Tonight, we're beginning a series that I trust God will use in our lives, dealing with the new identity that we have in Jesus Christ as a result of our union with Him. This is not mere theology that does not touch life. Indeed, the truth that we're going to be looking at over the next weeks as we study Romans 6, 7, and 8 is a truth that can transform one's life. The human race is defeated by sin and Satan. It is held captive by him.
Those who are lost are enslaved to the course of this world, which has been chartered by Satan. Things like prisoner, slave, bondage, all of those belong to those who are outside of Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus came to the world that He might set the captives free. Would you turn with me before we turn to Romans, back to the book of Isaiah, and notice what God says to Messiah, His servant, in the 42nd chapter of Isaiah.
Notice that He is addressing the one who is called, My servant, whom I uphold, My chosen one, in whom My soul delights. He says in verse 2 of Isaiah 42, He will not cry out or raise His voice, nor make His voice heard in the street. A bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish. He will faithfully bring forth justice. Skip on down now to verse 7.
He says the Messiah will come to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, and those who dwell in darkness from the prison. So clearly God is addressing here His servant Messiah, whom He says will by His word and by His actions deliver those who are prisoners and who dwell in the darkness of prison. Similar language is used in Isaiah 61, only here Messiah Himself speaks.
In the first verse of Isaiah 61, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. Up through that part of this text, Messiah is speaking about His ministry in His first coming. Now beginning in the second part of verse 2 on through verse 3, He speaks about His ministry at His second coming.
This is the favorable year of the Lord, which means it is that time, that period when God graciously is offering salvation to the world. That salvation is described in terms of proclaiming liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. And now turning to the New Testament, we find that when the Lord Jesus appeared to the Apostle Paul, or Saul as he was before his conversion, He gave him a commission that is recorded in Acts chapter 26, beginning in verse 16.
Jesus is here before King Agrippa, Paul is here before King Agrippa, sharing his testimony in Jesus. And He says in verse 16 of Acts 26, But arise and stand on your feet.
For this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness, not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you, delivering you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.
And so too the Apostle, the Lord Jesus gives this commission, you are to go and you are to preach. And the result of that will be the opening of eyes, so that Gentiles in particular may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God. Those who are outside of Jesus Christ are in the dominion of Satan. It is the gospel message and their faith in it which causes a person to be delivered from that dominion and given the freedom of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ came to set captives free through His gospel. That gospel is set forth as a beautiful doctrinal presentation in the book of Romans. The key verse to the book of Romans is the first chapter, verses 16 and 17, actually two verses. Romans 1, 16 and 17 condense the theme of the whole book of Romans when Paul writes, I am 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 the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. So the apostle Paul is going to write about this gospel of which he says he is not ashamed. He says it is a gospel which reveals the righteousness of God. It begins with faith, it ends with faith. From beginning to end it is faith in the righteousness of God that brings salvation. The gospel of Jesus Christ reveals God's righteousness.
Now that does not merely refer to the righteousness which is God's as an attribute, God is righteous, but he is referring to that aspect of God's righteousness in which he brings about a right relationship between himself and the sinner through the sinner's faith in Jesus Christ. Now tonight I desire to set a background for the study that we are going to have in the book of Romans in chapters 6, 7, and 8.
To do that we need to understand how that part of the epistle fits into the flow of the whole book. Let me remind you of a brief outline of the book of Romans. After some introductory comments in chapter 1 verses 1 through 17, the apostle speaks to this theme, God's righteousness needed. It begins in chapter 1 verse 18 and continues through chapter 3 in verse 20. I encourage you to write that down although it is my intention to have it in a written form for you next Sunday night.
But the first section of the book of Romans deals with this truth that the righteousness of God is needed. Or another way of saying it, it is man's sin which is presented beginning in chapter 1 in verse 18 up through chapter 3 in verse 20. Then the apostle speaks regarding God's righteousness provided or man's salvation. God's righteousness provided or man's salvation begins in chapter 3 in verse 21 and continues through the end of chapter 5.
The third main division of the book of Romans is God's righteousness experienced or man's sanctification. That is chapters 6, 7, and 8 and that is the focus of our study in the upcoming weeks. God's righteousness experienced or man's sanctification. The fourth major division of the book of Romans is God's righteousness rejected or God's sovereignty would be another way of saying it. Chapters 9, 10, and 11, the theme there being primarily dealing with Israel and Israel's place in this age.
