Who You Are In Christ, Justified

Good morning. This, as I was saying a little bit earlier with Roger and some of you overheard, this is possibly one of the best lessons that someone else could have planned to have on a resurrection Sunday morning. We're going to get to talk about justification, which is a topic that unfortunately I never learned about very much as a youth or a teenager. It would have probably, again, like many of the topics in this class, really helped me deal with the day-to-day life that I lived, and understand my life that is in Christ, rather than the difficult attempts I was making to do things in the flesh, because I was supposed to do things in a righteous manner, because that's what Christians do, but I didn't know that it was empowered by Christ and that I was justified. Let's take a few moments to discuss justification in a worldly sense, when the world talks about justification so that we have a clear comparison and contrast.

What have you justified in your own life, in your own actions? Spending time, spending money, questionable actions, white lies, purple lies, chartreuse lies. What things have you justified I'm pretty sure that chartreuse lies are more common than we'd like to know. What kind of things do we justify as human beings?

When somebody asks us, oh here, this is classic, in marriage, when something isn't quite right and a husband and wife are talking, because we don't argue, we just talk, right? When a husband and wife are talking and something comes up, Jessica sometimes in our marriage will ask, Why did you do that? She doesn't really want me to answer that question. I've learned she really wants me to apologize because I've blown it But instead I justify it I I've got to explain it and I go into almost an engineering level detail as to why in my analytical mind This was a smart choice And I justified it. And I go to great lengths and by the time I'm done she's just irritated so I'll get out because I should just own up to the fact I was a goober.

But we justify things. We justify spending money. You know if your budget's a little tight it's easy to justify throwing it on the credit card. Why not? Because I really need that Nintendo Wii. Think of the family fun we could have if I had a Nintendo Wii. Or spending time on something. Hey, I've got to do this. I enjoy doing this. I remember being charismatic.

And the argument to justify anything, any action, any weird theological departure was somebody was blessed by it. That was our justification. And we would justify it. It was one human justifying it to another. And it was really a cop-out. It was really a sad, sad state of affairs. When humans justify actions, we do it to cover our tracks, to explain why selfishness is rational, to shuffle the blame. Sometimes we'll get anger that anyone will even question our actions because we feel so justified in them. We'll redefine vocabulary. In the Genesis class in the main service, we looked at Adam and Eve. God said, you know, where are you? And they came out and immediately their justifications were blame shifting techniques. Oh, shoot, we blew it. Who's here? Oh, it's the serpent. It's the woman. It wasn't me. It wasn't my fault.

We try to justify things. We lack the authority to declare ourselves righteous, though. That's the big problem when we talk about justification. We don't have authority to declare ourselves righteous. Which brings us into the definition of justification. To be justified or to be declared just is an action of God to pronounce sinners righteous. It is an act of God because He does not lack the authority, He is the authority.

The Greek word there, and we're going to take a look at Romans chapter 3 a little later this morning, and so I have it in the tense from Romans chapter 3 verse 22. Dikaiou, I'm sorry I pronounced that wrong, is a verb, it's present, passive, participle. Present, happening now, he says being justified, so happening now to us actively as Events take place God is actively justifying us and it's passive. Okay being done by God to us We were past tense justified, but as things go on as the failures take place. I know you don't fail but when I do as They're taking place there.

We are justified God is taking care of it and the righteousness is is it is already accounted to us and God's justification. How many of you have heard the term imputed righteousness before? Imputed is roughly an accounting term. It basically means that God takes and puts Christ's righteousness onto our account.

If you had a ledger sheet, and I dropped out of accounting after two classes because it was too goofy for me, but some of you may be accountants and you understand it. But if you were to think of your balance in life as a ledger sheet, there is Christ's righteousness. imputed or placed on our accounting sheet so that when God looks at our life, every account is fully in the black by a bazillion infinity percent.

Okay? I almost feel like Randy Jackson on that show, American Idol, when I say that. A hundred thousand percent! But God has the authority. He marks our account as being fully righteous. It is done with full understanding of our sin, but not covered up. Instead, it's destroyed. The red that you might have in your account is erased from the books, and the righteousness of Christ is placed on there. Instead of it being a cover-up, it's done with full knowledge of those things.

