Exposition of 2 Peter 3:9

What about 2 Peter 3:9?
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (ESV)

Or

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (NIV)


The ESV translates the word “wishing” while the NIV translates it “wanting” but the bottom line is the same. If God is not willing or wishing that any should perish then why would Scripture also teach that Jacob was elect from before birth and Esau was not (Romans 9:13)?

First of all we need to understand that an expression of God’s will (and even a man’s will) needs to be viewed in three categories. There is the will expressed in an enforced decree (decretive), the will expressed in a prescription or rule (prescriptive), and the will expressed in a disposition or attitude.

God’s decretive will or His will expressed in a decree will can’t be resisted and will be accomplished. When He speaks forth His decree it is going to happen. A biblical example of God’s will expressed in a decree can be found in the book of Daniel. You probably remember the “Handwriting on the Wall” and this has even entered into popular language to indicate that something is decided already and can’t be stopped from occurring.

Daniel 5:24-28
“Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

God’s prescriptive will is His intent for our behavior expressed in commands that we need to obey. Disobedience brings consequences but obedience is not compelled. The 10 Commandments are excellent examples of God’s expression of His will in a prescriptive manner. He says, “thou shalt not” and yet we do what He told us not to do and then we eventually reap the wages of sin.

His will of disposition is what we would think of as wishing or expressing an opinion. For example, God tells Ezekiel to tell Israel that “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). So God does not find pleasure in the death (will of disposition) of the wicked and continually stresses that men are making real decisions and yet they persistently stand against the voice of God calling for repentance (prescriptive will).

So we have decretive will or will of decree, prescriptive will or commands, and then God’s will of disposition.

Certainly many have looked at 2 Peter 3:9 and said that it was simply an expression of God’s will of disposition. In fact, the ESV even translates it as “wishes” leaving the interpretation a bit ambiguous. However, the meaning seems a little odd if God is omniscient since He wouldn't need to wait to see if anyone was going to get saved. Besides, there are other scriptures using wish to mean a will of disposition. For example, Matthew 7:12 quotes Jesus saying “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” So the “Golden Rule” uses wish in the way we use use wish to mean a disposition or desire.

The problem with assigning God’s will of disposition to 2 Peter 3:9 is that it uses the wrong word. It is a purposeful wanting in 2 Peter 3:9 and not the wishing of Matthew 7:12. The verse found in 2 Peter 3:9 is not a prescriptive expression of God's will from either context or simple reading of the text. Consequently the most straightforward reading of the Scripture is found by reading the verse as God expressing His will in the decretive sense. So if we read in that way God decrees that He is unwilling (will not let) any perish. Well then suddenly the context is critical (as it always is and we should make sure that we never forget that). Who is “any of you”? If God decrees that He is unwilling to let "any of you" perish and "any of you" is everyone then we wind up finding support for universalism and presto we become heretics.

Scripture always fits together but we often insert ourselves out of context and then work from the middle outward. Remember when we looked at Hebrews how we wished we knew for sure who the epistle was written to so that it would aid our understanding of the Scriptures? Well we know who Peter was written to because it is specified in the first 2 verses of the epistle.

2 Peter 1:1-2
Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Therefore, the epistle is written to the Church and not to the world at large. The “any of you” are the called and elect (see verse 10). The “any of you” is you if you are a believer! You sitting in class or reading this Scripture now, if you are a Christian are the “any of you”. The context of the verse is an explanation of the delay in the second coming of Christ and Scripture tells us that God is delaying because He is not willing that any of the called and elect would perish. This verse is entirely consistent with Chapter 9 of Romans and in no way conflicts. In fact Peter is confirming that God is aware of those He will call and will not return in judgement until He finishes because He will not let any of His elect perish just as Jesus promised (John 6:35-44; John 17:12)

The struggle that we have in understanding how God made us alive when we were dead in our trespasses and sins is natural. It is also natural that we struggle to understand how God in His transcendence relates to His creation. Paul does a detailed explanation in Romans and it is OK that we take time to digest and understand all that God wants to explain to us and then leave the rest in God’s hand. Peter says in this epistle;

2 Peter 3:15-18
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Romans 9:1 to 9:33

From the mountain top of praise for salvation in Chapter 8 Paul now looks back in sorrow for those who are by birth (but not the new birth) the children of Israel.

Romans 9:1-5
I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

You can feel Paul’s sorrow here. He has the security of God’s move in his life and he knows that those who God has saved will never fall. However, Paul also realizes that many individual members of a people chosen by God would not respond to the covenants, law, worship, and promises any better than Paul did before God’s intervention. According to the flesh or simple genetics they have the patriarchs and of course Jesus. Notice that Paul praises God for what He did in the lives of his “kinsmen according to the flesh”. Likewise, we need to praise God for His gracious ministry to the Israelites and praise Him for the Grace of His work in our lives. Our attitude toward those who are Israelites according to the flesh should be one of humility since we understand the Grace in which we stand is not based on our brains and skills but rather on the gracious move of God’s Holy Spirit. In the following Scriptures Paul tries to drive home that our position in Christ is one of Grace.

Romans 9:6-13
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call— she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

Paul still experiences anguish and sorrow over those who make up his culture but he realizes that the children that are God’s are the children of promise and not those according to the flesh. To drive home the point Paul points out that it has never been simply that the children of the Patriarchs were the elect. God has always kept the children of promise and allowed those that were not of the promise to continue according to their own will and inclination. Think about Esau and Jacob. Here the doctrine of unconditional election is lived out in the lives of two guys that really were both flakes. Esau and Jacob were both, at least arguably, jerks. You wouldn’t elect either one of them conditionally (based on their natures or works). They were as bad as us and frankly most guys would rather hang out with Esau than Jacob. God had to work and work pouring out Grace in Jacob’s life. God in His mercy and grace chose Jacob before his birth and not because of anything he had done or was going to do that God was going to need. You can’t say that God is unjust because He showed mercy and compassion to Jacob and didn’t show mercy and compassion to Esau. Justice would condemn both of them. Mercy by definition can’t be required of the one showing mercy or it isn’t mercy. I think this is a key point in understanding Grace. An act of mercy can not be required; not now, not ever, never. Mercy can’t be the “fitting” or “just” thing to do. If Mercy is fitting then it is justice and not mercy. We never want to argue with God asking for justice. I want mercy and Grace. In our hearts, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” is a hard Scripture to deal with. The “Jacob have I loved” is easy for us to pass over as an acceptable portion. Why? Because we figure our sin natures should be no problem since they are so natural to us. Of course it is OK for God to love Jacob but we stagger at “Esau have I hated”. We are not really amazed by Grace are we? We think God owes us Grace as oxymoronic or maybe just moronic as that is. Esau got justice while Jacob got mercy. Which do you want?

