Our first scripture this morning comes from the book of Romans, chapter 3, verses 21 through 25. If you would join with me by reading in your Bibles along:
‘But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.’
From Paul’s letter to the Romans, we turn to his letter to the church in Ephesus, the second chapter, verses 1 through 10. Paul writes:
‘And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray:
Lord, you have given us your word. You have given us the words of life, of eternal life, through the story, the works, and the will and future hope all found in your son Jesus, given to us by grace. For without the scripture, we might know that you are, but we would never know who you are, what you have done, and what you will continue to do for us. Open our hearts to receive your grace. Open our ears to hear your word and our minds to be transformed with a new spirit. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
So we’ve got a problem—a serious problem. Every one of us, we all have the same problem, and there is nothing that—ain’t nothing—that any of us can do about it. Yet it is the problem which should be our greatest concern. We are all dead, spiritually dead. We, every single one of us, are all sinners aside or apart from the grace of God. Unless God has bestowed his mercy and grace in love upon us—upon you and me—we are dead in our sin, and there is nothing we can do about it. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing.
But God! God has a sovereign plan for our salvation. The plan to save for himself a people, for us to be made holy and clean—the plan to save us from ourselves, for himself and for his glory. One plan. Plan C: the cross of Jesus Christ. Our only hope and our greatest comfort.
But the world, our modern culture and society, teaches that people are basically good. That all of our problems—all of our common strife—all the evil we see happening around us is the product of our environment; that we are trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of wickedness and injustice, which needs the external force of government to correct and set to the right. Except every human government ever, whether it be monarchy, republic, communist, socialist, or some kind of hybrid, is corrupted as well. Delegated with authority from the Lord, they still are designed and managed by corrupt, fallen, and sinful people, doomed to fail and doomed to come under the rule and sovereign authority of the King of all kings.
If the world is correct—that people are naturally good deep down inside—then somewhere, somewhen, on this great planet Earth—whether now or sometime in history—there must exist a perfect society without sin, because they’ve never been exposed to it and never would have suffered a fall into depravity and corruption. Never knowing sin, they never could sin; they would be truly good.
But having explored the near entirety of the earth’s face—from within the deepest Amazonian rainforest to the darkest African jungles or the most remote Pacific island—no such society has ever been found. Even during the great colonial ages of history, every people encountered—even the most ignorant savages—already had some kind of understanding and conception of sin. Not a single one of them had a solution to offer to the problem of sin. Everyone had some kind of idea for dealing with sin—not that it would necessarily work, but they had an idea. But nobody could eradicate or prevent sin.
Sin is not a social, cultural, or environmental problem. Those fears may help sin to become worse, but they are neither the cause nor the source of our sin. They are not to blame. Sin is not an external problem; it comes from within. Sin is an internal problem, both by logic and by scripture.
The most famous British theologian of all time was a man named Pelagius. He lived from about 354 A.D. to 418. He suggested that every person is born with the capacity to choose good—that we are not born corrupt by nature—implying that it is possible for any average individual to be righteous before God on his own merits, by our choices, works, and deeds. Even if we don’t do that, we still had the choice.
However, that stands in clear and direct opposition to the teaching of scripture. Genesis 6:5 says, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” As part of his everlasting covenant made with Noah, God says, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” King David writes, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” The apostle Paul further references the Psalms, writing, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one does good, not even one.”
You see, Pelagius’s heretical teachings infected the church and culture of his time, and unfortunately, this flawed understanding has persevered in some limited regards through until our current day. Influencing past and prominent theologians like Jacob Arminius and through him, to a degree, John and Charles Wesley, they have encouraged the idea and hope that we poor sinners, that we are, hold the power and ability to act against our sinful nature and choose God first.
Their teachings have been used to build up a false hope around the idea that the Lord offers salvation to every person, but that we then make the moral choice for ourselves to accept Jesus Christ and his gracious salvation, or we can choose to reject him and be damned. That God offers to save us if we want him to, and only if we want. But that ultimately, salvation is our own personal choice—that salvation is a choice we can make just like we can choose our gender or sex.
If that were true, considering the fire and brimstone alternative, who would ever knowingly choose damnation? No one. But Satan hates the idea. He hates that anybody would be saved, so he puts forth his best effort to convince us to joyfully choose our own route to damnation.
So because of Satan’s influence, we do not think that it feels fair that God would save one person and yet not save another. Thus, the world likes to promote the idea that everyone is saved—it’s called universalism—so that really anything goes, or that there’s nothing to be saved from, which is nihilistic. Because really then, nothing matters.
