Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): 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. This summer and through the end of September, we're going through one of Tim Keller's most extensive sermon series in which he teaches from the first three chapters of Ephesians, looking at how the Bible's central truths about salvation and grace will shape even the most practical parts of our everyday life.

Tim Keller: Number one. And I promise not to do that again. And Laron promises that I won't do that again either. We're going to the Lord's Supper tonight and, of course, the Lord's Supper is a visible expression of the word of God. What I'm about to give you is also an expression of the word of God. Preaching and the Lord's Supper go together. They're a kind of one-two punch to give you the realities of the word of God. So I'm going to be a little briefer than usual. We're looking at verse seven of Ephesians 1, and I'm just going to read you the verse because I'm going to do this week and later two studies to make sure we understand the verse.

The verse goes this way: "In him we have redemption through his blood for the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, and in accordance with the riches of his grace." Now, it's such a great verse. And you know that, especially if you got the newsletter recently, you know that I promised myself I was going to move a little more quickly through Ephesians 1 than I am. And I will, but this verse is too rich and beautiful to look at once.

Last week, we basically preached on the first two words: "In him." And we saw that Christianity says that all the atonement, all of the saving is in him, not in us. Now today, tonight, I'd like to look just for a moment to prepare us to go to the Lord's table at the word "redemption." The word redemption is a pretty general word. In him we have redemption. But it's one of the most precious words that a Christian can know or have. Redemption means to be saved from and to receive forgiveness of sins.

Last week I made a quick reference to *The Fisher King*, a fairly recent movie. Actually, *The Fisher King* is about a talk show host on the radio. An unstable caller calls in, and he goads the man. The man, as a response to that phone call, goes out and takes a gun and begins to mow people down in a restaurant and kills a number of them. And then that talk show host, the story of the movie is how that talk show host deals with his guilt.

The movie is a lot of fun to watch, but at one point the talk show host, whose name is Jeff Bridges, says, "I wish I could just pay the fine and go home." But he can't get forgiveness. He can't get redemption. But in the process, the whole movie is about the fact that he meets a man whose life was ruined because his wife was killed through the talk show host's indiscretion. He tries to help that man put his life together, and in the process, he saves another life. And at the end, there's joy because he's been redeemed. He's paid his own ransom. He's worked off his guilt. He's atoned for his sin.

It's very clear because the movie ends on a happy note. That's Hollywood redemption. I can atone for my sins with a little bit of luck and just running into the right homeless man one day and accidentally breaking into a house and finding a person who was accidentally committing suicide and saving his life, and now I'm redeemed. That's Hollywood redemption. I think people who write books don't have to worry quite as much about box office and they can be a little bit more realistic, like Shakespeare.

In *Macbeth*, Lady Macbeth is eaten up with guilt because she helped her husband murder somebody. She goes insane with the guilt and she looks at her hand and she keeps seeing blood spots on it. She says, "Out, damned spot! All the sweet perfume in Arabia could not sweeten this little hand." And she's going insane. Macbeth looks at her and turns to the doctor and there's this great line from Macbeth here. He turns to the doctor and he says, "Canst thou not pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart?"

That's what Macbeth wants. What can we do to get forgiveness? The doctor turns to Macbeth and says, "There is no such antidote for this disease." And then says, "In this disease, the patient must minister to himself." You see this a lot in literature, by the way. At the end of Faulkner's novel, *Requiem for a Nun*, there's a simple woman, a nurse, a black woman who in the south years ago was a nursemaid to a prominent southern couple. At the very end of the novel, there's this wonderful and amazing reversal because the black woman is condemned for doing what she really did. She was guilty of murder.

And yet, though she's guilty of murder and though she was sentenced and she's about to be executed, she finds peace with Jesus. And yet the woman who's not condemned, her name is Temple, the southern lady, is full of self-hatred and she hates her marriage and she hates her life and she hates herself. At the end, she comes to Nancy. Temple, the free woman, the rich woman, comes to Nancy, the poor woman, the condemned woman, and says, "How are you doing this? Why do you have this peace?" Nancy says, "You have to believe. I can get low with Jesus." And as she's being led out, Temple turns around and she says, "But if there's nobody to forgive me, I'm damned. I'm doomed."

