Grace - God's Justice Satisfied

What we're trying to do is just do a short study on the issue of grace between now and May 10th, which at that point, the other class will roll over to a new class we want to roll at the same time so that people who are here might want to go there, or people there might want to go here.

So that's really why we're just, this is kind of a stopgap. So when we've talked grace, oh, eight years ago, it took us almost nine months to get through it. We're trying to do all that in six weeks, which is good. We're cutting it down a little bit.

So I thought we'd concentrate today on, under the heading of grace, how does God actually deal with sin? So my first question is, when God forgives a sinner, is he being lenient or is it something else he's doing entirely? What do you think? It sure ain't leniency. I'm sorry? It sure isn't leniency. It's not that.

I think at this point, this is an interesting point because at no point in the gospel of God saving grace is so, this is misunderstood. So it's mistranslated as revealed truth concerning God's immediate divine dealing with the sins of the unsaved. How does he forgive the sins of the unsaved? God's justice can't forgive sin. God's justice can't forgive sin, okay.

But He's going to, so how does He do it? Through His Son. Tell me how that works. His Son took all of our sin upon Him. And His Son paid the price. Therefore, we can be justified with God through Christ. He who knew no sin became sin. that we might be made the righteousness of God. So we're not talking about the sin nature here. We're talking about sins, S-I-N-S.

And so I think you're circling around the answer. The answer is that the Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world, and he did it as a substitute. See that? So, if he does it as a substitute, What would you say God is acting as? If He forgives my sins as a non-believer, when I believe in the person and work of Christ, you said He's not big-hearted. Well, what is He? He's the justifier. That's close. He's also loving. That's close. He's the judge. You see that? Because of what Christ did, he can judge that. He's acting as a judge and he's acting by judicial decree. He's forgiving your sins because he can. Unless Christ pays the penalty for your sins, there's no forgiveness.

You see that? So it isn't that God is a warm, fuzzy creature with a big heart. This is a transaction that where God is acting as a judge. Let me read some stuff to you. He sets aside forever all condemnation, such judicial forgiveness, I understand that term, which guarantees an unchangeable standing and position in sonship should not be confused with a father's forgiveness towards someone who's already a Christian. There's a difference there, and we'll talk about that next. Forgiveness of God towards sinners, therefore, is not an immediate act of grace.

You all right with that one? He acts as a judge, not under the heading of grace, unmerited, unlimited favor. The point is that it's a judicial pardon of a debt in view of the fact that the debt has been fully paid. What's the debt? You just thought this was going to be easy, didn't you? What's the debt?

Yeah, so there's a problem there from man's perspective that he owes something to God because of his sinfulness, if he wants to be saved. But sin, in and of itself, has a consequence. Did Adam's sin have a consequence? Sure did. The whole creation fell. And so, what God does initially is, through the work of Christ on the cross and the resurrection that we celebrate today, set up a judicial pardon of a debt. It's an everlasting covenant. Not a covenant. The eternal covenant between the Father and the Son.

Well, how about you, the sinner? I'm not in there except by salvation. What does that mean? That means that it was between the Father and the Son, and through His death, I'm made righteous. Stick with the forgiveness part. How does He do that? Do you understand what a judicial forgiveness or judicial pardon of a debt owed is? I think we have to... Forgiveness rests on justification. Justice has to be served. And the question that many folks have is, well, if I stand guilty before God, because of my sin, which we all must come to the conclusion of, right?

Then how does he handle that? And his justice is one aspect, and it is fully satisfied in the courtrooms of heaven through justification. But he's also satisfied with that payment, right? So then we get propitiation. And then what does he do on our behalf? Well, he sets us free he reconciles us but all of that Is tied up in the full character of God.

He's both just and loving and so since he can just defy a man through the death substitution of his son the man has the ability by faith to partake of in that justification and therefore be forgiven. Yeah, put it another way, it's a question of the basis upon which any divine forgiveness can be extended. righteously. In other words, because God is righteous, he does everything right, perfect, every time. So when it comes to the offense of sin, there has to be something in play where God is acting righteous by forgiving you your sins. And obviously the answer to that is the work of Christ.

