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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the You can reach us toll-free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s message will be a blessing to you and your family.

Justification by faith descended. And the gospel is Justification by faith. classification by faith. You’re justified by faith and faith alone and what Christ has done for you. It’s not like justification by faith is one way you can be saved. It is the only way you can be saved and Better man is justified by faith without works. Now here in Romans in chapter 4, I want you to look there in verse 1 and 1 And verse 1 says, What shall we say then that Abraham our Father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?

Now it’s not so much like Abraham went on looking and he found something. How many of us have made the statement? I was lost and then I found the Lord. Like God was lost and I found him. No God was not lost. I was lost and he found me. It wasn’t Abraham out there trying to find a way to be justified. Now the Bible tells us that Job did ask the question, how shall a man be justified with God?

But you can’t find the way unless God reveals it to you. And so that’s the purpose of us sharing the gospel with individuals so that they can hear the gospel and believe. So they can be justified just as if they’ve never done a thing wrong in their whole life. So God says that justification is by faith. Now look there in your notes. I have number one, justification was not by works before the law. When did Abraham live? Before the law.

How much before the law? Four hundred and thirty years before the law was ever given. So there’s no way that Abraham could have been saved by the law. And yet if he’s the father of the nation of Israel, he’s the one that’s always referred to in the word of God, the great faith of Abraham, then it can’t be referring to Abraham had to keep the law to be saved or do good deeds to be saved because the law wasn’t even given for 430 years later until it was given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Abraham found another way for a man in the flesh to be justified. Now how can a man in the flesh become justified? because God reveals something to him. And God spoke to Abraham back in the book of Genesis, chapter 15. And the Lord tells him things that he would not have known and made promises to Abraham. And the Bible says Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for faith or for righteousness. So God gave him his righteousness because Abraham believed God.

And by believing alone a man can be justified. So God made a promise to Father Abraham, saying, and these shall all families of the earth be blessed or received what you received, salvation, his righteousness by faith and faith alone. So the Bible says in Galatians chapter three verse eight that the gospel was preached in the Old Testament times to Abraham when he says that the heathen shall be justified by faith. So God made a promise, and that promise is to be kept.

Look there at letter A in your notes. If Abraham was justified by work, if he was justified by his works, because we have people today that say you’re justified by your works. You say, how do you know there’s teaching that you’re justified by your works? Any preacher who teaches you can lose your salvation. Because you did something bad, believed in justification by works. And he preaches who believes you can lose your salvation, does not believe in salvation by grace.

Because if God can save you by grace, He can keep you saved by grace, if you really believe it’s by grace. In letter A, if Abraham was justified by works, number one, he has reasons to glory in himself. And God would be in debt to Abraham to reward him for all of his works. Look there in verse two, for if Abraham were justified by works, if he was, he have where of the glory. That means he could brag, but not before God.

He could brag before other people, but not before God. You’ve ever heard of a verse that says for by grace or you say through faith that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God and not of works lest any man should boast. So God says that if Abraham was justified by his works, he could brag, but he couldn’t brag before God because the Bible tells us that no man shall glory in his presence. God wants all the praise, the honor, and the glory for saving a man.

And that’s why he made salvation free. He said it would be by grace. If it was by works, you could take credit for it. And it’s not by your works. Let her be. If Abraham was justified by faith alone, he has reasons to glory in God alone. His faith was counted for righteousness. And what does the Bible say? Look in verse 3, for what sayeth the scripture? That’s the Old Testament. Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

So Abraham simply by faith alone to receive the righteousness of God. So God gives his righteousness to a person by believing, not by works. It means not by you going to church, not by you living a good life, not by the money you give. You are not justified, cleared of your sins because you tried to do some good deeds that would outweigh the bad deeds. It won’t work that way. Salvation is a gift of God. Let us see what Abraham found.

What did he find that works, rewards and debt go together? And that belief, grace and God’s righteousness go together. So how do you know? Well, look what he says in verse four. Now to him that worketh is a reward, not reckon of grace, but of debt. So those things go together. If you work for it, then it would be a reward given to you because God would be in debt to you. That’s not justification by faith. That’s be justified by works because you work for it, you earn it, you deserve it.

And God says that’s not the way it’s going to be. Look there in the book of Romans in chapter 3 and verse 28. Romans 3, 28. A lot of these things no doubt will be repetitious because these things are mentioned over and over and over again in the Bible. And verse 28 says, therefore we conclude that a man is justified by what? Faith without the deeds of the law. In other words, without you earning it, without the deeds of the law, you can be justified by faith.