Again and again in literature, we see that you can't deal with your guilt. You can't get rid of it through some sweet oblivious antidote. You can't find a bump into a homeless man and realize if I put his life together, then I'll be redeemed as well. The Bible says in him is your redemption. Now the word redemption that I'd like us to consider tonight for a moment is a word that unfortunately in English has become awfully vague. What does the word redeem mean now? It means usually to rescue something in a general way.

But the word redemption translates a Greek word here that literally means to pay a ransom to get someone out of captivity. All of the dictionaries, all of the lexicons say that this word, *lutron*, the Greek word, this word means a ransom. That's a better word for us in English than the word redeem even right now, though the word redeemer, of course, is quite a favorite word around here. But you see, the word redeem means ransom. And the word ransom has two aspects to it. First of all, there's a captivity, there's a bondage, there's a slavery. And secondly, there is an exchange made to get the person out of slavery. There's a payment made.

In all of the old B-movies and all the old B-TV shows, there's an old plot. There's a villain and there's a hero. And the villain's trying to get the hero. So the villain goes and captures someone who the hero loves and then sends a note and says, "Unless you turn yourself over to me and put yourself into my power, this one will get it." And so what always happens in the plot is the hero comes and offers himself to the villain and the villain lets the loved one go. In that case, the hero has become a redeemer. The hero has become a ransomer. There's two aspects to this word. There's a captivity, there's a slavery, and there's an exchange, a substitution, a payment.

To any Christian who understands the word, the title Redeemer, of all of the titles of Jesus Christ, there's none more precious. And this word, if you understand it, tells us two things that modern people don't really want to believe. I'm going to look at one of them tonight and one of them later. Tonight, the first one is this. A lot of you have come to church for I don't know what the reasons are, but you keep coming. And you haven't been in other churches, but you come and you hear something and you keep coming back. And you say, "This is interesting. Christianity's interesting. Maybe I need this. Maybe I need Christ."

But it's one thing to see that you're a sufferer and you need a helper. It's another thing to see that you are in bondage, you are in captivity, you're in prison, you're guilty, you're a sinner, and you need a savior. I've done plenty of counseling over the years, and in the counseling I very often hear people say, "I'm a sinner because I'm a sufferer." But the Bible says you're a sufferer because you're a sinner. What comes first? What you need first is redemption. You need a ransom so your sins can be forgiven. You're not just a person who needs a little help. You're in captivity. You're not a person who simply needs a helper. You need a ransomer. You need a redeemer.

There's a lot of people I would think there's a lot of you out here tonight, too, that say, "I like a lot of the things you say, but very often your language is too dire. It's too serious. You talk about us as if as if we're in danger of falling into hell any minute." I've had people say, "You know, I don't know that I'm a Christian by your definition. I don't know that I'm born again. I don't know that I'm a Christian by your definition. But I'm willing to admit I'm flawed. I'm willing to admit that I sin sometimes. But frankly, I don't feel bound. I don't feel like a slave. I don't feel like I'm in prison. I don't feel like I'm a guilty sinner."

Let me show you why the Bible says that you are even though you don't feel that way. In fact, if you plumb the depths of your own experience, you'll see that what the Bible says is true. The second thing people don't want to hear about Christianity is that your sin was so bad that Jesus Christ had to die for you and there's no other way you can be saved. They don't want to hear that you're a captive, and they don't want to hear about Jesus having to shed his blood to turn aside the wrath of God. I'd like to look just tonight, to prepare us for the Lord's Supper, at the first of these two issues, the first of these two implications of the word redeemer.

