Salvation by Grace 1

Introduction

The gospel of free grace in Jesus Christ is certainly information, but it is also much more than that. It is declared by means of propositions, but there is also a great reality that the propositions are pointing to. So this gospel of grace is food, not just data. And that means that however long you have been a Christian, it never hurts to be reminded of the basics again (Phil. 3:1). And if you have grown up in the church, it never hurts to be reminded that the words you are accustomed to hearing all the time, and which you have heard your entire life, are words that represent actual realities. These are things we truly believe. We don’t just say them on cruise control; we are anchored to them.

What I would like to do is preach a series of three sermons, all of them springing from or connected to the same text. The messages will be Salvation by Grace, Sanctification by Grace, and Glorification by Grace.

The Text

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement” (Romans 5:6–11).

Summary of the Text

We begin with the dilemma. We had no strength, no ability to save ourselves, and so at the right time Christ died for the ungodly (v. 6). One of us might die for a good man, but even that is a stretch, and so is considered by us to be heroic (v. 7). God distinguishes His love for us in this—while we are still sinners, Christ died for us (v. 8). There is an a fortiori argument here, a “how much more” argument. If Christ freed us from guilt now, when we were mired in that guilt, how much more will He spare us from wrath (v. 9). If He did this for us while we were enemies, what will He do for us at the end of the world now that we are His friends (v. 10)? And on top of everything else, we are enabled to rejoice in God through Christ. And why? Because we have received atonement (v. 11).

So we are justified now by His blood (v. 9). And we are sanctified—rejoicing in God (v. 11), also by His undeserved grace. And we will be glorified by His grace as well—how much more will He save us from wrath at the end, glorifying us (vv. 9-10).

What We Are by Nature

In order to understand this gospel rightly, we need to grasp what we are by nature. There are two aspects to this. We need to know that we are sinners by nature, and we also need to understand that we are sinners by nature in a corporate way. Consider Paul’s words on this first point:

And on the collective nature of our sinfulness, Paul says this:

We all come from the same lump. We are all together in this. When it comes to our sins and sinfulness, everyone in this room shares the same point of origin. It all comes from the same place.

Pebbles in a Box, Leaves on a Tree

In the individualism of our day, we like to think of ourselves as discrete individuals. We think we are autonomous in everything, including in our sins. We grant that we have similarities, the same way that basalt pebbles gathered from all over the world would have similarities, or so the thinking goes—but each pebble is its own thing. But we are not strictly individuals but are rather interdividuals—like distinct leaves on the same tree, and all with a common Adamic root. Now if that root is diseased, then the whole tree is. So not only are we entailed in Adam’s sin, there is even a sense in which we are entailed in one another’s sin. What distinguishes you from anybody else? This is the reality that possessed John Bradford, a father in the Reformed faith, when he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, to say—when he saw a criminal being taken off to execution—“there but for the grace of God go I.”

This is why it is so silly for a sinner to take pride over against another sinner—we all of us have the same root problem. How much sense does it make for a leper’s index finger to take pride over the little finger because he has fewer splotches?

Adam In, Adam Out

So we walked into sin through our father Adam, and we must walk out of sin in the same way. Adam in, Adam out. Just as our iniquity was a shared iniquity, so also is our righteousness a shared righteousness. The first Adam disobeyed at a tree, and we know that the wickedness of that rebellion was imputed to each one of you here. Because you were a partaker of that disobedience, this is why you were sinning before you knew how to talk. You were a sinner by nature, together with all the rest of us.

But the last Adam obeyed on a tree, and the righteousness of that radical obedience was also imputed to everyone who believes. What the gospel means here is that legally, forensically, you are as righteous as you were guilty before. The foreman of the heavenly jury has spoken words over you that you can scarcely believe . . . but he actually said, “Not guilty.” You can’t even talk to God unless you are perfect, and this is why God arranged a means by which you can talk with Him, clothed in the perfections of Jesus Christ. That is what it means to pray in His name. The righteousness of another has been imputed to you. This means, among other things, that your prayers are perfect.

Necessary Grace

Because of the dilemma we start with—that of having no strength to save ourselves, or even to prepare ourselves for salvation, and because God intended to do it in a way that prevented us from doing what we would very much want to do about it—which would be to brag about our role—He offered us a gospel in which there is no possibility whatever of boasting (Eph. 2:8-10).

What do you bring to your salvation? Only the corpse that needs to be raised. What do you offer up? Only the crimes that must be forgiven. What do you carry into the presence of the Lord? Only the ingratitude that must be turned into something else.