I talk to people who think that they oh they say yes nobody's perfect of course I've done things wrong in my life but I'm living a good life in balance I'm making up for it with my merit. Don't you understand that God requires perfection? And we say glibly, well everybody's entitled to one mistake. Oh, God certainly never entitled you to one sin. But even if he didn't tally you to a single sin, how long ago did you use your entitlement up?
Sin makes us enemies of God, and we must not treat that lightly. All people are naturally hostile towards God, and peace can only be attained through faith in Christ, the perfect one.
However, even though we have peace with God, we are not promised that we won't experience suffering, conflict, or loss. But we can have peace in the midst of suffering, because Jesus has borne our sin, and because God's sovereign purposes for us cannot fail. Welcome to another episode of Renewing Your Mind. It's good to have you with us. Today's message is from Dr.
R.C. Sproul's series When Worlds Collide. When tragedy strikes, people are often looking for answers. Answers that the Christian worldview has to offer. For more than thirty years, Renewing Your Mind has endeavored to bring faithful Bible teaching to as many people as possible.
Whether you're a longtime listener or you've just discovered this program, thanks for joining us. I invite you to share Renewing Your Mind with someone you know to help them go deeper in their knowledge of God and His Word. Here's Dr. R.C. Sproul with today's message.
We've already considered the occasion when the disciples asked Jesus, as is recorded in the ninth chapter of John, about the tragic experience of the man born blind. You recall when they said that Jesus, whose sin was it—the man's or his parents—that he was born blind? And Jesus answered by saying, neither. And we explored then how important it is that we be careful not to assume that when people suffer or undergo tragic experiences, that there's a one-to-one correspondence between the degree of their suffering and the degree of their guilt. But another tragedy piqued the interest of Jesus' contemporaries, and in chapter 13, verse one.
These people asked Jesus about that. In chapter thirteen of Luke, verse one, we read this: "There were present at that season some who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." And Jesus answered and said to them. Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, no. Let me just stop at that point, and let's frame the picture.
A tragedy had befallen innocent people, people who were in the midst of worship. Bringing their sacrifices into the church of the day, when Pontius Pilate and his cohorts came in and slaughtered these people while they were in the midst of worship, mixing their blood with the blood of the Galileans, and people were deeply distressed by this. And in basically the implied question here that they're bringing to Jesus's. How could God allow this to happen? And Jesus said, "Do you think?
Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the rest of the people?" And He said, "I tell you, no." You cannot draw the conclusion that these people who suffered this calamity, who were destroyed in this catastrophe, were so destroyed because they were guilty, and other people were innocent, or that they had more guilt than those who escaped this particular calamity. I remember when I was involved in the great train wreck in Alabama. Back in 1993, where the train went into the water, more people were killed in that train wreck than in all of Amtrak accidents combined. And my wife and I survived that train wreck. And when we returned to Orlando, we were besieged with the television reporters and newscasters, and they kept asking me the same question.
Why do you think God spared you? I said I have no idea. But I don't want to make the assumption that I was the lucky one. Because if there were Christians who perished in that train wreck, their next day was spent in far better circumstances than mine was. They went immediately to heaven, but again, that reflects this negative view of death that we have, as if death were the worst calamity that could befall anybody.
When it's the greatest thing that could happen to somebody who's redeemed. But in any case, that's the kind of question that these people are asking Jesus: How's come these people died? Jesus said, "Well, it wasn't because they were greater sinners than anybody else, but I stopped in the middle of Jesus' answer. Let's look at the rest of it. I tell you, no, comma.
But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." Can you imagine Jesus getting away with a sermon like that in 20th century America, in the midst of tragedy? I mean, instead of bringing comfort and hope and consolation, Jesus is saying, "Don't look at those people as being worse than you are, because as long as you maintain a posture of impenitence before God, you also will perish." Then he goes on to answer the next question: Were those eighteen on whom the tower in Salome fell and killed them? Do you think they were worse sinners than all the other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? Here's another case of a tower collapsing. In this case, not killing six thousand people, but killing only eighteen people.
But nevertheless, this was tragic enough. For people to come to Jesus and say, in so many words, how could God allow this to happen? And you could have expected Jesus to say, Well, you know, I'm really sorry about that. I know that the Bible says that He who keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep, but that's hyperbole, that's poetry, and you understand that God's job of governing and monitoring every molecule that moves in this vast cosmic universe. Is a tasking job even for the deity, and even God has to take a rest from time to time.
