On One Condition: Christ - Part Two

The speaker discusses the concept of being "saved" in a Christian context. He explains that being saved means being saved from sin and ultimately from the wrath of God. He criticizes the idea that salvation is simply a choice made by individuals and emphasizes that it is a work of God. The speaker also challenges the notion that preaching should be focused on convincing people to accept Jesus, instead emphasizing that salvation is a result of God's choice and the preaching of the gospel. He concludes by highlighting the importance of recognizing the seriousness of God's wrath and the need for salvation. The following message is brought to you by the people of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. For more information, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org. And now, here's Pastor Jason Booth with the message. When you hear people say, I'm saved. When you hear people say that description of their spiritual condition, I'm saved. And you hear it quite often when you're amongst people that claim some type of an evangelical experience with God. It's their way of saying, in a more Christian way, that they are Christian. It's sort of an in-the-know jargon term in evangelical circles. You would never just say, I was raised in church because we all know from countless sermons preached all over the radio and TV, just to be raised in church doesn't mean you're saved. But to say that you are saved implies that you know a little something about the jargon of churchianity. But if you ask one more question, from what are you saved? They'll say, well, I'm saved from sin. And in an ultimate sense, that is true. You will be one day rescued from the very presence of sin. Sin will have no dominion. Sin will have no sway on your day-to-day life in the eternal kingdom. We will live one day free from sin. Praise God. So, in a sense, they're correct. But there's an important sense in which they missed the mark, ironically, which is the very definition of sin. They missed the mark. Many Christians missed the mark regarding what exactly they're saved from. When you say that you're saved, what are you saved from? Because the truth of the matter is you're not saved from sin in your day-to-day life. At least not yet. You're saved in principle from sin. But in your day-to-day life, you still struggle with sin each and every day. And so that's only half an answer. Half an answer with a lengthy explanation. But what is it that you're saved from? The Scripture answers that question in Romans 3 and 25 and in other places. But for today's sake, we're going to look at Romans 3 and 25 just for a moment. The Scripture says, Now, what is it that we're saved from? Beloved, if Christ was the propitiation, then God the Father had to have been propitiated by what Christ did, His gift, His sacrifice. What does this mean? It means that Jesus Christ was the satisfaction of God and remains, of course, today the satisfaction of God. And what did He satisfy? He satisfied the righteous requirements of the law. Beloved, Christ satisfied God's wrath concerning us. And if you are saved today, you're saved. Yes, ultimately you're saved from sin. But beloved, you are saved from the very wrath of God in Christ. So when we go around saying, I am saved, we should be careful to understand that this means that, yes, I'm saved from the penalty of sin. Absolutely, praise God. But more importantly, Jesus Christ satisfied God's wrath concerning me. Forever settled. Now, I heard some heretic on the radio or may have been on the Internet yesterday trying to downplay the word propitiation. Try to make it out to be that in this context, the word propitiation just means a sacrificial offering that a man could accept or reject. But I would challenge that weak-kneed definition of something so powerful. It ought to blow your mind that in order for men to defend their false doctrine, that they constantly have to diminish the Scripture in order to fulfill their philosophical conclusions. They'll say things like, oh, you sovereign grace people will read into the text and I'm sitting here reading the text word for word. If Jesus Christ is the propitiation, then those for whom He died, He satisfied God concerning righteousness. He satisfied the righteous requirements. He propitiated God's wrath concerning us. Hallelujah. And today we've got to ask the question, for those whom Christ died, was this something that we simply accepted on account of an invitation given to us? Or was this the work of God to actively redeem a people that He came to save? Jesus didn't die to invite anyone to His table. Jesus didn't die hoping that dead, God-hating, self-centered, fallen creatures like us would simply look at the evidence like a good sales pitch at a car dealership and say, well, you've made a good case. I believe I'll choose you. How foolish is that? But preaching has become this in our day. Men will stand in pulpits very similar to this and they will give you their pitch. And they will pitch Jesus to you. Because in their very emaciated, watered-down, man-centered, gospel-tainment version of churchianity, salvation is nothing more than a, won't you help Jesus out and become a Christian today? Why don't you do what you need to do? Why don't you