9-11 Having been justified by His Blood

Good morning. You'll notice that we have been reading from verse 1 of chapter 5 every Sunday all the way through 11. And that's purposeful because they do go together and they are a composite of what God has done to satisfy himself about sins. And so, when you study those 11 verses, you kind of have to keep in mind the one before and the one after in that whole context, because starting next week, there's a real shift in the doctrine, which we're gonna have a lot of fun with, I'm sure. So, Ironside starts out by saying The truth is stated here in its great outlines.

If a man's gonna build a house, I should have had Phil talk about this. The first thing he does is he stakes out the ground. Romans is like a staking out of the ground. Other epistles give details of the structure, but the stakeout is Romans. There is room within the great outline of this epistle for all features of divine grace that are developed in 2 Corinthians and all the other epistles. But this is the basic one. This is the one where the foundation is laid, okay?

So, last week we talked about for while we were still helpless, at the right time, or the appropriate time, Christ died for the ungodly. The fact of man's total moral inability is stated here in really gentle terms. And we're bankrupt. Hard for us to come to that conclusion, but we are bankrupt. And spiritual inclination towards God and holiness and anything that has to do with God.

Jim and I were talking after class this morning. He said, boy, you don't ever get to live in the middle ground. You're either for me, Christ, or against me. There's no yellow line. And so many people think, oh, I live in a yellow line. No, they don't. They're against God. And so they find out that they're powerless to do good or be good on any sense of the word. So yet into this total scene of those that are against God, helpless like that, God sends his son. I used to think and still think, gee, he didn't ask me if it was okay that he did that. He just did it. So why did he do it? For what purpose? To die for the ungodly. To die for all those God haters.

No return or response is demanded. It's just grace. Absolute grace for the ungodly. There's nothing like the Old Testament law system where you had to do something to be pleasing to God. Nothing. He took care of it all and all he says is, do you believe me? Do you believe that I did?

And then he says, one would hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man, the good man, someone would dare to die. We saw that God's love is not subjectively or emotionally viewed. but it's a display pointed out and built on the great objective fact that the death of Christ for us was outside of us. And the motivation was the fact that God is this thing called love. We didn't motivate him to love us. We saw how worthy the wisdom of God is.

Even a believer who is convinced of his ungodliness is slow to appreciate his powerlessness. We talked a lot about that last week. And it's good to know that man that as man, all was lost, and men have to face one of two realities. The first one is either you're gonna deal with God in wrath and unbelief, or you're gonna deal with him in righteousness and faith. There's no other choice. No other choice.

So, There is then the love of God in us, shed or brought in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. However, the foundation and demonstration of it is in Christ's death. That is the ultimate demonstration of God's love, that he died for us, humanity, when we were totally unworthy, when we had no strength, when we were far away from him.

And you know what this sets up? It sets up the perfect opportunity for grace, such as Christ's death. Grace is unmerited, as we know, unmerited, unlimited blessings from God, based on what? On deservedness? No, based on what Christ did on the cross, that it was total and complete, and it totally satisfied God's righteousness.

We also saw the Holy Spirit always reasons down from God to what God is to us, and this produces a change in the soul. When we begin to see that God, from God's perspective towards us, He's not ever opening the door and saying to the lost, well, you need to do something in response. The only thing you need to do is believe me, then I've solved it. We saw that the Holy Spirit always reasons from that point of view what God is, and he produces a change in the soul.

So what about God's love? We talked about the fact that God commends his love to us or demonstrates his love to us in the supreme sacrifice, the amazing surrender of the cross. The Lord Jesus went to that cross willingly. He wasn't forced. It was a willing thing on his part.

And for nearly 2,000 years, It has been distributed in millions of hearts of the Holy Spirit. What do you think Camp Elam's all about? It's the distribution of the love of God in the hearts of young people. What do you think church is about? What do you think evangelism is about? It's all about the distribution of God's love in the hearts of men so that they would know.

In verse seven, we saw that the character of surrender, which would be involved in one man dying for another, it would be considered among men the premium sacrifice that a man could make. We admire our military people because what do they do? They put their life on the line. They go and they fight for freedom. And we admire them for doing that.

