Salvation By Grace

ROMANS 3:9-18 “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (vv. 10-12).

Try as we might, it is very difficult for human beings to come to grips with the fact that we do not deserve heaven. The average person, perhaps even the average professing Christian, is likely to say God should let him into heaven because he tries his best to be good and do the right thing. We have an innate tendency to believe we will get into heaven as long as our good works outweigh our bad deeds.

Of course, in comparison to someone like Adolf Hitler, most of us could be described as “good,” relatively speaking. However, God does not measure our good­ness or righteousness by a relative standard but by the absolute standard of His own character and law. As we have seen, this standard is perfection, which is why Paul can look at the world and say that no person is righteous even if we see unbe­lievers do noble and honorable things from time to time (Rom. 3:9-12). Moreover, Jesus tells us quite explicitly that we “must be perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). God will not grade on a curve — we can pass His test and enter heaven by our works only if we never disobey Him (Gal. 5:3). If we commit only one “minor” transgression while we walk the earth, we have fallen short of infinite perfection and deserve an infinite judgment. This is the state in which all natural-born descendants of Adam find themselves (Gen. 8:21; Isa. 64:6-7; Matt. 13:40-42; Rom. 3:23).

Christ alone has met God’s standard of perfection (1 Peter 2:22), and that is why we can be considered the righteousness of God only if we are in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus shows us in the Sermon on the Mount that righteousness means conforming to God’s law both in its letter and in its spirit (Matt. 5:21-26), and we have failed in this task miserably. If we think that we have kept the Lord’s commandments, let us read Christ’s call never to put anyone or anything before Him (Matt. 10:37). To consider this command honestly is to realize that none but Christ have followed God so perfectly.

Born in sin, we cannot keep the law of God with our heart, soul, mind, or strength. The fallen nature we inherit from Adam (Rom. 3:9-18; 5:12-21) keeps us from want­ing to serve Him of our own accord. Only Jesus, by His Spirit, can change this.

God does not grade on a curve. Two good deeds do not make up for one bad one. Any way we slice it, there is nothing we can do to make up for not meeting God’s standard of perfection. Let us remind ourselves of that fact daily, that we might continually believe in the gospel. Only the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us by faith alone, fulfills the Lord’s standard and guarantees us eternal life.

• From Ligonier’s January 2012 Tabletalk Magazine

. . . Dr. Henninger noted that in the presidential proclamation for the annual National Day of Prayer, the last time the word sin was mentioned was in President Eisenhower’s proclamation in 1953 — and those words were borrowed from a call to national prayer by Abraham Lincoln in 1863! So, as Dr. Henninger observed, “as a nation, we officially ceased sinning’ some twenty [now over fifty] years ago.”‘  Karl Henninger is by no means alone in his assessment. Author Peter Barnes, in an article titled “What! Me? A Sinner?” wrote, In twentieth century England, C. S. Lewis noted that, “The barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin.” And in 2001, New Testament scholar D. A. Carson commented that the most frustrating aspect of doing evangelism in universities is the fact that students generally have no idea of sin. “They know how to sin well enough, but they have no idea of what constitutes sin.”  These statements only confirm what seems clear to many observers: The whole idea of sin has virtually disappeared from our culture. So we see that the entire concept of sin has virtually disappeared from our American culture at large and has been softened, even within many of our churches, to accommodate modern sensibilities. Indeed, strong biblical words for sin have been excised from our vocabulary. People no longer commit adultery; instead they have an affair. Corporate executives do not steal; they commit fraud.
But what about our conservative, evangelical churches? Has the idea of sin all but disappeared from us also? No, it has not disappeared, but it has, in many instances, been deflected  to those outside our circles who commit flagrant sins such as abortion, homosexuality, and murder, or the notorious white-collar crimes of high-level corporate executives. It’s easy for us to condemn those obvious sins while virtually ignoring our own sins of gossip, pride, envy, bitterness, and lust, or even our lack of those gracious qualities that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).

• the above is an excerpt by Jerry Bridges from Respectable Sins
• If we have no concept of sin, then we have no need of a savior

We were incensed, and rightfully so, when a major denomination ordained a practicing homosexual as a bishop. Why do we not also mourn over our selfishness, our critical spirit, our impatience, and our anger? It’s easy to let ourselves off the hook by saying, these sins are not as bad as the flagrant ones of society. But God has not given us the authority to establish values for different sins. Instead, He says through James, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for [is guilty of] all of it” (2:1o). That Scripture is difficult for us to understand because we think in terms of individual laws and their respective penalties. But God’s law is seamless. The Bible speaks not of God’s laws, as if many of them, but of God’s law as a single whole. When a person commits murder, he breaks God’s law. When a Christian lets corrupting speech (that is, speech which tends to tear down another person) come out of his mouth (see Ephesians 4:29), he breaks God’s law.
In chapter 1 I acknowledged that some sins are more serious than others. I would rather be guilty of a lustful look than of adultery. Yet Jesus said that with that lustful look, I have actually committed adultery in my heart. I would rather be angry at someone than to murder that person. Yet Jesus said that whoever murders and whoever is angry with his brother are both liable to judgment (see Matthew 5:21-22). The truth is, all sin is serious because all sin is a breaking of God’s law.
The apostle John wrote, “Sin is lawlessness” (i John 3:4). All sin, even sin that seems so minor in our eyes, is lawlessness. It is not just the breaking of a single command; it is a complete disregard for the law of God, a deliberate rejection of His moral will in favor of fulfilling one’s own desires. In our human values of civil laws, we draw a huge distinction between an otherwise “law-abiding citizen” who gets an occasional traffic ticket and a person who lives a “lawless” life in contempt and utter disregard for all laws. But the Bible does not seem to make that distinction.  Rather it simply says sin – that is, all sin without distinction – is lawlessness.

• the above is an excerpt by Jerry Bridges from Respectable Sins