Alright, good morning. We are going to continue on our theology course and today we are going to be looking at taking a closer look at the doctrine of justification. As you guys know, it's a 12 week course. Every week we do a different study and then we Usually when I finish the 12 weeks, we take a little break and do something different for a week or two just to give my brain a break. And then we come back and jump right into it. So if you're here and you're new, this is week nine. So we're almost to the end of the 12 weeks. We started out with theology proper, then we went to Christology, Pneumatology, all the different disciplines of systematic theology. And today we are doing a subsection because last week we looked at Soteriology. Anybody remember what that means? No, not Holy Spirit. The Doctrine of Salvation. The Doctrine of Salvation. The word Soter, in Greek, or Soto, means saved or salvation. You put the word, you put the L-O-G-Y on the end, it means the study of something. So we are doing soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation. And in the doctrine of salvation, there are three subsets or three subcategories we talked about last week. Does anybody remember what those three things are? Oh, come on, y'all woke up this morning, you know what I'm talking about. I can't hear everybody at once. Justification is number one. Justification, sanctification, and glorification. That's right. So, when we talk about salvation or being saved, justification is saved from the penalty of sin. The penalty of sin is Death, right? The wages of sin is death. And we're not just talking about physical death, but spiritual death. We're talking about eternal hell. We're talking about damnation, punishment. So, the act of justification is saving us from the penalty of sin. Sanctification saves us from the power of sin. Because sanctification is about giving us the power to live for Christ in this world. Once we are saved, we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to live for Christ, that is sanctification. And that's a process that lasts throughout our life. It's not something that happens automatically. Nobody immediately becomes a perfect Christian. In fact, you'll never be perfect until you until your body is redeemed and you receive a glorified body. And so when we talk about justification, that's the salvation from the penalty of sin. Sanctification is the salvation from the power of sin. And what's glorification? The presence of sin. That is the one day that's coming when we will no longer be in this sinful flesh. And we will have a glorified existence where we will no longer yearn for or desire sin. Okay, so this is, that was last week's lesson. Bring everybody up to speed. And today we're going to focus our attention on just this one subset of salvation, or the doctrine of salvation, and that is the doctrine of justification. It is my opinion, and it is just an opinion, so it's not gospel, but it is my opinion that it is the doctrine of justification that is most misunderstood and most falsely proclaimed. In fact, if you go and look in various cult groups, you look in various religions, It is the doctrine of justification where you have the biggest problem. Because the doctrine of justification seeks to answer a question. Anybody need me? I'm going to erase this. Anybody need it? The doctrine of justification seeks to ask, or excuse me, seeks to answer a very important question. The most important question in life. How Can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? How can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? You know what the most frightening reality about God is? What is it? Not knowing. The most frightening thing about... what were you going to say? Yes, that's true. Who said He's just? Yeah, I would even go simpler than that. The most frightening thing about God is that He's good. Everybody says, God is good all the time. He put a song of praise in this heart of mine. You guys know that song, right? God is good all the time. Well, the problem is we sing that as if it should make us happy. The problem is God's goodness is kind of a scary thing. Because if we say God is good and we are not, then that creates a divide between us. You see, what most people do is they elevate themselves and they try to diminish God. They try to build up their own goodness and they try to bring down His goodness. And the reality is, His goodness is so infinite and our badness is actually so depraved that our divide is very wide. And so the question of how can a sinful man be made right with a holy God, really you have to understand the two categories. The category of sinful man and the category of holy God. I've used this expression before. I've said, imagine the worst person that you could possibly think of. I don't know who that is for you. Maybe it's Adolf Hitler. Maybe it's Mussolini. Maybe it's Saddam Hussein. Huh? Jeffrey Dahmer. That's a freaky guy. Yeah, okay. We use Jeffrey Dahmer. He's kind of odd. John Wayne Gacy. Huh? John Wayne Gacy. John Wayne Gacy. I mean, again. Stalin. Yeah, Stalin. Yeah, well, we're getting there. You're right here. Because what I want to do is I say, if you