Christ in Our Place

I don't believe for one moment that Christ died for all the ungodly. I don't believe that.

You know why? Because I'm not a universalist. The Bible doesn't teach that everybody goes to heaven. Only believers go to heaven. Can Christ die for a person's sin and that person still go to hell? When it comes to the question of, for whom did Christ die, there is much debate among Christians, yet the Bible is very clear, as you'll learn today on the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

R.C. Sproul is in Romans 5 today, a sermon he preached at St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he addresses the important topic of the design of Christ's atonement, his work on the cross for sinners. If you have never asked the question, for whom did Christ die, or you believe that Christ died merely to make salvation possible for everyone, then I encourage you to stay with us as R.C. Sproul helps us see the powerful and effective work of Christ as he laid his life down for his sheep.

Here's Dr. Sproul. Tonight we're going to continue with our study of Paul's epistle to the Romans, and we have been working in chapter 5 in recent weeks, and so we return to that chapter once again, beginning at verse 6 and reading through verse 11, Romans 5, 6 through 11, and ask the congregation to stand for the hearing of the Word of God. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received the reconciliation. The Word of God for the people of God.

Please be seated. Let's pray. Again our Father as we give our attention to this portion of Paul's magnum opus, the deepest exposition of salvation we find in your Word, we pray that as we contemplate these things this evening that relate to the perfect sacrifice offered for us by your dear Son, we pray that our souls may be lifted up and that in the contemplation of so great a salvation we might have tonight a taste of glory. We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. We've seen that after Paul set forth for us the doctrine of justification by faith alone that in this chapter 5 he proceeded to set forth the benefits that flow from our justification that once a person is justified that there are immediate benefits that accrue through that person such as we've seen peace with God, access to his presence, and as we saw the last time the shedding abroad of the love of God in our hearts that provokes the kind of hope within our souls that makes us able to endure tribulation and through that endurance achieve character and so on. Now Paul turns his attention to the atonement of Christ and what it has provoked in our salvation.

So let's look at it beginning in verse 6. For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the godly. Now at this point Paul discusses the when of our atonement. At what point in history the redemption of the people of God was accomplished? And he speaks of the when of this accomplishment in two ways. The first point is the when with respect to us. At what point in our personal history did Christ offer himself on the cross? And the first thing that the Apostle tells us is that it was when we were still without strength.

Now let's comment on that before we look at the temporal aspect of the atonement, but in the first instance he stresses that Christ dies for the ungodly while they are still in a state of being without strength. One of the cardinal doctrines of biblical Christianity has to do with original sin and its impact on our spiritual strength. This issue has been battled in every generation throughout church history for this reason, that virtually every church there is confesses some doctrine of original sin, and I remind you as we've already seen in Romans that original sin does not refer to the first sin that was committed by Adam and Eve, but rather to the consequences of that sin by which God visited corruption to the entire race of humanity. All of the progeny of Adam and Eve are born in a state of spiritual death and moral corruption.

We are born in sin, and as I say every church has some doctrine of original sin, but where the debate rages historically is over the degree of that corruption. To what extent have we fallen from our original righteousness? Augustine waged this battle in antiquity against the heretic Pelagius who denied the fall altogether, but the cardinal point that Augustine taught was that the ravages of sin are so great they penetrate so deeply within our souls that we are left in a state of spiritual death, and what that spiritual death means that even though we are still alive biologically, even though we have faculties that remain intact, we still have a brain, we have a mind, we have affections, and we have a will, we have a capacity for making choices and all of that, but nevertheless our humanity has been so damaged by the fall that our moral state by nature is one that Augustine described as a state of moral inability.

Let me just take a moment to remind you again of what that means. The idea of moral inability is this, that we have been plunged so deeply into sin that in and of ourselves we do not have the moral capacity to incline ourselves in any way to the things of God. If God in His mercy and His grace offers to us complete forgiveness and salvation and Jesus Christ, but that God does nothing to work in our hearts, if He leaves us to ourselves to exercise our wills to take advantage of the offer of the gospel, no one would exercise that option.

