What the Cross of Christ Destroys

Paul is teaching, in effect, the same principle in Romans chapter 3. The question would arise for those who come to faith in Christ alone.

Is there any special connection? Is there any special claim for the Jews who come by faith? And Paul says, in effect, in verse 30, there is only one God. And if that one God accepts both Jew and Gentile by faith alone, then the ground at the foot of the cross's level justification is equally accessible to Jew and Gentile. And you can divide the world into those two categories, Jews and the rest of us, Gentiles. It's true that the Bible identifies two distinct groups of people, the Jews and the Gentiles. It's also true that the Jews are God's chosen people.

However, when it comes to salvation, all are welcome. Any prejudice that might exist in the human heart is torn down by the cross of Jesus Christ. When God saves us, he tears down our pride. He tears down our inclination to think of ourselves as better than others. And he destroys prejudice. We'll learn more about this next. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey and Stephen's concluding a series called Sola Fide with this message, What the Cross of Christ Destroys. One author tells a story along these lines of something that happened in the 19th century.

I've had this in my file for some time and I think it will be helpful in illustrating this particular point. He tells the story about Sam and his wife Bessie who lived in the 19th century on the west bank of a wide river. Across the Half Mile River was a trading post.

The trading post sold everything from tools and supplies to medicine. Because there were no bridges over this river in the warmer months, they would traverse that river to the trading post in a rowboat. In the winter months, they would walk across on the ice. One winter, beginning of the winter, they shared their cabin with a traveler for a day or two who unknowingly shared with them a highly contagious disease.

And in a matter of days, Bessie had developed a high fever. Sam recognized the symptoms and knew that his wife would probably die unless he got the medicine he knew was available at the trading post, an antidote for this particular disease. It was early winter and the nights had been very cold and the river frozen, but Sam was confident that the ice was not strong enough yet to hold him and it was not thin enough to push his way through in the rowboat. But he loved Bessie and determined he'd rather die trying to cross the ice than live without her and so he kissed her fevered brow and went down to the river. He'd never tried to cross this early in winter and so he had a large plank of wood that he used in front of him as he stretched out prone on the ice and began to inch his way out, praying as he went that the ice would hold.

Things went well for the first 20 or 30 minutes. He was now well out onto the river when the ice began to groan. He scooted slower. He moved forward an inch or two and there was more groaning of the ice and more praying from him. A few feet further and the ice began to creak and groan and then roar with a terrible crashing sound. The ice was breaking away.

Sam clamped his eyes shut. He braced for the icy waters to engulf him. The roaring grew louder and louder and even louder, but the water never came and he wondered what was happening. Eventually he looked up and around and then behind him he saw a man racing his team of horses and the wagon he sat in across the river. A hundred feet or so away from him he watched as this man literally raced that team across the river and up the bank and the man hopped out and went into the trading post. Sam leapt to his feet through his arms in the air and began to shout Hallelujah.

He's a Pentecostal now. He ran across the ice to the store. He got the medicine. He hitched a ride back on the wagon and raced home to his wife. No more fear, just confidence now.

No more crawling but running. No more thoughts of perishing but assurance. There's another part of this story that I particularly love. John and Nancy were friends of Sam and Bessie and John and Nancy lived in a cabin up on a high bluff that overlooked the river and John had been watching this whole scene take place. He had seen Sam's predicament clearly as he watched and he was also holding his breath as he watched his friend crawl in his belly across the ice. Nancy called him away from the window for a few minutes and he missed seeing the wagon race by.

When he returned to the window he saw Sam leaping for joy and then running without reservation across the frozen ice. He wondered what could have happened. God give him a vision. Did suddenly God give him some great bestowal of faith? No, Sam, although John didn't know it, just now had a deeper understanding of the object of his faith. I think that frankly many of our aches and pains and ills and troubles in the church come because we do not have a deep enough understanding of the object of our faith. In 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 1 Paul wrote when I came to you brethren I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom proclaiming to you the testimony of God for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. He wrote it later in Philippians chapter 3 more than that I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own derived from keeping the law but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. In other words the Apostle Paul said I want a deeper understanding of Jesus Christ and his cross work that which forms the basis and the foundation of my faith. I don't want to know necessarily more about my faith I want to know more about the object of my faith. So he would pray with great passion for a deeper appreciation and fuller understanding of Christ's sufferings his redemptive act of dying the death and dying passion of the work of Christ on behalf of all those who would place their faith in this divine substitute. For several weeks we have been discussing the issue of faith in Christ alone.