It would be considered amongst men the greatest thing you can possibly do for another man. A man's life is really precious to him. But the life of Christ, imagine if your life or friends of yours life is very precious to you, how do you think the father and the sons think about their life? And especially the life of the Lord Jesus Christ as a man? and the father as a father of the Lord Jesus Christ. So what about God's love? It's got value, it has tremendous value. And he shows it, puts it out there for us. It's concentrated in the wondrous fact of the death of Christ.

So, God demonstrated as long, we talked about this word demonstrate. It's a verb, it's an action word. A verb is an action word. Now think about this. This is God doing. It's an indicative mood, which means it's a fact. It's not whether he's gonna do it or not. He did it, and he's doing it. It's present tense, it means he's doing it right now. And it's active voice, it means that God is doing it all. So when you see verbs, action words that are indicative, present tense, active voice. It's all God doing everything.

And he did it while we were still sinners, while we were ungodly. On behalf of is that great Greek word huper, you see it a lot, and it means he did it in place of us. He did it in our stead. He took the punishment that we deserve because of our sins, in place of us, and he died because we were sinners, there's a consequence for your sins. You know what the consequences are? You have to die. But you're not holy and worthy enough to do it, so he did it in place of us.

And so we ended up translating The verses from Kenneth Weiss, which I thought was the best. For when we were yet without strength in a strategic season, Christ instead of, and in behalf of those who had not reverence for God and are devoid of piety, he died. For very rarely in behalf of a righteous man would anyone die, yet perhaps in behalf of a good man, a really good guy, a person would even dare to die.

But God is constantly proving his own love for us, because while we were yet sinners, he died for us. So, the verses today, first one, much more. And now we're gonna talk about the much mores over the next little while. Much more than, having been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God to come.

So if you look back, In Romans 3.28 says that, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Okay, we believe that, we rest in that. And in 5.1, Roger taught us, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This means it's done. We have been justified. It's over and justified means I have been declared righteous. In other words, I have a standing before a holy God that I didn't have before. I have access. I'm like him and I'm saved.

First Thessalonians 1.10 says to wait for his son from heaven. whom he raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come. And we'll talk about what that wrath is in a minute. Or 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, for he has not destined us for wrath, for obtaining salvation through Jesus Christ.

So, wrath is an interesting thing. The word the appears before wrath. You know how that works in Greek. I can say there are seven houses on that block over there, but if I say the house, I'm talking about a specific one. So we're talking about specific wrath of God. It's God's wrath. and he's pointing out its particular wrath against sin.

Ephesians 5, 6 says, let no one deceive you with empty words because these things, the wrath of God, comes upon the sons of disobedience. What does it mean to be disobedient? I don't obey God and believe. That's really all it means. Colossians 3, 6 says, for it is because of those things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. So God permitted man to inflict the terrible suffering of crucifixion on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me talk about something else first. What's the difference between just anger and wrath? Anger and wrath. Strictly speaking, It was not punishments which Christ bore on the cross, but wrath. He did endure the punishment for my sins, but it's more than that. It's the wrath of God against sin. Anger and punishment are personal things against the offender, but wrath upon Christ was against the thing, sin. You get that? It isn't that God is mad at individual believers. His wrath is against the thing sin, and humanity is identified in sin, so his wrath is against them.

You happen to be not in Christ, you're in Adam, you're in sin, and the wrath of God is gonna come upon you because of the sin issue. Christ bore that wrath, which God, God's nature being of holiness always and forever sustains sort of sin. God has had a wrath against sin since the very first one because sin is something that misses the mark.

And you always have to ask yourself, well, what is the mark? We think that if I do a bunch of good things and avoid doing the bad things that I'm going to reach the mark. As we discovered in Romans chapter one, the righteousness of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. So what is the mark? The mark is godliness. The mark is godliness. It's not whether you're good or bad. It says, are you like God? If you want to be with him for all eternity, you gotta be like him. That changes the equation from a performance thing to a believing thing.

And God knows this before I know it, and he sends his son to die for me so that I can be, if I believe him. The sinner cannot come near to God, but must die, he must perish if he gets into God's presence. And it's not because God hates him, but because God is the Holy One. Therefore Christ dies. And that forsaken of God under wrath because he is bearing our sins in his body on the cross. So it is also that the believer has not been appointed to wrath. Non-believers are appointed to wrath.

