Chapter 4: 1-13 (NKJV)
We, The Forgiven Lawbreakers

“What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? ² For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³ For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ ⁴ Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. ⁵ But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, ⁶ just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:

⁷ ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
⁸ Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.’

“⁹ Does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only, or upon the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. ¹⁰ How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. ¹¹ And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also, ¹² and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised. ¹³ For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.“

People are skeptical of free things. If you see a man in a van in a parking lot at a mall giving away free stuff, we assume that the things are stolen or at best there is a hook. He, we assume, is trying to lure you in to get something else. Many people approach the Gospel in the same way. They are wary of free. But God chose the Apostle Paul, a man who gauged his life by works from the time he was a youth to teach about grace and faith. In Philippians 3:2-6 (NKJV), Paul writes this,

“Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation! For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”

Notice that this former Pharisee dives right in and states that he has no confidence in the flesh. No confidence in what he could do for himself or have another mere human do for him. In the case of circumcision, the child’s parents made that decision for him; he did not make it of his own free will. We see that today with infant baptism, there is no choice on the part of the child. Another makes the choice for him or her. But if anyone that walked the earth had a reason to boast in the flesh, it would have been Paul. If someone could have noted his human accomplishments and been accepted into Heaven, Paul would have been the guy. But Paul tells us in the verses that follow that he counted his human accomplishments as rubbish, and in another place as dung (Poop).

Once Paul came face to face with Jesus and saw His glory, his self-righteousness amounted to nothing. Zero. Nil. Nada. Now, he was ready to trust Jesus by faith, and his life was about the change forever. Paul understood that compared to Jesus, he was just a rotten, good for nothing sinner and all his righteousness was in fact dung. He was to simply put his faith in Jesus.

Acts 9:5-6 “And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”

Jesus identifies himself, and Paul humbles himself: “Who are you Lord?” and then “What would you have me do?” Total submission from that day until the day of his death. Paul, a man full of pride and self-righteousness, was now a humble man who calls himself the chief sinner. This is how the true Gospel changes us and creates in us a right spirit. This is how we lawbreakers are forgiven, by faith in Jesus. We believe God, and it is accounted to us for righteousness just like it was accounted for Abraham, Paul, Moses, David and the countless billions who have believed Jesus in the past 2,000 years. It is the same way that thousands will be saved today.

1. Forgiveness: verses 7-8

There is much talk today about the prosperity Gospel, which is not a Gospel but a lie. True blessing is to know for sure that your sins are forgiven. David writes this and calls us, including himself, lawless. But was this not a man after God’s own heart? Yes, but he was a man, and as such, subject to sins and sinning. He notes three stages of how God takes care of our sins:

• God forgives them – we are pardoned and our sting and stench of our sinfulness are removed.
• Then our sins are covered – this refers to the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies. Once a year the High Priest would go into the Holy of Holies and pour blood on top of the Ark of the Covenant. In the Ark was a copy of the Ten Commandments; the blood sat on top of the Mercy Seat and covered the Law, thus covering our sins.
• Lastly, our imputed sins are removed. The very list of sins we have done is removed from our accounts. The Psalmist put it this way in Psalm 103:12 (KJV), “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

The east and west never meet. No matter how far east you go, you cannot meet the west, and vice-versa. So, in these verses in Romans 4:7-8, we see that God completely removes all traces and records of our sins from us forever once we believe Him, and He gives us His righteousness. We become perfect in Jesus. Paul did not know what perfection was until he met Jesus; and, once he met Jesus and became perfect, he could see his own sinfulness for the very first time. Once I was blind but now I can see.

2. Forgiveness for the Gentiles, 9-13

Abraham was justified before he was circumcised. Even so, we Gentiles who do not often get circumcised, are able to be saved as well. We do not need to keep the law to be saved, but anyone who at any point in History who put their faith in the risen Savior is saved. I am a Gentile who is saved. The vast majority of the NT church are Gentile peoples who were saved because Jewish men took the Gospel to them.