We simply don't have the moral capacity. We have the volitional power to choose what we want in any circumstances, but sin is so deep that we no longer have any desire for God or any want to for the gospel or for Christ. Now the overwhelming majority report in America today among professing evangelicals is that God offers the gospel to everybody and that those who exercise their will to receive Jesus, embrace Jesus, to make a decision for Christ those are the ones who are saved. That though God does 99%, that 1% that decides our fate for eternity rests in our cooperating, receiving, embracing, choosing Jesus freely. If I believe that, I will tell you tonight, the minute I'm persuaded of that will be the minute you'll see me climb down from this pulpit, leave the church, and sleep in tomorrow morning. Because I would have no hope whatsoever that the work of evangelism would ever be successful, that preaching would ever bring any fruit, because it would be like a preacher who preaches resurrection with great eloquence and great power, with great rhetorical skills in the middle of the cemetery and calls the corpses to come to life.

They're not going to come. And unless God the Holy Spirit empowers the word of preaching, unless God the Holy Spirit empowers the outreach of evangelism, no one will ever come to Christ. That's the point that Jesus made in the sixth chapter of John when he said, no man can come to me unless it is given to him by the Father. And so Paul again is teaching this same principle. He's saying that Christ died for the ungodly while we were still without strength.

And the strength that he has in view here is clearly spiritual strength. We have no strength in and of ourselves to affect our own salvation. And so God didn't wait for us to exercise our wills, to incline ourselves to him, to repent of our sins, to make ourselves in such a state that it would be appropriate for him to provide a sacrifice or an atonement for us. No, while we were still in this state that Paul later in his letter to Ephesians describes as spiritual death, while we were dead in sin and trespasses, Christ died.

But that's the when with respect to our human condition, the when with respect to history. He says in the next clause, for when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. We read in the Bible every Christmas that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

That's an integral part of the Christmas narrative of Luke chapter 2. But what we're getting there in that announcement is that Christ came into this world in real time, in real history. Salvation is an activity that God performs in history. It's not something that happens in the never-never world outside of space and time.

It is not some existential thing that takes place away from real history. And that the Scriptures tell us that when Christ came, He didn't come by accident, but He came in the fullness of time. He was born on the exact date in the exact place where from the foundation of the world the Father had decreed.

And throughout the whole Old Testament, all that we read in the activity of God in ministering to His people to creating a nation for Himself out of Israel, giving them the law, giving them the prophets, ministering to them through their entire sojourn, through the pages of the Old Testament, all that time God was preparing history for that moment that would be so ripe that it was just the time for Christ to come. That is, He came in due time. Remember the joy that goes through the household when Mama reveals to the rest of the family that she's due. And whenever we hear that from somebody, we immediately say to them, when's the baby what? Due.

When's it due? And the doctor gives a due date and we circle it on the calendar. And we know that just because the doctor gives a due date, that the baby's not necessarily going to come on the date that it's due.

Just like when you get bills in the mail and they tell you that they're due by such and such a date, that's no guarantee that you're going to send the money in in time to meet that due date. I'll never forget the birth of our first child, Sherry. The due date came and I was waiting and ready.

Vesta was ready. We're going to have our first baby. But she didn't deliver. The day after the due date, I took her for a walk.

I said, let's get this thing going here. The baby didn't come. A week after the due date, she still hadn't given birth.

And at that point, I was thinking, the whole thing is a hoax. She's never going to have this child. I mean, that was the hardest seven days of my life. And then she went on for three more days before Sherry was born. And then once the birth takes place, you mark that day as birthday. That's the day you celebrate. You forget for the rest of the time except when you're looking for sermon illustrations about the due date.

Who cares about the due date after the real date occurs? Well, with God, He's never late. When He appoints a day for something to happen and to take place, it happens that very day. And so Paul tells us that when we were still without strength in due time, that is in the time that God sovereignly appointed, Christ died for the ungodly. Again, when we read the narratives of the Gospels of the death of Christ, the Gospel writers tell us of all of the political machinations that were going on behind the scenes, how Caiaphas gave his advice, Pilate has his advice, Herod has his advice, the soldiers conspire, the Sanhedrin gets involved, they pay money to Judas to make sure that all of this takes place. And God sits in the heavens and laughs as He knew from the foundation of the world that this was the day, and no matter what Judas did, no matter what Caiaphas did, no matter what any of these people did, that none of these things had anything to do except insofar as these incidental aspects were also sovereignly decreed by God from all eternity. You see, not only was Jesus due on Good Friday, but Pilate was due, Judas was due, Caiaphas was due. All of these things came together in the concurrence of divine providence that on that specific date, Christ would die. But instantly as Paul remembers the death of Christ, he always, always when he mentions the death of Christ, speaks of its purpose. Paul does not see the death of Christ as a tragedy in the history of the annals of human affairs. He doesn't see this as the great destruction of an innocent man by a corrupt clergy and corrupt political body in Jerusalem. No, he says there's a reason why he died in due time. There was a purpose of his death, not simply to demonstrate the love of God or display some kind of moral influence into the universe, but he died for the ungodly. Now, you at this point may include yourself in that category or not. It's easy to come to the conclusion that if you are in the category of the ungodly, that Christ therefore died for you.