Instead of shuffling blame, God shuffled, and I use that term lightly, judgment onto Christ on the cross. And God's anger was satisfied in Christ's work on the cross. So, instead of us being angry that anybody would question our justification, or angry that anyone would question our actions, God's anger, which was righteous in His anger, was satisfied with the work of Christ on the cross so we can be justified. And lastly on this list, God has authority to declare us righteous. Any questions in what justification is after having gone over that?

I don't want to jump ahead into the passage. I think it's one of the biggest hangups of the ones that are so important in the Bible about our justification in the essence of what it entails. Absolutely. I know at one time I've taught people that the Bible can't really be shown to be heaven and earth. on one side and the bad things I did. When you add up the totals, I don't have that a possibility. That is a major, major issue.

Last night, while I was putting together the PowerPoint slides, I was chatting with my buddy in Canada and he's a very strong atheist and he doesn't like organized religion, basically is the way he puts it. But he said, well, what are you doing on your Easter weekend? And I said, well, right now I'm working on my Sunday school class for tomorrow morning. And he was like, oh, I don't know that I'd like that. And I said, well, it's about all the stuff in Christianity that you've probably never heard about before and would scare you because it's not the rules that you grew up listening to. That's odd. And then he changed the subject, because that was about as much as he could handle. But justification is just that thing where the world is used to some scale. I actually looked for a picture, but I couldn't find a really high quality picture.

I grew up in Carson City, Nevada. But just near Carson City, Nevada is Virginia City, Nevada. Anybody heard of Virginia City, the gold rush that took place there? Actually, there's a lot more silver there. They have, at their courthouse, Blind Justice. You're familiar with Blind Justice? Well, she's not blind. The blindfold is off to one side. She can see. She's not blind. And the scale is not quite balanced. That was always an interesting thing growing up. Justice wasn't so blind and it wasn't necessarily balanced in the Wild West that Virginia City was.

God has the authority to declare us just. So if we use the term just, it's usually in a theological context if we're going to use it, because we don't use it in our day-to-day lives very much. But it should be part of our conversation as believers, because it's very edifying. We're going to take a look at Romans chapter 3, verses 21 through 26 this morning. So if you have your Bibles with you, then it would be fantastic if you would open there with me.

Now, how many of you are familiar with Romans 3.23 as a Bible verse to memorize? That was a Bible verse that I memorized as a little kid, but we're going to look at that in a slightly larger context.

Romans 3.23 is all of sin and falling short of the glory of God. And if you're ever looking for a good use to beat somebody over the head with a law stick, that's a good verse to use out of context.

But in context, we're going to take a look at that this morning and it's a very powerful, powerful concept. In the greater context, if you weren't in the Romans class before or haven't studied Romans in any depth, this is Paul talking about Jews versus Gentiles in the greater context of the chapter. We're going to see that in a few of the verses that we look at this morning, so I just want you to have that as we're reading through it. Go ahead and please read along with me. follow along with me.

But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed. For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Alright, so we have just and justifier and justified all in this one passage, which makes it really good since the topic is justification this morning. but there's a lot of other really awesome, meaty theological content. So hopefully you will find these things as edifying as I did in my studies. So he starts out, But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

Alright, so this is apart from the law. Now, in the greater context of the Jew and the Gentile, which Paul is talking about in here, The Jews have, up until the point of Christ, been almost entirely directed by the law. They've got a couple hundred years before the law is given, from Abraham until the law. But from that point on, got, I believe, over a thousand years of law. Have some law every day.

Eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Part of the law is that you do that. You've got to wear it on your person somewhere. It's on your mantle or over your door. The law is part of your discussion. You go to synagogue or the temple and you hear the law. It's like law, law, law, law, law, law, law all the time.