imagine you put the worst person over here, right? And you say, this is a scale. It's a sliding scale. And you say, OK, over here I'm going to put Jesus Christ. Right? Perfect man. Never did anything. Never sinned, thought, word, or deed. Here's Jesus. Over there on the other side of the scale is the most evil person that you can think of. Where would you be on the scale? Most average people would put themselves somewhere near Jesus, or at least in the middle. But the reality is, when we compare ourselves to Christ, we would be shoulder to shoulder with The same seed of evil that was in Adolf Hitler resides in me. The same Adamic nature, the same sinful nature that rests in John Wayne Gacy rests in me. I know this because I know my heart and mind. I know the things that I've thought of. I know the things that I've fantasized about. I know the things that have crossed my own lips, have come out of my mouth. And the Bible says what comes out of the mouth, it shows what's in the heart, right? I know myself, and so I know that when I ask the question, how can a sinful man be made right with a holy God, the two most important words in that sentence are holy and sinful. Because that's what separates me from God. The Bible says our sin hath separated us from God. So when you ask the question, how can a sinful man be made right with a holy God, and you go out in the world and you talk to other religions or you talk to other teachers, you get all kinds of different answers. I want to give you three wrong answers to this question as we begin. Three wrong answers to this question. How is a sinful man made right with the Holy God, number one, is the answer of what is called universalism. Universalism is justification by death. You say, what does that mean? This is the person who no matter what they did, who they were, what they believed, when they die, oh, she's in heaven. Oh, he's with the Lord. You know, that's what we do, right? That's how we do. Doesn't matter, right? Because we have this weird notion that everybody is right with God. This weird notion that everybody is justified on their deathbed. Somehow, someway, everybody gets to go to heaven. There is no qualification. There is no stamp of approval. There is no requirement. It's just everybody gets to go. You ever heard of the Universalist Church? Usually it's called the Unitarian Universalist Church. Do you know why they're called Unitarian? because they deny the Trinity. Trinitarian is biblical Christianity. They're Unitarian because they deny the deity of Christ, they deny the Trinitarian nature of God, so they call themselves Unitarian and Universalist. Universalist means that God is going to justify every man, and every man will have his place in the Kingdom of Heaven. It's a direct denial of what Jesus said, because Jesus said, unless a man be born again, he will not see the Kingdom of Heaven, right? So Jesus gives a requirement, unless he's born again. They say, not a requirement. Jesus was wrong. Yes? I try to put in layman's terms, so when I go back and read your notes, Yeah, everybody goes to heaven. Like I said, I do. When I was 17 years old, 16 years old, I got my first job working at a funeral home. I worked for a funeral home for a couple of years. And then I thought I was going to be a funeral director. God had a different direction, took me into ministry and I became a pastor. But now I still work with a funeral home. And I've done over 150 or so funerals over the last few years, especially now recently. A few weeks ago, I had five funerals in one week. Just every day was boom, boom, boom. A couple days I had two in a row. Like I had one at 10 o'clock in the morning and one at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. People are dying all around us. 150,000 people die every day. If we stop talking for five minutes and just let the sound of the air conditioners lull us, what we're listening to is the silent cry of death, which is happening all around the world. Happens all the time. People die. The idea of justification by death is that every one of those people is going to go to heaven. That is not true, as much as we might like to hope for it. And the reason why I brought up the funeral home is because everybody says that. I go in to meet with the family. Okay, we're going to talk about Johnny. Johnny died. Tell me about Johnny. Oh, Johnny was a good man. Johnny didn't give his shirt off his back. Everybody gives their shirt off their back. I've never seen a person with no shirt on walking around, but everybody does it. Because that's what they always say. Johnny gives his shirt off his back. Johnny feed anybody, help anybody. Johnny, you know. I don't know. Maybe Johnny was a good dude. But if he didn't have Jesus, he's lost. And that's the reality. So, universalism is justification by death. The second one, which is, I would say, even more prominent than universalism, even though it is pretty common, is what we call legalism. Legalism is justification by works. Justification by works. Well, you could put Catholics into that category in a sense that they do believe that there are certain things that have to be done. But, you know, a lot of people, even