The Bible and Catholic Salvation, #1b

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. Why do you need justification? You need justification because you need to be delivered. You need to be saved. And you know what you need to be saved from?

It's not often said this way, sometimes it is. You know what you need to be saved from? You know who you need to be saved from? You don't need to be saved from a sad life. You don't need to be saved from difficult circumstances. You don't need to be saved from depression. That's not what you need to be saved from.

That's all earth-focused. You should think about your deliverance, why you need justification this way and this way only. You should be thinking, I need to be delivered. I need to be saved from God. I need to be saved from God because God is angry with me over my sin.

That's why you need justification. God has declared judgment on you already, has revealed His wrath against you already, and you need to be delivered from that. You need God and God alone to reverse the verdict of condemnation that is presently on your soul. You need God to declare a verdict of pardon and righteousness in your behalf. That's the only thing that can save you is if God would graciously do that.

Well, that should lead naturally in everyone's mind to the third question here today. How do I get justification? How do I get justification? How do I take this promise of which Paul has spoken that we saw in Romans 4 of full pardon from sin and an imputation of righteousness that satisfies the justice halls of God?

How do I get that? Well, let's address it this way at the start. It is the sinner's impulse.

It is the thought of every natural man initially to think that he can do it himself. I'm going to make a resolution. I'm going to decide right now I'm going to be a better man going forward. Good luck with that.

Good luck with that. Some of us can't even stop at three potato chips. What makes us think we can reverse the course of our soul, right? I'm going to stop speaking hard things to my spouse. I'm 15 minutes late.

That lasts 15 minutes, right? Don't you see if you reflect honestly on your life how little power you have? You have no power whatsoever to change your standing with God, but just even on a human level, haven't you seen that your efforts at self-discipline yield to nothing? How many of you, let's approach it this way. This is October 29th as we're preaching today. How many of you even remember the New Year's resolutions you made on January 1st? How many of you even remember them?

That small fraction of you that even remember, how many of you have kept them? Your resolve is nothing. Your will cannot save you. It is the sinner's impulse to try to make himself right with God, and it is the heart of folly to do that.

That is foolishness. Scripture says that you are dead in your trespasses and sins. A dead man can do nothing to reconcile himself to God. Scripture says that Satan has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. You know, whatever else we say about Satan, he is a supernatural power opposed to men coming to salvation. You're under the darkness of your own heart, the deadness of your own sin. You are under the domination of Satan himself in addition to being under the wrath of God. What makes you think you can do the first thing, lift the first finger in favor of your own soul in any way that would accomplish your deliverance from the wrath of God?

What makes you think that? You see, you're foolish in your pride, my unsaved friend, when I address you. Let me just say this.

It is not unloving for me to tell you these things. It is an act of love for someone to open the Scriptures and tell you the truth about yourself and the truth about God. If you reject it and say, well, that offends me, you're walking away from the very thing that would save your soul.

Why would you do that? It would be like going to a doctor and the doctor says, look, you've got cancer, but we can cure this. Doctor, it offends me that you say my body is sick. I'm leaving.

And you turn on your heels and you snap your way out. That doctor says I'm sick. Can you believe that?

I feel sorry for that doctor that he speaks that way to men and doesn't tell them that they're healthy and everything's going to be okay. That's insanity, isn't it? Well, multiply insanity by infinity and you get the utter incoherent nature of a response that rejects something simply because it offends you in the spiritual realm. Scripture says over and over again that a man cannot save himself.

A woman cannot save herself. And that impulse, in fact, let's put it this way. That impulse to try to save yourself by being better or by denying the judgment of God and saying I'm actually a pretty good person.

I think God will take me in when it's all said and done. That impulse is actually a further manifestation of the dark sinfulness of your own heart. Because as you say those kinds of things, you are rejecting the one revelation of God in the true gospel. God says you can't save yourself and you say I think I will.

It just multiplies the guilt and rebellion to even think that way. Scripture says, Romans 3.20, we just saw it, by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight. Isaiah 64, all of us have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment and all of us wither like a leaf and our iniquities like the wind take us away. Think of yourself, Scripture speaks about your life this way as being a vapor that quickly passes away.

Think about yourself and your claim to righteousness as a puff of smoke in a hurricane wind. It's gone. Doesn't exist.