Alright, look at number two in your notes and go back to Romans chapter four. Number two, justification was not by works under the law. It wasn’t by works before the law was ever given. And what about King David? He lived under the law. He lived after Moses. He lived a thousand years before Christ. So he lived right under the law, down that dispensation of the law. What did he, did those who live under the law? They have to keep the law to be saved.

No, nobody has ever been saved any other way than by faith and faith alone. It’s always been by grace. Nobody has ever earned their salvation. So don’t you try to waste your time trying to earn something that’s free because you won’t be able to get it then. If you look there in your notes, number two, justification was not by worse under the law. letter A, justification clears you from what you have done, sends, justification, close you in what Christ has done his righteousness.

And David’s three greatest blessings. This is the essence of grace. But first of all, look there in verse five in your Bible. Verse five, notice what he says, but to him that worketh not, but believe it. so believing is not a word. Believe it is not considered a work of man or a work of the flesh. Work is work, but believing is not work. Believing something means you believe in that what Christ did on the cross was for you and you’re accepting his work.

But believe it on him that justify it the ungodly. His faith is counted for righteousness. One of the main points in this is you need to understand is that God can justify the ungodly. So when you read chapter one, chapter two, you hear about all these ungodly people, these wicked people, they do a lot of bad things. And yet, right before it starts off with that I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believed it to the Jew first and also to the degree Jew and Gentile.

Then it tells you how bad the Gentiles are in chapter one. And mentions all these bad things that they did. Then in chapter 2, it talks about the Jews in the last part of chapter 2 and the first part of chapter 3 and how bad they were and the advantage that they had, but all have sinned. No difference. All comes short of God’s perfection. And yet God still loves them and says that the ungodly can be justified. That means to be made pure and holy, declared righteous, not by their works, but by faith and faith alone, just by believing.

How many times I’ve heard people say, that’s too easy. That is just too easy. Well I’ve asked a patient for this. I says, what is that? That’s a pen. I said, that was too easy. Believe hard. How do you believe hard? If I told you this was a piano, a baby grand, would you believe that? That would be hard to believe. But why should it be hard for a person to believe that God made salvation free? Because He loves everybody and anybody, whoever they may be, can trust Christ a Savior and have eternal life.

Christ says, going to all the world and preach the gospel to every preacher. Wouldn’t it be needed if all preachers preach the same message? All preachers, all over the world, preach exactly the same message that people all over the world would know what they had to do. But we have all kinds of preachers preaching all kinds of things and they don’t all say the same thing. Things that are different are not the same. And so they add things to the message.

And when you add one work to the gospel of grace, then the gospel of grace is no longer the gospel of grace. To be a gospel of grace, it has to be free, totally free, or it’s not the gospel. It has to be forever or it’s not the gospel. So if it’s missing any one of those components, it’s not the gospel that people are preaching. It has to be free. It has to last forever. Best news in all the world.

I want you to look there at letter A. Justification clears you from what you have done. That’s the things you’ve done, the sins that you have done in your life. Now look there in verse five again. But do him that work if not, but believe it on him that justify at the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. In other words, faith is counted or adds up to the same thing. In other words, where faith and righteousness becomes the same.

Remember, here’s God, and here we are. We have come short of God’s perfection, everybody. So the Bible says to be justified means to be made equal with God. Declared righteous where God sees nothing wrong in us. God sees no sin in us. It’s just like we are as righteous and we are as perfect as God Himself to be made equal with God the Father. We can’t do that by our works, but if he gave us his righteousness that would make us as righteous as God That’s been justified to be declared righteous as righteous as who As righteous as God Because we’re not comparing ourselves with each other It is between us and God his faith is counted for righteousness in other words God’s righteousness is is imputed to you.

Means put to your account. Verse six, look at verse six. Even as David, now this was under the law, even as David also described the blessedness of the man unto whom God and you are to underline this in your Bible. These are awesome words, these four words, imputed righteousness without works. In___ In other words, God save in a man, give it a man his righteousness, justifying you without your works. It means you don’t have to change your life. You don’t have to change the way you live.

