Everyone Needs A Savior
Bible Study Time 10-15-06
Church links:
Bible Study Time 10-15-06
In Genesis, Chapter 15, Abraham was concerned that he had no children, but the Lord assured him that his descendants would someday be as numerous as the stars of heaven. This was an amazing statement when you consider that Abraham was 85 years old at the time. But the Bible says that Abraham believed in the Lord. He didn’t just believe what the Lord said, but he believed in the Lord. Of coarse, with a promise that incredible, one would have to believe in the giver of the promise before he could believe in the promise.
Abraham knew that the God who had made that promise was the God of creation. The One who works everything after the counsel of His own will. Abraham believed in the Lord, and the Lord accounted it to him for righteousness. Just think about that. Abraham believed in the Lord and instantaneously he became righteous in the sight of God.
That was big. In fact, it was huge. God’s justice demands righteousness. God’s holiness demands righteousness. God can have no fellowship with unrighteousness, but because God is God and because He is sovereign over all things, He is the one who gets to determine who is righteous. When God saw Abraham’s faith, God declared Abraham to be righteous. It was just that simple.
When we read through the scriptures, we see that faith in the Lord is man’s only opportunity for righteousness. The Old Testament hints at this, but it is plainly declared by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. In Galatians, he said:
Galatians 3:21-22 (NKJ)
21 . . . if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.
22 But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
In Romans, Paul said:
Romans 3:21-23 (NKJ)
21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference;
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Many people think that if they try as hard as they can to be righteous, God will accept them as righteous. They pin all of their hopes for eternity on their ability to live a righteous life, and many of these same people are fully aware of the fact that no one is perfect. They know that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Maybe it’s their human pride or maybe it their religious background, I don’t know, but for whatever reason they continue to believe that their place in heaven will be determined by their good works. This is sad because God’s word plainly declares the fallacy of this point of view.
God will not accept anything less than total perfection. He will not accept anything less than complete righteousness. God will not compromise when it comes to His standard of righteousness; He requires absolute perfection. The Bible says, he who is guilty of breaking one law is guilty of breaking them all (James 2:10).
Some may think that they can play it safe by believing in Jesus and then living the best they can. They think that both of these things together will guarantee them a place in heaven. But is it really possible to trust in both? Jesus said:
Matthew 6:24 (NKJ)
24 "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other . . .
When it comes to salvation, no one can trust in Jesus and good works. The second we throw in good works, the work of Christ becomes of no effect. Paul said:
Galatians 2:16-19 (NKJ)
16 . . . a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
17 "But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not!
18 "For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
19 "For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God.
If we sin after we are saved, that sin does not come from God, and God will hold us accountable for our sins, but our relationship with Christ is based solely upon the work of Christ on the cross. Any good works that we have to offer to God must flow out of our relationship with Christ. Apart from our relationship with Christ, we have no good works to offer. That’s why Paul said:
Galatians 2:20-21 (NKJ)
20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
21 "I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."
If we try to add good works to faith for salvation, then we will be forced to come up with a standard of righteousness which is lower than God’s standard. We will end up focusing our attention on two or three things that we consider to be the worst sins, and then we will allow ourselves to feel satisfied with our performance as long as we stay away from those particular sins.
For instance, we may think that drug addiction is a terrible sin because we see how it destroys lives and tears at the fabric of our society. Now I think that we can all agree that drug addiction has terrible consequences, for individuals and for society, but if we focus on drug addiction, we may lose sight of the fact that by God’s standard any lack of self control is a sin.
To please God we have to have absolute control over everything we eat, and drink, and say, and think, and so forth and so on. This might make us feel a little uncomfortable because we know that no one can live up to that kind of an absolute standard, but if we, in our minds, lower the standard of God to something that we can do, we have robbed God of His glory. God’s perfect standard goes far beyond anything that we can accomplish, and that’s why the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone is so important.
The Lord Jesus was emphasizing God’s perfect standard of righteousness when He said:
Matthew 5:21-22 (NKJ)
21 "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder,' and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.
22 "But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment . . .
We might be able to avoid the sin of murder, but what about anger? Have you ever gotten angry; I know I have. All of us have to plead guilty to that charge. God’s standard is so much higher than ours and way beyond our ability to live up to it.
I heard the renowned Bible teacher, R.C. Sproll, on television the other day. He was on a question and answer panel, and he was asked what he did to maintain his personal walk of holiness. His answer was this. He said, “I know that I will fool myself every chance I get. I will lower the bar and discount what true holiness requires, and at the same time I will inflate my own view of my own performance. That’s why I have to immerse myself in the character of God to really understand what He loves and what He hates. I need the word of God to minister to my own soul so that the old man can be put to death and so that I can put on the new man in a disciplined way.”
I really appreciated Dr. Sproll’s honest comments because I’m afraid that if we put even a fraction of our faith in our own good works for our salvation, we will lose our objectivity when it comes to recognizing our own sin, and our ability to recognize our own sin is of utmost importance when it comes to allowing the Holy Spirit to create the righteousness of Christ within us.
John said (I John 1:9), “If we confess our sins, (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” But if we have no incentive to discover our sins, we will lower the bar and inflate our own performance. This satisfies the flesh, but it will cause us to lose the joy of forgiveness.
David said (Psalms 139:23-24), “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Because God’s standard of righteousness is so high, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to identify and cleanse us from our sin. If God’s standard was just a matter of not committing murder or adultery, we could probably train ourselves to identify those sins, but God’s standard is so much higher than that.
God’s righteousness takes into account everything that we feel and everything that we think. When we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the results of his search, we will be surprised at what He finds. The Holy Spirit is going to find things that we never even thought about or that we thought were insignificant.
On the other hand, when Jesus taught that true righteousness goes beyond avoiding murder and adultery, he was not pushing for the Pharisees to adopt a stricter set of rules for the synagogue. Jesus said that the Pharisees were already too strict. He said that the scribes and Pharisees “bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.” (Matthew 23:4)
What a contrast between God and the Pharisees! God calls upon us to cast all of our cares upon Him because He cares for us, but Jesus said that the Pharisees would not even lift a finger to help those who were burdened with sin. The Pharisees had an abundance of rules but no compassion. They had a bountiful supply of regulations but no empathy.
The Lord Jesus did not point out God’s strict standard of righteousness to encourage a stricter code of conduct, but rather, He was pointing out the hypocrisy of those who try to enforce strict codes without recognizing their own shortcomings. Jesus said:
Matthew 5:20 (NKJ)
20 "For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Even with all of their rules, the Pharisees could not live up to God’s perfect standard. Their only hope for righteousness was to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. When Jesus saw the faith of the paralytic man and his friends, He said (Matthew 9:2), “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”
God is absolutely holy, and when God declared Abraham to be righteous because of his faith, it was not our standard of righteousness that God was talking about. No, Abraham was declared righteous by God’s standard. Abraham was made absolutely righteous in the sight of God.
As a result, Abraham became the friend of God. He walked and talked with God. Abraham knew God as his provider and as his protector. He had the kind of fellowship with God that Adam and Eve had with God in the Garden before sin ever came into the world.
The beautiful gospel message for us today is that we too can have that kind of fellowship with God when we come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul said in Galatians 3 that:
Galatians 3:13-14 (NKJ)
13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us,
14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
We today, as members of the Church, the Body of Christ, are not promised all of the blessings of Abraham. We have no claim to the land of Palestine or the earthly kingdom, but we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings. We enjoy the same close spiritual fellowship with God that Abraham enjoyed. We cherish all of the spiritual blessings of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. We have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places.
It may seem hard to believe that a person dying on a cross 2000 years ago could have anything to do with our eternal destiny, but that’s what faith is all about. The heavens rejoice when we demonstrate our faith in the Lord by believing what He tells us.
The gospel of Jesus Christ may not seem logical to our human minds, and it may be hard to accept because we can’t prove it scientifically, but when we believe, faith becomes the substance of the things we hope for, and faith becomes the evidence of the things we can not see.
I’m sure that Abraham thought it would be next to impossible for him to have a son at 85 years old, but Abraham knew the Lord, and he knew that with God nothing is impossible.