people who call themselves Christians, fall into this category. Because they begin to put themselves into the category of do's rather than done's. And you say, what does that mean? Well, the Bible tells us that what was done for our salvation is completed. Jesus said it is finished. It is done. D-O-N-E. But then you meet people and they say, well, this is what you've got to do. And then you get into the religion of do rather than done. Rather than trusting in what Christ has done, it's about what you've got to do. You've got to do this, you've got to do that, you've got to do the other. And there's all these things you've got to do. That is legalism. And here's how you know someone is a legalist. You say, if you die today, and God said, why should I let you into heaven? And their answer is anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Because here's their answer. Oh, I'm a good person. God should let me into heaven because I'm a good person. That's justification by works, right? I'm a good person, God should let me in. Or they'll say, I went to church, I was a member of First Baptist this, or I was a member of First United Methodist that, right? I'm on the church roll. Justification by works. I took communion every Sunday for 40 years, man, I got the blood of Jesus flowing through my veins. Right? Again, justification by works. It's always something I did. rather than the finished work of Christ. You are either trusting in the finished work of Christ or you're trusting in something that you have done. And that's justification by works. Yes? I knew a guy who had a scale tattooed on his chest. And he goes, I don't believe in Christ, I'm not religious, I just know, I believe that if I do more, I know I've done a lot of bad stuff, that's why I do good stuff too. And so I know so long as I keep the scale balanced and before I die if I balance it a little bit more on the good side or the bad side, I know I'll make it. And I was like, oh my God. You know what's funny is last Sunday in my sermon, I talked about that very thing. I talked about people who believe that there's a cosmic scale of justice. And as long as my good outweighs my bad, then I'm going to go to heaven. Here's the problem with that from a legal perspective. Because God is just, right? What does just mean? God is righteous. He has a standard which is a legal, righteous standard. If you spent all of your life being a choir boy, never did anything wrong. You helped old ladies cross the street. You fed the homeless. You did all these things. But one morning you woke up and you said, hey, you know what? I'm going to take this 9mm and BAM! Blow his brains out. Guess what? You're still going to prison even if you lived 39 years as a good dude. That one example of your depravity is going to send you to jail. And no judge worth his salt is going to say, but you know what? You did good for 39 years. That outweighs your bad. No, you're going to prison. Right? And that's only one Sin, that's a pretty big one. But let me ask you a question. Have you ever committed only one sin? No. Have you committed only five sins? No. How many years have you lived? Forty-one? Twenty-seven. Okay, twenty-seven years times 365 days. That's a lot of days. I can't even do the math. If you only sin five times a day, you'd have hundreds of thousands of sins that you would have to account for. The idea that that's how God's going to judge us is our good outweighs our bad, that's not how justice works. The Bible says even one sin separates us from God. This is why when Adam and Eve ate of the tree, It separated them from God. You say, well, it's such a small thing. It wasn't a small thing. It was high treason against the Judge of the Universe who gave them everything that they needed for joy and happiness and comfort and they spit in His face and they ate from the one tree He said, do not eat from. And why are we saying God is unjust? No, they're unrighteous. And they deserve anything God chooses to give to them. And the fact that He covered them in animal skins and He didn't destroy them the very moment that the fruit went down their throat is mere grace. That's the point. And I get excited about this. The point is, when we deal with the subject of justice, God is just. And there's no scale. Because if there were, number one, your good is not going to outweigh your bad. Because the Bible says God knows the very intents of the heart. So your good is not going to outweigh your bad. But even if it did, on some miracle, it doesn't pay for your bad. Your sins have to be paid for by someone who never sinned. That's how Jesus can pay for your sins because He never sinned any of His own. He didn't have to make atonement for Himself because He was perfect. Alright, I didn't get all excited. Sorry. I can't do that at church. I get to have fun with you guys. I teach the youth on Wednesday night. I'd scare them all. I'd never have them come back. But you guys are adults. You're mature. And you're all men. I can talk about stuff here that I don't talk about with a mixed company. Ladies get a little tender. And that's fine. What's that? You said the mature thing. Well, I meant... Maybe not. Number three