And so Paul comes in and says, hey, we're not under the law anymore. And so this book is definitely shocking. But the interesting thing is that now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested. Now what is that referring to? The righteousness of God being manifested apart from the law. Anybody have some guesses on that? Stan? It means that righteousness was given not because you complied with the law. Okay, this is true. Righteousness is given because of grace. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, we're imputed.

But the interesting thing is that the law was a limited set of rules that revealed a limited part of the infinite nature of God and his righteousness. And so Paul says, hey, now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested. The righteousness of God is something that the Jews had always identified with the law. And here he's saying, OK, this is a part.

Now think of Christ. Did Christ fulfill the law? Yes. How did he do it? He wrote the law. But if you look at the exchange, Christ really offends the snot out of the Pharisees and Sadducees in part because he says, hey, I'm fulfilling the law, but you guys have misunderstood the law. And then He fulfills the law by relationship with the Father. The Holy Spirit interceding, communicating between He and the Father. Does that sound like a relationship that you know? That the Holy Spirit intercedes for us? And He communicates us? The Holy Spirit guides and directs us in our lives? This is the very life power that Christ had, is the very life power in our own lives.

And Christ exceeded the requirements of the law, apart from the law, even though he fulfilled the law. And if you think forward about, in the epistles, the law of Christ, how profound that is, right? Yeah. Well, it's that relationship. It goes so far beyond that. You know, that's one of the questions that we've had asked in some of the Sunday School classes in the past is, well, shouldn't the Holy Spirit enable us to fulfill the law? And so, let's ask that question this morning. Anybody have any answers to that? Should the Holy Spirit enable us to fulfill the law as a believer?

That's right. He doesn't. We're apart from the law now. And that's an important thing to recognize. the law of Christ. Yeah, it's the law of Christ and who we are in Him. But we died to that law. But what's interesting is the second half of this verse says, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Okay, now being witnessed by the law and the prophets, I don't have a long list of passages to look at, so we're not going to do that, plus our time is somewhat limited this morning.

But the law When Moses gave the law, did he not also promise that one who was greater than him was going to be coming? That would be Christ. So the law, and by the law he's not saying literally just the Old Testament law, because the Old Testament law wasn't about prophecy, it was about what you should and should not do. But then, here in Moses, the giver of the law to the Jews in human form, said one would come who was greater. And then the prophets. The prophets were proclaiming this new work, this new covenant, this new thing that was going to come in Christ.

So Paul's saying, hey listen, you Jews who want to be distracted by the law are ignoring other parts of scripture that was given by God to you so that you would know this was coming. Don't pretend you didn't know. If you didn't know, now you do. And now you can look back and see that it was there. So it was witnessed or prophesied or told and agreed upon in the Old Testament that this time would come apart from the law. Well, we need to keep going here, as powerful as this. Then he goes on, whoops, I jumped ahead here.

Verse 22, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe, for there is no distinction The manifestation is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. It's not the manifestation of the righteousness of God through the law, or through works, or through you-can-do-it attitude. You just believed in yourself, and you were good enough. It's the righteousness of God, which by itself we could just sit and meditate on that, and that's pretty awesome. God's righteousness. and it came through faith in Jesus Christ.

And then notice who this is effective for. For all those who believe. If you've ever been in a discussion, and we've had some of those in this Sunday School class as well, who's saved, who's not saved, what do you have to do after you're saved for other people to believe that you're a Christian, and they've seen enough signs from you in your life that they know. This righteousness of God is for all who believe.

Now again, we can't make that call on ourselves, but whether or not I am a total failure as a Christian from the world's eyes, or whether I look like I'm just the most wonderful, most righteous guy on the planet, which trust me, I'm not, this is for all believers. The spectrum covers all. That word all is rather inclusive instead of divisive.

And here Paul is bringing in with the second part of this verse, for there is no distinction. This is Paul talking about Jews and Gentiles again. For there is no distinction. And then verse 23 comes in. This is the sledgehammer. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's why there's no distinction. Because again, that word all is there. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Whether you're a Jew or a Gentile. You can't do it on your own strength. Fortunately, he doesn't stop there, and that's where we really need to keep going. We need God's righteousness because our own is not even of the same class or type.

