I was on a flight to El Paso from Los Angeles and flying down to do a conference with men in the El Paso Civic Center. And I was on the plane and I was just sitting there, as I often do when I travel, with my Bible open and writing some notes about what I was going to be speaking on, and there was a guy sitting next to me who was obviously Arabic. And, you know, you're kind of squished in on this little 737. He was looking at me and kept looking at me and finally got up enough courage, said, Sir, may I ask you a question? And I said, sure. He said, is that a Bible? And I said, it is a Bible. He said, oh, he said, I'm new in America. He said, I'm from Iran. And he said, in Iran, everybody is Muslim. But he said over here, I don't understand American religion. May I ask you a question? And I said, sure. And this was his question, verbatim, Can you please tell me the difference between a Catholic, a Protestant and a Baptist? I don't know why it fell out that way. So I did. I said, Sure, I can tell you the difference. And I went through the sort of a little abbreviated history of the Catholic Church and the Reformation and how the issue of salvation by grace through faith alone, through Christ alone, and talked about that in sola scriptura, in terms you can understand. And I said, you know, Protestants protested against ceremonial external mechanical religion and a surrogate Christ, namely the church. And I went through some of that. And I said, that does belong to that Protestant group. And they tend to be a kind of a biblical and they love the Bible and they want their Christianity to be practical in life. And I just explained all of that. And I said, Now that you've asked me a question, can I ask you a question? He said, Sure. You're Muslim, do Muslims have sins? And of course I know they do. I said, do Muslims have sins? He says, oh, we have many, many sins. He says, we have so many sins, I don't even know all the sins. I said, well, could I ask you another question? He said, sure. I said, do you commit those sins? Do you do them? All the time I do them. He says, in fact, to be honest, I'm flying to El Paso to do some sins. I said, you are? He said, yes. I said, well, what kind of sins are you going to do while you're there? He said, well, he said, I was immigrating and I met this girl. They immigrate through El Paso, people coming from all around the world. It's a big immigration center. And I met this girl and I'm going and we will sin. It's pretty honest guy, right? He doesn't even know me. He's giving me the whole deal here. And I said, well, I want to ask you another question. How does God feel about your sins? Oh, it's very bad, he said. It's very bad. I said, what do you mean it's bad? It's very bad. God is very unhappy with my sins. And that's, of course, his perspective on Allah. And I said, well, what could happen to you? I could be in some big trouble. I said, really? What kind of big trouble? I said, like, maybe going to hell forever? Because Muslims have hell, too. He said, yeah. I said, but you're going to go anyway and do this? Yeah. I said, You're in some real difficulty here. I said, Do you have any hope? Do you have any hope at all? He said, I hope the God will forgive me. I said, On the basis of what? Why would he forgive you? What's so special about you? I don't know. I said, is there anything in Islam that indicates there is salvation for people who willfully sin like you? He said, no, I just hope that God will forgive me. Then I said something I didn't really understand how it would affect him because it's so common to us. I said, well, I know him personally and he won't. The guy was absolutely shocked. First thing he said to me is you know the God personally like what are you doing in coach? On Southwest in the middle seat Come on, you know God personally. What are you talking about? The whole idea of knowing God personally is absolutely bizarre to a Muslim. I said, I know I'm personally won't forgive you He won't forgive you You'll die in your sins and you'll perish forever in eternal judgment He got very sober and I said, You want to hear the answer to your problem? I'm here to tell you that there's a way in which all your sins can be forgiven forever. And I had a willing audience and I unfolded the significance of Jesus Christ and the complete forgiveness of sin that Christ offers. He was shocked. He said, For the first time, I understand the meaning of Christianity. I sent him a bunch of tapes and sent him to a good church, and I haven't heard from him. I just committed him to the Lord. But I've learned as I've traveled around that, you know, if you're sitting on an airplane next to somebody and they ask you what you do and you say you're a preacher, the only thing they can think of that's worse is sitting next to some kind of salesman. I've actually had people bolt and never return to that seat, and I had that happen on a flight from New York, a guy to stay away five hours. So I've learned not to say that I'm a preacher. I just say, I have a wonderful job. I go around, tell people God will forgive all their sins. Are you interested? That's cutting to the chase. You immediately get right where Jesus got with the rich young ruler. This is all about sin and forgiveness. Does that interest you? Or would you rather just bury your sins and die and perish eternally in hell for your own sins? Or are you interested in forgiveness that cuts right to the issue? The issue of the gospel and the issue of repentance and whether or not the Holy Spirit has plowed the heart or not, and whether or not the Holy Spirit is convicting of sin. Now, the Bible makes it clear that all people are sinners by nature and by action. They are sinners by birth, born alienated from a holy God, and they live out their lives as a result of that innate sinfulness in such a way that produces in them no good thing ever and nothing that pleases God for which they pay eternally in hell. The most deadly virus on the planet is not the HIV virus, it's the SIN virus. The HIV virus kills everyone it infects, so does the SIN virus. There is no cure, however, for the HIV virus, but there is a cure for the SIN virus. And God himself has provided the cure. You say, we all know this. Well, I know we know this, but I want us to know it so well we can give it to somebody else with complete clarity and understanding. And one of the fears I have is that our churches are filled with people who have a minimal understanding of the gospel, but it's not sufficient enough for them to be clear and penetrating in how they present it to someone else. So I want to help you with that. Open your Bible to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Now, if you're going to spend the rest of your life telling people that God will forgive all their sins, you need