Today, God is telling us that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He was bearing the guilt and the penalty for our sins and that He was raised from the dead to give us everlasting life. All we have to do is believe.
John 1:11-12 (KJV)
11 (Jesus Christ) came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Well, I see that out time is gone for this morning. Thank you for listening to another broadcast of Bible Study Time. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
Abraham knew that the God who had made that promise was the God of creation. The One who works everything after the counsel of His own will. Abraham believed in the Lord, and the Lord accounted it to him for righteousness. Just think about that. Abraham believed in the Lord and instantaneously he became righteous in the sight of God.
That was big. In fact, it was huge. God’s justice demands righteousness. God’s holiness demands righteousness. God can have no fellowship with unrighteousness, but because God is God and because He is sovereign over all things, He is the one who gets to determine who is righteous. When God saw Abraham’s faith, God declared Abraham to be righteous. It was just that simple.
When we read through the scriptures, we see that faith in the Lord is man’s only opportunity for righteousness. The Old Testament hints at this, but it is plainly declared by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. In Galatians, he said:
Galatians 3:21-22 (NKJ)
21 . . . if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.
22 But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
In Romans, Paul said:
Romans 3:21-23 (NKJ)
21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference;
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Many people think that if they try as hard as they can to be righteous, God will accept them as righteous. They pin all of their hopes for eternity on their ability to live a righteous life, and many of these same people are fully aware of the fact that no one is perfect. They know that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Maybe it’s their human pride or maybe it their religious background, I don’t know, but for whatever reason they continue to believe that their place in heaven will be determined by their good works. This is sad because God’s word plainly declares the fallacy of this point of view.
God will not accept anything less than total perfection. He will not accept anything less than complete righteousness. God will not compromise when it comes to His standard of righteousness; He requires absolute perfection. The Bible says, he who is guilty of breaking one law is guilty of breaking them all (James 2:10).
Some may think that they can play it safe by believing in Jesus and then living the best they can. They think that both of these things together will guarantee them a place in heaven. But is it really possible to trust in both? Jesus said:
Matthew 6:24 (NKJ)
24 "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other . . .
When it comes to salvation, no one can trust in Jesus and good works. The second we throw in good works, the work of Christ becomes of no effect. Paul said:
Galatians 2:16-19 (NKJ)
16 . . . a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
17 "But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not!
18 "For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
19 "For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God.
If we sin after we are saved, that sin does not come from God, and God will hold us accountable for our sins, but our relationship with Christ is based solely upon the work of Christ on the cross. Any good works that we have to offer to God must flow out of our relationship with Christ. Apart from our relationship with Christ, we have no good works to offer. That’s why Paul said:
Galatians 2:20-21 (NKJ)
20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
21 "I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."
If we try to add good works to faith for salvation, then we will be forced to come up with a standard of righteousness which is lower than God’s standard. We will end up focusing our attention on two or three things that we consider to be the worst sins, and then we will allow ourselves to feel satisfied with our performance as long as we stay away from those particular sins.
For instance, we may think that drug addiction is a terrible sin because we see how it destroys lives and tears at the fabric of our society. Now I think that we can all agree that drug addiction has terrible consequences, for individuals and for society, but if we focus on drug addiction, we may lose sight of the fact that by God’s standard any lack of self control is a sin.
To please God we have to have absolute control over everything we eat, and drink, and say, and think, and so forth and so on. This might make us feel a little uncomfortable because we know that no one can live up to that kind of an absolute standard, but if we, in our minds, lower the standard of God to something that we can do, we have robbed God of His glory. God’s perfect standard goes far beyond anything that we can accomplish, and that’s why the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone is so important.
The Lord Jesus was emphasizing God’s perfect standard of righteousness when He said:
Matthew 5:21-22 (NKJ)
21 "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder,' and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.
22 "But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment . . .
We might be able to avoid the sin of murder, but what about anger? Have you ever gotten angry; I know I have. All of us have to plead guilty to that charge. God’s standard is so much higher than ours and way beyond our ability to live up to it.