Not so fast. It's true that Christ died for the ungodly, no question about that, because all of us for whom Christ died are numbered among the ungodly. But again, one of the most volatile controversies that abides in every generation among Christians is the question, did Christ die for all the ungodly? Let me just stop for a moment and ask you, what do you think? Don't answer out loud, please.

We'd have a riot in here. I always preach on this when I think that the crowds are getting too big and we need more space in the church. I wouldn't hesitate to answer that question. I don't believe for one moment that Christ died for all the ungodly. I don't believe that.

You know why? Because I'm not a universalist. The Bible doesn't teach that everybody goes to heaven. Only believers go to heaven. Only those who belong to Christ. And every believer that has ever been saved was at one time completely ungodly. And so Christ certainly died for the ungodly in the sense that He died for those who came to faith in Him. But again, the controversy is, did Christ die for everybody?

We know that everybody's ungodly. Christ died for the ungodly. And the conclusion many make is, therefore, He died for everybody. Well think about it, dear friends.

Two things you have to think about deeply. Did Christ's atonement satisfy the righteousness of God for all the sins of every person? And again, the majority report is that Christ died for everybody, died on a cross for everybody, paid the price of sin for everybody. Well, if everybody's sins are paid for, who's in hell? Can Christ die for a person's sin and that person still go to hell? Or is His death not sufficient to satisfy the demands of God's law?

Do we have this idea that in order to satisfy the righteousness of God, two things have to happen. Christ has to die, and we have to repent and come to Him. Because obviously His death wouldn't cover every sin because the sin of unbelief would be excluded. But if you really believe that Christ died for all the sins of all of the people and His atonement was effective, then you would have to come to the conclusion that He died for everybody equally and that everybody's in heaven.

But the Bible gives precious reason for anybody to believe that, doesn't it? And again, the Bible doesn't teach that Christ died to make salvation possible. Christ died for His sheep.

He laid down His life for His sheep. And when He did that, there was never a doubt in heaven that all for whom He died had their sins covered, and all for whom He died would spend eternity in heaven. Remember how Jesus talked about this to His disciples. He says, all whom the Father has given to Me come to Me, and He dies for those whom the Father has given to Him.

Let me just say one more thing about that, and I ask you to think about it before you rush for the door. When I speak to my friends who struggle with this, I say, well, how do you understand the atonement? And they say, well, I believe – and let me just back up here. When I'm on the floor of presbytery and young men are being examined for ordination, going through what's called the trials of ordination, they're examined on their theology. And every time this question of so-called limited atonement is brought up in an examination, we'll ask the young man, do you believe in limited atonement, that is, that Christ did not die for everybody?

The standard answer – I mean, I can predict it before they give it – is that they will say that Christ's death is sufficient for all but efficient only for some, that it is valuable enough to cover the sins of all of the world. In that sense, it's universally sufficient, but it is efficient, that is, it affects salvation only for those who believe. And that's true.

I have no quarrel with that. It's just not limited atonement. Every Arminian in the world believes – except those who are universalists – believe that Christ's atonement is sufficient for all and efficient only for believers. Now the question – and here's where I want you to think.

Put your thinking caps on. The question about the scope of the atonement is this. What was God's eternal purpose in designing the death of His Son? From all eternity, God had a plan of salvation. Did He plan to save everybody? If He did plan to save everybody, then manifestly, beloved, if God is God, and if God is sovereign, and that was His eternal plan, then nothing on heaven and earth would defeat that plan and every human being would be saved. But manifestly, the Scriptures teach that not everybody is saved. Now does anybody doubt that God has the power and the right to save everybody? If God, in fact, in His eternal plan, planned to save everybody in the world, everybody in the world would be saved. That's contrary to some theologians, one who's a friend of mine who keeps saying – I can't believe he says it more than once – but he keeps saying, God saves as many people as He possibly can. Let me ask you to think about it. God saves as many people as He possibly can.