Carried away. Where it can never be found again. You have no chance, you have no opportunity with God if you try to approach him on the basis of your own goodness and obedience. That does not exist in the courtroom of God.

What does that mean? Is all hope lost? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense of yourself. Yeah, all hope is lost. You have no hope within yourself to fix this situation. Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit. Those who realize that they are spiritually bankrupt. God's word, my friend, I realize this is a hard message to hear but you know what's a lot harder than hearing a hard message on a Sunday morning in 2017? You know what's a lot harder than that? What's a lot harder than that is being in hell forever.

That's hard and there's no relief to it. And so what this all means is that if you are going to be saved, if you're going to be justified, you must look outside of yourself. You must look to resources that do not belong to you if you would be delivered from the wrath of God.

You know what the good news is? God has made the way. God has made the way. He has provided the way of salvation. In humility and great love for us, Jesus Christ became a man. The eternal Son of God left the glories of heaven in order to come to earth. Scripture teaches that he lived a perfectly obedient and sinless life that fully answered the demands of the law of God. And as you know, every one of you, as you know Christ voluntarily went to the cross of Calvary and offered up that perfect innocent life, offered himself as an innocent sacrifice to pay for the penalty of sin. And God accepted that sacrifice as shown in the resurrection. Look at 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21. Remember, God assigns guilt to your account. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21. Oh, these words are so sweet.

And I trust in the work of the Spirit of God in your heart that they'll ring with a renewed and deeper and broader sound of glory in your ears in light of what we've said here today. Scripture says that he made him, meaning God made Christ, who knew no sin. There's that sinless life. To be sin on our behalf.

Where? At the cross. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

You see, justification brings what we call a double imputation, a double reckoning. Your sin reckoned to Christ at the cross where your sin was punished in full. Jesus said, it's finished, paid in full. And when a sinner believes, truly believes in Christ, God graciously supplies them the righteousness of Christ on their account. Having imputed their sin to Christ at the cross in justification, God imputes the righteousness of Christ to your account. You know what the righteousness of Christ is? Perfect.

Absolutely impeccable. It satisfies everything that God requires. God laid sin on Christ and punished him as if he were guilty of all the sins committed by everyone who would ever believe in him. That's why his suffering is such a sacred act. That involuntary love and self-sacrifice, Jesus, as it were, said, Father, lay it on me. I accept the blame. I accept the guilt. Even though I didn't do it, Father, I accept it.

Punish me on their behalf. That's what 1 Peter 3.18 says. Look at 1 Peter 3.18 with me. This act of substitution, Christ standing in our stead, in our place at the cross. 1 Peter 3.18 says, Christ also died for sins once for all. The just, the just one being Christ, the unjust being us. He died for sins, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit. Beloved, imputation is another word that isn't part of our normal everyday vocabulary.

We'd all be better off if it was. But God imputed your sin to Christ at the cross. He counted your sin to Christ. He reckoned it to Christ and punished him there.

The stroke fell on him. And in justification, God takes that perfect righteousness of Christ that satisfied everything that he required and says all as a gift, I will count that righteousness to your benefit, to your account. I will deal with you as though you had lived the perfect life of Christ because Christ suffered and paid for your sin as though he had done it, even though he hadn't. And so God gives you a gift and treats you as though you had done something that you hadn't.

Why? For the sake of his Son. So how do I get this justification? In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ has the answer for the greatest need of your soul. You can be justified in God's sight.

The vital question then, in light of what we've said here, in light of the cross of Christ, in light of his resurrection, the vital question is this. How do I get that? How do I receive that? How can I find that?

How can that gift be made mine? It's the only question in life that matters. If you get this right, nothing else matters. If you get this wrong, nothing else matters. Nothing else helps.

Nothing else compensates. We have already seen that to get this gift of justification cannot be something that you do. It cannot be based on your works. Go back again to Romans chapter 4. This passage is important enough to read it twice. We'll start at verse 4. Romans chapter 4 beginning in verse 4. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor but as what is due. You can't work for it. Verse 5, but the blessed contrast introduced by the word but.

A contrast. In contrast to working and receiving it as something that you deserve. Verse 5, but to the one who does not work but believes in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered.

Blessed, a divinely privileged in a position of divine favor is this man, the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account. How do you receive justification? You receive it by faith. You do not work for it.