As a programmer, we use the term class to describe As a programmer, we use the term class to describe a template for a type of data. We're not data, we're human beings. But when we describe justification or righteousness on human terms, we use a human template to describe those things.

But that's not the same as God's template or God's form of righteousness. If you were to write a mathematical equation and say God's righteousness equals man's righteousness, it would be a false equation. Because God's righteousness is of a different type. It started pure, it stayed pure, and it will remain pure. Our righteousness as human beings is really hit or miss, with a lot more missing than hitting. So we need God's righteousness. We need God's righteousness accounted to our ledger sheet.

But he doesn't stop there in verse 23 by saying all have sinned and then saying ha ha ha. He keeps going. Verse 24, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. So, justified. Being declared by God with His godly authority as righteous. Being justified of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

We've talked about faith before, but what is faith? Belief. Believing. Having faith. Believing in Jesus Christ. There's no works in the act of belief. You know, you didn't have to go out and kill an animal. You didn't have to go out and help nine older ladies with groceries across the street if you're a good Boy Scout or whatever it is. It's merely trusting the truth that's there.

Did you have something, Tom? sacrifice was sufficient by faith, all could lead to Christ, right? Because the prophets, that's an act of faith too, believing in what they had revealed, right? I mean this principle of faith is believing what God has revealed, right? Yeah, well and that's the interesting thing sometimes when we're ignorant of what the Old Testament consisted of, there's grace, there's faith, And even in another passage in Romans 4, which we're actually not going to go over this morning, but David talks about, blessed is the man who has been declared righteous by God. This is not even a New Testament concept. It goes back into the Old Testament that in faith, God can declare us righteous. We cannot do it on our own. Period. It doesn't matter which testament you're talking about. And that's a very good point. Thanks for bringing that up, Bob.

But he says that it's justified as a gift by His grace. Now what's grace again from the grace class? I've got it on here if you don't have it memorized. It's the unlimited, unmerited blessings of God. It's a gift. The gift of grace, of His grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

Now we talk about being redeemed in a past class, so we won't dig into that in great depth here, but does anybody remember what redeemed is, or to be redeemed? Purchased, okay. From slavery to sin, purchased and redeemed into life in Christ. So redemption, which is in, again, Christ Jesus, the focal point for all of our being justified is through the work of Christ on the cross.

You're not going to find it anywhere else. God's not looking for it anywhere else. He provided a singular way. You know, it's funny, sometimes when we talk to the lost person, they say, oh, it's such a narrow, narrow thing for God to only save people through one method.

It's free. It's a gift. It's narrow, but it's more than an arm's length width of a gate. It's sufficient for every single sin that you have. You were declared righteous for every single act of sin that you may have committed. That's not a narrow gate, in my opinion. Yeah, every time that it would be counted.

Ruth, if you get a call about them going to Vegas with you, tell them no. Yeah, that's a later discussion. The gate may be described as narrow, but the truth of the matter is that it's an infinite gate, if you're going to call it a gate. The nature of Christ and His work and what He did is not this narrow, limiting thing. It's a wide gate that takes care of everything and is presented there for all to believe. Now, there it is. It's that word belief again. That's where the real problem comes. is the narrow-mindedness of the person who chooses not to believe, rather than the narrowness of the gate of who Christ is.

Bud? Yeah, Randy. I've never been a part of or heard anybody tell you anything that's part of what the Scriptures say in regard to the law as a mirror by which we can see ourselves for how bad we are and correct ourselves. Oh, correct ourselves? Oh, man. Have you ever heard that stuff? That sounds just like Adam. If the law was given for us to correct ourselves, then that would mean that God knew we were able to do it.

But that's not why he gave it. So we'll continue on here. in verse 25, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. I'm just going to stop there in that part of that sentence. Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation.

