The Sentence Is...Life!

If you will just for a few moments imagine yourself to be the man in this picture on the screen. You have heard the case against you. You have heard the arguments of the prosecuting attorney. They've been very forceful. They've been very clear. There's no question that you're guilty. The defense has been able to get very little by way of a response, nothing convincing, and there you stand knowing that you're guilty. Knowing that the verdict is guilty, and you are awaiting the sentence that the judge will hand down. When you hear the judge say, the sentence is life. You're hit drops, your shoulders slump. All hope just drains out of you and your heart is filled with despair. You know that you face a future of condemnation and punishment. You're expected to be whisked away at any moment to the prison, and yet nothing happens. So you look up, and shockingly the judge is standing there before you. He's taken off his judge's robe. His face is beaming with a smile. His arms are open, and he says you don't understand the sentence. The sentence is life, not life in prison, but I'm offering you a chance at a new life. You see, your punishment has already been paid by someone else. Your crime has already been paid for, and I'm offering you a new life, and everything you need to live that new life I will give you. It will come from my resources. In fact, I'm making you an heir of my inheritance, and you're struggling to understand what you're hearing. You can't believe what's happening. The judge himself has made provision for all of your penalty to be paid for, for your crime to be punished, and you're being set free, and he's giving you all the resources to start over, a fresh, with a clean slate, new life. You can't believe what you're hearing. That is exactly what Paul tells us in Romans chapter 3. Today we're in Romans chapter 3 verses 21 to 31, and we find that what Paul is saying is very similar to what we see represented in that picture. And that is that all of us stand before the judge of the universe guilty, condemned, waiting to hear the sentence. Paul has proven like a good prosecuting attorney piling on the evidence. There is no question of the guilt of all of us in sin. In fact, he's taken pains to show that it doesn't matter whether you're an openly wicked, immoral person, a good moral person who has no interest in religion, or a religious person, all are condemned in sin, and very forcefully his closing arguments in chapter 3 beginning in verse 9. He says, we've made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. There's no one righteous, not even one, no one who understands, no one who seeks God, all have turned away. They've together become worthless, no one does good, not even one. He's pounding home the case for our guilt. There is no defense. The judge is ready to pass the sentence. And the sentence is guilty. The verdict is guilty. And now we await the sentence, and we expect to be dragged off into judgment at any time. But we look up and we see the beaming face of God and His love and His grace offering to us life, not life away from Him, but life in Him, eternal life. And He says, I want you to know what I'm offering you today is eternal life. All of your sin is forgiven. All of your punishment has already been paid by someone else, my son. And I'm offering you the complete forgiveness and wiping away of your whole record. I'm offering you life, and you're struggling to comprehend what you're hearing. You can't believe what you're hearing, but that is exactly what God does. As Paul begins this next second section of the book of Romans, he makes this incredible transition from the first section where he is dealt with righteousness needed. How much we need the righteousness of God and His chief subject there has been our sin. But now he makes this incredible transition to a new subject, righteousness given. And the subject that Paul will talk about is not sin, but salvation. And he begins this transition with two very simple words. Do you see them there in verse 21? But now. Very simple words, six letters. But I cannot express to you how powerful those words are. But now, in 11 times in the New Testament, that transition phrase is used. But now Paul uses it eight times. And in every occasion, it is signaling a major shift in argument, a shift from what we were in ourselves, in Adam, in sin, to what God offers us in Christ. Huge difference, huge transition. But now, but now. And Paul is going to talk about the righteousness of God, which is given, offered freely to us in salvation. But there is a word that Paul uses for salvation that we need to understand before we jump into this passage. It's a word justification or justified. Not a word we use every day. So let me take a moment to explain what Paul means by that. It's his word in this passage for salvation. To be justified, justification means that God declares us righteous. It is courtroom terminology. It is a legal declaration of righteousness. It is not God making us righteous. That's a lifelong process. Different word describes that. The word sanctification will get to that later in Romans. But justification has to do with being declared righteous, standing in the courtroom, expecting to hear the sentence of