And then the book closes chapters 12 through 15. Chapter 16 is basically some personal comments, but chapters 12 through 15 with this theme of God's righteousness revealed or man's service. God's righteousness revealed or man's service. So that we can see how chapters 6, 7, and 8, God's righteousness experienced, fits into the book. We need tonight to go back and to briefly review chapters 1 through 5 and talk about God's righteousness needed and God's righteousness provided.
To talk about man's sin and man's salvation. Let's think first regarding that division, God's righteousness needed. The apostle Paul in chapter 1 of Romans deals with the Gentile, the pagan world, which is without righteousness and is under God's condemnation. Notice that he says in verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
The apostle Paul is focusing first of all upon the nations of the world in their pagan idolatry. He is going to speak now about the Gentiles of the world and show that the Gentiles are under the condemnation and judgment of God because they suppress the truth as he says it in verse 18. What truth is that? Well that is the truth that is revealed to them primarily in two means, through creation and through their conscience.
Notice that he says regarding this truth in verse 19, that which is known about God is evident within them, that's the conscience, for God has made it evident to them, that's the creation. God has revealed truth even to the Gentile nations through conscience and through creation. Now what truth is it about him that is seen and understood? Well through the conscience there is some kind of distinction between right and wrong.
The conscience is not a perfect voice differentiating between right and wrong because it is a voice affected by man's sin. But the conscience is nonetheless within every person a voice which either excuses his actions or accuses a person of his actions. It either says okay or it says no. It says go or it says stop. But the conscience within a person tells him or should tell him that there is right and wrong in the world.
That there is a great morality which God has established, a difference between that which is right and that which is wrong. In the creation the Gentile is able to see what he describes in verse 20 as God's eternal power and his divine nature. The Gentile world tonight is under the condemnation of God even though it may never have heard a word of the gospel because of the truth that God has revealed and which it seeks to suppress and to put down.
That truth about God is that there is right and wrong and that God's eternal power and his deity can be seen. The rejection of this truth has turned the Gentile world, says Paul, to idolatry. In verse 23 he says that they have exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. The rejection of the truth about God turns man to the alternative of worshiping the creation rather than the creator.
As a result of that idolatry and that wrong worship, man falls into immorality. The impurity and immorality of his heart bursts forth. He describes that beginning in verse 24 through verse 32. Many times here it says that God gave these people over. Notice in verse 24, therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity. Verse 26, for this reason God gave them over to degrading passions.
In verse 28, and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind. That phrase, God gave them over, is a judicial response on the part of God to man's rejection of the truth about him. Because man has rejected God, God gives man over to his own lusts and his own immorality, his own depravity, which is fulfilled in the kinds of sins that are listed here in Romans chapter 1. The apostle says that the Gentile pagan world is lost.
It is under the condemnation of God because it has rejected the truth about God which it can know even apart from God's special revelation in the Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ. That which may be known about God from the conscience and from the creation around him is rejected and therefore God gives them over to their own sin. Now beginning in chapter 2, the apostle turns slightly to a different group of people. He has been talking to the pagans, to Gentiles in their idolatry.
Now he's going to begin talking to, well perhaps to those moral Gentiles who have not fallen into the gross sins of chapter 1. But primarily in focus, beginning in chapter 2, he has the Jew. The Jew who did not follow the idols. The Jew who was not caught up in the gross kind of immorality of the Gentiles. The Jew who thought he was righteous before God but his righteousness was a self-righteousness, an empty righteousness.
The apostle says that the Jewish moralistic world likewise is without righteousness and under the condemnation of God. He says in verse 1 of chapter 2, you are without excuse, every man of you who passes judgment. For in that you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge, practice the same things. He says that self-righteous people, moral people outside of Jesus Christ, that these people seek to excuse themselves from God's judgment, saying I am better than they are.
But God through the apostle is saying here that the self-righteous man, be he Gentile or Jew, is likewise under God's condemnation. For the very things that he condemns in others, he himself practices. He speaks about God's judgment and he says that it is according to truth. He says in verse 2, we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things.
So you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment upon those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God. God's judgment, he says, is according to truth. There is no escape from it. And then in verses 5 and 6, he says that God's judgment is likewise according to impartiality. For example, he says in verse 6 that God will render to every man according to his deeds. And again in verse 11, there is no partiality with God.
