Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Does what you believe about God really matter? Many people say that what matters most is simply living a good and loving life. But the Bible says something very different: that the way we live flows directly from our beliefs about God.

Starting this month and extending through the end of September, we’re going to go through one of Tim Keller’s most extensive sermon series in which he explores the core of the Christian faith. As we go through the series, Dr. Keller will teach from the first two chapters of Ephesians to look at how the Bible’s central truths about salvation and grace are meant to shape even the most practical parts of our everyday life.

Guest (Male): Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory.

Tim Keller: When we began chapter one, we said that Ephesians chapters one, two, and three is about salvation. We said last week that in New York City, if you talk about being saved, or if you ask somebody else if they’re saved, the average New Yorker gets very creeped out by that kind of language. This is because it’s considered a narrow and a shallow person who talks about being saved.

And yet the Bible tells us that rather than being a narrow and shallow concept, it’s the deepest and richest and broadest and most multifarious concept a mind can conceive of. In a sense, Paul in chapter one and two is taking the concept of salvation, which we’ve heard the word so often, and he’s running it like white light through a prism and breaking it down into its constituent rainbow.

It’s so beautiful when you stick a beam of light through the prism, and the prism breaks it down to show you all of the rich glories that are inside there. That’s what Paul is doing in Ephesians chapter one and two, but especially chapter one. He is trying to show us salvation from God’s point of view.

And we have said that one of the good things about college education today is that generally, college educators are down on ethnocentrism. They know that all human beings have a tendency to be ethnocentric, which means we have a tendency to look at everything as if our ethnic group is the center of the universe. All other ethnic groups are marginal or peripheral, and our way of doing things must be the right one, our way of thinking must be the right one.

The good thing about college education today is they pound on that and they say you mustn’t think that your culture is the pivot on which everything else rests and everything else orbits around you. You mustn’t think like that. We must get rid of ethnocentric thinking.

Christians agree. Christians go one step further. The Bible goes one step further. It’s not enough just to get rid of ethnocentric thinking; you have to get rid of anthropocentric thinking: human-centered thinking. It’s easy for us to decide that the human point of view, our particular view of things, is the central thing.

If you read the Scripture, you see that God makes everything orbit and everything turn around what is just, what is true, and what is right and what is holy. Everything turns on that: what is just, what is true, what is righteous, what is holy. Everything turns on that.

Now look at you and me. Everything turns on our happiness, on our comfort, on our joy. What about righteousness and truth and justice and holiness? Oh, we’ll take that into consideration. But it’s not the thing that everything is turning on in our lives. What we turn on—our lives orbit around and turn on—the joy.

Justice and righteousness and holiness is out there on the margins. We try to work it in if we can. It’d be wonderful if we could be just and righteous, but the important thing is to be happy. Don't you see that to turn everything on the human point of view, to turn everything like that, is worse than ethnocentrism? It’s human-centeredness.

God’s perspective is the only one that’s realistic. I remember some years ago, I was in a car and I didn’t own the car, I’d borrowed the car. I was trying to get home at a certain time and I was on a long trip, and the gas gauge was getting lower and lower and lower.

I was looking at the gas gauge and I had a passenger, and the passenger says, "You know, the little pointer is below empty." And I looked at it and I said, "No, no, it’s at one-eighth full." "No, it’s below empty." "No, it’s one-eighth full."

Next thing you know, almost within a second after that argument, the car shuddered and came to a halt. So I stood back, and you know, I’m 6'4" and my passenger was about 5'2". So I came on down and took a 5'2" perspective on the gas gauge.

Sure enough, it was empty. I was looking at it like this; my passenger was looking at it like this. Now the point is, those are two different perspectives, two different angles, and they can’t both be right. But I didn’t know which one it was. I said, "Well, maybe it was made to be looked at like this."

My passenger was saying, "Of course not, it was made to be looked at like this." Well, of course, that’s because my passenger always looks at everything from there, and so do I look at everything from there. Only one can be right.

The Bible says that your life and the life of this world is like a gas gauge, but it’s meant to be looked at—it can only truly be understood—if it’s looked at from God’s angle. That’s hard. It’s just as hard for white Americans to try to not look at everything from the white American angle and to be totally centered on that.

You think that’s hard? It is far harder because it takes the word of God and it takes the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to stop looking at everything from the human angle. From the human angle, things don’t make sense.