is, this one is kind of like a part, almost like two, but a little different. Number three is what I call religionism. Religionism. And this is justification by the church. Or you could put synagogue or the temple, you know, just whatever. It's justification. It's a form of justification by works, but it's more specific because these are the folks who would say, of course I'm saved. I went forward and I received Jesus. But their life was not changed. There was no heart change. And you know there was no heart change because two weeks later they went back forward again. And then two weeks later they went back forward again. It's just over and over and over and over and there's no heart change. There's no life change. This is justification by, I did what the church told me to do. Whatever it is. I took the sacraments. I went and got wet. That's what most people do. Baptism is good, but some people just get wet. Right? So justification by church. When Jesus returns and He rides that white horse into this world and He splits the eastern sky and the sword comes out of His mouth and He comes to bring judgment against His enemies, He's not going to go down to Sister Sarah at the local church and say, Sister Sarah, give me the church role. I want to see who's mine. No, that ain't how it works. You can be a member of a church and still be lost. You can be doing the things that the church tells you to do and still be lost. And some people rely on their religious observances and they think that that is what saves them. It's not. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's right. Yeah, a lot of people say that. I don't need the church. And there's all, you know, it's always Something that they find in themselves. Something that I have done, whether it's I went to church, or I helped old ladies across the street, or I fed the homeless, or I was a Boy Scout, or I helped this person or that person. It's always looking inward. I did this or I did that. And these are all false views of justification because none of these will save. What? I stayed sober at set three for five months. Yeah, I stayed sober for five months. Right? Whatever. Well, I want to present to you, now that I've presented to you the false view, or at least some of the, I mean, we could spend all day looking at different perspectives. But I've presented to you three false views of justification. Now I want to present to you the biblical view of justification. How is a Sinful man made right with a holy God. By the way, that word is justification. No, no, this is just justification. We're talking about how is he made right. To be justified means to be declared righteous. Because what are we? We are sinful. How can we be made right with a holy God? We have to be made holy. We have to be declared righteous, right? We have to go from here to here, right? And the only way to do that is through the process of justification, and the Bible says we are justified not by works, not by religion, and not by simply living and dying, but we are justified by faith alone. And I'm underscoring the word alone. The Latin is sola fide. Sola fide. You guys are familiar with the Marine Corps? Semper Fidelis? Right? Which means what? Always faithful. Well, it's the same root. Fidelis is the same root as fide. It means faith or faithful. And so we are saved, justified by faith alone. Open your Bibles with me. And we're going to look at two passages. Guess who's here? What did he say? Yeah, it's over, that's right. Romans 4. Actually, let's go to Romans 3.21 and we'll read to Romans 4. We're going to read through the chapter. Romans 3.21. It says, but now... By the way, the first three chapters of Romans is all about how sinful we are. Romans 1 talks about the sinfulness of the Gentiles. Romans 2 talks about the sinfulness of the Jews, those who have the law. Romans 3 brings it all together and says, what shall we say then? Are the Jews any better off? No. They all are under sin. Everybody is a sinner. There's none righteous, no not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. This again, sinful man. How is a sinful man made right with a holy God? Right here, verse 21. But now, The righteousness of God is manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Through what? Through faith. In who? Jesus Christ. Understand this. Faith requires an object. People will say, I believe. Well, what do you believe in? I don't know. But I believe. You think I'm lying. I'm telling you. I go out and talk to people. Do you believe? Yes, I believe. What? I don't know. I just know I've got to believe something. And God's not going to care as long as I'm sincere. You know what I say to that? I say the guys who flew planes into those buildings were pretty sincere. They believed what they were doing. Sincerity don't make you right. Don't tell me that sincerity is what saves you. It's not. Your faith must have an object. And that object must be able to hold you up. If I said I believe in this chair and the chair is made out of toothpicks and hot glue, my big old behind is going on the ground. Because my faith doesn't save me, what I put my faith in saves me. And if the chair can't hold me, then I'm