In leniency, take that concept, God's lenient towards me, sweeps it under the rug. There are belief systems where you can buy God's favor for your eternal destiny. Islam is one of them. What Catholics do. manipulate God's justice through your actions. From your perspective. From your perspective. And man-made system is always law-based, so they come up with those lists of things that they can accomplish to bring, you know, to find favor.

But God's not lenient that way. No, it's not. He's just. You can't sweep in another rug with Him. Let me read something to you. By gospel preaching, sinners are told that they may now stand forever pardoned before God, not because God is gracious, gracious enough to excuse their sins, but because there is plentiful redemption that is in Christ Jesus through His blood, Romans 3, 24, Ephesians 1, 7. Being free to forgive at all, God is free to forgive perfectly. That's what makes it so cool. On no other ground can the marvelous statement, having forgiven you all trespass, be understood.

Don't you think all of that took place in three hours on the cross? Sure did. Yes, it did. Absolutely, that's when it took place. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't want to get nitpicky about this, but wasn't it at the resurrection when the full satisfaction of God was revealed for it? I know that it was paid for. That was the guarantee. The guarantee. Okay, I can go with that.

And His satisfaction is our satisfaction. I've always just thought of it as the cross without the resurrection is fruitless. If you look at the eternal covenant in Hebrews, it's pretty simple. If you become a man and die for the sins of the world, okay, that's Christ's part.

My part is I'll raise you up. So He did His part. If the Father didn't raise Him up, He must have not done His part. Well, He did His part. And so He's raised from the dead. And that's the proof that the Lord Jesus did fulfill His side of the eternal covenant.

Now, I think you bring up an interesting point, and that is because we're such feely, touchy people. You know, sometimes when we sin or we think about sin, my sins are so terrible, how could he do that? You know, how could he forgive a serial killer or someone who sins a lot worse than I do? How could he do that? So keep that question in the back of your mind. But you're looking at merit there. Or demerit. When people look at it that way, they're mixing up forgiveness with consequences. They are. They are.

So, next question. What is the basis for forgiveness of the believer. You understand that there's a difference? What question is that? I'm not telling you. It's question 17. It's question 17, but I don't think you have it. Do you have 17? No, you don't have it yet. You'll get it next week. So what's the difference between forgiveness of an unbeliever and the forgiveness of a believer? Is there a difference? First of all, that's probably the first question I should ask. Is there a difference? Not on God's part. Yes, there is. Oh, because they haven't believed. We've already covered the non-believer.

I'm talking about how can God forgive your sins now that you're a believer? On what basis does He forgive your sins? Go ahead. I think it stems from His righteousness in the way that He is just. So His justice, if His justice is not satisfied, Some people think you could suspend the judgment, you know, you could somehow get around it, you know, but God's justice is, it's not partial or lenient, and so if it's not satisfied, God cannot forgive sin. Okay. Maybe ask it a different way. For the non-believer, how does he get his sins forgiven? He believes, right? For a person who already believes, how does he get his sins forgiven? Same way. No. They've already been forgiven. No. By His justice. He confesses. Oh, yeah.

Now, it doesn't mean that he's going to pay the consequence for those sins, but God requires that you confess your sins. God is faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. When a believer sins, it doesn't hurt his position, but it certainly hurts his condition, his fellowship.

So there's a method put in place to restore the fellowship. How do you do it? by confession. So what does the word confession mean? It means to say the same thing. Now that doesn't mean that I'm not going to talk about my sins and I'm just going to quote scripture of God. What it means is that there's an understanding by the believer that God is correct. God has acted righteously and He is correct by forgiving me my sins in the first place.

You can turn that into a law, too. Well, you can turn any of this into a law. You want to explain how you do that? Well, I haven't confessed enough. I've got to confess all my sins, which we should. But it's the work of the Holy Spirit. Well, you keep making these statements that you're just statements.

