The Unchanging Truth

Announcer: Welcome to The Unchanging Truth, the verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Jerod Gilcher, lead pastor of Christ Community Bible Church in Arlington, Texas. Through the living and active word of God, The Unchanging Truth exists to encourage your soul, transform your life, and help you trust and treasure Christ as redeemer, savior, and king. Now, opening the scriptures and proclaiming the truth that never changes, here is Dr. Jerod Gilcher.

Dr. Jerod Gilcher: What is salvation? What does it mean to be saved? We talk about salvation all the time, and we should, but what is salvation? Here it is, listen carefully: salvation is all of the blood-bought blessings predestined by the Father and purchased by the Son. That’s salvation.

To put it another way, the word salvation is a summary word. It’s a summary way to describe all of the riches of redemption purchased by the ransom price of Jesus Christ. Again, salvation is a vault of treasure. Every single individual aspect of salvation is a gold bar that makes what salvation what it is.

Regeneration, that's a gold bar. Propitiation, that's a gold bar. Forgiveness, imputation, justification, adoption, reconciliation—what are those? Gold bars of redemption. Add them together, and what do you have but the priceless treasure of eternal salvation? And that is what the gospel has the power to give.

Maybe you think, "Okay, if that's true, if the message is the means and the proclamation is the power to save sinners, then why is there not more success? Not many people seem to believe this. More people disbelieve it than do believe it, and therefore, maybe Paul's a little overconfident," we say.

Maybe there is cause for fear and shame because the gospel is the power of God to save some of the time. Some of the time. To which we say, maybe. That depends on how you look at it. Even more than that, it depends on your theology of sovereignty, doesn't it?

The gospel, the power of God, isn't a gun full of blanks mixed with some live ammo. It's not that. God's power isn't some gamble or roll of the dice. "Maybe we'll get lucky today." No, listen carefully: the power of God is focused like a laser. It always does what God wants.

Or put it this way: the power of God is the means by which he achieves everything he predestined before the ages began. Even then, he chose some from every nation and he gave them to his Son, for whom he would die and purchase with his blood. The point is, the gospel saves every single person God intends. Or to put it even better, the gospel saves every person God elects.

Which means election does not make evangelism meaningless. It guarantees that our evangelism cannot possibly fail, because all we need to do is go out there and find them by indiscriminately preaching the gospel to everyone. Do you see?

What that does is free us. It frees us from doubt, fear, and shame. You remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:18? He says, "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are called, it is the power of God." You see, beloved, we just don't care if the world thinks the gospel is ridiculous. We don't care.

It is the power of God to save. Many will reject, some will believe. The elect will believe, and our job is simply to preach. It's simply to proclaim a sinless, crucified, risen, returning redeemer and just let the chips fall where they may. Let me ask you this. Put you on the spot here.

Are you ashamed of the gospel? Silent about the gospel? Do you ever feel the temptation to spice the gospel up a little bit? Jazz it up just a little bit? Make it sound more credible? More scientifically plausible? Less wacko to a 21st-century postmodern culture?

Do you ever try to cover up the scandal of a bloody cross, which shows sinners to be exactly what they are, namely sinners who need a savior? Oh beloved, who has believed our message? Who has believed? Who loves and believes the gospel we proclaim? Precious few, hardly any.

But in the end, it doesn't matter. It doesn't move us at all because we're not after their approval. We're not after their acceptance, nor are we even after, ultimately, their friendship. We are after their souls. Only the message of a mutilated savior is the means to bring them from death to life.

But you've got to believe. You've got to believe it. That's what Paul says, isn't it? The gospel is the power of God to everyone who believes. Just because the crucifixion happened doesn't change anything about the status of your soul. You have to hear and comprehend and agree and yield to the message.

You've got to believe, and yet the question is, what does that mean? What is faith? It's one of those well-trodden, well-used words that we talk about all the time. You've got to believe, you've got to have faith, and we should use that word. We've got to define that word. What is faith?

You know faith is not just believing what you can't see. This isn't mere intellectual agreement with a few historical facts. There are historical facts, but it's not just that. Rather, authentic saving faith—listen carefully—is these three things: faith is desperation, faith is admission, and faith is submission.

It is desperation, it is admission, it is submission. Let's take these one at a time. First, faith is desperation. Faith is despair in your worthless works to save you, and where you cast yourself alone on Jesus Christ for all of his redemptive achievement.

