Please be seated.
It's good to be with you all again today.
My name is Jonathan.
I've been with you all the last three weeks.
This is our fourth week.
We've been looking at the topic of evangelism,
and we're really, I'm pleased that you're here.
I'm thankful that you're here.
If this is your first time,
welcome to Cheyenne Mountain Prez.
We are really glad that you are here,
and we hope that you'll come back
or that you'll meet somebody new.
I would love to interact with you,
especially afterwards,
if you have thoughts or questions.
Please come up and introduce yourself.
That's one of my favorite parts about this
is getting to talk to people
who are exploring church again or for the first time,
and so we're really glad that you are here.
As a personal, before we get started,
as a personal word,
thank you all so much for your hospitality
the last four weeks as I've been up here
in a lot of ways experimenting,
putting down things that I've been applying
on the college campus for the last seven years,
eight years,
and been beginning to think about
how would we systemize what I've been exploring,
and so in a lot of ways,
you are my guinea pigs
for things that I've seen work
and on a college campus,
but begin to actually train and teach others in it.
It's been really, really, really helpful
and encouraging to me,
and I hope it's been encouraging to you.
If you have had thoughts or questions
or would like to refresh,
someone asked me to remind you all
that everything that we've done
the last three weeks is on YouTube,
so you can go to the Shine Mountain YouTube channel
and re-watch them.
Also, you can find me.
I've told you before,
I hope you know,
that I care so deeply about evangelism.
It's one of my,
it's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
So my,
you can look up RUF Jonathan Clark.
You can find my email address.
You can get it from anyone on the session
or from Pastor Matthew.
Don't reach out to him right now.
Let him rest.
But I'd love to think more with you
when you come up afterwards
and say,
what do I think about this situation
or how do I do this particular case?
I love that.
And so please keep those questions going.
I also encourage you to stick around
and listen to David.
David and I were in seminary together,
which is really a treat.
So I'm thrilled to,
I haven't seen him since seminary,
but it's really a treat to have him here with us today
and to hear about his ministry.
So stick around for that.
I was reflecting,
it's amazing that David's doing ministry in India
and knew him in seminary.
Matthew and I were roommates in seminary
and here we all are trying to follow Jesus
and welcome others into that as well.
We are looking at a passage in Romans today.
I know that Matthew has been preaching
through the book of Romans.
So you've heard this passage preached to you recently
in the last few months
and I am aware of that
and I still chose that we need to do it
because it is,
as we looked at our confession today,
it's about justification.
And this is the most,
I mean,
as Andy said,
the without which nothing of our faith.
And if we cannot communicate this in evangelism,
then what are we doing?
What are we doing?
And so this is,
we will be looking at a famous passage again.
Again, you've heard this before,
but I promise that you have not heard it
the way I'm gonna talk about it today.
So stick with me as we do it.
So if you have a Bible,
turn to Romans chapter three
or you have it printed in your bulletin
and I will read it
and then we will look at it.
So this is Romans chapter three,
we're starting in verse nine.
What then?
Are we Jews any better off?
No, not at all.
For we have already charged
that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin.
As it is written,
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.
Their throat is an open grave
and they use their tongues to deceive.
The venom of asps is under their lips.
Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.
In their paths are ruin and misery.
The way of peace they have not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Verse 19.
Now we know that whatever the law says,
it speaks to those who are under the law
so that every mouth may be stopped
and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
For by works of the law,
no human being will be justified in his sight
since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
But now the righteousness of God
has been manifested apart from the law,
although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.
The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ
for all who believe.
For there is no distinction.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
and are justified by his grace as a gift
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood
to be received by faith.
This was to show God's righteousness
because in his divine forbearance,
he has passed over former sins.
It was to show his righteousness at the present time
so that he might be just and the justifier
of the one who has faith in Jesus.
This is God's word.
Would you pray with me?
Lord, as we look one more time at your word
and consider how to speak it persuasively and gently
and yet with courage and truth to our friends,
would you do it to us first?
Would the gospel shine into our hearts?
Would you illuminate our minds and our hearts
to receive the good news of justification by faith alone?