We're going to conclude it today and I want to make sure we conclude it with the right perspective. We have tested the rope of our salvation. We have crawled out on the ice of our faith in Christ.

We have as it were pressed against the window of divine revelation and all of them have held firm and strong like Sam on that frozen river. True faith changes the way you live doesn't it. It also changes behavior faith in Christ who died for us on the cross establishes and livens regenerates redeems us and then it strengthens us with resolve for holy living anything less than that is not true faith. However the cross doesn't just build those things up. It doesn't just establish those things the cross also destroys some things. It tears some things away and the Gospel of Matthew the Lord warned that the cross would divide family is like a sword.

It would divide mother and daughter father and son for those who would stand in Christ by faith alone would lose the favor of their family. Paul warned that the cross would bring disdain. He wrote to the Galatians that there would be those who would not want to be identified with the cross of Christ because identifying with the cross would bring shame as it were. So the cross would destroy a passive pseudo peaceful existence. And at the close of Romans Chapter 3 the apostle informs us that the cross of Christ will destroy at least three things and I want to give them to you.

Pride prejudice and presumption. First of all the cross destroys the right for personal pride. Paul and we've already looked briefly at verse 27 is now summarizing the paragraph and he says Where then is your boasting. It is excluded. Literally that Greek could be translated it is shut out.

It's locked out for those who truly understand their faith is in Christ alone. They have no reason to boast. There's no reason for personal pride no right for arrogance or boasting. Boasting then is an uninvited guest in the heart of the true believer. Since you had nothing to do with earning your salvation since you had nothing to do with this gift that came from God through Christ you have nothing to brag about.

The only thing you and I could ever get in a room and brag about is Jesus Christ right. He is the subject of our highest thoughts. He is the object of our deepest love. He is the theme of our finest music as we have just sung of him and to him. John's revelation unfolds a future scene in heaven where believers are singing.

Here's the text to that great anthem. Worthy is the lamb that was slain for you were slain and purchased for God with thy blood. Men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation and you have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God and they will reign upon the earth. You were slain. You shed your blood to purchase us you redeemed us you made us priests those who place their faith in you you have promised us a future reign with you in this coming new earth and coming new heaven. And what did we do to deserve any of it?

Nothing. No wonder boasting is excluded. True faith in Christ has nothing to brag about but Christ. No wonder Paul wrote God forbid that I should ever glory except in the what?

Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. So the cross of Christ destroys any right to personal pride. Secondly the crosswork of Christ destroys the root of personal prejudice.

Look at verse twenty nine. Paul writes or is God the God of Jews only. Is he not the God of Gentiles also. This is very troubling for them of course back then.

It can be applied in a moment as I will do our own day. But here it was Jew and Gentile and he is answering is God the God of Jews only is he not the God of Gentiles also yes of Gentiles also for since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one only one God only one way of salvation and it is the way of faith independently of works. So in other words it goes back to the idea that the Jews had a special connection with God. Surely God would view the Jewish people as since they were his people they would get into heaven some different way than the Gentile. There had been established quite a system of prejudice between Jew and Gentile during the days of Paul the Jewish man would rise every morning and pray a prayer that included Thanksgiving that God had not made him a Gentile. The problem with the Jew and Paul's day was not so much in considering themselves as belonging to God but in considering God as belonging to them.

And so they had developed the sense that they were somehow special and they would only as it were target each other. There are so many books that have been published lately in the last 15 years especially on ministry. A true preacher ladies and gentlemen a true messenger of the gospel does not target his audience based on race based on color based on some standard of living. There are pastors and professors who especially in the last 15 years have been teaching how to plant churches by simply in crass terms the principle of prejudice.

You do your demographic studies of the residents education and their race and their income levels and then you plant your church there because that's the kind of church you want. Ladies and gentlemen the gospel is colorblind. The gospel is classless.

This is causing difficulty in India even today. There are no classes in the gospel. The church should be colorblind too. It should be raceless too.

In fact according to First Peter Chapter 2 verse 9 those who place their faith in Christ become a new race. The problem of prejudice is a deeper problem than the world knows how to fix. The reason the African-American and the Hispanics don't really like each other has nothing to do with race. The reason white people don't like brown or black people has nothing to do with color.