do what you need to do to fill that God-shaped hole in your heart? And yet the Scripture is replete with examples of Jesus being the victor who came to conquer sin on behalf of His people. A Christ who tells us in the sixth chapter of John that those who come to Him only do so because they've been given to Him by the Father. And then you'll hear the naysaying heretic say, well, they can still reject and not come. No, they can't because of all you have given me, says the Lord Jesus. I will lose none. But they can still walk away. Ah, but the Scripture answers your question, you stiff-necked, stubborn sinner. They cannot walk away. For who would walk away from the arms of a fireman back into a burning building? And the Scripture tells it like this. Of all those you have given me, I will lose none. But they can walk away. No, they can't because here's the seal of your hellish theology. The doom is sealed in this word. And I shall raise them up on the last day. Hallelujah forevermore. Take your weak-kneed gospel-tainment pitch and throw it in the trash heap. It's worthless. And let me tell you about a victory in Jesus. Let me tell you about a Savior who came to conquer death, hell, and the grave. A Savior who tells you, if you come to him, he'll not cast you out. And how do I know that? Because he is the one who is bidding you by his Spirit to come. Otherwise, you're going to change the channel. If you're watching this message on social media, you're already looking for cute squirrels or dog videos at this point. If you're sitting here waiting for the time to pass, it's only because the Lord hasn't affected your mind concerning Christ. But by the Spirit's drawing, one day, if it be his will, you'll hear this message and you'll hear it like it's water running through the desert of your soul. You'll hear this gospel and you'll say, where else could I go? You have the words of eternal life, O Lord, just as the disciples. We will cry out just as the disciples when the Spirit of God convicts us. We will say, did not our hearts burn within us while you opened unto us the Scriptures? If this word, if this gospel bores you, if this gospel burdens you with angst, if this gospel makes you feel like you need to be someplace else, understand, I get it. This preacher can't convince you to love God. This preacher can't save your soul. I hear people say that all the time. Preacher, are you saving souls? No, I'm not. If I could save souls, I'd be a man on fire going around saving souls, wouldn't I? If I was any kind of a human being that loved his neighbor, I would be offering the water to the thirsty, would I not? But that's so far above my pay grade. I'm not someone who can save souls, but I am someone who can sound the call. The Lord has raised me up and he's raised you up in your own spheres of life to sound the gospel call. The Lord saves his people. The Lord adds unto the church daily, such as should be saved. Our task is to share the message. And let me tell you, this is a conquering message. For who can resist the will of God? No one. We are the pottery in the potter's hand. And this ought to excite us and comfort us. It shouldn't be a cause for pride. Why? Because you didn't do a thing to merit your salvation. You didn't make the better choice, like so many of the Arminian free will folks would say. You got to choose Jesus. That's heresy. You'll only choose Jesus when he's made you his choice. And he's done that in eternity. And it plays out in time through the preaching of the gospel. Men will respond to the gospel. And we'll say something like this. I sought the Lord and afterward I saw, I see, that you were the one who was seeking me. Yes, I responded to the gospel. And I thought I was loving you first. But it turns out you'd love me before time began. The scripture says we love him because he first loved us and gave himself for us. And we should be excited, beloved, that the wrath of God is satisfied in Jesus. So what are you saved from? I like looking at people and kind of tongue in cheek. And I look at them and I say, I'm saved from the wrath of God. And they look at me like, what? Well, we live in a day and age where God is very milquetoast. God is presented as our celestial grocery store in the sky. And all we've got to do is give him our list and believe it enough and pinky swear promise we'll do our very bedly best. And then God will do the rest. And you hear that kind of preaching, more or less, all over the place. And I want you to understand that apart from Christ, there's nothing in store for you but the unmitigated wrath and judgment of Almighty God. And this should send shockwaves through us. But you know why it doesn't? Because we're fallen. We hate God in our flesh, in our natural strength. We hate the things of God in our natural strength and flesh. And you don't believe me? How many of you were super comfortable this morning laying in your bed? Oh, the spirit is willing sometimes, but the flesh is weak. Or we know we ought to do right. We know we ought to forgive our neighbor, but it's so much more fun, it's almost delicious to sit around and think of new recipes of hatred. Oh, what I should have said, what I could have said, what I'm going to say. And we sit there, as it were, in our cauldron of despair and bitterness, and