to know how to approach that, right? Because that's why you're here. God left you here to do this work. 2 Corinthians 5, and I want to just read from verse 18 to 21. Now, all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were entreating through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him." The good news is there is a cure for the SIN virus. Everybody has it. And we're given the responsibility to disseminate the cure. That's what we do. That's why we're here. Folks, that's the only reason you're here at all. If we had been saved purely for fellowship with God, we might as well go to heaven because the fellowship here isn't what it ought to be. If we were saved purely for fellowship with each other, we might as well go to heaven where it's imperfect here. If we were saved to have triumph over sin, we might as well go to heaven because the triumph here is severely checkered, isn't it? And we all live in Romans 7 somewhere. and wanting to do what we don't do and not wanting to do what we find ourselves doing. We're here because there's one thing we can do here we can't do in heaven, and that's the ministry of reconciliation. Five times in the verses I read you, the term reconciliation is used in one way or another. And that term defines the heart and soul of our responsibility as believers in the world. You know, Christianity can get very complex. Your Christian life can get very complex. Your Christian calendar can get very complex. And so, if I might, I'd like to simplify everything and pull it down to the irreducible minimum of what it is that you're all about and I'm all about as Christians. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation. It is simply this. Our duty is to tell people they can be reconciled to God. That's what we do. Our mission is to preach the fact that God will forgive all someone's sins forever. that the relationship of hostility and hatred and enmity and bitterness and alienation from God can be totally changed, that enemies can become friends, aliens can become sons. That is the good news. The good news is not that God will fix your marriage. The good news is not that God will make your life happier, or that he'll make you prosperous, or that he'll make you successful, or that he'll bump you up a few notches on the comfort level. The good news is that alienation from a holy God, which carries the price of eternal damnation, can end. And you can be reconciled with God and enjoy his glorious heaven forever, all your sin having been dealt with. Our high calling and our high privilege is simply to tell people, God will forgive all your sins forever, are you interested? This is what we live for, this is what we preach for, this is what we teach for, that people might be reconciled to God. Literally, it says in verse 18, he gave us, actually it says he placed in us the ministry of reconciliation. Then you will notice at the end of verse nineteen, he has committed to us the word or the message of reconciliation. We have the obligation and we have the content. We have the ministry and we have the message. The word word here is Lagos indicates what is true and trustworthy, as opposed to mythos, which was the Greek word for myths and lies and deceptions and fictitious and spurious things. We have the logos in the midst of all the mythos. We live to announce that God can be reconciled to sinners, that enmity between hopeless, wicked people and a holy God can end. And from our viewpoint, the relation certainly seems irreconcilable and hell seems irreversible. But from God's standpoint, it is not. There is a way to be reconciled to God. And beloved as Christians, we better understand in a crystal clear manner exactly what that is all about. And I'm afraid we don't. And you know why I'm afraid we don't, because there is utter chaos at the very point of the gospel throughout Christendom today, from the grassroots level to the level of discussions going on among theologians. And I've been in those discussions. I sat locked up in a room in Florida for seven hours with some of the most prominent evangelicals in this nation. Men like Chuck Colson and men like Bill Bright and people like J.I. Packer, who sat next to me for seven hours in that locked-up room, and other very prominent men, John Woodbridge, church historian at Trinity, many men. R.C. Sproul was there, Michael Horton was there, and for seven hours we were embroiled in an irreconcilable discussion about the gospel and could not come to agreement on it, on what it was. that was essential for salvation. What is the essential content of the gospel, which a person must believe to be saved? And if they don't believe it, they can't be saved. And there was no consensus as to the answer to that question. Now you're talking about you're talking about some pretty highbrow people. I get involved in this all the time. I've been involved in it again recently when a new document came out called The Gift of Salvation, in which ten Roman Catholics and ten evangelicals take a second run at ECT, the Evangelicals Catholics Together document, and they come up with another document that again shows the utter confusion of what this message is all about. How in the world can we do the ministry of reconciliation if we're not sure what the message is? It filters all the way down to the grassroots, of course, and if the people who are supposed to be in leadership don't know what the gospel is, how in the world are we supposed to know? If I ask you the question, what must a person believe to be saved, what's the answer? Do you really understand what it is? Do you know what's the irreducible minimum? Do you know what really is the gospel? Do you understand what we're telling people? I spent recently a full day with the two leaders of the Mormon theology. The chairman of the Theology Department of BYU and the associate chairman, the two Mormon gatekeepers of theology. The Mormon Church has seven presidents that are actually like seven apostles. They make all the doctrinal decisions. If it's not in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price of the Book of Mormon, and they came, these two men came to spend a day with me under the authority and commission of the seven presidents of the Mormon Church to talk theology. We sat in the room and they told me they believe in salvation by grace and salvation through faith and salvation in Christ. And they wanted to affirm the things we have in common. Now, there are some people who would say, Wow, must be revival in the Mormon Church. We got done with hours and hours of discussion, very gracious men and very compelled. In fact, they've been reading through. They read through all four volumes of my commentary on Matthew, and they're going to both volumes on Romans, and they read the gospel according to Jesus' faith