And would you give us the words and the wisdom
and the courage to take that with compassion and bravery
to our friends and neighbors for your glory and for our good.
It's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Okay, so I'm going to start off by telling two different stories,
describing two different people for you.
The first person I want you to picture
is a person who lives in the year 1519.
1519.
And this person is a highly religious person.
This person has taken a vow to devote their whole life
to serving God and to obeying God.
And he is so religious, so committed to God's law
that he would beat himself up whenever he failed.
If there was a moment where he realized
that he had lapsed in his obedience to God's law,
he would beat himself with a whip or with a stick.
And he was so zealous that his spiritual mentors
would regularly tell him,
hey, ease up on yourself, all right?
Don't go so hard on yourself, right?
You're going a little hard on this spirituality thing.
And yet as hard as this person worked,
his conscience still plagued him.
He had this deep, deep sense of I am wicked.
There is something wrong with me.
There is a black spot in my being,
in my heart that I cannot get rid of.
And he had this nagging feeling
that I am a wretched sinner before God.
And no matter how hard I try,
it is not enough.
This person wrote in his spiritual biography,
he said,
though I lived as a monk without reproach,
a monk, a man who has taken vows of holy living,
a monk above reproach,
I felt that I was a sinner before God
with an extremely disturbed conscience.
I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction.
I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.
That's this person.
This is a person who is acutely aware
of the demands of God's law for his life
and painfully aware of his own sin,
knowing that he deserved punishment,
God's wrath for his sin.
And sometime in 1517, 1519,
Martin Luther realized the good news
of the gospel of justification
by faith alone in Christ alone.
That God had imputed,
that had injected or placed onto his account
righteousness from outside of him,
that it was not by his works,
but simply by trusting in Jesus Christ.
And that good news,
that gospel became to him
a source of relief and of hope and of salvation.
And he was transformed
with joy and peace and hope.
And he starts the air,
he's the air of the tradition
that we are now in today,
the Protestant Reformation.
That's the first person in 1519, 1517.
Second person I want you to picture.
I had this conversation,
this very conversation this last week.
It's a college student.
She attends UCCS.
She grew up with a very vague understanding
of Christianity,
did not grow up in a Christian environment,
knows the very bare minimum about Christianity,
has a limited view.
Essentially, her view of faith
is that God is out there.
He's out there.
And he punishes bad people.
And he wants us to live a good life.
But basically, God is loving.
That's Christianity.
God is out there.
He punishes bad people.
He wants us to live a holy life.
And I'll do my best.
And I was talking with her this last week,
describing to her the basics of the Christian life.
And I was describing,
I said, God condemns all sinners
to eternal punishment,
but offers salvation to anyone
who just trusts in Jesus.
All you do is trust in who Jesus is
and what he has done for you.
Isn't that good news?
And she goes, okay.
Okay, so what?
And right there, friends,
is the urgency,
the urgency of evangelism in 2025.
Because right there,
we see revealed to us
something seismic has happened in our world
to where one man, Martin Luther,
feels this dreadful sense of his own guilt,
his own spiritual demise,
that he stands before a holy,
wrathful,
judging God,
and he knows his own deficiency
and his own sin.
And the college student in 2025
who just says,
okay,
so what?
So what?
I don't see the urgency of this.
And what I hope to do today
is to try to remember together
how justification by faith alone
remains the heart
and the goodness
of the Christian gospel.
And most importantly,
how do we tell our friends that?
How do we tell our friends,
how do we tell our neighbors
that that is true
in what we could call,
what we will call,
a secular age?
And I'll describe that in a minute.
So how do we communicate
to a secular person
that justification still is good news?
That's our task today.
The way we will do it
is we'll look at this in three ways.
First,
why is justification hard
to communicate in 2025?
Why is it hard?
Second,
why does it still matter?
How does it still matter?
And third,
how do we do it?
How do we do it
with our friends and neighbors?
So let's look at this.
The first thing I want us to consider
is why is justification hard in 2025?