Or the world promotes many different ways to heaven so that everyone can pick their own path to the same paradigm paradise end, which is just another form of universalism, because God loves everybody and wants everybody to be happy, right?
We forget or ignore that our condemnation is just that—we all deserve to be damned—and that our only holy sovereign, the Lord God Almighty, is not obligated to save anyone. He’s not obligated to save anyone at all. The simple fact that God has chosen to save anyone is the very essence of grace.
Affirming God’s sole sovereign role and choice in election is what makes people hate biblical Calvinists like me. Don’t forget what Jesus said: “Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
See, fortunately, we Christians understand the fact of ourselves. We understand the fact of our salvation better. We have received the truth that while all roads may just lead to heaven, only one—the narrow way—the way of Jesus Christ—will get us in through those pearly gates. We understand and believe that we have been saved only by the grace of God through faith in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, and not by any effort on our part. God has given, and we have received. Jesus saves alone, not us.
Now, grace is not just a New Testament concept or understanding because the Old Testament is full of grace. There’s not an angry God of the Old Testament and a loving God of the New; there’s only the one triune God—Yahweh, the Lord, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost. He does not change, and he is gracious.
The Lord created in the beginning—that was an act of purest grace. He had no need to create—only the desire to. The Lord not immediately destroying Adam and Eve in the garden after they ate the forbidden fruit was also grace. He showed them—and us—mercy.
The Lord, by saving Noah and his family from the flood, was also grace, for he still showed mercy. The Lord’s promises made to Abraham were purely by grace—gifts out of God’s love.
The Lord leading the children of Jacob out from the land of Egypt during the Exodus was grace, part of his loving promise and the covenant of redemption. Finally, the Lord preserving and allowing a remnant to return to the land of Judah following the Babylonian exile was also grace. See, scripture is filled with God’s grace, cover to cover—every single word of it.
Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in northern Africa, he refuted the teachings of Pelagius. He was the first most famous theologian to write concerning original sin and our need for God’s sovereign grace.
Original sin is not that first sin expressly committed by Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, but it is actually the resultant sinfulness within all of us—our inherent corruption, which is the continuing consequence of their first sin. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because by our very nature, we are sinners.
We have a heart problem. We have a spiritual problem. Our hearts are born spiritually dead—stony, hard, and unresponsive.
But I must admit, the world is correct about one thing: we do need an external outside force to set things right; but it’s not showing the government. We need a power outside and beyond ourselves—one that is not tainted or corrupted by our sin—the perfectly obedient God-man, theanthropos, Jesus Christ—to be righteous on our behalf and to give us his righteousness so that we may be justified before God—not by our sinful works, but by his obedience and grace alone.
We need God’s help. We need God to rescue us himself because we cannot do it on our own. We need his alien righteousness—something foreign and completely different from what we call our righteousness, which is not righteousness at all but is thoroughly tainted by our sin.
You see, the apostle Paul, he summarizes our need for us under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, convictingly, succinctly, and quite bluntly: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Again plainly, every one of us is a sinner aside from the grace of God. But God has the best and only plan to fix our sin problem, and the name of that plan is Jesus Christ.
Now, the Pelagians and the Arminians, they believe that being saved is a synergistic work—that we participate or cooperate with God to effect our salvation. That we can invite or request God to save us; that we can choose to repent and to be good people and to do all manner of good things, so that then because of our repentance or good works, God will save us because we deserve it.
But that line of thinking makes us responsible for our own salvation and takes away from God’s glory. That would elevate us to the highest position of authority by claiming a sovereignty greater than God’s, by believing then that without our assent, God could not and would not save us—believing that without our cooperation, he is powerless to save us.
With the logical inverse also needing to be true that we could deny his salvation by thwarting his will if he so wished to save us. By this understanding, we would then assume divinity for ourselves instead of the Lord, because a God who is powerless to save except by our own willing participation and assent is clearly not God. Thank God those beliefs are false. Thank God that he alone is sovereign. Thank God for his salvific gift of grace!
Scripture plainly shows that our salvation is a monarchistic work—that our salvation is the work of God alone, which we merely receive the benefit of unearned and undeserved. God’s grace is a gift received through our also given faith in Jesus Christ.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
We can only receive God’s grace through the faith which he gifts to us; otherwise, we would have to do something worth boasting about. Salvation is all and only because of Jesus.