works, the sufficiency of Christ. All these books I've written, and they're drawn to me because they never really understood the Bible like that. And they came because they wanted to know me personally and ask questions. And they said, We want to affirm salvation by grace alone. We want to affirm salvation by faith. We want to affirm salvation is in Christ. I heard that at a very prominent seminary you know very well, a very evangelical seminary. Two faculty members have just put up on their web page, and it's there for you all to see, that we should all be invited to embrace the Mormons now. I said, I want to ask you three questions at the end of the day in a gracious way. I said, tell me about your God, and they gave me a God who didn't have three persons. They're Unitarians, so I said, well, let's just, whatever it is we want to talk about regarding grace, faith, and Christ. Let's just get it straight. We have a different God. I said, Tell me your Christology. They said Jesus is created by God. He's a high order of created beings. I said, Then let's make this clear. We have a different Christ. And if anybody comes and preaches a different Christ, he's cursed. And I said, If I wanted to get to the highest heaven, what would I need to do? They said you would need to join the Mormon church. You would need to evidence, certain obediences, you would need to be baptized with a certain kind of spirit endowed baptism in the system. I said, Let me get this clear. We have a different gospel. Apart from those, we agree. There's a book out. I don't know if you've read it. You may have seen it, John, called Ecumenical Jihad. Write it down. You need to read it. It's a short little book. I'm always giving him assignments. Ecumenical Jihad, I just want to tell you what the book's about. It's very brief, and just to illustrate the issue here. Ecumenical Jihad is a book written by Peter Kreeft. Some of you recognize the name. He's a Catholic apologist, teaches at Boston College, Catholic Bastion up there in Boston. Peter is a very articulate writer and a very bright guy. Ecumenical Jihad, interesting name, is that Jihad is a holy war in Islam. Ecumenical is what you think it is. Everybody get together. So everybody has to get together to fight the holy war. Now, the thesis of the book is that there's a holy war going on in our society, in our culture. Our culture is going down the proverbial drain, and we need to get a cultural morality. We've got to stop America from sliding, we've got to stop Western civilization from sliding down into a moral morass. And so what we need to do is, there are not enough evangelical Christians to fight this battle alone, there are not enough Catholics to fight it alone, so we all need to throw our arms around each other, let's all get together and embrace each other, and let's go fight the holy war ecumenically. claim reclaim the culture and create a cultural morality, which will create a better environment for belief in the gospel. That's the idea. Now, he says the thesis of the book is that basically we should accept the fact that all monotheists are on their way to heaven anyway, because there really is only one God and they all just view him differently. So he cast this. It's a brief little paperback, but it's quite interesting. It was advertised in Christianity Today, promoted by them. He cast it. He was surfing one day, he says, and he hit the bottom. and had an out-of-body experience. In his out-of-body experience, he was taken to heaven, so Kreef writes, and the first person he met there shocked him, because the first person he met there was Confucius. His response was, What are you doing here? Confucius said, What I didn't understand about Jesus down there, I understood once I got here. It was all clarified for me. Then he met Buddha, same scenario, and then he met Muhammad. And then he met a bunch of Orthodox Jews who worshipped the true God, they just didn't quite get the Jesus side of the deal. And then he met a bunch of atheists who were seeking truth, and since truth all resides in God, they were really seeking God, so they were true God-seekers, so they were also there. And the thesis of the book is, look, we're all going to arrive at the same place, why are we fighting each other? Then he said, now if we're going to win the Holy War, we've got to get our arms around everybody, and we've got to have a general. There's only one general in the world who's up to this task, and that's the Pope, who's the great winner of unwinnable wars, he calls him. So we all subscribe to the Pope. That's the general who commands the troops. And then he said, we have to have an inner power. And the final section of the book is a call for all of us to reaffirm our devotion to Mary, bow, as it were, to the power of Mary in us. So that's pretty weird book. Well, on the back cover, there's a paragraph endorsing the book in which it says, Peter Kreeft is one of our finest contemporary apologists. We need to listen to his message signed Charles Colson. Next paragraph says, What if he is right signed J.I. Packer? What if he's right? Are we asking if he's right? I don't think so. He's not right, is he? He's wrong. Are they still asking that question? Do they not understand what the gospel is? Do they not understand how a person gets to heaven? I'm not commenting on what they said. I only quoted what they said. You can buy the book and see it. It's on the back. It's an endorsement of the book on the back cover. There is such confusion. at the level of the gospel more than I've ever known in my lifetime, and that's why I'm embarking upon this. Now, if we are ambassadors for Christ, and as he says in verse twenty, if we have been given verse eighteen, the ministry of reconciliation, and if we have been given the word or the message of reconciliation, and that's what we do and who we are, then certainly we better be clear on the issue. Right. And it's up for grabs right now. There's a there's a strong movement going on now for a pre-reformational Christianity. A pre-reformational Christianity, where we wipe out the Reformation. In fact, one great leader said he believes that maybe God has called him to reverse what Martin Luther did. Undo it. This is serious stuff. We need to understand the gospel. In fact, when I was in the Ligonier Conference down in Florida, We're trying to find a new word. You know, we used to call ourselves fundamentalist, but we don't really want to do that anymore because it sort of becomes, you know, no fun, too much damn and not enough mental. And, you know, it's just. We can't use that word, it's it's been it's been sort of cast in a certain way, you know, and then we had the word evangelical, but that's that doesn't mean anything today. You got more stuff in this town called evangelical than you'd