we just stir up a brand new recipe of delicious, quasi-unnutritious hate. And we whip up a big old batch, don't we? Boy, we enjoy that. And we let that root of bitterness just grow. And then, if you're saved from God's wrath, if you belong to Him, if you've been propitiated, if God has been propitiated on your account, then He comes in through the Spirit of God, thankfully, our Comforter who doesn't leave us. And He comes in and He checks us and says, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I love you. Love them. Ooh. And it's like the father in those Hallmark movies that can just sort of look at his little girl. And that look of disapproval comes on his face. And all of a sudden, that girl just sort of cowers in the corner. No voice need be raised. No hand needed to be thrown. Just that simple disappointment. And all of a sudden, your heart just melts and the Spirit of God does a wonderful work of formation in your life. The Scripture's clear. We grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. And by love, He works in us to do His good pleasure. And boy, He gives us a spanking like you wouldn't believe just by loving us. I loved you. Love them. Ooh, but Lord. Ooh, but Lord. You see? Those elements of stubbornness in that old man keep rearing its ugly head. Do they not? But the Lord is good and He's patient. And He forms us and He molds us and He makes us. That we're saved from His wrath because now He's entirely satisfied in us for Christ's sake. That's why He loves us. That's why and because He loves us, He demonstrated that love through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Beloved, to say you're saved, the whole point is this. To say you're saved means so much more than just I'm saved or that I said a prayer some time ago. There is no sinner's prayer. Every prayer is prayed by a sinner. There's only one time in scripture a prayer's ever been uttered that come out of perfect lips. And that's any time Jesus prays. Every other time, that's a sinner's prayer. But there is no magic abracadabra that you can say that, oh, now I'm saved. But something does happen to our minds concerning Christ when we hear the gospel and the Spirit of God grants us repentance. We immediately think, oh, well, man, everything I thought I stood on is shaky ground. I'm done with all that. I'm going to trust Jesus alone. And boom, the Lord of Glory's done a work in your heart. He's made you alive. He's regenerated you. And now you do all of the things that saved people are inclined to do. You might pray. You'll repent of all those dead works. You'll look at some sinful behaviors and really start dealing with them and turning away from some of that stuff as the Lord gives you strength. You will, to greater or lesser measure. And no man can sit in judgment over you concerning those things. But let's face it. The Lord has already demonstrated. Like when Paul became a Christian, he quit killing Christians. There's a great example, right? But none of those things are the righteousness. I like what Herman Hoeksema says about it. He likens it to a baby being born. A baby coos. A baby cries for mother's milk, mother's attention, the warmth, the closeness, the affection. The baby will stretch its legs and open its eyes. The baby will move its arms and flail about. But none of these things would even have been possible before the baby was born. So the baby isn't a baby because it moves its arms and because it coos and because it longs after its mother's affection and closeness and warmth and milk and nourishment. No. A baby does those things because it is a baby. And so let's not get the effects and the causes confused. Jesus is the righteousness. You might hunger and thirst after that righteousness, but your hungering and your thirsting is not the righteousness. How do we know this? Well, the Bible says in Romans 3 and 25, whom God put forward, Christ, as a propitiation by his blood. So what satisfies God? The blood of Jesus Christ. The death of Christ is what satisfies God's wrath. Don't think that your faith is what saves. I hear people say, oh, he's a man of faith. Well, so isn't every Hindu on the planet. So isn't every Muslim. So isn't every other false religion under the sun. Everyone has some faith in something. You have faith that those chairs are going to hold your backsides up from the ground right now. You're not saved by faith. You're saved by the proper object of your faith. If Jesus Christ is the object of your faith, then Christ has saved. Your faith is in the right object. But your faith itself is a gift of God. You understand? Babies don't cry until they're born. And I don't see very many people taking credit for being born. Oh, I'm so glad I chose to be born. I'm so glad that as I was floating around as molecules in space someplace, that I, millions of years ago, decided to coalesce and come together and land on planet Earth until I became nutrients and food and then became part of the molecules that formulated and formed up human, pre-human cells in different biological life forms. And boom, I just knew I was going to be born. Of course, I'm speaking at the level of absurdity to illustrate the point. None of us take the credit for being born. We don't go around high-fiving people at the nursery, at the hospital, going, yeah, boy, I was born like a boss. No. You were born, but that had nothing to do with you. You think salvation's any different? I'm glad it's no different. I am thankful that I am incapable of doing anything good on my own. You know why I can say that? Because it is not a testimony to giving up towards sin and saying, I'm just going to be a sinner. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. My strength is only made perfect. His strength, rather, is only made perfect or only fully realized in my life when I realize that I am weak. And again, the little children's song teaches us so much. I am weak, but He is strong. Who satisfied God on your behalf? The real question isn't how many times have you prayed. The question isn't how many times you've gone to church. The question isn't what church you've joined. The question isn't if you've been baptized or not. It's not if you've taken the wine and the bread. The question today is, who is satisfying God's wrath concerning you? God put Jesus forward as the satisfaction, the Bible says, by His blood, to be received by faith. And this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Has Jesus gone your way? When He died on Calvary's Hill, did He die in your place? If He did, then nothing can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We're saved conditionally. Oh, you are? Yeah. The one condition is Christ. And it's Christ alone. That's why our salvation stands. That's why you don't go home after church wondering if you need to be resaved a hundred times. If you've ever been saved from God's wrath, then you've been saved by the blood of Jesus. And the blood of Jesus alone cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Not your good deeds, not your bad deeds, not your, well, I eat beef, or I don't eat pork, or I don't drink wine, or I don't say these seven magic words. None of that's going to save you. That's not the righteousness. The righteousness is Jesus. John Gill, the great theologian from days gone by, says this about this passage. Forgive his flowery language, but remember he's writing in a different era when people were frankly more intelligent than we are. So bear with him, open your ears, and listen to this great Baptist preacher from an era long since past. First, of the righteousness itself, which is holy of God, not of man's providing, but of God's appointing. I want to stop there and just focus a little bit. You didn't bring anything to the table that saved you from God's wrath. Nothing you present saves you from God's wrath. Even when men in the Old Testament days had to bring a sacrifice to God, do you notice that it was never something of their own self that they sacrificed? It was always some external thing had to be brought into the picture. This itself is a type of Christ. You couldn't just go to the temple and say, I present myself as a sacrifice. Why? Because you were a sinner. You had no way to sacrifice anything for yourself. Even the Old Testament tells us that your own goodness can't save you, for you don't have any goodness. It would be as though releasing a murderer, and I've said this a time or two, releasing a murderer just because he promised the judge he would not murder anyone else, I think he swears. Well, what does that do about the situation of all the murders you've already committed? The stain is set in the fabric, beloved. Sean Gill goes on. Not of man's merit, but of God's free grace. Why do we call God's grace free? Because God is sovereign to dispose of His grace in any way He sees fit. It's free from the constraints of what you and I might desire, what anything else in heaven and earth could do. God exercises His grace independently based on His own pleasure and will. That's when we say free grace. That's what we mean. Grace that is conditioned on no one and nothing save the pleasure of God. And it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. Hallelujah. Forevermore. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him and by His stripes ye are healed. Hallelujah forevermore. No predisposing cause, but the everlasting love of God in Christ having anything to do in the matter. Yea, faith itself, by which a child of God is made to possess it and enjoy it, has nothing of merit by way of recommendation. So people say, well, no, I still had to believe preacher. And I look you right in the face and say, if you think the faith you believed Christ in and for, if you think that faith emanated from your stone-cold dead sinner heart, then you don't have a biblical understanding of faith. Faith is a gift of God. Well, I don't even care about all this. Well, then you don't have God's gift of faith. Now Christian, you might doubt from time to time. Let's not kid ourselves. We're prone to wander. We're a stubborn sheep. We go do our own thing. Everyone in this room has had false. You've even acted contrary to the will of God. Shocker, I know, right? But if you seriously find yourself perturbed by the gospel, you know, you hear it on TV, I forgot that, or I watch it, I don't want to see it. Well, that doesn't surprise a gospel preacher. It doesn't surprise a gospel preacher. Why? Because gospel preachers know that there's nothing special in the preacher or in his message that will ring the bell of a sinner who