Romans 9:14-18
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You can pray for God to have mercy and compassion on others and God may hear; however, you have no leg to stand on if you start to thing that God is unjust in dispensing mercy and compassion. If you do then please stop singing “Amazing Grace, that saved a wretch like me” and start singing “Reasonable Grace, that saved a guy with a few problems but otherwise was a pretty good guy”.

God will use a wicked man according to his wicked nature to accomplish God’s good will. God knew specifically what would harden Pharaoh’s heart and used him to accomplish His will. Events hardened Pharaoh and God used that. He didn’t need to “do violence” to Pharaoh’s heart to harden it. We need to remember what God previously told us about mankind’s lack of inclination toward God or we’ll make the error or thinking that Pharaoh was some basically nice guy who God had to corrupt. God doesn’t corrupt us we are already radically corrupt or, in other words, corrupt to the core. It is too late for God to do that. We did it to ourselves.

Now Paul is aware that since God is sovereign and it is He that has made us and that we have not made ourselves. So since God has revealed the depth of our sin nature we can just claim that we should not be subject to judgment because we are sinners by nature. Listen to what Paul says about that.

Romans 9:19-29
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ” And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” And as Isaiah predicted, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.”

To argue that you are not subject to judgment based on this revelation would be the same as a pedophile arguing that they can’t be found guilty because they are pedophiles by nature. An unsaved person who tries to argue that God can’t find them guilty because they willingly choose to sin is in error. We always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment. We are liable for our sins because we make bad choices and choose to sin. God has revealed that in His mercy He changes our heart (regenerates) and we choose Him. We make morally valid choices in either case.

We are called “my people” and “beloved” because of the will of God. He has made us “Vessels of Mercy” and called us and made us the Body of Christ.

Romans 9:30-33
What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “ Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

Here is the summary. You guys (who did not pursue righteousness) because of God’s work in your life, have a righteousness attained by faith while most of those who are Israel according to the flesh stumbled on a stone laid by God for stumbling.

Exposition of Hebrews 6:4-6

Well I hope that everyone realizes that if they find a hard Scripture that they want dealt with in class that they can ask, email, blog, or call me and give it to me to deal with. I might want time to pray and think before I answer but I’ll give you the best answer I can come up with. You are not likely to have any question that is younger than 500 to 2 thousand years old anyway.

Along those lines … I’d like to deal with some verses in Hebrews that, at first glance, may seem to be contrary to the doctrine of the Preservation of the Saints. I want you to have the Helmet of Salvation on and well fitted to protect your mind from the enemy of your soul.

First, we always need to remember to interpret Scripture with Scripture. It is a unified whole written by divine inspiration and not with men as mechanical holy typewriters used by God but with men inspired and God writing through them in history with their style and person in the process. That is why we like to know why a book was written. What occasioned the writing of the book? This is especially important in the Epistles and that is because it gives context. And why do we want context? It is because a text without a context is a pretext. In other words if you are out of context then you are spinning the use of a Scripture to support a point that may or may not be valid but in either case the Scripture isn’t appropriate for your point.

Hebrews is a little hard in this respect because the Early Church was convinced that Paul wrote the book but modern scholars wonder and nobody is sure who the letter was written to or what caused it to be written. So we are left to listen carefully to what the author is saying.

The verse that you’ll sometimes hear from someone who is convinced that “eternal security” isn’t eternally secure is Hebrews 6:4.

Hebrews 6:4-6
For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then fall away, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

So that verse can be taken to infer that someone can fall away and lose their salvation. So you could decide that in John 17 when Jesus said that He had not lost any that the Father had given to Him that He was wrong or meant almost none. Well that can’t be right can it?

The solution that many have sought in this verse is to argue that the person that might fall into this category isn’t really saved. They saw some light, tasted some good stuff, shared a little in the blessings and then bailed out. I’ve had some friends and acquaintances that would fall into a category like that and Scripture does indicate that Tares (the Unsaved) will grow in with the Wheat (the Saved) until Judgment Day.

I like simple explanations when possible because we don’t want to twist stuff around and the fancier we get the more likely we are to make a mistake. This verse says “repentance” and says that they have shared in the Holy Spirit. It really seems that it is talking about a saved person and not a person that was just looking for the benefits of Christianity without the Lordship of Christ. In particular I see “restore again to repentance” as restoring salvation. So if that is the case then how does this fit?

We have to back up to context here. We don’t know who the author was really writing to for sure so what do we infer from the text? Hebrews begins with a discourse on the glory of Christ as our Priest. He is viewed in His glory as finished with his provision of purification for our sins (Hebrews 1:3-4). Then some warnings and corrections begin to be found in the text as the Glorified Christ is praised and lots of Scripture is quoted. I’ll list the warnings.

Hebrews 2:1
We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.

Hebrews 3:12
See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

Hebrews 4:1
Therefore, since the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.

Hebrews 4:11
Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.

Hebrews 4:14
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

It really sounds like they were rejecting the rest or position that God has provided for us on the Cross and beginning to develop some distorted gospel (which is no Gospel). The author was talking to the believers (Brothers) but their local church was in danger of forgetting the Gospel.

Then the author hits them between the eyes …

Hebrews 5:11-14
About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

So you have some brothers here who barely understand the Gospel. They are in need of the first principles of the Gospel and you have to assume they are teaching and practicing doctrinal error. Based on the warnings they must have a limited view of Jesus and the atonement and are not entering into the rest that Christ has provided n our justification.