out of luck. That's why it says here that it is the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. Not just faith, but through faith in Jesus Christ. For all who believe, for there is no distinction. For all who sin and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift. Very important word there is the word gift because salvation cannot be earned. In fact, the very thing Paul tells us is that if you try to earn your salvation, then it becomes a wage. He says the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life. It's not a wage. You don't earn it. You receive it by faith. You don't earn it by works. Very important distinction. That's right, because you didn't earn it. So it's given. And you don't deserve it. Amen. So verse 24, "...and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith." What does the word propitiation mean? Well, that substitution, and it's similar, you're on the right track. Propitiation means to satisfy someone. So let's say I owe a debt to you. Let's say you let me borrow $100, right? And I pay off the debt. I satisfy the debt. Not exactly. Propitious means to satisfy or appease. It sounds similar, but it's not exactly the same. As long as my debt is against you, you have something against me. You have a debt against me, right? But when I pay you, it satisfies you. There's no longer odds against us because you've been paid. We have a sin debt against God. Jesus dies on the cross and He pays the debt for us and satisfies God's wrath. God's wrath is satisfied by the death of Christ. That's propitiation. The debt's paid. The satisfaction is made. You know what the book of Isaiah chapter 53 says? It says it pleased God to strike His Son. It says it pleased God to strike Him. You say, why in the world would it please God to strike Christ? Because in striking His Son, He doesn't have to strike us. Because Christ takes the stripes that we deserve. Christ becomes the one to take our punishment. That's why Isaiah 53 says, by His stripes we are healed. He takes the punishment. All our iniquities are laid upon Him. Isaiah 53, written 700 years before Jesus came, and it was about the coming of Christ and what He would do on the cross. By His stripes we are healed. So Jesus produces this propitiation. This is what it says. It says, who God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness. How is it showing God's righteousness? Because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Let me tell you something. Verse 26. Underline it. Highlight it. Do whatever you've got to do. Make a note in your Bible that the phrase that God is just and the justifier is so important because here's the thing. God is the judge. And He demands that sin be punished. That's how He's just. But He allows the sin to be punished through a substitute. who is Jesus, that's how He becomes the justifier. So God doesn't give up His justice, He allows His justice to be poured out on a substitute who takes it willingly. Jesus, the Bible says, came to do the will of the Father. He came to save us from our sins. He came willingly to do what only He could do. Live a perfect life, die a substitutionary death. And that's how substitution comes in. He substitutes for us and becomes the appeasement or the satisfaction for our sins. So Jesus is now our Savior through His work of propitiation. And that is how God gets to remain just, but also merciful. The just and the justified. God gets to be both. Oh, sorry. No, it's fine. I just couldn't hear who it was. I would say more specifically for believers, but yes. Okay. We live in a world which has been corrupted by sin. Christ came to save His people from the penalty of their sin. And one day He will save us from the presence of sin. But that is not yet. His first coming saves us from the penalty of sin. His second coming saves us from the presence of sin. That's what we're looking forward to. That's what the Bible calls the beatific hope. The beatific hope is the hope of blessing. The hope of one day a world without sin. In fact, we sing a song. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, amen. We're looking forward to how it was in the beginning. Because in the beginning there was no sin. We're looking forward for the paradise restored. Right? There was paradise, paradise lost. That's the story of the Bible. Paradise, paradise lost. That's where we are now. And we're looking forward to the restoration of what God had in the beginning. It was corrupted by sin, but it won't always be that way. Sorry to get all into singing, but sometimes I can't think of the words when I was singing them out. But we look forward to that world without end. That's that paradise to come, you were going to say. So right now, Jesus justified, we're being sanctified. Glorification is on the way. Right now we're in sanctification. And we may die before it happens. I mean, Jesus may not come back for another hundred years. And if He waits another hundred years, We'll all be gone. Unless we live to be very old men, which I don't expect. That's why I always tell people, people always ask me about end times. I say, you're in the end times. Because even if Jesus doesn't come back for another thousand