentence, so we need to kind of unpack it. I remember hearing, I remember hearing that even when I was little, I didn't understand it, but I remember hearing it, he's just and the justifier. What does that mean? So we're gonna kinda unpack that and we're gonna see what that means. In plain language it means that God is just in his justification of sinners through faith in Christ. He can do that and still be a just God. In other words, we're guilty, right? We've already said that. We're guilty and when we say that God justifies us, we're saying that he's declaring us right and righteous. Well, if God did that and it wasn't true, God would not be just in that, right? If God said, well, it's okay, and I'm just gonna declare you righteous, nothing's been done about it, but I'm just gonna declare you to be righteous, and we're all gonna be good, then God wouldn't be just in that action. But because Christ's righteousness, He lived a perfect and sinless life, and you have that righteousness because of that, and because your sins were paid and removed from you as far as the East is from the West, because of those two things, God is just in saying that you are righteous. That is an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing that God would be able to say that, I mean, just a sinner as bad as we are, that he can declare righteously and justly that you are righteous, that you are just. Just an amazing thing. It's the heart of the gospel. It's why this is one of the most important paragraphs in the Bible. God is just in his justification of sinners through faith in Christ, that he might be just and the justifier of them which believeth in Jesus. Now, that last part of that text brings us into the last topic we wanted to cover in this section, which is justification by faith. So, if we are justified, if it's just for God to say that you are righteous, how is that applied to us? How is that brought to us? Well, it's brought to us by faith. The Bible is very clear on this matter. It is really It's really amazing to me that this is a topic of debate among some people, and it's really amazing to me that some people who are called primitive Baptists really don't understand justification by faith, and really, they make faith something that is not important at all, that we were declared righteous in eternity past, and really, anything that happens in time is irrelevant. I one time had a deacon tell me that, well, Brother Andy, all this other stuff is really meaningless. All that really matters is election. That's it. God elected you in eternity past, and he determined to save you, and none of that other stuff really matters. It doesn't matter what happens in time. It doesn't matter if you believe the gospel. And I said, well, surely what matters in time happens, because guess what? It was in time that Christ came and paid the price for your sins. So you better hope that some of it has to do with the things that are in time. But brethren, the Bible's pretty clear. If you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, then I don't have any message of hope for you. I don't have anything from the Bible that I can preach to you that should give you hope of being justified before a holy and righteous God. Only through faith in Christ can we be justified before a holy and righteous God. There's a little word that's really important and some people try to make a big deal out of it, but it's really and actually a simple word. The word is dia. It's a primary preposition. And it's the word by, so justification by faith, everywhere that it says that. Sometimes it's translated through faith, but those are the same thing. It's the same word, dia. It's a primary preposition, and it denotes the channel of an act. So an act is happening, what channel does it take? How does it get to you? I remember when Brother Matthew Strevel was preaching our meeting here one time, kind of tickled me because he's talking about such a big topic, you know, justification by faith, and he said, it's like a PVC pipe, you know? That seems like it's simplifying it a little too much, right? But it actually is a really good kind of picture in our heads to say that it gets from here to here. So it is the channel of an act. This is John Gill's commentary on this passage, and especially this passage that we're dealing with right now. He says this. Faith is a means of apprehending and receiving righteousness. It views the excellency of Christ's righteousness, it owns the sufficiency of it, the soul by it renounces its own righteousness and it submits to Christ's, rejoices in it, and gives him the glory of it. Now this is by or through faith. So if you need the righteousness of Christ, the way that that is applied to you and the way that you have access to that righteousness is through faith. It is through faith. It is because of belief in Jesus Christ. Now, it makes some people nervous when you say that. I don't know why. What do we believe about faith? So is what I said, is that justification by works? Because you have to have faith? What do we believe about faith? Do we believe that we can just have faith? That it's something that we come up with on our own? That's absolutely not what we believe. We believe that faith is a gift of God. It must be given to you by the Holy Spirit in regeneration. You must be born again to even see the kingdom of God. So it's not justification by works. It is God from beginning to end. So to say that you believe in justification by works, should not lead you down that path. We need to tie those two things together. So just so that you understand that this is not something new or something different, our people throughout the years, throughout centuries, have really believed the same thing about this up until more modern times. The 1689 London Confession of Faith has a whole chapter, chapter 11, And it's called Of Justification. And so I'm not gonna read the whole thing. I have the whole thing in my notes. I'm gonna spare you that. We're not gonna read the whole thing. But I am gonna read a couple of passages out of that, probably paragraph two and probably paragraph four. But I think it's important to understand that was written in 1689 by some of our forefathers. And you say, well, that was over in England and maybe that wasn't our people. Well, in Philadelphia in 1742, Our forefathers, they reaffirmed this 100%. If you want to know more about it, I can bring you all the way up into the mid-1800s. People like Sylvester Hassell, people like that, saying that confession is the best understanding of our doctrine and practice that's ever been written. Quotes like that. So this is not something that was kind of out in left field. This is what our forefathers believed. On paragraph two, it says this, faith, Thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness is the alone instrument of justification. Yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love." I think that's pretty plain, right? I think that's not hard to read. It's not hard to understand. Paragraph 4 says this, God did from all eternity decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did in the fullness of time die for their sins and rise again for their justification. Nevertheless, they are not justified personally until the Holy Spirit in time doth actually apply Christ to them. I'm going to tell you right now, I believe that. That's what I believe. And here's why I believe that that's so special. Did you notice in that paragraph four that all three members of the Trinity, each one of their role in eventually in your justification, that in the fullness of time, God did from all eternity declare to justify all the elect. God the Father. In the fullness of time, Christ died for their sins and rose again for their justification. And then some people want to stop right there. Well, you know what? The work of the Holy Spirit's really important. Because if you have all of that, but it's not applied to you personally, then you are lost. You're lost. It must be applied to you. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to apply that to you personally through regeneration and conversion. And you all in this room know I would love to take a rabbit trail on that for a minute. It's one of my favorite subjects. But we're not going to do that. But the Holy Spirit in time doth actually apply Christ to them. That's justification by faith. That's what I believe. And it's what our forefathers believed. Now, on to our last point. I told you we'd be brief this morning. We're trying to skim the rocks. And we're going to have plenty of time to go in and listen. I know everybody in this room probably is saying, I have no idea what you're talking about. This has been a lot of language and a lot of we're going to go through this and unpack this as Paul does in his arguments as we continue through the book of Romans. So if you're overwhelmed, don't feel that way. We're going to get there. Our third point is that obedience follows faith. I think it's also a really important point. I think it's why Paul. threw it in on the end of this argument he makes here. Verses 28-31, Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Paul does this a lot and I'm really happy that he does because sometimes his arguments are so complicated you need him to go back and just say, okay, so here's what I just said. That's that sentence. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. You cannot be justified by the deeds of the law. Justification by works. Verse 29, is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes. of the Gentiles also, seeing it as one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith." That is Paul declaring that he's going to save the Jews in the exact same way that he's going to save the Gentiles, and it's through faith. That if the Jews are to be saved, they're going to be saved through faith. If the Gentiles are to be saved, they're going to be saved through faith. Then verse 31, and this is where we get our point that obedience follows faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish the law. So you say, okay, what do you mean by obedience follows faith? Well, if you heard what I preached this morning, and I said, you can try to work for your salvation all you want to, and through those works, you're not gonna be saved, and it's only through faith in Christ that you can be saved, and works cannot get you there, then you could say, okay, we're gonna throw works out. We're not going to do anything. We're just going to trust in Christ and we're going to live however we want to live. That's not what Paul is saying. He's not saying that we, he says, do we make void the law through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish the law. This is what John Gill said about it. He said, the law is not made void, neither by the grace nor doctrine of faith, by the grace of faith, for that faith is not right, which is not attended with works of righteousness." Let me repeat that. This is another issue that some of our people for some reason have a problem with. For that faith is not right, which is not attended with works of righteousness. In other words, if you truly come to faith in Christ, what's going to accompany that in your life is obedience. You're going to obey Him. You know, we get in arguments about that, well, how much? I'm not gonna get into that. I think there's some people that are more obedient than others, I think that's true. But to some extent, there will be some evidence of obedience in the life of a believer in Jesus Christ. That's basically what he's saying at the end of this. Do we make void the law through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish the law. Moreover, none, John Gill again, moreover, none but believers are capable of performing good works aright, and they do them, and they ought to do them, besides faith as a grace, looks to Christ as the end of the law for righteousness, and therefore we do not make it void." So he's saying this is the truth, only a believer can do works that are righteous, works of righteousness. Anything that is not of faith is what? That's what Paul makes that argument in another place. Anything that is not a faith is sin. So good works, the obedience is going to be followed by those who have a true faith or a saving faith in Jesus Christ. We're going to close there, and I hope that has made some sense. It's a very wordy topic. It's a very deep topic. It's something that is going to take us a while to really unpack and understand, and Paul's going to continue that work as we go into Romans 4. If you have any questions or anything you'd like to ask me about, I'd love to talk to you about it. I think it is, like I said, one of the most important paragraphs in the Bible. It's one of the most important topics for us. It should be for all of us, right? How are we going to be justified before a holy God? If that's not an important question, then our priorities are not right. So let's close with this. Let's sum the whole thing up. If you understand that you're a sinner, you understand that because the Spirit of God has done a work in your heart. And in that work, he also then reveals to you Christ. And so we come to Christ by faith. We come to Christ, we repent of our sins, and we come to Christ by faith. We've seen that. That's a wonderful thing, right? That we've seen in our assembly recently. That people have been born again, they've been converted to the truth, they have come to Christ, they made a profession of faith in him. And so if people ask you, if people were to ask you the question, well, how is it that I'm saved? What was the answer in the scriptures? Anybody know? I had a pastor that I really respect. He told me recently that somebody came up to him one time, and they were doing work at the church, and they got to talking in the parking lot. They weren't a member of the church. They weren't even really churched. And they asked him the question, well, how is it that I can be saved? And he said, I'm embarrassed to say, I hem-hauled around and said two or three things, and really I didn't say anything. And I went inside the church, and he said I wept. I just wept for a long time, because I thought, here I am, a preacher of the gospel. Somebody asked me the simple question, how can I be saved? And I didn't have the right answer. Well, let me tell you what that answer is this morning. It's repent, and believe in Jesus Christ, and follow Him. And the first act of that is to be baptized. But you don't even have to go that far. You can say, repent of your sins and follow Christ. Believe in Jesus Christ. That's the answer. We don't have to go into a doctrinal treatise for 30 minutes with people who ask us, how is it that a sinner like me can be saved? The answer of the apostle was repent and believe. Repent and believe. And we can say that same answer today. It's what we still believe today. So if that is your lot, if you have been made to understand your sin and you want to follow Christ, you can let that be known as we sing a hymn and the doors of the church will be opened. We want to sing.