Radio Broadcast Wednesday 11/06/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Romans P18 (11-06-24)

Justified Through Faith We Now Have Peace With God Through Jesus our Lord God

~ “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:1-2

When a person is in Christ Jesus, they have nothing to fear, because there is a peace with God that passes all understanding. We don’t have to worry about what is going to happen to us after our physical life. We don’t have to worry about our tomorrows, for God is in our tomorrows. We don’t have to worry about what is happening in the world. We don’t have to worry about anything, for He is the one that directs All our paths for the person in Christ Jesus. And for the person who is in Christ Jesus, we also know where the Spirit of fear comes from, it comes from the evil one. And the Holy Spirit is the one who guides us in ALL Truth, giving us a sound mind and self control to make proper decisions along the way. Yet we at times want to go our own way, and make decisions based on what I want to do, when I want to do and the way I want to do it independent of what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. It’s important that we understand that we have been called to a holy calling, a set-apart calling, to be used by Him. We have been set apart in Christ Jesus to share the Gospel of Truth with others. Paul declares to Timothy the Truth of this in:

2 Timothy 1:7-12

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.

So do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, His prisoner. Instead, join me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God. He has saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but by His own purpose and by the grace He granted us in Christ Jesus before time began. And now He has revealed this grace through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the gospel, to which I was appointed as a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher.

For this reason, even though I suffer as I do, I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day.”

And we who are in Christ have the Holy Spirit living in us. So we are to trust in the Holy Spirit for ALL Truth, and lean not on our own understanding of ANYTHING today. Because we live in a world filled with deception at all turns. “However, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into ALL TRUTH. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears, and He will declare to you what is to come.” John 16:13 This is for each of us today. Trust in Him alone for ALL TRUTH.

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~ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.

For at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Therefore, since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him! For if, when we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life! Not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned. For sin was in the world before the law was given; but sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the way that Adam transgressed. He is a pattern of the One to come.

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, abound to the many! Again, the gift is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment that followed one sin brought condemnation, but the gift that followed many trespasses brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive an abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

So then, just as one trespass brought condemnation for all men, so also one act of righteousness brought justification and life for all men. 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.

The law came in so that the trespass would increase; but where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 5:1-21

Pray to God:

Do you really want to know the WHOLE Truth of what is going on today?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7

Lord Jesus, teach me the truth of the world today and give me the wisdom to know the truth and identify the lies of the devil. Thank you God.”

~ “Guys, we’ve been studying through the book of Romans. We come in chapter five to a therefore. And as we’ve talked about so many times, what’s a therefore there for it’s a conclusion. It’s where the apostle Paul has made statements that we are in Christ. We are justified by faith and by faith alone. And it says that in that’s why it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. It said the words, if it was credit to him, were written not for him alone, but also for us. In other words, for you and me today, who whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification.” ~ Bob George

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Join Bob George in this chapter by chapter exposition of the letter to the Romans. Available for download the complete series on the Book of Romans. Romans has been described as the most dynamic, life changing document ever penned. It is a study in systematic theology, a defense of the Gospel, and a practical guide to Christian living all in one.

Announcer 0:12
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Bob George 0:27
Guys, we’ve been studying through the book of Romans. We come in chapter five to a therefore. And as we’ve talked about so many times, what’s a therefore there for it’s a conclusion. It’s where the apostle Paul has made statements that we are in Christ. We are justified by faith and by faith alone. And it says that in that’s why it was credited to Abraham as righteousness. It said the words, if it was credit to him, were written not for him alone, but also for us. In other words, for you and me today, who whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification.

