Alright, reading from Ephesians chapter 4, verse 32. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Thank you and be seated. Let's look at that verse 32 one more time after you've been seated. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." Now, the Apostle Paul is writing to a New Testament church in the city of Ephesus, and he's writing to Christians, and he's dealing with everyday practical living. But the part that I want you to notice is the last part of that verse. He says, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. I want you to notice that part, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. The title of my message today is, For Christ's Sake. For Christ's sake. The first thing I want you to notice in the message is it says, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. God. Let's stop and think about that. God. In the particular setting that we're looking at here, we have to remember that this God who's doing the forgiving is the offended one. You may offend man sometimes when you sin, but you always offend God. We always offend God. Sin is always against God. It may sometimes be against our fellow man, it may not, but it always is contrary to God and His holiness. God is the one who is sinned against. He is the one that makes it very plain in the Bible what he requires and what he will not accept. And that which is contrary to his will is called sin. For this God who will forgive for Christ's sake is the one who is sinned against. This God is the one whom, before a sinner is saved, there is enmity against. Now it's hard for lost sinners to believe that they're actually enemies of God before they're born again. But this is not something that the Apostle Paul figured out for himself. This is something that the Holy Spirit actually revealed to Paul and he wrote down and he said, all you people in Ephesus that are now saved, remember this, you were enemies of God before you were saved. Now, lost people say, I don't have anything against God. Yes, you do. Why do you know that? You can't read my heart, but I don't have to. I read the Bible. It's much simpler than that. It's not near that hard. The Bible says that the lost person, even you that sit here this morning that have never trusted Jesus Christ, you're not on God's side. You're at war with God. You're His enemy. You're actually, the Bible says, you're actually working with the devil. Now, that's kind of hard, but you see, once you get saved, you quit arguing with that. You understand that you were there, and you accept that, and you say, that's what it was. And you say, I may not understand all of that, but I accept it because God says so, and God doesn't make a mistake. This one whom Paul says, and the Holy Spirit through Paul says, God, who for Christ's sake hath forgiven you, this God is the one that lost man has sided with Satan against. How would you like it today if you had an enemy, and that was 100% against you, not 99.9%, but 100% against you, And one of your friends or one of your family sided with that enemy against you. You wouldn't feel too good about that, would you? Well, when God looks down from heaven, he sees man, whom he's created, siding with the devil, who wants to be like God, and who can't stand God, and who opposes God at every opportunity he gets, and who would take God's place if he could. And who does he see working with him? He sees man, whom he's created. Now, this is the God that I'm talking about here in this verse. This is the God that I want you to remember when we speak about this verse this morning. And for Christ's sake, the Scripture says He's forgiven us. It's the offended God. You see, God didn't have to forgive us. God doesn't have to save us. God would be just in sending every one of us to hell. I don't understand it's simple man that seems to feel that God owes us something. I beg your pardon. God owes us nothing. We are the debtors, not God. We don't seem to get that straight, do we? We seem to think that, like some people do today, that some people think the world owes them something. The world doesn't owe you anything. Not one bit. And God doesn't owe us anything. What He does for us, saved or lost, or saved and lost, He does simply out of His grace, out of His mercy. We don't deserve it. We don't deserve it at all. And we never will deserve it. There never will be a time when we can say to God, look here God, we're finally even. We're finally square. We will always be in the position of not deserving what God does for us. The Holy Spirit to the Apostle Paul said, God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. I want you to notice that term there, for Christ's sake. What does that mean? He writes to these people in Ephesus and he says to them, God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. These people were now saved and had been baptized and were members of the New Testament church. What does he mean for Christ's sake? He meant because of Christ. He meant because of Christ. That's why they were saved. He meant because of what Christ had done for them. He meant because of Christ's suffering and His death and the shedding of His precious blood on the cross. He meant because of Christ's substitutionary death. In other words, Christ having substituted for them in taking the wrath of God upon Himself that rightly belonged to them. He meant because Christ had borne their sins, not his, their sins in his own body. When he says, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? It's not because of anything that he had