Number two, faith is admission, where you admit that the only contribution that we have to our own salvation are the sins that need to be forgiven and the guilt that needs to be atoned. Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling; naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace.

And then number three, faith is submission. Submission to the one with all authority, who alone satisfies the deepest longings of the soul. That is faith, where it is desperation and admission and submission to Jesus Christ as Lord and God and King and Savior and Treasure of the soul.

The question is, is that the kind of faith that you possess? Is that the faith that you possess? Did you despair in your worthless works to save you and cast yourself upon Jesus Christ alone? Did you admit that the only contribution you had to your own salvation were the sins that need to be forgiven and the guilt that needed to be atoned?

Did you submit without qualification to the one with all authority, to Jesus Christ as Lord and God and King and Savior and Treasure of the soul? Because that is what it means to believe, and it's for everyone who believes. And yet Paul said something funny, didn't he?

He said it's for everyone who believes, but then watch what he does. He adds a bit of a caveat, a bit of a clarification: to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Do you see what he does? It's for everyone, but then he divides up humanity into two different groups: the Jew first and then also to the Greek. That hardly seems fair. That actually feels rather discriminatory.

"These people get the gospel first, then you." I don't know about that. And yet, if you think about it, that statement is the essence of God's love, isn't it? Tell me that God is faithful without telling me that God is faithful. The answer is: to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

What I mean is that God has a plan for the Jews, and that plan is still on. It's still on. Every covenant promise God ever made to the Jews will in the end be fulfilled in full. So the gesture of the apostles to walk into a city and stop at the synagogue first and preach the gospel was a vivid way to say that the plan of God for the Jews remains profoundly unchanged. Does that make sense?

Because once you are chosen, you cannot be unchosen. Whether Jews or Greeks, it doesn't matter. The gospel is the power of God to save. So I just want to ask you, do you believe that? Do you believe that the life-giving, soul-saving power of the gospel is able to do in others what it did in you?

Do you understand? You know what we are? I'm so tempted to do this one time: next time someone asks me what you do for a living, I want to say something just kind of wild and wonky and weird. I want to say, "You know what I do? I am a broker of eternal life. I arrange meetings between sinners and the God of the universe."

That is exactly what we are: brokers, salvation middlemen. There's no shame in that. Good night, what are we doing? The gospel is the power of God to save. It happened to us, and it's unbelievable we would be entrusted with this. So may God give us strength, church, to preach the gospel, to contend for the faith, to be willing to be hated, to be willing to be fired.

To bear shame for the name no matter the cost. Because how could we not do that? How could we look poor sinners in the eyes and say and feel nothing? As former slaves trapped in darkness, how could we not proclaim to current slaves trapped in darkness that the light of the world has come? There's no shame in that.

Which brings us to the second reason Paul's eager and unashamed. Number two: the gospel gives the righteousness of God to justify. The gospel gives the righteousness of God to justify. And you probably know this, but Romans 1:17 is the verse God used providentially to ignite and to unleash the entire Protestant Reformation.

There it is, 1517. And there is Martin Luther, you see him in his low-lit study. Stone walls, probably, candle burning on his desk, Greek Bible open to Romans 1, in particular verse 17. He's preparing to lecture on Romans at the university, and you have to understand, Luther was not a true Christian in any real sense of the term.

He was a traditional Roman Catholic seeking to obtain his salvation through the addition and contribution of his good works. He did not understand salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone. He did not know that. And yet here he is, deep in meditation, stuck on Romans 1:17, agonizing over the text and what it means.

And here is what he said: "I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But up until then, it was a single phrase in verse 17 that stood in my way, namely the phrase 'the righteousness of God.' I hated that phrase, the righteousness of God," he says.

Because according to Catholic tradition, I had been taught to understand the righteousness of God with which he punishes the sinner. And though I lived as a monk without reproach, I knew that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that his anger was appeased by my good works. I did not love—no, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.

I was angry with God. Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Do you hear the issue here? The problem is God is righteous and I am not. I work my fingers down to the bone in an attempt to appease the righteousness of God, to appease his wrath, and I know it doesn't work.

No matter what I do, it's never enough. I never know how good is good enough. How can I cobble together a few good works and believe that that will appease the righteous wrath and anger of God? I'm doomed because God is righteous and I am profoundly unrighteous. That's his issue, and he is exactly right.

And yet, as he labored over verse 17, there was this faint glimmer of hope because as he studied the text, it seemed to challenge the traditional Catholic teaching, which it does. And he goes on: "Nevertheless, I beat unrelentingly on Paul in that place in Romans, most ardently desiring to know what it is that Saint Paul wanted."