Hebrews 6:1-8
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then fall away, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

So they have been returning again and again to repentance, apparently with multiple versions of baptism (here translated washings), with repeated laying on of hands (presumably for the Holy Spirit), and they apparently a problem with the doctrine of our resurrection and of the judgment throne. The author acknowledges that the Holy Spirit is needed for us to grow but it is something we must do. Then the author points out the obvious. That you can’t get saved, lose your salvation, and get saved. These guys were apparently teaching this. They were apparently stuck in some sort of multiple salvation process. Stuck at repentance over and over and forgetting our Great High Priest and his atonement for us once for all. Instead they were teaching that you got saved, lost it, got it, etc. The author wasn’t trying to say that if you lost your salvation you couldn’t get it back. He said what he said to correct an error. He was teaching that it doesn’t even make sense. How can you have all your sins past, present, and future atoned for, then lose this (how can that be?), and then have another atonement? Well you can’t. It takes a contemptible view of the Cross to make that work in which partial and progressive atonement would be possible. The author isn’t arguing for eternal insecurity but on the contrary he is saying it isn’t even a rational position and they need to stop teaching that your salvation comes and goes. If they keep teaching false doctrine then the author is afraid that they are not part of the Church but rather thorns and thistles.

Hebrews 6:9-12
Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

“Though we speak in this way” refers to both the strong rebuke as well as showing that their doctrine was foolishness and that they had forgotten the surpassing worth of the sacrifice of Jesus. Note that the authors says that they are really sure of better things and things “that belong to salvation” and by implication that they are saved eternally and may have the full assurance of hope until the end. And what does it mean to inherit the promises?

Hebrews 6:13-20
For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of is purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

So if you wondered about the view of the author on Eternal Security here it is. Eternal security taught by the author! The “unchangeable character of His purpose” is so glorious for us. How can we get stuck on a verse that is simply pointing out how dumb it is to think that a salvation based on our High Priest could ever come and go and then ignore the verses that follow? God wanted an oath to assure us in our weakness so He swore by Himself that He was going to accomplish this thing for us. We are the Children of Abraham. We have a sure refuge and our souls have an anchor back behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies.

So Hebrews 6:4-6 does not teach that you can lose your salvation. The verse teaches that it is foolish to think that salvation can come and go. This portion of Scripture teaches eternal security and rebukes recipients for a weak view of the Cross and an immature understanding of justification.

Romans 8:9 to 8:39

Romans 8:9-11
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Christians are not in the flesh but on the contrary we are free from it. “Carnal Christian” is an oxymoron. Scripture says there will be tares in among the wheat but the tares are not “Carnal Wheat” because they are not wheat. Paul makes it clear that someone who is saved is not in the flesh any longer. You can’t be in the flesh and saved and your body is being given life in a new way by the power of the Holy Spirit who now lives in you. So you can’t be like you were before. You are saved by faith alone but not by a faith that is alone. Does that make sense to you? A living faith necessarily produces works. You are not saved by works. They contribute absolutely no merit toward your right standing before God. But don’t ever forget that faith without works is dead and you are saved by a living faith that gives life and leads you to act out your faith. So you judge yourself. The Church has a discipline responsibility for those within the Church but we can’t see hearts and tell is someone is in the Spirit or in the Flesh. We look for fruit and hope for fruit in ourselves and others but when it comes to salvation you obey Scripture and:
“make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Pe 1:5).”

When we see someone in persistent sin who claims to be a Christian we are either looking at a child headed for discipline or a person who never possessed saving faith. We can’t tell. The longer they run without correction from God the more likely they were never saved but we can’t tell and we don’t really need to. We are required to address the sin and remove it from the Church for the health of the Church. We can’t act like a brother’s sin doesn’t matter to us in our walk with God because it does but we need to treat the person with dignity and concern.

Romans 8:12-17
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Our lifestyle must change as we yield to the Holy Spirit. The struggle we find in our flesh is a spiritual struggle as we learn to let the Holy Spirit dominate and rule in our lives. It strikes me as odd that almost every departure I’ve heard of from the Gospel taught in the New Testament so clearly in Romans involves a move into a spirit of slavery and fear in order to control human behavior. But we are now children of God and we have that new birth in our hearts that connects us to God by means of the Holy Spirit and we inherit all that God has for us as we enter the struggle to obey and live before God in our Sanctification. When we as obedient children pray the Lord’s Prayer and say, “Our Father, who art in heaven” then it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we pray “Our Father” in humility and thankfulness.

Romans 8:18-25
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We really need to guard our hearts against whining about the struggle to put to death the sin nature that we find within us. As Christians we struggle in our lives (as Chapter 7 makes clear) to live according to the Spirit and to stop living according to the flesh. We need to realize that if we make a realistic contrast of the struggles we have in this life with what will be ours someday we really should certainly be able to patiently run the race we find ourselves in. In some sense, all of creation is waiting for us to be revealed (as God intends us to be and His intent will be accomplished) and we also groan inwardly until the redemption of our bodies is complete. We sometimes lose sight of the hope that we had when we were saved. God has promised to complete the work that He began in us and that is our hope. Once again we don’t want to leave our minds in the struggle described in Romans Chapter 7 without moving on to the tremendous blessings and promises of Chapter 8.

Romans 8:26-30
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Most of us will admit that on occasion we are hard pressed to put up with our own failure in spiritual things. God knows our weakness and the Holy Spirit intercedes for us according to the will of God. One of the beautiful aspects of these verses is the unity of the Trinity in our threefold salvation. The Holy Spirit is interceding (so that we may be saved day by day); God the Father working everything according to His purpose (so that we may be saved someday and live in Glory), and the Son who died for us that He might be the firstborn among many brothers (so that we are saved and justified by His work on the Cross). Then we have a golden chain of predestination, calling, justification, and glorification and that chain forged by God isn’t subject to breaking or even modification by anything or anyone. It is most certainly not subject to modification by the accuser who is the enemy of my soul.

Romans 8:31-34
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

What can we say about these things? If we meditate on our salvation and get rational about our situation we should naturally have a great assurance of salvation. Romans Chapter 8 starts with the statement “There is therefore now no condemnation” and we see clearly why there is none. It is because God who could justly accuse us has justified us. Christ could condemn us but He is at the right hand of God interceding for us. I think these verses are one of the main reasons I love this chapter. There is such finality with regard to my justification here. I can rest in my relationship with God and not fear losing it. It is also why all I can do is shake my head in disbelief at an organization that would teach that a sin might kill the grace in me and then I’d need to go earn merit to get right with God again. There is nothing about a salvation that comes and goes in this Gospel. The Gospel is all about God’s ability and not about my ability. I was saved, I’m being saved, and I’ll be saved in Heaven someday. In each case it is God who saved me, is keeping me saved, and who will raise me up in the last days. It is all God and not me. The evangelicals who abandon the P in TULIP as a means to scare people into holiness are in error. I can understand that as a man who is acquainted with sin I can understand why you might think that you could manipulate human behavior with fear of losing salvation. Many don’t even stress the glory of this doctrine because they think it might result in more sin. So would you assume that God would thank you for altering the Gospel to do him a favor? As Paul says to the Galatians, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:6-9)

Romans 8:35-39
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“ For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things
present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.