As I've already said, if you try to work for it, you make the situation worse. You walk further away from God when you say, I'm going to try to earn my salvation. So you're justified by faith and that means that the million dollar question is, what is this faith? What is this faith? Well, let's approach it in a couple of different ways, supported by Scripture. Faith, beloved, means this.

It means that you rely on Christ alone for your salvation, Christ alone for your merit before God and on nothing of yourself. You receive justification as a gift of undeserved favor from God. Look at Romans chapter 3 verse 21. Romans 3 verse 21.

And all of this setting up things that we'll talk about on Tuesday in the way that the Catholic Church violates this very basic principle. Romans 3 verse 21. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. Apart from works, faith, belief, trust, receiving, for there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Verse 28, actually verse 27. Where then is boasting?

It is excluded. Listen, listen, listen. No one is going to be in heaven taking credit for anything that they did that contributed for them being there. There will be no one in heaven saying, you know what I did to get here? No one will be there saying that because that is a boast.

I did my part. Verse 27 says, where is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Look at Romans chapter 10 verse 8. You see, when the gospel is truly preached, we're not calling on men to work to receive it. We're calling them to believe in Christ to receive it. It's not about moral reformation. It's about being born again because you cannot save yourself. It's about receiving a gift from God that you could never earn, never deserve. What could you possibly do that would merit, that would reward the gift of eternal life and blessing in heaven forever and the righteousness of Christ applied to you and all of your sins pardoned forever, never to be brought up again by God?

What could you do that would deserve that? A 10-minute daily devotion, carried out faithfully, given a guy on the street a $20 bill. You think you could buy your salvation for handing somebody a $20 bill? How about 50? How about 50? Would God be impressed with that?

How about 100? Carried all the way through, beloved. Nothing could deserve the great gift of salvation in heaven forever. Therefore, you have to give away, put away any thought that I could do something to deserve it. Look, if there was a work to do to deserve it, it would be laid out clearly in the pages of Scripture. Scripture says, works can't save you.

And therefore, stop thinking about trying to do it on your own. Stop making up your own standard of righteousness. There's only one standard that matters and that's the standard of God. And the standard of God is only satisfied in Christ and in Christ alone. Romans 10 verse 8.

What does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we are preaching. That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. A promise of Scripture based on a response of faith and faith alone. For with the heart a person believes resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation. Faith means, I'm going to give you a couple of definitions.

One short in my own words, a longer one in someone else's words. Faith means that you receive Christ and all of his work on your behalf and you rest in him. It means that you cease trying to earn your salvation because you know that Christ has paid it all. Christ, I come to you as a guilty soul. I come to you knowing that I cannot earn my salvation. I come to you believing your promise to save me if I believe in you. Lord, I turn from sin.

I turn from this world. I come out of the false religion of Catholicism and I come and I embrace you and you alone. And you rest in him. The rest is a crucial aspect of it saying, Lord, I understand you have satisfied God completely. There's nothing left to do for me to earn favor with God, to earn the verdict. You receive Christ and you rest in him. You yield to Christ, you bow before him and you're satisfied in him. And that's accompanied with a sense of relief, of trust, of wonder, of love, of gratitude, all mixed together in seed form in that initial act of faith that says, Lord, I see it and I trust you and I rest right here. J.C. Ryle puts it this way, bear with me, it's a little bit of a longer quote, but I want you to get this because I would love for you to go to heaven with me, with others in this room that know Christ.

That's the only thing I care about right now. J.C. Ryle puts it this way, true saving faith is an act of the whole inner man. It is an act of the head, heart, and will united and combined. It is an act of the soul in which seeing his own guilt, danger, and hopelessness and seeing at the same time Christ offering to save him, a man ventures on Christ, flees to Christ, receives Christ as his only hope and becomes a willing dependent on him for salvation. Continuing the quote, true faith has nothing whatever of merit about it and in the highest sense cannot be called a work. It is but laying hold of a savior's hand, leaning on a husband's arm, and receiving a physician's medicine. It brings with it nothing to Christ but a sinful man's soul. It gives nothing, contributes nothing, pays nothing, performs nothing. It only receives, takes, accepts, grasps, and embraces the glorious gift of justification which Christ bestows and by daily acts renews that faith.

End quote. The one who receives Christ like that receives justification. The one who receives Christ like that receives a perfect standing with God that is permanent and can never change. It can never be reversed.

