In his sermon titled 'The Righteousness of God which is by Faith,' Pastor Steve Hopkins explores Romans 3:19-26, emphasizing the concept of righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. He stresses the importance of living in the Word rather than being consumed by worldly news, advocating for daily prayer and family worship. Pastor Hopkins explains that all humans are guilty before God, unable to justify themselves through the law, which only reveals sin. He highlights the difference between Christ's passive and active obedience—His death for our sins and His perfect life fulfilling the law—both necessary for salvation. Faith, as he underscores, is not a human work but a gift from God, enabling believers to grasp Christ's righteousness. The sermon also touches on theological concepts like justification, imputation, and propitiation, with Christ's role as the mercy seat fulfilling God's justice and mercy.

Welcome back to Barnet Bible Church. Join us this week as Pastor Hopkins continues his sermon series through the Book of Romans. Good morning once again. How good it is to be here. Very, very grateful.

So let's turn in our Bibles, if you would, with me. We'll be returning to the book of Romans, Chapter 3, working our way from verse 19 to 26, Lord willing, today. And I am really, really, really excited about this message. It was hard to go to sleep last night thinking about this. But before we stand and read the Word of the Lord, a couple of things that I was thinking about as I do these pre-message messages, this should take about two minutes.

Don't live in the news, live in the Word. It's easy for us to get caught up, I myself am one of those who can do that. You get caught up in the news, the things that are going on in the world, but we need to not live in the news, we need to live in the Word of God. Never give up those non-negotiable time of prayer and the reading of God's Word every day. Never give up that non-negotiable time of family worship every day.

If you get off track, and we all do, get back on track. I've had guys from the past, one I'm thinking of right now specifically, who comes up to me one day says, hey can I meet you at a restaurant in in Burnet? Yes. Hasn't been at this church in 15 years in tears. He said I want to thank this church, he said, because of the emphasis that it placed upon family worship.

He said, I have never stopped, and it's been the greatest blessing of my life. And I just wanted you to know that, that's what he said. Listen to sermons by godly preachers. We may not have the internet forever, okay? By godly preachers in the Reformed tradition.

The other guys, the non-Reformed guys, they stumble onto some truth from time to time, but they'll get you off track on many things. You know, I recommend Sproul, MacArthur, Paul Washer, you know, from history. My wife was telling me she listened to a couple sermons from Spurgeon this past week, very, you know, helpful to her. Make use of the Internet, okay? Not by living in the news, but living in the Word and listening to godly sermons.

We have access in our time to every single message that's ever been recorded and that's ever been written in basically the history of the world on the internet today. You realize that? What a great wealth there is. Use it. Use it for the glory of God.

And then last but not least, men, Pray for your bride. You've heard me say pray with your bride before, and we've gone through passages of Scripture on that. Pray for your bride. Jesus did. John 17 in the high priestly prayer, Who's he praying for?

For his bride. Pray for your bride. Pray for your bride. Pray for your bride because Jesus did. And let's stand for the reading of the word of the Lord.

Romans chapter three, verses 19 through 26. Let's read together. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference.

For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. To declare I say at this time His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier of Him which believeth in Jesus. Amen. Let's pray. Our wonderful, wonderful Father in heaven, how gracious and merciful you are to your children.

We pray that you would be honored this morning as we open your precious word, and you might receive glory and praise and honor, Lord, and by your spirit, open our understanding and build us up, O God, in the faith of Christ, and encourage us, O God, as you continue to transform us by the renewing of our minds by your Word. For we ask it in the name of Jesus, amen. Let's be seated. So as I said, I'm so excited about this message today. We're picking up now with this morning with chapter 3 and verse 19 of Paul's letter to the Romans, where we finally get to the message of the gospel.

The apostle has labored thus far to stop every mouth from boasting, to stop every mouth from boasting of any notion whatsoever of a righteousness whereby man may commend himself to God. The Apostle has labored every point and he has addressed every conceivable objection and he has rendered all the world guilty before God. Man has no righteousness. We think we do, but man has no righteousness. All that a man or a woman, when I say man I mean mankind, All that unregenerate, unsaved, born after Adam's kind, man can bring to the table when he meets with God is his sin.