There's another word that we don't often use in day-to-day vocabulary. Propitiation is placating God's wrath. and there's variations on the definition a little bit, but they all pretty much contain that concept, that God's anger and wrath was placated or dealt with so that God could move on to other things. Now, the result of those other things is the content of this class and many other things that you'll learn in other classes. The richness of God's grace and his blessing in our lives could happen because Christ was our propitiation. He placated God's wrath. He dealt with God's wrath. Stan? An interesting way to look at that is, since His wrath is satisfying, that means we have peace with God.

And that's an interesting thing because at Christmas, I've said this before, people are always saying, peace in the world. The peace of Christmas Yeah, but they want peace on earth and goodwill towards men and we'll ignore how that could ever possibly be fulfilled as long as we give a dollar to the Salvation Army bell ringer. Yeah, well it is. You're looking to the wrong source. It's a problem. Yep, the only real peace is God's peace.

So Christ is the propitiation Now he says where the propitiation came from with the rest of that sentence, in his blood through faith. Again, there's faith again. There's faith in the effective nature of Christ's blood. When we talk about various other world religions that are sometimes grouped into what we would call, in a very generic and sad sense, Christianity, when you talk about the Catholic religion, or you talk about Mormonism, there's this sense of ineffectiveness in Christ's blood. I haven't done enough. I've got to say the Hail Marys, take the transubstantiation in the communion, I've got to go through the sacraments, I've got to do all this stuff because the work of Christ was almost good enough. You know, you could almost, you know, to be doctrinally challenged, you could almost take this passage and look at justification and say that justification could exist in the absence of the resurrection.

How could you say that? Well, no, I'm just saying you read this passage. I'm close. I mean, I'm just challenging you a little bit. Sure. Resurrection is absolutely necessary. That's what we're celebrating today. Well, he's going to, we're going to keep going and look at some other passages. We're going to take a look at Romans 8 33 and 34 which is going to I think will nail that. of a mainstay of those states right it really is a decade and that's that's thank you that's that's a good point that's the reason I launched on that. Sure. Stan? Quick. What's the passage?

It's in the Pentateuch about life is in the blood that the Jehovah Witnesses use. Oh man I don't have that off the top. Transfusions anyway but anyway the life of the human being truly is in the blood right and it's interesting this passage is saying eternal life is Yeah, well their problem is that they've defined life incorrectly and they don't have a proper hermeneutic or interpretation set of interpretation rules. The problem in discussing things with the Jehovah's Witnesses is you have such an absolutely different framework of referencing things. But again, you have two forms of life, Bios and Zoe. The life in Christ is Zoe. That's eternal life. Yeah, that's eternal life.

This is actually something that I brought in because I used it yesterday as I was preparing to look at some things and it's a book called Charts of Christian Theology and Doctrine by Wayne House. I haven't had a chance to meet Wayne House but that doesn't really matter. He's a neat guy. He's been an attorney. U.S. Marshall and a theologian and a bunch of other things. He's an interesting fellow.

But this book has got to be one of the most useful theology books for general theology. Again, that's Charts of Christian Theology and Doctrine. And I'm not trying to sell it. I won't make any money if you buy it. But it discusses the variations between views on justification. Variations between views on many of the topics that we're going to discuss in this class. And it also gives you Bible passages to go look up and evaluate and check out to discover things in more depth.

Jessica and I actually bought this, well I think it was just Jessica before we got married, bought this book for my dad for Christmas one year and he cried when he opened it up. So that's so you know my dad's a soft, tender guy. But this book is really useful just for whatever that's worth. But it will kind of help bring out some of the errancies between different things.

He's actually got another charts book on cults and other religions which is really good too. I have that and this one and there's about five or six in the series and they're worth getting. But they talk about the very, it helps kind of delineate visually the differences that you'll see in various theological groups.

But with the Mormons and the Catholics, there is a sense of, I've got to go in and put in the extra work to make up for the lack of efficiency or effectiveness in Christ. They don't understand identification with Christ. They're not identified with Christ. And they're hoping to have some kind of temporary identification with Christ through transubstantiation in the Catholic process.