You are, the Bible says, under the law until you're born again. You're under the law, you're under the curse of the law, you are a slave to the law. You're chained, you're imprisoned. Whether or not you were raised in a church, whether or not you're religious, you are a slave to the law. You're under the law. You're under the curse of the law. What is a law? Whenever somebody puts a law into whenever there's a law legislated, the law isn't a law unless you say what the penalty is. If a congress puts into puts into effect a law saying that a corporation can't pollute the environment in a certain way, they have to attach they have to attach something to it.

What is the fine? Five dollars? Five million dollars? They have to attach it or the law means nothing. There has to be a curse with the law, or the law's not a law. Did you hear that? If there's not a curse that goes along with the law, now, the congress doesn't call it a curse. Ordinarily, when they pass a law, they don't say, "And cursed be thou, oh corporation, to the tune of five million dollars. May this curse rain on your head." But that's what they're doing. A law isn't a law unless there's a curse. And the Bible says that everybody until you're born again is under the curse of the law.

The law in a sense says, "This one has disobeyed me and I have a claim on this one." And you're under the law objectively and subjectively. Let me explain. Objectively, what it means to be under the curse of the law objectively is simply that the law of God you have broken. There's the Ten Commandments. There's the two great commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself." You've broken those, and you're therefore under the curse of the law of God.

Now, somebody says, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I've always wanted to ask you this and I'm so glad you're anticipating my question. I want to know why it is that God tells us that when people sin against us we're supposed to just forget it. And then when we sin against God, he has this eternal curse on us. Doesn't really seem fair. Look at all these places in the Bible where it says no matter how many times a man sins against you, 70 times seven, you must forgive. And the Bible says if you transgress the law once, one time, you're under the curse of the law. That's not fair. Why can't God do what he asks us to do?" I used to think about that myself until I realized the illogic. I was overlooking one important point and that is that we're not God.

Look, when somebody personally hurts you by insulting you or embarrassing you in front of your friends, there's a lot of ways in which a person can do personal injuries to you. But if someone comes up to you with a knife and a gun and shoots you in the shoulder and tries to stab you and fails to kill you and you're in the hospital and you find out that the police have grabbed that person and now that person's in jail, if you say, "But I forgive him. I'm a Christian, I forgive. You can't arrest him." Now, I don't know quite what the laws of the state are when it comes to pressing charges, but I'm trying to make this case. When the person did that, they were not just doing a personal injury against you. They were not just personally offending against you, but they were also offending against public justice.

A society cannot live, cannot operate without laws that say citizens can't kill each other when they feel like it. You can't have a society without that. You must have a law. And you see, when that person assaulted you, he also assaulted the social reality. And even though you can personally forgive for the personal injury, it's not anywhere near as easy for society to forgive him for what he did. Why? Because if a society just regularly forgives people for trying to murder each other, you can't have a society. Forgiveness is extremely difficult for sins against the public and social reality. Isn't that true? You can pardon a person here and there, but ultimately you've got to uphold the law.

When you disobey the law of God, when you disobey the Ten Commandments, when you disobey the great commandment, do you know what you're doing? The divine law is a fundamental reality in the universe. Please admit that if there is no divine law, if there's no absolute standards, if there's no divine lawgiver and there's no divine judge who will eventually make sure that all of the universe is running and operating according to righteousness, if there is no law and there's no God and there's no judge, then you know, do you not, that violence and racism and oppression are just words? Everything is relative.

If it's really true that there's no God and there's no divine law and when you die you rot, that means that whether you live a violent life or whether you live a decent, compassionate life means no difference and ultimately all categories of right and wrong and violence and oppression and injustice are all subjective categories. And it means that fundamentally and finally, one deed cannot be any different than another. And there's not a person in this room that can live that way. Not one of you. Even if there's anybody who really believes that we can't know if there's a God, when you're dead, you're dead. There is no divine law. Not one of you can live that way.