And so the man who thinks himself righteous or religious or better than the pagan and the idolater, that man likewise will come under the judgment and the condemnation of God in his sin. God is not partial in that way. He is impartial. He says that all will be judged according to the light which they have received. Look at verse 20. He says all who have sinned without the law, that is apart from the law, will also perish apart from the law. Those are the Gentiles back in chapter 1.
They did not have the law of God, the revelation of God that the Jews had. But they sinned nonetheless, even though it was outside of that specific revelation of God contained in the law. And he says that they will be judged apart from the law according to the light which they had and have. But he says, and all who have sinned under the law, that is the Jew, the one who had received the special revelation from God, he says will be judged by the law.
And so all men will be judged according to the light that they have. God's judgment is according to truth. There's no excusing oneself from it. God's judgment is perfectly knowledgeable of everything that every man does. He says God's judgment is according to impartiality, and God's judgment is according to the light that every person has. Beginning then in verse 17, he especially focuses on the Jew. The Apostle Paul, remember, was a Jew. He did not hate Jewish people.
But he spoke with great compassion for the Jews. And yet he felt he must point out the truth about them, that the Jewish people in particular were without escape from God's judgment. They boasted in their ancestry. They called themselves Jews, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and thought that surely they were immune to God's judgment. Paul says in these verses, not so. They claim to be better than the Gentiles. Paul says, but you practice the same things as the Gentiles.
The Jew had his ritual, namely circumcision, mentioned here, and felt that because of circumcision surely he was immune to God's judgment. Paul says it's not the outward circumcision that counts, it's the circumcision of the heart. The Jew felt that he had his privileges, and he did. Those privileges did not give him a right standing with God. The Jew is condemned because like the Gentile, his conduct is sinful.
The Apostle concludes this section in chapter 3, verses 9 through 20, by the fact that all people, whether Jew or Gentile, are under sin. Notice that he says in verse 9, what then? Are we, that is we Jews, better than they, Gentiles? Not at all. For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks, or Gentiles, are all under sin. When it says they're all under sin, it means that all are under the bondage of sin. All are enslaved to sin.
All are under the condemnation and death of sin, whether Jew or Gentile. Then he quotes from the Old Testament, and he says, there is none righteous, not even one who is righteous in himself before God. Then at the end of this text, in verses 19 and 20, he says, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God. He literally says here that every mouth may be stopped.
Every mouth may be shut up before God, and that all of the world may become accountable to God. He says, because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. God did not give the law to bring salvation, but to bring the knowledge of sin to the sinner. The law cannot deliver the sinner from the guilt of his sin. The law cannot deliver the sinner from the power of his sin. It cannot do that.
All it can do is expose sin, and that it does beautifully. It accomplishes that good and holy and righteous purpose of God. It exposes the heart of the sinner and slays the sinner before God. That is the purpose of the law of God. But it cannot save. The law only brings man to condemnation, to death, and to the end of himself. And so as we conclude this first section of the book of Romans, man is left in a pitiful state.
Whether he is Jew or Gentile, he is absolutely without hope in himself before God. Then the apostle changes his theme, and notice that he begins verse 21 with those words, but now. But now. He is going to speak now regarding God's righteousness provided. Man needs righteousness because he has none himself. He is not righteous. Whether he be a Gentile who had no knowledge of the law, or a Jew who had knowledge of the law, he had no righteousness by which he might present himself to God.
But God provides righteousness. That is now the theme the apostle Paul is going to speak about. This is man's salvation beginning in chapter 3 verse 21, which goes through the end of chapter 5. Now basically, he says four things regarding this righteousness that God has provided. First of all, it is provided through Christ's sacrifice. Verses 21 through 26 speak to this plainly. He says that there are three results of the death of Jesus Christ, of his sacrifice.
One is manward, another is Godward, and another is sinward. That is, one result of the death of Jesus Christ is toward man himself. One result is toward sin. It deals with sin, and another is toward God. Namely, these are the three results of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Justification, redemption, and propitiation. Notice that he says in verse 24, being justified as a gift by his grace. There the word is in a verb form, but it is the word justification.
Then he goes on, through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation. So those are the three key words in this first paragraph. Let me just define them for you briefly, although most of you probably understand them. Justification is the judicial act of God whereby those who put their faith in Jesus Christ are declared righteous in God's eyes. That's the key phrase.
Justification is our being declared righteous in the eyes of God so that we're free from guilt and from punishment. That is the result of Christ's sacrifice toward us. We are declared righteous before God. As God sees us now, he does not see our sin. He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He declares that we are righteous in his sight. Then the word redemption. Redemption has to do with a payment of a ransom price. It's the word that deals with sin.