condemnation. And you receive the sentence of life, of forgiveness, of righteousness being given to you, a legal declaration that you are righteous in God's sight. That's justification. And that's exactly what Paul is describing here and what God offers to us. It's a legal declaration in God's courtroom that our record is clean. There is no more sin on our account. We are clothed, draped in, the righteousness of His Son, Jesus. We are declared to be righteous in God's sight. That's justification. And that's what God offers us. Now, in describing what it means to be justified, Paul will flesh out for us the two main ideas of justification. In describing what it means to be justified, he describes first of all the need for justification. Look again at verse 21, where Paul describes for us the need for this justification. This need to be declared righteous, he says in verse 21, but now a righteousness from God, a part from law, has been made known to which the law on the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe there is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There are two reasons Paul describes why we need to be justified, why we need, if we are going to get to heaven, why we need to hear God's legal declaration, you are righteous. Two reasons why we need that, the first is because we need God's righteousness. Iarz is not enough, we need God's righteousness. Now you'll notice that Paul uses that phrase twice in these verses, verse 21, but now a righteousness from God, verse 22, this righteousness from God. He has introduced that back in chapter 1 and verse 17 as the overall theme of the book of Romans. What he's going to talk about in this book is a righteousness from God. And now he describes that we need that kind of righteousness to get to heaven. My righteousness is not enough, your righteousness is not enough, all the good things we may do or be are not enough to gain us entrance into heaven. We need God's righteousness. And would you notice how he describes this kind of righteousness for descriptions of this righteousness we need? Verse 21, first of all, it is a righteousness from God. But now a righteousness from God, please understand that, Paul is not talking about good living on your part. He is not saying if you turn over a new leaf, if you straighten up, if you quit certain things, get rid of certain sins, if you start living better, if you start going to church, if maybe even you join the church, maybe you get baptized. If you start reading your Bible and you start praying doing the best you can do, then you will provide for yourself a righteousness you can offer God. That's a righteousness that works from us up. That's self-righteousness and it gets no one to heaven. This is a righteousness that comes down from God. This is God doing something to make us right with him. It's initiated by God. It starts with God. It doesn't start with you. It doesn't start with me. It doesn't come from the ground up, it comes from heaven down. This is righteousness from God. Second description of this righteousness that we need is it is a part from law. You see it there in verse 21, a righteousness from God, apart from law. That means there's nothing you can do to earn this kind of righteousness. You say, well, I try to keep the Ten Commandments. I try to live by the sermon on the Mount. I try to do my best to do what God expects of me. That will never get you to heaven, my friend. This is a righteousness that is apart from any efforts of your own to keep the law. You cannot earn this righteousness by what you do. So it is a righteousness from God, comes down from him. It is apart from law thirdly notice. He says, this righteousness in verse 21 has been made known to which the law on the prophets testify. It's been made known. It's been fleshed out, lived out, presented to us in this New Testament time through the life of Christ, death of Christ. But it's always been God's plan. The law on the prophets, referring to the Old Testament, pointed forward to this righteousness. The law on the prophets, all that the law showed, was that we cannot live a righteous life on our own. It was always pointing us toward the need for God's righteousness. The prophets were always pointing forward to the Messiah who would come, the Savior who would come, and provide a righteousness that we could not earn on our own. And so God has never had a plan B. There's always been one plan for us to get to heaven. And that's through the righteousness of Christ. Everything in the Old Testament pointed forward to it, the law on the prophets. Jesus came, fulfills it, dies on the cross, and everything since then is pointed back to it. This is a righteousness that the law on the prophets agree with, and point toward. Fourth description of this righteousness we need is that it is through faith, verse 22. This righteousness comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe. Now we'll see Paul flesh that out a little more fully later on in this passage. But he's just introducing us to the basics so that we understand, wrap our minds around what this righteousness is. It's received by faith. Again, this is not something you earn. This is not something you pay for. It's not something you work for. You receive it by faith. This