Episode Transcript
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Please remain standing. And let's turn
our to Romans, chapter three. This
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is the text for the sermon this
morning. Romans three, verses twenty seventh
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through thirty one. Please give your
attention again to God's word. Romans three,
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verse twenty seven. Then what becomes
of our boasting? It is excluded
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by what kind of law? By
a law of works? No, but
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by the law of faith, for
we hold that one is justified by faith
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apart from works of the law.
Or is God the God of Jews only?
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Is he not the God of gentiles
also? Yes, of gentiles also,
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since God is one who will justify
the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised
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through faith. Do We then overthrow
the law by this faith? By no
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means, on the contrary, we
uphold the law. May God bless his
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word to us. Please be seated. On second thought, I think it
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may have been helpful to begin reading
it from Verse Twenty One. We started
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the reading with this question. Right
then, what becomes of our boasting,
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and assumes that you're tracing the argument
here from what has come before, I'm
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I'll do that a little bit for
you now to help situate this text in
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its context. I help us understand
it in light of the things that Paul
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has already said. To put it
briefly, Paul has been setting up,
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at the beginning of Romans of this
contrast, a contrast between between God's righteousness
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and our righteousness. It's a contrast
meant to achieve a very particular purpose.
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God wants us to trust his righteousness
and not our own. He wants us
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to put our faith, our lives
in his hands on the basis of his
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righteousness, and so this contrast he's
been setting up has been a very strong
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one. God's righteousness is good,
our righteousness is bad. His is holy
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and clean. To use an image
from somewhere else in scripture, our righteousness
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is like filthy rags. His righteousness
is powerful to save, as he says
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in Verse Sixteen, it is the
power of God for salvation to everyone who
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believes, for in it the righteousness
of God is revealed. God's righteousness is
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powerful to save. But, as
the following verses Show Us, our righteousness
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conclusively damns us, it curses us, it brings about God's wrath, as
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he says in verse seventeen or eighteen, the wrath of God is revealed from
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Heaven Against All UN godliness and all
unrighteousness of men knee. He describes that.
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So this great contrast we see between
between God's righteousness and our righteousness is
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one that is meant to show us
we don't have anything to stand on.
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It just to show us that we
require a righteousness that's outside of the system
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in which we're born into. It's
a good system. There's nothing wrong with
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the system in and itself. The
system, namely being you obey God,
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you receive life. You Disobey God, you receive death. It's a fair
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system, it's a justice it's system, it's one that's makes sense and accords
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with God and his nature. But
it's a system that we cannot live in
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because, at our essence, that
are the most central parts of our being.
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We are unrighteous, we are broken, and so it's not that the
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system has failed us, it's that
we have failed the system, we have
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failed God, and in that we
find ourselves trapped, broken, in prisoned
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and under God's wrath. And so
God has been telling all of us to
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show us that we need a righteousness
that's not our own, righteousness, that
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doesn't come from inside of us and
produced by us, but a righteousness that
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comes from outside, not one that
we earn, God's God's salvation, but
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one that comes to us as a
gift, one that comes to us from
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this righteousness that is revealed. He
has a name. His name is Jesus.
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The righteousness of God that is revealed
is Jesus, and so because of
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that, because of our our justification
is in him. That's why we have
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salvation through faith alone. We have
it by believing and trusting in what God
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has done, not by believing and
trusting and what we have done. And
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that's what Paul said in versus twenty
one through twenty six, the part I
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didn't read. That's what Paul sums
up everything that has come before. I'll
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read it to you now, verse
Twenty One. But now the righteousness of
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God has been manifested, apart from
the law, although the law and prophets
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bear witness to it, the righteousness
of God through faith in Jesus Christ,
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for all who believe, for there
is no distinction, for all have sinned
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and fall short of the glory of
God and are justified by His grace as
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a gift, through the redemption that
is in Christ, Jesus, whom God
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put forward is a propitiation by his
blood to be received by faith. This
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was to show God's righteousness because in
his divine forbearance he had passed over former
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sins. It was to show his
righteousness at the present time so that we
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might, I'm sorry, so that
he might be just and the justifier of
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the one who has faith in Jesus. So this is Paul's big point.