The apostle has labored this point. It doesn't matter whether you're a Jew or you are a Gentile. You are condemned before God as a law breaker. All that man can bring to the table before God is his guilt before God. The Jew who possesses the law of God comes to the table condemned as a violator of God's law.

This is what the apostle has been teaching. The Gentile who comes to the table to meet with God without the law comes to the table condemned as a violator of the law of God written on his heart and confirmed in his conscience. The law condemns all as sinners in the sight of God. All. Why?

Because The law reveals that we are all violators of the law of God in every point. That not one of us has kept the law of God in any point, at any level, According to the requirements and the demands of the law, there is none that do it good. We read, there is none that keep the law of God. Not even one. Not even one.

Only, as we read back in Romans 2.13, the doers of the law are justified in His sight. How many are doers of the law here today? After all that we have studied, all we've been through, anybody raise their hand in the congregation and say, I'm a doer, I'm a keeper of the law, I'm a doer of the law. Only the doers of the law are justified in God's sight and there is none good, no not one, none righteous, all are violators of the law of God. We don't want to hear that about ourselves.

We are all violators and therefore the law does not justify us. On the contrary, the law condemns us Because we have failed at every point to keep it. Has everyone gotten that message? Has the apostle driven that truth home to each of the members of this congregation, to every one of us personally. Have you got it?

The more you look into the law of God, the more you see we see our filthiness. The more we look into the law of God, the more we see our wretchedness. The more We look into the law of God, the more we see our wretchedness. The more we look into the law of God, the more we see our guilt and become more and more aware of our inability to satisfy the demands of the law for a perfect righteousness. That's God's requirement.

You keep the law, you keep it perfectly, you're justified in my sight, You don't, you're damned. Harsh, hard words. So the apostle says, therefore, by the works of the law there shall be no flesh justified in God's sight. Why? For by the law comes the knowledge of sin, our sin, your sin, personally.

And so the more we look into the law, the more we see of our sin, our failure, our unrighteousness. Our failure, our unrighteousness, and thus we must conclude the justice of God is vindicated in our condemnation. And we are under the just sentence of His wrath. But praise God. Praise God.

This is why I said I'm so excited about this message today. We finally get to the gospel. Praise God, verse 21 begins, but now. But now. How grateful we should be for those two words in chapter 3 and verse 21, but now.

But now, Okay, after everything we've been saying, but now here's something that you need to understand. Everything the apostle has said heretofore concerning the miserable state of mankind is true. We all come into this world under the just sentence of condemnation and divine wrath. Oh, it just strikes a dagger to the pride of the heart of man to hear that. We all come into the world under the just sentence of condemnation and divine wrath.

Every one of us stands guilty before God in our sins, personal sins, and our trespasses, and our inability to meet the demands of God's law. But now, praise God, bless God for those words of hope, but now the righteousness of God without the law." Look at the text, verse 21, but now the righteousness of God without the law, that is apart from our personally fulfilling the demands of the law as the law requires. It is revealed. It's manifested, the King James Version says. And you remember Paul alluded to it back in chapter 1 of verse 17 when we began this journey in the book of Romans, when he wrote that in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.

He doesn't reveal it yet, he just tells us that's where it's revealed. The Gospel of God, again, chapter 1, I think verse 1 or 2, which was promised in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament by His prophets. It was prophesied, it was promised long ago by the prophets. But only Now does the apostle come to it? Only now after rendering all the world guilty before the tribunal of a holy God does the apostle bring any relief to sin-weary souls loaded down with the guilt of sin and conscious of the just sentence of eternal wrath that is hanging over their heads.

Only now does he come to it. Only now does he reveal it. The bad news had to come before the good news. And the good news, the glad tidings of the gospel message is this, there is a righteousness apart from the law whereby a man may be justified in God's sight." It's good news. There is a righteousness apart from the law, apart from our personally fulfilling the demand of the law to keep it perfectly in all points, whereby a man may be justified in God's sight.

There is a righteousness that is acceptable to God, the perfect righteousness of His Son, the perfect righteousness of God's Son. And it is a righteousness, listen everyone, that saves and does not condemn. We've been hearing a lot about condemnation and wrath and God's anger and he's holy and he's just and he's punishes all sin and he does. And everyone's under his just sentence from the day they were born we came into the world speaking lies. We've been through it.