And this one particular afternoon, while he was catching forty winks outside of his purview, this tower fell on these eighteen people. I'm sorry about that. I'll try to get him to be more careful in the future. Or I told you that there's not a bird that lands on the earth that he doesn't notice. And in fact, the very hairs of your head are numbered by Him.
But that particular afternoon, He was so busy catching the hairs of a bushy-haired fellow that His attention was diverted from that tower that fell.
Now you know that's not what Jesus said. Jesus makes no attempt here at theodicy, no attempt to justify. God, for the presence of the tragic in the world, you see, Jesus had a world view that was radically different from ours. Jesus had a view of God, that God the Father was absolutely perfect in His righteousness and in His justice, and He also had a view. Of man that differs radically from ours, because Jesus believed that every human being was guilty of sin before God, that every human being owed a debt to God.
That that person could not possibly pay, and I'll talk more about that in just a moment. But again, he gives the same response about the incident where Pilate mixed the blood of the people with the sacrifices, as the collapse of this tower of Siloam. When he says, "I tell you, unless you repent, you will likewise perish." Let me say two things about hell. As unpopular as it is, that nobody teaches us more about hell in the Bible than Jesus. Secondly, Jesus taught more about hell than he did about heaven.
But if there's any teaching of Jesus that even the church does not believe, it is his teaching about this dreadful calamity that awaits an impenitent world. The author of Hebrews, in looking at the vast redemption that has been accomplished for us by Christ, Likens us to the people in the Old Testament, who, for generation after generation after generation, ignored the mercy of God, ignored the loving kindness of God, ignored the grace of God to their everlasting peril. And the author of Hebrews makes a comparison between God's mercy in the Old Testament and His mercy in the New Testament. And points out the greater abundance of grace that God pours out upon the world in the gift of Christ in the New Testament, and talks about the greatness of the salvation that has been accomplished by Jesus. And then he asks this question, which is a rhetorical question.
How can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
Now, why is that question rhetorical? A rhetorical question is a question that is stated or uttered about which there is no doubt what the answer is. And this question that the author says, "How can we escape if we neglect such great salvation?" The answer is obvious. What? We can't.
And we won't escape. There is a condition established by Christ, by the New Testament, by the Word of God for escape. And that condition is repentance, repentance and faith. Unless you do A, Jesus says, B will inevitably follow, and the B is this: you will perish unless you meet this condition. That's why, you know, I tend to harp.
On the point of how dangerous it is when ministers and preachers stand up and tell the public at large that God loves everybody unconditionally, because when they hear that term "unconditional love," that means to people who hear it, I can do anything I want, whenever I want, and I never have to worry about God. I never have to worry about being saved from him, because his love is unconditional.
Well, in one sense, his love is unconditional, but his salvation is conditional. He requires all men, everywhere, to repent, to confess their sins, to despair of any hope. Of redeeming themselves, there is nothing that you can do to save yourself. Again, Jesus describes us as debtors. Debtors are people who have an unpaid obligation.
Now, if we look at the elementary principles of our understanding of God, remember our worldview begins with how we understand the nature of God. At the heart of our understanding of God is the understanding that God, as our Maker, and as our Ruler, who is sovereign over the human race, that that God has eternally. Inherently and intrinsically, the absolute right to impose obligations upon you. You know how it is. How often we are distressed when somebody says, "You must do this," or "You ought to do that," and "You should do this," and we get tired of people pointing their fingers at us and telling us that we need to do this, and you ought to do this, and imposing a burden of guilt.
Or some obligation upon us that we didn't ask for. There are all kinds of people who tell me that I ought to do something. Then they have no authority to tell me that. But if Almighty God looks at me and says, "R.C., you ought to do such and such," I can't argue with the Almighty because God has the inherent right. To impose obligation upon me, and the obligation that he has imposed on you, and the obligation he has imposed upon me, is the obligation of obedience to his law.
And it's that law that measures. The degree of my indebtedness to God. You know, in our little catechism, we ask the children, "What is sin?" And the answer is, "Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God." Disobedience to God is an act of lawlessness. And every time we disobey, every time we commit a sin, we incur a debt. In my Sunday school class in my church, just this past week, we were talking on a passage of scripture that I'll look at in a second.
But we talked about this image that Paul gives of mounting up wrath, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. And the reason why this kind of imagery is used is because there is an accentuated indebtedness. Every time I violate the law of God, I incur a debt—a moral debt. Second time I sin, the debt gets larger. The third time I sin, it gets even larger.
And those debts mount up and mount up against the day of judgment, and so that Jesus says, "We are debtors who can't possibly pay our debt." I talk to people out there who think that they oh they say yes nobody's perfect of course I've done things wrong in my life of course I've committed sins but I'm living a good life in balance I'm making up for it with my merit. Don't you understand that God requires perfection? If you sin once. There is no possible way that you can do enough on the side to make up for that one transgression, and we say glibly, "Well, everybody's entitled to one mistake." Oh, I don't know who ever entitled you to any. God certainly never entitled you to one sin.
But even if He did entitle you to a single sin, how long ago did you use your entitlement up? Seventy percent of people in the United States have credit card debt. They're in over their head. I have a friend, whom I know, owes more on her credit card debt than she makes in a single year' salary. She has no hope of ever being able to pay off that debt, and the sinner.
Who has sinned against God has absolutely no hope of paying off that debt. That's what the gospel is all about. It is about God in His mercy. This God, who is a God of justice, is also a God of grace. This God, who is a God of wrath, is also a God of mercy.
And now we read in the New Testament that God has revealed His grace unto us in the gospel, in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In which God sends into the world, while we are still sinners, one who has no debt, one who lives his entire life in perfect obedience. That's why it's so important for us to understand Christ as sinless, because he comes to the end of his life no debt. And he comes to his people who are covered with debt, who are absolutely impotent to pay the debt. And he says, "Give me your debt." And he takes that debt, and he puts it on himself.
Paul describes it this way in his letter to the Colossians. And you. Colossians chapter two verse thirteen. Being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. What a magnificent metaphor to describe the atonement that Paul speaks about: letters of indebtedness, certificates of debt.
That even in the Old Testament law, that when a person violated the law, it was written down. It was a moral I O U. Debtors who can't pay their debts, Jesus said, "That's what you are by nature." And Paul says that on the cross, the first thing Christ does in our behalf is to erase the debt. He blots it out. Remember David.
After his sin with Bathsheba and is confronted by the prophet Nathan, and he comes to a time of real confession, and he cries out to God, "Oh God, blot out my transgressions. If you could just erase them from my record, expunge it from my history." And this is exactly what Christ does for those who put their trust in Him. He blots out the debt, and then Paul says, "He nails that certificate to the cross." In the ancient world, when an economic debt was canceled, instead of writing "paid in full" on the document, this is the figure, which was the Greek representation. Of the cross was placed on the document. God literally puts a cross over your debt when you repent and you embrace Christ.
Who in the world could possibly measure the graciousness of that grace? The mercy of that mercy. This is salvation in the ultimate way. To imagine that Christ has for us cancelled that debt forever. And has won for us the forgiveness of every one of our sins, and not only that, transferred to our account the perfection of His righteousness for all who believe.
Now, when God does that, He does not stop being holy. He does not stop being righteous. When Paul describes this transaction in Romans. And tells us the gospel. There, he says that what the gospel shows us is that God is both just and the justifier.
He never negotiates his righteousness. He makes sure that guilt is punished and that sin is paid for. He doesn't just forgive the debt; he marks it paid.
So that he is still just, but that he allows it to be paid by somebody else rather than by us, he shows forth the glory of his justice and the unspeakable treasure of his grace. In the final analysis, ladies and gentlemen, that which defines The Christian life and worldview is the glory of the cross. I didn't know that in the ancient world, the mark of the cross is what signified that a debt was paid in full. How wonderful that our Creator God would use the symbol of the cross to indicate that our debt is paid. Thanks for joining us today on Renewing Your Mind.
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So, thanks for your support. If we don't start at the beginning of the biblical story, how can we understand the end? Tomorrow, join me as I sit down with Reformation Bible College's new R.C. Sprole Chair of Theology, Dr. Keith Matheson, to discuss his book, *From Age to Age*.
That's here on Renewing Your Mind.
