Classic Christianity – Book of Romans P21 (12-11-19)
Synopsis
This passage of scripture, in this 5th chapter of Romans, is one of the most important chapters in the entire bible. It takes the whole deal and encapsulates the entire gospel in Christ. Looking at just Romans 5:10, we have an explanation of how God reconciled the world unto himself. Sadly, many people have not understood the latter part of this verse, that we are saved by his life.
You are not saved by the death of Christ. You are saved by the life of Christ. His death is what was necessary to prepare us for salvation, and is necessary for salvation. For if Jesus did not die to take away the sins of the entire world, the next time man sinned he would die again. But death does not give life. Life gives life.
Forgiveness also does not give life. This also is the most understood doctrine, what salvation is. Untold thousands of people understand salvation as getting your sins forgiven. But that is not salvation. Yet, there are people, such as Calvinists, who think that salvation is getting your sins forgiven.
If your premise of what salvation is, is off, then your conclusions are off. The Calvinist comes to an erroneous conclusion based on the premise that salvation is getting your sins forgiven. If that is true, salvation is getting your sins forgiven, then how do you explain that Jesus died for all of the sins of the world. Then, the conclusion made is that Jesus must have only died for what they refer to as the elect. That is, certain people are destined for damnation and others are chosen, and are of the elect. The reason for this conclusion is to try to explain away universal salvation, that everybody is saved because their sins are forgiven.
But upon studying the meaning of the word of God, through Romans and the book of Ephesians, relying on the Holy Spirit to teach you, one understands that salvation is the receiving of new life. From the book of Romans, from what we have studied so far, election is referring to both the Jews and the Gentiles, the only two groups of lost people, that are to be saved the same way, by grace through the faith. We also have a clear understanding of how a person has salvation in Ephesians 1.
Ephesians 1:7
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
From this passage, you come to understand that you do not get forgiveness, you have forgiveness. When do you have forgiveness? When you are in Him. How do you become to be in Him? When you are born again, when the Holy Spirit of life is placed in you, the moment you believed the gospel of salvation, which is the receiving of life by faith. So in Him, you have everything. From 1 Peter, we come to understand that we have been given everything we need for life and godliness. In Him, you have forgiveness. But you also have Christ’s righteousness. You have every spiritual blessing in Christ.
This receiving of life, salvation, is received by faith alone in what Jesus did through his death, burial and resurrection. But it His resurrection that life is offered. The same life that raised him will raise you up to new life also, to you who placed your faith in Him. Jesus said, “Come unto me.”. You do not come to Christ to get forgiveness. You come to Christ for Him, to receive life. Life is in Him.
Religion, man’s attempt to cover sin, all started in the garden of Eden. Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and as Paul explains in writing to the Romans, that is how sin entered the world, and how sin and death came to all men. One man, Adam, sinned, and so all died, because all sinned. When Adam sinned, what did he do? He tried to cover himself with fig leaves. Genesis 2 and Genesis 5 go into more detail on how sin and death entered the world.
So from Adam’s fall, that is how religion started. Man tries to cover his sin, but it cannot save you from the consequence of sin, which is death. Religion cannot take away the consequence of sin, which is death. Man hides from God in his fallen state. The age old question, ’How do I get my sins forgiven?”started in the garden, and is based on a fallen state of man, dead to God. Instead of asking that question, man should be asking, “How do I get new life?”
Man is empty inside, dead to God. He is alive to the world. His human spirit, that separates him from the animal kingdom, is alive to the world, but dead to God. He has a longing in his heart for something. He knows something is missing, but does not recognize it is God who is not living in him. The first created man, Adam, had the life of God living in him, but that Spirit of God left him because of sin. So every man, as we read in Genesis 5, has since been born, not in the image of God, but in the image of fallen man. Every child born is not born saying, “Praise Jesus”. They are born dead to God, spiritually dead.
Out of love for man, God sent Jesus to come to redeem mankind from his condition of death. The Spirit is calling men unto himself. He wants men to recognize their condition of death that they might seek a savior in Jesus Christ. God has placed the thought of eternity in the heart of every man, according to his design in creation. God in the man is indispensable to the functioning of the man. Man is born without a spark plug. He is born without the Spirit of God living in him. That is why man asks the questions, “Where do I go when I die?”, “What is the meaning of life?” or “Why am I here?” That is why Jesus told Nicodemus, “Unless a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”. God sent Jesus to give life back to man, to whosoever believes in Him, He gives the right to become children of God.