We started in the book of Genesis and we showed Adam and Eve, they sin, and the first thing they do is take flight and run from God and every single one of us is was in that same situation. Fleeing from the presence of God, no one wants to be in the presence of a holy, righteous, perfect, just God who punishes all sin when they are sinners, condemned by their own sins and transgressions. But here a perfect righteousness is spoken of, the perfect righteousness of God's Son that is alone acceptable to God and it is a righteousness that saves and does not condemn Praise God for that. It is a righteousness that is imputed to men That is declared to their accounts and we're gonna Talk more about that as the Apostle Paul brings in the imputation of the righteousness of Christ Well, we're going to talk about that in the future But there was a righteousness that is declared to the accounts of men who are unjust declared to our accounts the moment we put our trust in God's Son alone for our acceptance with Him. And it is a righteousness that covers Both the Jew and the Gentile as they read further on in verse 22, for there is no difference That's what he's talking about between them Why because all of sin and all comes short Has continued to fall desperately short of the glory of God, of the demands of the law.

That's what he's talking about there. But everyone who believes on Christ, whether he is a Jew or whether he is a Gentile, every person who trusts in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ for their acceptance with God is justified instantaneously, justified freely, our text says, and justified by God's grace. How? Through the redemptive work of His Son. Redemption purchased by God's Son, by His blood.

People don't like to talk about blood, do they? Nobody likes to think about it. Life is in the blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins, the scripture says. Our acceptance with God, our justification, is free justification and acceptance, and it's by God's grace through the redemptive work of his son.

He redeemed, if you're redeemed today, you were redeemed from the slave block of sin by the blood of God's own Son. That's what it took to save a miserable wretch like you and me. That's good news. But let's define our terms. We just looked at redemption, a purchasing back, a ransom that's paid to purchase back.

Let's define our other terms so we understand what Paul is saying. We need to understand what Paul means when he uses the terms, the righteousness of God. Because we just said there is a righteousness, okay, that whereby man can be accepted to God. What does that mean? What does it mean, the righteousness of God?

And then he speaks of faith. What is faith? You flip on your television today or look at your iPad or whatever you get your news on or your source of information of the world. And they always like to talk about people of faith, like we're all just together. The Muslims and the Buddhists and the Satanists and all just people of faith, Christians are all people of faith.

Oh man. No. Well we'll define that in a moment. And then the term justification. There's one.

I could probably right now, not gonna do it, I could say stand up and give me a biblically sound theological definition of justification. Some would, some would not. Many would not. And that's okay. That's what we're doing today.

We're going to define our terms. There's much confusion prevailing in the churches of our land. Oh, I guarantee you there is. But what does Paul first mean when he talks about the righteousness of God? What is he referring to?

Well, first, let's talk about what it's not referring to. The righteousness of God does not, in this section, in what he's saying here, refer to God's attribute of righteousness. He's not talking about God's attribute of righteousness, okay, Whereby we say that God is righteous. Yes, God is righteous. His character is moral perfection.

But that's not what he's talking about here. The righteousness of God that the apostle is referring to here, when he talks about the righteousness of God that is acceptable to God, alone acceptable to God, alone by which his people may be clothed and justified in his sight. That righteousness refers to the person and the work of Jesus Christ. When He speaks of the righteousness of God, He's talking about Jesus and what Jesus did for us and applied to us, and we'll get to that application in a moment. Jesus Christ is our righteousness.

Jesus is our righteousness. If He's not your righteousness then you have no righteous covering. The righteousness of God, when it speaks of Christ's righteousness, refers to Christ and what he has done. Now what did Jesus do? What was his work that brought about righteousness that could be imputed to us whereby we could be justified in the sight of a holy God.

The righteousness of God in Christ refers to Christ's passive work and his active work. These are theological terms. His passive obedience and His active obedience. You've heard me talk about this before, how I explain it to my children. You little ones, listen to me.

Jesus' passive obedience, okay, which is one half of what constitutes the righteousness of Christ, is His passive going to the cross and dying for our sins, submitting to the judgment of God in our place. His active obedience refers to his – what he did in his life, his active obedience in keeping the law in our place. Both of those had to be fulfilled by Christ for anyone to be saved. Because a sin debt has to be paid for, and you have to have perfect righteousness. You should explain it to the children this way, okay?