is a righteousness from God apart from anything you can do to earn it, testified beforehand by the law on the prophets, and received by faith. This righteousness that we need, that's the righteousness that gets you to heaven. So we must be declared righteous in God's courtroom. That's the kind of righteousness that will get you to heaven because we need God's righteousness, not our own. But secondly, we need justification, that declaration of righteousness. We need justification because we all are sinners. That's Paul's second reason. Why we need justification? We all are sinners. Without exception, we all are sinners. You see what he says there at the end of verse 22? There is no difference. He is parking back to what he said in the first three chapters. There is no difference whether you are an ungodly wicked, publicly known sinner. Everybody knows the way you live or whether you are a good moral person or whether you are a religious person. He is dealt with all three categories. And he is reminding us again of what he has said in the first three chapters up to this point. Just in case we protest, just in case we say, well, you know, I am not sure about this deal, God's righteousness coming down from him. I think I am doing pretty good on my own. You know, after all, I am a pretty good person. Look at the neighbor down the road. Look at that. Look at him. Look at her. I do pretty well when stacked up to them, compared to them. I am okay. I think I will make it. Just in case we protest that, Paul gives us a little bit of a reminder of what he has told us so far. And that is there is no difference, verse 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All, no exceptions. We all are sinners. We all sinned and we fall short of the glory of God. Pastor was doing a children's sermon as a part of the service one Sunday and as he was explaining to the little children the way of salvation. He asked this question. He said, what must we do to receive God's gift of eternal life? And one little boy raised his hand and said, well, first of all, we got a sin. Well, you know, he is right, but it is not like we need to be reminded of that and we check that off the list. Okay, first of all, go out and send some, then I will be qualified to be saved. Now, we all are sinners already. We don't need the reminder to do that. We are all already in that category. We are all sinners, regardless of who you are in this room, all of us. Our sinners, we have all sinned and we fall short. Notice we fall short of what? The glory of God, God's glory. It's an interesting study to study that concept of God's glory. When the Bible speaks of the glory of God or God's glory, that is a summary statement of all that God is. All of his character, all of his attributes, characteristics. Everything that God is is summarized in the Bible with that word, glory. It's just kind of a summary statement of everything that God is in his perfections in his holy character. And what Paul is saying is that, my friend, is the standard to get into heaven. It's not your neighbor. It's not a church member. It's not somebody who claims to be good. You don't try to compare yourself to other people. We always can compare favorably to someone. And we will always find that person we can compare favorably to. But that's not the standard. The standard is God's perfection. God's absolute righteousness and holiness. That's the standard. And nobody on this planet measures up to that. We have all sinned and we fall short of the glory of God. But glory is also used in a second way in the New Testament. And that is of the eternal destiny of those who do place their faith in Christ. Heaven is a place of glory. It's where we will see glory. It's where we will live in a glorified body like Christ. Glory. We often speak of heaven as glory. We fall short of that too. What Paul is saying is, we fall short of the standard, which is God's absolute perfection. We also fall short of heaven. You can't get there. You always will fall short by your own efforts. Fall short of the glory of God. All of us are in the same boat. We are disqualified for heaven. If I were to ask you who your favorite boxer is or who you would most remember as a boxer, some of you would be clueless. I don't care anything about boxing. But for those of you who have followed boxing or know a little bit about boxing, you might think of Joe Lewis or Muhammad Ali or Joe Frazier or Evander Holyfield or George Foreman or somebody like that or some of you George Foreman is a little grill type deal. That's all you know of him. He was a boxer. But some of you would think that probably none of you would think of CD Blaylock. CD Blaylock, however, has accomplished something in boxing that no one else has ever been able to do. He was a well-known boxer back in the 1930s. And in one boxing match, he threw a vicious punch at his opponent. But his opponent ducked and Blaylock missed him. The way Blaylock cocked his head when he punched and the recoil of his arm because he missed, he caught himself in his temple, dazed himself, fell back on the canvas and was out cold. The only boxer ever in history that knocked himself out. And Paul's saying that's exactly what we have done. We've all knocked ourselves out. We have all