The reason the Japanese don't like the Chinese and the Chinese don't particularly like the Taiwanese has nothing to do with geography. It has to do with the heart. You redeem the heart by faith in Christ and Christ reforms the heart and prejudice becomes a thing of the past. One of the great illustrations of prejudice that would fit well within Paul's comments here was Jonah. Remember the story of Jonah?

He's the guy that got swallowed by a fish. True story by the way. Amen.

Just checking. God told Jonah to go and hold a citywide revival. You remember Nineveh? Jonah ran the other way. God sent a storm while Jonah was in that boat and Jonah knew God was after him. He didn't know exactly what God was going to do with him but he knew he was after him and he didn't want these other sailors to die and so he told the sailors throw me overboard and the storm will go away.

So they threw him overboard and about that time he hit the water a whale came opened his mouth swallowed Jonah down and he stayed in the belly of the whale for three days until he personally repented. Chapter 2 and he says in effect OK Lord salvation belongs to the Lord. He wanted it to say salvation belongs to the Jew. He wanted God to stay on his side of the railroad tracks. He wanted God to stay in the Jewish neighborhood.

Lord I don't want you to go in the Gentile neighborhood I want you to stay over here. Furthermore Jonah was afraid the Ninevites would repent. He had a sense that God was going to be gracious and revealing his grace to this pagan corrupt nation in fact everyone from the king on down to the servant repented and followed after God but Jonah didn't want a Ninevite for a brother. And so for three days in the belly of a whale he resisted until finally he prayed OK salvation is from the Lord and of the Lord and with that God allowed the whale to spit him up on the dry land and he went and preached Nineveh repented and Jonah what pouted.

I find it incredibly amazing that it took Jonah three days in the belly of a whale before he finally gave in. And if I'd been thrown overboard and the whale came after me opened his mouth and I was swallowed down into the belly of that whale at about the time I hit the bottom I'd be saying OK Lord OK salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Three days he believed not only that the Jew belonged to God he believed that God belonged to the Jew. Paul is teaching in effect the same principle in Romans Chapter 3. The question would arise for those who come to faith in Christ alone is there any special connection is there any special claim for the Jews who come by faith and Paul says in effect in verse 30 there is only one God and if that one God accepts both Jew and Gentile by faith alone then the ground at that foot of the cross is level justification is equally accessible to Jew and Gentile and you can divide the world into those two categories Jews and the rest of us Gentiles the cross destroys the root of personal prejudice. One more thing the cross not only destroys the right to personal pride in the root of personal prejudice but third the cross of Christ destroys the rationale of personal presumption. Paul writes in verse 31.

Look there. Do we then nullify the law through faith. May it never be in other words do we get rid of the law. God forbid your translation may read you can render it not in a million years. Never.

No never. On the contrary we establish the law. Now what does he mean here. Those who are listening to Paul believe then that you were saved by grace through faith alone having nothing to do with the works of the law then with the law be important. Can we just throw it away and I'll just live any way I want. And there was a belief in his day that was rising that would rise I should say in the early church the first century that since the grace of God forgave sin will just send more and the grace of God will be even more evident and you'll see it.

So the more you send the better off you are. Paul will answer that question in Chapter 6 verse 1 What shall we say then he writes Are we to continue in sin so the grace may increase. May it never be. Same phrase here.

God forbid not in a million years. How shall we who died to sin still live in it. But the question could honestly be asked couldn't it. Since the law doesn't matter and getting anybody to heaven do we just get rid of the law. The moral law of God. Those timeless laws that would apply in any culture and at any time. Well Paul says here in verse 31 that the law was established.

What does he mean. Two things very quickly. Number one the cross established the law by upholding the standard of the law at the cross of Christ the essential nature of God is holiness we sang about it earlier. It triumphed at the cross. Do you realize that it triumphed the standard of God's holiness was not abolished by the crucifixion.

It was upheld. The cross was absolutely necessary because the law was not negotiable. So God upheld the law and his son was crucified to pay the penalty for law breakers James Montgomery Boyce is now with the Lord illustrated with a couple of very good thoughts. He said this suppose that God had declared the law necessary.