I heard the renowned Bible teacher, R.C. Sproll, on television the other day. He was on a question and answer panel, and he was asked what he did to maintain his personal walk of holiness. His answer was this. He said, “I know that I will fool myself every chance I get. I will lower the bar and discount what true holiness requires, and at the same time I will inflate my own view of my own performance. That’s why I have to immerse myself in the character of God to really understand what He loves and what He hates. I need the word of God to minister to my own soul so that the old man can be put to death and so that I can put on the new man in a disciplined way.”
I really appreciated Dr. Sproll’s honest comments because I’m afraid that if we put even a fraction of our faith in our own good works for our salvation, we will lose our objectivity when it comes to recognizing our own sin, and our ability to recognize our own sin is of utmost importance when it comes to allowing the Holy Spirit to create the righteousness of Christ within us.
John said (I John 1:9), “If we confess our sins, (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” But if we have no incentive to discover our sins, we will lower the bar and inflate our own performance. This satisfies the flesh, but it will cause us to lose the joy of forgiveness.
David said (Psalms 139:23-24), “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Because God’s standard of righteousness is so high, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to identify and cleanse us from our sin. If God’s standard was just a matter of not committing murder or adultery, we could probably train ourselves to identify those sins, but God’s standard is so much higher than that.
God’s righteousness takes into account everything that we feel and everything that we think. When we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the results of his search, we will be surprised at what He finds. The Holy Spirit is going to find things that we never even thought about or that we thought were insignificant.
On the other hand, when Jesus taught that true righteousness goes beyond avoiding murder and adultery, he was not pushing for the Pharisees to adopt a stricter set of rules for the synagogue. Jesus said that the Pharisees were already too strict. He said that the scribes and Pharisees “bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.” (Matthew 23:4)
What a contrast between God and the Pharisees! God calls upon us to cast all of our cares upon Him because He cares for us, but Jesus said that the Pharisees would not even lift a finger to help those who were burdened with sin. The Pharisees had an abundance of rules but no compassion. They had a bountiful supply of regulations but no empathy.
The Lord Jesus did not point out God’s strict standard of righteousness to encourage a stricter code of conduct, but rather, He was pointing out the hypocrisy of those who try to enforce strict codes without recognizing their own shortcomings. Jesus said:
Matthew 5:20 (NKJ)
20 "For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Even with all of their rules, the Pharisees could not live up to God’s perfect standard. Their only hope for righteousness was to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. When Jesus saw the faith of the paralytic man and his friends, He said (Matthew 9:2), “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.”
God is absolutely holy, and when God declared Abraham to be righteous because of his faith, it was not our standard of righteousness that God was talking about. No, Abraham was declared righteous by God’s standard. Abraham was made absolutely righteous in the sight of God.
As a result, Abraham became the friend of God. He walked and talked with God. Abraham knew God as his provider and as his protector. He had the kind of fellowship with God that Adam and Eve had with God in the Garden before sin ever came into the world.
The beautiful gospel message for us today is that we too can have that kind of fellowship with God when we come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul said in Galatians 3 that:
Galatians 3:13-14 (NKJ)
13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us,
14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
We today, as members of the Church, the Body of Christ, are not promised all of the blessings of Abraham. We have no claim to the land of Palestine or the earthly kingdom, but we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings. We enjoy the same close spiritual fellowship with God that Abraham enjoyed. We cherish all of the spiritual blessings of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. We have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places.
It may seem hard to believe that a person dying on a cross 2000 years ago could have anything to do with our eternal destiny, but that’s what faith is all about. The heavens rejoice when we demonstrate our faith in the Lord by believing what He tells us.
The gospel of Jesus Christ may not seem logical to our human minds, and it may be hard to accept because we can’t prove it scientifically, but when we believe, faith becomes the substance of the things we hope for, and faith becomes the evidence of the things we can not see.
I’m sure that Abraham thought it would be next to impossible for him to have a son at 85 years old, but Abraham knew the Lord, and he knew that with God nothing is impossible.
Today, God is telling us that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He was bearing the guilt and the penalty for our sins and that He was raised from the dead to give us everlasting life. All we have to do is believe.
John 1:11-12 (KJV)
11 (Jesus Christ) came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Well, I see that out time is gone for this morning. Thank you for listening to another broadcast of Bible Study Time. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
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