Transcript
Romans 5:10
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son,
Let us pick up where we left off last week. We are told in the scripture that when we were God’s enemies, when we were lost, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son. When were you reconciled to God through his son? You were reconciled when you were lost. You were not reconciled when you were saved. You were reconciled when you were lost. We have so many doctrines that have been formed, and misunderstanding of scripture, because of people who do not understand the latter part of this verse.
Romans 5:10
how much more, [this being an accomplished fact, reconciliation] having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
Churches have been streaming people down aisles, for years, trying to get their sins forgiven. The fact of the matter is, people’s sins were already forgiven. What they need now is life, for you are not saved by the death of Christ, you are saved by the life of Christ. You have to be saved from something. What you are saved from is the consequence of sin, which is called death.
Ephesians 2:1
1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins
We have to understand something. We all understand that we are sinners, but if we do not understand we are dead, why would we come to Him for what He came to give us, life. He came to give us eternal life, not temporal life.
Mark 10:45
45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
The only way that I could have eternal life is because of the eternal consequence of the cross where he took away the cause of death, once and for all, for all mankind. That is why Jesus said that the only sin that is attributable to man is unbelief in Me.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord
John 16:9 (TLB)
9 The world’s sin is unbelief in me
The world’s sin is unbelief in Jesus. The only question that will ever be asked, by you and me, of God, is “What did you do with My Son?” Did you ignore him? Did you rebel against him? Were you just in neutral about him? Or, did you come to understand that if we are going to believe truth folks, there is only one spot to look for truth, and it is in this bible.
John 1:1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 17:17
17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
2 Peter 1:21
21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 4:10
10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
You are not going to find truth in the Reader’s Digest. You are going to find truth in the bible. The bible says we are dead.
Colossians 2:13-14
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
We are dead in our sins and the uncircumcision of our sinful nature. We are born into this world dead. Death is a problem. Have you ever noticed that they are hard to move? A corpse is hard to talk back to. A corpse will not move when you tickle it’s feet. It is dead. And it says that we have become dead. Now, if you are dead, you need life.
John 5:21
21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.
Forgiveness does not give life. Life gives life. The only life available to us is the resurrected life of Christ Jesus our Lord. It is not a doctrinal issue. It is not like an issue like that at all. It is a very practical issue. If you and I, as human beings, are born dead, then you need life, and where are you going to go to get life? Are you going to go to the pope? He cannot give it to you. Are you going to go to Martin Luther? He cannot give it to you. Are you going to go to People to People? They cannot give it to you.
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
There is only one person who can give you life. That person is the resurrected life of Jesus. He is alive today, and today he is going through the world, as he has for over 2000 years, saying, “Come unto me. Come unto me, not for my forgiveness only, but for me. Because I am the way, I am the truth and I am the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me, Jesus”.
John 7:38-39
38 “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
If you are listening here today, dead, then you have a choice, remain dead or choose life. When you choose life, your life has changed because you have come alive, we are told, in Christ Jesus. You are no longer dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature. You have been made alive.
Ephesians 2:3-10
Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
So, folks, when we tell people, if you do not quit sinning, you are going to go to hell, that is a lie. No man will ever go to hell because of his sins. They have all been taken away. The only sin is the rejection of the one who came to take those sins away, and was raised from the dead in order to give you the solution to your condition of death by his offer of resurrected life. That is the good news of the gospel, folks.
1 Corinthians 15:1-5
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.
Our denomination cannot do that. The baptists cannot do that for you. The Presbyterians cannot do it for you. We cannot do it for you. It is Christ Jesus. We have gotten so hung up in denominationalism. Someone asks you, “What do you believe?” How do many people respond to such a question? “I believe what the baptists believe, for after all, I am a Baptist.” “I am a Calvinist. I believe what Calvin believed.” Well, you are to be pitied of all people because you do not have a brain to think about what has God taught you. Not what he taught Calvin. Not what he taught Martin Luther, not what he teaches the pope, but what has the Spirit, through the scriptures, taught you.