like to ever be associated with. Is that not true? So what's the word? So Sproul says, well, I know the word I'm using. I'm calling myself an imputationalist. And I said, well, you could probably get some money from the government for the Americans for Disabilities Act. I can't go around saying I'm a Bible-believing imputationalist. People will run for cover. But I mean, we're trying to find a term that we can actually use in the middle of all this. I'll get back to that in a minute. Let's look at the solution. Do you understand the gospel? Let me give it to you in these verses. I want to give you an understanding of reconciliation. In the ministry of reconciliation, we preach the word of reconciliation. Paul says, We beg you, verse 20, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Verse 18, God is reconciled. That's our ministry. That's what we are. In fact, maybe that's the word we ought to use. Reconcilers. Biblical reconcilers. Not bad, just thought of it. Start a movement tonight. Let's go back to verse 18. Let me give you just several points. Number one, reconciliation is by the will of God. Reconciliation is by the will of God. Verse 18. All these things are from whom? From God. All these things are from God. What things? Verse 17. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away, behold, new things have come, and all these things are from God." The whole saving work is from God. What makes new creatures is from God. The whole work of reconciliation is from God. Sinners can't decide to be reconciled to God and devise a plan to reach Him. That's what all false religion in the world is. All the world's false religions are the same thing, sinners devising a way to be reconciled to God. Christianity is God determining a way to be reconciled to sinners. Sinners have no power to satisfy God's anger toward sin. They have no virtue to charm him. They have no righteousness to qualify themselves for forgiveness. We are all offenders. We have been justifiably, eternally banished from his presence. We are hopeless, helpless, impotent, ignorant, blind and doomed. And any change in that relationship has to come from him. It can't come from us. God alone can change our relationship. And that's the good news. God so loved the world, he made a way of reconciliation. He desired to reconcile sinners, he desired to make them his friends, his children. This is not foreign to his holy nature, and this is a very important point, as if he had to be reluctantly appeased by some whimsical deity created by man. Now, this is really this is really astonishing stuff in Paul's day, really in any day. Because nobody knew a God who was by nature a loving reconciler. All the gods of the nations had to be appeased, cajoled. Somehow their anger had to be ameliorated by some sacrifice. In some cases, taking your little baby and putting your baby on a fire and burning that baby to a crisp as the Canaanites did for centuries in the land of Palestine to pacify the god Moloch. People in the world didn't know God as a reconciler. They didn't know a God who was a reconciler. They knew gods that were at best indifferent, at worst aggressively hostile, and in the middle, whimsical, seemingly doing inconsistent things at their own discretion. But whoever heard of a God who was a loving God, whoever heard of a God, where are you going to find that in the history of ethnology? You can search. See if you can find in the religions of the world a loving, kind, gracious, merciful, tender-hearted, compassionate God who sought to reconcile sinners. You won't find one. That was a stark, shocking realization when the gospel penetrated the Roman world with that message. But our God is a reconciling God. Titus chapter 1 says, Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of those chosen of God. God is a God who chose to save sinners. God can't lie. God promised before time began that he would save sinners. It was his plan. At the end of verse 2, he promised long ages ago, actually in the Greek, before time began. From the very outset, before time began, that means before creation, that means before man ever existed, God predetermined to save sinful man. It's nothing we've done, it was all bound up in who he was, who he is. Titus 2.10 identifies God as God our Savior. God our Savior. By the way, verse 3 of chapter 1, the same thing. God our Savior. God is mentioned once after the introduction in verse 1, that's in verse 3, he's called God our Savior. He's mentioned once in chapter 2, verse 10, he's called God our Savior. He's mentioned once in chapter 3, verse 4, and he's called God our Savior. Jesus Christ is mentioned after the introduction once in chapter one, verse four, Christ Jesus, our Savior, once in chapter two, verse thirteen, our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, once in chapter three, Jesus Christ, our Savior. In verse six, God by nature is a saving God. That's a tremendously important issue. God is a Savior. In fact, he demonstrates that look at first Timothy four, ten in first Timothy four, ten. There's a most remarkable and somewhat disconcerting verse when you first read it because kind of hard to figure out. But it says in first Timothy four, ten, the living God right in the middle of the verse. We fixed our hope on the living God, who is the savior of all men, especially of believers. Boy, that that has really created havoc in the minds of people. What do you mean God is the savior of all men? Well, what is in what way is God the savior of all men? Well, we know this. We know he's not the savior of all men spiritually and eternally, don't we? We know that, because people go to hell, right? Jesus makes that clear when you find a rich man in torment. That's that's a glimpse into that place. So we know he is not the savior of all men spiritually and eternally. In what way is he the savior of all men? Listen carefully, physically and temporally, physically and temporally. So how does that work? Well, he doesn't give the sinner what the sinner deserves the moment he deserves it. The fact that you're still here, you're still breathing, you're still alive, is evidence that God is a saving God. He has temporarily and physically delivered you from the wrath which should have fell the first time you violated his law. He's already demonstrated that he's a saving God. You've already seen his mercy. You've already seen that. Romans two said that forbearance of God, that patience of God. by which he overlooks the transgression and waits and gives space to repentance should have led you to repentance. Romans two, four and five. God is a saving God, and he's demonstrated across the globe through all the history of humanity because he's delivered men temporally and physically from what they deserve, which was the instantaneous explosion