Well, good morning. If you were here last Sunday, then you know that we began a six-part series that I've entitled The Bridge to Eternal Life. And as I mentioned last week, I've decided to do this series for three different reasons. First of all, because the Bible does say that the gospel is of first importance, and so it is top priority in our doctrinal system, in our understanding of who God is and who we are and how we can be reconciled to him and have a relationship with him. Also, another reason is because of what Peter says in his second letter where he writes to believers and says, I'm stirring you up for remembrance. And that's what I want to do in this series. I want to stir you up in remembrance. I want you to really reflect more deeply upon the gospel, the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then thirdly, I want to give you a simple tool that I have found really, really helpful since the Lord saved me. He brought me to faith in Christ in 1984, and immediately I was brought into a small group discipleship. And one of the tools that I learned was the bridge illustration, which is just a simple visual of the reality that God is holy, we are not, and there is this massive chasm between the two that must be bridged. And we want to think about that throughout these weeks. Because Paul says in Romans 1, verse 16, that the gospel is the power of God into salvation. that the gospel is the message that God empowers by His Spirit in order to breathe new life into spiritually dead sinners to cause us to be born again, to cause us to come to faith in His Son. Let me review a little bit quickly of where we were last week, and then we'll move on to the second major piece of the six pieces of this illustration. We began thinking about God and the separation that exists between God and us. And we talked about how God is holy, and that means that God is set apart, that he is distinct. There is no one who is like him. Habakkuk 1.13 says, Your eyes are too pure to look at evil. The prophet was praying to God. And Isaiah 59 says, Behold, the Lord's hand is not too short that it cannot save, nor His ears too dull that He cannot hear, but your sins have made a separation between you and God. and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear." So the gospel begins with God, and that's how the Apostle Paul begins the gospel in the book of Romans, which is the largest and longest treatise in the New Testament about what the gospel is. The gospel is God's gospel. He's the one who gave it to us. He's the one who defines it. He's the one who demands a response from us as sinners. So God is holy. But we also thought about how God is also loving. That not only is God holy, which means that he is distinct from us, and we have this barrier of sin between us and God, but God is also loving. That God took the initiative to do what it took to reconcile us to himself. In his mercy, God provided a way, the only way, for us to be forgiven and reconciled. And that's basically just a quick summary of what we learned last week about God, that God is holy, is distinct, separate from us. We are sinful. We are the ones who created this chasm between us and God. But God is loving and he took the initiative to send his only begotten son so that we who believe in him may have eternal life. Without the rescue of God, we have eternal death. That is what comes to us as sinners if our sin is not taken care of. So now let's move on to thinking about the second really big piece of this message, and that is that we are sinful. We are sinful. What does that mean? Well, I think that generally speaking, mankind tends to have a pretty shallow understanding of sin and sinfulness. We tend to think merely on the level of behavior. Well, I did a bad thing, and therefore that bad thing is sin, and therefore I sin. But the Bible talks about sin in much deeper ways, which really help us to understand how deeply we need the Lord Jesus Christ. Because if all that God did was to come and take care of our sinful behavior, then he wouldn't have given us a savior from the very roots of sin. What he would have done is just created a new religion whereby we could change our behavior through our willpower so that we could then be better people. but the roots of sin go much deeper than our behavior. And so we need to understand that this morning. And so again, we'll be in the book of Romans like we were last week. So open your Bibles to Romans chapter three. Again, as I mentioned before, Paul's letter to the church in Rome is the longest, most thorough explanation of the gospel. And so, as we looked at it last week and noticed God's holiness and God's loveliness and his love toward us, we are looking this morning at our sinfulness. But what does that mean? What does it mean that we are sinful? Well, first of all, it means that we willfully bend away from God. That's the first thing that it means that we are sinful. We willfully bend away from God. In other words, there's something internal going on with our sin. It's not just about our behavior. It is about something in our hearts that moves us to turn away from God, to bend our will away from God. Paul describes this in Romans chapter 3 beginning in verse 9. We touched on this passage just a tiny bit last Sunday, but I want to look at it again. I want you to notice here that by nature we are bent away from God, but then willfully we also bend ourselves away from God. It's important to understand both of those dynamics. Look at chapter three, verse nine. What then? Are we Jews any better off? As I explained last week, and Paul has just finished a section dealing with Jews and the privileges that they had and the knowledge of God. And so he's saying, well, then what then? Are we better than Gentiles? Are we who have knowledge of God and revelation from God better than other people? Well, no, none is righteous. No, not one, verse 10. Why? Because we're all under sin. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." So, as Paul is laying the foundation, before he gets to the good news, he lays this foundation of the bad news, which is telling us the truth about ourselves. You know, it's like when we go to the doctor, we know that something is wrong with us, we think that something is wrong with us, we really appreciate doctors who tell us the truth, rather than doctors who lie to us, right? I mean, if we had a fatal cancer going on inside of us, we wouldn't want the doctor to say, well, you know, the reason why you're just really having trouble is you have a bad big toe. And we need to take care of that. Well, we appreciate honesty. And so spiritually, we ought to appreciate honesty. We ought to appreciate the fact that God tells us what's going on inside of us in regard to sin. And Paul says, as God looks at mankind, this is his conclusion. There's nobody who's good enough. There's nobody who's righteousness. Everybody lies in some way, whether through their lips and what they say or through their silence and what they withhold. There's no fear of God. Their feet are swift to shed blood." In other words, they are by nature bent away from God, and they willfully bend away from God. And so that means that we have a pretty big problem. We have got something that needs to be solved. Second way that we are sinful is this, we fall short of God's purpose. Going on in chapter three, the apostle introduces the concept of righteousness that comes to us through faith. He says that in verse 21, that righteousness cannot come to us through the law, it has to come to us by faith. And there's no distinction, again, the end of verse 22, in other words, no difference among mankind, no difference between men and women, boys and girls, as far as sinfulness is concerned, no difference between ethnicities, as far as sinfulness is concerned, all are guilty. And he says this in verse 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now this is an interesting way to define sin. that sin is defined as falling short of God's glory. Now, why would that be important for us to understand? Well, it's because if we understand who we are created to be, as we learned last week, that God is the creator of all, we understand that God has created us to glorify him, to be reflectors of his glory. But sin has changed that. Sin has dampened our light. Sin has distorted who we are at the very depth of our being. And so, as good as we might be able to make ourselves be, we still fall short of the glory of God. We fall short of being everything that God created us to be. and therefore we must be justified as a gift by his grace, not through our works. We are sinful in that we willfully bend away from God. There is something in our nature that is always working to move us away from God. And we have fallen short, every one of us. We can have our levels of righteousness that we see on an earthly level, on a horizontal perspective, and we might say, well, that person is more righteous than that person. But when God looks at mankind, he says, all are guilty, all are unrighteous, all remain stuck, separated from me because of this massive chasm created by sin. But then a third way that we see that we are sinful is that we inherited a corrupt nature from Adam. He says this in chapter five. Again, he's talking about the contrast between justification by faith and man's attempts to justify himself through the works of religion. And Paul is basically saying, The core reason no religion will ever save anyone is because the problem is much deeper. We are, at our very core, we are corrupt. And so we don't need a religion that's going to change us from the outside in. What we need is the power of God in the gospel that will change us from the inside out. And so Romans chapter 5 verse 12 says, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. So Adam, as the federal representative of the human race, when he sinned, all who come after him in his lineage are also born with sin, born in a sin nature. born with a corrupt nature. My wife and I did not have to sit down any of our 10 children and tell them how to disobey. We did not have to say, okay, so this is, the class today is called Lying 101. We didn't have to teach any of our kids that. We didn't have to say, okay, this class is sibling rivalry. This is how you're going to beat on each other. This is how you're going to just make each other feel lousy by the words that you say. It's all inside. It's part of our nature. And so something has to happen internally to change us, to transform us. And he goes on in this passage to compare Adam then to Jesus, who is the second Adam. So Adam brought sin into the world, Jesus brings righteousness into the world. Adam's sin brings condemnation to all who are connected to Adam, but Jesus brings righteousness to all who get connected to Jesus by faith. And so here we have this glorious message of the gospel of God's rescue of our souls. So again, what does that do? It levels the playing field