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It's one that he is going to
continue opening up and fleshing out and helping
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to describe in all kinds of examples
and ways. He's going to tell us
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what it means to live by faith. He's going to tell us what faith
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is, how it was demonstrated before, how the promise was given to people
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even before us, but in our
passage. Now he turns to this particular
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objection. You remember that he's dealt
with objections before. In fact he's dealt
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with this one just a little bit
before as well. But he turns to
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it, he returns to it here. If all this is true, if
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everything that I've been telling you is
true about the Gospel being powerful to save
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because in it the righteousness of God
is revealed, then what becomes of our
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boasting where is our boasting. Now
he has in mind all a particular kind
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of boasting in which many other kinds
of boasting are also included, and that
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particular kind of boasting is described in
chapter two. It's a the boasting of
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being a Jew. It's that particular
kind that he has in mind here.
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Listen to chapter two, verse Seventeen. But if you call yourself a Jew
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and rely on the law and boast
in God and know his will and approve
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what is excellent, because you are
instructed from the law. And he goes
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on there to describe that perspective guide
to the blind, lie to those who
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are in darkness, instructor of the
Foolish, teacher of children, having in
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the truth, the embodiment of knowledge
and truth. This is the perspective of
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being a Jew, a boast.
He describes it there into to verse seventeen.
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It is this gift that you have
been given if you are born a
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Jew, it means that you have
the very law of God. It means
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that you have this special revelation by
which you could become a guide to the
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blind, a teacher of children and
instructor, one who is living in the
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world with this very special status and
privilege. Now Paul's Point in chapter two
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is to say, you who says
you're all these things, why aren't you
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living like it? Now he returns
to that same idea and asks another question,
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a rhetorical question, from that perspective. Well, if it doesn't matter
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being a Jew, if everybody's a
sinner and everyone's justified in the same way,
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well then what's the purpose? What's
the point of being a Jew?
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What advantage has the Jew? What
value has circumcision, as he says in
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chapter three, verse one, or, to use the language here, from
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our passage? Then what becomes of
our boasting? Well, he says it
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is excluded. It is excluded.
So what's wrong with boasting? What's so
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wrong with having pride in being a
Jew or some other thing that you might
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have, a good education or money
or a happy family? What's so wrong
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with boasting? Why is it that
the Gospel, this Gospel, about justification
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by faith alone? How does that
exclude it? Well, the first thing
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you have to know is the difference
between boasting and the joyful, thankful reception
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of a gift. They're two different
things, aren't they? You know it
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when you go to a child's birthday
party. Let's imagine two different birthday parties,
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one of a boaster and one of
a non boaster. I'm not sure
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what to call that person exactly,
but will say boaster and non boaster.
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The child who boasts gets a gift
and then he uses it to establish themselves
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as powerful over the other children,
as more important, as having a higher
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status. Look what I have,
look what I got, you can't play
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with it right now. This one
is mine right, those kinds of things.
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My toy is better than your toy, my party is more important than
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yours. This is entirely different from
the child who receives a gift with joyful,
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thankful recognition. It's not that they
tossed the gift inside and say gifts
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have no meaning to me. I
do not dare boast. No, they
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receive it with joy right. Thank
you, mom. This is awesome.
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This is really, really cool.
Do you guys want to share? Do
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you want to plague? Do you
want to enjoy this with me? They
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recognize the gift, they share it, they use it, they are happy
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about it, they feel the relationship
they have with the one who is given
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the gift. It's a good thing, right. Well, kids these same
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things aren't only true of you.
They're the same thing happens with adults.
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Adults also have birthday parties and get
gifts at them, but they have gifts
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and other places in another ways,
just like you do. Sometimes an adult
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will get a job or promotion and
they use this gift and they receive it
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with thankfulness and joy and recognition.
With this new promotion they have an opportunity
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to serve and help those people that
are under them. They have opportunity to
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use these gifts that God has given
them to be generous with other people.
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But then sometimes, instead of doing
that, instead of joyful, thankful recognition,
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boasting happens. They become prideful in
it. They they use it to
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establish themselves over other people. My
jobs more important than your job, I
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get to travel more places, I
make more money, and on and on
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and on. Boasting involved securing your
power and and fangs and money and all
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the rest. It's an effect,
it's a symptom of what we trust.