The Gospel was always for the Gentiles as well. But the Jews hoarded it and refused to share it in many cases. We need to be careful not to be like them. Let us share the Gospel. Let us get it out in any way that we can to the masses and give them the opportunity to repent and believe.

In Acts 16:30-31, we see these timeless words told to a Gentile warden: “And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

Believe on the Lord and be saved. Like Abraham, this jailer and his household believed God, and they were eternally changed forever. He and his household became perfect in Jesus and are no longer under the wrath of God.

All too often modern Christians, and I am sure Christians of all generations, change the simplicity of the Gospel.

Believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved. Believe that Jesus is the perfect God, the image of God in the flesh and believe in Him. Believe in His death, burial and resurrection and you will be saved.

Sean, you say, you sound like a broken record about this Gospel. Good! That is my intent. The Gospel has been altered, watered down and downright lied about. It is simple, plain and applicable to any who believe in Jesus. God made it this way. He made the Law complicated and burdensome, but He made the Gospel simple; and with it He removes burdens. He removes the burden of sin, the burden of judgment and the burden of fearing God’s wrath. I cannot say it any clearer, so let me leave you with the words, so simple and yet so powerful these nearly 2,000 years later:

“And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

God bless you,

Pastor Sean Gooding

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Chapter 3:21-31
God Made the Way for Everyone

“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, ²² even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, ²⁶ to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

“²⁷ Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.                  ²⁸ Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. ²⁹ Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, ³⁰ since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. ³¹ Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.“

Last week we took a dark look at the condition of mankind before the Holy Living God. We are sinners, evil as the day is long. Our sin separates us from the Lord God; He cannot keep company in the Shekinah Glory with sinful men. People will say that Jesus hung out with sinful men, He went to their homes and ate at their tables. Yes, He did. But Jesus was not in His Shekinah Glory here on earth. He, according to Philippians 2:5-7, put that aside for us and humbled Himself to the death on the cross. Thus, Jesus, the Man/God, was able to sit with us and commune with us, and touch us and not have His glory kill us.

Recall Moses when he went up to the mountain to receive the Commandments understood this in Exodus 33:19-20:

“I will cause all My goodness to pass before you,’ the LORD replied, ‘and I will proclaim My name—the LORD—in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” And He added, “You cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live.”

In a similar manner, Isaiah in chapter 6 of his prophetic book sees God, and immediately he is cut to his very soul:

Isaiah 6:1-5 “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.“

Wow, what a response from this great prophet, “Woe is me!” Man, too many of us just don’t have this level of reverence any more for the Lord God. We are unguarded in His presence. While He is our Heavenly Father, we have lost the reverence that was once afforded to earthly fathers. It is not a mistake that the world system has worked hard to devalue men in the home and make fathers out to be buffoons and idiots. The devil knows the value of dads and fathers. Weaken the dad, destroy the family. In the same way, the trickle-up effect is that we have less respect for the Lord God as well.

Let us take a look at the wonder of our Heavenly Father and try to recapture the awe, the breath-taking view of who He is.

1. He is Righteous, verses 21-26

There are no less than 4 times in these verses where God’s righteousness is mentioned. This is not an accident. In the previous 20 verses beginning at verse 1, we have a picture of man’s sinfulness; we are told how evil we are, every word and thought, every action and reaction is evil. In contrast, we are now being told how righteous God is. This magnifies the gap, the gorge more accurately between sinful mankind and the righteous God. The chasm is virtually uncrossable. In contrast to men who always do what is wrong, God always does what is right. Every word is right, every thought is right, every action and re-action is right. His judgments are always right. He is Righteous to the same degree that we are sinful.