The result of Christ's sacrifice with regards to sin. It is the payment of the ransom price for the enslaved sinner. And it goes on to talk about his removal from the curse of the law and his release from sin's bondage. But the point of redemption is that the price has been paid, that the sinner might be released and freed from his slavery to sin. And then the third word, propitiation. A simple one-word definition is satisfaction.
When it speaks about Jesus Christ being the propitiation for us, it means that he is the satisfaction of God's just demands for judgment on sin. Because of Christ's sacrifice, it is possible now for God to show mercy. This very same word that is translated propitiation in this verse is also translated in Hebrews 9.25 as mercy seat.
Those of you acquainted with the Old Testament know that the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, the main object in the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament tabernacle, the lid of that box which was called the Ark of the Covenant, was made of pure gold, solid gold. And it was called the mercy seat.
And that was the place where on the day of atonement each year, the high priest of Israel would enter in, in the prescribed manner, would sprinkle the blood of the atonement upon the mercy seat, which allowed God to deal with his people Israel in mercy. What this verse says is that Jesus Christ has become our mercy seat. We no longer need to offer up a lamb and take his blood to a certain place and sprinkle it on an object because Jesus Christ has been the satisfaction for us.
He is now the mercy seat for us and his blood has been sprinkled, as it were, as a satisfaction before God. God's just demands for judgment upon sin have been satisfied by Jesus Christ. So God can now provide righteousness to you and to me because of Christ's sacrifice. Now there's a second thing that he says regarding the righteousness of God being provided for us. Not only is it provided through Christ's sacrifice, but it is received by man's faith. It is received by man's faith.
From verses 21 through verse 31 in this chapter, you will find the word faith or the word believe no fewer than nine times. And then it continues on. So from the very beginning as the apostle speaks about the righteousness which God provides the sinner, he lets it be known that it is provided for the sinner who believes that righteousness is received by man's faith. And he gives the great illustration of this in chapter four, and that is Abraham.
Abraham who lived before the law was given believed God's promise. And it says in verse three, it was reckoned to him as righteousness. In other words, God declared Abraham righteous by his faith, not because of his works. The law had nothing to do with Abraham being justified before God because the law wasn't even given then. Furthermore, this occurred before Abraham was circumcised. Now the Jews felt that circumcision made them righteous.
But here the apostle points out that their great patriarch to whom they looked with great respect and admiration, that he was declared righteous before God before that ritual was performed upon him later as a sign of his justification. So it had nothing to do with the ritual. The point is that Abraham was saved by faith, not by works, the same way that we are saved today. And so the righteousness of God is received by man's faith.
And then in chapter five, verses one through 11, he says a third thing regarding this righteousness of God. It is accompanied by gracious blessing. And he lists here a number of blessings that come along with this righteousness from God. He says, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. That's blessing number one. No longer is there enmity between us and God, now there is peace with God. He says also we have obtained access or an introduction by faith into this grace.
We have access to the very presence of God. And he goes on through these verses to list the blessings that come with the righteousness of God when we're saved. And then beginning in chapter five and verse 12 on through the end of chapter five, he says a fourth thing regarding the righteousness of God. He says it is based upon the principle of headship. Now this is a key thought which is absolutely essential to understand so that we can get the point of chapters six, seven, and eight.
In the last part of chapter five, the apostle Paul says that there really are two great families in the world. There is on the one hand the family of Adam, and on the other hand the family of Jesus Christ, the last Adam, as he is called in 1 Corinthians. There are those who are identified with Adam as their head, as their representative. And there are those who are identified with Jesus Christ as their head or their representative. This is the principle of headship.
He points out to us in verse 12, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin. So death spread to all men because all sinned. How did all sin? They sinned because they were represented by Adam. The point here is that when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, he sinned not only for himself, but for all of us who were yet within him in his loins. For all of the descendants that have come from him, he sinned. He represented us.
So that when he sinned, you sinned, and when death came upon Adam, you inherited death at that moment, though you were born thousands of years later. This is the principle of headship. Adam represented his whole race when he sinned in the Garden. That is important because you see the Lord Jesus Christ in his work of obedience at the cross when he died represented us as well.