Just walk up to a person like that. Somebody walk up to you and say, "Oh, I understand that you're a relativist. You may not like what I'm about to do. I'm going to mug you, but you certainly can't say that what I'm doing is immoral." Nobody can live like that. If there isn't a divine law, there isn't a universe. And everyone in this room lives as if there are absolute principles. And therefore, when you sin against God, when you break his law, when you break his moral law, you are not just doing a personal injury to him, but you're sinning against the most public figure there is. You are sinning not just against a social reality, but a cosmic reality.

And if you think it's virtually it's very difficult and almost impossible to forgive people for breaking the laws of the land because to forgive people for breaking the laws of the land means that down would come society, it is even more impossible for you to be forgiven by God. Do you see? May I say it respectfully and reverently that forgiveness, for God to forgive us, was one of the greatest problems, if not the greatest problem that he ever faced. God could say, "Let there be light," and there was light. God could say, "Let there be water," and there was water. God could say, "Let there be animals and men and women," and there could be animals and men and women. But he couldn't say, "Let there be forgiveness."

In the same way that you just can't pardon every murderer because that's the end of the social reality, you can't forgive somebody for breaking the law of God because it's a it's an offense against the cosmic law of God. Do you see the problem? If you don't see the problem, if you don't see that forgiveness is a terrific difficulty for God that he had to take thousands of years to set things up so his son could come and die and pay the penalty, if you don't see that, you will never be transformed by the gospel and the Christian message.

I hear people saying, "Well, if God's a God of love, why doesn't he just forgive us?" Because God's also a God of holiness. And if he's not a holy God, what hope is there for the universe and for you? But on the other hand, if he is a holy God, what hope is there for us sinners? And until you see that it's a tremendous problem for God, forgiveness, and until you see it's a glorious and wise thing that he was to be able to pull it off, when you look at the cross, you'll just say, "What's that?" You'll never be changed. You'll never be forgiven.

Not only that, it'll be hard for you to forgive other people. When you see what God went to the lengths to do, when you realize how God had to lavish his son on us, how Jesus had to voluntarily be tormented and tortured and killed, all because forgiveness is a problem for him. If you see what incredible lengths God would go to to overcome the problem of his forgiving us, let's get to it. We don't have anywhere near as many problems for us to forgive each other. Listen, it's hard for me to forgive you. It's hard for you to forgive the other person. But it's nowhere near as hard as it was for God to forgive us. Look at what he did in order to forgive us. Look at the lengths that he went to. Nothing like what it's going to take for you to forgive your brother and your sister and your neighbor. But you need to. Look at what he did for you. You must forgive. What is it going to take? What is it going to take? You must do it.

Lastly, you're not only under the law objectively until you believe in Jesus. You see, you're under the law, under the curse of the law. You've offended against the public justice. Every sin is a kind of cosmic treason. It's an effort to bring God off of his throne. You're objectively under the curse of the law, but you're also subjectively under the curse of the law. Don't you know that doesn't every one of you deep down inside know you ought to be perfect? Yes. A lot of people have done studies over the fact that if children have anything that goes wrong with their early years, they turn into horrible perfectionists and addicts and workaholics. We know now that if parents divorce, the kids think, "It must be my fault. There must be something bad about me."

If a parent dies, the child thinks, "It must be my fault. There must be something bad about me." If the parent is distant or neglects you at all, the child immediately says, "There must be something bad about me." And we know that. But the thing that I never see in the research is why would the children jump to such stupid conclusions? Unless what the Bible says is true and that is deep down inside, underneath everything, we know we owe God perfect obedience. We know we owe it to God to love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind because he gave us all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind. That's just logical.

We know that we should obey the Golden Rule, that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, we should give our neighbors everything that we would want from them. And anybody who even thinks for a moment about those two most basic rules would go crazy realizing you can't get anywhere close to it. The reason that we're so quick to hate ourselves, the reason we're so quick to become perfectionists is because underneath everything, sleeping tremendously deeply, the Bible says you know. It says it in Romans 1 and 2. You know you should be perfect. You've gone to therapists to try to convince you otherwise. You still know you should be perfect.