That blows most people’s minds. That blows most preacher’s minds. That you can be justified, cleared, and don’t have to change your lifestyle. Don’t have to change one aorta. Don’t have to stop one sin. Don’t have to commit one thing to God. Don’t have to promise that you’re going to live differently. And yet that seems contrary to everything that we think about. feel. See if a man was to design salvation, a man would say, you got to do this and stop this and if you don’t, you go to hell.

God says, nobody deserves it and I’m making it free, totally free. If you have to change your life in order to get it or keep it, it’s not free. Wouldn’t be free. Maybe it’s not easy to believe in. Maybe that’s very difficult for people to understand because I’ve had so many people say, well, you just given people a license to sin so they can go out here and just live like the devil. I says, don’t you anyway? Most people sitting in this room right now live the way you want to live.

The people I hear in the world, how are they living? The way they want to. They do whatever they want to do. You know why some people ain’t in church today? Because they don’t want to go. You know why some people won’t be in church tonight? and maybe some of you, because you don’t want to come. You know why you won’t be here on Wednesday? Because you don’t want to. You already do most of whatever you want to do.

What would you do if nobody ever found out about it? What would you do if there was no restraints? See, sometimes the knowledge of the Word of God is the restraints that we need upon our life. And that’s why I’ve said love the Lord with all your heart and then you can live like you please. but love him first. Here in verse six where it says, God will impute righteousness without works. That’s getting something that you don’t deserve. That’s grace.

If you’ll notice there in your notes letter B, justification close you in what Christ has done. That’s righteousness. David’s three greatest blessings. This is the essence of grace. Number one, righteousness imputed put to your account without works. works. That’s grace. Number two, iniquities which are sins are forgiven because they are covered, A, in the Old Testament by the blood of animals, which was only a type, but they never washed their sins away. And God was not satisfied with the blood of bulls and of goats.

And that’s why the payment Christ made God was satisfied with. That’s why He says in the book of Romans in chapter 3, he was the propitiation for our sins. That means he was the satisfaction. God was satisfied with the payment that Jesus Christ made for all the sins of all the world. And God is satisfied that if you trust Him as your Savior, God is satisfied in justifying you so that he can be just and the justifier, all those who seek justification from him.

Hope that’s clear. Number three. Number three is also awesome. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Blessed is the man to whom God will not impute sin. Well if that’s true, you mean if I do something wrong God doesn’t put that sin to my account? You see the one is past where he’s paid for my sins. He gives me his righteousness and then he says the one sins that I commit tomorrow the next day and in the future will not be put to my account.

Now tell me if that don’t give you a license to sin, nothing will. And yet I believe all of this. And guess what? I want to live as righteous, as godly, as holy as I possibly can. So believing this is not the problem. This truth, understanding And that’s not a problem. If there’s some things that a person doesn’t understand, that there are consequences to sin in other areas and it’s not hell. I have enjoyed life. I enjoy living. I enjoy the blessings of God now.

And I’m looking forward to rewards when I get to heaven. I don’t want God to have to beat me to death, take me home before my time. I don’t got to have to chase in me. I’ve watched a lot of other Christians who rebelled against the Lord and I’ve watched God tear him up. I don’t want to have to find out the hard way. I’m just going to take God out of His Word and believe Him and go ahead and serve Him.

But I serve Him because I want to, not because I have to. Nobody can make me. in verse 8 again, blessed or happy is the man to whom the Lord will not imputes in. Now this statement that is made here, these blessings, that’s where the Bible says that those who believe by faith are blessed. With faithful Abraham. In other words, the blessing that came upon Abraham because he believed also came upon David because he believed and the Lord says if we believe those same blessings will come upon us.

In other words, God will forgive you of everything you’ve ever done, give you his righteousness and in the future, not impute your sins to you. So why not? Well, let me just kind of give it to you in a little here. When Christ died on that cross, picture Him on the cross. Christ on the cross was in your place. That should have been you paying for your sins, correct? Yes. But He did it for you. So when Christ died on the cross, you died.

And if you died, you were buried and you came back from the dead because you were in Christ and he did it for you. So this whole thing, death, burial and resurrection was put to your account as though you did that. That means that when you trusted Christ as your Savior, you died. You died. Well the law cannot touch a dead man. You’re dead to the law. The law can’t touch you. The law cannot contribute a sin to a dead man, because I really didn’t die.

I am to reckon it to be true, because it is true, because it was put to my account as though I did it. When we get to chapter 6 and the identification truths, it’ll blow your mind how awesome this is when you really understand it. The reason that my sins in the future are not put to my account is because they’ve already been put to his account. And you can’t place the sins in charge of person twice for the same sin.