So we don't have either of those. We can't pay for our own sins, and we can't keep the law of God perfectly. So imagine your heart, I always tell the children, you got a black heart, it's full of sin. You got this heart, it's black, it's full of sin. When we have sermon review later, so you got this heart that's black with sin, right?

Jesus' passive obedience, He dies for that sin. He by His blood washes away your sin. He takes the penalty that's due your sin. He satisfies the justice of God and the wrath of God that was due you, and He cleans you. Now you've got this blank heart, but the law of God requires not only that your sin debt be paid for to stand before God, which we went through in some of the law in Leviticus in our last session, and the killing of the animals and the sending away of the scapegoat, etc., etc.

But you must also have a perfect righteousness, and guess what? You don't. You have to have perfect fulfillment of the law in every point and you don't and I don't and we desperately need that and we cannot stand before God without it. You can't stand before God without your sins being paid for, without your sin debt being taken care of and you can't stand before God without having a perfect righteousness and only Jesus fulfilled that and he did that in the place of his children. So the righteousness of God refers to both the passive and active obedience of Jesus.

Jesus died for us, listen, but He also lived for us. Jesus passively dealt with the judgment of God in our place on the cross when He bore our sin dead and suffered and died in our place. In His passive obedience, He submitted to the penalty due His people and paid the penalty in full, making satisfaction in full to the justice and the wrath of God that was due us. Amen? But if that was all He did, we could not be saved.

Jesus had to live for us. God didn't send his Son from heaven and say, okay here go straight from there to the cross. No. Jesus had to live, had to fulfill the law perfectly in thought, in word, in deed, the moral law, the ceremonial law, everything. He had to fulfill it all.

Why? Because that's the requirement of the law for you to stand before God, uncondemned. Without that, you're condemned before a holy God and will be under His wrath for all eternity. You understand this? You understand the serious consequences of the cross and of the life of Jesus.

He had to live for us and He had to die for us. He had to live a life of perfect obedience in our place. And He did. He fulfilled the demands of the law for us perfectly that we were unable to keep at any point. Remember, if you violate, as Galatians says, one part of the law, you're guilty of the whole law.

We're all violators. But that second part, the act of obedience of Christ, is also necessary. Jesus died in our place to satisfy the justice and wrath of God do us and Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to the law of God in our place. When the Apostle Paul speaks of the righteousness of God this is what he's speaking about. When he speaks of the righteousness of God, this is what he's speaking about.

He's talking about the righteousness of God, which is by faith. So we have to get on to our other terms. When Paul speaks of the righteousness of God, what he's talking about is Christ's perfect obedience to the law and his death for our sins, both of which are necessary for us to stand before a holy God, uncondemned, before the tribunal of God, uncondemned. Now, the passage we've just read speaks of this righteousness of God, which is by faith. So we need to define our term, what is faith?

It speaks of this righteousness of God, which is by faith unto all and upon all them that believe." The righteousness of God comes to man by faith. But what is faith? First, again, what faith is not. Please get this everyone. First, what faith is not.

Faith is not a work of man. Faith is not your work. Oh, I've gone round and round and round with the Arminians on this point. If there were a work, if faith were a work, then man could boast that he was saved by something he did. I had faith, therefore God saved me.

I had faith, therefore God rewarded me with salvation. Puff your chest up, brother. No. Faith is the gift of God as we read in Ephesians chapter 2. It is the gift of God.

Faith is not something that we exercise in order to gain God's favor. Does everyone get that? Faith is not a work, if you're gonna write a note down about this, write this one down. Faith is not a work that makes us righteous in God's sight. Faith is not a work that makes us accepted in God's sight.

Well, you have faith and so now you're accepted in my sight. I'm very pleased with your work of faith. No, that's a faulty understanding. Oh, it permeates the churches of America But it's a false understanding faith is not your work Faith is God's work in you Faith is not your work. Faith is God's work in you.

When the Apostle Paul speaks of verse 22 of the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, he is speaking of the means by which we lay hold on the righteousness of Christ. Faith is the means by which we take hold on Christ and what he has done for us. But that is not a work that we do, it is a work that God does in us. Ephesians 2, again, it is God's gift and it's given to us by grace. If it weren't, then man could boast and a lot of people do.