And I say to my friend Norman, shame on you. God saves as many – you mean that God can't save the unbeliever? Well, He really believes that God righteously cannot intervene in the life of one of His creatures and work faith in the heart of that believer. That would somehow violate the sinner's freedom. Every sinner in hell would give everything he had and do anything he could to have God intervene in his life and work for him saving faith in his heart.

God can do it, certainly, and He certainly has the right to do with the clay what He wills. But God has not decreed from all eternity to save everybody. He has decreed from all eternity to do more than make salvation possible. There is, in Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, a doctrine called the doctrine of election.

You may not like the doctrine of election, and I suspect if you don't like it, it's because you don't understand it, because I don't know how a person could have the affection for Christ in his heart and not rejoice for all eternity at the unspeakable grace of God to include us in this work of salvation and to make certain that we would be saved. Now, the idea of limited atonement deals with the question of God's design. What God intended. Did God intend to save a remnant of the world, and He sent His Son to die for His sheep, to die for those people, to ensure their salvation? That's what limited atonement means. It means definite atonement. That is, that the atonement of Christ was not just to make things possible because in that theory, it is theoretically possible that Christ could have died and He would never see the travail of His soul and be satisfied. If the efficacy of Christ's death depends on you or depends on me, Christ would have no, no fruit from His death. But while we were without strength, while we were impotent, while we were powerless in our souls to incline ourselves to the things of God, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

And if that's the ungodly in general, then let's look just a little bit later in the text. For Paul goes on for scarcely, for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. Now here, Paul uses two different words. One is translated righteous, the other is translated good. Paul again, let's read it again, he says, scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet for adventure maybe, perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. Calvin believed that there was no distinction here between a righteous person and a good person that basically was a hendiotist, two different words referring to the same thing. Luther, on the other hand, was convinced that Paul was making a distinction and the theologians who take that tack that Paul was differing between a righteous man and a good man, though a good man would necessarily also have to be a righteous man. The idea here is that righteous is somewhat formal and a righteous person can be somebody who obeys the law, does what is right, and his behavior provokes a certain measure of respect.

And Paul says, we can respect people that we think are morally upright, but it's rare that anybody's going to die, lay down their lives just because they respect somebody's moral character. But when we talk about a good person, now we're speaking about more than their moral activity, more than their conformity to principles of righteousness, but rather there's an effective idea involved here that a good person is the kind of person that produces a certain love and concern from us. We say, oh, he's a good fellow. That means he's a nice guy. He's a kind person.

He's the kind of kind person that we would be willing to go the extra mile to reciprocate his affection and his kindness to us. And so Paul is saying it's rare that anybody's going to die for a righteous man, maybe for somebody they really love or somebody that they really appreciate, somebody that has rendered certain personal kindnesses to you. You may be inclined even in your paganist to jump on a hand grenade for that person. But Paul says, in the case of the atonement, it wasn't that Jesus is dying for righteous people, and He's not dying for good people.

He's dying for godless people. And let me, before we continue with this, just say that again. We shouldn't have to spend any time on this, should we?

Yeah, we should. Because in the heart of every corrupt human being, even in a person who's partially sanctified, where the work of God is not yet complete, there remains this little buzz that's going on there that persuades us, you know, really, I wasn't that bad, and that Jesus died for me because I'm kind of a nice fellow, and heaven wouldn't be quite the same without my presence there. I mean, it's rare that we ever come to a full conviction of our helplessness and of our wickedness.

All the power of our psychology is at work every minute to suppress full admission of our guilt and of our hopelessness. I mean, when people say to me, the reason I'm a Christian and my friend isn't is because I, because I, because I, if they say that long enough, I begin to wonder if they're in the kingdom at all, because they certainly have not yet been convinced of their helplessness due to their sin. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Notice this shift in language here from the generic ungodly to the specific for us. For us, while we were in this state of sin, God so set forth His love for us that Christ died for us. Now what does Paul mean, does he mean for us men, for us sinners, again going back that Christ died for everybody? But again and again and again in Paul's epistles, he speaks of the specific work of grace that Christ does for the believer.

And when he talks about us, he's talking about those of us who are in Christ Jesus for the Christian. Now what about the love of God? God demonstrates His lone love towards us. There are two things I want to say about this and right now the biggest enemy for me is the clock.