done. It's because of what you and I have done. And everyone that is of men saved by the grace of God could answer and say, It's for me. It's because of me that you have been forsaken. And for Christ's sake means because of Him and not because of what I or anyone else has done. For Christ's sake, Paul says to the Ephesians, for Christ's sake, God hath forgiven you. For Him, because of what He has done. You're saved by the grace of God. Your name's on the Lamb's book of life. You'll never feel the fires of hell. But it's not because of anything that you personally can claim. It's because of Christ. You owe everything to Him. You're a debtor to Him. Now, dear people, this morning, that's why the Lord Jesus Christ can say, Your father and your mother and your wife and your children and no one else should ever come before Jesus Christ. Because nobody can or has ever done for the child of God what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. And this is what this verse is teaching, and this is what the Holy Spirit is emphasizing to us here today, and what He was emphasizing to the church in Ephesus, and what He's emphasized all down through the centuries, wherever the Word has been preached. And that is this, you are saying, for Christ's sake, and you'd better remember that. And I say this, and I believe this. That the longer you're saved, and the longer you study the Word of God, and the more you grow as a Christian, the more you are in understanding, and the more you rejoice at the fact that God has, for Christ's sake, forgiven you. Because you know that if He hadn't forgiven you for Christ's sake, you wouldn't have a chance. There's no way that you could ever make it into the presence of God. You know what you are. At your best, even if you're a child of God, at your best, you fall far short of God's standards. And what's so bad about it, and I think this is even the worst, is that you fall so far short, but you don't even realize and know and couldn't sit here and name to me hardly ten things that you do in a day's time that's a sin, because sin is so much a part of your life and mine. In other words, we don't know just how far we do fall short. Our ignorance is that great. Now, dear people, this morning the Holy Spirit wants us to understand that this thing called salvation is not something that we can earn or anyone can earn for us, but it's something that only Jesus Christ can do for us. And it means, dear people, that for Christ's sake means that He died on the cross So that when we put our faith and trust in Him, with all of our hearts, not playing around, not trying to play games with God, as some people try to do, but we meant it with all of our hearts. As Philip said to the Ethiopian unity, if you believe with all your heart, it means that when we do that, God forgives us for Christ's sake. God says, okay. It's not because God doesn't value His law as being very great. It's not because God doesn't think the breaking of His law is a great infraction. Just the contrary. It is because of that, that the Father sent the Son, and the Son came into the world and died on the cross, and the Holy Spirit, now that the Son is gone back and sitting at the right hand of the Father, is active down here through the preaching of the Word and the saving of lost souls. It is for Christ's sake. It is not, and I don't want to leave you with this thought today, that God the Father really didn't want to save us, and if it hadn't been for Jesus Christ, that we'd just be in trouble. No, sir, it was the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, our Holy Ghost, all three that were involved in our salvation, and all three were willing to save us. And all three have their part in our salvation. And none of the three is to be left out. That's a grave sin. That's a grave sin. And I want you to understand that the Bible does not mean that when it talks about one God, that God is one person playing three parts, playing the part of the Son, playing part of the Holy Ghost, and playing the part of the Father. I'm a father, I am a son, and I'm a brother. I'm all three of those things, but they're just one of me. But that's not what the Bible says when it talks about the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. It speaks of the Father who sends the Son, the Son who prays to the Father, the Son who goes back to sit at the right hand of the Father, and the Holy Spirit comes to be down here since the Son is gone. Now, that's three people, three persons in the one Godhead. Somebody said, I don't understand that. I don't understand Genesis 1 and 1. But I accept it. I accept it by faith. That's what Christianity is all about. Now listen, dear people, this morning. It said, God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. Now let's just notice that, hath forgiven you. And this original was written, keep in mind, to the people in Ephesus who were once lost and who were idolaters and who were headed for hell, and God in His mercy and God in His grace sent the gospel to them. And the Holy Spirit worked through this gospel to open their sin-blinded eyes and to turn them, the Bible says, from darkness to light. Now, He said, He hath forgiven you. This is a past, completed thing. He hath forgiven you. Now, what's that mean? That means when they trusted Jesus Christ, they were forgiven. And at the time Paul writes this letter to them, they have been forgiven, as far as their standing before God is concerned. As Christians, as children of God, we have to confess our sins in everyday life