isn't under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. There's nothing I can do. But sound out the warning in the call. And guess what? The Spirit of God, He brings forth the fruit. Why do I say that? Because He says, when the Spirit of truth has come, He will testify of Jesus. And my gospel came not unto you in word only, in the enticing words of man's wisdom, but in the demonstration of power. What is the demonstration of power? That's the Spirit of God moving and changing hearts. So faith, your faith, isn't something that you've drummed up. Let's lay the baseline definitions here. Faith is a divine enabling. Faith is a miracle of grace. People say, they don't see miracles anymore. And you know, you're right. You turn on the TV preachers and you're not going to see very many miracles. But where you will see miracles every single day is when the preaching of the gospel goes forth and dead sinners, under no power of their own, find themselves crumbling at the feet of Christ, asking Him for mercy and grace and knowing He's their only way of escape. The miracle of grace is the gift of faith that the Spirit gives us that we might be able to apprehend and lay hold of this glorious gift of salvation. All to the praise of His glorious grace. This has nothing to do with you. You're the object of God's love or you are the objects of God's rest. And in God's economy, that's all there is. There are sheep and there are goats. There is wheat and there is chaff or tares. My only prayer is that the Lord would use me to speak the truth to as many people as I can that He may be pleased to save His people from that multitude in the preaching of the gospel. That's our plea. That's our prayer. That's our passion to preach the gospel. I don't know who the elect are. That's so far above my pay grade as a mere human being that I don't even have any business sitting around speculating. Here's what I can say though. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And why? Because He's knocked. He's entered. He's given you a heart of flesh to believe. He's taken out that old stony dead heart. The Spirit of God's done all the ground work and now He bids you come and then He enables you by that gift of faith to make that decision. The decision doesn't save. That's not the righteousness. Christ is the righteousness. The Spirit is the unction and the power to do what's right and to cry out to the Lord. But it's all of God's grace. You understand this is all of God's grace. The condition is met in the blood of Jesus. He is the propitiation. All right, let's look on. The Lord who is the sole author and giver of this righteousness is the sole author and giver of faith also to receive, believe, and enjoy it. And so that faith as an act of ours is but the effect and not the call. Your faith does not save you. Your faith has been given to you because you have been saved. And now you act as though the Lord is who He says He is because He has given you a change of mind concerning who is righteous and who isn't. The highly favored soul who has made a rich partaker of the blessing, to Him it is given to feel His want of righteousness in Himself. That means the first way you know by the Scripture's own account that you are lost and undone is that you finally realize that you are lost and undone. You're like the prodigal son in the pig pen eating the husks that the pigs were eating. And then you realize, you come to your senses and say, wait a minute, there's plenty of food back at the father's house. And then realizing that you don't deserve it, just make me a servant, the prodigal son. All this is part and parcel of the experience of conversion. To behold Christ's righteousness as every way suited to Himself and His wants. This is what we do. We say He is all my righteousness. I stand complete in Him and worship Him. To accept on bended knees the proffered mercy. God does not offer mercy indiscriminately to this whole world through the preaching of the Gospel. He is not offering this to vessels of wrath. But He sends ministers like me and like you in your spheres of life to tell the truth concerning Jesus. And that call is like mom yelling for her children at the end of the play day to come on back to the house. That's what the Gospel is essentially. I remember growing up in town, Marion, Ohio, and we could be three or four blocks down the road and then come dusk, you'd hear a mother's voice, which was the cell phone of the 1970s and 80s. I would hear, Jason! Sometimes it'd be more faint than others. Sometimes it would echo off of the houses. I'd be in an alleyway with some friends, maybe riding our bikes up and down the alleyway. You know, kids always looking for mud holes to run their bikes in. And you'd hear the voice and you'd know it was time to come home. And you knew that the house you were going to wasn't built by you. The clothes you were going to wear that night to bed were not bought by you. The meal that was going to go in your belly prepared that night, seemingly by magic, to a six-year-old, wasn't anything that you had come up with. You just knew that when you heard the voice, it was time to run on home. Now, every analogy breaks down. A theologian could take the analogy I just gave you and slice it and dice it and no analogy ultimately