What do they mean? Well, we were talking about law. You were talking about law. Yeah, and you can turn that into a merit system. You can. There's no question. I mean, all you have to do is be raised a Catholic and you have the sacrament of penance, which means in order to get your sins forgiven, you had to go into a little box. and you had to, you know, tell them.

I just never could remember all mine. Yeah, but Edith says them are phone booze to God. What's that? Edith Bunker says they're phone booze to God. Yeah. Edith Bunker? Yeah. Just think about this though. Let's say you're a good Catholic and you go to confession every Saturday. How many sins did you commit from last Saturday to this Saturday? He's probably still in sin. Pick a number. Let's say it's 500. How many, when you're supposed to sit down in the pew and examine your conscience, and to see what you've done wrong, and then you go in and confess. How many do you, when you examine, how many do you come up with? five if you're lucky, six or seven, you know, if you're lucky, unless it's the same sin over and over again, then it's pretty simple.

But the point is, is this, if we have studied all these years about walking in the flesh as Christians, I think a lot of times believers don't even know they're sinning. Is walking in the flesh a sin? Is minding the things of the flesh a sin? is being in a position where I can't stop sinning, a real problem.

Here's my point. My point is that the believer indwelt by the Holy Spirit, one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to keep you tracking, for lack of a better way. And so rather than have a Catholic priest hooked up to your belt all day long and all night, He convicts you, you confess, and you're good. You see that? So, what it does is it puts you back in a dependent position for God to do His work in you, including your confession of your sins.

Because I'm convinced that, I mean, sometimes it'll be a week later, I'll be thinking about something and say, oh, I shouldn't have done that, that was a sin. I shouldn't have done that. Just thinking that is confession. Yeah, but he made me aware of it.

A father and a son. There you go. That's good. When a son does something that the father doesn't like, then there's no fellowship there. But when the son realized what he's done and said, hey dad, I was wrong there, then there's fellowship again. Or a husband and wife. Same thing.

But there is another fellowship, and that's when he takes them out to the woodshed. You know, since I've been a Christian, the Lord has never taken me to the woodshed. A man will. I think the Lord Jesus is a man. Yeah. I've been to the woodshed. Well, I know you have. You never forget about the woodshed. I know.

Lord, forgive me. So the point I'm trying to make is this, that the lost never are saved by confessing, and the saved are never restored by believing. It's the other way around. You see that? You all right with that? All right. So, in other words, for a believer to go to God and beg for forgiveness is totally ridiculous. Because the word confession means to say the same thing. Well, what is God saying to you? There's my son.

We took care of that sin. Your problem is fellowship. It isn't forgiveness, it's fellowship. You all right for that? Okay. Read a passage to you, this is... If we confess our sins these faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness My little children these things I write to you that you may not sin, but if anyone sins We have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and he himself is the propitiation or satisfaction For our sins and not ours only but those of the whole world so it's interesting when you run into you run into a non-believer, you're not trying to persuade them to confess their sins, you're trying to persuade them to believe that they've already been paid for.

If we say that we have no sin, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. That just means we're out of fellowship. Yeah, that's what it means. It doesn't mean we've lost our salvation. That's right. That means maybe we'll go to the woodshed, maybe not. How are we doing time-wise? Oh, great, we've got time for one more question. This is a fun one. You ready for this?

Why does the thought of repaying God for his grace utterly out of harmony with grace? I'll ask it again. Why does the thought of repaying God for his grace utterly out of harmony with grace? Because you're incurring a debt. I'm what? Incurring a debt. I am?

Grace is a gift? Grace is such a gift that you can't pay it back. You see that? It's necessarily, I'll read what Schaeffer says about it. Grace being un-recompensed favor is necessarily un-recompensed as to obligation which are past, un-recompensed as to the obligations which are present, and un-recompensed as to the obligations which are future.

In other words, you cannot in any way pay God back for the salvation He gave you for free. And lots of believers live like that, especially young ones. God did such a great, gracious thing for me, I've got to show Him that I appreciate it. And I've got to live for Him. When in fact, when you realize that what He did, you can't pay Him back. Because what can you do? What can you do?

