to our sermon text. We've been going through the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans for quite a bit, for a while. We're in chapter 2 this morning, and we have been looking at verses 4 and 5, and then last Sunday, 6 through 11. I want to come back to verses 6 through 11 this morning. I think I mentioned last Sunday that I thought I would do that, and I wanted to do that, so let's go back to Romans chapter 2, and again, verses 6 through 11. And Paul has been speaking to these self-righteous, hypocritical, outwardly religious Judaizers, or Jews, and they were presuming that just because they were ethnically, religiously, different than Gentiles, as verse 4 says, that they were presuming on the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead to repentance. They were not supposed to trust themselves, but trust the Lord in turn. from self, but they didn't. But, he says, because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself, and as we just read from Zephaniah chapter 1, on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. And then coming back to the passage from last Sunday, I'm going to look at it again here, verse 6. He, God, will render to each one according to his works. To those who by patience and well-doing, or doing good, seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey in righteousness, there will be wrath and fury, there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, for the Jew first and also the Greek. But, verse 10, it goes back to verse seven now, but glory and honor and peace for everyone. who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Amen. Well, if you fly much, one of the grandparents, the grandpa's from Daxon's basketball team last night said he doesn't really fly, so I was thinking of my sermon, and I said to myself, this might not work for everybody, but if you fly, or if you have flown at least once in the post 9-11 era, it doesn't matter who you are, whether you're the pilot, whether you are a businessman, businesswoman sitting in first class, you're a senator, I've seen representatives from Congress go through the scanners too, or you're even a pastor. Everyone has to go through that scanner, right? Some sort of metal detector or the scanning machine. You can smile all you want, you can look respectable all you want, you can stay as calm as you want, but the moment you step inside, that machine is gonna see everything. It's gonna see you, you can't hide from what's underneath. It sees your bones, it sees metal, it sees liquids, it sees electronics, at least it's supposed to. All of that stuff just shows up. God's judgment, God's judgment we saw last Sunday, sees everything, it sees every one of us. There's no partiality with God we read here, verse 11. There are no exceptions. Everyone is under that same justice and judgment of God. And your works are the visible evidence, as Paul describes here, of what you carried in your heart. And so when God looks at you as it were a divine scanner, he sees what is in your heart, not merely just what you're trying to hide in your pocket. And as we turn again to Romans, I want to remind you of what Paul said back in chapter 1. It's been a few weeks. But back in chapter 1, look at verses 16 and 17 where Paul told the Roman Christians why he wanted to go to Rome and preach the gospel to them. That was in verses 14 and 15. But then look at verse 16. Here's why he wanted to go preach the gospel. For, or because. Here's the reason. That's what that little word means. Here's the reason for why I want to go and preach the gospel to you. I am not ashamed of the gospel. He wanted to go preach, why? He wasn't ashamed of the gospel. Why not? Again, for, because. Here's the reason. It, the gospel, is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Note it's by faith, not works, why is the gospel so powerful to save all who believe? Again, for or because. Here's the reason. In it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. Again, faith alone is mentioned. As it is written in Habakkuk the prophet, the righteous shall live by faith. And in the context of Habakkuk 2, faith in contrast to the Babylonians' pride. The righteous shall live by faith, not by their pride, meaning their works, trusting themselves, their abilities, their power, their strength, so on and so forth. So the good news of Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, which we saw a while ago, is that the impartial judge of all human beings has also provided an impartial righteousness for all who believe in Jesus, the Jew first, also the Greek. Jesus, who lived in a perfect obedience to God's righteous rules in the place of disobedient sinners like you and me. The innocent one was condemned in the place of the unrighteous. He died that you, a sinner, might live. And so the impartial God has shown his impartiality in his judgments, and he will again in the last day, but he shows his impartiality by providing a righteousness, the ability for sinners to stand before a holy God. And so to all of that, everybody amens, right? But, if you've been tracking with Paul then, if you've been tracking with Paul as we've been going through and hearing of the Gospel, then we come to verse 6 through 11, and it's sort of like we get a little bit of a whiplash here this morning. He suddenly speaks about judgment according to works, notice. And rewarding with eternal life those who do good. And condemning those who do evil. So in chapter one, Paul spoke nothing of works. But in chapter two, that's all he's talking about. And so I said last Sunday, I wanted to come back to this passage again and sort