One of these days I'm going to bring a hammer up here and I'm beat on this thing until time stands still, but that's not going to happen. Two things I want to say about God demonstrating His own love toward us is this. I've mentioned the first idea before to you, but here it comes up again in this context that we talk about the love of God in more than one way. That theology distinguishes among three distinct types of the love of God. The first aspect or the first type of divine love is that love that we call the love of benevolence.

I've told you this before. God's love of benevolence, let's take the word bene means good or well. We have a benediction. That's a good saying, right? And benevolence, we talk about being volitional creature.

Volens has to do with will. And the Bible tells us that God's basic attitude towards the world, towards fallen humanity is one of good will. God is not unkind. God is not mean-spirited, but the basic posture of the Creator towards the world is one of good will and that every person in this world experiences in one way or another the good will of God. How do we know that?

Because they're still alive. That every moment the sinner continues to exist in this world, he can only continue to exist by virtue of the good will of God, by God's forbearance, by God's patience with him. And so in this sense God loves everybody in the sense that His good will flows towards everyone. The second sense of divine love that we've talked about is His beneficence. And just as His benevolence refers to His good will, His love of beneficence refers to His good acts.

The Bible tells us that God's rain falls on the just and the unjust. So in the sense that all people, repentant or not, believers or not, receive certain kind acts from the hand of God. In that sense they all experience God's love of beneficence. You've heard me say again and again how distressed I am when I hear ministers preach that God loves you unconditionally. That message is everywhere in our culture today and what the pagan takes from that is unconditional love means that God loves me no matter what I do or what I don't do. I can depend on the love of God even if I reject Jesus Christ. I can depend on God's love even if I never repent of my sins.

That's not the biblical message at all. But when we talk about the unconditional love of God, that love that God has that never fails, we're talking about what's called His love of complacency. Now even that is a little bit difficult to grasp because the love of complacency that God has does not mean complacency in the sense in which we use the word complacent in our vocabulary today. When I say so and so is complacent, what do we mean? They're smug. They're at ease in Zion. They're resting on their laurels. They've satisfied with anything they've ever achieved.

They have no desire to go beyond where they are. That's what we understand by the term complacency. But when we talk theologically about God's love of complacency, we're talking about God's love that He has, the delight that He takes, first of all, supremely in His Son. That God's love for His Son is without measure, without qualification, that He loves His Son fully and perfectly. But beloved, the love that the Father has for His Son extends beyond His Son to those who belong to His Son so that only the believer receives God's love of complacency because of Christ, not because of anything in us, but because God gives gifts to His Son from all eternity. He loves His Son, and from all eternity He plans to give a portion of humanity to His Son that His Son might be the firstborn of many brethren. He loves His Son with this love of complacency, and He demonstrates that love of complacency for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Now the second aspect here is one that maybe is too technical to even get into, but I'll just mention it in passing. In German theology, there emerged a debate in the 20th century about the atonement. What some of the theologians were opposed to was the classic doctrine of the atonement as the Son's satisfying the wrath of the Father. In the old creeds, Ira Dei, that God has this anger that needs to be assuaged, that needs to be satisfied, or that God's justice has to be satisfied so that sin is repaid through this satisfaction offered by His Son. And these theologians scoff at any idea of an atonement that provides satisfaction for our sins.

They say God doesn't need satisfied. His love is enough to redeem the world. God's love is so great that He cancels His own wrath. He sets aside His own righteousness and accepts sinners as they are.

Again, this is more like Mr. Rogers' neighborhood than it is the kingdom of God. And the attack on the classical and biblical doctrine of the atonement is what was called the umstemung controversy among the German theologians who said, in this view of satisfaction, you have God at odds with God. That you have God the Father angry at sinners. You have God the Father pouring out wrath upon the ungodly. But God the Son arrives on the scene and rescues poor humanity from the wrath of the Father and God the Son persuades God the Father to set aside His wrath. And this whole idea posits a conflict internally in the Godhead among the Trinity.

No, no, no, no, no. The biblical view again and again is that though the Son comes and satisfies the righteousness of God, takes the wrath of God upon Himself, that He comes because the Father sends Him. It's the Father's idea from all eternity to which the Son gives His total agreement as well as the Spirit. This is called the covenant of redemption, that from all eternity there is one purpose and one mind in the Godhead.

