Sermons About Justify
A Certain Salvation (Romans 5:9-11)
Some kinds of doubt -- self-doubt -- are healthy. But it is unhealthy for us to doubt God and his promises; we end up hedging our bets and trusting in things less secure. Not only that, but our doubting God is sin, unbelief. In this passage, Paul presents one of his strongest logical arguments for our assurance of God's saving us and keeping us. Paul anchors our assurance in the objective work of justification and reconciliation that Jesus accomplished at the cross. He has accomplished the most difficult thing in bringing us justification and reconciliation through his death. We can be confident that the one who declared "it is finished" will continue to preserve us! As a result, we rejoice, and we boast in Christ; we do this by looking backward on what he has done for us, by looking forward with confidence in his faithfulness and promises, and by living today in light of our certain hope.
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Justifying the Ungodly (Romans 4:1-12)
Paul argues and shows from scripture that we are justified only by faith in Jesus, not by anything we do. How can it be otherwise? After all, there is no boasting before God, and the only wages that our works could possibly earn for us is death. We see that Abraham was justified by faith and not by works, and furthermore that he was justified long before he was circumcised. Neither works nor rituals can save us; instead, we come to God as ungodly sinners, trusting only in him to receive justification as a free gift. Because of this, we can come to God today, now. And so the life we live is one of humility, recognizing our sin and guilt; but also grateful celebration, recognizing the magnitude of the gift God has given to us.
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The Gospel: God's Power for Salvation (Romans 1:16-17)
We should not feel ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation; because it is for everyone; and because it reveals and provides the righteousness of and from God that is necessary for us to be accepted by God. Apart from the gospel we have no hope, but for everyone who believes, the gospel is a sure and certain and powerful hope, providing for our greatest need.
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Justification on the Narrow Road
We all want and expect judges to exercise their authority fairly by exonerating the innocent and punishing the guilty. A judge that lets the guilty off without punishment should be replaced. In order for our relationship with God to be restored He needed a way to accept sinners like us without letting our rebellion go unpunished. He accomplished this by sending His Son Jesus to die in our place. If we trust in Jesus then His death becomes the punishment that we deserve and His perfect life gets credited to our record. The Apostle Paul has to confront the Galatians because they have detoured from this great truth to follow the lie that we can do righteous acts to put ourselves right with God. This is foolish because it cheapens what Christ did on the cross and the greatness of the gift of being able to spend eternity with God by trying to purchase it with our few meager, sin-tainted deeds.
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Contending For The Narrow Road
No one likes a person who is contentious and always looking to pick a fight. Sometimes the fight erupts around you, though, and you can either surrender or contend for that which is dear to you. The Apostle Paul did not look for a fight in Galatia but the fight was brought to him as false teachers came and tried to get people to believe that they needed to be circumcised in order to be accepted by God. Paul is willing to stand up to anyone, including the Apostle Peter, to make sure that the Gospel of grace is faithfully proclaimed and lived out. He fights because he knows that Jesus died on the cross to open up the only way to God, and if there are other paths to God then Jesus’ sacrifice was meaningless.
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The Beauty of the Gospel
We live in a pluralistic society where it is common to believe that there are many paths to God and that all religions and philosophies contain some truth but none of them can claim to have it exclusively. In stark contrast to this relativism Jesus Christ proclaimed that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one can come to the Father except through Him. The Apostle Paul carries on this teaching as he warns the churches in Galatia that there is one Gospel, one way to God, and that is by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ and His death for us on the cross. To add to or subtract from this message is not to walk another path but to head off the edge of the one path down to destruction.
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The Narrow Road of Faith
The book of Galatians is the most influential open letter in history. It was written by the Apostle Paul to the churches in Galatia. Paul wrote the letter to them out of a deep love and concern for them because they had started listening to false teachers who were distorting the good news about Jesus Christ. They were beginning to abandon the core truth that we are counted as acceptable to God simply by believing in His Son Jesus Christ and His death for us on the cross and instead thought that you needed to added obedience to the Old Testament law to Jesus’ work on our behalf. Paul argues passionately for the gospel of grace in this letter because he knows that it is the only way to know God and that the gospel is the foundation for every good and loving act that we are called to do.
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