lasts. They all break down eventually. But don't you see the gist of it? My job is to stand on the front porch of eternity and say, Come home! And if you hear that voice, you hear the voice of the Master, He set a table for you. He set a table for you. There is a marriage supper of the Lamb that will last for eternity upon eternity and He has bid His people come, buy and eat without price. Hallelujah forevermore. Finally this morning, as we conclude this two-part series, the Gospel is Christ's righteousness imputed to us. So, the Gospel satisfies God's wrath concerning sin. And the Gospel is also the crediting of Christ's righteousness to us. Let me say it like this. If we are not both forgiven and declared righteous, then the whole package of eternal life in heaven is not going to work. We can be forgiven of all sin and still not enter into the kingdom as righteous. You know, there's a way you could say that, just as though we've got to have a change. If God just simply forgives sin and then we just go forward and nothing else has changed and we're not seen in the righteous robes of Christ, we're still as yet lost for eternity. Okay, so we're not going to kill us immediately. We'll just die later. But the Gospel is Christ's righteousness credited to us. 2 Corinthians 5, 18-21, the Word of the Living God. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. Now listen now. What does reconciling mean here? Here you go. Not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. You see, we're on the front porch. It's dusk and we're saying, come home, come home. The supper's waiting. And God's people are made willing in the day of his power. God makes his appeal through us. The Bible says now, we implore you on behalf of Christ. And here's the part of the minister, the part of the Christian. We say this, be reconciled to God. That's the message we have for this world. Be reconciled to God. Verse 21 tells us how all this is possible. Strike that, how all this is certain. Verse 21, For our sake he made him, Christ, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Now, how is it that we talk about imputation? Imputation is an accounting term. It's a term that implies accrediting to one's account. You can go right now and impute someone else's charge account down at the local carry out to your bill. You could do that. You can walk in there and say, tell you what, credit the money I have toward their account or debit me the amount they owe on their account. Just bring it over to my books and I'll take it. See, Christ did not become a sinner, so that we would become sinless. That's not what the scripture teaches. Now, there are some cult groups out there that really are bearing down on that very topic right now. They're trying to say that Jesus Christ became a sinner. Here's a problem, though. If Christ became a sinner, then he could no longer be the lamb, the spotless lamb slain before the foundation of the world. If he was a sinner, rocket scientist, he could not die a sinless death. He was tempted in like manner, as are we, yet without sin. Christ, the Bible says, was reconciled to a sinner. He took our sins by imputation. We reckon, that's another accountancy term. Listen, Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. Why? Because he himself bore the penalty on Calvary's tree, counted as a sinner. He wore our sin by imputation, just as we wear his righteousness by imputation. Now, this is some teaching. If you love the Lord, you love this teaching. You have to, because it's your only hope. Because if this isn't true, then the only other option is, be a good little boy and girl, cross your fingers and hope that you do enough to please a holy God who cannot look upon even the slightest sin. So you go have a good time with that. I'm going to stay here in the scripture that says we can be reconciled to God by the work of Christ. For God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. We are reckoned the righteousness of God. And this is wrought to our minds by faith, his gift that causes us to believe in Christ our righteousness. Already we are seen as righteous for Christ's sake because of his work. Even now, I want you to understand, the Bible says we are seated in the heavenly places with Christ. This is a done deal. If you belong to Jesus, I don't care what happens, height nor depth nor any other thing can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. You belong to him, and the full pardon of your sins, if that's the case right now, then you are saved forever because he is able to save to the uttermost. And if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things are passed away, and all things become new. Why? Because there's power in the blood, there's power in the efficacy of the finished work of Christ to do that which God sent him forth to do. He did not come back void or unprofitable, for Isaiah tells us that the word of God does not go forth unprofitable. It never returns void. It always accomplishes. And who is the word made flesh who dwells among us? The Lord Jesus Christ. One day when faith ends in sight, we will be glorified and made sinless and always free from sin. Until then, we will wear the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. And I'm so thankful that I can