Here is a wonderful and beautiful affirmation the doctrine known as the “preservation of the saints”, “perseverance of the saints”, “eternal security”, and “once saved always saved.” God tells us this so that we will know that we are His and kept by Him. This causes an attitude of worship in my heart. It is a source of awe at God’s patience and sovereign Grace in my life.

I think some reject this doctrine out of fear. You can’t reject the Gospel because it is too good. And I’ve also seen those who were supposed to reject the doctrine of the preservation of the saints (because of denominational affiliation) cling to this doctrine in times of trial.

Considering the basis of the “love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” we have to praise God along with Paul and leave the question as a purely rhetorical question with the obvious answer that, with all the glory going to God, I’m sitting in the palm of God’s hand and nothing can remove me from that place.

Romans 8:1 to 8:8

The seventh chapter of Romans ends with the struggle we find in our lives to live according to the moral law. After salvation, with the mind I acknowledge that the moral law is good and righteous. However, as a result of my sin nature, I still fail to live up to the moral law I approve of. So I would find myself condemned by both God and myself if it were not for the justification that God has freely provided.

Romans 8:1-4
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The justification that we’ve been discussing removes our sin and grants us Christ’s righteousness in the atonement. We are free from the cycle of sin and death that we would otherwise still be living under. The corruption of original sin made obedience to the law impossible for us. Now, as a result of the work of Christ, we have imputed righteousness and as we walk according to the Spirit our works are acceptable to God. You have forgiveness for your sins and the leading of the Holy Spirit for works day by day. It begins and ends in Grace.

Chapter 8 is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. Meditating on the joy that is ours in the freedom from condemnation accomplished by God and not by me and the security I have in that freedom is a constant source of joy.

Chapter 7 and 8 are strong contrasts. But Luther summarizes the contrasts with his famous statement in Latin that we are, “simul iustus et peccator” which means that we are at the same time justified and sinner. We don’t believe that contradictions are true but here I’m not saying that a Christian is justified and sinner at the same time in the same relationship. We are justified and sinner at the same time but not in the same relationship. Considered in myself and based on my own performance I’m still a sinner and fail to fully obey God. However, by virtue of Christ’s righteousness imputed to me, I’m just in the sight of God.

Historically, the Roman Catholic teaching has objected to this teaching. They have argued that this would involve God in a form of fraud. They have argued that God can only pronounce someone as righteous if they actually are righteous. Well we would agree that you must actually possess righteousness but the heart of the question, and the root of our freedom from the Law, is how you possess righteousness. We believe that righteousness is possessed by faith. The Roman Catholic teaching views baptism as the start of justification with grace infused as a result of baptism. Then they teach that you must participate with the infused grace to become righteous. The problem is that it isn’t necessarily a permanent state. Any mortal sin will kill the grace while any venial sins are less serious in this teaching. So if you commit a mortal sin you kill the grace but not the faith so you can have faith but not be justified. Then you need a form of penance to form “the second plank of justification for those who have made shipwreck of their souls” in which “works of satisfaction” generate either congruous merit or condign merit making it either fitting or necessary for God to reward the penance. They teach that grace, faith, and Christ are involved in your justification but they also teach that these are not sufficient and you need earn additional merit.

It is remarkable that such a departure from Scripture was constructed when the Gospel message is so clear. I think the motivating factor in this construction is a desire to feel justified by our own works. It is a sad thing that God purchased our salvation at a price we could never pay and yet we want to bring something to the table to feel that we are somehow owed salvation. Condign merit or a merit that God is forced to reward was the teaching that finally stuck in Luther’s craw and precipitated the movement that eventually produced the denomination we find ourselves a part of. We are justified by faith alone. Christ’s righteousness is the only merit we have before the face of God and anything else we bring is a sinful offense. It makes a vital difference whether you believe that your righteousness rests within your behavior or is something provided for you.

Romans 8:5-8
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Notice that Paul does not leave room for what some these days call “Carnal Christians”. We are saved by faith alone but we are not saved by a faith that is alone. Saving faith has inevitable consequences in a man’s life. The Holy Spirit will continue His work and call us to a life that is sanctified. Your natural mind is hostile to God. While an unsaved man may desire the benefits of God and not be as evil as he could be it is still true that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. In the flesh, mankind is wholly unable to please God. No “good” work is produced by our old natures. God has good works prepared for us after salvation. We do them with Him. This is only something that is perceived after salvation. Before we are saved, the idea that our donations to the needy or kindness to strangers is not pleasing to God would be rejected as absurd. An unsaved person would assume that God is probably happy with whatever “good” thing they do. But to stand before God thinking you have earned His favor is sinful. We compound our sin. Stewart was teaching on Hannah last Wednesday and asked the question (in the context of Hannah’s prayer for a child), “Does God make deals with us?” We had a nice discussion and generally came around to an answer of “no” but the problem with the question is that it implies we have something to make a deal with. Of course we don’t have anything that is ultimately ours and not God’s. If I wanted to make a deal with the God of the Universe I think I’d at least need to have something that didn’t already belong to Him to bring to the table and I don’t. You may be thinking of our wills submitted to His. You could think of offering that in a deal with God but that brings us all the way around and back to original sin. We owe God perfect obedience with our wills submitted to Him in heart and action. He doesn’t profit from that. He gets what He is owed from that. You don’t have anything to bargain with and I don’t mean you don’t have enough to bargain with. I mean that you have nothing (i.e., no thing) to bargain with.

Romans 6:20 to 8:4

We should be slaves of righteousness in the same way as we were slaves to sin is because we need to allow our choices and desires to come under the Lordship of Christ. We take advantage of the Means of Grace and allow God to change our desires.

Romans 6:20-23
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul is still talking about sanctification but has the fruit of our salvation in view. We only had death as a fruit before salvation. However, the fruit of salvation, even if it comes via trials and struggles, is fruit that leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. The cost of sin is death but God gives eternal life as a free gift. A life pleasing to God is a fruit of being slaves of God. As we submit to the Lordship of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit we have eternal life in Christ but it is a gift and not a wage. This is because it is initiated and sustained by the power of God and not by us. God doesn’t owe us anything but we owe Him everything.