Here’s Joseph in the pit. His brothers, jealous of him, have stripped him, thrown him in the pit, and they’re about to sell him into slavery. And he says, "Lord, you’ve got to help me." So how does God answer his prayer? He’s sold into slavery for years. His life is ruined.

Not only is he sold into slavery, but at one point he’s framed by the wife of his employer and then he’s put into prison, and any day he might be executed. What is God doing? Joseph was looking at the gas gauge from down here. Somebody else was looking at the gas gauge from up here, but only God can see things from the true perspective.

Later on in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20, he says to his brothers who had sold him into slavery, and now he saw the purpose of it because as time went on, he began to see things from God’s point of view, and he says, "You meant it for evil, God meant it for good."

Right now, you can look at your life and you can decide whether you’re going to stand up on Genesis 50, verse 20. Get on Genesis 50, verse 20 and look. It says other people mean it for evil, this person has hurt you, this person has hurt you, God means it for good. Look at Romans 8:28: all things work together for good to those who love God.

You look at this passage. God has chosen you to be holy and blameless in His sight. He has destined you, He has secured it, He has guaranteed it. He is taking everything and working it together according to the counsel of His will, it says in verse 10 and 11, so that you can eventually be a great and glorious person.

Now, you can either stand up and look at your life on the platform of Ephesians 1:11, Ephesians 1:8, Romans 8:28, Genesis 50:20—it’s up to you—or else you can continue to look at it from the human point of view and say, "I don’t get it, I don’t get it, I don’t get it." There’s only one angle that works: it’s the biblical angle, it’s the God’s perspective.

We’ve said up to here that the Bible’s talking about redemption from God’s perspective. In verses three, four, and five, we’ve actually looked at the Father’s role in our salvation. It says what the Father does in our salvation: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us with everything in heavenly realms." So he’s talking about the Father.

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. He predestined us to be adopted as his sons." Now the point is, elect—the Greek word elect—and the Greek word predestined means he has set and he has destined us, which means he has guaranteed that you and I, those of us who believe in Christ, he has guaranteed that we’re going to be holy and blameless in his sight, that we’re going to sit in glory with him. He’s guaranteed it.

That’s what the Father has done. And immediately the question arises, how could that be? And the answer begins in verse seven. Because the answer to how can the Father actually accomplish his purpose is that the Son has accomplished his purpose.

So when you get to verse seven, there’s a change and it moves from talking about the Father to talking about the Son. Then when you get to verses 13 and 14, it moves from talking about the Son to talking about the Spirit. Because it’s the triune God; it’s God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit that is in view.

The link between verses three, four, and five and six about the Father and verse seven is a little word: "in him." Now for the life of me, I hate to do this because people make fun afterwards, but it may be hard for me to get past those two words before our time is out.

I want you to know that it’s not the words, but it’s the message in those words which has turned thousands of people over the history of the church into dynamos. And it can change you into a dynamo tonight if you let it sink in. The question is, how in the world could God guarantee that we’re going to be holy? How can he guarantee that, when he himself is holy and a judge? How can he guarantee that rebels—weak, foolish rebels—how can he guarantee that we’re going to be perfect and holy and gracious?

There’s a parallel passage to Ephesians 1; it’s 1 Corinthians 1. In 1 Corinthians 1, you have almost the same basic sentiment. I quoted it probably a week or two ago, and it’s one of my most important—it’s probably the most important passage to me personally in the Bible. It starts like this, just like in Ephesians 1, it starts with what the Father does.

It says, "Consider your call, brothers. Not many of you were wise—not many of you, according to worldly standards, were wise—not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised, even the things that are nothing, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human flesh can boast in his presence."

Now look carefully. That is my life verse: God chose the foolish things to shame the wise, he chose the weak things to shame the strong. Now, I’ve often said that’s my life verse, and over the years when I’ve preached on that text and I said when I see that, I see myself, I’ve had people come up afterwards and say, "That doesn’t make much sense. How can you identify with being weak and foolish? You seem successful."

Now for a fleeting minute, it’s wonderful to hear anybody in the world think that a minister could be making any contribution to society at all. For the sake of my profession, I can almost be happy that they said that, but that’s a fleeting second. Because when somebody says, "Well, how could you identify with that?" it shows that they don’t understand the Gospel.