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Boasting is a tool that we use
to confirm and strengthen our faith and the
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faith of others in the things that
are closest to our hearts. Who We
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are, what we do. So
why does boasting not fit with the righteousness
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of Jesus Christ? Because in boasting
we're establishing ourselves. Our hopes, our
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dreams, our power, our status, are victories, our wealth, those
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things that are most important to our
hearts, and boasting were establishing them on
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ourselves, on our world, on
the things that we have. We're counting
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on those things to save us.
But do those things save us? But
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we all know that they don't.
Job Titles go away, companies crumble,
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bank accounts falter, toys get lost, stolen, broken, all kinds of
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things we might point to, even
things that are maybe a little more permanent.
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Oh, we find go away.
When we seek to establish ourselves on
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our own righteousness, on ourselves or
on the things, things around us,
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we're running on a broken leg.
We're finding that eventually we're going to fall
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and get even more hurt. As
Paul has been saying, it's not a
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matter of simply suffering a little bit
in this life either. The effects are
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eternal. When we run, when
we seek to run and establish our lives
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on ourselves, on our righteousness,
the house will fall. It's built on
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a cracked foundation, and so this
is Paul's first reason why there's no boasting?
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Because it is excluded. We are
justified by faith, not in by
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faith in Jesus Christ, and he
is righteousness, not in our own.
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The second reason boasting is excluded is
that God is God over all. God
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is God over all. It's not
only because we're justified by faith that we
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that boasting is excluded, but because
God is savior of all people. Now
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some would like to divide up God
and his salvation. There are many people
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even today who would clean claim the
opposite of what Paul says here. Here
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Paul says God is not only the
God of the Jews but also the god
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of the gentiles, that he justifies
both the circumcised and the uncircumcised in the
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exact same way. They are saved
in exactly the same way by faith in
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Jesus Christ. There are people,
though, today who would say that this
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is not true, that there are
two plans of salvation, one for the
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Jews, another for the gentiles.
They're all kinds of variations on this,
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and Paul is attacking this. Here. He says, no, this isn't
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true. There is unity in our
salvation. Now it's true. There's a
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distinction between these two people, between
the Jews and the gentiles, but it's
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all unified under God's singular purpose.
Think about some of the things he's been
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saying. Roll take Romans one,
verse seven. He says he writes to
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all those who are in Rome,
who are loved by God and called to
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be saints. When he says that, he has both the Jews and the
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gentiles in mind. Or Verse Sixteen
of Chapter One, for salvation is to
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everyone who believes, to the Jew
first and also to the Greek. You
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hear the distinction Jews Greeks. Distinct, yes, but it's to all of
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them. Salvation goes to all of
them. In then, in verses eighteen
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through chapter two, verse one,
Paul Addresses Gentile and righteousness. Then in
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Fort Chapter Two, verse twelve through
verse nine, he addresses Jewish as Jewish
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unrighteousness, concluding in verse twenty two. I'm sorry, in Verse Twenty Two
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of Chapter Three, that all are
unrighteous, he says. The righteousness,
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I'm sorry, he says that there
is no distinction. Chapter Three, twenty
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three, for all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God and
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all are justified by His grace.
As a gift through the redemption that is
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in Christ, Jesus. So this
is the second reason. Boasting is excluded,
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particularly this kind of Jewish boasting.
And it can go both ways.
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Mind you. It's not only Jews
who boast in their salvation. But if
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gentiles stand outside of the Jews and
see the salvation of the Jews is something
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that's just for them, that's a
way of separating it too. So what,
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as I remember, whichever group you
might belong to, we have to
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be careful about this. Paul says, why? Because of salvation is only
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to the Jew. Then it puts
salvation somewhere, the the the power or
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the reason for salvation somewhere other than
in God. It puts it in man.
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It allows man to stand on something
in himself and say, because of
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who I am, in my birth
and my heritage and my culture, I
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am pleased or Im God is pleased
with me. But this isn't true.