Now we have talked about before that the cross was what cleared the deck for the divine action of bringing life to the dead. That you’re not saved by getting your sins forgiven. You’re saved by receiving life from the dead. But before that we could receive eternal life, he had to eternally deal with what caused death, and what caused death was sin, and that was the purpose of the cross, was to reconcile. That’s an accounting term, reconcile all things unto Himself through the death of his Son, so that he could save us by His resurrected life. And this is precisely why the Apostle Paul was writing that he was delivered over to death for our sins, but He was raised to life for our justification. Now in justification includes what he did at the Cross reconciliation, but reconciliation and justification are two different things. Justification is the cross. The cross was included in the resurrection, and that’s why we say we stream people down aisles to get their sins forgiven, instead of bringing them down an aisle to receive life. And so what happens is we go back to our pews as empty as we went to the altar, and we don’t understand why we have not had a change of life, because all we have done is received a half gospel. We have come to Christ for what he did for us, but not come to Christ for who He is in us. And that’s God. We came to him as a savior, but not as who he is God.

And so the resurrection is the centrality of the teaching of the New Testament all the way through the New Testament, it is the resurrection that saves lives, and we’re told that over and over, without the resurrection, we’re to be pitied of all people and are still in our sins. Did Paul not understand that a cross had occurred? Absolutely he understood that. But he also understood that it’s only in the resurrected life of Christ Jesus that that forgiveness that was provided for the whole world is received. He went to a cross to die for the sins of the whole world, not a select bunch, but for the whole world. He died and took away the sins of the world. Now, if salvation is getting your sins forgiven, that would be universal salvation, but that provision is what cleared the deck for the divine action of Him through His resurrected life of bringing life to the dead. And so we come to Christ for him his life, and in that life, we receive forgiveness of sins. What was provided for us, then, is only received in the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. And that’s what he has attempted to get across to us in these first chapters of Romans.

And now coming with the therefore, therefore, since we have been justified through faith. We have peace with God, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Therefore, since we have been justified. Now again, we’ve just been told that you’re justified by His what? His death or his life? His life. We have come to him for life. Why do we need life? Because we were born dead. The only man that was ever born alive spiritually is Jesus Christ. That’s why the only man who was ever capable of laying his life down for you is the only one that ever had a life to lay down for you, and that is Christ Jesus. That’s why his virgin birth is not up for grabs. Adam, the first Adam, was created alive. Jesus called the last Adam was born alive. And so therefore the only man that ever had life at birth was Christ. We are born dead. When you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God did what? Made you alive with who? Christ and He forgave how many of your sins? All of them.

So therefore, since we have now been justified through faith in his life, we have peace with God. In other words, until you come to be justified in Christ, until you come to know Christ, you will never have peace. We know that, don’t we? We’re always looking. And that’s the condition of the Lost World, always seeking, always looking, always looking for something new. Find me a new hula hoop, a new place to go, a new place to be entertained, a new place to look better. And so we’re always in this age of uncertainty, always looking for something because we’ve never found. Jesus said, once you have drunk of my water, you’ll never thirst again. And I wonder why many people who claim to be Christians are so thirsty, when Jesus said, If you’ve drunk of me, you’ll never be thirsty? And so when you have Jesus, you have everything you need, for life and for godliness. You’ve been given it all in Christ, Jesus. So he said, we have peace. That’s peace. I can now rest, and that’s what God has called us to as a Sabbath Rest, isn’t it? Resting from our works, just as he did from his. And he’s saying to you and me that if you are truly justified in Christ, you can live in peace. You don’t have to worry about where you’re going when you die, because we know that in Christ, you’re absent from the body present with the Lord. Now, friends, if I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to go when I’m die, then I certainly don’t have to worry about what I’m going to do while I’m here. And that’s, again, what he’s trying to get across to us. We have been we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We were born into this world alienated from God, dead to God, not dead to your knowledge of God, not dead even to the fact that you’d like to know God, but you’re dead to knowing him, and until the day came when you as an act of your faith, and what Jesus did for you at the cross, and what he did is offer you in His resurrected life, you come to Him by faith. That’s the only time in your life that you’re ever going to experience peace, the peace of God that passes all understanding. And so we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom it says we have gained access, and I’m going to leave that word by faith out a minute through whom we have gained access into this grace in which we now stand. God wanted you to enter into His grace, the grace of God. Enter into His grace. That means that you stand in His grace. Now you can’t stand in His grace and stand in His law at the same time. There is no grace in the law. Under the law, the wages of sin is death. That is not exactly what you call grace.