of his just and righteous wrath. The world has had plenty of illustrations of how much a saving God he is. Then he adds, especially and he saved believers spiritually and eternally. OK, but even when you look at the world as it is today, but when you look at this world, you see sinners running rampant all through the world. That's evidence of God's saving character. God said to Adam in the garden, You eat that fruit, you're going to die. He ate. Guess what? He lived. He lived. He didn't die the day he ate. Seeds of death were planted, but God showed himself a saving God. and immediately put in place a saving plan, didn't he? Right in the same chapter where you have the fall, in verse fifteen, God promises there's going to come a seed that's going to bruise a serpent's head. Redemption is on the way. God, by nature, is saving God. You find him in the garden. He's not off somewhere having Adam wandering around the garden saying, Where are you, God? Where are you, God? No, it's God wandering around the garden saying, Where are you, Adam? Where are you, Adam? The Son of Man has come to what? Seek and save. God does the seeking. From Genesis 3, 8 and 9 on, God has been seeking the lost. Ezekiel 34, 16, I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick. Man is lost and not seeking. God is seeking. No man seeks after God. Luke 15, three parables. Lost sheep, lost coin, lost sons. In every case there is a search, and when what is lost is found, all of heaven rejoices. Why does all of heaven rejoice? Because they know how precious that is to the heart of God. The lost coin is like a sinner that repents. The lost sheep is like a sinner that repents. The lost son is like a sinner that repents. And it causes a party in heaven because it's so dear to the heart of God. God is a saving God by nature. We're not trying to appease him. He's a saving God by nature. And you see it in the demonstration when the guy finally got up in his middle of the pigsty, eating the pig slop and says, I'll go home. He runs and what happens? He gets near his house and his father, who's an old man, runs. Runs when he sees him coming. throws his arms around kisses and calls for a road will be put on the most beautiful ring of peace and that's got that father is God. That's the saving nature of God running to the repentant sinner throwing his arms around the center and lavishing blessing on his nature to nature and he says to the center of what he said to the sun. All that I have is yours. He seeks the reprobate. He seeks the wicked. He seeks the outcast as well as the and respectable and outwardly religious. God is the reconciler. Reconciliation is the divine provision by which God's holy displeasure can be appeased, the hostility removed and sinners restored to Let me just give you something to think about. Man never makes reconciliation. We don't make reconciliation with God. It's not what we do. It's simply what we embrace. God has provided the reconciliation. We can only embrace it. To put it another way, reconciliation with God is not something we accomplish when we stop deciding to reject him, but something he accomplished when he stopped deciding to reject us. God is the source of reconciliation. So we're not looking for some religious leaders to invent the plan. OK, we don't need a meeting to come up with this. All we need is a revelation from God. True. So we go here. So, first of all, reconciliation is by the will of God to second point, it is by the act of justification. It is by the act of justification. Verse 19, God was reconciling the world to himself." God was reconciling the world to himself. I wish I had more time to talk about all of that. The world here is not the world of universalism. It doesn't mean everybody is going to be saved. John 129, when the Lamb came, he said, Behold, the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the John 3.16, God so loved the world. He is the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 2.2, not for ours only, but the sins of the whole world. Hebrews 2.9, he takes the death for every man. This is not universalism. It simply means mankind in general. Very simple. Mankind in general. Titus 3.4, God's love for mankind. The world of humanity. Obviously, not every individual will be saved, but the world indicates the sphere, the kind of being, the class of being toward which God seeks reconciliation, and God who was in Christ, verse nineteen, reconciling the world to himself, did it this way. Verse nineteen, by not counting their what trespasses against them. That's how he did it. So that's justification, he declared them righteous. Justification means to be just or to be right. The only way that God could reconcile sinners if they it would be if they were not sinners anymore. If they were made righteous, if they became righteous. So you've got a problem if you say, well, God's going to reconcile sinners and he's just going to do it by saying, it's no big deal to me. You're all forgiven. Come on in. Then you've got a problem with God's justice, right? God's holiness, God's integrity is at stake. So if we're going to have forgiveness, we have to have justification. It's by the will of God, but it's by the act of justification. Somehow God has to declare us just. And how does he do it by not counting their trespasses against him doesn't say He doesn't know about me, does doesn't say they aren't there. They are. It just says he doesn't hold them against us anymore. In fact, that's another way to present it, you say, you know, I'm happy to tell you. I know a truth. That can cause God or allow God never again to hold anything you ever commit against you. Wow. That's the good news, folks. That's the good news. So it is by the act of justification. Blessed is the man whom the Lord will not impute what? Iniquity. Psalm 32, 2. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account, Romans 4 says. So the only way that God can do this, this plan, is if he forgives you and never holds your sins against you. None of them. Past, present, future. Absolutely none of them. Fully forgiven and you're declared to be righteous. That's the only way it can ever happen. I don't know if I can make it. If you were raised a Catholic, you understand how tough that is. This is Roman Catholic theology. I'll give you a little course in Roman Catholic theology. Here's how it works. You want to be justified and made right with God, here's the process. God infuses grace into you. They use the term infused grace. God infuses it into you. It's grace or righteousness. and it's the grace of Christ and the righteousness of Christ, and it's dumped into you. The first dose you ever get, you get an infant baptism. That's why infant baptism is absolutely required, because it is the first dispensation of infused grace. And according to Catholic theology, at that point, grace is infused into you. That grace becomes an energy in you, moving you toward justification, toward righteousness as you cooperate by good works. Every time you go to the mass, every time you do penance, Every time you say your beads, every time you go to confession, every time you do any of that, you get more infused grace. That's why some Roman Catholics go to church seven days a week. Because they need lots of infused grace, they operate in their fear. That's why they go to confession, not because they want to tell the priest all their sins, but because they want the infused grace that perpetuates them on the process to righteousness. If, for chance, as you move along the road, you're getting closer and closer, you commit a mortal sin. Two kinds of sins in Catholic theology, venial sins which don't count like big ones, and mortal sins which are really big. Anytime you commit a mortal sin, you're back to zero again in the process of justification. It's as if you just had infant baptism. You go all the way back to ground zero. Most Catholics don't know these nuances at all. All they know is they're working real hard, hoping they can get to heaven. But I'm giving you the inside stuff. This is Catholic theology. Commit a mortal sin, you're back to square one again and you start the process. Do that when you're seventy five years old and you die when you're seventy six. You've got a long time in purgatory. Purgatory comes from the word purge. And purgatory is where you go because you didn't make it to justification, didn't make it to righteousness, but you're a good guy, you tried really hard, we can't send you to hell. So invent a place and you go there and over a period of three or four hundred years or whatever it is, you get purged and finally you get righteous and then you can go to heaven. And you can get aided, because there are some folks who had more righteousness than they needed. In fact, they were so good, they had extra righteousness. And when they died, their extra righteousness was put in what's called the Treasury of Merit. Treasury of Merit is a big, you know, hypothetical box. And God, at his own discretion, could take some of that out and give it to you while you're in purgatory to move you faster along. And that's and you just keep hoping you're going to get finally to write so that Roman Catholic theology believes this God justifies only the righteous. In other words, you're never going to be right with God until you've achieved righteousness. My Bible says God justifies sinners, and that is the difference. Roman Catholic theology says you'll get justified when you get righteous. The Bible says you'll get justified when you fall on your face and acknowledge your sin. And justification is not a process that finally culminates in purgatory. It's an act that occurs in a moment of time when God declares you righteous and forgiven. That is a huge difference. One view saves the other dams because it's a system of works. Sounds good. It's got grace in it. It's got faith in it. It's got righteousness in it. The righteousness of Christ is in it. They use all those terms. In fact, this latest document says we Catholics and we Protestants believe in salvation by grace and salvation by faith and salvation in Christ alone. And we believe in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And they go and average evangelical. Wow. What else can you say? Salvation by faith, by grace, through Christ alone. And then, as a paragraph at the end, it says, Of course, we have yet to discuss the doctrine of imputation, the mass and baptismal regeneration. It doesn't mean anything, just words. Huge difference. And the way God, listen to this, the way God justifies a person is not by infusing grace in them so they can become perfect, but by not counting their what? It's just a matter of God saying, OK, I'm not counting those anymore against you. It's not God saying, oh, there aren't any more there. It's not God saying, well, you've reached a point where you don't have any more trespasses, you can be declared righteous. That's not justifying the ungodly. God justifies the ungodly, the Bible says in Romans. He just doesn't impute their sins. So you can say to a person, you want some really good news? God wants to save you, God wants to justify you and to sanctify you, God wants no longer to count any sin you ever commit against you. Ever. That is good news. So this whole matter of reconciliation is by the will of God, by the act of justification, which is tantamount to complete forgiveness. Thirdly, and I have to say this, it's by the obedience of faith. It's by the obedience of faith. There's a faith component, verse 20. We're going around begging people on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. You say, if it's all of God, what are we begging people for? It's not apart from faith. It's not apart from faith. We're begging for a response, and the response is to believe and to receive as many as received him. How can I say it? They became privileged to count themselves as sons of God. It's by faith. So, we go around calling people to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, don't we, and be saved. Now, you know this. So, getting people to understand this and to put their faith in Christ alone to justify them is really what we do. Let me just give you a little insight into this. You say, what's the actual message? Well, it comes down to this. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved, Acts 16.31. Came into the world, God in human flesh, born of a virgin, lived the perfect life, died a substitutionary death on the cross, rose from the grave, ascended to the right hand of the Father, having accomplished our redemption, is our high priest and coming king. That's what I call the drivetrain of the gospel. You believe that. You believe in the Christ who is the true Christ and in his death and resurrection for you. And so we call men and women to that faith. We understand that. Men and women are trapped in all kinds of lies and all kinds of deceptions. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 10, calls them fortresses, and we smash those fortresses with the truth, hoping that the fortress will crash down and we can lead the prisoners captive to Christ. But we call them to faith, believing. For by grace are you saved, Ephesians 2 through faith. So, we say here, I want to give just trust Christ, put your faith, just affirm you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ who lived and died for you and rose again. Believe that? Acknowledge Christ as your Lord and Savior. That's it. And receive the forgiveness he offers. But one final point remains, and frankly, all the rest was introduction. I really want to get to verse twenty-one. The question is, how do you do this? How in the world could God pull this off? How could he do it? How can you do it and still be just? How? How could God do this reconciliation by the will of God, by the act of justification, which involves forgiveness by the obedience of faith? We just call sinners to believe. How can you do it? How can you reconcile sinners when he's too pure to look upon iniquity? Can't behold evil. How can he fellowship with transgressors? How can he satisfy his justice? How can he satisfy his righteous, holy condemnation of sin with full and deserved punishment and still be able to show mercy to sinners at the very same time? How can he punish the sin in our lives at one time and make us his own children at the other? How can he punish us without destroying us? How can he end the hostility of those who hated him and take them into his holy heaven? How can he do it? Verse 21 is the answer. Maybe there's a greater verse in the Bible, I don't know. Maybe not. Fifteen Greek words. If you understand this verse, you understand the gospel. Fifteen Greek words that define the meaning of the reconciliation message. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. That we might become the righteousness of God in him, that's how he did it. That's how God did it. There is the plan. This is the secret of redemption, folks, right here. Understand this verse. He first one in the verse he made is God. God is the antecedent at the end of verse twenty, reconciled to God, he made God is the one who did it. It's God's plan. God designed it. As we said, God devised it. And in order to make it happen, in order to make it work, he made him who knew no sin. Who's that? You don't have a lot to choose from. Him who knew no sin, who's that? Jesus Christ, of whom the writer of Hebrews says He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. The sinless, spotless Lamb of God. He made him who knew no sin. That's so critical. That's so critical. He had to be a perfect Lamb. He had to be without spot and without blemish, right? He made him who knew no sin. Here comes the key. The Greek says, He made him who knew no sin, sin. His sinless Son, in whom he said, I am well pleased. His sinless Son, who said in John 8, 46, Which of you convicts me of sin? His sinless Son, whom Peter calls the just for the unjust, was made sin. What in the world does that mean? Do you know what that means? Kenneth Hagin says it means, I've heard him say it, Christ became a sinner on the cross. On the cross, he became a sinner. Others in the word-faith movement say he not only became a sinner on the cross, but he had to go to hell for three days to pay for his sin, and when he finally paid for his sin, God let him come out of the grave. Let me tell you something. That's not anything short of blasphemy. On the cross, Jesus was not a sinner. He was never a sinner before, he wasn't a sinner then, and he never will be. He was as pure and holy and harmless and undefiled, hanging on the cross as ever before or since. He is not a sinner, never a sinner. He never broke a law of God, and he never failed to fulfill perfectly everything God ever required or desired. And God did not make him a sinner on the cross. That is an unthinkable blasphemy. If he became a sinner on the cross, then he would have to go to hell for his own iniquities. Isaiah 53, 4 and 6 says he was wounded, not for his transgression, but for our transgression. He was bruised, not for his iniquities, but for, and it was the chastisement for our peace that was put on him. Boy, that is a terrible thing to say. God has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. Let me tell you something. You have to understand this. Here's how to understand it. On the cross, God treated Jesus as if he had committed every sin ever committed by every person who would ever believe, though, in fact, he committed none of them. You get that God treated him as if he committed personally every sin ever committed by every person who would ever believe, though the fact is he committed none of them. That's the great doctrine of substitution, and that's the first side of imputation. God imputed our sins to him. He was guilty of none of them, none of them. God treated him as if he committed all of them. And he just unloaded his fury for all the sins of all the people who would ever believe him in him in the history of the world, he unloaded all his fury against all their sins on Christ. To borrow the language of Leviticus 16, Jesus became the scapegoat. Scapegoat was guilty of nothing. But the high priest, as it were, laid all the sins of the people on the scapegoat and sent him away. He was. Without sin. But sin was credited his account as if he had personally committed it, and then God punished him, though the fact is, he never committed any of it. That's imputation. That's imputation, that's the first time, so the only sense in which Christ was made sin was in the sense that our sins were imputed to him. God treated him as if he was guilty, but he wasn't. You were. You were. And then God just exploded his wrath on the innocent Christ. Who was in our place as our substitute? Galatians 313. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, that was it. Now, go back to the verse. Here comes the rest of this incredible truth. He made him an innocent sin only in one sense, and that is that he treated him as if he had committed all the sins ever committed by all the people who would ever believe, though, in fact, he committed none of them. And he did it on our behalf or for us. Listen to this. In order that we might become what the righteousness of God in him. That's the other side of imputation. This is just mind boggling to me. Let me tell you what that last half means. You ever ask yourself the question, when Jesus came into the world, why did he have to live all those years? And why? You know, if I was planning the plan of redemption, I'd have had him come down on Friday, die, rise on Sunday and go back to heaven Monday. I mean, that was the only deal that needed to happen, wasn't it? You ever thought that through? Why 30 years? Why 30 silent years? Isn't it quite remarkable to you that you have one little tiny vignette in the life of Christ at the age of 12? And that's it, and that's not of monumental theological significance. He was a twelve-year-old who got separated from his parents, and he was wandering around the temple asking questions of the theologians there, and he made the one comment that it needed to be about his father's business, which a noble Jew could have made, a devout Jew concerned about things of God who was his father. But you have 30 years of absolute silence. You have 30 years of no record. Look, this is God on the earth. This is the almighty, glorious God of heaven living in the world. And we have