First Thessalonians 5.9. The wrath of God will fall. If it doesn't fall on Christ, then it's going to fall on them. So, as I said, God permitted men to inflict this terrible thing of crucifixion on the Lord Jesus. But those sufferings were not the cup necessarily that his father had given him to drink. The cup was the cup of divine wrath against this thing's sin, and it involved being cut off out of the land of the living under the hand of divine judgment.

That's from Newell, verse by verse. In chapter five, we take a look at the much mores now, which is interesting and probable for us to note. There are two of them here, and there will be two more in verses 15 and 17. There's one in nine and one in 10.

And first we have the two much mores of future, what I would call future safety, the point being that Much more, having been now justified by the blood, we shall be saved from future wrath with him. So a believer doesn't have to think about wrath. And verse 10 will tell us that while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his sin. Much more, having been reconciled, we've been saved by his life. So it's interesting that these two much mores of grace, abundance, are developed in other sections and other chapters. But here, in verse nine, we've looked at this particular principle before.

If Christ died for me and took the wrath of God upon him against sin, that's the big thing. Would he not also do the little thing? And that's what much more is all about. Much more than having been declared righteous by means of his blood. That's the big thing. Shall we not be saved? Shall we be saved from his coming wrath? That's the lesser thing. What you find out is that if God did the big thing and all these smaller things come under that heading, it would be, he's done the harder thing, won't he also do the easy thing?

Or if you were gonna go buy a car this afternoon and the salesman said, well, it's great, it runs fine, except it doesn't come with tires. Why wouldn't it? Well, you get the car, but you gotta buy the tires. No, the tires are included. The lesser thing is included in the death of Christ. All of it, you got the whole thing.

So God has done this great thing now. Christ dies for me while I'm a sinner. Greater thing. Much more now that I have been justified. I'm already justified, we found that out. Therefore, I'll be saved from the wrath in the future. That's a minor thing, but it's included in the death of Christ. The much more was done for me when I was a sinner. How much more will God do for me now that I'm a member of his family? The larger includes the smaller. See that? Whenever you see this much more, it always starts with, here's the big thing, but the little things included in it.

So in Romans 5, six through eight, For while we were yet sinners and helpless, I don't have to read it enough. The conclusion to be drawn from verse nine comes from verses six through nine. And the conclusion is, what I just went through. Did he die? Yes, he did. Am I righteous? Yes, I am.

So therefore, I'll be immune, let's say, from future wrath. The larger includes the smaller. So if I say to you, Jesus is the answer, is another scripture expresses our deliverer from the coming wrath. We wait for the Son of God from heaven to raise us from the dead. We shall not be saved from the coming wrath merely by the course of events. However blessed these events may be, but we're saved by a person. it's not an event thing, it's a personal thing, who is pledged in the fulfillment, faithfulness to persevere or preserve us from every affliction of wrath. It lies in the power of that person, the Lord Jesus, to secure for the saint who composed the body of Christ complete immunity from all the coming wrath that's gonna be in the world to the ungodly ones. We have already been justified in the power of his blood. His personal interest and power are engaged to keep us secure. He will remove the saints from the assembly and the assembly or the church from the scene where the wrath will fall.

In other words, I love it when I get to do this. Raise your hands if you're looking forward to the rapture. Why? Because we know this is true. We know this is true. That's why we look forward to it. We know we're immune. We know we're not gonna go through it. But the point here is that he himself does it. It isn't that we've been given a ticket to get in. He personally does this. Such is the tender interest and faithful love in regard to the justified that will be, who will be saved by him from the wrath.

It's always personal. It's always family. It's always the Lord Jesus as our life, okay? Verse 10 says, for while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. Here we go again. Much more, having been reconciled, what's gonna happen?

I'm gonna be saved by his life. We will be saved by his life. So, this is another aspect of salvation, which is life. Having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts as we have found out and having been justified in the power of God by the blood of Christ, we've got an outlook or a viewpoint, the viewpoint of salvation in two respects. One is that we're gonna be saved from the wrath to come. Two, we will be saved by the power of life, life.