This is a subtle thing, because it creeps in, I think. The operating system of grace and the law mentality, even though we're not under the law that the Israelites were under for 1500 years, we still find a way to create a law for ourselves, something that we can offer to God. That's religion, that's not relationship, but it doesn't stop man, even if he's not under the Mosaic Law, from creating something he can do. And if I'm doing something motivated by grace is much different than if I'm doing something in order to make a down payment on that, so to speak. What can I do to receive grace?

By definition, you're not involved in that other than the receiving part. See, I think that's so critical because, looked at a different way, by God saving you, He gets all the glory. There's one thing man can do. Let me finish. By God saving you, he gets all the glory. If any part of that equation, I try to sort of make it reasonable from his perspective that he would save me because I take away from his glory.

Do you see that? And you don't understand the gift. You don't understand what you got. Okay, Mike. All man can do is say thank you. He doesn't even have to do that. No, but the heart does. I mean, being thankful could be a law. Well, I've got to thank God for everything he's done for me. Do I? Well, and it sounds, when we say it matter-of-factly like that, it sounds like something that would never cross my mind. I know the definition of grace. But the way it creeps in is, I see how much you love me, God, and I just want to love you back and show you How much I thank you for loving me this much.

Thankfulness is a response to grace, absolutely, but it's not a requirement of it. Because the giver is doing it sufficiently from himself, and it's all based on the work of the cross, which is part of that second question. Everything that the Lord has done graciously towards us is not contributed to by you, it is received by you because it was completed on the cross. It was finished.

Where does that leave me as a believer? If I really understand, and I think the Spirit of God has to show us that, that the salvation offered me was something not only did He as complete and total in terms of its unlimited salvation, but it was given to me free.

I remember the day I got saved, I was standing there, and these two guys were pushing me across the line, so to speak, and I wasn't resisting. But I was, to be honest, I was afraid. Because all I saw on the other side of the line, which was salvation, was that I was going to die. It's kind of weird to say that.

And so we prayed together, and it's like the Lord just picked me up and took me. So from the very beginning I thought, wow, this whole thing is of Him and from Him and for Him. I'm just along for the ride. I believe him. But there was nothing I could do to say to them. Well, the one guy got mad at me because I was hugging him on 16th Street downtown in the middle of the afternoon. He said, get away from me.

You got saved at Jesus Saves. No, I got saved in a guaranteed bank building. but I understood that God saved me. You understand what I'm saying? I didn't have to, I mean, I almost was paralyzed. I couldn't, what could I do? I knew the facts. I thought I believed the facts, but I, salvation was, there was a step there that, and it was almost like the Lord shoved me over, you know?

Save me that way. Grace so offends the flesh. What's that? Grace offends the flesh. That's why it has to be crucified. Because the flesh is self-centered. It only can do. It can only earn. It can only achieve. It can only satisfy itself. And Grace says you don't get to be a part of this other than receive the gift that I've given to you.

I've done it. That's the difference. Our walk together is going to be based on this operating system. That's how this functions moving forward. And we want to get in there and muck it up. We want to add to it. We want to tweak it. We want to put barriers around it. We want to get credit somewhere.

But it truly is free to you, but it was not free to him. That's right. That's a good way to put it. And I don't know how... How do I say this? If you spend time studying, especially Paul's epistles, you get amazed at how free everything is. How gracious it is. How overwhelming it is. And this is just the beginning. You know, we're not even close to, you know, that verse in, has never entered into the mind of man what God has in store for those who love man.

You know, so that makes grace the kind of motivator for your life, not from the standpoint, I've got to prove, God already knows. But when you find out that all he wants you to do is receive, then it gets simpler. No, the problem is then we don't believe it. And that's the question. All of this has been given to you, positionally. That's the part we don't believe. You don't believe it. Yeah, you really don't. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you again for your word. We thank you for your son and his work on the cross. And we thank you for your raising him up today, which proves to us that his work was enough to satisfy every desire that you have for us. That we might walk in it day by day. And we thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.