One of the background assumptions,
and I said this the day,
the first day that we started looking
at the topic of evangelism
the last few weeks,
is that one of the background assumptions
is that something seismic has happened
in our world,
in our culture,
in the lives and hearts of your friends
that do not know Jesus
that has made evangelism really hard.
Evangelism has always been hard.
But something has shifted
in the last 500 years,
in the last however you want to date it,
to where Martin Luther feels,
the average person says,
how am I made at peace with God?
How do I live at peace with God
to today where it is just
not a pressing urgent need
in most people's minds?
They just don't care.
They don't feel the need of it.
Scholars have called this shift
secularism.
Secularism.
Actually,
Cheyenne Mountain
is going to be hosting
a seminar in a couple of weeks
on ministering and secularism
for chaplains at the academy,
I mean,
at the fort,
which I'm thrilled by
that y'all are,
you know,
that they're continuing
to think through this
because this is easily
the most urgent missionary need
in our world today.
Secularism.
Now,
here's what it is.
For our main purposes,
our main point here,
we could go on
for a long time about this.
It's this,
that most people
do not have categories,
do not have categories
for the basic movements
for the progression
of the Christian faith.
Concepts such as sin
and righteousness
and faith and grace.
They just don't have categories
for it.
They do not,
the average non-Christian
college student,
the average person
who grew up secular,
doesn't understand
what those are.
And even if they have grown up
in the Christian faith
and have either moved away
or openly rejected it,
they don't feel
a sense of urgency.
In fact,
I would wager
that if you're a non-Christian here
and you're considering Christianity
and you stumbled into the church,
you're like,
I don't frankly know
why I'm here.
I could be doing
a whole lot of other things
on my Sunday morning
rather than coming to this place
and spending two hours here.
Categories of the Christian faith
don't feel urgent
in our world.
And here's the problem.
When we do evangelism,
depending on
or hinging on
the historic Protestant message
of justification
by faith alone,
the way that we have
historically understood
and done it,
we are solving a problem,
A, that most people
don't see as a problem,
and B, with a solution
that most people
don't really feel is helpful.
When we offer
justification by faith alone,
the way that you and I
often intuitively
think through it,
we are solving a problem
that most people
don't really think
is a problem
with a solution
that doesn't feel helpful.
Does that make sense?
So think of it this way.
If you were to have
a flat tire,
you're driving down the road
and you feel that you have
a flat tire in your car
and it's in the middle
of a blizzard
and some guy pulls up
to you to help you
and you say,
oh, thank heaven,
and he offers you
a pet snake
and a protein shake,
you would say,
uh,
not what I need
right now.
Not what I need
right now.
that's what happens
when we offer
the gospel
to our friends
in a secular age.
They go,
okay,
so what?
So what?
I don't understand.
Prior to secularism,
for hundreds of years,
human beings felt
like Martin Luther,
where there was
a pressing need
to be reconciled
to God.
They knew that God
was really involved
in the human life
and that he was holy
and they were not
and they sensed that
and they said,
we must be reconciled
with our God.
There is this thing
called sin
and it is a gap
between me
and God's holiness.
And evangelism
during this season
was basically
persuading people
of things that they
already knew
were true
and they accepted.
It was persuading people
to believe
what they culturally knew
and today,
all of those categories
are gone.
Does that make sense?
Do you see
what the problem is?
Often the gospel
feels like superfluous news
for a non-existent problem.
It is superfluous news
for a problem
that people don't feel.
Justification by faith alone,
that is God reconciling to us,
simply by us trusting in Jesus,
it feels unnecessary.
It feels not urgent
to most of our friends.
Now, how do we share
the gospel in that world?
How do we make it urgent again?
How do we make it relevant again?
How do we evangelize in this?
Well, I hope to show you.
But that's the first point.
And that's why,
often,
when you share your faith
or as you think through it,
it falls on deaf ears.
People think,
I don't see the urgency for this.
So let's look at part two.
Why does justification matter still?
Or how is it still relevant?
And this is where things get tricky
and this is where things get really exciting.
This is where I come alive
because this is where,
because we can actually begin
to communicate to our friends
that it is relevant.
But it takes a little extra steps.
It takes some work.