So this first contemplates believers as having been reconciled, but it adds this much more to it. Having been reconciled, we will say in the power of that life. So let's consider the great blessing of the good news which is here presented for us. First time in this epistle that God would have us know about this thing called reconciliation. Another one of those 25-cent Christian words.

Reconciliation, God would have us, God would have us reconcile. we would have seen already that men did not think it good to have God in their knowledge. You know, we think in terms of good and bad. I really like this phrase that God does not think, put it this way, man doesn't think that God is even worth messing with. I don't even have to think about him.

And if God interferes in their life, they're upset by it. But now we find that there's a positive antagonism to God and men. And that you who were once alienated and enemies by your wicked works, Colossians 121. The point being is that if I have a relationship been a sinner or am in sin, what's my standing before God? Well, I don't have one. I'm alienated.

If someone comes to me and says, you know, I'm in a squabble with this friend of mine, and he thinks this, and I think this, and we need to be reconciled, right? Okay, well let's talk about it and go through the process. So what is the process? If you give a little and he gives a little, maybe we can make it work. Well, maybe you gotta give a little more and he'll give a little more.

Is that true, being reconciled to God? Is that the formula? No. God doesn't need to be reconciled about anything. You remember, he's righteous, which means he's right every time about everything. It's man who needs to be reconciled. And it isn't God gives a little and you give a little. That's not the way it goes. You have to be reconciled to him because he's righteous now. So we've been justified. We've been justified from the offense of being guilty of. But as enemies we have, I'm sorry, we have been justified from the offenses that we were guilty of, okay. But as enemies we had to be reconciled.

It is in each case something affected by God. He affects the reconciliation. He justifies and then he reconciles. It's in regard to the state of the enmity and alienation from God which characterizes everybody who is godless by nature. It's not something that I produce, not something that I produce.

It is God who contemplates us as sinners. He's gonna do something about it. It's not affected in us, it's affected through the death of Christ for sin. It is a delight of God to have us suitable to himself in nearness through the death of his sin. If there was no cross, there is not gonna be any reconciliation. There won't be any.

Because God is righteous. God is righteous and he's holy. So, The whole state of enmity has been removed through the death of Christ. Believers are set apart from all cause of disapproval on God's part. From every feature of unsuitability to him so that he might have a place with God, which is the answer to the death of his son. the whole condition of enmity, which was before God has been taken up by the Lord Jesus Christ, who knew every necessity of divine love, for it was his Son, and he died to secure that we should be reconciled. The reconciliation is absolute, it's immeasurable, and it's only, only received by faith. It's the only way you get it, you believe. So believers being set apart to have a place with God according to the value of the death of Christ, which puts everything on a new footing and adjust everything to God's satisfaction.

God made up the breach. Here's man, here's God. God did this. And when he got here, he brought man back to himself. And he's perfectly acceptable and righteous before God, because God did it. I've always thought, gee, that's really great, because now I don't ever have to worry about whether it's done enough. He did it all.

You know, I love to ask, I hope I don't offend any Catholics, but I love to ask Catholics, and it came from, oh, I can't remember the guy's name. I ask him a question, did Christ die on a cross for the sins of the world? Yeah, he sure did. Did he die for your sins? Yeah. Did he get them all? Well, I'm not sure he got them all. There's some, you mean he left some for you to clean up?

That means the reconciliation wasn't enough. That the death of Christ wasn't enough. That somebody, you, have to make up the gap. There's no gap. He reconciles us totally. So, He's the one that made up the breach. He removed the difference. And you know what? His attitude counted, not mine, his. We could only be with God for his pleasure through the death of his son, in which the whole state of enmity was dealt with and through which things are entirely new footing now.

There's no distance, there's no alienation, and there's no unsuitability. I don't care if you sin two minutes ago and you think, oh, I'm somehow separated from God. No, you're not. No, you're not. You may have lost fellowship, but you're reconciled. You're near him.

Colossians 1.22 says, in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and unreproachable above reproach in his sight.

He's gonna do that. So, if we were enemies then, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. In his life, meaning that the believer shares the risen life of Christ. that in the power of that endless life, the believer will abide now and forever. And starting next week for the next months, we're gonna find out how God did that. The great thing about Romans 6 is he takes a verse like this or he takes a premise like this and he explains it to us. He tells us the mechanics he went through for to save us by his very life.