We are totally sinful and God is totally perfect. This distinction is often missed in the Lord’s churches today. We have watered down how sinful we truly are, and as such, we have tempered how perfect Jesus/God is. The gap between God and man then does not seem so far, and His salvation does not seem so needed and so awesome. The wonder of the cross, the gloriousness of His sacrifice, the beauty of His love for sinful reprobates (Romans 5:8) is diminished and we lose the awe, the wonder and the wow factor of the salvation that was bought for us in the blood of our Savior Jesus the Christ.

There are still some that get it. We sing songs like ‘Nobody Loves Me like You Love Me’ by Chris Tomlin, ‘The Greatness of Our God’ by Newsboys United, ‘Alive’ by Big Daddy Weave, ‘My Story’ and a host of other songs we can see that some still get it. The Holy Spirit is still revealing the wonder of the cross, the power of the empty tomb; and the Holy Spirit is still revealing the depth of our depravity. We still sing songs like ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘There is a Fountain filled with Blood,’ ‘At the Cross,’ and ‘What can Wash Away My Sins.’ You see the depravity of man and the righteousness of man played out in songs.

May we never lose the wonder of the salvation that was bought for us at such a great expense. Let us never forget the blood that was shed, the very lifeblood of Jesus that covers and washes away our sins. Let us never forget that Jesus did in 6 hours on the cross what 4,000 years of animal sacrifices could not do. Let us never forget that there are no chairs in the Temple; the High Priest’s work was never done, so he could not sit. BUT Jesus sat down after the work on the cross was done because He, the Righteous God, shed His pure, perfect, innocent blood for us.

Take a look at Colossians 3:1: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”

and Hebrews 1:3:

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

Jesus did the job. There is nothing more to be done for salvation. The gorge has been bridged, the chasm filled in, the distance erased, and now the ever-sinful mankind can have fellowship with the ever-perfect Godhead. This is the Gospel, the Good News that the entire Bible is about. God made a way when there was no way. God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We could never be good enough to have fellowship with God, so Jesus came, the God/Man, and He is our Righteousness. His righteousness covers our hideous sinfulness, and now we can come close to God and not die.

Oh, what a mighty God we serve! Oh, what a loving God we have! Oh, what a powerful God we have on our side! How can we ever shut up? How can we ever run out of songs to sing, poems to write or stories to tell? We cannot be silent when we have such wonderful a story.

2. Not works, but Faith, verses 26-31

God knows that we could not be saved by doing enough righteous deeds so as to eradicate our evil deeds. The math would never work in our favor. We don’t even truly know the depth of our sinfulness. In Psalm 19:12, the writer talks about ‘hidden sins,’ sins that he did not even know that he had committed:

“Who can discern his own errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults.” 

Sometimes we don’t even know we have sinned, but the righteous God knows that we have sinned. Therefore, God, in His mercy, made salvation by faith in what Jesus has done by living perfectly for us and then dying for us in our place. Once we place our faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, we are made perfect before God by being ‘born again’ (John 3:3). We’re reborn in Jesus as perfect. This is an act of God, in us once we have faith. He, via the Holy Spirit, who is God as well, comes to live in us, and it is His perfection that covers our imperfections. One day, either by death or the rapture, we will get perfect bodies to complement our perfect souls.

Now, there are a lot of questions about the Law and what happens now that they are saved. Well, we are not required to keep the law for salvation, but Jesus in His wisdom left us the very substance of the law in the Gospel, Matthew 22:37-39: 

“Jesus declared, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

These two principles are all the law and the prophets. Now that we are saved, redeemed in and by Jesus, the Holy Spirit in us will equip us to live like this. No one will get to Heaven by living out the Law, but all who are citizens of Heaven through Jesus have the power in them to live like Jesus, love like Jesus, serve like Jesus and forgive like Jesus. Paul sums it up for us in Ephesians 2:8-10:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Now, in Jesus and by Jesus and for Jesus, go and live out the life that Jesus has purchased for you with His blood.

God bless you,

Pastor Sean Gooding

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca