When you come to the cross of Jesus Christ, you pre-qualify. In other words, our acceptance is guaranteed by grace, and Dr. Tony Evans says that sets us free to do the right things for the right reason. And he wants that to be our motivation for loving, serving, following Him. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. When Jesus died on the cross, our sins were forgiven.
But today Dr. Evans tells us why that was only the beginning. Let's turn to Romans 3.24 for a look at some of the other accomplishments of the cross. Justification is connected with justice. If I were to put it in everyday language, justification is just as if I've never sinned. It's just as if I've never sinned. The problem is I have sinned. You have sinned over and over and over again. So God had to satisfy His perfection in a way that sinful men could be made so righteous it would be just as if they never sinned.
Justification. Since that is not our reality because we have sinned, God had to come up with a way to make that real or condemn us. So what God did was came up with a legal means to equip the sinner without skipping the sin. To declare the sinner innocent even though the sinner is guilty. The way that a holy God came up with being able to acquit a sinner even though the sinner has sinned and to do it legally was through the doctrine of imputation or credit. Justification occurs not because the sinner hasn't sinned but the sinner has gotten a credit on his account that has addressed the debt that sin has incurred. Sin has created a debt that we can't pay.
The best we do is minimal payments like our credit cards. We try to do a little something good here and a little something good there and a little something good there not knowing interest is accumulating. How are we justified? He says here it is. He says by his second big word grace. Grace is the inexhaustible supply of God's goodness whereby he does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. It is the inexhaustible supply of God's goodness whereby he does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Why does God want to do things by grace? He tells you if you'll go down just a couple of verses to verse 27. Where then is boasting?
It is excluded. The reason why God wants to do things by grace is so there are no peacocks in heaven. God wants to do things by grace so that God gets the glory and God gets the credit because God made the supply.
It was God provided, therefore God gets the glory. If you get to heaven because of what you did, you get the credit so you can brag. God, you know why I'm up here?
I was good. You know why I'm up here? I went to church. You know why I'm up here? I sang in the choir.
You know why I was up here? I was preaching. God said, no, by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not according to works, so that no man should boast.
Okay? But not only is that true of a sinner becoming a saint, it's true of a saint becoming sanctified. Do you know there is a lot of stuff God would love to give, but we keep trying to get the credit through our human efforts to earn it. Which cancels him giving it because he's not going to share the credit.
You say, well, where do my works come in? Aren't there things God expects me to do? Absolutely, but he expects you to do it because you're responding to grace.
He expects you to do it because I'm so grateful for his goodness, I can't help but love him, I can't help but serve him, I can't help but worship him, I can't help but give to him. See, when people don't know grace, you got to force them with law. See, when people don't know grace, you got to make them and threaten them and make them feel guilty and pressure them and say, well, you know God's going to get you. You got to keep law, law, law. So they may do it, but they do it under pressure. When people understand grace, they do it, but they do it and enjoy it.
Why? Because they're responding to something, not being driven to something. Law drives you.
You better, you better, you better right now and if you don't, I'm going to do this. And so you live under the fear of the law. In the Old Testament, they lived under the fear of the law.
They quaked at the law because the law was always threatening. When you understand grace, you do the right thing, but not because you're driven, but because you're grateful, because you're responding to Him. He says that we are justified by His grace.
He then comes to the next word. Oh, rich word, redemption, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Oh, the word redemption in the Bible is generally against the backdrop of slavery. In biblical days, just like in slavery in the United States when they had indentured servantry, a slave could purchase their freedom. They could buy their freedom or somebody else could purchase or redeem them. To redeem means to purchase through the payment of a price. That's what redeem means.
To purchase through the payment of a price. The price, of course, for the purchase of our salvation was the blood of Jesus Christ. What was the blood designed to do? To remove us from the slave market of sin. You see, you and I were born sinners. And while it may come out at different levels, at different individuals, the ability to do it is already built in because you're born that way. And the Bible says we're slaves so that even the good things you do have sinful attachments to it.
Okay? Whether it's a bad motive or whether it was wrong mixed with the right or all of that, the Bible says even our righteousness is as filthy rags because our righteous deeds get contaminated with unrighteous thoughts or motives or any such thing. So this issue has to do with a release tied to a payment. The Bible declares that the blood of Jesus Christ redeemed us from sin and from the judgment of sin by the law. It's like a person who was kidnapped and they call for a ransom.
I will give you back your son or daughter if you pay me a million dollars. What they're saying is I will release them through the payment of a price. Well, you and I, outside of Jesus Christ, were being held hostage by a three-fold jailer, the world, the flesh, and the devil, all designed to keep us away from God. Jesus Christ posted bail. And what he did was he secured our release through the redemption, he says, that was in Jesus Christ.
Now, watch this. The Greek word here for redemption is pronounced apolutrosis, apolutrosis. Now, the root word is lutrosis, lutrosis. Lutrosis means release. It means pardon.
It means you've been released through the payment of a price. That's lutrosis. But the word here is apolutrosis, so it has a prefix on it to strengthen the word. Now, to appreciate apo onto lutrosis, the redemption that's been on steroids, redemption is lutrosis, apo are the steroids.
He puts a steroid onto lutrosis so you fully understand what it means. Now, to fully understand what it means, we've got to go back to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, on the Day of Atonement, they would slay a goat, okay? They would slay a goat and drain it of its blood, signifying the sacrifice for the sins of the nation Israel.
That would be lutrosis, okay? They would slay the animal, and then the priest would put his hands on the other goat, the scapegoat. He would put his hands on the other goat, and that goat would be shooed out of town. The shooing out of the town of the second goat meant the sins of the people were being removed from Israel. So there would be the sacrifice of the first goat, the shooing of the second goat after the priest had put his hands on it, signifying sins were paid for and sins had been removed. It was a two-step process since the first goat is not going to rise from the dead, so the first goat is dead, the second goat shooed the sin away. That was lutrosis. That was releasing the people from the consequences of their sins through the shedding of blood and the removal of the goat.
That's lutrosis. The problem would be that the second goat would sometimes wander back into the camp. The second goat would come back. Now, they didn't want that because that meant the sins of the people were coming back, and when sin comes back, judgment comes back. And so they did not want the second goat, the scapegoat, to come back.
So they would assign somebody, a shepherd boy or somebody, to walk the second goat out of the camp to a cliff and push it over. That's apolutrosis. Lutrosis is I have been redeemed. Apo means this is never coming back again.
That's apolutro. I got some good news for you. It's never coming back again. That's why you can't lose your salvation. That's why God is never going to leave you nor forsake you, because when Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, it was salvation with steroids. He not only saved you, He has saved you forever. Nobody can lay a charge at God's elect, the Bible says.
It'll never come up again. That's apolutrosis, and that's a reason to praise Him, because He's done it once and for all. But that's not all the Lord has done. Stay with us to discover another powerful accomplishment of the cross, coming up in just a moment. Well, with Easter just a few weeks away, it won't be surprising to see more crosses displayed and posted than usual. But do those who use them truly understand all the cross represents?
Do we? In his book The Power of the Cross, Dr. Evans explains what makes the cross so pivotal and why the entire Christian faith falls apart without it, why the cross makes the difference between a victorious, living faith and a dead, empty religion. Right now, we're bundling this book along with all 14 messages from Tony's two-volume teaching series, Returning to the Cross, and making them all available as our gift to you. And thanks for your donation to help support our outreach here on this station and others like it around the world. Just visit tonyevans.org to get the details, or give us a call at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our friendly team members help you.
Again, that's 1-800-800-3222 or online at tonyevans.org. Well, let's get back to Dr. Evans now with more on the accomplishments of the cross. His final word is propitiation. Say propitiation. Notice verse 25, whom God has displayed publicly as a propitiation through blood. That's another one of those technical words to help us understand the cross. The synonym for the word propitiation means satisfaction.
That's what it means, to be satisfied. The justice of God, the wrath of God, must be satisfied by that which God will accept, which brings us back to redemption, which brings us back to grace, which brings us back to justification. Remember the Passover? The death angel was going to come over Egypt and take the life of every firstborn. God told his people, you slaughter the animal, you paint the blood on the doorpost of your home.
And then he says, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. In other words, I will skip you in my judgment. Passover.
I'm going to pass over you. My judgment will pass you by. So on the night of the Passover, the Bible says, there was weeping and wailing throughout Egypt because the firstborn died, because there was no blood, meaning God's wrath had not been averted. But when Israel put blood on the doorpost, God passed over them.
Why? Because God's wrath had been satisfied. Another illustration, this is Moses and his wife, Zipporah. God told Moses to circumcise his son. Moses refused to circumcise his son. The Bible says that the anger of the Lord burned against Moses and God came after Moses to judge him. But then the Bible says Zipporah, his wife, stepped in between Moses and God and circumcised their son. It says when Zipporah circumcised Moses' son that God's wrath turned aside. It was averted.
Why? Because somebody stepped in as an in-between that caused God's wrath, legitimate wrath, to be assuaged and averted. Now that's good for two reasons. Number one, it's good to know that God's wrath can be averted. Number two, it's good to know somebody else can step in for you and avert God's wrath. That's why the Bible calls us to intercede for one another, because God may say, I have to judge you, but if you step in the way and do the righteous deed, you can avert the wrath against somebody else. Parents can do that for children, 1 Corinthians 7 says.
You can do that for loved ones. You can avert the wrath of God. And of course, Jesus did it for us all. He propitiated the wrath of God by satisfying its holy demands.
That's why 1 Thessalonians 1 says, Christ's death delivers us from the wrath to come. The story is told in the western days of a father and son. They were in their wagon, the horse-drawn wagon, and there was a prairie fire. The prairie fire was catching up with them, and they weren't going to be able to outrun the fire. So the father said, get out, get out.
He got out the wagon. The father drew a circle around his son, and then he set the inside of the circle on fire. As the big fire was coming, he created a little fire right here, and he set that little spot on fire. Then the spot got burned out, and he stomped out what was remaining of the fire, and he said, son, take your stand here. He said, but that fire is going to overwhelm us. He said, no, it is not going to overwhelm us. He said, because where we're standing has already been set on fire.
So when that fire comes to us, it's going to have to go around us, because it can't burn this spot. Why am I going to heaven? Because I have taken my stand on the cross. Why are you going there? Because you've taken. So when the judgment of God comes, it's got to pass you by.
Why? Because you've taken your stand with Jesus Christ. So that's why the eternal question is, do you know him? Not first, how good or bad are you?
Do you know him? You must take your stand on the cross so God can be propitiated. If you're taking your stand on your good works, you're going to burn. If you're taking your stand on your church membership, that won't work.
You must take your stand. The Bible talked about a publican and a Pharisee, and they came to the temple, and the Pharisee talked about how good he was, and the publican talked about how bad he was and said, I need some mercy. And the Bible says, I tell you that that publican went away propitiated. The Pharisee went away judged.
Because he thought his good works could satisfy a holy God, and it can't. I got in the mail a few weeks ago, a statement from a credit card company, and it said, you have been pre-qualified for $10,000 on this card. They didn't qualify me in advance of spending. Okay, now they want me to spend, but they let me know that I've been pre-qualified for future debt. When you come to the cross of Jesus Christ, you pre-qualified. Yeah, you're going to have some debt in the future, but God has pre-qualified you.
Pre-qualified you. He wants that to be our motivation for loving, serving, following Him. In closing, a little boy was in a fire in an orphanage. He didn't have father or mother, and his life was being threatened in an old building that had a drainpipe for hot water coming outside the building. The boy was screaming, help, help, help.
The fire department hadn't arrived, and there was a man standing, this boy getting ready to be eaten alive by the flames. And so he climbed up this drainpipe in the dead of winter that had hot water flowing through it, and even though his hands were burning, he had to get this kid, and he climbed up and got the kid and brought him back down. The court had to find a place for this boy, and they put it in the newspaper about this boy who almost died in this fire, and they were looking for an adoptive parent. A doctor came in and said, I want to adopt him, and I have the funds to take care of him. A social worker came in and said, well, I want to adopt him because I have the social sensitivities to take care of him.
Numbers of people came in to adopt him. The judge listened to all as they had to make a decision where this boy was going to go, and then there was a final figure who came in. The final figure stood before the judge. He took his hands out of his pockets and placed them so the judge could see them. Before he ever had a chance to say anything, the little boy jumped up and ran and hugged the man and said to the judge, I want to go home with him. Who is he? The boy says, look at his hands.
His hands have told the whole story. He's the one who climbed up when I was dying, delivered me. I want to hang out with him. I want to love him. I want to stay with him.
I want to function with him. I want you to call me his son because his hands told it all. When you see Jesus Christ, his hands will tell it all. There will be nail prints in his hands. There will be a wound in his side, nail prints in his feet, and that's the reason his hands tell it all. Why am I a Christian? His hands tell it all. Why do I love him? His hands tell it all. Why do I serve him?
His hands tell it all. At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light and the burdens of my sins rolled away, it was there by faith. I renewed my sight and now I am happy all the day. It's at the cross where I was justified by grace, having been redeemed so that I've been propitiated is all at the cross. Dr. Tony Evans talking today about the accomplishments of the cross. And if you're ready to experience all the cross accomplished for you personally, well, here he is once again to talk about how you can make that happen. If you've been listening to our broadcast and you have not personally trusted Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins so that he can give you the gift of eternal life right now, I want you to go to God and transfer your trust from any and everything else except the Son of God who died on the cross for your sins and arose from the dead. In fact, I'm going to say a little prayer and you can repeat it after me. You just have to mean it for yourself. Heavenly Father, I know I'm a sinner and that I can't save myself.
I believe Jesus Christ, your Son, died on the cross in my place for my sin and I now am trusting him alone to forgive me and to give me the gift of eternal life that he promised to give to anyone who came to him for it. Thank you for saving me and help me from this day forward to live a life pleasing to you. Congratulations.
Welcome to the family. Find a good Bible teaching church so you can grow, and we are here to help you with resources to move you forward in your spiritual life. God bless you. Tony would like to tell you more about what that decision means and how to start living it out. Just visit tonyevans.org and follow the link that simply says Jesus.
There, he'll walk you through everything you need to know to start your brand new life. Before we wrap up, I want to let you know that today's lesson comes from Tony's two-volume teaching series, Returning to the Cross. It's a powerful collection of sermons that focus on the most important concept of the Christian faith. You can get all 14 lessons in this series, along with a copy of Dr. Evans' book that perfectly complements these messages, The Power of the Cross. As I mentioned earlier, this audio and book package is yours with our thanks when you support the alternative with a financial donation. But this is an offer that will only be available for a short time, so be sure to visit tonyevans.org today. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you.
That's 1-800-800-3222. If God wanted to forgive our sins, all He had to do was do it. So why did Jesus have to suffer and die? Dr. Evans will actually give us three answers to that question as he talks to us tomorrow about the purpose of the cross. I hope you'll join us.