And here's the first thing
that we must do.
The first thing that we must do
is pay attention
to the felt needs of our friends.
Watch our friends,
watch our neighbors,
watch our family members,
and just put up your spiritual radar
and pay attention
to their felt needs.
What are they aware of?
Where do they feel a gap in their lives?
We talked about this
when we looked at Revelation 21,
where most people are asking,
remember what I asked?
Does the story end happy?
Does it have a happy ending?
People are asking that question.
Does it have a happy ending?
There's this sense of,
I need a happy ending
in my life or my story.
Where are the gaps
in our friends' lives?
If they don't have this gap
between their lives
and God's holiness,
where are there those gaps?
And I would like to single out
two for us.
There's lots of different options,
lots of places,
but I would like to single out
two that I think
are particularly common today.
Two places where the average
non-Christian secular person
does feel an incompleteness
or a need in their lives.
You with me?
Okay, so the first one is shame.
The first place is shame.
Most people today
have an acute sense
of personal shame
for some reason,
from something,
and where that can come from,
my gosh,
there are infinite options.
But what that is,
is shame is an internal voice
that humiliates
and denigrates
and denies self-worth.
Most people have a sense
within them
that there is something
deeply flawed
about their deepest self.
And it could come from
something that they did,
that you did.
Perhaps this is you.
As soon as I bring up
the word shame,
people go,
whoo,
and they start looking inside
and they begin to feel it.
Something that you did
a long time ago
or recently
and you feel guilty,
dirty,
something's wrong
within yourself.
It could be something
that happened to you,
some kind of abuse,
something that someone else
did to you
that made you feel unworthy.
Either way,
most people
are carrying around
in their heart
a list
or an event
or a thing
that makes them feel
deficient,
dirty,
or unworthy.
And I recently
talked with a student
who felt like
no matter how hard
he worked,
he would never be
enough for his dad.
No matter how hard
he tried,
no matter how hard
he worked
and his grades
and all that,
that his dad
would never value him.
And he felt
tremendous shame
about this.
Now notice,
he feels no need
for God in his life.
He feels no urgency
to have peace
with God,
but he does feel
a lot of shame
in his relationship
with his dad.
We can work with that.
Talked with another friend,
he's a peer of mine,
he's a former soldier.
This is particularly
relevant for the base,
for the Cheyenne Mountain.
He felt an incredible
amount of shame
over things that he did
while he was deployed.
He had done things
in war,
he never told me.
He said,
how can I possibly
breathe another breath
after the things
I've done?
doesn't feel
a sense of
wrong before God,
just,
I'm bad.
There's something
wrong with me.
Now,
what is the secular
solution
our non-Christian
world's answer
or solution
to shame?
For the non-Christian,
for the secular,
the solution
to shame
is,
hey,
you just need
to forgive yourself
and accept yourself.
That's what it boils
down to.
So,
for example,
college students
will go to
the counseling center
at the college
that I work at
and the school counselors,
very well-meaning people,
will say something like,
hey,
healing is learning
to love yourself
and just accept yourself.
That's what you need to do.
Just learn to accept yourself.
Some version of that.
Do some deep breathing
and some mindfulness exercises
and learn to love yourself again.
And that's well and good.
There's a place
for something like that,
but it doesn't work.
It does not ultimately work
and our friends know that
because they've tried.
They've tried to heal
their shame on their own
and it doesn't go away
and it continues
to gnaw
and eat at their hearts
and they feel,
though they feel
absolutely no spiritual guilt
before God,
they feel deep angst
within themselves
about who am I?
Do I deserve
to take up the air
that I breathe
on this planet?
So that's the first felt need
that many of our friends have
and we can work with that.
Let me tell you.
I'll show you in a minute how.
Here's the second felt need
that many of our friends have.
It's the reality,
the acknowledgement
of injustice
or oppression
in our world.
Our non-Christian friends
will look around their world,
they will look around
their neighborhood,
they'll read the news
and they'll say,
something is wrong
with our world.
People with dark skin
have it harder
than people with light skin.
Women have it harder
than men.
Something like this.
They'll look at something
in our world
and say,
that is unjust.