of drill down a little bit deeper on it to help us understand how justification and judgment go together. Justification and judgment. Kids, justification, as I've tried to describe it to you, is that you are guilty. God is the judge, and you are on trial, and you are absolutely guilty, and God knows it. God sees all the evidence. He sees right through all of your excuses. Your good lawyer cannot make up excuses for you. He can't get you off. You are guilty. You are guilty and you're gonna be condemned. You're gonna be thrown into the slammer, right, for all of eternity. But God takes off his judge's robe and he steps down and he stands in your place behind that table or in the dock as it used to be called. And God says to you that he will take upon himself your punishment, your condemnation. and that you can literally sit in the judge's seat and be justified, declared to be righteous. All of your crimes, all of your sins are forgiven, they are wiped away, and that you get to stand in the place of the judge as if you were righteous and perfect and just like the judge. That's what justification is. God wipes away your sins and he gives to you, what? He gives you a gift. the gift of righteousness. Whose? Jesus' righteousness. God gives sinners like you and me the gift of righteousness so that we can stand before God who is righteous, before God who is our judge, before God who's holy, holy, holy, and he can't even look upon sin, but then he looks upon us as we're clothed in Jesus and he says to you that you are my child. Well done, well done, good and faithful servant. So how does that justification where God by his amazing grace says to you that you are sinless and that you are acceptable to him, how does that go together with this idea that in the end there's gonna be a final judgment? Does God tell us that we are forgiven in this life? And then on the last day, he's going to resurrect our bodies and he's going to put us back in the same place, back in the defendant's chair? So there's two non-negotiables here in Romans. On the one hand, justification by faith alone apart from works. Justification by faith alone apart from works. And again, justification is that courtroom verdict. Your works are not the reason why you're justified. Christ's are. That's the first thing that Paul says here. Justification by faith alone is apart from works. Secondly, final judgment is, notice the key term here, according. According to works. We'll come back to that. But these two things go together. Justification and judgment. Now the danger for us as Christians, as those who love our Bibles and we love the gospel, the danger is that if we only hold on to the idea that we are justified by faith alone. We might become, we can become somewhat complacent and casual about living a life of godliness and turning away from our sins. It just can't, it can be that way. This is what Paul is going to go on to say in chapter 5 and 6. Should we sin that grace should abound, right? Well I'm justified, should I go on sinning that I get more grace? So one of the dangers for us is that we can sort of overplay our hand of cards, and we only say that we are justified by faith alone. On the other hand, if we only say that there's going to be a final judgment according to works, it can make us feel despair. And we can maybe even become self-righteous and pretend that we are somehow going to earn our justification. But you need both justification and judgment to be a healthy Christian. The question is how. The question is how, and so here's our big idea this morning. The God who justifies the ungodly by faith alone will judge the world according to works. Not as the price of eternal life, but as the proof of faith. So the God who justifies the ungodly by faith alone will judge the world according to works. That's what Paul has been telling us. Not, though, not as the price of eternal life. That judgment is not the price you pay to get in. It's the proof. It's the proof of faith. So first of all, notice the rule of judgment here. According to works, as he says, or no partiality. These are, as I mentioned last Sunday, two bookends to our paragraph. Verse 6, he will render to each one according to his works. Verse 11, God shows no partiality. And so it's important as we read our Bibles to recognize that the context in which words appear isn't just key, but it's the king. Context is king when it comes to interpreting what seem to be contradictory verses. That I'm justified by faith alone in Christ, yet there's a final judgment. What's Paul doing here? Again, chapter 2, he's leveling the playing field. He's especially telling idolatrous and immoral Gentiles and outwardly religious hypocritical Jews that they all stand together. This is not the Olympics. that we're gonna be able to go, I think we're gonna be able to go see in 2028 in Los Angeles, if they can get their act together, right? We can go actually see the Olympics. This is not gonna be the Olympics where there's a first place person on the top step, and there's a second place just a little bit lower, and the third place, you know, the hapless bronze, right? Just a little bit lower. Everybody else, like, everybody else in the bottom. There's no levels here. There's no gold, silver, bronze, and then sort of, you know, a consolation prize after that. He's leveling the playing field. Everybody stands in the same level. Whether you are a Gentile who worships idols and engages in all kinds of immorality as chapter one described, or you are a Jew that has all the privileges of God's blessings in his Old Testament, the covenants, the sacrifices, the law, and so forth. Everyone's