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Justification is by faith alone, in
Christ alone, that that's where our salvation
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is. We can't put salvation anywhere
else. The second problem this has is
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that it makes God smaller than he
is. We have big problems when we
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think of God. Is Small.
Will Jesus say? Or, I'm sorry,
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not Jesus, will Jews. Will
Jews say that God is limited?
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This is sort of Paul saying,
are you going to say that God is
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not God? Over the gentiles at
all? He appeals to them and this
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thing that they know. God is
Supreme, he's God over all, God
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is one, this very important doctrine
found throughout the Old Testament. He appeals
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to Jews and say, are you
going to say that God is limited,
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that God is only God over the
Jews, that somehow he is supreme and
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only this way? Of course not. God is only one. But to
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the gentiles, who say, are
you going to say that God is limited,
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that is supremacy only and his salvation
only comes to here, only to
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this one people in this way,
to deny one? The first one it
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denies his supremacy and the second place
it denies your own salvation. Either way
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it's bad, and either way Paul
calls us to see God as unified,
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as one who is God overall and
has this unity of salvation for us all.
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So in both these things we see
that what becomes of our boasting?
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The answer is clear, as he
says it. It's excluded. We don't
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have a leg to stand on when
it comes to our salvation, but in
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Jesus we have everything. Well,
there's one more thing we have to address,
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and that's this objection. One last
thing. Paul gives three reasons.
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What becomes of our boasting it's excluded. The first reason is that justification is
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by faith alone, apart from the
law. The second reason is that God
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is over all, and the third
reason sort of comes in the form of
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this objection. Do We then overthrow
the law by this faith? This is
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an objection he's going to address again. It's an objection that comes up a
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lot, and it basically goes like
this. If you're going to preach a
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gospel that is comes as a gift, if you're going to preach a righteousness
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that isn't built up in a person
themselves, then aren't they going to slack
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off? Aren't they going to stop
working like they going to stop doing things
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and trying to be righteous? Do
you set aside the law by preaching that
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salvation comes apart from the law?
People will always say this whenever you preach
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the Gospel, whenever you believe of
the Gospel, people will always say this.
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The always be concerned that somehow you're
undermining the work that a Christian is
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called to do, the obedience that
a Christian, that all people, are
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called to give to God. Paul, face the subjection, Augustine face the
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subjection, the reformers face the subjection
and we face the subjection today and will
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always will, because the Gospel is
offensive in that way. It comes to
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us and says here's everything, and
we say, I don't like that.
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We still are always craving something in
ourselves, something in ourselves that we can
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give to God, some reason we
can stand on. But Paul says this
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isn't the case. You don't have
anything to worry about. We don't deny
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the law by saying salvation comes apart
from it, to use his words.
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On the contrary, we uphold it. I keep swinging back to chapter one,
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versus sixteen and Seventeen, because Paul
here sets things in motion, he
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gives us a thesis statement, so
to speak, and we find so much
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of what he's filling out here.
The same thing here again. That is
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what he says in verse Seventeen,
for in it that is the Gospel,
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the power of God for salvation.
In it the righteousness of God is revealed
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from faith, for faith, as
it is written, the righteous shall live
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by faith. How do we define
that living? How do we define that
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life? Paul doesn't really do it
there, but he does it throughout the
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rest of the book and we see
it in the rest of the scriptures.
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Life is defined in various ways and
by various aspects. And one way you
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can define it in a legal sense, sort of innocent, guilty, life,
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death. You have life, you
are granted life as opposed to being
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granted death. It's a kind of
status that you have, a legal status,
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but it also has inward effects as
well. We might say it this
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way that when God reveals his righteousness
in Jesus Christ, he not only gives
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us life, but that righteousness of
Christ also is life. God justifies US
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According to Christ's righteousness and he also
conforms us to Christ's righteousness. Jesus is
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righteousness. is how we stand before
God and are able to say I'm innocent,
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because we are clothed with Christ's righteousness. We are given credited what he
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has done. But it's more than
that. Not only are we do we
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stand before God is people who stand
clothed in Jesus's righteousness. But there's also
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something inside going on as well,
that purification that we read about earlier,
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a sanctifying that's happening. Happens as
the Holy Spirit works in US and cleanses
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US and renews us. More and
more and more, we are conformed into
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the right to the into the image
of Jesus. We are conformed into his
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righteousness. This is one of God's
great promises that, in sending this son
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and the spirit as well, our
hearts wouldn't only have the law but would
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receive it in a meaningful way,
that we would begin to obey the law
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do the things that God has commanded. And that happens not in a separate
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way from from the Salvation and the
righteousness that comes them of Jesus, but
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in it. The righteous shall live
by faith in every aspect of our living,
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not only in our justification, but
also in our sanctification, our purification
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and in our glorification as well.