Just as Adam represented us in disobedience and death, so Jesus Christ represented us in obedience that we might have life. This is the principle of headship. You'll notice that in most translations, verse 12 ends with some indication that Paul is going to interrupt himself, and he does. He says, so death spread to all men because all sinned. Then he goes in a certain direction. He doesn't come back to that theme until verse 18, where he kind of sums up and picks up the theme.
So then, as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, that's Adam, even so through one act of righteousness, that's Christ's work at the cross, there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, who are the many, all of those identified with him. Even so through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous, who are the many here, all of those identified with Christ.
Now this is important because you're going to learn as we get into chapter 6, that when Jesus Christ died, when he was buried, when he was raised again from the dead, you were identified with him in that. You're identified and united to him in his death, burial, and resurrection. And folks, it is that very identity or union with him that delivers us from slavery to sin. So that we no longer have to obey sin that still dwells within us. God has set us free from sin's dominion.
Sin is no longer our master because we have been set free from it by our union with Jesus Christ in his death, his burial, and his resurrection from the dead. He says in verse 20, and the law came in that the transgression might increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Before you were saved, sin reigned in you.
You were in bondage to sin because you were identified with Adam in his disobedience. And you were in death. That was your spiritual state and that was your destiny, death. But now God has done a work in you. He has provided righteousness for you by your union with Jesus Christ. And that righteousness is not only a position that you have, but it is a very practical way of living which you may experience. He speaks here about grace reigning through righteousness. Now grace reigns in your life.
And righteousness may be the expression of that grace. The point is this, that you and I no longer have to sin. We may sin, and the fact is that we do sin, but we don't have to sin. We do not have to sin, for we have been delivered from sin's dominion. That is basically the theme of Romans 6, 7, and 8. I hope you can see how it flows out of chapter 5 in our identity with Jesus Christ.
The dramatic change in our spiritual identity, now we are identified with Christ and no longer with Adam, along with the release from sin which it entails, provides for us the possibility of a transformed life. Our conduct is those who have been justified by grace through faith. Our conduct will be transformed at different speeds perhaps, but we cannot separate our justification from our sanctification. Those two doctrines go together. They flow from the one to the other in the book of Romans.
The apostle says that the work of grace in our lives is so complete and so sweeping that we have been delivered not only from the guilt of our sin, but we have been delivered from the power of sin which is still within us. We are delivered from its dominion so that we may experience victory every day of our lives. The fact that we do not experience victory every day is not because God has not provided it. He has provided that deliverance.
And I hope that as we understand how God has provided it, that that knowledge will be written in our hearts in such a way that a door will be opened so that you and I can experience that victory because we are one with Jesus Christ. Would you bow with me in prayer? Father, we have covered a lot, perhaps too much tonight as we have sought to gain an overview of these five chapters. And yet I pray that the Spirit of God will cause us to rejoice in that truth which we can comprehend.
Once we were blind, now we can see. Once we were lost, now we have been found. Once we were in death, now we have life. Once we were enslaved by your grace, now we are free. We are released. I pray that you will work into our lives a greater understanding of and appreciation for that righteousness which you have provided for us in Jesus Christ. And may that righteousness be our experience.
May grace reign in our lives so that righteousness will be the expression of our thoughts, our words, our actions more consistently. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. I'd like us to sing in closing a verse of 266 that tells us where our hope is placed. I'd like for us to sing the second verse of this gospel song written by Norman Clayton who speaks about the righteousness of Jesus Christ in which we are found. Would you stand please as we sing together verse two of number 266.
No merit of my own. No merit of my own. His anger to suppress. My only hope is found in Jesus' righteousness. For me He died. For me He lives. And everlasting life and life He freely gives. Let's bow together. His grace has planned it all, tis mine but to believe and recognize His work of love and Christ receive. Have you received Jesus Christ, my friend? Or do you still find condemnation within your heart because you are separated from Him?
If tonight you have not the assurance of your salvation, would you come up afterward and speak to me about that and express your burden, your heart need? Let me or one of our counselors sit down with you and show you how tonight you can know freedom from the guilt of sin which weighs down your soul. Father, thank you for the work of grace and for all that you have planned for us in Jesus Christ. And I pray for someone who is here without Christ.
Lord draw that one to yourself tonight to believe, to receive Jesus Christ. And for all of us who have done that, I pray that we will depart from here rejoicing in that righteousness that you have provided by grace which we can never know apart from your work of love. And let us, I pray, desire with all of our hearts to experience that righteousness daily in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. Good night.