And listen folks, and then we're back to the place where we're claiming we're saved because we did something. Do you understand that? We're back to the place where we're claiming God saved me because I did something. I exercised faith out of my utterly corrupted, God-hating soul. I exercise faith.

No, Martin Luther correctly termed it alien. It's an alien righteousness and it's a foreign work to us. It doesn't begin with us. We didn't do anything except sin against God and call down his wrath upon our heads. God did everything.

Oh, if we could just get this back into the churches of America. You know how long we've been sliding into this Armenian pit of pride? It's been going on for so long and you can trace the decline of the nation and its morals with the acceptance of the Armenian doctrines. They happen simultaneously. Graph the charts and you see it.

When we moved away from the truth of God's Word that was preached by men like Spurgeon and then in the Great Awakening of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, that Encyclopedia Britannica said was the most ingenious mind ever on this continent, the North American continent. When we moved away from that, we went downhill. And now the chief Armenians like Joel Osteen and their crowd rule the thinking in the country. We didn't do anything. God did everything.

Salvation is of God from beginning to end. Man is passive in the work of salvation because he is dead and dead men can't respond to anything. We are dead in trespasses and sins and dead men don't respond to anything. I can go into the graveyard near our house, over to Bethel Cemetery, and I can preach to the dead all day long, and not a one of them is going to respond to me. They're dead.

And the Bible says you're dead in trespasses and sins. Dead men don't respond to anything. The salvation of man is a work of God alone. Martin Luther in his battle with the Roman Catholics alone. Remember Jesus died for our sins, all of them.

I want you to just try to grasp this for a second. Do you think that Jesus died for all of the sins of His people? Okay. Some say well he died for the sins of all people. Okay, well, let's just think about that for a moment.

If Jesus died for the sins of all people, one of those sins that he died for was their unbelief. How can they now be charged? How can they now be condemned? He paid for their unbelief. Their unbelief is paid for.

You paid for everybody's unbelief. It's all paid for. Jesus died for our sin of unbelief also. No. Doesn't stand to reason.

It's illogical, isn't it? Faith is the gift of God. It's of grace. It's God's grace, not of works, lest any man should boast. Faith is the means by which we lay hold on Christ and His works.

And it is the work of God in us, not a work of ours, springing forth from our corrupted nature. We don't like to believe that, do we? No, like I said last session, we want a communist God who sprinkles His grace freely on everybody and everybody gets the same thing, everybody works the same, everybody gets the same. It doesn't matter whether you're a doctor or a trash collector, everybody gets the same, everything's the same. It's not a thing that God looks down from heaven upon the sons of man and says, oh, oh, you have faith.

I'm going to reward your good work of faith with salvation. No, God creates faith in the heart of unbelievers. The hymn writer got it right. We're going to look at the hymn. This is an independent Baptist hymnals.

This is a United Methodist Church hymnals of all. Number 712 in our hymnals written sometime between 1840 and 1901 by Daniel W. Whittle. I don't know who he was. I know not why God's wondrous grace to me hath made known, or why unworthy Christ in love redeemed me for his own.

I know not how this saving faith to me he did impart. He imparted that faith to me. I didn't conjure it up within my own sin-sick soul, nor how believing in his word brought peace within my heart. I know not how the Spirit moves convincing men of sin revealing Jesus through the word creating faith in him. We sing it but we don't believe it.

Stop singing things you don't believe. It's like, it's hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy to say that God created faith in me when I believe that I created the faith in myself. And to sing that, it's a hypocrisy to say he imparted faith to me and yet really believed I conjured it up within myself, my own sin-sick soul. There's the truth.

Sung throughout the churches for 150 years or what have you. They sing it but they don't believe it. No. Man is passive in the work of salvation. Dead in trespasses and sins and dead men don't respond to anything.

Faith is by grace. Grace is the unmerited love and favor of God by definition. And everyone does not experience that grace. If they did, everyone would be saved. The independent Baptist Church, as I grew up in, taught that God distributes grace evenly upon all mankind, which of course means that some people make wiser and make a better use than others do of the equal grace that God has distributed equally in measure upon all people.