This is oppression
and it should be fixed.
The rich are getting richer
and the poor are getting poorer
and that's not good.
Something terrible
happens on a social level
or on an individual level.
If you're a woman
under the age of 25,
statistically,
the chances of you
having something tragic
happening by a man
is almost 100%
and they are deeply aware
of that injustice.
They are deeply aware
of the oppression
that happened.
A miscarriage of justice
or an unreprimanded
and unsolved oppression.
And again,
for the secular person,
for the non-Christian,
the secular solution
to justice
is either
to have solidarity
to create
a new group
with power
who can go fight
those bad guys
or to just get revenge.
That's what they want.
They'll say,
well, there's injustice
out there
so why don't we just
raise awareness,
create solidarity,
create a new group
that we can then
go fight them
to the point
of maybe getting even.
And this can take
several forms.
We can have cancel culture
or it can be
as simple as gossip
and character assassination
or it can reach
the level of violence
to use power.
And the problem
with this
is it sets up
a new power struggle.
It sets up
a new us versus them.
My tribe versus your tribe.
And it never actually
heals the injustice.
It never actually
deals with the oppression.
It just keeps
the spiral going.
You see that?
Okay, now,
I want to zoom out.
Justification
is not important
to our non-Christian friends.
They don't care about it.
They don't feel
a need for it.
But shame
and injustice
are highly important.
They are deeply aware
of those things
in their lives.
And so what we need
to do
is pay attention
to the felt needs,
to the things
they do care about
in our friends.
And then,
here's the next move.
Pay attention here.
The next move
is to show them
that Christianity
offers
a better explanation
of what went wrong
and a better solution
of how to fix it.
It's to show our friends
that Christianity
offers a better explanation
of what's wrong
and a better solution
of how to fix it.
What we need
to show them
is that their diagnosis
of what is wrong
in their lives
and in their world
does not go deep enough.
A few months ago,
I had a friend
who had a car.
His car was,
well, he still has a car.
He was having some car trouble.
He's driving his car
down the road
and he starts to feel
the gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk,
the wump, wump, wump,
you know,
and he starts tinkering with it.
He's not a mechanic
nor the son of a mechanic.
And he thought,
well, maybe the air pressure's low.
And so he puts some air
in his tires.
And then he tries driving again
and all the tires
are perfectly inflated
and he still feels
the gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk
as he's driving down the road.
And he takes it
into the mechanic
and the mechanic says,
no, it's not your air pressure.
Your CV joints are off.
Something deeper is wrong.
And my friend thought
he knew what was wrong.
He thought he understood
what was wrong,
but his solution
didn't go deep enough.
It didn't go deep enough
to what was wrong.
And the same is true
with our non-Christian friends.
They know something's wrong,
but their diagnosis
can't go deep enough.
We get to show them
that Christianity
explains the deep level
brokenness of the world.
And that's where Romans 3 comes in.
That's where Romans 3 comes in.
Verses 9 through 10,
or verses,
well, it's 9 through 18
in a lot of ways.
We have already charged
that all,
in this context,
Paul means every person
who takes up oxygen
on God's green earth.
All are under sin.
As it is written,
none is righteous.
No, not one.
No one understands.
No one seeks for God.
They have all turned aside.
Together,
they have become worthless.
No one does good.
Not even one.
No one is righteous.
The word righteous,
of course,
is a crucial phrase
in the book of Romans
and in the Bible,
in the Christian faith,
because it means
spiritually accepted
before God.
When it says
no one is righteous,
it means that
no human being
has right standing
before and in the presence
of God.
There's a genre
of TV shows
that are particularly
popular,
well,
they have been for a while.
Shows like Breaking Bad,
a new one just came out
called American Primeval.
It's on Netflix.
Cannot recommend it.
It's brutal.
Breaking Bad is another one.
Yellowstone is one.
Ozark.
These shows that come out,
and the thing about these shows
is that everybody's a bad guy.
Everybody's a bad guy.
You know,
there are shows
where there's good versus evil.
We love these kinds of shows.
