An indication that you're trouble. And if you were to get into heaven that way, heaven wouldn't be heaven very long.
Something has to be done about all this. The thing about hell is they've not dealt with their sin. So God dealt with it for them in a different way by restricting them from His glory and His presence in what we call heaven. My defects in Christ have nothing to do with my righteousness, and I am so happy about that, because I am defective.
So are every single one of you. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Romans.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Book of Romans chapter 3 as he begins his message, Unearned Salvation. Paul's letter to the Romans chapter 3, we will take verses 21 to 23. Now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You don't get a period until verse 26.
He just keeps going. I say that because just trying to set the context, it was not very easy if you're unfamiliar with what's going on. Paul in the middle of controversy, of course, coming primarily from the Jews at this time. Unearned Salvation is the title of this consideration.
That's what the text, I think, yields to us the most. In the Gospel, according to John, John talks about Jesus coming to his own, the Jewish people, and that they did not receive him. And remember John himself, a Jew, and he wrote many years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And he went on to say, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Well, we're talking about salvation and there is no salvation apart from God's plan for salvation and this irritates the world, a lot of people, and we'll come to some of that as we move forward. We look now at verse, well before we look at verse 21, we go back one verse to set the context a little bit for us. Romans chapter 3 verse 20, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight.
Now, you can get a little tripped up with the word law. Well, he's talking about the law of Moses and he includes the prophets. And the law of Moses was the hub for all that the Jewish people believed in their approach to God and their future. Everything was centered on Mosaic law and the prophets came along and enforced much of that and this is what he's dealing with. He's saying to his audience, I'm not deviating from God's word, but God has more to do and it's already in his word.
Moses talked about it, the prophets talked about it. And so, as we come across that word law, remember we're speaking about the Jews' obedience to their Old Testament, especially the parts that Moses gave to them. So now we look at verse 21, but now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed being witnessed by the law and the prophets. And so he's saying we are seeing God's goodness outside of Old Testament rituals, but according to the Old Testament authors. He's saying, my preaching Christ is the Messiah and moving past the dias, the Sabbath, the circumcision, all that stuff.
This is what was promised. I'm not preaching to you anything that's not found in our own Bibles. Obeying the commandments and following the rituals, however, is not enough.
It's not enough to be compliant to Moses because you can't be completely compliant to what Moses required and the rituals won't make up for it. Salvation is received, it is not earned ever. Adam and Eve could not undo the sin they committed by afterwards obeying God. Yeah, we goof with the whole tree thing, but now we're going to really be obedient and all that would just be in the past. Well, that's not how it works. You could say the sin was out of the bag.
The world would have maybe like a Pandora's box kind of approach to it. Subsequent obedience does not take away sin. You learn that early on as a convert to Christ, you have these great ambitions to obey Christ and the next thing you know, you'll find yourself in the flesh committing some act that is unappealing to God, that actually could be sin. And you huff and puff and you're going to blow this house down and it's not going to budge.
You're going to be back at it again. Thank God for recurrent grace, the blood of Jesus Christ. Partial compliance will not save anyone the antidote to the damning power of sin and all sin as that damning power. The antidote is Jesus Christ and the gospel is not contrary to the Old Testament Scriptures.
It fulfills the promises, the messianic promises of the Old Testament Scriptures and there are more promises coming and they will be fulfilled also. So when Jesus said, now I hope I emphasize this just like I want to, just like I feel led to. Jesus said, do not think that I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. The part that stands out for me at this moment is do not think.
Don't think this. It's wrong. I did not come to undo what Moses said but what Moses said had within it things that I am fulfilling. And so the approach to God through animal sacrifices and rights were wiped out by Jesus Christ. Those rituals were canceled. Colossians 2, Paul writes, speaking of Jesus, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us because the law did nothing but condemn.
You're guilty. That's what the law did. Grace has the solution to that. We call it propitiation theologically. Well, coming back to this, he wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us which was contrary to us and he has taken it out of the way having nailed it to the cross.