He sprinkles His grace upon all people who have ever lived, you know, and then you're the ones who make the decision of how you're going to respond to that grace, and some people just make a better use of that grace than others do. That is so proud. I made a wiser use of the grace that God equally sprinkled upon all mankind. Spurgeon has a sermon on this and he just labors it on and on and on and on. Till by the time you get to the end of it, you're just like going, wow, am I in that camp?

No. That's not Bible. And it creates an environment for boasting. To say that God distributes to every person ever born equal grace and some choose to believe on Christ while others choose to reject Him makes the will of man the ultimate factor in salvation and not the will of God. In contradicted to the scripture and the apostle John who says we were born, John 1.13, not of the flesh, neither of the will of man, but of God.

Faith is the instrument by which we lay hold on the righteousness of Christ. It's by God's grace and God's will and God's grace and will are the determining factor, not our will. You understand? I know I'm laboring this a long time. We've got to grasp this.

You understand what happened at the fall? Maybe you don't. Maybe you think man got sick at the fall and he really got sick and sinned and he just needs, you know, a little medicine and he can pull himself up by his own spiritual bootstraps. No. All the faculties of man were corrupted by original sin by the fall.

And one of those faculties in every single one of us was and is our will. Your will was utterly corrupted because you inherited the corrupted nature of your first parents Adam and Eve. You understand that? Your will was corrupted. It wasn't just dirtied up a little bit, it was absolutely utterly corrupted and an utterly corrupted will will never choose Christ when given the choice.

You understand that? An utterly corrupted will will never choose Christ when given the choice. A corrupted will goes the way of corruption. Science teaches us that everything in the universe acts according to its nature, and guess what? Mankind acts according to its corrupted nature.

The more the corrupted nature of man hears about Jesus, the more he hates Him. I know I'm going a long time, but we're going to finish this. The more it hears about Jesus, the more it hates Him. I preach on the streets of Burnet, Texas, and I've preached around the country and I've missed some weeks here because of being sick. I'm trying to get back this next week, but I'll tell you what, the more people hear about Jesus in the unregenerate state, the more they hate him.

And they jump up and down with the middle finger in the air. I've seen them jumping up and down, grown men with their middle finger in the air at me. The more they hear about Jesus, the more they hate him. Why? Because their nature is corrupted to the core, not just on the surface, absolutely to the core.

And a corrupted nature hates God and wants nothing to do with him. And like Adam and Eve, it takes off running, lickety-split into the woods to try to cover its nakedness with his own works. We've been through that, right? Adam and Eve don't sin, and then they go, oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner. They don't run to God and kneel before him.

The scripture says they fled from the presence of God and guess what? So did you in the unregenerate state of your corruption. So did you. Get a grasp on it. That's the nature of unregenerate man.

Hates God. So again, what is faith? Faith is trusting in Christ in His works, not ours for our acceptance with God, but it's a work of God in us, not a work that we come to the table before God to present to him and say, Lord, accept my faith. Receive me because I have faith. No.

That is a wrong thinking, and it's destroyed the churches of America and the West. Faith is placing our trust in Christ and what He has accomplished for us in our place in both His life and His death. Faith is trusting in Jesus' righteousness, not ours, which by the way would equate with eternal destruction since we have no righteousness of our own. Faith is the means or instrument whereby we lay hold on Christ and His righteousness. In Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 through 9, if you want to look at it, study it, go to the Greek, please go to the Greek and study it fully and you will understand the error of the Arminians.

It is faith that is the gift of God, not grace. Grace means gift. Grace means it's a gift. It's by the grace of God, unmerited love in favor of God given to undeserving, wretched, vile, filthy, rotten sinners who deserve God's wrath. We are told in Ephesians 2, 8 through 9 that it is by grace that we are saved through faith.

And that is not of ourselves. It's not a work of ourselves. But it is the gift of God when will we get that through our thick skulls? Thick hearts, lest any man should boast. Of what?

Lest any man should boast it was something he produced or had stirred up within himself. Okay. Going forward, we read that it is faith by which sinners are freely justified, verse 24, again by God's grace, on account of the redemptive work of Christ. But what about justification? What does it mean to be justified?

We are justified freely in His sight, okay? What does it mean to be justified? We know that it is by God's grace that we're justified. We know that it's on account of the redemptive work accomplished by Christ. But what does it mean to be justified?