That’s called law, and we’ve we dealt with that last week, and we’ll continue to deal with it, that here comes a point where you’ve got to die to what killed you so that you can come alive to what saved you. And He wants us to stand in His grace. Now, how do you enter into this grace that He provided for us? He provided all of it at the cross, His burial, his resurrection, and the fact that I left this earth so that I could send my spirit into you and you could be my body. Now, folks, that many times, is the missing link in Christianity and in Christian teaching. That’s the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We’ve taken the ministry of the Holy Spirit in some areas and made it wild and wooly, and in others, it’s absolutely ignored. And there’s entire theologies that basically is grabbed a hold, too, by people who think themselves as intellectual, who absolutely have not a clue as to what it is to walk in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. God said, I am going away. And he said, It is good for you that I am going away, because when I go away, I’m going to send my Spirit to live in you, and you are going to be my body here on this earth 2000 years ago, if you were to look for the body of Christ, you’d had to go to Israel and find a man named Jesus of Nazareth, and there you would have found the body of Christ. But he said, I’m going away. And he said, it’s good for you that I’m going away, because when I do, you’re going to become my body on this earth. And that’s exactly what you and I are who are born again. We have become members of the Body of Christ, the Holy Spirit of God came to live in us. It then says that the Spirit of God baptized us into the body of Christ placed us into the body. We’re told that the body has many parts, and though its parts are many. It forms one body, and you only got one head, and we’re not it. We are not the head. We’re the body. And this body responds to the head. Everything these fingers are doing is as a result of the head telling them to do it. And that’s the way we’re supposed to live on this earth, and that is in dependency upon the head. And we’re not it. We don’t gain our instructions from one another. We gain it from the head. We teach what the head has told us. That’s why we have this Bible in our hands is to teach us the body what the head has told us.

And so he says that we have gained access, by faith into this grace in which we now stand and we are a part of the body of Christ. The Spirit of God lives in us. Now Jesus said that when the Spirit of God comes to live within us, that the Spirit of God will be responsible to do what? Lead us in how much truth? All truth, and who did he say was truth? Himself. And when you pick up this Bible, my friends, it’s the only book that I know of that we study, and the only reason we should study it is to get to know the author. There’s no book that I ever studied in any intellectual pursuit to get to know the author. I don’t know who wrote the history book that I read or the math book. I hope they’re all someplace except heaven. But at any rate, I don’t know who the author was. Don’t care. Never did care. I never studied a book to get to know the author, only to get to know the book long enough to get it in a blue book. And you do that enough times, you get a degree. That’s how hard it is to get a degree. You just memorize long enough don’t even need it much beyond the test. At least I didn’t, didn’t need it much beyond the test. You get enough of that you get a degree. When you study the Bible, you study it for one purpose only, to get to know the author. He said this, I will lead you into all truth. My Word is truth, and I will lead you into my word. And My Word will lead you to me, and I will set you free, and when the Son has set you free, you shall be free indeed. Is that true or not? Guys, that’s the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our guide. The Holy Spirit lives in you. The Holy Spirit lives in you so that he can guide you into all truth, to lead you into the paths of righteousness.

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Bob George 13:49
You’re not guided by the law written on stone that kills. You’re guided by the Spirit who is alive, living in you that gave you life. The law did its work, we studied that. What was the purpose of the law? To show you your sinfulness in order to lead you to Christ. The law is a mirror. What’s the purpose of the mirror to wash your face? No to show you it’s dirty. But a mirror doesn’t wash your face. Is a mirror necessary, if you want to see if your face is dirty or not, it is, if you don’t care, it has no meaning to it. But if you suddenly come to a point where you’re wondering whether your face is dirty or not, you look in a mirror and you see it is but a mirror can’t wash it. And that’s where you hear a tapping on your shoulder, and you turn around and there’s Jesus saying, Bob, did you see what was revealed in the mirror? Yes, I did. Do you want me to cleanse you? Yes, I do. And we turn and are saved, cleansed of all unrighteousness and indwelt by the Spirit of God. That’s salvation. We enter into that by faith and by faith alone. You don’t enter into that by an ounce of works. You enter into that by faith. Faith, and by faith alone. And so in as much as we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access to this by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope.