on the same level. Everyone. That's what he's doing here. He's leveling the playing field. Everyone is going to be weighted in the same balance in the end. So this puts a spotlight on the heart. This puts a spotlight even on our hearts. That we have to ask ourselves, we read a verse like this and a series of verses like this, where do I secretly feel like I can get a pass on that final day? My upbringing, my doctrine, my ministry, right? Now look what I did for God. Paul says there's no partiality. No partiality. Now John Calvin commented on verse 6. that he's gonna render to each one according to his works. Quote, it's not as difficult as it is generally assumed because the scriptures again are teaching two complementary truths. God repays the wicked what their works deserve. God repays the wicked what their works deserve. God rewards the righteous, notice the language though, according to their works. The difference is the repayment of the wicked for their wickedness is sort of a one-to-one correspondence. It's justice. They deserve what they have coming to them. On the other hand, the reward of the righteous isn't a matter of merit, isn't a matter of justice. In fact, notice you might no doubt just read over this, but look at how he describes verse seven, to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory, honor, immortality, he will give. The language of giving in the Bible is gift language. It's gracious language. He will give eternal life. But, verse 8, for those who are self-seeking, who don't obey the truth, who obey unrighteousness, notice he doesn't say he's going to give them, it's just that this is the way it is. There will be wrath, fury, tribulation, distress. But, for the one who seeks after glory, honor, and so forth, who does good, right, it's he gives. He gives. It's the language of gift here. So, on the one hand, there's a repayment to the wicked according to justice. On the other hand, there's reward to the righteous according to their works. But it is a gift of God's grace, not a matter of merit. Let me put it this way. What God is going to reward on that final day is what His Spirit has produced in you as a justified sinner. As St. Augustine said, when God gifts us in the end, He rewards us in the end. He's putting a crown on His very own works. That the Spirit of God has been transforming us from the inside out. He's pre-planned the good works for us to even walk after Ephesians 2.10. And as we do that in obedience to God, on the last day, it's as if God puts a crown on His very own gifts. He graces upon His own grace. Lord, I've only done what I've been commanded to do. Right? Jesus gives that parable. We have no merit before God. There's nothing that we can say to God. This is a matter of strict justice. You know, I did that. I should get that. No, it's a matter of free and mere grace. And so everyone is going to go to that scanner, as it were. God's scanner is perfectly calibrated. God can't be bribed, God can't be manipulated, God cannot be fooled. Everyone is gonna stand before the very same judge on the last day. And that means that your background, my background, won't save you. Not your Christian family, not your theology, as good as it might be, not your church membership. The scanner, as it were, that God asks for doesn't ask for a resume. It just shows what is already there. Notice, secondly, the result of this judgment. There are two outcomes. It's life or wrath. And as a trained rabbi, the apostle knew the Old Testament, that it says, God repays each one. God searches the heart. God will render to each one according to his works. I mentioned that last Sunday, some of these Old Testament passages where that comes from, Psalm 62, for example. And Jesus reinforced this very same truth. When I return, he said, the Son of Man will repay each person according to what he's done. This is just blanket, old Jesus and apostolic, biblical faith. Here's the point of what they're all saying. Future judgment isn't hypothetical, it's certain. Every one of us has been subpoenaed already to appear before the judge. His eyes miss nothing. And if he knew that your court date was coming this week, what would he be scrambling to fix, right? He's again, he's saying this to hypocrites. If you got that subpoena that summons this week in the mail, what would you be afraid was going to show up in the evidence file? He's wanting hearers to divest themselves of any merits, of any works, and if you are hypocritical, to be afraid of this and to return to the Lord. That's why he's saying this. And that's why it was so horrific for the self-assured Jew in Romans 2. There are no exemptions based on their heritage, no passes from mere outward religion. Again, human courts can be biased and bribed. Gods can't. He's the God who shows no partiality, who takes no bribes, the Old Testament says. And the day of wrath is going to reveal what human beings have tried to conceal. Yet God weighs every life based upon one rule, righteousness. not reputation. And so Paul describes here, just to go back to those verses, Paul describes here how the judge is going to deliver a sentence to two different groups. Those who are patient in doing good, who seek God's glory, who seek God's honor, who seek God's immortality, they are going to be given graciously, they're going to receive eternal life. We have it already in Jesus Christ, we trust him now. We have now everlasting life. But this means the actual enjoyment of it, the fulfillment of it, the reality of it, the fullness of it. We have it now through a glass dimly, but this is to see it and to hold it. No longer by faith, but by