We need to be fully aware of our freedom from the law and our submission to God. So Paul uses the analogy of marriage and death to stress the finality of our break from living under the bondage of sin manifested by the law.

Romans 7:1-6
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from he law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

When we first enter the Kingdom of God by saving faith we die to the law through the body of Christ. This is because we are then wet to Christ and our allegiance is to Him. So we are no longer captive to the law we now serve via the Holy Spirit and not via the written code of the law. But then how are we to view the law? Is this where we enter into antinomianism? No it is not and we must guard our hearts against that tendency.

Romans 7:7-12
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

It is important for us to realize that the law is not bad. The law is good and it accomplished the purpose for which God revealed it. It manifested sin. You know the problem with the law ultimately was that it turned a light on my heart. The law said you shall not covet.

Modern society considers covetousness so lightly that we can name a product “Covet”. The show called “Sex in the City” was all about the coveting of a group of women. One of the actresses now has a line of perfumes and etcetera called “Covet”.

Covetousness is a heart problem first and only an action problem later. The heart departs before the lifestyle. To covet means that you may never act on it but you have a heart desire to take and have. Cupidity is another similar word that indicates a desire to take what another has. So most cultures (without the law of God) would never ask their members to regulate their hearts and teach that covetousness is a sin. But of course it is. I could never argue now that to covet wasn’t sin. God sees my heart and so sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. God isn’t indicating that to admire my neighbor’s stuff is bad but you can see another response in your heart to test it. When my neighbor (I’m using that in the broad sense) is blessed with something then the question is, “am I thankful and blessed to see them receive it or am I annoyed and want one too or judge them for how I think they acquired it?” I’ve sometimes thought that you could think of covetousness as wanting something bad enough to take it if you could get away with it but it goes deeper than that because our heart response can reveal a covetousness in us that judges and begrudges the blessings another person receives. This problem is magnified when we don’t think the person deserves what they have. So the commandments of God had a broad impact on mankind convicting each of us of our sin.

Romans 7:13-20
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the
law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Note that Paul has switched from using “we” to using “I” and is relating a personal experience. In the process of sanctification, if you are running with patience the race that is set before you, you encounter this frustration. We realize that the moral law given by God (along with all the requirements for heart obedience) is spiritual and pure but we see ourselves fail to live up to it over and over. We really do find ourselves looking at our actions and wondering why we do what we don’t want. Now we always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment but we wonder why, at that moment, we decided to be stupid. We want to live a life that is holy and pure before God and to be pleasing in everything we do but we fail. After salvation, we find that we are in a struggle with our sin nature during our struggle to be sanctified.

Romans 7:21-25
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Note that Paul’s struggle is a post salvation struggle (as we’ve said earlier) because he says that he delights in the law of God. This struggle that all Christians find themselves in would be intolerable if not for God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We each get frustrated with the failure we find in our lives if we have entered the struggle. In Chapter 8 we have an exposition of what it means to serve the law of God with our minds while we serve the law of sin with our flesh.

Romans 8:1-4
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The justification that we’ve been discussing removes our sin and grants us Christ’s righteousness in the atonement. We are free from the cycle of sin and death that we would otherwise still be living under. The corruption of original sin made obedience to the law impossible for us. Now, as a result of the work of Christ, we have imputed righteousness and as we walk according to the Spirit our works are acceptable to God. You have forgiveness for your sins and the leading of the Holy Spirit for works day by day. It begins and ends in Grace.

Romans 6:15 to 6:19

In addition to the material that follows, we had an extensive discussion of the means God uses in salvation and the privilege of evangelism in obedience to God.

Since we have a perfect justification in Christ what is our view of sin? God needs to give us a right view so that we can live before Him as pleasing children.

Romans 6:15-16
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Here Paul keeps drawing the line that our freedom from the chains of sin is not to be viewed as an excuse to stubble back into sin. Our relationship to sin changes but we are to be actively engaged in the struggle against sin in our life. The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith makes the following statement about Christians who continue in persistent and serious sin:

Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins (a) and, for a time, continue therein (b) whereby they incur God’s displeasure (c) and grieve His Holy Spirit (d) come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts (e) have their hearts hardened (f) and their consciences wounded (g) hurt and scandalize others (h) and bring temporal judgments upon themselves (i). (a) Matt. 26:70, 72, 74; (b) Ps. 51:14; (c) Isa. 64:5, 7,9; 2 Sam. 11:27; (d) Eph. 4:30; (e) Ps. 51:8, 10, 12. Rev. 2:4; Song 5:2–4, 6; (f) Isa. 63:17; Mark 6:52; 16:14; (g) Ps. 32:3–4; 51:8; (h) 2 Sam. 12:14; (i) Ps. 89:31–32; 1 Cor. 11:32.

One of the key points is that we can fail to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. This failure can go beyond the common sins that so easily latch on to us like leaches and includes grievous sins that bring down ministries and scandalize the Body of Christ. We must not present ourselves as servants to sin. We are called to fight against our old sin nature after salvation.

Romans 6:17-19
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

In is now possible as a result of the Holy Spirit in our lives for our obedience to come from the heart. Once we had hearts that were spiritually dead so keep in mind that God has enabled your obedience by His initial and continuing work of Grace. If we focus on becoming slaves of righteousness in the same way we were slaves to sin then we will progress toward sanctification. The reason I said that we should be slaves of righteousness in the same way as we were slaves to sin is because we need to allow our choices and desires to come under the Lordship of Christ. We take advantage of the Means of Grace and allow God to change our desires.

Romans 5:12 to 6:14

God’s solution for sin brought an end to the sin chain begun in Adam.

Romans 5:12-14
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— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Adam’s sin started the entire cascade of sin in the Human race. We have a sin nature and are natural born sinners. The sins of disobedience to God’s revealed law were not counted prior to the giving of the law by revelation. However, the law written on hearts was violated and death reigned even though they impact of Adam’s sin was unique in the way it propagated. Adam could sin or not sin and it was not hard for Adam not to sin. Since Adam fell we sin. Apart from God’s move on their heart, an unbeliever will always sin because they choose to do that. We always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment and we are sons and daughters of Adam.

