In Christ Alone: "My Lord, I did not choose You"

A Few of my favorite quotes

Our Salvation is not so easy that a caveman can do it. Our salvation is so difficult that only God can do it! Paul Washer

Does this world satisfy thee? Then thou has thou reward and portion in this life. Make much of it, for thou shalt know no other joy. Martin Luther

"Lord I submit to my sentence, and if you bid me to be punished, I can't complain because I deserve it, but for Christ's sake, for His blood's sake, have mercy upon me." Charles Spurgeon

"The first step towards being really good, is to feel bad. The first preparation for heaven, is to know that we deserve nothing but hell. Before we can be counted righteous we must know ourselves to be miserable sinners. Before we can have inward happiness and peace with God, we must learn to be ashamed and confounded because of our manifold transgressions. Before we can rejoice in a well-grounded hope, we must be taught to say, “Unclean! unclean! God, be merciful to me a sinner!” Charles Spurgeon

I don’t care how strong your religion is, or how strong your church life is, I don’t care how strong your morality is. On that day of judgment God will tear it down and it will wilt. Whenever humans declare themselves to be righteous they are doing it by contrasting themselves with other humans who are worse. And you can get away with that, but when your righteousness is contrasted with the righteousness of God there is nothing but to throw yourself down and declare your morality to be dung. Paul Washer

How can a just God be just and still forgive sinners?

Here is a question we must answer: How can a just God be just and still forgive sinners?
How can He justify the wicked?
It’s the greatest problem in the scripture because Proverbs 17:15, "He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord." If God is just, He can not just forgive you. If God is Holy, He can not just overlook all of our terrible sins, the Judge of all the earth must do right because we are wicked!

He is Holy and can not look on sins, so how could God just forgive us and look over our sins?
God’s Justice demands that I die because of my sins.
"For the wages of sin is death" Romans 3:23
"God will not acquit the wicked." Nahum 1:3
"He who sins, shall die." Ezekiel 18:4
We have broken all of God’s laws, and we stand guilty and condemned before Him, how can He just let us go? There is a problem here. My sins deserve death and punishment.

Just imagine you walk in on a criminal who has just killed your family. You see him do it and he is guilty, but that guilty criminal stands before an earthy judge awaiting sentencing and that judge says, "I am a very loving judge. I forgive you. You may go." We would scream out against that and cry out "Justice must be served!" But we stand as a guilty criminal before a Holy God and we expect Him just to overlook our sins against Him? We expect Him just to wink at our awful offenses against His holiness and just forgive? There is good news! (Romans 3:19-26)

No one is declared Righteous before God by observing the Law (Romans 3:19-21)

The word righteous means exact and perfect conformity to the law of God. The standard of obedience required by the law is absolute perfection. James 2:10 tells us "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking it all." Galatians 3:10 "For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Curse is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them."
Only perfect obedience is acceptable to God. Only 100 % is acceptable. He removed Adam and Eve from the garden for ONE sin. None can stand before God with just one sin. Because He is a Holy God, He can’t just forgive or overlook that one sin.

In order to be declared righteous by God, we would have to be absolutely perfect. We can NEVER through our own obedience attain a righteousness that is sufficient for salvation. No would ever claim 100 % obedience, and we would never want to stake our hope for eternal life on our performance on our very best day.

There is a Righteousness from God that is apart from the Law (Romans 3:21)

Because we can not attain a sufficient righteousness on our own, God has provided it for us. This righteousness from God is none other than the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ who through His sinless life and His death in obedience to the Father’s will fulfilled the law of God. Therefore when God justifies us, or declares us righteous, He does not create some sort of legal fiction, calling something righteous that is not. Rather He declares us righteous on the basis of the real, accomplished righteousness of Jesus Christ which is imputed or credited to us through faith. On this righteousness must we rest; on this righteousness must we live; on that righteousness must we die; in that righteousness must we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and in this righteousness must we stand forever in the presence of a righteous God.

The Righteousness from God is received through faith in Jesus Christ (v.22)

Faith is the hand by which the righteousness of Christ is received. It involves our complete renunciation of any confidence in our own righteousness and relying entirely on the perfect righteousness and death of Jesus Christ. We are declared righteous on the basis of the righteousness of Christ. We must depend on His righteousness to make us right with God. "Nothing in my hands do I bring, simply to the cross I cling." We must understand we are not good and we could never do anything to be made right with God. The best we could ever offer God is as filthy rags before Him. (Isaiah 64:6), only the righteousness of Christ will God accept, and we trust in Christ alone to make us right
with God. By faith we declare our dependence on Him.

This rightesousness is available to everyone on the same basis, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (v.22-23)

God’s plan of salvation is for sinners for ALL are sinners. Sin, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us, is a violation of God’s holy law and subjects us to the penalty of death. We must never compare ourselves with others, but only compare ourselves with God’s perfect standard and see that we all have sinned and fall way short of the glory of God.

All who put their faith in Jesus Christ are justified freely by God's grace (v.24)

To be justified is to be absolved from any charge of guilt and to be declared righteous. Justification is like two sides of a coin. On the one side we are declared not guilty before God, and on the other side we are declared positively righteous through Christ. Through faith in Christ, we are counted in God’s sight as having perfectly obeyed the law of God!!

This justification is through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. God presented Jesus as a propititation, through faith in His blood (v.24-26)

Here is the answer to how a Just God can forgive sinners and still be just...Jesus Christ!

Christ paid the ransom that redeemed us from God’s just and holy wrath. Sin had to be punished, and Christ took that punishment to appease the wrath of God. Christ is the one who would turn aside God’s wrath, taking away sin. The Lord Jesus Christ by His sacrifice on the cross appeased and turned aside God’s just and holy wrath that we should have borne. We are all guilty before God. We have all sinned and broken God’s laws. We stand condemned and guilty before Him. God is a Holy God and the judge of all the Earth must do right, so He can’t just let our sins go unpunished. Our sins must be punished and removed for us to be declared righteous. God the Father killed His Son and took the wrath of Almighty God that should have fallen upon sinful man.

Christ came between a Holy God and sinful man and absorbed the wrath of God. Christ in essence was saying, "Father, I know they deserve it, but let it fall on Me." God was getting at sinners, but Christ stepped in between. Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world. At the cross, the fury of all that stored up wrath against sin was unleashed against God’s own Son. Jesus prayed, "Let this cup pass from me." The cup He was referring to was the cup of God’s wrath that He would drink on the cross for sinful man. If Christ prayed that this cup of wrath would pass from Him, how much more should we who are still under that wrath! (John 3:36)

He lived a perfect life of 33 years, died in sinner’s place and rose again. Because of His resurrection, God fully accepts His sacrifice and His wrath has been appeased.

However, this is not automatic. All of sinful humanity is under the wrath of God until you repent and trust in Christ alone for salvation. Repentance is realizing your awful condition before God, realizing you are a sinner and have broken every command, turning from your sin and hating it. Wanting to be freed from your sins, and believing on Christ alone for salvation! Believing that there is no way you could ever be made right with God, but He will accept you ONLY by what Christ has done on your behalf. It is not our contrition or sorrow for our sin, it is not our repentance, our good works that cleanses us, it is Christ alone that saves! Cling to Him alone!

In Christ Alone

Monday, January 26, 2009

"My Lord, I did not choose You"

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