At no point is he talking about lawlessness. He is talking about the processes of God and saving souls. And as I mentioned, Sabbaths and circumcisions and animal blood sacrifices and diets could never save a soul and the Jews knew that. Jesus made these obsolete. Hebrews chapter 8 verse 13 uses that word.
He made them obsolete. Those rites and rituals. He is the fulfillment of what those things promised and illustrated.
And in its place, God's grace invites man to trust and to obey. And I started out with John saying he came to his own and his own did not receive him. Well, some of them did. Many of them did. And many of them still do. But never enough people receive Christ. We're singing a song everywhere I go, somebody's talking about Jesus. Is that still true? What are they saying?
It was very, I found it to be so in the 80s, but I was in the workforce then. But if they're not talking about Jesus, bring him up. Maybe they need to talk about him.
Of course, you bring the light to the situation and the more you know about Christ and his word, the more ammunition you will be able to spend on the devil's work, you'll know what you're talking about. And the world needs that. Whether they know it or not, they need it. You know, somebody who is rendered unconscious from some accident, at that moment, they don't know what they need. They're not conscious. But those who come to help them, they do.
Most of the time. So God, it's obsolete, the Old Testament rites and rituals. Not the commandment, not the moral codes.
We'll come to some of that. In this place, God's grace invites man to trust him and to obey him, which is what repentance is all about. Faith, to trust God. Repentance, to side with God, to obey. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. What were his commandments? Well, thou shall not kill is certainly one of them.
Don't steal, don't lie. Yeah, have no other gods before me. There are commandments in the New Testament. They're inescapable.
And they're good. There is actually a line of thought that some have tried to inject into Christianity called antinomianism, which is essentially lawlessness. Well, the Bible rebukes that. Old and New Testament gang up on that one.
Being witnessed by the law and the prophets. And so he's saying, as God said, through his prophetic scribes, men did not write the Bible any more than Belknap Press wrote the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which I may read one day. They just published his memoirs. He's the author. Well, how come this is a problem all of a sudden when it comes to God? That God is, but man is big enough to do this, but God is not. Hebrews chapter 5, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Well, he's also the author of judgment to those who don't. Looking unto Jesus, Hebrews 12, the author and finisher of our faith is all about him. And we love it.
We love it. So Old Testament law is moral. It is civil and it was ceremonial. That was what was the law of the prophets, the law of Moses and the prophets of course upholding it, which is something a lot of Christians do not understand upholding the scripture. The sense of entitlement was going to help you and violate scripture if you're not careful. This moral law restrained sin in the individual to the benefit of the individual and others. The moral law was to help people out. The rabbis called it the fence of the law, helped you to not sin. Civil law, it protected men and therefore society from the mischief of men, from the negligence of men in society whenever it was upheld. This is a quick one, you know, in Israel the houses had flat rooftops. Well, the law required you put a fence around that roof so no one accidentally falls over.
That's just one of the civil laws. There were many of them, that's just one. But then there were the ceremonial laws on the sacrifices and they were detailed and they were strict.
They educated the people. They reminded the people the cost to deal with sin. So when that temple was offering its morning sacrifices, you could smell the aroma of the animal that was being cooked and that was a reminder, you're a sinner and there's a right way or wrong way to approach God. But your sin's got to be dealt with. It's not ignored by God. And in the evening before you went to bed, there's another reminder.
We're right back where we started when you woke up. You're a sinner. You've got to deal with this. And these things, all the ceremonial law especially, indicated the need for a greater solution. Messiah would provide that solution. The Jews knew this. In Hebrews, Paul writing to the Jews says, it's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin. David knows that as it was in his psalms. Blessed is the man who God does not impute sin. He takes it away.
The animal sacrifices aren't going to do that. But what about God doing it? He made it personal, the life and the death of Jesus of Nazareth.
It's almost as though in man's sin, God says, if you want something done right, you're going to have to do it yourself. And he came down and he died in our place and rose again. And we know the gospel story. And much of Romans, this part, is basic Christianity, but there's some, you know, there's doctrine in here, what we believe in.