be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, but having his. Hallelujah. Forevermore. So the final two points in this series are this. You're saved from God's wrath. And the final point that I really wanted to drive home today was that the righteousness you have is the righteousness of another. It's been credited to your account. I'm so thankful for the righteousness of Jesus because I don't have any righteousness. You know, it's funny. When you're preaching to your family, they know who you are. They see you every day. They see you in your highs and your lows. They see you when you lose your temper. They see you when you're down and out. They see you when you're happy. They see you when you're having a good time. They see you when you're joking around and you come to church. And you know, I often wonder how folks that preach works righteousness can dare stand in the pulpit knowing that their own family is staring at them. They know who they are. They get in their pulpits and lie and say stuff like, I've lived all week free from sin. Meanwhile, their kids are sitting in the crowd going, yeah, what about the time you hit your finger with that hammer there, Dad? Dad's a liar, but he sure does preach good. This isn't a gospel according to Jason. This isn't the gospel according to how good I have lived my life. If that's the standard, we're all doomed because none of us live a life that pleases God in our own strength. But the gospel, hallelujah, is all of Christ. He has satisfied every condition. He has taken the law and nailed those righteous requirements to His own cross. Hallelujah forevermore. He's the end of the law for righteousness and then the belief. And I'm not going to finish what began in the Spirit by the deeds of the law. I'm not going to finish my salvation by somehow adding all the things I think I ought to do and that's where I'm going to find my righteousness. No! My righteousness is from Jesus who has become for me my wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and ultimately, beloved, redemption! Redemption by His blood! Forgiveness of sin! Oh, preacher, that's foolish. Yes, it is foolish for a grown man to yell at people for an hour every Sunday morning. But if you have been called, this is hope and peace to your soul. This is life and strength for the journey and joy for the days ahead. Hallelujah. Let us conclude. The gospel is God's power and the salvation conditioned solely on Christ. The gospel is the revelation of God's righteousness conditioned solely on Christ. Today, we heard the final two points. The gospel is the salvation, or rather the satisfaction, of God's wrath concerning sin conditioned solely on Christ. And finally, the gospel is the righteousness of God imputed to His people conditioned solely on Christ. Beloved, the one and only condition for being a Christian for knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have a sure promise of eternal life is Jesus Christ. The gospel is a set of historical facts concerning the person and work of Christ. This is true. For we have to have a factual foundation for our faith. And for no other foundation can man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. He did the work. He was born a virgin. He was confounding the temple priests and the temple teachers by an early age. He worked miracles, signs, and wonders and preached this kingdom all throughout the land. He lived sinlessly. He was tempted in every manner as are we yet without sin. He was unjustly tried, convicted. He was sacrificed. And He opened not His mouth as He was led to the slaughter. His righteous death split the very veil of the temple and opened up the floodgates of grace to reign in righteousness all throughout the land. And now He calls, after that third day, He was resurrected, seen of hundreds of people, told His disciples to go and turn the world upside down with this gospel message of belief in Jesus for the salvation of sins. And He went up to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit a few days later. And it's all been victory, victory, victory, victory, victory ever since. Hallelujah forevermore. The gospel is a historical fact. It happened. And now we preach about Jesus having finished all this work. And it's the Spirit of God who grants you the faith to believe in Jesus under righteousness. If you come to believe Jesus is who the Bible says He is, you do so only under one condition. And that sole condition is Christ alone as one's only hope before a holy God. If you've added anything to that, you are as yet in your sin. Christ is the power. Christ is the revelation of God. Christ is the satisfaction of God's wrath. Christ is the righteousness of God imputed unto His people. And today, the only thing left to say is hallelujah. Hallelujah. Holy, holy, holy God. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Lord bless your people. Save the lost. Comfort the saint. And do all these things through the only condition, the only name given among men whereby we must be saved. Do so in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen. Amen. You have just heard a message from Pastor Jason Booth of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. To learn more about the good news of Jesus, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org.