Now, before Jesus enters our hearts, apart from Jesus, we are—or we were—dead in our trespasses and sins. We were not sick; we were not dying; we were not mostly dead. We were all dead.
If you’re sick, you’re still alive, and something can be done about it. If you’re dying, then you’re not dead yet. A person is either alive or dead—either/or, on/off. It’s a simple binary state of being. There is no other choice or option. If you are dead, then there is nothing you can do to change that. You cannot change your situation or circumstances. You are helpless, powerless—a lump of lifeless, inanimate matter or spirit. You are dead.
If you are drowning and someone throws you a life preserver, then you have a choice on whether or not to reach out and grab it. There, you may choose to participate in your salvation, or you may choose to confirm your death and damnation. You can reach out, grab that flotation device, and hold on for dear life, but that takes personal effort—which is a work—you would then have saved yourself, albeit with a little help from a friend.
But drowning or dying is not how scripture describes our spiritual condition before Jesus. We were dead. We had already sunk below the waves, with our eyes glazed over, our lungs filled with fluid, cold, lifeless, and completely unresponsive. But God, being rich in mercy—because of the great love with which he had loved us—even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
But Jesus, he reached down into the water, dragged our corpse out onto the dry land, and gave us CPR. He resuscitated us and breathed new life into our lungs. He filled us with life—true life, spiritual and eternal life—and there was nothing we could do about it. We neither asked him to save us nor could we prevent him from saving us. We neither helped nor hindered God’s soul sovereign work of salvation, period.
We are saved by God’s grace alone, not by any of our works or efforts, so that none of us can boast, so that God alone gets all the credit and all the glory for saving us. It’s by his word, the sacred scriptures, and by their illumination through the Holy Spirit which brings us to the knowledge and understanding of our sinfulness.
The prophet Ezekiel writes about our spiritual resuscitation, writing, “Thus saith the Lord: and I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”
When saving us, God sends his Holy Spirit to invade our spiritual corpse, and he then gives us a heart transplant. He gives us a living, beating, spiritual blood-pumping heart with the arteries open and clear. That’s our born-again moment—being born from above by the Spirit.
In that moment—and even now—we can see the alternative to following the course of this world, the alternative to following the prince of the power of the air, Satan. Thus by the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to repent, to turn around, to change our ways in response to God’s work within us. So now we have a desire to be obedient children of God—a desire to follow Christ, to follow him and stay on his narrow way.
This soul sovereign work of God upon our hearts, souls, and flesh is his solution to our problem of sin. This is the mercy and grace of righteousness which Christ earned for us when he suffered our condemnation on the cross.
Adam and Eve did not ask to be created. Adam and Eve did not ask God for mercy. Noah did not ask to be saved from the flood. Abraham did not ask for a promise to become the father of nations or to be a blessing to all the nations. And yet God chose to show his grace to them first. Then they responded to his grace with faith.
God’s grace always showcases his glory because he alone may boast in the things that he has done. That’s why we’re told to boast in the Lord and not in our own worldly wisdom or in our own human strength or our flawed works. God—Jesus—has the best and only reason to boast.
So what does this grace from God do to us? Just what has Jesus done for us? We are now raised to a new spiritual life with him, and will one day be raised to eternal life in the new Jerusalem with him. And even now, we are seated with him in the heavenlies, meaning that in him we are more than conquerors; that because he rules in heaven and has all authority in heaven and on earth, we have no cause or reason to fear any of the powers in the world. That Satan and his minions, they cannot harm us.
That—as Martin Luther taught us to sing—“Though this world with devils filled, we tremble not for him, for lo, his doom is sure,” and also “The body they may kill, but God’s truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.”
Isn’t grace amazing?
So now that Christ has saved us by God’s grace, we may do what we were created for: doing the good works which God has prepared for us to do as our obedient response. We did not and still do not deserve salvation, but God is mighty to save.
But God decided to save some so that he may show the immeasurable riches of his kindness, love, and mercy. God is just; therefore he has and he will punish the sin of the wicked justly, pouring out his wrath onto both the wicked as he has already done upon Jesus, our willing substitute who said, “Thy will be done for us.”
God is merciful; therefore he has and he will show mercy to those whom he wills—those whom he has chosen and called, the elect. We receive mercy and forgiveness for our sin because Jesus has satisfied justice. God is loving and is love; therefore he has and he will display his love for his son and his chosen people, his adopted children through this grace by raising us all to glorified eternal life with him and for his glory alone.
We have all sinned, but God’s beloved children are saved and forgiven by his grace alone. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy and grace. Amen.