Just a brief comment. Sure. It's the concept that what was crucified? I mean if you take a narrow view of justification you think your sins have been removed before God. That's true. Yeah. But Adam himself, we talked about this last week. Yeah. Adam's crucified. Yeah.

And raised in newness of life. And that's the thing that they If your salvation is merely to address the problem of sin by itself, it's a weak salvation compared to the breadth of description in scripture of the life that should pour out of it. You know, when Christ says, I came to bring life and life abundant, I never understood what that meant when I was younger. When somebody said abundant life in Christ, I thought that meant I was having a good day where I sinned a whole lot less.

It wasn't his life working through me. It wasn't his life enabling me to, yes, not sin, but to draw near to him and to grow and to have a relationship. And it was terribly disappointing when I found out the truth for me to discover that no one had ever told me that so simply before. I was like, man, I have wrestled with sin for my whole life and I could have known this.

This is liberty. As Bud said, is this about liberty? Yes, it is liberty. We've been justified. That's liberty. Keep in mind, Randy, it's not intellectual knowledge. It's by faith that you accept that. Sure, but I didn't have the truth to place my faith in. That's really where it was for me. Yeah, it's not just intellectual knowledge. I tried that. I went to seminary. Intellectual knowledge is useful for trivia, but it's not life-giving by itself.

Actually, to deny or omit the resurrection is part of the fact of salvation. It's to not tell the whole story. It's not the gospel. It's not the gospel. I want to clarify. I just said something that was somewhat negative about seminary. I'm not saying seminary is evil. It's just not. If you go to seminary with the purpose of I will learn everything that there is to know. You won't learn everything there is to know. And it really is not a source of useful life-giving knowledge. There are good seminaries with good professors. I shouldn't be too negative on that. after his death it was destroyed?

We're going to take a look at 25 and 26 and look at the time aspect of that as part of this. That's a very good question because we need to look at the time aspect of it. We're not there yet but we will get there. So it's through faith in the blood of Christ and This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed. That's part of your question. Past tense in 25, previously, and the present is going to be in 26.

So we're going to take a look at both of those elements here. This was to demonstrate his righteousness. is righteous, but he doesn't just leave it in being righteous, he demonstrates his righteousness actively in the world. The world can't say that God is not righteous because his righteousness is demonstrated and has been demonstrated. How is it demonstrated every day?

Any thoughts on that? Just the fact that he's left us here. He hadn't destroyed the earth for the sins of man. Any other thoughts on that? I've got an answer I was thinking of. That's when I wasn't. That's a good answer. His righteousness is lived out through us. The body of Christ as we abide is going to demonstrate that righteousness in the world every day.

They're going to see that and they're going to go, well how come you're not doing this? How come you don't do that? And sometimes they see that as legalism and instead that's the opportunity for us to say, oh, this is the life of Christ. I don't have a rule book.

I just love my Savior. That's pretty cool. That's His righteousness demonstrated every day in the world around us. And then he goes on, because of the forbearance, God's foreknowledge and foredealing with things, he passed over the sins previously committed. Because of the work of Christ at that one singular time in history, God knew it was going to take place. He had planned it to take place. He had agreed, as the Godhead, for this to take place. He could pass over the past sins. Okay? Were the animals sufficient in the Old Testament to take care of sin? Were the animals good enough? I mean, those were some pretty awesome lambs. I'm pretty sure they could deal with sin, right?

But you said previously through atonement and all the other rules that God laid out. But with the destruction and fulfillment to take place in the future. Right. What I'm saying is they were passed over until Christ's death. Yes. And they were destroyed. Yeah, that's important. They were no longer passed over because this is the full sacrifice and the complete sacrifice because He was God. Absolutely. And not just a bull and a lamb and whatever. Absolutely. So now they're destroyed.

Yes, but Paul's talking to Jews and Gentiles in this context. He's saying, okay, Jewish believers and people who are maybe a bit too pious about your ethnic origin, remember that it was because God passed over those things to declare His righteousness so that, verse 26, He's going to demonstrate it for His righteousness at the present time. Now Paul is talking about being much closer to the death, burial and resurrection and ascension of Christ.