The Greek word here again that is used in our text and throughout the book of Romans means to be declared just or pronounced just. For the Roman Catholic the understanding is different. Why? Because at one point back in the year 405 when Jerome completed his translation of the New Testament translated it into Latin. That's what the Roman Church used for 1, 100 years after that.

And they got a lot of stuff wrong because Jerome got a lot of stuff wrong. So he completes it. Jerome completes it in AD 405 and he translates the word that we see in our text right here in verse 24 being justified Guess how he translates it He translates it from two Latin derivatives Eustace J US T US if you want to write that down, J-U-S-2-S, like just us, but it's Eustace, and Ficarri, F-I-C-A-R-E, which means to be made just. Ah. And so we have the error and we have the controversy and we have the reformation that comes and corrects this.

Paul didn't write to the Romans in Latin. He wrote to the Romans in Greek. And the Greek word is used here and throughout the New Testament is Dikai-A-O, and this is a transliteration. If you want to write it down, D-I-K-A-I-O-O. So it's from this Greek word.

You'll see the variations used throughout the New Testament. But it means to declare or pronounce one to be just or righteous, not to be made just or righteous. And therein stands the error. Rome said, you can only be declared just or righteous if you actually are just or righteous. Then God will declare you just.

And thus their system of works added to faith to become just and remain just in God's sight. And I don't have time to go through it all, but you won't find any of it in the Bible. In the next few weeks, we're going to go through and we're going to look at it. We're going to look more at Reformation, what happened at the Reformation. And we're going to go through some of this, and we're going to show the system that the Roman Catholics came up with.

But the Reformers come along and say, no, the word Paul used for justification means to be declared or pronounced righteous, not to be made just a righteous. And men are declared just in God's sight even though they're still sinners." How about that? Which we're going to look at more closely when we get to chapter 4 and verse 5, where we read that God justifies the ungodly. Flip over there and look at it for a second. God justifies the ungodly.

That's throws right in the face of Catholic doctrine. One's faith being counted for righteousness. Martin Luther is gonna use the Latin phrase when we start looking more at the Reformation. Simil, justus et peccator. Simil, like from the word simultaneous, simul.

Justus, just, et, yet, peccator. Anybody know Spanish? Peccator, what's a peccadillo? Right? Same word, sin.

At the same time, sinner, peccator. A sinner. At the same time, just, yet, sinner. So as we move forward through history, the Roman Catholics used Jerome's translation and they get it wrong. And they build on it for 1, 100 years.

Paul wrote the book of Romans in Greek, not Latin, and the word for, justification Paul used means to be declared righteous in God's sight, not made righteous. Righteousness is declared to the account of the man who has faith in Christ. As soon as he repents and trusts in Christ alone and in no work ceases to trust in any work or righteousness of his own, realizing that he has none. Again, a man's faith does not merit righteousness. It's like, well, I have faith and so God says, okay, that merits righteousness.

I'll give you righteousness. My son, no. It's the work of God. Faith is not a work acceptable to God in the place of the perfect obedience. No, it's a work of God.

A man's faith is not accepted in the place of righteousness. A man's faith is the instrument by which he apprehends or lays hold on the object of true and saving faith which is Jesus Christ, trusting in His perfect obedience to the law and His atoning sacrifice for our sins. This is free justification in the sight of God by grace through the redemption that is found in Christ Jesus alone, apprehended or laid hold on by faith alone, alone. And it is the righteousness that is imputed or credited to the account of all those who believe in Christ. We're going to look at that doctrine of imputation in the future.

We don't have time to do it today. Lord willing, we're going to, in the next few weeks, we'll really get into it. But I want to end with this. In our last session, we defined propitiation. And here we come upon the Word, verse 25, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.

How many remember in the last session what I said? What do you think when you think propitiation? How many remember? Raise your hand. When you think propitiation, think satisfaction.

Satisfaction made to the justice of God. Satisfaction made to the justice of God by God to appease the wrath of God. And that by Jesus atoning sacrifice for our sin dead on the cross. And then I said, we need to understand the term expiation. And what did I say?

We need to, when we think of the word expiation, which is also a biblical word, and some versions use it here in the place of propitiation, what should we think of? How many remember? Expiation. What? Removed.

Expiation. Think removal. That on account of Jesus' redemptive work, our sins are removed as far from us as the east and from the west, right? And where do we go? We went to Leviticus, we looked at the Day of Atonement, the two goats are brought in, right, on the Day of Atonement to atone for the sins of the people for the full year.