John 3:34
34 For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.
1 John 5:10-12
10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
If you are born again, the Spirit of God lives in you. If the Spirit of God lives in you, He is committed to living in you, to teach you truth, and to lead you into all truth, and to guide you into all truth.
John 16:13
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
He said that truth will set you free. Do you know why it sets you free? Because it leads you to Him. And it is written, when the Son has set you free, you shall be free indeed.
John 8:32
32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
John 8:36
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed
So this passage of scripture, in this 5th chapter of Romans, is one of the most important chapters in the entire bible. It takes the whole deal and encapsulates the entire gospel in Christ. When we were enemies, lost, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son. It was done for all men.
Guys, here is where people get confused. When they think salvation is getting your sins forgiven, and that is what they think salvation is. That is what Calvin’s problem is. These people who are Calvinists, whenever they went back to study what Calvin believed, they obviously believed that your sins were forgiven and, therefore, you are saved. Nothing could be further from the truth!
But if that is what you believe, then how are you going to deal with “God was in Christ reconciling the whole world unto himself”? How are you going to deal with that not only that he died for our sins, but the sins of the whole world? How are you going to believe that, and not believe in universal salvation for all men? The issue is you can’t.
So they had to come up with something. So he thinks, “Well, I cannot go along with universal salvation. I know he died. It says he died for the sins of the whole world but that would mean salvation for all men, so we cannot believe that. So maybe he just died for the elect.” That is how their concept of the elect came up. That is where predestination came up, which incidentally has nothing to do with salvation, except the Jew and the Gentiles. It has nothing to do with you’s and me’s.
Read the book of Ephesians and it will speak that to you, if indeed you have the Holy Spirit living in you, and allow Him to teach you. But if that is your idea, of what salvation is, then you had to come up with every idea under the sun, that he did not die for the whole world. So a Calvinist says, “He just died for a special group of people. He chose one for damnation and another for salvation.” There is nothing more nonsense to me than that theology
Calvinism stems from a false premise. If your premise if off, your findings are going to be off. The findings of experimentation are no more accurate than the original premise. If you go to a doctor, and his premise is that I think you have Tuberculosis, and you do not, he will probably kill you with the medication, because his premise was off, and his findings are off. If your premise is off in regard to what salvation is, then everything is ultimately going to be off.
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Now, consider other religions, who also have a false premise of salvation. You have Catholics going to a priest for forgiveness and you have the evangelical going to 1 John 1:9 for forgiveness. Forgiveness, forgiveness, … is all you hear. God is up in heaven crying out, “Guys, it is finished. What do you think I did at the cross? Do you think I died for just some of your sins? I died for all of them. And I cried out from the cross, ‘it is finished’. Do you know why I said it was finished? Because it was finished. I want you to rest. I want you to enter into a Sabbath rest, resting from your works just as I did from mine. I am not doing anything more. There is no more forgiveness to be executed on your behalf. I have taken away the cause of death, which is sin, so I can offer you life eternal.”
John 19:30
30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Hebrews 7:27
27 Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
Hebrews 9:12
12He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
Hebrews 10:10
10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Hebrews 4:8-10
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
We are still dealing over here and paying no attention at all to the meaning of the resurrected life that lives in us and guides us into all truth and teaches us the marvelous things of the Lord Jesus Christ. How much more having been reconciled shall we be saved by his resurrected life!
Romans 5:10-11
how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.It is all over. It was provided for the entire world. It is received in Him. Do we understand that, guys? He provided reconciliation for the whole world. That means wiping your sins away for the whole world! Where is that reconciliation received? In Him. In His resurrected life. That is why the scripture says:
Ephesians 1:7
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s graceYou do not get redemption. You have redemption. What else do you have? The forgiveness of sins. Where is forgiveness received? In Him. When you come to Him, you get it all.
2 Peter 1:3
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.You have been given everything you need for life and godliness. There is nothing else that you need. I quite frankly, do not know what to pray for, because I already have everything. That is why, praying to me, is saying, thank you, Lord Jesus. “Thank you. Thank you.” For what? For all of His provision. What do I need when I have been given everything, all I need for life and godliness. It is a marvelous thing that God has done for us. Now that that has been done, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received. We have now received it, reconciliation.
