Turn with me if you would now to Romans chapter 3, we'll be reading verse 24. Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Lord, we thank You for Your goodness, Your grace, unmerited favor toward us who had nothing in us to bring pleasure to You, to offer to You. Lord, we thank You that You came to us to save us, and we praise You for it, in Jesus' name. Amen. Remember, Paul has been dealing with the lostness of man. There is none righteous, no, not one. There's none good. There's none that seek after God. And then he closed last week by saying, All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. He had said just before that verse, By the DEEDS of the law shall no man be justified. And therefore, He's already told us what we need, but there's nothing on HOW we can attain it. He's told us in verse chapter 1 that the gospel, again, brings to us the RIGHTEOUSNESS of God through which we can be saved. But that leaves us empty. How are we going to receive that? Now, Paul in chapter 3 and verse 24, he's going to open up to us how justification by faith alone is gotten. And so as we come, we see now he's looking backwards. All those who are the children of Adam are sinners. There's not one person who will be saved, who is a son of Adam by himself. And so now that's what he's looking at, he doesn't know. But out of that group, God will save a group. He already tells us in Ephesians chapter one that God before the foundation of the world chose out a people and that people that he's choosing out of is this group of people who are all the sons of Adam. All are sinners, but God is going to save a certain amount of those people in His way, in His time, through His Son. See, that salvation coming, and this is who Paul is going to, how is that going to be? Remember he said just last week, you must be as righteous as God Himself is righteous if you are going to stand before Him one day and Him say to you, enter into my kingdom. You will have peace with God. And so this morning he's going to begin opening up that door and notice he begins by saying, BEING JUSTIFIED FREELY. And as we look at these words, we see they're very important because that word BEING is very important, it's a VERB. It's an active, excuse me, it's a PASSIVE verb. Remember in English language you have an active verb, that's where the SUBJECT does the acting. I HIT THE BALL. in the passive voice it is the subject receives the action and therefore it says I was hit by the ball in this verb he's showing that man is passive in this work of justification being justified freely it is God's work that we're looking here at has become it's an objective idea, it's not something I do, it's something that God's doing, and so again we see that we must be FACED with the Law. Paul does that in all of his Gospels, he shows us that we're before the Law, that's what's condemning us. There's no hope with the Law, you can't KEEP it because you've already broken it, therefore, where's your hope? But He's going to bring us that Christ IS that hope, and so when we see, first of all, He says, BEING FREELY JUSTIFIED. And that little word, freely, is a real interesting word because it's the same word that Jesus uses in John 15 when He says, They HATED Me without a CAUSE. To be free is to be unbound. There's nothing that draws you one way or the other. You are free. There's no reason necessarily that you should do something. That's what he's saying. God's love to us is free. There is no reason that God should love us. When we look at scripture, we see God's love. We read this morning in Deuteronomy, where Moses is talking about God's love for Israel. And basically what he says, I loved your fathers. Therefore, I am doing what I'm doing with you, Jews, you stiff-necked, uncircumcised, and heart men. I'm doing to fulfill a promise I made to your fathers who I love. And why did I love them? He says, because I love them. He talks about it in Isaiah. Isaiah says, God found Israel like a baby that had been aborted and thrown out into the desert. And God comes and raises her up as his daughter. He washes her with salt. And he points out there was nothing lovely about her, but he loved her. That's the point that he's making here. God loves his people. But none of us have anything within us to say that it was expected because we have nothing in us. And this is the idea of the word grace. being justified freely by His grace. Grace is a word that means to be unmerited, undeserving. There's nothing in you that you deserve and there's nothing that God can say, well, you know, you did this and I like that, so I'll choose you. No, there is nothing in man that is pleasing to God. When Isaiah talks about man, he says, he's man is as filthy rags. To put it mildly, what he's saying is, your garments look like you're a leopard, and they're just covered in all the stuff that comes off for leprosy with the open source. That's how God sees it. But, His grace. His grace comes to us through Jesus Christ. And now notice, again, When he gives us grace, he expects nothing in return. It's the opposite of working and receiving a paycheck. When you work, you deserve what you get. You're working to get that. And so you can say, I've done this to earn. Grace, there is no earning. Everything comes from God as a gift. And so this is the point that he's making here. The Father who CHOSE us, CHOSE us BEFORE we were ever born. He CHOSE us KNOWING us