Romans 5:15-17
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

So sin entered through one man’s sin (like the shattering of a plate of glass because of a flaw) and spread spiritual death throughout mankind. In contrast, Grace came after many trespasses and produced justification. We will reign in life through Christ as we receive Grace and the free gift of righteousness.

Romans 5:18-21
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So God shows us the problem (Adam) and the solution (Jesus). The only solution for a Holy God was provided for us by the Holy God. Sin increased from Adam to Moses. Then the Law was given and sin blossomed until Christ. No Grace reigns through righteousness leading to eternal life.

Grace reigns? How does undeserved blessing reign over anything? Well the accuser comes against you with a viable charge. For example, “God your so called servant Dwight sinned yesterday. Actually he sinned more than once. In fact, I got bored and stopped counting. Anyhow, he deserves eternal punishment for his sins” and he has a legal and valid point apart from the Grace of God. By the Grace of God my sins, not in part but the whole, have been nailed to the Cross and I bear them no more. It is well with my soul. Grace reigns!

Romans 6:1-4
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones said:
There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this: that some people might misunderstand and misinterpret to mean that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding then it is not the gospel.

Think of how this doctrine has been opposed down through the centuries. Paul had to write an epistle to the Galatians telling them to stop trying to depart from this truth. Paul had to correct Peter because he was sliding back toward the ritual law. Not all of the early church fathers understood this doctrine. For example, around 200 AD a leader called Tertullian could be considered to be more Jewish than Christian in his understanding of justification. He seemed to think that God only gave the Gospel because we were so weak and that once we were following Jesus then all the law applied. Pelagious was a 5th Century monk whose name is now used by calling Pelagian all those who reject the necessary saving and enabling Grace of God and substitute their doctrine of salvation by works. We’ve spoken recently of Finney who was called Pelagian (I think that was a little unfair to Pelagious) and said that the doctrine of justification by double imputation was “impossible and absurd” (Lecture 36, Justification; Systematic Theology, Charles G. Finney). In our age many denominations now wonder if preaching a substitutionary atonement of Christ on the Cross shedding His blood for a lost and dieing world is just not “seeker sensitive”. Over and over again the Gospel has come to be viewed as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence and so there is an attempt to remove the Chief Cornerstone.

1 Peter 2:6-10
For it stands in Scripture:
“ Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious,and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Some folks have observed that a particular sequence is often repeated in a local church or denomination that is departing from the Gospel. The sequence is that at first we proclaim the Gospel, then we assume the Gospel, and then we deny the Gospel. In fact this observation could be made of the Children of Israel as they cycled from following God to not following God. The process can take generations but what we want to do is draw ourselves back constantly to a clear presentation of the Gospel. We want to be like Paul who urged that we would be “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.” (Ephesians 6:18-20).

Paul wanted prayer so that he could open his mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel. He didn’t want to assume that the Romans would get it right. He wanted to spell it out in detail for them and subsequently for our benefit. We should start to panic when all we deal with at church is how to have a better life, how to deal with children, how to find fulfillment at work. It isn’t that these are not topics that the Body of Christ shouldn’t address. We should address these topics and we do have much to say about those topics. The problem is that they can’t displace the Gospel and the importance of the Gospel in our teaching. They are not the Gospel. Romans is a presentation of the Gospel and for a Christian it is your life and breath.

Romans 6:5
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Just in passing, remember that you will not be a disembodied spirit or angel strumming a harp on a cloud in the resurrection. You’ll have a resurrection body like His. Your body will be different but you will not be disembodied. This being united with Him in His death and being united with Him in a resurrection like His is also part of having our sins paid for on the Cross and being clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Romans 6:6-11
We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Notice the level of identification that exists for us in Christ’s death. Our old self was crucified with Him, we are no longer servants of sin, we now live with Christ, and we will never die spiritually. You have a command here. You are commanded by God to consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Not only has a substitutionary atonement been made but your living is now different. You are alive to God in Christ Jesus as opposed to your previous condition of being dead in your trespasses and sins.

Romans 6:12-14
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Paul is now transitioning into a discussion of sanctification. The “therefore” here is to link back to the command to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ. We are therefore in a struggle to keep ourselves away from sin and to present ourselves to God for His use. Sin doesn’t rule over us because we are under grace and our works are acceptable to God because we are alive to God in Christ Jesus. The works are not acceptable because they are perfect the works are acceptable because we are alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 4:13 to 5:11

The justification we receive freely will drive our obedience as we live before the face of God empowered by the Holy Spirit. You’ve got to know that you are justified by faith alone so that you’ll run with patience the race you have before you.

Romans 4:13-15
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

From the very beginning, when mankind has been judged to be righteous it has been because of faith. You can’t invalidate Abrahams promises with the law that came later. The law magnifies our lack of ability to serve God and the way our nature is set to serve ourselves.

Romans 4:16-17
That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

The promise doesn’t rest on the works of Abraham but upon the faith exhibited by Abraham. Likewise the heirs of Abraham are not heirs according to the law but according to Grace because they share in the faith of Abraham and are the result of the promise made to Abraham by God. In that sense, Abraham is the father of us all. God gave life to us when we were spiritually dead. God called us into existence as the children of Abraham when we were lost and without hope in the world. That day when you were saved, as you heard the Gospel … God resurrected your dead heart and called you into existence as a child of Abraham. Salvations are as miraculous as Lazarus’ resurrection when serves as a physical picture of our salvation. Jesus gave life to a dead Lazarus and called him into existence when he was not in existence except as a rotting corpse.

Romans 4:18-22
In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced
that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.”

I wonder if Abraham objected to being referred to as “as good as dead” but I guess not. Abraham knew that it was not his ability that would fulfill the promise. Abraham’s confidence was in God and was the result of years of fellowship and interacting with God. Abraham was familiar with God and so he knew that God was the one who was able to do what He had promised and that was what mattered.

Romans 4:23-25
But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Our righteousness comes from faith in Him who raised Jesus from the dead after being delivered up for our sins and raised for our justification before God. Here we have in view our blessed double imputation in the atonement; we trade our sin for His purity.

Chapter 4 ends with a compact statement regarding the imputation of our sin to Christ and the imputation of His righteousness to us. It has been called “The Great Exchange” in a recent book by Bridges and Bevington. It is the heart of the Gospel. Paul continues to explain the Gospel in Chapter 5.