knocked ourselves out of heaven. We have all disqualified ourselves. People say, how could a God of love send anybody to hell? Ultimately, God doesn't send people to hell. We all deserve hell and send ourselves there because we're sinners. We all knock ourselves out, you see. So Paul's reminder is we need to be justified. We need this declaration of righteousness because we all are sinners. Please understand this. We must see our absolute need for God's righteousness. You cannot get to heaven by earning it or working for it. You simply cannot. Church attendance, church membership, good moral life, religious experiences, baptism, trying to do your best to live a Christian life, trying to keep the law, whatever it may be. However you may describe it, describe it. Any of your efforts will end up in falling short. You will not get to heaven that way because you cannot, in a lifetime, measure up to God's perfections, you will fall short of the destination. All have sent and fall short of the glory of God. So we need to be declared righteous. We need for God simply to look across his judges' bins and say, I declare you righteous. You can't be righteous on your own. I declare you righteous. You say, okay, John, I see that. I see that I need God's righteousness. I see that I'm a sinner. I need that justification. How do I get that? How do I get justified? What makes that possible? Well Paul goes on to describe it as he describes the means of justification. Not only does he make clear the need for justification, he describes the means by which we can be declared righteous by God. And three very simple statements I trust will summarize Paul's argument in verses 24 to 31. Justification, first of all, is by the grace of God. That's what Paul says in verse 24. You see it there? And are justified freely by his grace. We're going to stop right there in the middle of the verse. That's enough for us to dwell on for a few moments. Justified, declared righteous, in other words, freely by his grace. So the first truth we need to understand about the means of justification, how it happens, is that we are justified by God's grace. And notice he says, freely by God's grace. Freely means this is a gift. This is something that is offered to you without any payment, without any expectation of, I've got to do something to earn this. You know, for some people it's just flat out difficult to accept a gift. For many, they feel like when somebody gives them a gift, well I've got to do something to kind of pay back for this. I've got to earn this. I've got to give them something. What can I do for you? What can I give you? Can I, for some people, just difficult to understand the concept of a gift. But God gives freely by his grace, verse 24 says. Now let's understand the term grace. I appreciate what Joel said earlier about grace. He was right on target when he talked about God's grace being that which we do not deserve. But God freely offering it to us. In the first century, in Bible times, the way that word would be used, the word Paul used for grace, was it meant a favor done out of the spontaneous generosity of the giver without expecting anything in return. It was a favor that was given out of the spontaneous generosity of the giver, not because you've done anything to earn it, not because he expects payment back for it. Just out of spontaneous generosity of the giver, this person gives something freely without expecting any payment for it, any work done for it, anything to earn it. But typically in the first century, this kind of grace was offered to one's friends. You would think of doing something as a spontaneous gesture of your kindness without expecting anything in return to a close friend. The amazing thing about God's grace and the amazing thing about how the New Testament uses this word is that it's not offered to God's friends, it's offered to God's enemies, all of us by the way, because we've broken his law. We've disqualified ourselves from his perfections and inference into heaven. And so we are, as Paul will say later in chapter 8, we are at enmity with God. We are separated from God. Residinates, and God still, in the spontaneous generosity and love of his heart, offers us without any expectation of payment or works to earn it, he offers us his righteousness. That's grace. That is pure grace. Back in January of 2000, there was a company in England, an insurance agency called Goshawk Syndicate, which filed suit against Buena Vista Entertainment to stop payment on the who wants to be a millionaire television game show. At that time, it was ABC's most popular program. But the insurance company that was overriding the payout of prizes for that Goshawk Syndicate said, we're back and out of this, we're filing a suit. They actually filed a suit for a breach of contract because they said the questions are too easy, people are winning too much money. And they were basing, this was a British company, they were basing on their experience with the original game show in England where the questions were tougher and no one ever won the million dollar prize. So based on that, they thought the same thing would happen in America and we kind of dumbed it down and people were winning big money and they were saying, we can't afford to make