And we'll come to some of that. Verse 22, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, who all and on all who believe, there's no difference. You see, it's all through Christ, all about him. Faith in Christ made available by the faithfulness of Christ. The grace of Christ offers the solution to sin.
And what is sin? God's broken commandment. What is that? Disrespect to God.
What is that? An indication that you're trouble. And if you were to get into heaven that way, heaven wouldn't be heaven very long.
Something has to be done about all this. The thing about hell is, they've not dealt with their sin. So God dealt with it for them in a different way, by restricting them from his glory and his presence in what we call heaven. My defects in Christ have nothing to do with my righteousness. And I am so happy about that, because I am defective.
And so are every single one of you. 2 Corinthians 5, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Christ, who is God the Son. I love that passage in 2 Corinthians. Christ took my sin upon him, and the Father did look away. For that moment, there was that abandonment of sin on the sinner, which should have been me. 2 Corinthians, Paul had been talking to God about a problem that he's having in his life due to Satan.
And we can only speculate exactly what that problem was, and it's not really necessary nor profitable. The fact remains, he had a big problem, and he took it to God, and he said, I took it to God three times. This messenger from hell, Satan, sticking me in my side, in my flesh with this thorn.
And then he tells us what God said to him, essentially leaving the thorn on his side. And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Well, Lord, you're going to have a lot of opportunity to show yourself strong with me, because I have an abundance of weakness. Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. I will boast in my infirmities in this sense. I am not denying that I am infirm.
I am weak. Christ does not give up on me, and my defects have nothing to do with my righteousness, because the righteousness of Christ is upon me. Now, there are tenses of righteousness, is the application, the practice of, and that's not how I'm using it.
I mean my standing before God. To be accepted into heaven, I have to have righteousness upon me, and it's the righteousness of Jesus Christ by the blood of Jesus Christ. It is here that God's plan of salvation parts company with every plan devised in the human heart. Here come the objections from all the religions and all the people outside of Christ.
The world's false religious systems, no matter how divergent in their beliefs, whether it's a Hindu or a Muslim or some that claim Christ but don't believe in his word, they fall in this category also. They all have one major principle in common, and that is they all insist that salvation can be earned. In fact, they insist it must be earned by man, that man has to do something to merit the favor of God. Whether it is an animal sacrifice, walk upstairs on your knees, put extra money in the plate, do something. Whatever you do, don't trust your salvation to the finished work of Christ.
That's their position. Be it ritual or deeds of men or combination thereof, they think you've got to do something. True Christianity, because there are counterfeit Christianities and there are counterfeit Christians, but true Christianity cannot be earned.
It's received. And so I started out as many as received him, and not according to the flesh or the will of men. It's something that God does in people.
We all should know this verse and memorize it. For by grace you have been saved through faith. That not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest anybody should brag. So when God says, by grace you have been saved, that means God has opened an invitation.
He's made it available. Faith is the key. I have to activate what God has given to me, and all I have to do is submit to it. In the gospel, deeds do not result in salvation, they result from salvation. We're big on deeds, we're big on the commandments, but they're not going to save your soul. There should be evidences that your soul is saved.
It is the outcome of salvation. Quick proof of that is just in the thief, the outlaw on the cross. He didn't have any time to do any works. He couldn't put his hands to anything. Literally, he was nailed to a cross. All he could do is what? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was saved. And with just a couple of hours, he was in heaven.
Just like that. To all who, and he continues here in verse 22, to all and on all who believe. Well if you don't believe, then you won't receive. What is so unfair about that?
Is it too much to ask? This is illustrated in the story of Naaman, that a Syrian general came to the prophet Elijah with his leprosy. He said, I hear you can cleanse people of leprosy. Elijah says, yeah, yeah, look, I'm busy right now, but go dip in the Jordan seven times. And he closed the door.
I'm sort of caricaturizing it. But essentially, that's what was going on. And Naaman was insulted. He thought he would have to climb some mountain. He'd have to do something. He had to earn this cleansing.