Romans 5:12
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned –Now, who is that one man? Adam.
Romans 5:13
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.You were still under the death sentence. You were born dead. Do you understand that? You were not born alive spiritually. No one came out of their mother’s womb saying, “Praise Jesus”. You are born dead. The only thing a dead man needs is life. Even though sin was not taken into account before the law, nevertheless death reigned. The law was given, not to us Gentiles, but to the Jews, through Moses.
Romans 5:15
15 But the gift is not like the trespass [of Adam]. For if the many died by the trespass of the one manIf you look at your bibles, and circle “one man”, you are going to see this. One man. One man. One man. Adam is the one man and the other man is Jesus. Adam caused sin to enter the world, and death came through sin. Jesus brought the gift of righteousness to all people.
Romans 5:16-17
16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!If we look back at this for a moment. You say sin entered through one man. Let us turn back to the book of Genesis. Look at Genesis 2:15 to see how it all began. Genesis 2:15-16
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
That today, in essence, can be equated to freedom. A lot of times people ask, “Who does God want me to marry?” God is saying, “Take your pick.” It does not matter. Today, with sin in the world, as long as they are Christians, it does not matter. You are sitting around waiting for this perfect job, this perfect woman. God says, there are all kinds of trees in the garden. Go and pick the one you want. Is that not encouraging? Now, you are free to eat of any tree, except there is one tree that you better not eat of.
Genesis 2:17
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
There is one tree, man, you better not eat of, the tree where you decide “I do not need you, God, to determine for me what is right and wrong, good and evil. I am going to deal with situational ethics. I am going to make up my own rules. I am going to just say, after all, we are just human. I am going to come up with all those things.” God says to them, “I am going to tell you something. The day you eat of that tree, and you make the determination that you do not need me to determine right from wrong and good from evil, you are going to die.” So it says, later on, in Genesis 3, what Adam chose to do.
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman,
He said to Adam first, that you can eat of any tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if you eat of it you shall die. Then, God created Eve. He said “Wow. I do not want to lose her.” So Eve is in the garden and Satan says to her.
Genesis 3:1
“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Did God say this to Eve, or to Adam? He said it to Adam. Who told Eve? Adam. Look what Satan did.
Genesis 3:2
2 The woman said to the serpent,
In essence, Eve is saying, here is what Adam told me.
Genesis 3:2-3
“We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
Now did God tell Adam not to touch the tree? No. But you could hear Adam. I can tell you what God said, but I can tell you that you do not even need to touch that tree. So here, Eve got her instruction from Adam not to even touch that tree. So what was Satan probably doing? Leaning on the tree. Not dead, but alive, leaning on the tree. So he says.
Genesis 3:4
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.
It is as if Satan is saying, “Look at me. I am touching the tree. I am not dead.”
Genesis 3:5
5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
You see what happens when you add to the scripture, folks. You add to the scripture and that is where Satan is going to get you every time. If you subtract from it or add to it, that is where Satan will get you. Adam added to the scripture. God did not tell him to not touch the tree. He just merely told him to not eat of it. Adam, in his enthusiasm, I think, not to lose Eve, said to her, “Do not even touch it”. And that is where Satan got her.
Genesis 3:6
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye,
She did not see anything wrong with it.
Genesis 3:6
and also desirable for gaining wisdom,
And also, you will get some wisdom, according to Satan.
Genesis 3:6
she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
I think Eve was deceived and man is rebellious. I think that is true today. A woman is more easily deceived. A man is just plain old rebellious. Do you guys agree with this? So Adam ate it, intentionally. All of a sudden their eyes were opened.
Genesis 3:7
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
In other words, they tried to cover up their own nakedness with their own doing. That was the beginning of religion. That was law in the garden of Eden. And there was also grace. In essence, God said those fig leaves are not going to cover you. I will clothe you. I will provide the clothing for you. And we all know the story of that. That is where sin began.
From that moment on, we are told that we came from the loins of Adam. Read Genesis 5:1-3.
Genesis 5:1-3
1 When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God.
Adam and Eve were created in the image of God.