years, you're going to die in the next hundred. You're in your own end times. Everybody right now is in their own end times. You've got less than 80 years probably to go. For me, I'm 41 years old. I'm more than halfway there, I'm sure. If I live to over 80 with this body, I will be amazed. And so therefore, I know I'm looking forward to my end time. I think about it all the time. It's coming. So celestial bodies, it's like whatever you feel, You won't feel that. It's that indestructible body. Are you talking about our glorified bodies? Yeah, glorified. Okay, okay. I think they'll be physical. I don't think they're going to be just spiritual. I think they'll be a physical body and a physical new earth. So yeah, we'll have feeling. I think it's going to be a lot like Eden. I don't think it will be exactly like Eden. I think it will be better. The picture that we get in Revelation, Revelation 21 and 22, is of a new paradise, a new Edenic state. But it's better than Eden. But it's like Eden in the sense that Adam had a body that was physical. He could eat, he could drink, he could enjoy life. And he had no desire for sin. Which is amazing because he still sinned, which is weird. But in the new heaven, there's no opportunity for sin. There's no opportunity for that. So, kind of lost where I was. Okay. Alright. So, when we look at Romans 3, it tells us that we're justified through faith. And this is where the... If you ask anybody, they'll say, yeah, sure, we can be justified by faith, but that's not all we're saying. We're saying justified by faith alone. Not just by faith, but by faith only. Not by faith plus anything else. In fact, you've probably seen this before, but just in case you haven't, there's a little math thing. You say, Jesus, Jesus plus nothing equals salvation. Jesus plus anything else equals being lost. Because you can't add anything to Christ. You either trust completely in what He has done alone, Or you're lost. And that's what people want to add. They want to add, well, yeah, I believe in Jesus, but I also believe I did good works, I did this. This is why I asked that question. If you died today and you faced God, and you went into the throne room of God, and God said, why should I let you into heaven? If it's anything other than Jesus, if it's anything other than the finished work of Christ, then you're trusting in the wrong thing. That's the scary part because people want to add things to what Christ has done. You don't need to. You need to trust Him. Yes? That's right. Absolutely. It becomes all about Him. And then your life changes because your life becomes all about Him. The One who set me free. The One who loves me and saved me. He's my Savior, but He also becomes the captain of my ship. Right? He's the head of my personal army. He's the captain of my eternity. He's everything to me. That's right. If it weren't for Christ, I would be lost. Therefore, people say, this is why Jesus says that my commands are not burdensome. Why does He say my commands are not burdensome? Because when you realize how much He loved you, that He came to die for you, anything He asks for you is not too much. Anything He asks from you is not too much. That's why it says when you put your hand to the plow, you don't look back. Why? Because you've got your eyes set on the One who saved you. And you know what He said? He said, Remember Lot's wife? You know why He said, Remember Lot's wife? Because she had the opportunity to be saved. The angels were pulling her out of Sodom and said, Go towards the mountain. Don't even look back. Go towards the mountain. But her heart was set in the world. Her heart was set in Sodom. And Jesus said, Remember her. because she did not keep her eyes on God, but she set her eyes on the world. Boy, I mean, just a powerful thought, right? Jesus said, follow me. Genesis 19, yeah. That's right, that's right. We focus on the water rather than on Jesus. Alright, so I want to show you one other passage if you have your Bibles. Go to Galatians 2. I'm sorry, Galatians 3. Galatians 3, 5. Because I'm making the argument that we're saved by faith alone. Go to Galatians 3. Oh, well, we got out of Romans 4. Romans 4 continues Romans 3 and it goes on to talk about how Abraham was saved by faith alone. That's the point I was going to make and I'm sorry, you're right, I should have read on. He says, how was Abraham saved? Was he saved by what he did or was he saved by faith? And he quotes Genesis 15.6. Genesis 15.6 is one of the most important Old Testament passages because it says this, Abraham believed God and he was counted righteous. Abraham believed God and he was counted righteous. How was Abraham saved? By faith alone. He believed what God told him and he was counted righteous. Now, we get to Galatians. Notice what he says, beginning in verse 5. Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Again, citing Genesis 15.6. Know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations of the world be blessed. So then, those who are of faith are blessed, along with Abraham, the man of faith. For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. For as it is written, cursed should be everyone who does not abide in all the things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. That's it. That's it. Now before I answer your question, let me just say something very important here. He says this, He says we are saved by faith. He doesn't use the word alone, but notice he's not giving anything else to go with it. So that's why we stress the idea of faith alone. We are not saved by anything but our trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now does that change our life? Absolutely. Does that change who we are? As I just said, hand of the plow, looking at the Savior, following the captain of our salvation. Absolutely. James talks about this. He says if you say you have faith and don't have works that go with it, your faith is not real. It's dead, right? So there's a reality where our faith changes our life. But it's still salvation by faith. You were going to say? Aren't you the one that said this a year and a half ago that you don't You prefer not to ask people, do you believe in God, but you ask them, do you believe God? Yes. Yeah. If you read Genesis 15-6, when it talks about Abraham, it doesn't say Abraham believed in God and he was counted righteous. It says he believed God and he was counted righteous. And there is a major world of difference when you add the preposition. When you say believe in God, I'm going to tell you this, you may disagree with me. Some of you out there may consider yourselves to be atheists. I want to talk right now to this very thing. The Bible says everyone knows that God exists. Romans 1 says that the righteousness of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is evident to them, mainly His eternal power and His divine nature which has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. Therefore, He is without excuse. No man can look at the world around him, the order and the power of the universe around him and say there's no God. And anybody who does is lying to himself and he's suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. The idea that we say there is no God is an absolute self-deception. So I don't think believing in God helps you one bit, because you know He's there. It's believing God, not believing in God. There's a difference. That's why when I go out and we share the gospel, we do our fishing hole ministry, we go hang out tracks. I've never once asked somebody, do you believe in God? In fact, I assume they do. I immediately start talking about God. Somebody will say to me, I've had teenagers, little smug teenagers, well, I don't believe in God. And I say, yeah, you do. No, I don't. Okay. I don't go into a long story, but just to be able to say to them, Do you believe in moral absolutes? Say, what do you mean? Would it be wrong if I stole your wallet? Well, yes, it would upset me. But why does that matter? Do you have any value outside of just being a big sack of stardust? Because if you're a true atheist, then you really don't think that you are really any more intrinsically valuable than that table, or the rocks, or the dirt. Because all you are is a very complicated series of stardust. You believe you're more than that. You believe you have value. You believe you have dignity. You believe that you have humanity. And all of those things are endowed in you because you have a Creator who put them within you. I don't have to prove to you The very fact that we can have this conversation and talk about absolutes and oughts and ought nots comes from the fact that we're created in God's image. You know God exists. And here's the other thing you know. You know that you're a sinner. And if you don't, I had a girl the other day call me on the phone. I don't know if I told this story or not. No, I couldn't have because it happened after set free last week. Bobby told the story? Well, I won't go into the whole story, but the lady called me on the phone. She wanted to ask questions about the Bible. And right away, she said, well, I don't believe the Bible. I don't believe in Jesus. I believe the Old Testament, but I don't believe the New Testament. And so we started going back and forth, and I said, well, the most important thing you need to understand is that you're a sinner and that you need a Savior. I'm not a sinner. Not a sinner? And I said, have you ever told a lie? Well, yes, of course I've told lies. Everybody lies. I know. The Bible says in Revelation 21.8, all liars will have their place in the lake of fire. Well, I'm not a liar. Back up. You just said you've told lies. How many lies have you got to tell to be a liar? Yeah, and say, how many murders you got to beat up? Bang! One time, you're a murderer, right? One time murderer makes you a murderer. One time liar makes you a liar. And you're going to face the judge of the universe one day. And the judge of the universe is righteous. And you are not. She got so mad at me. I am not a sinner. How dare you tell me I'm a sinner? You don't know me. I said, I know enough. You've got the blood of Adam running through your veins. I know that you're a sinner. That's another part of the story. I did ask her, because she sounded young, and she got very offended, I said, Are you a young person? I said, How old are