Romans 5:1
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember when we see a “Therefore” we look to see what it is there for. In this case it is a link back to “Double Imputation” as the heart of the Gospel and faith as the operative “cause” that results in the peace we have with God. Please keep in mind that faith has content and an object in Christianity. Our faith is not “believe-ism” or a blind leap. Like Abraham (and in fact partly because of the testimony of Abraham) we believe God because He has proven Himself faithful. God says that I’m justified by faith in the work of Christ and that I have peace with God through Christ.

Listen to these verses by Spafford in the hymn “It is Well with my Soul”;

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
Spafford – It is Well with My Soul (1871)

Spafford knew the comfort of justification (and hath shed His own blood for my soul) and he knew that his sins were paid in full not in part.

Romans 5:2
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Again listen to Spafford point to the hope of the glory of God …

But, Lord, ‘tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh trump of the angel! Oh voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul!
And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
Spafford – It is Well with My Soul (1871)

We like Spafford should long for the appearing of Jesus and our entry to heaven. We now can rejoice that the sky and not the grave is our goal. Rather than fear the Glory of God, the Grace of God will prepare us for the Glory of God. Apart from the Grace of God that Glory terrifies and our God is a consuming fire.

Romans 5:3-5
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

One more time listen to verses from Spafford’s great hymn;

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
Spafford – It is Well with My Soul (1871)

It is well with my soul when I am justified before God. We don’t easily remember that we should rejoice in our sufferings. We undervalue endurance and character. We want a shortcut to hope. Spafford had sorrows like sea billows. He was a wealthy man mourning the loss of his son who then lost almost all of his wealth in the Chicago fire of 1871. That fire burned about 4 square miles over about 3 days. Thinking they needed a vacation he sent his wife and 4 daughters ahead of him for a vacation in England. There was a collision at sea and his 4 daughters were all killed. He wrote the lyrics for this hymn as his ship passed the point where his daughters died at sea. He was writing his heart and even in the deep sense of loss he was looking for a way to rejoice in suffering, allow endurance to produce character, and allow hope founded on Christ to be his only life.

A daughter named Bertha born later to Spafford and his wife said, “That he could write such words at such a time was made possible by the fierceness of his struggle and the completeness of the victory.”

Romans 5:6-11
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 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 we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Salvation, is three fold in that we are saved (Justified), we are being saved (Sanctified), and we will be saved (Glorified). That is why Scripture here says, “much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

If God gave us Grace (underserved favor in His sight) when we were sinners then it is irrational to think that He will not also give us Grace to live before His face. How could we ever question God’s work in our life? He didn’t destroy us when we were in rebellion against Him. We were His enemies and He reconciled us by the death of His Son. He didn’t reconcile us to lose us or to destroy us. Being lost and destroyed is all we deserved but He was for us. How can we worry about the enemy of our souls taking us from His hand? We are purchased at too great a price for God to let us go. We were reconciled while enemies and now, much more, shall we be saved by His life.

Romans 4:1-12

Paul begins in Romans 1:18 to 22 by pointing out what is called general or natural revelation. That is what Paul is stressing is actually suppressed by unbelievers and that all humans receive this revelation from nature. It is also called general revelation because we would not know many specifics about God without special revelation. During the reformation the material cause or the cause we see argued by Luther and others was often “Sola Fide” or the biblical doctrine that was are justified by faith alone. But the formal cause of the dispute or the underlying cause was a difference about “Sola Scriptura”. The Roman Catholic Church held that there were two sources of special revelation. Those sources for them were Scripture and tradition. So while both sides accepted the infallible authority of Scripture the Roman Catholic Church departed from the teaching of Book of Romans disallowed any teaching from Scripture that would contradict tradition. We reject that teaching (although sometimes our reaction to change in our church services makes me wonder) and although creeds such as the 1689 London Baptist Confession may be brilliant in summarizing and clearly teaching us the Gospel and while they may merit deep study and meditation … they must bow the knee to Scripture. They must be judged by their fidelity to Scripture and, if in conflict, be corrected by Scripture.

We need this high view of God’s revelation in Scripture when we move on to verses regarding the universal sinfulness of mankind. In fact, Romans will continue to teach you about yourself and your salvation and you need that high view of Scripture to understand Romans.

Paul brought conviction to the heart of the first century Roman Church by making sin personal to them and by declaring the depravity of mankind and making conviction of sin personal to us as well. We should all be weeping for our sins when we get to Romans 2:6-16. We should be weeping for our failure and sins even before we read on to Romans 3:9-18 in which our life before Christ is presented.

Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul is determined that the Christians in Rome (and all us who have come after) will understand that that apart from Christ they are lost and that salvation is Sola Fide or by faith alone. Paul goes right to the most significant religious person in Judaism. He uses Abraham as his example who I would guess every Jew in the audience would assume was justified by his works of obedience.

Romans 4:1-6
What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 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.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

Abraham had lots of works as well as a cousin named Lot. For example, his tithe to Melchizedek is commonly thought to be an Old Testament theophany (Genesis 14:18-20; Hebrews 7) and his willingness to offer his son Isaac was another act he performed. Since Abraham had offered his son in Genesis 22 it seems odd to stress that it was his faith was counted as righteousness yet he never committed a work that gained merit for salvation. Even in the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham figured God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19).

Ask yourself how we can make up for sin. In our minds we sometimes seem to drift to the conclusion that if I stop a particular sin then God should forgive me for it if I behave pretty well from this point forward. Yet in our society if a criminal wanted to be forgiven for his crimes because he wasn’t committing one right now and he said he was sorry for those crimes previously committed we’d think he was working on an insanity defense. In the movie, “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” after Delmer’s salvation experience (in which he is standing in a grave yard with nothing except a roasted gopher for dinner when he is compelled to rush into the water and be baptized followed by his friend Pete) he claims to be completely free from the consequences of his sins and even confesses to crimes he said he didn’t commit prior to his salvation. The unbeliever Everett says, “Even if it did put you right with the Lord the state of Mississippi is a little more hard nosed.” That movie has a lot to say about salvation and the sinful heart of man. But Pete, Delmer’s friend, uses the term absolved (to set free from the consequences of guilt) …

Romans 4:7-12
“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.”
Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely
circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

It seems reasonable to ask if this scripture argues for believer’s baptism since many argue for a parallel between OT circumcision and NT baptism but that isn’t the point here. Here we see faith and imputed righteousness preceding the obedience to the law. Obedience to the law then was a sign of the righteousness he received by faith. Your obedience to the moral law revealed in Scripture as God’s will is then a sign of the saving faith in your heart. Faith without works is dead because a justified heart can’t be dead and will seek to please the Father. The justification we receive freely will drive our obedience as we live before the face of God empowered by the Holy Spirit. You’ve got to know that you are justified by faith alone so that you’ll run with patience the race you have before you.