Genesis 5:2-3
2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
Were we born in the image of God? Or, were we born in the image of Adam? Which is it? Were we all created in the image of God, as people say? No. Who was created in the image of God? Adam. Who was born in the image of Adam? Us, dead as a hammer. Adam died and we were born into Adam, dead. That is why we were born dead. That is why it says that through one man, sin entered into this world, and death through that sin, and in this way death came to all men. Death came to how many men? All men. Why? We have all sinned.
Romans 5:13-14
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
Now this grace and this gift came.
Romans 5:15
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
One man, Adam, brought death. One man, Jesus, brought life.
Romans 5:16
16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation,
What was the judgment of God? On the day you eat, thereof, you will surely die. That was the judgment of God. Now, did Adam die physically that day? No. Did he die soulishly? No. How did he die? Spiritually. What is death? The absence of life. What is darkness? The absence of light.
The condition of this world is dark. The sun comes up, dispels the darkness, and we have light. The sun goes down, we return to our natural state. What is spiritual death? The absence of spiritual life. The life of God departed from Adam. His human spirit was joined to God because of God in His master plan of creation. God determined that God in the man is indispensable to the humanity of the man, just as electricity in a bulb is indispensable to the function of the bulb, or gas in your car is indispensable to the function of the car. God made us in such a way whereby God the creator, in His creation, is indispensable to this man being totally whole.
So God departed from man, and man was left with a human spirit that is alive to the world but dead to what left it. This is contrary to what some people say. They say that your human spirit is dead dead. If your human spirit is dead dead then all you have is a soul and a body and that is a dog. A dog has a body. Does a dog have a soul, a mind? Does a dog have a mind? Yes. Emotion? Yes. A will? Yes. Does a dog have a will? Yes. It sure does. You are a dog if you do not have a human spirit that separates you from the animal kingdom. You would be nothing but an animal. So this idea that your spirit is dead dead means that you are an animal.
Your human spirit is alive. Your human spirit is alive to the world but it is dead to what vacated it, God. So your human spirit is constantly longing and each and every one of us who are in Christ today, remember the day before we came to Christ, when our hearts were longing for something. Something was missing. You remember those days. Something is missing. Something is wrong.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Things are not functioning properly. It is kind of like a car without a spark plug. Something is missing. It is running, but it is jumping. You remember those days. So you turned to alcohol, drugs, women and guys and bars and booze and all this stuff to feed the flesh, to try to get some satisfaction, and there isn’t any. None. You are as empty as a pork barrel. You look into the mirror and say what is this all about? (Read the book of Ecclesiastes, a picture of a man, Solomon, a man with all kinds of wisdom, with every pleasure afforded him in the world, yet spiritually dead, looking for the meaning to life, and saying “Life is meaningless”.)
Ecclesiasats 2:17
17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
That is exactly the prayer I had before I was saved. Not a very theological prayer, but it was my heart. What is this life all about? There is no meaning to it. Making money, successful, no meaning to it. It has no meaning. That is a condition of a heart without God living in you. There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that can only be filled by God through His Son, Jesus Christ. There is a vacuum that is there. We have to understand that.
So your human spirit is very much alive to the world. It is just dead to what vacated it, and that is God. That is what you are longing for. Every person is longing for God. We do not know that is what we are longing for. I remember the day I was saved. I looked back and I was wondering, “Everything I have been looking for in my life was as close as a prayer. It was as close as saying, ‘Jesus, come live in my heart’. That close, and I missed it for 36 years.”
Acts 17:26-28
26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Is that not crazy? How we miss something so important. I knew about Jesus. If someone had asked me, “Do you love, Jesus?” I would say, “Yes, I love him as much as I can love anybody.” But did I know him? No, I did not know him. I did not know I could. I never heard that I could. I had never been in a church that taught I could know Christ personally. When I came to know Him, I wondered why it took so long. Many times I asked God that. How come it took 36 years for you to save me? God said to me, “Do you have compassion on the lost?” I do because I remember what it is like to be lost.
All this came about through one man, one man, Adam, and one man, Jesus.
Romans 5:16-17
but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
The gift of God is not like the result of one man’s sin, Adam’s. The judgment came on Adam, and it, therefore, came to all men. We were born in that judgment. We were born dead.
Romans 5:18-21
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