before we were ever born. Remember, God does NOTHING He has not ordained, and He knows everything from the end to the beginning. He CHOSE us in Christ Jesus BEFORE the worlds were ever created, He says. He CHOSE us in Christ. Therefore, again, there's nothing we could do. Like people who disagree with us in our view on election. They would say, Well, God chose you because He knew what you would do. And I said, That's not an election. That's a ratification. But it's not an election. And matter of fact, what God says, When the elections were held, you were not even present. And so again, as we keep looking at everything in our salvation for the believer is God-centered. It is He who works in us to do HIS good pleasure. And so we see grace BENEFITS man, yes. It brings peace between God and man. but it looks Godward, it comes from God to us. We're passing, he comes to us with his son and the ransom that his son has paid for us. And therefore, we see God. We see negatively that grace means that God does not give to man what he deserves. We were DEAD in our trespasses and sins. We were all in Adam when sin came, and he partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil when God said not to. And God had already said to Adam, in the day that you eat, you will die. And in dying you will die, and your seed will be just like you. You will be now the seed of the serpent, Adam. Now, in grace, his wife becomes the seed of the woman, but nonetheless, we see here as he works it out. God comes truly and surely from the love of God to that we deserve and we deserve nothing. And so now we see, he tells us of grace. Grace is the cause of salvation. Faith is not the cause of salvation, it's the means to salvation. Grace through faith. as he says in Ephesians, by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, least anybody should boast. Grace is something God gives to you, and therefore, we see, He comes to us. And now, what do we find in there? We see first, again, this faith, this grace through faith, comes through the redemption of His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, when we look at the word redemption, that's a word that is only used 10 times in the New Testament in redemption. It's used in other ways to get it, but the price, ransom, all these things have to do with redeeming something to get it back, okay? And so we see this idea of justification comes through redemption. And so again, it's the purchase by the blood of Christ that we have redemption in which we can stand before God's law and be declared righteous, not guilty, being as righteous as God is righteous. And so we see this as we can. And so now we see when God begins to speak because God redemption pictures to us the idea of restitution as we read this morning again in Deuteronomy we read the laws of restitution if you go to Deuteronomy in chapter 21 through 23 are the rules and regulations when a crime is committed there are the rules of restitution in every sin God has a cost The soul that sins shall die. So now, when he begins down all those lists for two chapters, he lays them out. If a man becomes a slave to another Jew because he's been done poorly in his business, he now has LAWS there, he will be in servitude for six years. If he comes in, he's married, his wife will go out with him. If he's not married, when he comes in, his wife remains a slave. But all these laws, as we begin, if a man steals an oxen, if that oxen is one who plows the field, he says, he is to gain five oxen in its place. But he says, if he gets his oxen back, you give four. You steal a sheep. If he gets back his sheep, you give two extra sheep in its place. So he ends up with his sheep unharmed, and therefore he's had three sheep. But if you kill him, you give him back five sheep. And so in God's laws, as you begin to look through them, they all apply to sin. When you break God's law, there's a payment to be made. The restitution for murder is life for life. And therefore, God gives us, remember, that list of things, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. These things, if you listen to the news, and we talk about justice, oh, these are barbaric, these laws. A tooth for a tooth? That's barbaric. No, God GAVE that because He knows WE are barbaric. When you knock out MY teeth, I don't want to knock out one of your teeth, I want to knock ALL of your teeth out. That's the way MAN feels. No, God says, no, the law is, here's the law, here's the payment restitution IN the law, and it's the LAW, the GOVERNMENT, that carries OUT this JUSTICE. for the victim because it knows the retaliation and what man wants for restitution. He wants an extra pound of flesh. And so again, God's law doesn't do that. God doesn't get an extra penalty. Sin is death before God. That's what he told Adam. Didn't matter whether you took a cookie, a piece of fruit, or something big, death was the penalty, and death is still a penalty of sin. And so he says again, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and this idea again of redemption. Remember, how does God say? God MUST SAVE EITHER THROUGH A SACRIFICE, THROUGH HIS LAW, OR THROUGH HIS SON. We already know that the law can only bring judgment. It does NOTHING as long as the person is living under the law and obedience. It's when it's BROKEN that it brings death, and from SIN came DEATH. And so we have to ask that question again, as he says, how are we