You see, Christ doesn’t have to die twice. He died once and for all, for all the sins past, present, future at one time. So when you accept that payment, you have a payment for past, present, future sins. There is no sin that can be put to your account. Blessed and happy, ought that man to be. Does he deserve all of this? No. These are positional truths. These are foundational truths, things that doesn’t change. Now there’s other truths in the Word of God that refer to our state in which we’re in, but there’s some things that don’t change and that’s your standing that you have in Christ.

Now look at number 3, justification was not by ordinances. Now today we have two main ordinances of the Church. The Lord’s Supper and Baptism. Neither one of those ordinances that we have save a person. Nobody has to do those in order to be saved. We do require a person to be baptized in order to be a member of this local body of believers. We believe it’s a sign of your obedience to God that you believe that he died on that cross-paid for your sins and rose again and you believe that and you want to walk in newness of life.

So there’s no problem there. We have the Lord’s Supper, but it’s for those who trust the Christ as their Savior. It’s not to save you, doesn’t help you to be saved. It’s just an ordinance that what we do in remembrance of what Christ did for us as we look forward to His coming again. Well, God gave an ordinance to the nation of Israel. When Abraham believed what God said, God justified him, declared him righteous. This is almost almost 500 years before the law was given, 430.

In verse 9, cometh this blessedness that we just mentioned those three blessings, upon the circumcision or the Jews only, circumcision refers to Jews, uncircumcision refers to Gentiles or the Gentile nations, or upon the uncircumcision also. For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. Abraham was made righteous by faith. Well, where does this circumcision come in? Because there were some people saying you’ve got to be circumcised in order to be saved. Being circumcised is the cutting away of a little flesh.

The Bible says that Abraham has a grown man. Well, circumcised as a seal of the righteousness he already had. In other words, by faith alone, he was severed from the flesh, birth, and given a new birth. And that was a type of it, a symbol of it. It doesn’t save, but it is a cutting away of the flesh, a separation. When you and I trusted Christ as our Savior, we were, severed from our first birth and given a new birth.

God sees you a totally a circumcised individual, spiritually speaking. Down here in this verse, looking verse 11, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also. So God says, whether you’re Jew or Gentile, Been circumcised? Haven’t been. Everybody can be justified by faith. God will take and put his righteousness to your account. Remember this, the righteousness of God is not put to your account until you believe on him.

That means the very day, the moment you trust in Christ as your Savior, this righteousness is imputed to your account. It’s not done if you haven’t believed. Look there in verse 24. But for us also to whom it shall be imputed put to your account if we do what? If we believe. And God says He puts that payment that He made to your account. He gives you His righteousness and you go to heaven on what He did for you.

Letting this hand represent you and me and this wallet represents sin. We all have sin on us. God loves us but He hates our sin. We committed the sin we ought to pay the payment is death, inhale, the wages of sin be in death. So God said, He loves us and wants us to have eternal life and go to heaven. To go to heaven we have to be perfect and no one’s perfect. God gave the law to convinces. So anybody who looks at the right to stand in of God knows their sinners and cannot save themselves.

So we need a Savior. This hand represents Jesus Christ. God in the flesh, He came into the world because He loves us. Hates our sin because our sin separates us from the Lord. Christ took the sin. Faithful on the cross came back from the dead. said, if we’ll believe that He did it for us by faith alone, believing that what He did was for us, I believe He did it for me, God would save me by grace. I didn’t deserve it.

I didn’t do anything to deserve it and never will. But He loves me. He gave it to me as a gift. I go to heaven on what He did for me. There is no other way. You don’t promise God anything. All you do is receive it. He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. Are you a new listener to Bibleline? Do you enjoy the teachings of Dr. Arnold? Well, if you’ve never contacted us before, we want to give you Dr.

Arnold’s book, The Gospel Driven Man. Every day we receive many emails from folks who have questions about repentance and salvation, about faith in works, and about how to share the Gospel with friends and loved ones. This book, The Gospel Driven Man, covers all those topics, and we want all new listeners of Bibleline to receive a free copy. There’s no obligation, no donation necessary, simply call us at 1-800-576-3771 or write to us and request your free copy of the Gospel-Driven Man.

The mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Again, don’t forget to include your mailing address, and God bless you and thank you for listening to Bibleline. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And now, a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound, and we will be changed.

Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day. Leaving that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.