Romans 2:25 to 3:31

After Paul shows our sins and hypocrisy then he briefly addresses the topic of religious observance.

Romans 2:25-29
For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

Paul foreshadows what we will hear as we move on into the epistle. Circumcision was a sign of the covenant in that the excess of the flesh was removed. The Law is good and righteous and circumcision is to be a matter of the heart and it accomplished “by the Spirit”. Approval of men is fundamental to those who seek to obey the law. Religious observance without heart obedience is not religious observance. True circumcision is a matter of the heart by the Holy Spirit.

The Gospels show the Pharisees in action seeking the approval of men. The Gospel is not about what other men think about what you do but about God who sees what you do and knows why you do it. Clearly the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

So what is the advantage of being raised in the faith? Paul is discussing the place of the Jews and the value of circumcision but you can ask the same things about baptism and growing up in the Church. However, God will use these religious acts as Means of Grace and if some are unfaithful it doesn’t mean that God is unfaithful.

Romans 3:1-4
Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, “That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.”

Paul’s line of reasoning begs this question as to what was the advantage then of having God interact so extensively with a people? The faithlessness of the Jews is no commentary on the faithfulness of God. God has been completely faithful to the Jews and to His promises given in prophecy. The deficiency is with mankind as Paul has already shown. We don’t like to admit that we are the problem and here Paul quotes from a man that had the guts to face his sin. This is from Psalm 51 and immediately follows “Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight— “ David recognizes whose law he has violated.

Romans 3:5-8
But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

The idea that we are by nature sinners stimulates us to look for a reason to think that God owes us a pass because we are only doing what comes naturally. Often those who draw back at the teaching of the Gospel will do so by misstating the Gospel. This is especially common among those who are religious but have drawn back from the clear teachings of Scripture. I’ll try to be very careful to indicate those points that many modern men will misstate as we move on through Romans. However, this is really a spiritual effect. Paul faced this with those who said that he was teaching that people should sin so that God’s grace may abound. A man named Finney who preached from the mid to late 1800s had a terrible impact on the modern church. We see his residual works based evangelicalism in America today. He rejected the atonement. He didn’t think he needed it. The teaching of salvation by Grace alone (Sola Gratia) causes many to stumble. They’d like to bring their works into the picture and some denominations have complex doctrines of merit from the works of men.

Romans 3:9-18
What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one; 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.”

And all the people said “Amen” or “Oh My”? Especially since some of our testimonies feature us as the basically righteous but unsatisfied protagonist who is seeking God but really has some skills they want to use for God and then we found God. But we have to say that it didn’t “feel” the way Scripture describes it for most of us. But God tells me it was this way and therefore I am taught of how lost I was. I wasn’t just a little lost.

In classical reformed doctrine this is one of the proof Scriptures for the T in “TULIP” acrostic and the T stands for total depravity. Scripture doesn’t teach that we are as evil as we could be. I think most of us realize that is the case. That is why Paul put his finger on the Roman’s sins (and ours) and poked real hard. We justify ourselves. Total depravity isn’t the same as complete depravity. Many modern authors use the term “radical corruption”. What Paul is getting at is that we don’t seek God. Know we know that when the Holy Spirit moves on us we do seek God but God gets the glory for that and Paul will get to that in a little while. We get no glory for our salvation.

Romans 3:19-20
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

God’s revelation in the law made a specific and detailed exposition of the sinfulness of man and the holiness of God. Our sin nature, like those who don’t have the law, keeps us from fulfilling the law but the law brings a fuller and more explicit statement of our sin. Notice how clear verse 20 is. The law identifies our sin but “by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight”. No one will be justified by the law because the law shows how far we are from our Holy God.

Romans 3:21-24
But now the righteousness of God has been 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. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

There are some precious exceptions that God gives in scripture and this “But now” is one of them. Notice that the Law and Prophets bear witness to it. We are redeemed by Christ being justified by grace. It is unmerited and it is a gift. It is not deserved. This, in part, illustrates the U in TULIP which is unconditional election. It is a gift and we deserved nothing but judgment.

So after explaining how all of mankind is subject to judgment for their sin, Paul now begins to explain Grace. It is important to Paul and to us that even though the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law it is still explained and foreshadowed in the Law and Prophets. If you’ll remember we recently finished a study of salvation pictured for the individual in the corporate salvation of Israel. Christ is everywhere in the Old Testament. Our righteousness comes by faith in Christ as we believe. There is no distinction between Jew or barbarian. We have all come short of the glory of God and the only justification is by His Grace. Grace is unmerited favor or undeserved blessing that results in our salvation through Christ. We have some words that we simply have to learn. Justification for example; what does justification mean. Paul spent a great deal of chapters 1 and 2 explaining our liability and that we deserve judgment.

So the distinction that Paul labors in an earlier chapter is explained as no distinction since we are all found to be sinners and are all likewise justified by His Grace as a gift. Remember our 5 Solas. We are saved by faith alone (sola fide), by grace alone (sola gratia) by Christ alone (sola Christo). We know this because we establish doctrine by Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) and then by definition we know only God gets glory from our salvation (soli Deo Gloria).

Romans 3:25-26
whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show 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.

For shock value some folks will say that we are ultimately saved by works. Technically this is true since we are saved by the complete and perfect work of Christ. Christ was put forward as a propitiation or payment by His blood and He kept the law perfectly from heart attitude to action. We receive this pardon by faith and God displays righteousness not because He simply forgot about our sins but because the price was paid. God is just and the justifier of those of use who have faith in Jesus. We need to remember that Grace isn’t cheap and that Christ’s works met the requirements of the law. So His perfect work saves us and we are saved by works. Not our works but His.

Romans 3:27-31
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. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one. He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Sola fide is the means without regard to Jewish or Gentile background. There is only one means of salvation. We really have absolutely no reason to boast since God has saved us from our condition in which we were lost, spiritually dead and, apart from a move of the Holy Spirit on your heart, we did not seek God. Remember the hymn “For He sought me and He bought me with His redeeming Blood.” We need to be amazed by Grace.