The sins of the people of God are symbolically laid upon the goats, right? One of them is slain, the other one is sent to wander in the wilderness towards the east, signifying propitiation, the blood sacrifice of Christ, and the removal of our sin debt from us, our guilt as far as the east is from the west. Propitiation, satisfaction to the justice and wrath of God, expiation, the removal of the guilt of our sins. Praise God it was all done in Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. All the the shadows of the Old Testament law pointed to Jesus to come.

We've been going through the book of Exodus and family worship. And I explained it to my family again this past week, as I say, as we come to a close here, when we read the instructions given to Moses on the Mount concerning the annual sacrifice of atonement. Oh, please hang with me for just this last part. In our text from Exodus chapter 25, The instructions are given concerning the mercy seat. Write down Exodus 25 and go and read that later this afternoon.

And see where you come to the place where it talks about the mercy seat. What is the mercy seat? The mercy seat is the lid that covers the Ark of the Covenant. What's there? Some old movies about them trying to find the Ark of the Covenant, right?

Anybody know anything about the Ark of the Covenant? It's real. It's not a fictional thing, it's some stupid movie that Hollywood produces. Okay? The Ark of the Covenant is real and it has real significance.

And it's probably somewhere still in the world today, we don't know. But here's the thing, the mercy seat is the lid that covers the ark of the covenant. And I explained to my family that this word, mercy seat, is the same word translated in the Greek New Testament right here in our text in verse 25, propitiation. Jesus is the mercy seat. He is the propitiation for our sins.

Jesus is our mercy seat. Every shadow of the law in the Old Testament pointed to Jesus. He is the propitiation for our sins. Jesus is our mercy seat. Every shadow of the law in the Old Testament pointed to Jesus.

He is the propitiation for our sins. He is the mercy seat that the blood was sprinkled upon annually by the high priest. He is the satisfaction made to the justice and the wrath of God do us for our sins. For everyone who believes on his name. Verse 25, and God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness, the righteousness of our sacrificial Lamb, the righteousness of our mercy seat, His righteousness for the remission of our sins that he put up with in the past through the forbearance of God.

To declare, I say, Paul says, at this time, his righteousness. He emphasizes it by saying it twice, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believes in Jesus. I went over it all with my wife and children, again asking them, do you understand the significance of the Ark of the Covenant upon which this lid, this mercy seat was above? Most of them remember because we've been through it many times. Does anybody know what's inside the Ark of the Covenant?

My friends, you need to study these things and understand these things. Inside the Ark of the Covenant, the Covenant means the Ten Commandments. The Ark of the Testimony. Inside are the two tables of stone where on The law of God was written with the finger of God Laws that only Jesus fulfilled in perfection That's what's under the mercy seat in that box. What else is in there a clay jar?

What's in the clay jar? Some of the manna that came down from heaven. Jesus is the bread who comes down from heaven that of a man eat. He shall never die. It's all about Jesus.

What else is in the box? Aaron's rod, a dead stick that came to life and budded and produced almonds that you could pick off and eat, pointing to Jesus who would die for our sins like a dead stick and who would rise again from the dead the third day and live forever. This is the significance of the Ark of the Covenant. This is the significance of the Mercy Seat, which is over covers that Ark of the Covenant. And the blood of the sacrificial bull was sprinkled by the high priest upon the mercy seat the same word used in our text here translated propitiation pointing to Christ whom God has set forth to be a propitiation, a satisfaction to the justice and wrath of God, do us, do me, do you, through faith in His blood, which is a gift of God, to declare His righteousness for the remission of our sins that God forbear so long with us to deal with.

To declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness, Christ's righteousness, that he, God, might be just. Why? Because he punishes all sin like a good judge. And at the same time be the justifier of ungodly people like us, which believe in Jesus because he punished his son in our place. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for our mercy seat. Jesus, your Son, who fulfilled the law perfectly in our place, also died and satisfied the justice and the wrath that was due us. We thank you, God, that you're a just God who punishes all sin, but you're also a merciful God who punishes a substitute in the place of your people whom you love. And we thank you for your love and for your mercy and we thank you for it in the name of Jesus. Amen.