If you understand the Gospel, it completely shatters your normal way of thinking. There’s only three ways of thinking: God has chosen me because I’m strong, or God has rejected me because I’m weak, or God has chosen me because I’m weak. Which of those three makes the most sense?

Listen: God has chosen me because I’m strong; God has rejected me because I’m weak; God has chosen me because I’m weak. Which of those three makes sense? The first two make perfect sense. Heck yeah, of course you choose the one who’s strong, you reject the one who’s weak.

What idiot would say God chose me because I’m weak? Well, Paul, the idiot Saint Paul. The Bible says that. How could that be? If you don’t understand the Gospel, you would say either I’m strong and therefore God chooses me or I’m weak and God rejects me.

And Paul has the audacity to say, "No, you see, salvation is completely and sheerly and totally by grace and therefore, God, with his divine sense of humor to show that no one is worthy and no one can make themselves Christians, has a particular delight in going after the weak and the messed up and the foolish to show the whole world that their wisdom is nothing, that their strength is nothing."

The question is, how could that be? How could God be a just God and do that? How could he choose the weak? How could he choose the rebel? Isn’t he a great judge?

Another way to put it: if God is not a perfectly righteous judge who will punish all evil, there’s no hope for the world. But if God is a perfectly righteous judge who will punish all evil, there’s no hope for us. And that seems to be a dilemma that we can’t get out of. Either you’ve got a God who punishes all evil and we’re sunk, or you’ve got a God who doesn’t punish evil—he kind of winks at evil—and he says, "Well, boys will be boys and girls will be girls and everything else will be everything else and I’m just kind of a laid-back God and I’m not going to punish," and then there’s no hope for the future.

So, how could we be saved? How could God choose the weak? And the answer is "in him." Now you see, 1 Corinthians goes on. Why did God choose the weak? How can he choose the weak? How can he choose the foolish? How can he choose the lowly and despised?

And see, 1 Corinthians 1 goes on in this way and says, "For of him, you have become in Christ Jesus, who has been made for us to be our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption." Do you see that? See, in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul is saying God doesn’t choose the strong and he doesn’t reject the weak, but he chooses the weak.

How can he do that? Because "in him," you have become wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. His righteousness has become yours. It’s in him, it’s in him, in him you’re everything. Apart from him you’re nothing. In him you’re righteous, you’re wise, you’re holy, you’re redeemed.

That word "in him" is your life. It’s because of "in him" that we do not choose between the ones who say God has chosen me because I’m strong, God has rejected me because I’m weak. If you don’t understand "in him"—or in the old King James, it says "in whom," same thing. "In whom we have redemption," "in him we have redemption."

If you don’t understand those two little words, you’re forever trapped between "He chooses me because I’m strong," "He rejects me because I’m weak," and you’re going to go back and forth because you’re going to have strong weeks and you’re going to have weak weeks, and you’re going to always be going back and forth, friends.

And when you come and see anything that the Bible says about election and about being saved surely by grace and being chosen, and God just setting his love on you not because of your desert but just because he loves you—a love that has no other rationale but itself, that it cannot be overrun or overwhelmed by your faults but instead it overwhelms your faults. He doesn’t love you because you’re lovely; he loves you to make you lovely. You want to understand that. If you don’t understand "in him," totally "in him."

Guest (Female): Marriage is one of the most significant human relationships there is, but it’s also one of the most difficult and misunderstood. In *The Meaning of Marriage*, Tim and Kathy Keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand God's vision for marriage. Whether you're single, considering marriage, or have been married for a long time, *The Meaning of Marriage* will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of God.

*The Meaning of Marriage* is our thank you for your gift this month to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. To request your copy today, visit gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

Tim Keller: Now, "in him" also means this: it means that Jesus Christ did not come to show us how to be good people. He did not come to teach us the way. He came to be our substitute and to actually accomplish something for us.

There’s an awful lot of churches that will go at it this way. They will say, "Well, we’re modern people." I don’t know if any of you went to college and you took New Testament 101, but you might have run into a whole school of German scholars and theologians who talked in the early part of the 20th century about demythologizing the Bible. Did you ever hear that?

"We’ve got to demythologize the Bible." What’s that mean? Well, the idea was that there’s all these mythical elements in—listen to this, this is very important. This has been done in church after church after church in this country and in this city.