But what these shows do,
things like Breaking Bad,
is it basically creates
a set of characters
who are all bad guys
and lets them loose
and just lets them
go do their thing.
And there's no good guys.
And I think we love to,
they're very popular shows.
We love to watch them
because we like to imagine
the reality that it's out there,
but not actually here.
But the terrifying reality
of those shows
is when you really encounter them,
when you actually
really sit with it,
you go,
oh man,
that might actually be true,
which then implicates me.
It implicates all of us.
There's no good guys.
Verse 15,
they are swift to shed blood.
These shows will create characters
who are all selfish,
all willing to sacrifice others
for their own good.
And they're deeply unnerving
because we are faced
with the possibility
that no one is a good guy.
Everybody's a bad guy.
And Paul tells us
that those shows
are actually reality,
spiritually.
He's talking about
what we call natural humans,
natural man.
And he says,
natural man,
separated from Christ,
without God doing something,
restraining
or saving in our world,
in our hearts,
we would only deteriorate
into worse and worse,
selfishness,
sin,
rejection of God,
and harm of man.
No one natural man
that seeks God.
No one does what is good.
And in evangelism,
what we need to say
is say,
yes,
you are on to something
with shame and injustice.
But your explanation
can't go deep enough.
You're looking at tire pressure
when there's a CV joint problem
under the hood.
And the doctrine of sin
that the Christian faith offers
cuts underneath it
and offers a problem
that is deeper,
that's more systemic,
that explains what's broken
in my life
and in our world
far more accurately,
far better
than shame
or injustice
or anything else.
Let me try to show you how.
For shame,
shame says,
sin says that
there actually is
something wrong with me.
You know,
the great fear of shame
is that there's something
actually wrong with me,
so bad that I cannot
just accept myself.
The secular counselor
just says,
well,
just accept yourself.
And you say,
I can't.
There might be something
wrong with me.
What does sin say?
Your worst fears
are more true
than you ever thought.
There actually is
something wrong with you.
There actually is
something deeply,
deeply wrong with you.
You actually ought
to be ashamed
on a level.
There's godly shame.
I am right
to feel it
because I am guilty.
What about for injustice?
Sin says,
yes,
there actually is
something dreadfully
wrong with our world.
Yes,
there actually is
oppression,
but it's all of us.
What it says,
their feet are swift
to shed blood
and their paths
are ruin and misery.
And what it does
is it implicates
all of us.
What does he say
later on?
For all have sinned
and fall short
of the glory of God.
Rather than what
injustice systems
of our secular world
would do,
which would create
a good guy
and a bad guy
and us versus them
where we just
fight it out.
It says,
no,
everybody's broken.
We're all in this
reality show
of broken characters
together,
fighting it out
together,
fighting out
against each other.
That explains
the world better.
Our world is not
an us versus them
problem.
It's an all of us
are part of the problem.
And sin explains
the problems
that your non-Christians
have more realistically
with a better solution
than what they're
trying to explain it with.
And we must show
our friends
that their answers
and their explanations
that are wrong
with the world
don't go deep enough.
Only sin,
only total depravity
actually gets
to the root
of what's wrong.
And so watch
for how do they
explain what's wrong
with our world.
If you're not a Christian,
I would ask you,
how do you?
And I would challenge
you to say,
does it go deep enough?
I don't think it does.
Whatever it is.
If you want to challenge me
on that,
I'd love to buy
a cup of coffee
and listen to hear
what you're thinking.
I would love to do that.
The last move.
The last move
is to make justification
good news again.
To show them
that the solution
goes deep,
as deep,
even deeper
than the problem.
If sin goes
to the very deep,
we show them
that the gospel
goes deeper.
verse 21.
But now
the righteousness
of God
has been manifested
apart from the law.
The righteousness
of God
through faith
in Jesus Christ
for all who believe.
The righteousness
of God
has been manifested,
Paul says.
Manifested
is the word
for uncovered
or revealed
or exposed.
What he is saying
here is that
in contrast
with the unrighteousness
of man,
we have God's
righteousness
coming down
and uncovering,
exposing,
punching down
into our world
to do something,
to fix
the sin problem,
to deal with it.