"At last," he said, "by the mercy of God—notice, meditating day and night—I gave heed to the context of the words: 'The righteous shall live by faith.' There, listen carefully, there I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that which God gives to the sinner by faith." Are you still with me?

"That through faith in the gospel," he says, "we are counted righteous as a gift of God, and that on that basis of faith, we are justified before the merciful God. Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered through open gates into paradise itself." Which is exactly what happened. Do you hear what Paul discovered, what he understood from verse 17?

Listen carefully: that through faith in the gospel, God gives to believing sinners the very righteousness that he demands. That's what he saw, and that's called imputation. Verse 17: "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'But the righteous shall live by faith.'" And there it is, you see it there: the righteousness of God. And yet notice the logic of the text. The first word in the sentence is what? "For."

It's for, which means he's explaining what he just said. And what he just said is that the gospel is the power of God to save. And what verse 17 now is doing—listen carefully—is that it is explaining the way God saves or how God saves. And how God saves is the righteousness of God.

In other words, when Paul says "the righteousness of God," what he means is the righteousness from God. The righteousness from God, given from God to the believing sinner, by which the sinner is justified and counted as righteous. Does that make sense? Because you know that one of the problems caused by sin is that before the judgment seat of God, in the cosmic courtroom of God as it were, we were legally, judicially, and officially guilty, right?

This was not a small thing. This was tragic. We are internally corrupt and defiled by sin, that is true, but we are also legally condemned and guilty for sin. That is also true. And yet God has made a way to find sinners not guilty without dropping the charges.

He made a way as if before a court of law for sinners to be legally, judicially, and officially counted as righteous, namely through faith in Christ, the righteous one. You see, that's why faith, beloved, that's why faith is so critical. You see, when we put our faith in Christ, we didn't just alter our beliefs, change our theology.

No, when we put our faith in Christ, our lives became so inseparably intertwined with his that his perfect, flawless obedience was then transferred to our bankrupt spiritual bank account so that the Father now sees us with the very righteousness of his Son. The fancy theological word for that is called imputation.

And this is not new. It's not new. Paul's not making this up. "I've got a new thing I'm bringing to the table here guys. I know you haven't heard this, pretty radical stuff: imputation." "Wait, what is that?" No, this goes all the way back to Genesis. Genesis 15: Abraham believed in Yahweh and it was counted to him as righteousness.

That's what Isaiah said the Messiah would do. Chapter 53: "The righteous one, my servant, will justify the many as he will bear their iniquities." And then if you've got the notes, look at Romans 3, this is astonishing. Absolutely incredible, Romans 3:21 and 22: "But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets."

Do you see that? The righteousness of God. Here it is: "Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe." Did you see that? Righteousness from God for those who believe. That's astonishing. Or to put it in the words of Paul, "He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him."

And maybe you think, "Why are you laboring with this so long? Why taking so much time to describe this? I think I get it." Well, the reason why I labor on it is because it's the one that it's the hardest for us to love and it's the hardest for us to truly appreciate. It's the hardest to grasp because you think about it: "Okay, well, I guess I'm justified. I guess the righteousness of Christ was imputed to me. I didn't feel it happen. I didn't feel any different when it happened."

Well, of course you didn't. Of course we didn't. This was a judicial declaration about the state of your soul made in the spirit realm that we were not present to hear or witness. But that doesn't matter at all if we weren't there to see it or hear it. Justification is more real than what you feel because it's based on the sinless life and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.

You see, this is not a cold legal transaction, rather it is part of the loving adoption process whereby we were made sons and daughters of the living God.

Announcer: Thanks for joining us for The Unchanging Truth, the verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Jerod Gilcher and Christ Community Bible Church in Arlington, Texas. At Christ Community Bible Church, we exist to prize, portray, and proclaim the supremacy of Christ as we trust in his word and wait for his return. We hope today's teaching has encouraged your soul and helped you trust and treasure Christ as your redeemer, savior, and king. If you're in the DFW area and looking for a church home, join us for worship Sunday mornings at 10:30. To learn more about the mission of the church, meet the pastoral staff, or plan a visit, go to ccbiblechurch.com. You'll find ministry services and additional teachings there as well. Just click on the resources tab to get started. That's ccbiblechurch.com. Join us again next time as we open the scriptures together and proclaim the truth that never changes. This has been The Unchanging Truth.