"We’ve got to look at the Bible, and there’s a lot of great things in the Bible, but there’s a lot of mythological elements that the modern mind can’t believe anymore. We’ve got to pull out the supernatural, we’ve got to pull out the miraculous, we’ve got to pull out all those ancient legends, and we’ve got to get the teaching, the basic principles of Christianity, because those things will turn our lives around and will show us how to live and how to change our world and how to be better people."

So what are the mythological elements we take out? Well, we take out the virgin birth, the idea that Jesus is the preexistent Son of God come to earth. Can't believe that. We take out the idea that on the cross, Jesus Christ turned away the wrath of God and paid for our sins. Oh, we can’t believe in an angry God and all that stuff. That’s the Greek stuff.

Remember all the Greek myths? Here’s Agamemnon and he’s on his way to Troy—or I guess he’s on his way back from Troy—and the boat is terribly—it’s foundering because there’s a horrible west wind. And so what does he do? The gods are unhappy. So he takes one of his children, he takes his daughter, and he offers her up a blood sacrifice. He kills her, and immediately the gods, their wrath is turned away.

And that’s one of those old awful pagan primitive obscene myths from the ancient times where people were scared of nature and they made up these ideas as a way of—they weren’t scientific, it was a pre-scientific idea—so they made up these stories to help them deal with the great unknowns of nature. And unfortunately, one of those mythological elements has crept into the Scripture, this thing about God’s wrath and Jesus turning away. Oh no, we can’t believe in that.

And we can’t believe in a literal physical resurrection anymore. We can’t believe that if you were there with a Polaroid camera, you would have actually seen the stone rolled away and Jesus coming out. We can’t believe in those things, but we can get the principles, we can get the teaching. That’s the important thing.

Not if you look at this word "in him." Your redemption is in him. Let me say something and you can quote me anywhere: Jesus was a failure as an educator. You heard it here first. A failure.

Listen, you musicians, piano, right? Suppose somebody hires you to educate a child in the piano. You’re going to teach the child piano. All right, what if the second lesson with a second-grade student, the second lesson, you sit down and you play a Chopin piece, and then you turn around and say, "Now you do it. Go ahead, you do it." You’re a failure as a teacher. You should go back and take educational psychology 101. You’re supposed to break it down. You can’t give a second-grader on the second lesson this wonderful, beautiful picture and then say, "Okay, you try it." All that will do is discourage the child. All that will do is create in the child a sense of inadequacy. You’re a lousy teacher.

What if one of you is a workout, a trainer, a gym coach? And somebody comes to you and says, "I want you to train me. I need to get in shape." You say, "Fine." The very, very first time, you bring them into the gym and you say, "Let me show you. I can press 300 pounds. Let me show you, I can do 300 sit-ups. Watch." And you get up and you say, "Now you do it." You’re a failure as an educator. The person’s going to die. It’s going to be in the papers.

You’re a wonderful athlete, but you’re a total failure as an educator. Jesus Christ shows up and he says, "Let me tell you the kind of holiness and the kind of integrity and the kind of godliness and the kind of purity and the kind of love that should characterize your life." He takes the law of Moses and he expounds it in a Sermon on the Mount, and he gives us a standard that is so impossible, it is so much beyond even our understanding that we had of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament.

Look at the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament. Look how wonderful they are, but look at how hard they are to obey. And Jesus comes along and says, "You know the commandment 'thou shalt not kill'? You know what it really means? It means you can’t be hostile, it means you can’t hold a grudge, it means you can’t be cold to people, it means you can’t reject them, it means you can never fail to treat them with love." And you say, "Oh." "Now you try it," he says.

In other words, he puts up a standard that is absolutely impossible to reach. And he says, "Be perfect as I am perfect." Now friends, if he came as a teacher, he is an utter failure. He is worse than the person who at the second lesson with a second-grade teacher says, "Here’s a Chopin sonata, now you try it." We’d be discouraged. If you’re the parent of that child, you would say, "Excuse me, I’d like my money back. You’re no teacher."

If Jesus came as a teacher, he was a failure. And if you take all of the mythological elements, so-called, out of the Bible, you’ve got a complete failure and you’ve got no rationale at all. You have no explanation for why in the world the Apostles would have been so completely changed by their contact with Jesus.