But at the present time, in the now days, dealing with it in Christ so that he would be just, God had to be just, his justice needed to be shown, so he dealt with sin, and being able to make things righteous, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Now what's interesting is he dealt with the sin in the past tense, but the Old Testament saint doesn't have the last half of this verse, which is where we need to start to think about this, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Now they believed a Messiah would come, but they didn't have a faith in the work of Christ so that they are a New Testament believer. But the past tense was dealt with before Christ. God looked over it knowing that it would be dealt with, like we were saying.

And from that point forward, those who believe as Christians, who believe in the work of Christ in the past tense, are dealt with it in the present age as well. so that God could be called just, and we talked about that just a moment ago, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So God is the only one, again, who can justify. God is the one who is the justifier. There is no one else who is capable. I'm running out of time here. So with that mind on that last part of verse 26, how does Christ's work deal with the Old Testament? It is, they had faith in God as the one who would be able to deal with the sin and destroy the sin.

So that's the prophetical aspect. Yeah, I'm going to try to draw a picture just because for me I'm visual, hopefully this is helpful. Let me know if it's not and I'll start over. I'm going to make the infinity sign over here. This is God in eternity past. We know that eternity is different from infinity, but it's an easy visual. God is going to be eternal that way. In the scope of time, the work of Christ on the cross is eternal. worked out an agreement with Christ in eternity past. This is in Hebrews chapter 13. We could go into that, but since time is limited, I'm just going to say you can check that out, Hebrews 13. It talks about the covenant that God made with God, with Christ, to deal with sin so that we could draw near to God.

And so, with that in mind, when God tells Eve in Genesis 3.15, He says, one of your seed will crush the head of the serpent and the serpent will bruise his heel. That's the very first prophecy of a Messiah that's going to come and deal with the issue of the sin, which was in part a result of the serpent deceiving Eve. Of course, Adam and Eve made their choices, so it's not just the serpent's fault.

But you have the issue of time moving forward God knew that this was coming. There was no question in his mind. So any part of atonement that may have looked like it was coming through the sacrificial system was merely relying on this upcoming event. It was a temporary placeholder as a visual reminder to the Jews at the time of what was coming. It wasn't effective in its own self. You know, as Bob brought up, the blood of bulls and goats is insufficient.

But this is the focus point of eternity for the earth. Not eternity, but the focus point of the timeline for the earth. Once we reach past the millennium, this is going to be important only for the fact that we have a relationship, but we're going to continually focus on the Savior as our groom. the relationship will be different. Is this a little bit more clear visually and to understand that, Stan? Okay, so infinity passed to the cross, Satan has power. I wouldn't say it like that. Well, when Christ came, he destroyed the power of sin, right? We're going to say infinity past zero.

This is going to be creation. Again, this is not the scale. So this will be creation. Okay, but there's something different between the sin and the past and the sin. I know, I know, but let me clarify something. So we have the time of creation. Then we have an unknown amount of time between Adam and Eve falling. And again, this is not the scale. So we're going to call this the fall. We'll put Adam here.

At this point in time, Satan has no dominion. From here to here, Satan has no dominion. So he doesn't have power. Actually, from the time of creation until Satan falls, he's with God, glorifying God. So Satan doesn't have authority there. So up until this point, Satan doesn't have anything. The earth was given to man as man's dominion and man forfeited that at the fall. In which case, that's when Satan was able to have more authority in the domain of the earth.

But again, it's all subjected to God and his ultimate authority, no matter what. Does that answer this? I can see we're on the rabbit trail. He continues to have that authority after the fall until the cross. and then the authority again is removed because the Christ is legal. He's the son of this world. The authority is removed from influence or from rulership for the believer at this point in time. But the lost are still his children.