you? And she said, why do you want to know? I said, well, I want to make sure I'm not talking to someone's teenage daughter. You know, if you're a child, I'm not going to keep going with this conversation without talking to your parent, you know, because I'm a grown man. And I don't want any, you know, well, I'm 35 years old and I can't believe you think I was a kid. And I was like, well, you just have a young sounding voice. She got really mad. Anyway, I don't know why I got into that. It did not get much better. because she was very obstinate that she wasn't going to believe, and that she didn't want to hear anything I had to say. She heard the gospel several times, and I did tell her, I love you, there's a reason why you called me today, I believe God ordained this, and I believe that there's a reason why you're hearing me say, nobody in the world is going to be as honest with you as I'm being right now, and I love you enough to tell you the truth. So I hope that those words would pierce her heart, that she actually knows. Because most people will affirm anything. People come in with all kinds of crazy stuff. I believe in Medusa and all that. People will affirm stupidity. We tell seven year olds, oh, you think you're a boy? No, you're a girl, but we'll let you be a boy. Because we're stupid. Because we affirm everything. It's only the person who doesn't affirm crazy who has now been considered to be the hateful one. I will not affirm you're crazy. I hope you don't ever affirm mine. If I come in here one day saying that I'm the President of the United States and you affirm me, then you're just as crazy as me. You gotta tell me when I'm wrong. See, we have come to the place in our society where everybody, if you say anybody's wrong, Person could be standing on the side of a ledge, about to fall 5,000 feet, and you say, hey man, if you take a step, you're going to fall. What you judging me for, bro? I mean, golly, you're going to fall. You're going to fall to your death. I'm not judging you. I'm pointing out the precarious perch upon which you stand. You're going to identify as a pancake in about five seconds if you step off that ledge. But that's right, right? Somebody would say that. I identify as a bird. I'm a peacock. Watch me fly. I'm having too much fun. We gotta end. I'll finish with this quick story. Martin Luther was a 16th century Catholic monk. He's one of my favorite, favorite men of history. Not because he was always right. In fact, he was a German who liked to drink and cuss, and he had a little bit of a hard nose on him. I mean, he was a hard dude. But Martin Luther, he was a monk, and he would spend his whole day going to confession because he was so overwhelmed by his sin. to the point that his overseers, sort of like here, but they're priests that were over them, they're bishops, would say, Brother Martin, please don't come to confession until you have something serious to confess. I mean, you live in a monastery. What could you do? I was coveting Brother Anthony's rice. What were you going to do? But he would come and he would confess sin over and over to the point that it was driving him crazy. And they tried to give Him every religious thing that He could do to find salvation. They sent Him to Rome. He went to Rome. And there's a set of steps in Rome that you can climb. And with every step, you're supposed to pray a prayer. And it's supposed to forgive the sins of your family. And you go up these steps until you reach the top. It's supposed to be the steps that Jesus ascended when He went to see Pilate. Supposedly during the Crusades, they found those steps in Jerusalem and they took them apart and brought them to Rome and rebuilt them. It's a crock, but that's what they said. Right? They go there, they're on their hands and knees, they crawl up these steps. Well, he went and did that. And he said when he got to the top of the steps, he didn't find salvation. He said, I found nothing there. So he came back, and he began to finally study the Scriptures. And he came to Romans chapter 1. And in Romans chapter 1, it says, that I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for the Gospel is the power of God, for salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, that is in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. From faith to faith. That means from faith in the beginning to faith at the end. It's faith alone. Not faith plus words. Not faith plus what I do. It's faith from beginning to end. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. He says, when I read that passage, it was like the scales fell off of my eyes for the first time and I could finally see what I had been missing. That my salvation comes not in what I do, not in confession or penance or the buying of indulgences, but finally and forever, my salvation is through trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Justification by faith alone. Let's pray. Father, I thank You for Your Word. I thank You for Your truth. I thank You that You give us these opportunities to study together. I pray You bless every one of these men and myself with a better understanding of Your Word and Your Gospel. In Christ's name, Amen.