The word life here is zoe, it's a principle, it's the comparison with death, life and death, nothing in the middle. Our Lord said to his disciples, pay attention to this, yet a little while and the world sees me no more, referring to his death, but then he said to them, but you see me because I live, you shall also live. Referring to his life in resurrection power. So the Lord Jesus Christ isn't here, but we share his life. We know he's alive and we're alive with him and in him. That is in virtue of the fact that the Lord lives after death. He rose. He's able to save us completely to the end.

Hebrews 7.25 says, therefore he's able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.

If you think about it, salvation comes in three parts. were justified, the removal of the guilt and penalty of sin, and the bestowal of righteousness to every one of us, and before God, and before God's law, which is given the moment we believe, and then sanctification. we're being set apart practically, it's a progressive work of the Holy Spirit during the Christian life. That's part of our salvation. That's part of our spiritual growth. And then the last part is that we will be glorified. the glory of our bodies in the rapture. It's this latter part that Paul is speaking here about in writing and context.

It should be clear that the statement we shall be saved by his life has no reference to the Lord's life on earth. It only has reference and as an example of the believer's resurrected life. So to mistake to mistake, well, what I need to do as a Christian is to look how Jesus lived and that's what I need to do. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about resurrected life, newness of life.

That's the modus operandi for us. So, not only this, but we exalt in God. Now, it's interesting. I get pretty excited about this. We exalt in God through the Lord Jesus Christ to whom we have now received the reconciliation. We already have it. You remember back in verse three when he talked about we exalt in tribulations? Well this one says we exalt in God, why? Because Jesus Christ to whom we have received the reconciliation, we have it. So, What a great change. Three chapters back, we were sitting in the divine judge's court.

Guilty, our mouths stopped and all our works rejected. Remember we talked about God gathers all men under sin. And they all, up until that point, they all had something to say. But he sets them all down and he says, every mouth is stopped now. You have nothing. You know, it's like saying, everybody, are you done talking now?

And as soon as they're done, they're guilty, and they know they're guilty, and they're under wrath. You know what God says to them? I love you, and my son died for you. Wow. He had to get them quiet so he could give them that message. If you're talking all the time, you never hear this message.

So, now, through our Lord Jesus Christ, we've been justified, we've been introduced into this environment of grace, We have God's love poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We've been saved from future wrath and we've been reconciled to God. He's done all of that, all of it. We have seen the method that God uses in our life experience to bring us to appreciate these gifts.

We exalt in tribulation because we know. We know that tribulation provides perseverance or produces perseverance. Okay, I've learned perseverance. With perseverance comes proven, tried character. And perseverance and tried character are the characteristics of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. We share those. Proven character gives us an unshakable hope. Unshakable hope we know and we rest in.

So this is a climax of what God is doing. We exalt in God. You can't go any higher than this. In this we do boast through the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given us the most excellent gifts, but even better than that, he's given us himself. Closing, I have a couple of quotes.

From this, as for all the rest, we are indebted to the Lord Jesus. And we may even say, boldly, yet most truly, that only through Jesus could God be what he is at the highest spring and ground and object of our boasting. Without the mighty work of the cross of Christ, we could not, being sinners, be reconciled to God. But this is the theme we have been. the complete making good of our case with God with whom we had been at war and from whom we were wholly estranged by our sins.

In Romans 3.23, we were shown how God justified us freely by his grace. And he did it through the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he set forth as the propitiation, satisfaction, mercy seat through faith in his blood. Thus he could be propitious in spite of our sins, which was fully met by the blood of the Lord Jesus. So in closing, we have seen that the first half of Romans five brings us in his love and consequently the reconciliation, which we have now received through Christ, impossible without his atoning death, but much farther, but going much farther in itself than we ever anticipated.

So let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. How we thank you that you have done all of this in spite of our sinfulness, in spite of our not wanting you in our thoughts. But you've done it, you've brought us near. And now we are in a place where we can grow, and know the Lord Jesus Christ and the character of him as love. We're so thankful for that, Father. And we're thankful for all that you continue to do to implement in our lives your grace. And we pray in your son's precious name, amen.