this, we're willing to underwrite paying people for winning, but we have a limit. There's only so far we will go, you're handing out too much money, we want out of this thing. Aren't you glad God's grace is not like that? Aren't you glad God never says, well I will give this much, but only to a certain limit. If you don't do this, you don't do that, if you don't live up to my, just contract, whatever, then I'm back and out of this deal. God's grace is not like that. Out of the overwhelming love and generosity of his heart and kindness of his heart, he offers freely without any expectation of reaching a certain standard, freely offers his righteousness, that's grace. I cannot fully grasp that. I look into the face of my judge, realizing I'm a condemned criminal, I deserve the punishment and for him to turn around and offer me that without expecting me to earn it or pay for it. I don't understand that, but you can't fully understand grace. You just have to be thankful that God's soft fit and his grace to offer us his righteousness. His righteousness comes by the grace of God. Secondly, it comes because of the work of Christ. About a grace of God, but because of the work of Christ, and he describes that work of Christ in two ways, in verses 24 and 25. He says, and are justified freely by his grace. Here we pick it up. Through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus, God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. You notice he says two things about the work of Christ. He, first of all, speaks of redemption and then he speaks of a sacrifice of atonement. Two ways of looking at the death of Christ. The first one has to do with the effect on man. The second one has to do with the effect on God. Christ in his death, first of all, provided redemption. A great word. We're seeing a lot of theological terminology in this passage. Justification, grace, now redemption. What is redemption? Well, there were three words in the New Testament that were translated redemption. And together they formed this picture. A purchase price is laid down to free a slave from the marketplace. One word has to do with just laying down the purchase price. The second word has to do with taking that slave out of the marketplace of sin. They will no longer be sold to sin. And the third has to do with setting them free. Those three words together form a beautiful picture of redemption. Redemption, when Jesus died on the cross, he was paying the price to set you free from sin and from the condemnation of God. And he paid the price that was needed for you and for me to be released from slavery to sin that we no longer have to serve sin. We'll see how that works out later in chapter 6. But for right now the purchase price has been paid. We've been set free from the slave market. That's what Jesus did for you and for me on the cross. But he did something also which affected God. You see there in verse 25 where it says God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement. That phrase, sacrifice of atonement is translated in the King James propitiation. And you may have heard that word from your knowledge. Maybe some of you of the King James. It's only found a couple of times the Greek words found three times in the New Testament. Propitiation, what is that all about? What is a satisfactory atonement? Well, here's the idea. When Jesus died on the cross, he satisfied the holy demands of God regarding your sin. He satisfied all of God's wrath, his just wrath and condemnation for you as a sinner. Everything that you deserved God's wrath was real and it was just. God is angry at sin and he justly could condemn us because of our sin. Jesus satisfied all of those requirements and satisfied the wrath of God. Jesus did that. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say you can satisfy God wrath? Jesus did that. God made him a propitiation, a sacrifice of atonement. Doug Mu in his wonderful commentary on the book of Romans points out that this word, which is not found much in the New Testament, is found twenty-one times in the Old Testament, Greek translation of the Old Testament, to describe the lid on the ark in the most holy place, the Holy of Holies, in the Tabernacle in the Temple. It's called the Mercy Seat. Twenty-one times in the Old Testament this word translates that Mercy Seat. So maybe God's trying to show us something with that picture, with that illustration of what He's talking about here. It is a beautiful picture of what He's talking about here. You see in Israel's worship system the most holy place, the inner sanctuary where only the high priest could go once a year. The Holy of Holies contained a box. It was only about three feet before feet. It wasn't very big but inside that wooden box covered with gold was the Ten Commandments, the two tablets of the law. Reminding Israel that they had broken God's law. Those Ten Commandments in that box in the Holy of Holies was a continual reminder that Israel was guilty, condemned rightly because they had not measured up to God's standard in His law. And every year the high priest would take the blood of an innocent sacrifice and go back into that room and he would sprinkle that blood on the lid over that box called the Mercy Seat. The arc of the covenant, the