You have no idea in the world why they should be so changed by their contact with Jesus that they should have been able to turn the world upside down. Do you think the Sermon on the Mount would have transformed anybody? Somebody coming and saying, "Here, look at this incredible picture of what you should be like." It gives you a nosebleed even to listen to it. And then Jesus says, "Go and do it." Is that going to energize people? Could that have possibly changed them?

C.F.D. Moule, who’s a teacher of New Testament at Cambridge, says, "If the coming into existence of Christianity, a phenomenon undeniably attested to in the New Testament, rips a great hole in history—a hole the size and shape of the resurrection—what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with?" The actual historical effect is inconceivable without the resurrection of Jesus as its objective historical cause.

Now, I’m not talking about the resurrection; I’m talking about the redemptive work as a whole of Jesus. What is he saying? He is saying there’s no way that the teaching of Jesus would have done anything but crush people into the dirt. Jesus says, "This is holiness, this is the kind of life you need to live." That would just crush people into the dirt if that’s all he was—a teacher.

Instead, these people were transformed. How could that be? Because they knew that their holiness was in him. They realized that he died for them and when he died for them, when they died in him, they were treated as if they had paid all the debts that Jesus paid when he died.

And they saw that when he was raised and they were raised in him, they were as beautiful in God’s sight as if they had been raised in his holiness perfect and had lived as great a life as Jesus. Our redemption is in him.

Martin Luther, John Wesley, all those people, until they understood "we’re redeemed in him, we’re saved in him"—not by listening to his teaching and now we go and get ourselves saved, we make ourselves Christians—but "in him." It wasn’t until they saw that, that they were transformed to become dynamos. There is no way that the teaching of Jesus Christ can possibly account for the effect in history.

Now, one more thing that we can probably adjust here: "in him." Let’s use this "in him" as a test for a minute. Let me put it this way. Let me ask you this: do you know if you’re a Christian?

As a pastor, I’m continually sitting down with people and saying, "As far as you’re concerned, do you believe you’re a Christian? Are you a Christian?" And an awful lot of times, people say, "I hope so," "I’m trying real hard," "I think so." And when they say that, and they don’t immediately start talking about Jesus—immediately—it shows that they really don’t understand "in him." They don’t understand that the redemption is in him.

I put it this way: if I asked you, "Is your life energized now by the concept in these two little words?" I have asked people, "Do you believe that God will accept you into heaven?" I don’t know if any of you have ever read the book or taken the training called Evangelism Explosion in our connection, our fellowship. And in talking to people to try to ascertain where they are spiritually, he asks them a question. I’ll ask you a question.

If you were to die tonight and suddenly appear before God and he were to say, "Why should I let you into heaven?" what would you say? That’s the question. You ever heard that question before? It’s not a bad question; it’s a telling question. Another way to put the question is to say, "Well, if you knew that tonight was your last night, would you have hopes that God would accept you, and what would your hopes be founded on?"

Now let tell you a couple of the answers that I usually get. One of the answers is, "Because I think God is forgiving. I believe that I’m a sinner, but I believe in the mercy of God." Is that the right answer? "The reason I believe that God will receive me into heaven is God is a merciful God, he’s a forgiving God."

There was a French skeptic, wasn’t a Christian and lived a very licentious life, and as he was dying, somebody asked him, "Do you believe that God will receive you?" and his last words were, "God will forgive me, that’s his job." In other words, he’s forgiving. Do you think the idea that God is a laid-back God, that he’s just merciful, he’ll overlook? Do you think that will ever change somebody?

Let me tell you something: when I’m with my children and they’re acting up, and I’m just too wimpy or too lazy or something to ever, ever come down on them—if I keep saying five times in a row, "If you do that one more time," five times in a row, "If you do that one more time, I’m going to do this or I’m going to take that away." In other words, if it’s my job to continually just overlook sins, does that change my children? It makes them a lot worse. They’re not changed; they get worse and worse and worse.

Just talking about God’s mercy is not the reason that God is going to let you into heaven. Some people say, "Well, I’ve been very, very sorry for my sins." Okay, sure, you’ve been very, very sorry for your sins. Do you think that’ll earn it?