completely. We are all sinners. We all are desperately in need of the Savior. We must be saved. And that is something that only God can do. All right, so let's look at the illustration again and just summarize where we've been. God is on one side, man is on the other, separated by this chasm created by our sin. God is holy, he's distinct, he's set apart. He is also loving in that he initiates a way for us to be able to come into a relationship with him and to have the gift of eternal life. But we are sinful, we are helpless, and if something doesn't change, if something does not change fundamentally with who we are, we will die in this life and then go into an eternal death, an eternal separation from God. So let's think now about what it means to be helpless. What does it mean that not only that we are sinful, but that we are helpless? Well, essentially, what it means is that we are unable to bridge this chasm. We can't do it. It's too deep. It's too wide. There's nothing that we could ever do to bridge the chasm between God and ourselves. We are helplessly lost. That's what it means. Well, let's think a little more deeply. Go back to chapter three of Romans, where we see that what it means to be helpless is this, that our works cannot justify us before God. No matter how many good works we do, we cannot justify ourselves before God. No matter how many religious works we do, we cannot justify ourselves before God. Romans chapter 3, verse 20. For by works of the law, notice, no human being. No human being. You ought to underline that in your Bible. Because I was raised in a works religion that essentially taught me, for by the works of the law, some people will be saved. by the works of the law, by you doing the things that the church tells you to do, and not doing the things that the church tells you not to do, then some of you will be justified. But is that what God's word says? For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. The purpose of the law was not to save anyone. The purpose of the law was to show mankind that he cannot save himself, that the law is too high, too holy, that he cannot obey it. Why? Because his problem is a corrupt nature. And so the purpose of the law was to show man that he was so sinful that he needed someone else to fulfill the law for him. And that's where Jesus enters the picture. Now, pick it up again in verse 27. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. If we could be saved by our works, then that would lead to boasting. That would lead to us comparing our works with each other and then even spending all of eternity in heaven comparing, oh, well, you got here by the skin of your teeth. I got here with loads and loads of rewards. But in heaven, there's only one kind of boasting, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, boasting in the cross, boasting in Christ, who did it all so that we could be born again, that we could be saved. So, again, notice verse 28, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart, apart from works of the law. All right? then go into chapter four, because now the Jewish reader of this book or the person who's Jewish in the audience who's hearing this publicly read for the first time is thinking, well, but what about Abraham? Well, then what shall we say about Abraham, our forefather? Verse one. For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. In other words, it was reckoned to him, it was accounted. It's an accounting term, it's a bookkeeping term. that God saw Abraham's faith, that he believed in the promise of God based on the word of God that was brought to him, and God then put in his book a credit, a credit of righteousness. He accounted a credit of righteousness. This was a gift. He didn't earn it, why? Because it came to him by faith. Now, verse four, critical verse, verses four and five. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. So every time you get a paycheck, either paper or a direct deposit into your bank account, You're not thinking, wow, my employer just felt exceedingly generous this week and just decided to put this money into my account. You were expecting that check. You were expecting that deposit. Why? Because you worked for it. Because you earned it. The one who works isn't looking for a gift, he's looking for a paycheck. but to the one who does not work, verse five, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. His faith is the vehicle through which he receives the righteousness of God. God is the one who saves. His faith doesn't save. You know, a lot of times we hear people talk and say, well, my faith is what got me through, or my faith is what's going to save me. Actually, no, it's not. It's God through Christ who's gonna save you, and you receive that by faith. There's a difference there. we receive the promise of God through faith. In other words, believing his word. What he says about himself is true, what he says about ourselves is true, and what he says about the only way to get to him is true. And so he goes on then from Abraham to David. Verse six, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness, It's an accounting term, credits righteousness to the person who believes. All right? He is forgiven apart from works, verse six. And so that's why he brings this triumphant shout. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. We are led to believe all the while we grow up, if not by the way that we are taught, at least by our sin nature, wants us to believe this way. That is, that in heaven there is a big scale or, let's say, there's a balance sheet. And so we have loads and loads of debt, ways we've sinned against God. That has to be forgiven. Which, by the way, that's the meaning of the word forgiven. It means to release from debt. But then we think, well, I know I've done all those bad things, so now let me work extra hard at being good so that I can balance those things out. And yet what David is saying from Psalm 32 here, is that how blessed is the man who has been forgiven. His debts, his sin debts, have been erased. Why? Because they are not being counted against him. And why are our sins not counted against us? if we believe in Christ? Well, because God counted them against Jesus when he was hanging on the cross and treated Jesus as if he had committed every sin that you and I would ever commit. And yet he committed none of them. And so righteousness comes to us on the basis of faith. That's his point. All right? So our works cannot justify us before God. Why? Because the root problem is far too serious, far too deep. Secondly, It means that we cannot reconcile ourselves to God. So we can't work our way to heaven, but we also can't manipulate God in such a way that he would then be reconciled to us. We can't bring that about. And so chapter five, pick it up, in verse six, for while we were still weak, or helpless, some translations use, for while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the righteous. Right? Is that what your Bible says? No, it doesn't say that. At the right time, Christ died for the what? Ungodly. Christ died for the ungodly. And why did he do this? Well, one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So God isn't sitting up in heaven waiting for us to get our act together. waiting for us to clean up our life before He will receive us, He's looking for humble, broken sinners who will come to Him helpless in order to receive the gift of righteousness, which then leads to eternal life. Verse 9, Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, Much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, if while the relationship was broken, if while there was this separation between us and God, that we were then reconciled, how, by the death of his son, how much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life. While we were enemies, God took the initiative to break down the wall of separation, or to bridge the gap, in order to reconcile us back to himself. And that's the way that grace works. Grace is God taking the initiative to reconcile us. to deal with the separation that we have caused by our sin. There's a third way that we're helpless. That is that we cannot earn eternal life. Look at chapter six. Now, in chapter 6, Paul is writing, again, to believers, as the whole book is written to believers, but he's talking about, in chapter 6, the right way that we as Christians do battle against sin. So he's talking about slavery, that we were once slaves to sin, now we're slaves to God, So there's a lot of that language going on in the chapter. And so when he comes to verse 20 and says, for when you were slaves of sin, you were freed in regard to righteousness, but what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? In other words, you once were a slave to sin, but what good was coming into your life when you were a slave to sin? Those of us who got saved later in life, we can remember back to what slavery to sin looked like in our lives. And we're so grateful, exceedingly grateful, that God reached in to rescue us and to purchase us out of that slave market of sin with the blood of his son. So he's setting us up here to understand the difference between what we were, slaves to sin, and what we now are if we are trusting in Christ. But now that you've been set free from sin, verse 22, and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. In other words, the evidence that we really have been set free by the gospel is progressive growth in holiness. It's called sanctification. So if you can remember back to a time when you prayed a prayer to receive Jesus Christ, and yet you look at your life and you don't really see any change, especially change inward, that then is making itself manifest outward, you really need to examine yourself. Because the Bible says that when a person comes to faith in Christ, the seed of new life is placed there by the gospel, and that begins a revolution, a transformation, to varying degrees, of course, because we're not all the same. but you ought to, you better be able to look back at that time when you believe you trusted Christ and see that there has been progression toward Christlikeness in your life. as the general pattern of your life. We'll all have hills and valleys. We'll all have mountaintop experiences in the Christian life, and then we will have valleys that seem to go on forever. But what is the general movement of your life? Is it moving toward love for God, love for his word, growing in holiness, an increased sensitivity to sin, and all of the things that come from the Holy Spirit's work inside of us. That's what he's saying when he says that the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. He's not saying we're saved by our sanctification. He's saying salvation comes to those who are being sanctified. Make sense? Super important to understand. Four, verse 23, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So the wages of sin, what we deserve is death. And not just