With some of us, it sleeps very deep and we've done a pretty good job of keeping it down. With others, it's like an open wound all the time. But those of you who are more laid back, don't laugh at the poor people that seem to be addicted and need all this approval because we're all really the same. Unloving parents don't cause your perfectionism; it just aggravates it. It doesn't create it; it just reveals it. And there's no way out from under this. In some cases, sometimes this knowledge that we owe God perfect obedience sleeps very deep, but in some cases, it wakes up and we begin to realize by looking at the Golden Rule that we have never done a holy deed, we've never had a holy thought, that we owe God everything and we've given him nothing.

And you go so crazy that the first thing you do when that really wakes up is you get religious and you find a religion and you find a church with the most rules you can possibly find, with the most regulations you can possibly find. And you do everything you can by throwing yourself into the you find the most authoritative, legalistic church you can possibly discover, and you do everything you can to be very active in that church to keep God away so that you can defend yourself from what your conscience knows, and that is you need to be perfect and you can't be perfect so you need a redeemer. So you get very religious to try to keep the redeemer out.

So some of you have come from very legalistic and authoritative backgrounds, some of you come from very permissive backgrounds, but I hope you all see that you're under the law until you realize that Jesus has paid it. There's one place in one of my favorite novels where one of the characters goes through tremendous suffering. Whenever I read it, I think of Jesus, and the perfectionist in me is satisfied. There's a place where the character says and think of Jesus on the cross, "I feel no taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree, grass, or flower. I am alone and naked in the dark and there is no veil between me and the fire of the wrath."

When I see what Jesus experienced on my behalf, even the most inveterately perfectionistic part of me says, "That's what I deserve, and it has been paid. It's gone. It's taken." And that's the reason the Bible says you are no longer under the law; you're under grace. And you know what's the most beautiful thing? It wasn't until I understood the gospel that I realized that until I see that I can't obey the law, I can't obey the law. Because the law says you should not only do good deeds, but you should do it simply out of the love of your heart for God, right? Isn't that right?

But until I saw that I could never satisfy God through obeying the law, all the good deeds I did were for me, not for him. Everything I did, I did so that I could feel better about myself, so that he would have favor on me. There wasn't a single thing I ever did trying to satisfy him, trying to deal with that sense that I need to be perfect, trying to deal with that. In all that time, whenever I obeyed the law, I was doing it for me. It wasn't until I realized I couldn't possibly satisfy the law, it wasn't until I received Christ as Savior that my good deeds became things I did for him. Until you see that you can't save yourself through your good deeds, you can't do anything for him.

But when you know you're saved, when you know you're accepted, when you know you're accepted in his love, then your good deeds are for him and him alone because they're acts of gratitude. Until I saw I couldn't obey the law, I couldn't obey the law. And when I saw I couldn't obey the law, I began for the first time to fulfill the law and do things out of love. Stop trying to atone with your own blood. Stop trying to atone with your own sweat. It's difficult at first to finally humble yourself and say, "You know, I went through my unreligious phase in which I just went around and sinned everywhere, and then I got so guilty I went through my incredibly religious phase and did everything I could to hide myself from the sense that I needed a redeemer, that I couldn't be perfect."

And now finally, finally, I see that I have to actually receive Christ as Savior. I thought I had, but I never had. I just really found one more way to try to keep the redeemer out. I was giving myself and giving myself and giving myself for Jesus and I'd never really received him as Savior. It was just one more guilt trip. Now I see what I've got to do. Do it. As we come to the table to receive the elements, give yourself to him and say in him, not in me, there's redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. Let's pray.

Our Father, now that we're going to sing, we're going to take, we're going to eat, help us to enjoy our redemption and the freedom we have, not to disobey the law, but the freedom we have now from having to obey the law as a system of our salvation. We thank you, Lord, that you have shown us what it is to repent, and you shown us how you forgive, and we thank you for it. Help us to rejoice in it and live upon it and rest in it. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and share it with others. For more helpful resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com. There you can subscribe to the Life and the Gospel quarterly journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotions, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelinlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. 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.