If somebody says, "Well, I have really tried very, very hard. I’ve really tried my best." That’s another answer. Another answer that people very often give is they say, "I’ve had a hard life. I think God’s going to let me in because I’ve lived a hard life, I’ve suffered. I’ve done some things wrong, but that’s mitigating circumstances." If you say any of those things, you don’t understand what it means to be a Christian. Because here’s what a Christian says: "In him, I am redeemed. In him, my sins are gone. In him, I’m accepted. Apart from him, I am nothing."

You see, if you understand that for Christ and Christ alone’s sake, God will accept you, then you understand the Gospel. It’s in him alone that you have redemption. So if you’re a guilt-ridden person, you don’t understand that "in him," you’re perfect.

If you’re a proud person and you feel a little bit better than most other folks, if you say God’s going to take me to heaven because I’m better than most folks, then you still don’t understand "in him." If you’re living a licentious life and you start to say, "Well, God’s just a forgiving God and I know that I’m not doing right, but on the other hand, I think this is what is true for me," you still don’t understand that it’s only in him that you’re redeemed, and he redeemed you so you’ll be holy and live a righteous life.

Look, this is a doctrinal and practical test. It distinguishes real Christians from legalists. It distinguishes people who believe in orthodox Christianity from others. There’s some people who say, "Well, Jesus is not the only way to God, there’s many ways to God. The good Buddhist and the good Muslims, they’re going to come to God too." And that means you don’t have to have grace alone, it’s possible to get to heaven through good works.

If you say Jesus is not the only way to God, what you’re actually saying is it’s possible to be good enough. It doesn’t necessarily take grace. But if you believe "in him," you know Jesus is the only way. If you believe it’s "in him," then you know that you’re saved by grace alone.

If you believe it’s "in him," you’re no longer guilty and always looking down at yourself. If, on the other hand, it’s "in him," you’re no longer proud and looking up and being inflated. In him. In whom. In him. That’s the reason God can choose you, because all been accomplished for you.

Hey, last thing. What do you have in him? You have the forgiveness of sins, because redeemed by the blood. We have to come back to this later, but one of the things that has really worked the most on my heart in the last few years is a little statement I read in an old sermon, a very old sermon once that said, "Stop and think what it means that you have forgiveness of sins. Stop and think about it."

You realize that the Bible tells us that apart from Jesus Christ, you would be cast off forever. In a sense, you’d be put into prison forever. You’d never get out. Which means that even if you’d spent 10,000 years cast out from God, you wouldn’t have paid your debt back. That’s how big it is.

Jesus Christ, just in those few hours of torment on the cross, suffered infinitely because he lost an infinite love, an infinite relationship, and therefore paid it off completely. So don’t you see how hard it would be? Those of you who are living your life trying to atone for your own sin, don’t you see how impossible it is?

There’re some things that you’re trying to live off and you’re trying to work off in your life that you never will. There are some of you who, because you feel guilty about this or because you feel guilty about this, you’re coming to church. That’s no reason. Because you feel guilty about this and because you feel guilty about this, you’re in this and that relationship.

Don't you know, if you said, "God, I would like to go to hell for 10,000 years to pay off this sin, the sins of my life," that wouldn’t be enough? Don't you see how completely impossible it is to go the way you’re going? But "in him," you have complete forgiveness of sins. Total and utter forgiveness of sins.

Poor Henry V, before the big battle, he’s there saying, "Oh Lord, forgive me. I’ve done everything I can. You know, with my wealth, I pay 500 beggars every day and give them food. I have built cathedrals. I have 6,000 priests in my employ that pray to you and do all these things. Oh, forgive me."

Poor Henry. You know, I like him an awful lot. And there he is. And he’s really not that old. I mean, if he’d only been able to get with Martin Luther, who would have taken him to Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7 and said, "In him, you have forgiveness of sins through the redemption of his blood according to the riches of his grace."

Just take this entire week and live out of those two words. You’ll take criticism well this week, you’ll look at things from God’s perspective and not be that upset when things go wrong. Just live off those two words every day this week and watch what happens. I dare you because I love you enough to dare you. In him.

Let’s pray. Our Father, help us to live out of that, help us to live off of that, help us to see just what we have in you, O Lord Jesus Christ. And we ask that you would help us to see the places where we have forgotten that: the places where we’re guilty, the places where we’re proud, the places where we’re licentious and disobedient, the places where we are not seeing our completeness in you. Show us that and enable us, we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime, visit gospelinlife.com.

Today's sermon was recorded in 1992. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.