absolutely no information about this. We don't know anything about what happened. So many times I've wondered what kind of a little boy was he? Was he like my little boys? Not a chance. Was he like your little boys? Not a chance. What was he like? And, you know, you have all these apocryphal books about whenever he saw a bird with a broken wing, he healed it. And whenever he saw a crippled child, he healed him. And, you know, those are fanciful things. What was he like? Well, we know he grew in wisdom and stature and faith with God. And then we know absolutely nothing. You have 30 blank years of the life of God on Earth. Isn't that wonderful to think about? I mean, I just wish there was a... I wish the Gospels didn't start with the birth of Christ and leap to the baptism. There's 30 years in there. What was going on in there? Tell you what was going on. The reason he had to be here all those years. was identified at his baptism when John said, I'm not going to baptize you. Remember that? And he said, No, you have to. I have come to fulfill all righteousness. That was just part of doing what righteousness required, and the reason, listen carefully, that Jesus lived a full life was so that he might live a complete life, fully righteous. that he might live a complete life, absolutely without sin, absolutely perfect. Listen to me so that that perfect life could be credited to your account. That's the backside of imputation on the cross. God treated Jesus as if he lived your life so he could treat you as if you lived his life. That's the gospel. That's substitution. I don't think people even grasp the reality of that. The only way God could ever be reconciled to sinners. Was it should have been paid for and did in Christ. And if the center was made righteous and he did in Christ. And that's why Paul in Philippians says, oh, man, all those years I was racking up all that stuff in the game column, you know, circumcision, tribe of Benjamin. Of the nation, Israel, Hebrew, the Hebrews, concerning the law, you know, Pharisee. Blameless, and then I saw Christ and it was immediately manure. And I found a righteous not on my own, but the righteousness of God through Christ. What happens when right in justification? God simply declares you righteous because your sin has been paid for. He treated Christ as if he committed all your sins and lived your life. And he treats you as if you live Christ's life. That's how the father sees you now. And that happened at the moment of faith, didn't it? That's the gospel. That's what we need to tell sinners. That's the essence of it. And if you take out the doctrine of substitution and you take out the doctrine of imputation, you just mess up the message. That's why R.C. Sproul said, I'm an imputationist. You can't tamper with that one. We're not cooperating with infused righteousness, trying to become holy so God can declare us righteous. Now, in faith, repentant faith, acknowledging our sin, we acknowledge Jesus. died and rose again for us in simple faith. We ask him to save us from our sins, and at that moment, the payment of Christ is sufficient for all our sins and the righteousness of Christ is granted to us. And from then on, God treats us as if we had lived Christ's life. That's why Paul and Roman says it when there's therefore now know what can't be can't be paid for. Here's the brother and shows up in heaven. He says that John MacArthur and I did this. He did this. He did this. Jesus has paid for. I paid for. Paid for. Paid for. Father says, sorry, Satan can't see it. All I can see is the righteousness of Christ. That's the great message of the good news. And this is what we preach. This is the word of reconciliation. There's no cure for the HIV. There is a cure for the SIN. And folks, we are the dispensers. Hang on to this message. It's being assaulted everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. People are caving into this, some knowingly and some unknowingly. The great doctrine of substitution, the great doctrine of imputation, the great doctrine of imputed sin to Christ on the cross and imputed righteousness to us. That's the heart of the gospel message. I walked into a store in Cleveland, Dick Mayhew, the dean of the Master's Seminary, and I was wandering around waiting for a meeting we had to speak at. We just walked down the street. It was a cold night in Cleveland, and we ducked into a store to keep warm. There was a guy there. I started talking to this guy. It was a men's store. We just fiddled around there, keeping warm and asking him where we could go to get some coffee or tea to drink. I said, Sir, I don't know what your religious background is, but I just want to let you know that if you're ever interested God will forgive all the sins you've ever committed or ever will commit completely and totally. If you'll just ask him. He said, Come on, that's not fair. He said, I'm a moral guy, I work hard at being a moral guy, I'm a good husband, I'm a good father. That's not fair to just forgive all that. You know, you mean, he said, if some really bad criminal type guy just wants forgiveness, God will forgive him. I said, Yeah, he said, That's not fair. That is not fair. I said, Well, it's true. I said, I'm not sure you want fair, if you think about it. But I said, I said, I agree, it's not fair. So I said to him, I said, But you know, I understand. I just want you to know if there ever comes a time, you know, in your life where you just come to the place where you say, I'm so weary of my sin. I'm so fearful about the potential consequences of it. I just want you to know that if you will ask God on the basis of the death of Christ, which I briefly explained to him in his resurrection, if you just ask God to forgive your sins He'll do that. You may never want to do that, but if you ever do, you can just ask. On the basis of the death of Christ as a substitute for you. That is, that just can't be right. We went down, we got some coffee and tea. An hour later, we walked back. I think I got to slip in and see this guy again. This is exactly what happened. I walked in the door. I said, Hi. I said, We're just walking back. I want to thank you for telling us where to go to get something to drink. And he said, You mean, I could just ask any time. I said, Yeah, absolutely. Any time we gave him some material, we got back to send some material. That's the message. You understand it in the heart of it? Well, you should, because you're an ambassador for it. Amen. Father, thanks for a great evening for these precious friends, this great church and for the great ministry you've given to us. We love you. And we thank you beyond words for reconciling us who are so utterly unworthy. We bless your name. We praise you. And may we be faithful to proclaim this great word in the name of Jesus. Amen.