And it is out of the love of God that He sends His Son to take His wrath for us. Several years ago at the Christian Booksellers Convention, 6,000 people in the audience, I was giving the keynote address, and as I was thinking about what I would speak on, I thought, I want to speak on the urgency of the gospel to people who are absolutely convinced that they are every day being faithful to the gospel. And I had to steer my ship between two issues.

I didn't want to speak above the intelligence of those gathered, nor did I want to dumb it down to such a degree that I would be insulting their intelligence. And so I spoke on the subject, saved from what? I went back to the rudimentary concept of salvation, and I said to this gathering, what does it mean to be saved biblically? And if we look at that concept of salvation in the Bible, we see that the most rudimentary meaning of salvation is to be rescued from some calamity.

If you are restored from sickness, you're saved from the effects of that illness. If you experience victory in battle, you're saved from the ignominy of defeat. And that's the way the word sozo, sozomai is used in the New Testament, for example, that any time a person experiences rescue from catastrophe, they experience salvation. And yet with all these lesser applications of the word salvation, there is this grand doctrine of salvation in the Bible that speaks of salvation in the ultimate sense, in which we are rescued from the supreme danger and peril.

We are rescued from the worst of all possible catastrophes. And what is that salvation but that what the New Testament calls being saved from wrath? That's what the church doesn't believe anymore. You see, the church believes in a God who has no wrath. But remember back in Romans 1 when we started this study and Paul introduced the gospel and we thought that he would just go ahead and unpack the gospel, but instead the first thing he does after he announces the revelation of that righteousness of God that is by faith, he then plunges into a different revelation, the revelation of the wrath of God that is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of many.

He spends a whole chapter giving us the background for salvation. If there's no wrath in God, there's no need for the gospel, folks. If there's no wrath in God, there's no need for Christ. I hear people all the time who aren't Christian say to me, you know, that's fine for you, but I don't need Jesus.

And I say, there's nothing in this world, in heaven and earth, that you need more than Jesus. But as long as people are not concerned about the wrath of God, they feel no need to come to Jesus. But if God is real, so is His wrath. And the biblical view of salvation is rescue from wrath. So I said to those folks, I said, you want to know what you're saved from? In one word, you're saved from God.

This is gasp. And to this day when I'm at that convention, people come up to me and say, you know, I never thought of that in my whole life until that message. And I said, you talk about being a fundamentalist. There's nothing more fundamental than that, that it is God who saves people from God because His wrath is stored up against the day of wrath, as Paul has said. And he most certainly will demonstrate that, but he has demonstrated his love towards us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. Now I could rush ahead and finish the next couple of verses, but I'm not going to do it. I'll wait till next week, God willing. There is a continuity here throughout the epistle, and if I don't cover everything that I read tonight, there's no law that says we can't postpone that until next week.

But, you know, I knew that. I knew coming in here, there was no way I was going to have enough time to cover all those verses. But with that, let's pray. Father, we don't even want to think for a minute about Your wrath, thoughts of nuclear war are too horrible for us to put our mind to. And yet we know the manifestation of Your wrath is far more dreadful than any weapon creatures can invent or use. What are we to say to the love that You have for us while we were still sinners? Christ died for us to save us from Your wrath. How can we understand that He took in Himself the full measure of Your wrath that we deserve? Father, how can we ever think of His death without thinking of that wrath that He bore innocently that we may not bore it, bear it in our guilt and in our sin? Father, we can't begin to plumb the depths and the riches of that love of complacency that You have demonstrated to us, who are neither righteous nor good.

And yet You sent Your Son, while we were without strength, to die for us. Thank You for that. Amen. That was R.C.

Sproul. And because there is God's wrath, we thank God for the gospel. We thank God for Christ. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and I'm glad you're with us. What you heard today was a sermon from R.C. Sproul's series in Romans. If you'd like to study and learn more about this letter from the Apostle Paul, a portion of Scripture that was used significantly by the Lord during the Protestant Reformation, you can request the hardcover edition of Dr. Sproul's commentary on Romans for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. This commentary is an aid in Bible study, but it's also a helpful volume for further devotional reading. So request your copy today only at renewingyourmind.org. Next time, R.C. Sproul will move to chapter 6 of Romans to unpack what it means when Paul tells us to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies. So be sure to join us next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind. .