The righteousness
of God
is God's perfection
coming to make
us perfect.
It is God
offering us
righteousness,
which is what?
A perfectly right
relationship with God.
It's God beauty
coming into our lives
to make us beautiful.
It's God's light
invading our darkness
and shining forth.
It's God's antidote
to the poison
that lies
at the heart
of every person.
It's God's love
burning away
all our love,
our unlove
and all our hate.
It's God's righteousness
giving us
God's capacity
to follow him again.
That is what it is.
Now how does this happen?
How does God
make us righteous?
Verse 22,
it's through faith.
It's by trusting
simply and only
in who Jesus is
and what he has done.
This means that
God makes us righteous
or he gives us
standing before him
the minute
that we trust in him.
We trust in what
he has done.
Verse 23,
for all have sinned
and fall short
of the glory of God
and are justified.
English fails here,
but it says
and are made righteous.
and are made righteous
by his grace
as a gift.
So in this
broken world
of shame
and injustice
and sin,
God comes in
and as a free
undeserved gift
makes sinners
righteous.
How?
Through the redemption
that is in Jesus Christ
whom God put forward
as a propitiation
by his blood.
As a propitiation
by his blood.
Paul tells us
that God is the one
who restores
our standing before him
and the tool,
the instrument
that he uses
is Jesus
and he tells us
that Jesus
is the propitiation.
That word means
wrath deflection.
If God's wrath
is hurtling,
zooming towards us
and we deserve it,
Christ comes
and stands in our way
and deflects God's wrath
off of us
and onto himself.
And the moment
we trust that,
that becomes
spiritually true of us.
We said it today
that it's an act
of God's free grace.
The moment we trust
it is true
that we are justified.
Now,
this is where it gets fun
in evangelism.
Pay attention here.
Justification by faith alone
in Christ
solves
both
the felt need
and the deeper
spiritual need
of every person
and of the non-Christian.
It solves
the felt need
and the deepest
spiritual need.
And when we begin
to solve the felt need,
the thing that they are aware of,
it becomes good news again.
It becomes something
that they want
and they desire.
Remember,
how does this happen?
Remember that most of our friends
feel an overwhelming
sense of shame.
What does justification do?
What does justification mean?
It means that God
imputes to us,
injects into us
an alien righteousness,
that was Martin Luther's term for it,
righteousness that comes
from outside our world,
outside of us,
and injects it into us.
What does that mean?
It means that he cleans us,
he washes us,
anything that could
or would make us dirty,
shameful,
the thing that we say,
what if it's actually true
and sin says
it actually is true?
Justification says,
and it's gone.
It's placed on Christ.
You are justified.
The secular counselor
just says,
accept yourself
and it doesn't work.
It does not work.
But the gospel says
the most judging person
in the universe
has judged you
and he loves you now
because of your faith in Jesus.
He accepts you.
That has the power
to deal with shame.
Do you see that?
That has the power
to deal with shame.
Now what about injustice?
If sin makes injustice
and oppression
a human problem
and implicates all of us,
we are all oppressors.
We are no longer
into just an us-them system
but what does it say?
Justification says
that God is our propitiation
through Christ.
He is the one
who bears our wrath.
Rather than injustice,
we say,
well, let's just go judge them.
Let's bring our wrath
down on them.
But then sin says,
no, you're part of the problem too.
You deserve wrath too.
But what is Christ?
He is the one
who bears the wrath
that we deserve.
He is the one
who takes the injustice
of sin onto himself.
He was canceled.
He was killed.
He was judged.
He was obliterated
in the place of mankind
and it solves
the felt need
of the person
looking to solve injustice
with the perfect justice
of Christ.
26,
to show that his righteousness
at the present time
that he might be what?
Both just
and the justifier
of the one
who has faith in Jesus.
You see what it does?
You see what justification does?
Our goal is to show our friends
that justification
offers a better solution
to the deeper problem.
But the way that we must do it
is through what they are aware
is the problem.
It shows us
that our worst fears
about ourselves
both as individuals
and as a human race
are more true
than we dare to imagine.