Suppose he had said I don't think it's going to be necessary for me to send my son to die on the cross for sinners by grace I'm just going to allow them to be saved any way they want to be saved. They can attempt to keep the law and I'll just accept whatever their attempts are. I'll set a certain standard of what I'll call a passing grade. Those who make it to that passing point will get in. Well suppose that God set the passing grade at 70 percent. Would he not then violate 30 percent of the law. And what if within that 30 percent of the law were the commands thou shalt not kill or commit adultery would he be violating that part of it would that be unimportant.

What if God put the passing scored 50 percent. Would he not then be saying that 50 percent of the law is nullified. Well if the cross were unnecessary and God saved us on the basis of whatever we could do 30 percent 40 percent 60 percent 70 percent since we do not in fact keep any of it perfectly. God would actually be setting aside then the entire law because you couldn't keep 30 percent that maybe I could. Instead the cross of Christ revealed that God took the law seriously seriously enough to require the life of a substitute who in this eternal case was his own son.

Which leads me to the second thought. Not only does the cross establish the law by upholding the standard of the law the cross established the law by fulfilling the verdict of the law the soul that sin shall surely what surely die in the words of William R. Newell the cross of Christ established the law by having its penalty executed. Robert Haldane wrote Can there be any greater respect shown to the law than that when God determines to save men from its curse he makes his own son sustain its curse in their stead and fulfill the depths of its eternal verdict for the wages of sin is eternal death. God could have looked the other way. God could have just loved us into heaven. God could have graded us all on a curve.

Yeah you're better than that guy over there so you get in. God could have graded for sincerity. You know the popular tune of our own American culture is that God's on a mountaintop and and there are many paths you can make to God.

You just hike up the mountain and you get to the top of it and you'll find God there. That may sound tolerant and that may sound intelligent but you must realize that makes God a fool. If there are many paths to God why make your son die. If there are many ways there why put the son through humiliation and suffering.

Just let people find their other ways to God. Truth is there is no curve. There is no passing grade for sincerity.

There is no 70 percent passing score. You see the cross of Jesus Christ established the law ladies and gentlemen because it established on record the need for a perfect score and the fact that we would never earn it. And then through Christ's atonement on our behalf having died in our place experiencing an eternity of punishment because he is an eternal infinite being. God by his grace to those who place their faith in him erased the F the failing mark out of your ledger of life and in its place in that column wrote in one hundred percent because in Christ you are perfectly pardoned and justified.

You must have him as it were take your place and you benefit from the fact that he has by placing your faith in him. I read several months ago about an advanced philosophy course taught in a university and the professor was a legendary about failing students. I had a few of those there wasn't anything I could do.

Maybe you were that way too. Well the final exam was approaching and the professor announced that each student could bring to the exam one sheet of eight and a half by 11 paper with everything they could cram onto that paper front and back. They could use it on the exam. The students of course developed immediately an incredible ability to write very microscopically and they wrote from edge to edge upside down along the edges and cram their papers full of information they could use. The day of the exam arrived the students filed in with their pencils and their one sheet of paper. One student sat down in the front and simply placed his sheet of paper on the floor.

It was perfectly blank. He then brought in a graduate student who was about to earn his doctorate in philosophy and had him stand on top of that paper. The others protested but this student reminded them and the professor that they had all been told they could use anything they could fit onto one eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper.

Isn't that great? The professor nodded his approval and he was the only student who passed. The truth is ladies and gentlemen none of us will ever pass the test of the law. God established it. He upholds it.

He requires the verdict of the law to be carried out. Only those who invite Christ in. Here Lord you stand in my stead. I know nothing. I am nothing.

You stand as my substitute. That will be the person who passes through the gates of everlasting life. So ladies and gentlemen I want to be perfectly clear with you as we leave our study on the subject of soul of the day. I don't want you leaving saying oh what a great faith we have. I want you to say oh what a great savior we have. We do not glory in our faith. We do not worship our faith. We glory in the object of our faith. We worship the strong one in whom we have placed our faith. We worship the man of sorrows who took our place on the cross.

We worship the lamb of God who died to establish our faith. He is worthy. He is the wonderful counselor. He is the mighty God.

He is the Prince of Peace. You've been listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen pastors the Shepherd's Church in Cary North Carolina. Today's message is called What the Cross of Christ Destroys and is the sixth and final message in the series Sola Fide. If you'd like a copy of this entire series for your library of Christian resources please call and ask about it. Call us at 866-48-bible or 866-482-4253.

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