But he had people who loved him, Naaman did. And they said, what's the big deal? Dip in the Jordan. If it's wrong, you just get a little wet. So he does, and of course he's cleansed. And he comes back.
And he's a different man. Well, I would love to spend more time on that, but we've got a lot to do here this morning. But Naaman illustrates the grace of God there in the Old Testament, according to the law and the prophets, to all and on all who believe. So to benefit from the salvation of Christ, we must agree with God about Christ's identity and his work.
I hope you're understanding what's going on here. You may be familiar with all that I'm saying, because you've been around Christianity a long time. But are you able to articulate these things to a lost soul? At the end of each service, I give you an example of an altar call.
So that if you get in front of somebody and they want, you can see, you've been preaching to them, and it's time to save their soul, to lead them into the kingdom. You know how to do it. You have a template.
You can use a different one, but you can use that one. You can ask them. You can look them in the eyes. Are you ready to receive Christ as your Lord and Savior? Are you ready to repent from your sin? If they say yes, you say, then make this prayer with me, Lord Jesus. And then it goes on. So as you're listening to this, you say, oh, you know, I know all this, the salvation from Christ.
But can you work it? Will God call upon you to share it? After over three decades of Christianity, none of this has grown old to me, and it shouldn't to you either. You don't have to wait three decades, some of you.
Some of you got more than three decades. Well, to all who believe that he alone is the divine Savior, and that is critical. He is not a created being, but he is the creator of being. And if you need some coordinates for that in Scripture, John 1, 3, Colossians 1, 18, Hebrews 1, verses 1 through 4. We do not need to be faithless as Christians, nor do we need to be fatalistic or pessimistic with our faith about our salvation. Twelve men were sent into the promised land by the Lord through Moses from the desert of Moab to spy it out. Ten were faithless pessimists. They displeased God by snubbing his word. Yeah, yeah, we heard what you said. We reject that.
They died in the desert of Moab as such people always do. Don't be one of them. Trust God's word. If it's not working out the way that you want it to work out, then understand you've got an opportunity to stand face to face with the devil and beat him by not moving away from your faith. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? So tribulation, distress, persecution, nakedness, famine or sword, none of these things. Just Christ doesn't come and deliver me from the sword or the famine or whatever problems I may have. He's no less my Savior. Hell can't beat that.
Didn't work with Job and shouldn't work with us either. Pessimism doesn't serve well, the Christian life. You have to take it. And I'm sure there are many churches out there going to tell you that, you know, just put on a happy face, God's going to make it all okay. Tell that to the martyrs as they burned at the stake, holding true to their faith. Tell it to Christ as he went to the cross. We accept these things in Christ because he's worth it. And where we're going is a lot more important than where we are.
For there is no difference, Paul says, between Jew and Gentile. And there's a war right there. That's what he had to deal with in his day.
We have stuff to deal with in our day. You know, we look at these people, you know, free Palestine. They know nothing of what they're talking about.
Nothing. If we took the Palestinian people out of Gaza and put them in their neighborhood, they would be crying like a baby. The work that Satan has accomplished in those people is deep. And it's a problem in our day to tell people, listen, Israel is one of the proofs of God's word being true. And if it's true on that point and 40, 11 others, it's true about who you are and where you're going if you don't get this fixed too. It means something. These are just not, you know, little Bible studies that we walk around with.
This is reality that we're dealing with, hopefully. And in Paul's day, he was attacked by people saying, well, salvation is for the Jews and of the Jews and only for the Jews. And he says here, no, there's no difference. God does not make distinctions on race. If you, if you could just picture standing before the throne of God and God's, oh, you're Jewish? Oh yeah, sure, come in. It doesn't matter that you were a mass murderer or anything like that, or that you were an idolater, come in.
Well, that's not going to happen. Same with the Gentile. It's, there is no difference with God.
Lot, Lot was a Gentile, well, essentially is a Hebrew, not a Jew. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again, or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans, here on Cross Reference Radio.
