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I've really enjoyed studying
the book that Alan Nelson wrote, From Death to Life, How Salvation
Works. And I've heard from you on how
you've enjoyed this study, and I'm thankful that hearing the
reports of how you've grown in such an important matter as salvation. And we as Church members, those
of us who identify ourselves with Christ, do so on the basis
of salvation. And so therefore, it's very important
that we know how salvation works. And there is a great need in
our churches to have this knowledge and to teach Bible doctrines. And really that's what we'll
be looking at this evening. And chapter 6 is where we were
going to be at if you were able to read that chapter this week. Chapter 6 is entitled The Great
Exchange. We're going to be looking at
namely two points of salvation. One will be looking at justification,
what that means, and then also imputation, which is, as we're
going to talk about, the great exchange. And this will be a
rather brief study tonight due to the phone call and conversation
with Dan Rogers momentarily. If you have a Bible, if you would
take your Bible and turn with me to Romans chapter 3 and verse
27. Romans chapter 3 and verse 27.
And we're going to be looking at, as I said, two Bible doctrines
that he mentions in chapter six. The first one is justification.
What is justification and what does it mean to be justified? Well, Romans chapter three and
verse 27, he says, where is boasting then? It is excluded by what law? Of works? No, but by the law
of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a
man is justified by faith apart from the deeds or the works of
the law. Really, a quick definition of
justification is that it is a legal declaration by God. Justification is a legal declaration
by God. And that is when someone responds
to God's call to repentance and faith, God responds to that faith
by thinking of that person's sins as forgiven and by thinking
of Christ's righteousness as belonging to that person. And at the very moment At that
very moment, God also declares that person to be righteous in
His sight. So this is called justification. We talked about a couple weeks
ago this thing of regeneration. And regeneration is really another
word for that is the new birth, where a new believer becomes new creatures
in Jesus Christ and how the Holy Spirit comes to the sinner and
he quickens the dead spirit And therefore the sinner then is
able to respond to God in repentance and faith toward God and faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember last week we talked
about that we cannot free ourselves out of sin's prison, right? We
are in bondage. Spiritually speaking, we're dead
in trespasses and sins, and we cannot free ourselves. If we
could, it would be a salvation by works. And so regeneration
is that where the Holy Spirit frees us. He removes that dead
spirit. He quickens our spirit and makes
us alive toward God. And that is solely a work of
God. Well, and that brings us to justification. Justification is an instantaneous
legal act of God in which He, first of all, thinks of our sins
as forgiven and thinks of Christ's righteousness as belonging to
us and therefore declares us to be just or morally righteous
in His sight. Paul is very clear that this
justification comes after we respond to the gospel call in
faith, and that justification is God's response to our faith. We see this in Galatians chapter
2 and verse 16. He says, Paul says, we know that
a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through
what? Faith in Jesus Christ. That's
as simple and as plain as you can get it. We are not justified
by works. We are justified by faith in
Jesus Christ. That is just one scripture that
Paul gives that I'm reading, but there are others that I could
take the time and show you where that same principle is seen many
times in the New Testament. But the righteousness that is
imputed to our account, as R.C. Sproul put it, the righteousness
that is imputed to our account is an alien righteousness. That is, it is wholly something
outside of ourselves. We are not justified based on
the good works that we do, but on the good works that Jesus
Christ has done. And so now we're looking at this
thing of not only justification, but how this justification works
is the thing that is called the great exchange, this imputation. And really it is the double imputation
that we're talking about. And we see this in second Corinthians
chapter five and verse 21, second Corinthians chapter five or 21. Paul says, for he made him who
knew no sin, that is Christ who knew no sin, to be sin for us,
that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And so that's a powerful verse,
2 Corinthians 5, 21, for he made him, Christ, who knew no sin,
to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God
in him. Now, in a legal and in a positional
sense, we are righteous once we are justified, because when
God looks at us, he sees the perfect righteousness of Christ. But this righteousness is not
something that we have within ourselves or something that we
do, and it's very important that we get that. The righteousness
that we have is not something that we have within ourselves.
It is a declared righteousness. And that is why at the time,
in more, that is why at the same time, in more of a human sense,
we are still sinners. We're still in the flesh. We
still sin. However, we are no longer legally
subject to the punishment due our sin. And again, R.C. Sproul says, nonetheless, sin
is still present in us until we are glorified. Now our spirit
is saved at the moment of regeneration and justification, but guess
what is not saved yet? You know it, our flesh, right? Our flesh is not yet saved. The
flesh will not be saved until our glorification. when the Lord
gives us a new body, a body that will not be touched by sin and
touched by infirmities and all of those things. But God can view us as righteous
in Christ because of what? Because of imputation. Imputation
means to credit or count something toward an account. And it's really
seen in Romans chapter 4 and verse 5 where it tells us that
when we put our faith in Christ, we are counted as righteous. So that is the perfect righteousness
earned by Jesus is then imputed to us. In turn, our sins are
imputed to Jesus who made satisfaction for them by bearing the wrath
of God against His people on the cross. God's law tells us
that we can never be good enough to be righteous in His sight. All of our works are as what?
Filthy rags. Every good deed that we could
ever do, if somehow, someway we could pile those good deeds
up and at the end of our life put all those good deeds before
Jesus Christ, to Him still it would be as filthy rags. We need
the righteousness of God to clothe us. And so the gospel tells us
that Christ is perfectly righteous and that by faith alone His righteousness
is credited to us. And here's the thing, that is
the good news of the gospel, isn't it? that we who by no means,
no way could ever earn God's favor have been freely granted
this on the basis of Christ's work alone. I tell you, that
right there, when we think about all those, the precious gift
of salvation, we ought to take time and spend some time praising
God for His unspeakable gift. And remember that if you truly
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has imputed His righteousness
to you. And so that's the basis of chapter
number six, where it talks about this thing of justification and
then imputation, the great exchange, and where Christ's righteousness
is applied to our account Our sins were applied to Christ's
account, which he was the satisfactory atonement for our sin. Now, next week, we'll be looking
at Chapter 7. And that is the next thing in
our salvation experience, that there is the regeneration, the
new birth, the justification, But it doesn't stop there, does
it? It stops, or it continues, with sanctification. That is,
we're growing in Christ. Every day, the Lord, our Heavenly
Father, is molding us into the image of His dear Son, and that's
the process of sanctification. So, next week, chapter 7 living
things grow and if you are alive in Christ you're going to have
growth in the Lord Jesus Christ and so I encourage you to read
that and next week we'll be looking at that in greater detail than
what we were able to do today. At this time I'm going to take
some prayer requests and
The Great Exchange
Series The Doctrine of Salvation
From Allen's Nelson's book "From Death to Life"
| Sermon ID | 12819121412288 |
| Duration | 13:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Romans 3:27 |
| Language | English |
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