We are actually bad.
And then
the gospel shows us
that God knows this
and he still loves us
and he deals with it
and he does something
to us,
for us,
and in us
through the redemption
that comes through Jesus Christ.
God demonstrates
his love towards us
in this.
While we were still sinners,
Christ died for the ungodly.
this passage shows us,
the gospel shows us
that the most loving,
the most just,
the most wrathful,
the most discerning,
the most gracious,
the most gentle,
the most caring person
in the universe
judges,
evaluates,
and then accepts,
loves,
and cherishes
me,
you,
despite your shame,
despite your guilt,
but based on Jesus'
perfection given to us.
And that ministers
to our deepest needs
and it becomes good news.
It becomes something
that our friends
desire to hear again.
It marks us with love.
Really,
that's what this passage
shows us.
It shows us
what the whole gospel
promises,
which is that God
loves us a lot.
as simple as that.
If there's anything
you hear from this,
it's that God
loves us a lot
and he marks us
with love.
I just finished reading
the first Harry Potter
with my daughter.
We reach the climax
of the Sorcerer's Stone
when Professor Quirrell,
who's a dark agent
of Lord Voldemort,
attacks Harry.
But when he attacks Harry,
he immediately,
his skin starts burning.
He cannot touch Harry.
Why?
Well,
Professor Dumbledore
explains it at the end.
He says,
your mother died
to save you.
There's one thing
Voldemort cannot understand
it is love.
He didn't realize
that love
as powerful
as your mother's
for you
leaves its own mark.
To have been loved
so deeply,
even though the person
who loved us
has gone,
will give us
some protection forever.
It's in your very skin,
Dumbledore says.
Quirrell full of hatred,
greed,
and ambition.
Sharing his soul
with the dark Lord Voldemort
could not touch you
for this reason.
It was agony
to touch a person
marked by something
so good.
And in the world
of Harry Potter,
Harry's mother died
to save him.
She sacrificed
herself for him.
She bore
Voldemort's wrath
sacrificially
and marked Harry
with love
to protect him.
Her sacrifice
saves Harry.
J.K. Rowling
understands this.
She knows
that it points us
to something
far greater,
to the one
who marked
all of us
with love.
The minute
that he died,
he justifies us
and it marks
you with love
so that the minute
you believe that,
you can say,
I am a Christian,
one who is justified
before my God
and there's nothing
that you did
to receive it,
nothing you do
to earn it,
all you do
is receive it
by trusting in God.
And apart from God,
we are all unrighteousness.
That's what this text says.
But through Jesus,
God comes close
with righteousness
outside of this universe
and all we do
is trust.
It's as simple as that
and we are marked
with his love.
This is an ambitious sermon.
I know I pushed
a lot of you
and that's okay.
Thank you for staying
with me.
What's the point?
The point is this.
Justification by faith alone
is still good news.
It will always be good news
because it will always
solve our deepest problem,
which is sin.
Our task
is to show our friends
that the way
that we do that
is by paying attention
to what they are aware
of that they need
and then to show them
that their solution
isn't deep enough,
but the gospel solution
is far deeper.
When we do that,
as we do that,
then justification
becomes what it was
for Martin Luther.
It becomes good news
and no longer
does a person say,
okay, so what?
But they say,
this is what I need
in my life.
This is what I've always needed.
And you say,
let me show you,
follow with me
the Jesus
who justifies the faithful
because he loves me
and he loves you.
Evangelism is that.
That's all we're doing
is saying,
come follow the one
who has marked me with love.
He loves you.
He's the one
who justified you
and it's really good news.
Let me pray.
Lord in heaven,
thanks that the gospel
is timeless.
Thanks that your grace,
despite the coming
and going
of different cultural moments,
is always been
and always has been good news.
We pray that you would
give us wisdom
on how to apply that
to the people
in our lives
who need it.
We can talk about
culture all day long.
We can talk about
theology all day long.
At the end of the day,
we need your spirit
to make the gospel
sweet to us
and to give us wisdom
on how to make it
sweet to our friends.
Give us all that grace
and we will give you the glory.
It's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.