So these are the reasons Paul gives.
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These are the reasons why boasting is
excluded. The law is upheld, it's
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not put down. God is God
over are all. He saves in the
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same way. It's not divided up
and justification. The way that God saves
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us by faith alone, in Christ
alone. It's effective and it puts away
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all boasting, any anything that we
might hope to stand on. We can't,
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but in him we don't need to. Well, this should all,
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should give us all pause. If
boasting is excluded, then we should think
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about we're boasting is included in our
own lives. We should think about where
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are the things in your particular life
that you find yourselves going yourself going back
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to again and again and again.
It could be all kinds of things,
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perhaps some of them even irrational and
not even very surprising. Some of US
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boast in painful memories, some of
US boast in tragedies and sin. Others
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boast in family and heritage, connections
with important people, job titles, experience,
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age, certain inward dispositions, character
traits, good looks, skills.
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which ones of these are true for
you? So there's something that I haven't
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mentioned that you hide in your heart. It's important to think about this,
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to feel around for it, because
wherever the boasting exists in your life,
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that's a part of your life.
That's a part of your life that's not
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given over to faith. It's a
part of your life that you're holding for
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yourself, some place in which you're
trying to rely on yourself for salvation.
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It's a sad thing when we do
this. It's kind of like walking into
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a garden that's packed with weeds,
overflowing with leads and finding the two or
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three flowers that someone transplanted there,
picking them up and holding them into a
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bouquet and saying, look at my
garden, look at my life, isn't
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it beautiful? This is kind of
what our resumes are, I think,
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these tiny little flowers, just the
the few that we can collect and put
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on to a piece of paper to
impress someone. Of course, resumes have
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their place. I don't feel need
to feel guilty about putting a resume together.
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But are you trusting in it?
Are you boasting in it? Do
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you think about your life in this
way? Do you go about your life
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collecting these tiny little bullet points?
This just the handful of things that you
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might be able to put together,
when all the rest of your life,
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if it were on display, would
be this great stack of paper that would
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certainly not get you the job.
And when we stand before God, we
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stand before God not with a single
sheet of paper, a little collection of
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our best deeds and accomplishments. We
stand before him with everything, all of
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it, exposed, our entire heart. God judges you on that. How
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will you be judged? You will
fail. And that's why we step aside
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from that Great Mountain of paper and
we say I'll take Jesus. I'll take
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Jesus instead. And when we do
that, my friends, we find a
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lot of consolation comfort to our souls, because now we're not scrambling looking through
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all the the weeds, all the
mess, to find just a few things
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that might work and said we say, okay, that's a failed project.
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Instead, I'm going to trust in
Jesus and in his perfect life lived for
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me, his perfect blood shed for
me. That's a foundation worth building your
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life on. That's a life worth
living. And when you see things from
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that perspective, you can understand how
a person can get busy to work,
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can go into their lives freely and
do things for God, because they're not
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trying to do things for God in
a way that they can somehow save themselves,
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but they're doing things for him because
they love to do things for him
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and because even in those imperfect things, even in the the disappointments and the
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mixtures with sin and all the rest. Ultimately it's God doing the work,
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it's God saving us, and so
our boast is in God. That's why
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boasting is excluded in ourselves, because
our boasting is at him, because in
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Him we have all of our status, all of our power, everything that
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we could ever want. You might
call it life. We have life in
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God, through the righteousness of Jesus
Christ. So let's be not boastful children
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at a birthday party, but let
us be those that receive these gifts,
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this gift of the son of God, with joy and thankfulness and a desire
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to share it with others. Let
us pray