physical death, but we deserve eternal death. Because our sin is infinitely against an infinitely holy God. But in Christ Jesus, our Lord, we receive what? The gift. See his comparison there again? Wages, gift, wages, gift. Wages of sin leads to death. Gift of grace from God leads to eternal life in Christ. Well, we cannot earn eternal life, that's clear, but we try. We try. And there are three ways I want to do it. mention that we try to earn eternal life. First, we try to work or buy our way to God. Some people write checks in hopes that those checks are going ahead of them and purchasing their heavenly residence. They're like real estate deposits for heaven. Doesn't happen, can't do that. We saw that extensively already regarding work, but what about buying? What about buying our way into heaven? What about buying eternal life? Well, Revelation 22 says, come, let the one who is thirsty come, and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. No, we can't purchase eternal life. We must receive it as a gift. the gift of God's grace. Or we might try to be a good person. And yet Jesus says in Mark 10, there is no one good except God. And we saw in Romans 3 that God's assessment of all mankind is nobody's good enough. But our nature is led to believe that, well, you know, we're bad, because otherwise our conscience wouldn't feel so lousy. So now we've got to make ourselves good. and the gooder we can make ourselves, the more chance there is that we'll be in heaven someday. Or through rituals, man-made rituals of man-made religion like infant baptism, communion, confirmation, and you can list as many others as you are familiar with depending on your upbringing. And yet, God makes it clear that we cannot earn eternal life. Titus chapter 3 verse 5 says this, Not even religious works can save us. but according to his mercy. And so you notice that all of those attempts, and those are just three samples, there are infinite more, because man is infinite in his ability to conjure up false ways of potentially getting to God. But notice, none of those reach the other side. None of those work. There is no stairway to heaven. There's a stairway from heaven where the Son of God descended down to us, become one of us, die in our place, be risen again, that we might be given the gift of eternal life. And so God provided the one and only way to be reconciled, to be at peace with him, and that is through the cross of Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can bridge the gap. Only Jesus. Jesus Christ is the bridge to eternal life. Listen to one more scripture from Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, but it is the gift of God not a result of your works, lest no one may boast." So we receive the salvation that God has offered to us through his Son by faith. What is faith? As I mentioned last week, and I'll touch on it again this morning, but we're going to deal extensively with this in a future week, Faith is a two-sided coin. Faith means to repent and believe. Two sides to every coin on one side of faith is repent, which means to turn, to turn away from our sin, to turn away from all of those steps that we are trusting in, trying to get to God, and trusting, believing, trusting that what God says about himself and us And Jesus is true. And we trust the message of the gospel. We turn, our will turns, and we trust. That's what faith is. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. See, God has done everything required to save mankind from sin. And yet, not all of us, none of us, are automatically saved. None of us are automatically saved. We must respond. And not all of us will be saved. Not everyone in the world will be saved. Not everybody is going to heaven just on a different path. We have to respond to this message. We do that through faith, by turning away from the things that we've been trusting in our whole lives and turn to Jesus. And we embrace him and trust him. for all that he is and all that he has done for us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for reminding us this morning that you are holy and we are not. But you, being rich in mercy, you have provided the one and only way for us to be reconciled to you. Oh, what a gift of mercy, love, and grace this is. Oh, if you did not love us, we would be helpless and hopeless forever. But God, thank you for bridging the gap, for bridging that chasm that we created through our own sinfulness. And you did that by giving your Son. You bridged the gap through the saving work of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God come in the flesh, to be that sinless sacrifice that was required for payment of our sin. You accepted his sacrifice on the cross, and to prove it, you rose him from the grave, and now he lives today to give eternal life to all sinners who will turn and trust in him. God, you know each of our hearts, so wherever we are at, Lord, if we are believers already who need a deeper appreciation of the gospel, then would you so do that work in us? But Father, if there's anyone here who is not yet certain of where, on what cliff they're on, are they still off all by themselves, trying to find a way to get to you? If so, Lord, oh, would you just woo them with your love and your grace today and cause them to come to Jesus by faith. God, we thank you for the Lord Jesus who gave his blood for us to forgive us, to restore us, to reconcile us back to the one who created us. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.