sight. On the other hand, those who are self-seeking, notice the contrast, those who seek God, those who seek self. Those who obey unrighteousness, they're going to receive, they're just going to be the way it is in accordance with justice, wrath, fury, tribulation, distress. That's the result. That's the result. Now, this is describing two paths of life. There's two endpoints, life and wrath. that are the results of two paths of life, those who seek God, those who seek self. And those paths of life that people walk upon are the results of and the manifestation of what's in their hearts. And so that's what he's saying here. These are two paths of life that flow from the heart. One that leads to reward, one that leads to retribution. One to life, one to wrath. One to peace, one to anguish. Now, some read these verses as just hypothetical. Just hypothetical. If, you know, Paul is saying here, if, hypothetically speaking, if you could persist in doing good, then you would receive eternal life. But we know, wink wink, that this isn't really what Paul is saying because the whole context of chapter 1, 2, and 3 is that there's none righteous, there's none who seeks God, there's none who does good. And so, some read this in a hypothetical way. This is a hypothetical standard that no one can reach. And that's Paul's point, right? There's a grain of truth to that. Yes, it is true. That if you could persist in doing good, as Adam was supposed to, you would reap everlasting life. And of course we know that no one can do that. Of course we know that. But I think what Paul is saying is more than that. This is a real description of real believers and real unbelievers. These verses, especially verse 7 and verse 10, are describing what the Holy Spirit has actually produced in a justified believer's heart as you and I walk by faith. And that's why he says the final judgment is rendered according to not on account of or by. There's different prepositions that can be used. And Paul uses the one that corresponds with saying this is according to. The judgment is according to works. It's not on the basis, it's not on account of, it's not by the means of works. In the same sense that we are justified on account of or by means of the works of Christ. We are justified in a different way than the final judgment is going to be rendered. That's what Paul is saying. Now whether Paul says the law is impossible, or whether he's describing here the Holy Spirit's real fruit, or in some way both of these are true, the message is the same though, really. Works cannot earn eternal life, but they will be taken into account on the last day. We are justified by faith alone, apart from works, And we will be judged according to the works that reveal our faith. So here's how, then, justification by faith alone and judgment according to works fit. So don't forget, justification on account of Christ works, right? That is done. On account of Christ works, 100%, faith alone, I am justified already and I always will be. On the other hand, he describes here a judgment according to according to works. I mentioned last Sunday this, that when we read these verses we can go away and we can take away from them that first the law is showing us here the unrealizable condition for salvation apart from grace, apart from the grace of Jesus Christ. Apart from Christ, it is true, no one is patient in well-doing and seeking for glory, honor, and immortality. No one. We know this. We know this. And so, in a sense, Romans 2 is revealing the law's perfection and our failures. Secondly, I said last Sunday, just to remind us of this, the gospel does reveal a righteousness from God that you don't have. And that's what we looked at in chapter 1, verses 16 and 17. Saving righteousness comes from God, not you, amen? Comes from God, not you. It's grounded, it's based upon, its foundation is completely Jesus Christ obedience, not yours, amen? Okay? And when you receive Christ by faith alone, apart from any works, you are justified, you are declared righteous, you are declared acceptable to God. Amen? Right? That's the gospel. That's the gospel. And so justification is God's declaring sinners righteous on the basis of Christ's work, not ours. But there's also something else that I wanted to remind us of again this week. There's something more about the gospel than merely or just justification. The gospel also renews us. The grace of God also renews us in righteousness. In other words, when you are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, you are joined to Jesus. You belong to him. And then He, with the power of the Holy Spirit, begins to transform your life. You undergo a metamorphosis from one degree of glory to another. From one step of faith to another. and you are empowered by the Holy Spirit, who then begins to, in your heart, from the inside out, your thoughts, your words, and your deeds, to produce in you the fruits of new obedience, seeking God's glory, not my own. That's one of the hallmarks of a Christian. I seek God's glory, not mine. I seek Him to be honored in all that I do, not myself. We just sang that wonderful hymn, that it's not in the things that we've done. I should have it memorized. I love that song. Where'd it go? Here we go. My worth is not in skill or name, in win or lose, in pride or shame, but in the blood of Christ that flowed at the cross. So the Spirit filled life is a life that seeks the glory of God. It seeks the honor of God. And notice it seeks immortality. Why does he say that? Because only God is immortal. Only God is immortal. He grants to us, the Bible says, He grants to our souls and our bodies that are bounded by time and space and all the things that it means to be a creature. He grants to us graciously immortality to share unending life. And so a Christian is seeking not life in his or herself, that's what Paul's saying, but in God, right? These are like basic ABCs, one, two, threes of the Christian life. I seek God, not myself. But always remember that Romans 2, verse seven, this is not describing, you know, moral heroics, but a spirit created life in you, a justified sinner. This doesn't mean a flawless life, right? You are gonna seek the glory of God, the honor of God, and His immortality, His life. You're gonna seek it for a moment, and you're gonna seek yourself for a moment. You might have a mountaintop experience as a Christian. You're gonna come down the mountain at some point, don't you? You might have this great spiritual high. You know, I've reached this next level. You're gonna come crashing down at some point. At some point you're up on your feet and you're in absolute wonder and awe of the gospel. Other times you're crawling on your face, hands and knees. This doesn't mean a flawless life. but real change in the direction of all the things that make God who He is. You are going to stumble and fall, but what Paul is saying is that the trajectory of your life is toward God, His glory, His honor, His life, not away from it, towards it. Now again, for those of us believers, this is not meant to cause us to live in fear. Some of us might live in fear. If you live in fear today, I'm here to free you from that fear. God is here to free you from that fear. Will I have enough good works in the final day? Were my works good enough? Did I really, really, really do enough good works? Did I really believe? This text, beloved, you who trust in Jesus, you love the Lord, You want to serve Him. And you see flaws, you see failure, you see nothing but a life that feels futile at times. The Gospel is meant to free you. Jesus wants to free you. This passage is not meant to point you, believer, inward to begin to do inventory to count up your good works. This is meant to drive you outside of yourself to Christ. Again, he's writing to Jews who are hypocrites. They were trusting in their works, their outward religion, their works' righteousness, their ethnicity, their kosher laws that made them different from Gentiles, their Sabbath laws, different from the Romans. They were trusting all this outward stuff, but it wasn't leading them to repentance. He's writing to them. And for them, they should fear, fear that those outward good works are not going to stand in the last day. Trust the Lord. For us who are believers, though, Again, this is not my job and your job today is not to go home, spiritually speaking, and to go into your backyard and look at your fruit tree and pull the fruit off and inspect the fruits. Almost all of you have been in my backyard how many more times than I can remember and you know that I'm not a very good fruit tree guy. Okay, we bring the tangerines to church every once in a while, we fill up a bag, we bring them to the snack table, and they're terrible. They're terrible. Pastor Danny has the worst tangerines. I don't know how much water to give them, I don't know how to cut them right, I don't know how to put in a fertilizer, if you're supposed to even do that. I have no idea. I just know that it's a nice green tree that makes cool orange-looking color fruit, and sometimes they might taste good. Tangelo tree next to that, don't even touch those things. Pomegranate tree? Maybe once in a while I'll get one pomegranate. I mean, I'm a terrible, terrible farmer. The job of this passage is not to inspect your fruit, beloved believers, Christians, those of you who love the Lord Jesus Christ. This is meant to point us out, out of ourselves. that Jesus alone and how his grace has already changed us and is going to continue to transform us. And so amazing by his grace of the last days that he gave us everlasting life. Right? That's the gospel. And so in summary, justification is by faith alone on account of Christ's obedience alone. The final judgment is according to works. Works are not the price of eternal life. Again, they are the proof that you have eternal life. Works are not the entrance into God's acceptance, but the evidence that you already belong to Him. And the final judgment will correspond to the reality of your hearts. Those who sought themselves, that's going to be revealed. And those whose hearts were changed into seeking God, ever so little, that's going to be revealed. And they will be given graciously everlasting life. time's getting away, but our Roman Catholic friends, our Roman Catholic friends like to point us oftentimes to James 2, as if we've never read that passage in our Bibles. James and Paul agree. James 2, Romans 2, they agree. James actually helps us, not a hindrance to us. In James 2, I'll just summarize it for you, I encourage you to read James 2 this afternoon, read it along with Romans 2. James' point is not that works compete with faith, but that our works complete our faith by showing that our faith is alive. And to say that we are, the language of justification, justification can have a twofold sense. Paul especially means it to be the gracious granting or imputing of Christ's righteousness to us. And God declaring me on the basis of what Christ has done, that I am righteous. And in James, justification, as he uses that language, means the manifestation of righteous living before men. Paul speaks of it as justification before God. James speaks of it as justification before men. We declare our faith before our fellow human beings by our works. That's all we can see. Only God can see the heart. We can only see the outward. Calvin, in fact, says in James 2, verse 23, man is not justified by faith alone. What does he mean by that? That is by a bare and empty knowledge of God. That's what James is arguing against. People who said, I believe. And James is like, the demons believe in God too. Show me your faith. Don't just say it. That's what James is doing. Calvin says that a man is justified by works, that is, his righteousness is known and proved by its fruit. That's exactly what Romans 2 is doing. Paul says that we're justified before God on account of Christ, received by faith. James, along with Paul in Romans 2, emphasizes that we're justified or declared righteous before men in this life as it is demonstrated by our works. and the life to come when God judges us according to works that reveal that we were truly justified in the first place. And so when it comes to justification before God, Paul is answering a different question than James. Paul's asking on what basis and by what way is a sinner justified before God? On what basis? Christ. By what way? Faith. James and Paul here as well, and Paul and Galatians as well, Paul and James are asking, well, what kind of faith actually justifies? And the answer is not a dead faith, not a fruitless faith, but a living, fruitful faith. Faith apart from works is dead. Christ's works justify sinners, beloved. Our works justify our faith. They demonstrate, they declare, they vindicate our faith. I mentioned last Sunday, just for you to know this, but our own confession says this, our own catechism says this. It's impossible for justifying faith to be unfruitful. Our catechism says that justification by faith alone does not make us indifferent and wicked. It is impossible for those grafted into Christ, those who are joined to Christ, to Jesus. It's impossible by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude. If you call yourself a Christian, this is what Paul's doing in Romans 2, if you call yourself a believer, but there's no fruit, no repentance, no growth, The problem isn't that you're missing a few good works, a few more pieces of fruit on your tree. The problem may be that you're missing Christ himself. That's what Paul's doing here. If you want to go fruit inspecting, the problem isn't the fruit, the problem is the root. Do you have Christ? If you have Christ, then you have what you need. Works are then necessary as the natural fruit that accompany our faith in this life and that will be evident and manifested openly before God and man on the last day. And so Romans 2, beloved, Romans 2, these verses here, especially verses 6 through 11, we read them as believers, as Christians, and they should completely strip us of any and all self-reliance. Romans 2 strips us completely of self-reliance. Now if God judges according to works, and I by nature am self-seeking, that means Romans 2 should take you and I back to Romans 1. You cannot produce works that can stand up in the court of God's justice on your own. Only Christ's works will stand. At the cross, children, the judge stepped down from the bench, and stood in the dock, he stood in the place of the accused. And the verdict that you deserved became his. The verdict that you deserved became his. So that the verdict he deserves could be yours. When you trust in Jesus, You're not only justified, but the Spirit of God unites you to Jesus and gives you his life, a new heart. The Spirit of God begins to reshape your entire life so that slowly but surely, you begin to seek the things that Paul lists here. Again, glory, honor, immortality. And on the last day, your works aren't going to save you, but they're going to say He, she, you belonged to Christ. One day you and I are gonna walk through that divine scanner. Everything's going to be revealed. But here's the amazing thing, to use the illustration. The alarm won't sound. Not because you're empty of sin, but because you're full of Christ. Only His righteousness and only those clothed in His righteousness can pass the scan without alarm. Beloved, by faith alone, that righteousness of Jesus is already yours. That righteousness of Jesus is already yours and it will always be yours. And on that last day, your works won't purchase your salvation, they'll prove. that Christ's life was already in you from the beginning of a new birth all the way to the end. Amen? Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we ask now that you would write your words upon our hearts, that we would not sin against you, but that we would love you and serve you and honor you and glorify you with all that we are and do. Lord, if anyone does not know Jesus, I pray that you would use the harshness of your word to bring them to a realization of their need of who Jesus is for them. For any who might be hypocrites, faking it, pretending, Lord, stir up them as well. May the words be harsh, horrendous even, Lord, but to wake them up. And for those of us who believe, Lord, give us confidence that we belong to Jesus. Give us more and more desire to love you, to serve you, to honor you, to glorify you, to live lives of good deeds, to bring you glory, and also, Lord, to win others to Jesus Christ, even through our good works, because they testify of you, the one who gives life. Help us now, we pray, as we come to the table of the Lord to receive this gift of God for our souls that we would know Be assured and be confident in Jesus, the one who is our life giver. And we ask it all in his wonderful name and all of God's people say, Amen. Let's respond together to the word by singing 343.