to the Lord every day, and He'll forgive us. But there is a fact, as far as our salvation is concerned, where when we trusted Christ, all of our sins were forgiven, and we shall never come into condemnation because of them. We shall never perish because of them. That's what the Bible says. He says He has forgiven you. That means our record is cleared and clean. Believe me, there is nothing that a human being can do that will clean the record up like trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior with all of your heart will do. It will take care of every sin that you've ever committed, every sin that you will ever commit, and your standing with God will be that you're justified, which means it'll be just if you never sinned against God. as far as your standing is concerned. You're a child of God, your soul is saved, it's as white as snow. That's a different thing in everyday life. The Bible talks about that. We understand that. But our standing with God is we are saints of God, and we're saved by the grace of God. Now, when he says he hath forgiven you, it means we're no longer under God's wrath. To be lost means that every moment you live, you live under the wrath of God. It hangs over your head like a dark thundercloud threatening to break forth upon you at any moment. As long as you're lost, that's the situation you live under. You may get up and look outside and say, the skies are blue. This is a beautiful day. But the wrath of God hangs over your head like the worst thundercloud or worse than any thundercloud from any storm that you've ever seen. And you're in grave danger. grave danger. He said, He has forgiven you. In other words, He's forgiven you what? He's forgiven you fully, fully, completely. I don't understand these people say, you've been forgiven, but you yet got to go pay somewhere else. No, no. If you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, your Savior, God has fully forgiven you. God has freely forgiven you. God didn't say, now look, I'm going to forgive you, I'm going to save you, but you've got to promise me that you'll give me so much money before you die. No, sir, it was full and it's free. Salvation in the Bible is always spoken of as being a gift of God. Now, if I say to Sister Adina, I'm going to give you a $500 gift just as soon as you bring me the $500 check for it. She'll say, hold on. That's not a gift. I'm paying for it. Well, I say, you give me the 500 and then it's mine and then I'll buy it for you and give it back to you, so it's really for me then. She won't accept it that way. The Bible says salvation is a gift. It's a gift that can be given to the believer because it's been paid for by the Lord Jesus Christ. It's been paid for. Oh, it's been paid for. paid dearly for. That's why it can be given to you. You can give anybody in this church a Cadillac if you'll go pay for it. And you can say, here it is. It's yours, and it costs nothing. But you can be sure of one thing. It cost somebody something. Someone had to pay for it. That's how people say, I got this from the government. No, really, you better run it back a little bit farther than that. The government got that from your neighbor. And these politicians, they've got the guts, you know, to tell us how much we ought to vote them back into office because of what they've done for us when they've taken the money away from us and our children and our grandchildren and our neighbor in order to do what they've done, and then they want us to thank them by putting them back in there saying they did that for us? Really and truly, dear people, we must be dumb. We've done that for ourselves. We paid the bill, and they take the credit for it. That's pretty good, isn't it? I say to Brother Willie today, Brother Willie, Sister Marilyn needs a new house. Give me the money for it. You give me the money and I'll buy it for her. And then I say, Look Marilyn, how much you owe me? Brother Willie said, I gave that money for that. Well, that's about like the politicians do us today. Isn't that right? That's right. That's right. Now, God has forgiven you, for Christ's sake, fully, freely, forever. Forever. Now, I wouldn't want this religion some people's got. They don't know whether they're going to heaven or not. They believe they are saved today, but they can be lost tomorrow. They don't really know. I have actually heard a preacher in a denomination say on the radio, after he had played a song, he said, a beautiful song, and he read something about salvation, he said, of course, I'm trying to make it, but I don't know if I'm going to make it or not. But I'm trying to make it, I may not make it, but I'm going to try to make it. And I said, goodness gracious of life, I don't know nothing he's got. I walked up on a man in the street in the town one day and I talked to him about going to heaven. He said, nobody knows whether they're going to heaven or not. That was strange to me. I've read it in the Bible. It's a common fact among the early believers because it's written in the Bible. John said, you know, we are now the sons of God, believers in Christ. And he talks about us going to heaven. And Peter talked about us having this reservation laid up in heaven. And I'm just, you know, fool enough to believe the Bible. And this guy looking me right in the eyeball telling me nobody knows whether they're going to heaven. And I got a book where people writing all the time about going to heaven. What did they have? Whatever they had gave them assurance they're going to heaven. He didn't have what they had. That's the trouble. No, he didn't know whether he was going to heaven or not. Did he believe what his religion did? He didn't. But he was telling me I couldn't know. Nobody did. But he didn't know his Bible because if he did, he'd have known that there was and there are people who know they're going because they haven't obeyed the gospel. They have it in writing. Isn't that sad? There are actually people walking around out there today that say, I don't know what's going on. I hope I am. Ooh, I don't listen. You know, I may hope a lot of things. I start to think, I hope I don't have a flat. Hmm? I start to get a cold guy a machine I've got to drop money in. I hope that thing works. I start to get a newspaper out of a machine that puts newspapers out. I hope it doesn't take my money, because it's been known to do so. I hope that and take that as a normal part of life, but when it comes to heaven, I don't want to run around saying hope, like I may not make it, but I'm hoping. Oh, no. No, no. No, no, that's one thing I don't want to miss. And I have the assurance of the Word of God That if one day I turn from my sin and unbelief and put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, I've been saved by the grace of God, I've got it in a bullet bag. Because the Lord said, these things are written so that you that believe may know that you have eternal life. You may be able to have it. No, you can know you have it. You can know that you've got heaven in your sights and you couldn't miss it if you'd shut your eyes. You think when I die I'm going to say, I'm dying, y'all. Somebody get me a map to heaven. Well, that's going to be bad, because I don't know if anybody's got one. Now, I might need a map to every other place, and I've got lost going to some places, but there's one place I'm going, I'm not going to get lost, Brother Charles, and that's to heaven. I'm not going to wander around somewhere around a star saying, look, you know, I started up this trail to heaven, and I got lost. My wife probably says, that's the only reason why you'll make it without getting sidetracked somewhere, but that's all right, the Lord will get me there. I won't need no one there saying, take a right here, take a left there, you know, jump ahead, take a right there, whoop, you made a wrong turn, go back, you got to turn here. No, that's tough. I'm going straight to heaven. When my soul leaves this body, I'm going to be with the Lord because God has, for Christ's sake, forgiven me. You see, I don't deserve to go to heaven. I'm not good enough to go to heaven. But then I never claimed to be good enough to go to heaven. And the longer I know me, I know that I could never be good enough to go to heaven. I know that. You see? And that's so in everybody's life that's really saved by the grace of God. So I've been forgiven fully, freely, forever, liberally, liberally, liberally. Mmm, God doesn't look on record saying, Mmm, when I said I'd forgive you, I didn't know you had this on there, Greg. I didn't know about this. Now I don't know about this. We've got to go over this. I've got to think about this, where I forgive you that or not. If you'll turn to me and put your faith and trust in me, I'll forgive you for all your sins, whatever they are." Goodness gracious of life. Somebody said, Well, what about murder? I don't know, but I know a man named Saul who struck down on the way to Damascus, and he had had people arrested and put in jail and had voted for them to be put to death. And God saved him. and forgave him freely. And I'm reading from the book that he wrote in the Bible. He not only forgave him, he not only forgave him for his sins, the writer of this book knew what he was talking about because he had already been through this, he had experienced this. But he took him and used him to write a great portion of the New Testament. That's right. Now, dear people, this morning, when Paul said, God hath for Christ's sake forgiven you, he knew whereof he spoke. Look, dear people, this morning, All sins completely, forever, without reservation. No terms like, I'll forgive you providing you hold out. No, no. I'll forgive you forever. If you've got the real thing, that's not part of the deal. Well, you know what? Sinners are crooked. They sit around and say, oh, well, I'll just go forward and say I'm saved and I can go out and do whatever I want to. No, you don't, you rascal, you. You don't pull that on God. This is between you and God. He reads your heart better than you do. He knows when you're trying to pull one on Him. These fellows running around, you don't think they pull one on God. They really pull one on themselves. You know what the Bible said? Don't deceive yourself. It didn't say deceive God. Nobody's ever done that. But you can deceive yourself. And when you deceive yourself, that's number one, you see. You can deceive yourself. You take a lost sinner, he's sitting in a congregation, and he hears a message like this today where he can't save himself or she can't save herself by her own works, that she must turn from her sin and unbelief and put her faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior. They're sitting there saying, well, I haven't done that, but nobody knows that I haven't, so I'm just going to go and make out like I have. Let me tell you one thing right now, that's a bad deal. You are the one that's going to lose everything. I'm not. You can fool me, that's not hard. I've been fooled by a lot of people in a lot of places, but you can't fool God. You may say, well, I'll put one over on the pastor. That's not hard. But on God, now that's a different matter altogether. Because nobody's ever been able to do that, and you're not going to do it either. So you might as well come clean. You might as well come clean. You can't play games with God. You can't practice mental reservation with God. Well, I'm coming downtown, I'm accepting Jesus Christ, but really inside, I'm not really putting all my trust in Him, because I've got some things I want to do out there and see. You're just striking out, old buddy. You're just wasting your time. And everybody else's. You're not getting anywhere. Because I'm going to tell you, when people are really saved by the grace of God, they really mean it. And when they are saved by the grace of God, they also mean it that they will live for God, too. That's part of it. You check your Bible. Check your Bible. We've got a thing called salvation today where people come down and say, I trusted Christ as my Lord and Savior, and they go out and live just like they always did. Honey, they didn't have anything. That's nothing. They didn't get anything. They just deceived themselves. Now, the change may be slow, but there'll be some change. And it's obvious that some people who've been pretty good people morally don't have, you can't see the big difference in them like you have somebody that's been a drunk. But there's change. there'll be change. And as they stayed faithful to the Lord and studied the Bible, that change will become more evident. And you can sit here on these beaches and holler, amen, till you wear a hole in them and fall flat on the floor. You may be fooling you, but you're not fooling God. And I've had folks sitting in this church and holler, Amen, sound like a fool. Of course, the pastor, Bud Miller. And go right out that door and go right back to living just like they were and think this old man is a fool? I'd reckon not. I didn't fall off of the wagon yesterday. You can sit there and holler, Amen, and you get hoarse. When you turn and walk out that door and you live the same way you did, I say, ha ha. Didn't get one over on me. and didn't get one over on God, somebody else might have, but not me. Not me. And I don't have to take that stuff, because I've got a Bible that keeps me straight. Now, he said, God hath for Christ's sake forgiven you. That's completely without reservation. All your sins, not just some. When did this happen? When you came to Christ in saving faith. When you came to the Lord Jesus Christ, you were just loaded down a filthy, old, nasty, dirty, hell-bound sinner. And when you trusted Christ, God forgave you, washed you from your sins, and you stand there whiter than snow, justified before God. No condemnation for what Christ has done for you. Nothing left. You are now holy, whiter than snow, all because of what Christ has done for you. Now, dear people, I am going to heaven. I am going to heaven not because of my feelings. I am going to heaven because of a fact. And that fact is, Christ died for my sins on the cross. I have put my faith and trust in him as my Lord and Savior without reservation. And I have his promise that he has forgiven me and that heaven is my home. And that's the fact. And any feeling I get is from that promise. That promise is as sure as the Word of God is. And my Bible says God can't lie. Boy, that's pretty strong, isn't it? And so the Lord says, it's just like you're already there. In fact, you're just as good as that semester. There's a reservation up there for you. I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it because of what Christ has done for me, for Christ's sake. Then, when the Lord says to me, take up your cross and follow me, how can I refuse him? How can I refuse him? He has full claim to me. If I say this, he says, wait, I bought you with a price. You're paid for. Look at my hands. Look at my feet. Looking aside, you know who put these there? You did. I paid for you. Nobody has a right to your life like I have a right to your life. And I expect you to follow me, and I expect you to live for me, regardless of how many other people want you to do otherwise. Because I've got a right. They don't have any hold on you like I've got on you. I bought you. I paid for you. I saved your miserable soul from hell. Wouldn't be for me! You'd be going to hell! You're mine! Now, serve me. Serve me. And when you find people that aren't backslidden, that have really been saved, they understand that claim from the Lord. They understand that. They understand But when you find people that have faked it out, and just faked it out, and let me tell you something about people faking it out. I've been in the ministry a long time, and people that make professions of fakes a lot of times for a lot of reasons. Sometimes I go out here and they get as mean as the devil, and do some sinful thing, and they think running down there and making a profession of fakes and getting baptized again is going to get them right. So they're baptized three or four times, and every time they come, they've just done something and they won't get clean. I know where I speak, honey. You don't stay in the ministry 52 years and not learn about these people called Baptists. You have to watch you don't get cynical about it. You don't get saying, hmm, hmm, hmm. I just get to where I say, show me, show me, show me. That's what I say. And the Bible said, well, here, produce some fruit. The Bible says, here, here, here, there'll be some fruit. There'll be some fruit. So God hath for Christ's sake forgiven us.