So really this is why we had to have, we talked about Federal headship we had to have be a new creation and have a new federal head because otherwise our federal head was Adam and under Adam our Lord was unfortunately Satan or our father was unfortunately Satan and that's the first bell, so we've got to Keep going yeah, but wasn't Satan by permission of God Sent on a mission in the Garden of Eden to do what he did I wouldn't say he was sent on a mission. That wouldn't be vocabulary I would use. You could use the word by permission, but you wouldn't say by mission. I wouldn't use the word mission. God wouldn't intentionally say, hey, why don't you go screw this all up? He can say, you can go try, because I've dealt with it anyways.

He did already know of the work on the cross that was coming. He knew the fall was going to happen, but it wasn't like God was like, okay, and he was waiting for, I can think of the student with the other student going to sit in the chair, and just about as the kid is going to sit in the chair, he's going to kick it out from underneath him. That wasn't God's plan. His strategy wasn't to go shock people. We are totally not going to be able to get into the second passage. We are out of time.

When we take a look at this, when we talk about being justified, is it very clear that God has declared us righteous, He was the only one able to, and it was through the work of the cross, that Christ did on the cross, that He was able to have us create, God could create this relationship and we could draw near to Him. I'm going to jump to the very second to last slide. The very second to last slide is a bunch. Theological ramifications of justification. Because we're justified and it's something that God does and declares us righteous, we have security of salvation. It removes the need for fleshly guilt in the day-to-day life that we live. If you sin, you're justified. Stop feeling guilty about it.

Move back to your relationship with the Lord. It's time for that moment-by-moment relationship. The believer can draw near to God. When Hebrews says, draw near to God, we can do that. We're justified. We're declared righteous. Only the righteous can come near to God, and guess what? You are.

We can pray without ceasing. We don't have to be praying all the time, Oh God, please make me holy enough so that I can actually pray about something else. We can pray about everything with confidence, knowing that we are drawing near or drawn near. Because we've been justified, we can walk in newness of life. We can have victory over the sin nature. It's been dethroned and we can walk in that newness of life.

And the last thing, this is a rhetorical question. These two questions are for you to just evaluate and think about. What have you justified lately? Reflecting on the content of the lesson, what things have you not justified that you need to let go of and focus on the Lord because He justified What actions or past sins or things that you've done, and believe me, I've got a whole long list, that you in the flesh would like to hold on to and wrestle with and try to rectify in your own. That's a problem that sometimes we do in the flesh is we say, oh, I know God paid for it, but I really wish I could deal with this problem. It's justified.

I sinned in the past as an employee in various ways, and I have always wrestled with that because I feel like that's robbery. I stole money because I didn't get the job done right or I didn't do whatever. And that kind of thing bugs me. My employers got past it and over it, but it was still in my mind.

It's justified. It's paid for. I've been declared righteous. It's like I actually did the work. sacrifice for all sins, why am I not satisfied? Exactly, and that's the question. Because I want to go back and say, just like you, I look at those things, I should have done this, I should have done that. I said, well God was satisfied. And you say, by faith I accept that God is satisfied. And that creates a rest in the believer. Exactly. And that's where the rest comes from. Creates a rest in the believer. And the second question is actually the reversal of the first.

What things have you justified lately that he already justified that you need to let go of and focus on the Lord because he justified it? What sins did you justify that you need to just let go of because he's already declared you righteous? So, they're both sides of the same coin. If it's you trying to justify it, or you trying to not justify it, or whatever else you're doing, it's the wrong attitude.

That's where 1 John 1-9 comes in. If we confess our sins, meaning we agree with God and what He said about these things, He's faithful and just to forgive you of your sins. Yep. And they're done. And that's the thing is that that passage gets taken out of context to describe, okay, if you don't confess it, then He's not forgiving it. But the concept is mostly that in in this we have been justified past tense We're being justified and when we when our position and condition become unified when we're our heavenly bodies And we're we're raptured up or taken away through through death They'll be unified and We will be righteous. We won't just be declared righteous and be dealing with these bodies our righteousness will be full and complete and position and condition one and the same. Let's close in prayer because we're out of time.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for having justified us. What an amazing concept and theological doctrine. We just pray that you would continue to help us understand all the ways that that can be applied as we move forward. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your work in our lives and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.