If God has declared it, he will not reverse himself because he cannot contradict himself and there's no one higher than God. Scripture's laid forth before you the way of salvation, the way that you can be reconciled to God today in the person and work of Christ alone, by faith alone. Now look, it's humbling. It takes away our pride. It's a recognition and acknowledgement. Someone else has to save me because I can't save myself. And it's the death blow of pride in your heart to realize I was a ruined sinner, but Christ saved me. He gets all of the glory. I get none. And you know what?

I like it that way. In justification, the law previously condemned you. In Christ, God delivers a verdict of complete and irreversible pardon.

And yet, beloved, in some of the songs that we sing don't fully bring this out the way that they should or could. The verdict goes beyond mere forgiveness. In justification, God doesn't simply restore you to a position of innocence. God gives you a status of perfect righteousness, that you have satisfied all that he requires. And that verdict is secure because it rests on the merit of Christ, not on your good works. Salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, based on the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone. That raises two vital questions as we close. And I am almost done here. First of all, in the context of our series, the Bible and Roman Catholicism, we ask this question. Does Roman Catholicism teach salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone? I'll answer that one.

No, not at all. They don't. We'll show that on Tuesday. The second question is one that only you can answer. I can't answer it for you. Do you trust in Christ alone and nothing good in yourself? Forget about the person sitting next to you. Don't think, you know, I know someone who needs to hear this.

Answer the question yourself. Are you trusting in Christ alone for your salvation? If the answer is yes, then your heart should burst with joy and gratitude.

Oh, God, thank you. The wrath of God has been completely satisfied against me, never to be raised again. I am at peace with a holy God.

How great is that? If not, come to Christ and be saved, won't you? Next Sunday, I hope to address a passage from James chapter 2 that might seem to make this more complicated. We'll address that next Sunday and discuss a little more the change that accompanies justification in the life of a believer. I hope you can be with us.

God bless you. Let's pray. In Christ alone, oh God, our hope is found. And in Christ alone is our glory. Father, we really tremble at the magnitude of the things that we've discussed here today.

Who's adequate to talk about eternal salvation and the holiness of God and the judgment of God? But Father, we trust that through your Word somehow you've adequately conveyed this so that it would be settled in the minds of your people, perhaps some things of faith clarified for them and those that have not yet believed in Christ and do not have this great gift of justification, Father. Please silence the work of pride in their heart. Please, oh God, hinder the work of Satan that would continue to blind them. Please, oh God, by your Spirit, open their eyes, incline their will, incline their understanding to the truth of the things that have been said. There is no other place for them to go than what has been shown in your Word today. Please, Father, those that are under the sound of our voice with whom we move and live and have relationships that are still in darkness, please, Lord, work in their heart that this all might be true for them as well. God, we can't do it on our own. No man can redeem his brother by any way.

He might as well stop trying. God, not only are we dependent on Christ to believe in Him by faith for salvation, we are utterly dependent on you to do the work in the heart that is necessary to make that happen. So for friends present and friends outside, friends over the live stream, Father, through this message, through like messages preached around the world by those who also love Christ and love your Word, send forth your Word with power.

Lord, we realize we live in a very dark age. We ask for a supernatural work of your Spirit to bring the light of Christ to bear, to bring a sweep of revival. As you've done in the past, as you've done on this soil, O God, in times gone by, as we look back and we remember the times of the Great Awakening where people fled to Christ in response to your Word, God, we ask for something like that.

That you would honor your Word, that you would honor your Son, that you would honor your servants of five centuries ago. Father, by the power of your Spirit bringing men to saving faith in Christ and in Christ alone. That's what we ask for, Father, as we close this time.

In Jesus' name, amen. That's Don Green here on The Truth Pulpit, and here's Don again with some closing thoughts. Well, thank you, Bill, and just before we close, my friends, I just want to let you know that this podcast is made possible for you by the generous support of many friends of our ministry. We're grateful for that, and if you have supported us, I want to say a special word of thanks to you for all that you've done to make this possible. And if you would like to join in the support of our ministry, you can do that so easily by going to thetruthpulpit.com.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. You'll see the link to give, and you can add your support to the others who make this possible for us. Thank you for whatever you do, and whether you give or you don't give, know that our love and prayers are with you. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time as we continue to study God's Word together here on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.