saying? It must be through sacrifice, a substitute, or through the law, or through his son. Now, we might say, you must have a sacrifice. You must have a substitute. You must have a substitute that himself is liable before the law, but is perfect before the law. In other words, man sins, so man must repay the law. And so we find in scripture when it talks about Christ, He was born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. God requires a sacrificial lamb, a man in our place, whose value, however, is such that it can redeem a world like ours. His cost must be INVALUABLE, INDEFINITE IN VALUE. That's why He was GOD. The second person of the Trinity became MAN, God and Man. One person with two natures, and what happens to one nature is applied to both natures. And so now, as we look at our situation, we see that God's way of salvation is JUST. The LAW MUST BE FULFILLED. Man who has sinned cannot pay for another man's sin. So how can another man take another man's place? Now, the Romans did have a law of substitution, but that person who took the place of another had to be INNOCENT of the crime that the man was suffering for. He could take his place as an equal. It couldn't take TWO PEOPLE'S PLACE. His VALUE was not. He was a MAN, and man must pay the debt. And so, this is the picture. God says, No, man sinned, therefore man must pay the debt. Now, we have to have a REPRESENTATIVE. Adam WAS our REPRESENTATIVE in the BEGINNING. When he sinned, he was STILL our REPRESENTATIVE, and as our REPRESENTATIVE acted, we would act LIKE HIM. And his SEED would be in HIM and LIKE HIM, and Adam fell. And so we see this idea of guilt, but it's free grace, which is manifest for us. And again, so again, it gives us admittance into his throne through his son, a vicarious, that is a substitute. You must have SOMEONE to SUBSTITUTE in your place. And this is the picture of the ceremonial law when they always had a lamb every day that Israel opened the temple they worshipped through sacrificing lambs to God for sin, and that's what Paul, the writer of Hebrews, says. that shows us he says this shows us that the law in the old testament couldn't save anybody no lambs it didn't matter how many lambs you slayed you could never never be saved in the land that's why they had to keep the lambs the priest had to wash and shave himself every day to be recleansed but he's saying that's what the law was showing us we needed a lamb that would do it all one time We needed a high priest who would one time sacrifice the lamb, and there would never be a return back to the temple to sacrifice more lambs. God was showing us animals don't count toward anything. They say nothing. As a matter of fact, God says, I would rather you be obedient to me than sacrifice. He says, I desire OBEDIENCE, not sacrifice. And so again we see God commends His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. Already, as we've already said, in history, before the creation, God and the Son were to save His people from their sins, and it was already planned. It tells us that in the book of Acts, in chapter 2 and chapter 4, when Luke is telling us about the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, that it was the predeterminate counsel of God that ORDAINED Christ AND the Jews AND the Romans AND the Greeks, all to be counted guilty of murdering the Lord of Glory. And so we see again now that's where we are in this. His sacrifice was an ATONEMENT. It was a REDEMPTION. Remember, a REDEMPTION. Think of a COUPON. If you get a little coupon to go to McDonald's or Hardee's or something and you have one, free meal, if you present this thing, that's a COUPON. It's REDEEMABLE! In other words, you give them that piece of paper, you get something of worth BACK! God's Son gave Himself, His blood was shed to redeem us back from the wrath of God, which called for death. That's why Christ had to die as a man. He was God, He was perfect, and by sin came death. So how did Christ die? It's because as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, the death of the cross, knowing, as Luke says, Death could not hold Him. Christ knew when He died, He VOLUNTEERED to give His body up as the Lamb to die, but death could not hold Him because He was sinless. He was God come in the flesh, and therefore He would raise, and that's what His resurrection showed for us. His inability to be HELD by the strains of death, SIN, had no power over Him. He actually lived 30 some odd years here on the earth and lived perfectly before the law. He kept every jot and every tittle. The smallest particle of a letter is how strenuously that law was. No man could ever follow it. Once Adam sinned, we see Adam, who lived a perfect life before God and walked with God. he sinned. But our Savior was tempted and tested. Remember, He comes and is born. He works as a man. He lives as a man and lives PERFECTLY BEFORE THE LAW. When He s called to do His ministry, God sends Him into the DESERT, not into a garden where everything is free and quick, beautiful. No, He sends Him into the desert to be tempted by Satan. And what do we hear? Satan could not tempt him enough to make him fall. Every time he said something, Christ quoted him the Word of God. Even when he was starving after being out there 40 days and 40 nights with Satan tempting him. In the last one, he says he was a thirst and he was hungry. Satan says, well, make the stones turn into bread. You can do it. I must be about my father's business." God says, he will feed me. I am the bread of heaven that came down. And again, I must be about my father's business in doing this. He's the one I have food that you know not of. And so now he says again, he gave his son, his beloved son as a ransom. The ransom again, as I said, generally speaking in this word used in the Greek, it has the tendency to kind of focus on the idea of someone being imprisoned or a slave and someone buying them out, purchasing their freedom. This is what Christ did for us. We were in prison. We were like the children of Israel in the desert. We were in BONDAGE as the prelude to the Ten Commandments. You're in BONDAGE in Egypt, but I FREED YOU from that. Freed you. This is what He's doing. He's PURCHASING us, and He's NOT PURCHASING us from SATAN. That's what some of these ministers today have gone back to this ancient heresy that somehow GOD LOST THE EARTH because He gave it to SATAN. When Adam sinned, Adam had to return and give over the earth to Satan. And now what Christ comes to do is to PURCHASE IT BACK FROM SATAN! That is HERESY! Satan HIMSELF will be CAST INTO THE LAKE OF FIRE! Satan was the one who SINNED FIRST, not Adam! Before Adam came, God had CAST OUT Satan before He created the world or thereafter, but there was a short time, and Satan himself lifted himself up above God. He DID NOT love God, he became an ENEMY of God, and God tossed him out and he came to the Earth and he tempted Adam. He was the first sinner and the worst wicked one, but now there is no redemption for Satan. So who owns the Earth? We find in the Psalms, the Earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof. Everything in it belongs to God. So how can Satan come up and say, It belongs to me? What happened is God never gave up the Earth. God's law was broken. man was under God's law, just like Satan was under God's law. You must love me, Satan, Lucifer. You and your angels must love me, and you haven't, and he tosses them all out of heaven in a act of war against him, and he comes to the earth. He will, like those who trust him and follow him, the seed of the serpent be cast into hell with them and his angels. God's law was what was broken, and we must pay our debt of sin to God the Father in the sense of His law. He is the great lawgiver. His law must be kept perfectly, and it was Christ now who comes and keeps that law perfectly for us, and again we see it contrasted. Remember Christ in Matthew 25, He says, These shall go away into everlasting punishment. He's talking about the goats on one side. He said they'll go into everlasting damnation. But those on the right, He says, will go into eternal life. How did they get righteous? Because they are righteous in the Son. When God the Father sees the Son, He sees us IN the Son. When we see Him, we see Him THROUGH the Son, but we see God the Father. See, His righteousness CLOSES us now, as it were. We have received justification as THOUGH we have never sinned. We are seen by the Father as though we were on the cross and we paid the debt of our sin with our OWN BODIES because we were in Christ. That's how He sees us. We were in Christ, therefore we have all the benefits And we are seen before God the Father as as righteous as His Son, who is God and man. And we will see Him for eternal life. And so it is. That is in Christ Jesus. That's how we see Him. Everything is through the glasses of Christ, as it were. We are in Him. And therefore, we were guilty we owed to the restitution. Christ took our place as though He were guilty. He bore our sins on the cross. Our punishment after keeping the law perfectly and being told by Herod and Pilate both, I find no fault in Him. He's without spot and without blemish. And so again, He is our Savior. He saves us. through His grace. So what is the cause of our salvation? Why is it that God loves us? Because of grace. He owed us nothing. We owed Him everything. We fell before His law. We took His law upon us. When we fell, we became like our father, Adam. But God in Christ Jesus claimed us as His own and taking all of our sin upon Himself, now we are seen in Him and His infinite value, His infinite wisdom, His infinite knowledge, His infinite perfection before God, His Father, and His law is ours. He did not infuse those things into us. Now we walk around in a cloud being perfect. No, we still sin. But that's why He says He CONTINUOUSLY is cleansing us because we still live in a sinful world and we must again CONTINUALLY confessing Christ. He has ONCE FOR ALL justified us BEFORE THE LAW. We've already had our day in court. Jesus' day on the cross and keeping the law and being FOUND BY Herod and Pilate both, they were LEADERS and instruments of REPRESENTATION of God as the LAWGIVERS of the land, and they REPRESENT God's law, and what they said was God's law, because God's law was THEIR law. I find no fault in Him. He was DECLARED publicly before the Roman Empire and the WORLD. I find no fault in Him. He goes to the cross as the sinless Son of God, and we are in Him sinless. We are in Him as fallen, because He takes a punishment for us, and we are punished in Him. And He applies that to us, and therefore, we find in Colossians, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Christ has made us whole. We are His, He is ours. There's now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus. Amen.