Folks, you’re going to see in this passage again, the triplicate of faith, hope and love. If you remember when I was going to write our last Bible study at one of the last ones that we wrote, and it was going to be on love. And I thought, Well, that’ll be an easy one to to write. And I started getting into writing the Bible study. And I it was frustrating. I couldn’t write it. God wouldn’t let me complete the book on love. And I finally realized that the reason was that you cannot take love by itself. It’s a triplicate faith, hope and love. Paul has always commended you for your what? Faith, Hope and Love. Faith, hope and love. Why? Because you really can’t have one without the other. There. You have to separate one from the other, but you can’t have one without the other. But the fact is, they’re different, and yet they form one thing. And so in this passage, you’re going to see him talking about faith, and then you’re going to be talking about hope, and then you’re going to be talking about love. And so he’s saying here that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, we’ve gained access by our faith into this grace that we stand. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, and not only so, but we rejoice in our sufferings.

Now I want to deal with this for just a moment, in regard to rejoicing in our sufferings. How many of you have ever had sufferings of any kind? Is that all of us, or if some of you escaped it, if you’ve escaped it, just give it time. In this world, Jesus said you are going to have what? Tribulation. Now, that’s a promise. So if you haven’t had it yet, just wait, because you are going to have it in this world. You will have tribulation. In this world, you will have suffering. You may lose a loved one, you may lose a romance. You may lose the love of your husband or the love of your wife, you may have a child that rejects you and goes off into no man’s land. You may lose your job, your work, you may lose your health, which some people do. You may lose your mobility, as some people do. You may lose your voice, you may lose your eyesight, you may lose your hearing. There’s all kinds of things in this world where we have tribulation. Am I right or wrong? I’ve told people, if you’re married in this room, look at your mate, because unless you die together in an accident, one of the other you’re going to look at one another in a casket someday. It’s just that simple. One of you are going to look at the other one in a casket that’s going to be called tribulation, trials, hardships. And Jesus said, In this world, you’re going to have them. When sin entered into this world, death entered into this world, trials entered into this world, tribulation entered into this world, to the point it says, Even all nature groans for its redemption, the whole world is fallen, and we’re a part of that fallen race, until we’re born again into a newness of life, living in that fallen race, but as a light to that fallen race. And so he said, You’re going to have suffering.

Now we had, I don’t know about you, when I came to Christ back in the 60s, it was kind of come to Jesus, and everything’s going to be wonderful. No more problems, no more trials, no more tribulation. Did you? Did any of you go through that as well? That doesn’t last long, does it? And we find out that’s not true at all. But he said something about suffering. When I enter into something that causes me to suffer, if I begin to look at that circumstance from God’s perspective, and I begin to think in my own life to say, Why am I going through this suffering? Is there a purpose for this? And we grab a hold of a verse of Scripture that says, I will cause all things to work together for good, to those who love the Lord and to those who are called according to His purpose. You see friends, it’s only when we look back after we’ve watched God’s faithfulness that we look back and say, I now see why I went through that. I now see it. I didn’t see it when I was going through it, but I see it now. Now you’re never going to see that if you’re not looking at things from God’s perspective, and this can be some of the worst things that you’ll ever go through in life, but if you will hang in there, trusting God and trusting the Lord Jesus Christ to do precisely what he said he would do in your life. I will cause all things to work together for your good, if you love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.