box that held the covenant, the broken covenant, the broken law was covered by a lid which became the Mercy Seat. You see the blood sprinkled on that lid came between God and the broken law. What a beautiful picture of a satisfactory atonement of propitiation. The blood of Jesus satisfies the holy demands of God contained in that box, the law. And God who could justly condemn us for breaking His law now looks upon us as being covered by the blood of Christ. That's what Jesus did to satisfy the wrath of God. That's a sacrifice of atonement. That's propitiation. That's what that means. Max Lucato in one of his books tells a story of a young man who came up to a pastor after a sermon had been preached and he said, what can I do to find peace in my life? What can I do to get salvation? And the pastor said you're too late. And the young man almost into the spare said, what do you mean I'm too late? I'm too late to get peace. I'm too late to get salvation. And the pastor said, well, no, no, but you're too late to do anything about it. That was done 2,000 years ago by Christ. You can't do anything to earn your salvation. You can't do anything to earn God's statement declaration of righteousness. The work has already been done by Christ and he did it for you so that you could be saved. If you go to Chicago today, you'll see of one of the world's major airports up there, Chicago O'Hare International. O'Hare International Airport was named for Butch O'Hare who was a Navy pilot in World War II. One, the Congressional Medal of Honor, one, several other medals for bravery in combat before he was shot down in 1943 and lost his life. Butch O'Hare's father was the lawyer for Al Capone. If you do Chicago sometime, take the gangster tour. Chicago was a big gangster town back in the 20s and 30s. They have tours in the city pointing out all the haunts of these gangsters. Al Capone really controlled the city of Chicago back in the 20s and early 30s. Well-known mobster. Mr. O'Hare was his lawyer. But when it came time for his son to go to the Naval Academy, he knew there was no way with what the authorities knew about him. That his son would get the Naval Academy. And so that's when Mr. O'Hare went to the authorities and told everything he knew about Al Capone and admitted his own complicity in all that had happened, knowing what would happen and sure enough within a couple of weeks his bullet-riddle body was found in his car the mob had killed him. Knowing what would happen but to make possible for his son to be accepted at anapolis gave his life. And that's exactly what Jesus did for you knowing knowing what it would cost him because he loved you and wanted you to be accepted into God's family and have entrance into heaven. He gave his life for you. When he died on the cross, he paid the price for you to be set free. That's redemption. He satisfied all of God's holy demands against you in the law. That's propitiation. Christ did it all. There's nothing you can add to that. Christ did it all. Did all the work that's needed for you to be saved and be declared righteousness. God's righteousness is given by the grace of God because of the work of Christ but catch this last one. It is through faith. I'm not going to take the time to do this but if you were to go back to verse 22 and read all the way through verse 31 you would find faith is mentioned nine times. Nine times in these ten verses. Faith, faith, faith, faith over and over again. Paul's pounding this home. The way that we received this justification is through faith. And faith is not something you offer to God. It's not something you work up. It's not like, well, how much faith do I need? I'll work a little harder to get more faith. No, no, no. Faith as one person has described it is simply the receiving hand of the heart that says, I willingly take and receive what God offers me. That's faith. Salvation is through faith. What does that mean? Well, Paul says three things that faith does. First of all, faith excludes any boasting. Look at verse 27. Where then is boasting? It is excluded on what principle on that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. Faith excludes any boasting. No one in heaven will ever be able to boast about how they got there. And aren't you thankful for that? Heaven would be an awful place if all we did is going around saying, well, I got here by, I was a church member for 40 years. I was taught Sunday school. I was a deep and I, well, I can be that. I'd be an awful place. Dale Moody used to say, I am so thankful that no one will go around heaven boasting about how he got there. Faith excludes boasting. Secondly, faith excludes salvation by the law. Look at verse 28. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. This is by faith. You simply receive it. You do not work. Do anything to get it. You cannot earn it. So keeping the law won't do it. It's apart from the law. Verse 31 says, do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law. The law has an appropriate function even today. And the appropriate function of the law is it continually serves as God's reminder that we are not capable in ourselves of getting to heaven. The law continually shows us that we fall short. We saw that back in verses 19 and 20. The law silences us. The law causes us to realize we can't do it on our own. And it still has that legitimate function. So faith actually upholds the legitimate function of the law because we can't keep the law. We can't get to heaven that way. So we are forced into the corner of faith. And we realize the only way to be saved is through faith. And we uphold the legitimate use of the law in that way, Paul says. So faith excludes boasting faith excludes salvation by the law and faith excludes any advantage because of religion. Look at verse 29. Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles to? Yes. Of Gentiles to since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and who and the uncircumcised through that same faith. In other words, it doesn't matter if you have a religious advantage. That is no difference to God. That makes no difference to him. Everyone who will get to heaven will get to heaven the same way. And that's through faith in what Christ did for you on the cross. That is the only way to be declared righteous. I want to summarize what we've seen in these verses. To be justified means to be declared righteous by God legally to be declared righteous. You have a clean slate. God now sees you as righteous as His Son Jesus. How is that possible? It is because of the grace of God. It is because of the death of Christ and what He did for you when He paid the price to set you free from sin when He satisfied the holy demands of God because of the death of Christ. And it is received by us through faith. It is no wonder that Donald Gray Barnhouse, the great former pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia back in the mid-1900s, had a heart drawn over this passage in his Bible. And he wrote that these are the greatest words in all of the New Testament. Martin Luther used to say of this passage in Romans that it was the center of the book of Romans. It was the center of the whole Bible and there was nothing that surpassed it. If I could add a comment to those two men not anywhere near their category. These verses are certainly a turning point in Romans and they can be a turning point in your life as well. If you will understand that you can only be saved not through your own efforts. You will only get to heaven, not through your own righteousness, but through a righteousness that comes from God being declared righteous by His grace because of the death of Christ through faith you receive it. If you will recognize that your whole life will be changed. You will be given eternal life. You will hear the sentence of a holy and just God. I sentence you to life, but not life in prison, life in heaven, eternal life. Watch me knee the Chinese writer of spiritual life once told the story of a Chinese man who was struggling to keep his head above water out in the ocean. He appeared to be drowning. Several of his friends were on shore and none of them could swim and they were frantic to try to get help so they cried out for help. Another man came running to the edge of the water and said, I can swim, I can help him. And then he stood there and did nothing. And the friends were saying, what's wrong with you? You say you can have something to go get him. Please, he's drowning. Can't you see he's about to go under? And the man just continued to stand there. Did nothing. And they were yelling at the man, come on, please help, get out there. What do you mean standing here? And the man just kept watching the guy who was flailing his arms out in the water going under, coming back up, flailing, trying his artist. And finally the man's arms dropped and he slipped under the water for what appeared to be the last time. And at that moment the man on shore dove into the water, swam furiously out to him, grabbed him and pulled him up and pulled him to the shore. And the friends gathered around after they realized the man was still alive and he was going to be okay. They gathered around and said, what were you trying to do? You're about letting ground before you did a thing. And the man said, I had to wait till he quit trying on his own. With his arms flailing and kicking like that, he would have taken both of us under. I had to wait till he gave up trying on his own. And then I could save his life. My friend, that's what God's telling you in the book of Romans. You can't do it on your own. You cannot get to heaven. All of your flailing and effort and self-righteousness and trying to do your best, you'll never, you'll never be saved that way. But when you give up your own efforts at trying to get to heaven and you realize the work has already been done by Jesus on the cross, it is then that you can be saved. It is then that you can hear the sentence of a life eternal by the grace of God, cause of the death of Christ through faith. Would you bow with me in prayer? Father, thank you that Paul made your gospel, the gospel of the righteousness that comes from God so clear. Father, I pray today that if there are any in this room today that have been flailing on their own, trying their best to live the kind of life that would get them into heaven, oh, Father, I pray that they would stop, that they would, by faith, trust you to save them. Father, help them to see that it is only through the work of Christ. We ask in Jesus name, amen.