And so we have attitudes that we can approach suffering. I can approach suffering with an attitude of God and His promises, God, in His faithfulness, I can approach this regardless what I’m going through. I know because God has promised me that in his time, he will cause this to work together for my good, for what is good for me. He will cause it to work together for that purpose. Or we can say, Woe is me. And I’ve had people who are Christians who say, How could God allow this to happen to me? And in essence, what they’re saying is, how could God allow this to happen to wonderful me. I mean, I know God loves me, but no wonder I love me too. And we say, How could this happen? And you say, What’s wrong with you man? Did you see what happened to his Son? Did you see what happened to the Apostle Paul? Did you see what happened to the apostles who were the ones who carried this gospel to you and me. All of them died a horrible death, except John, who died in exile. Why would we think that we’re going to escape trials and tribulation when Jesus didn’t or nor did His early church, or his early apostles, and so that’s a mindset that, quite frankly, escapes me sometimes, is, why do people want to blame God mainly for our own stupid decisions that we’ve made? And yet we blame God. How can God do that? Well, very easy. He gave man a free will. How could God allow all of the Hebrews to be because he gave a free will to man. Well, how God is sovereign? I know He’s sovereign, and in His sovereignty, he gave a free will to man. That’s part of his sovereignty is, I’m not going to make a robot out of you. I’m going to create a man who can choose. I don’t want a man that has to love me. I want a man who chooses to love me. I don’t want to marry a woman who has to love me. I want to marry a woman who chooses to marry to love me, don’t you? Didn’t you? So God, in His sovereignty, created a man with a choice, and man has been making choices every since. Adam and Eve made a choice in the Garden of Eden. God didn’t force him to do that. If he did, he’s a sadistic God, who knew that he was going to choose and force them to choose to fall so that this world could be screwed up for 1000s of years, He created them to live in dependency upon God, which they did, until the day that they decided that Adam decided he would kind of add to what God told him and and Eve decided she had believed what Satan said instead of God or her husband, and man fell, and we’ve been in that fallen state ever since.

And so we have to understand the truth that God gave us a choice, and the problems that we see in the world today are a result of choices that man makes when they decide, I don’t need God to determine right and wrong. The one single choice, the one tree in the garden of Eden was, this is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and Adam and Eve don’t try to even think about eating from that one, because on the day you do, you are going to die the day you decide that I don’t. You don’t need me to determine right from wrong and good from evil. You’re going to die. Anything else, folks that trees are available to you. Any other choice you want to make, go ahead, because I’ll work all those things together for good on that one you try to make that one, you’ve had it.

What are we kind of a generation do we live in today that’s getting worse and worse and worse? This country is going downhill faster than you could ever dream or imagine, as we bring intolerance of everything, and you have the homosexual community as an example with inserts into the Dallas times. Did you all see that? Pages of it to get people to have an acceptance of perverted behavior. What is that? That’s man standing at the guard at the tree and saying, God, you don’t know what’s right and wrong. You just don’t understand. You just don’t understand. Well, the issue is is, yes, I do understand, and I understand that when I say that something is sin, that means it’s sin. And if I call something sin, don’t call it something to be tolerated. That’s man, man standing at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, saying, I don’t need you God, I have situational ethics. And if you just, if you’ll just get it accepted, if we just get it out there and get everybody accepting, why then nobody will criticize me. And I want to tell you, folks, the last place of a movement. I don’t care what movement it is, but a movement to discredit what God said is sin is the Church of Jesus Christ, and that’s the next battleground, and it’s taking place in history right now, where we bring in ministers, and we bring in elders, and we bring in everything who are out of a background of sin. How many of us have sinned? All of us have sinned. I’m not zeroing in on one sin, but if I ever came down and said, fornication is okay, adultery is okay, stealing isn’t bad, either, lying is okay, cheating is okay, worshiping idols, that’s okay. You ever get down to that, folks, you’ve had it.

Announcer 27:11
Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord find more information online at BobGeorge.net. There you will also find available CDs, DVDs and Bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.