Session 9 – Romans; Romans 3:20-31 through 4:1: Mark Lanier, 06/01/25

[Music]

[Music] I'm so glad. Well, I started to say I'm so glad to see you this morning, but I left my glasses behind and I can't see any of you. So, I'm so glad to sense you this morning and uh uh some of you I'm delighted to smell uh you. Uh it's always nice to hear you and I can only imagine what you look like. We are in Romans and there is a paragraph in Romans, Romans 3:21-25 or so that Martin Luther called the most important paragraph in the entire Bible. He said it was the hinge point of the whole Bible. Now, I don't know that I would go I might, but I'm not sure that I would go there fully with him. But it's certainly worth our third week of looking at. And so, we're going to look at it. We'll go a little bit further. Uh, and and the reason why I I struggle to teach on this because I know so many of you and so many of you I don't know. And I know though that in a class this size and one that goes on the internet, thank you by the way, AV team and and internet team. I know that in in in a group the size that may watch or or be in this class, we have a wide range of people. We have some people who don't even know necessarily the gospel yet. They're they're experimenting. They're they're trying to they're they're curious. And then we have people who've been walking in the word and studying the Bible for decades and dec I mean I've got Charles Mickey is in here. Where's Charles? He's somewhere. I can't see him. It looks like maybe he raised a hand. That's either him or Kay his wife. I'm not sure. Anyway, uh but I mean Charles Mickey was teaching Pauline theology and on a college level when I was in college. And so we've got different people with different levels of experience and and knowledge. And it's it's wonderful for a passage like this because this is a passage where we can we can find that shallow end where the kids can play. Um, yeah, I cut off my son-in-law's face, but I kept the four kids in this picture, uh, the four grandkids. But, but, you know, it's it's one that's got a depth, this passage in Romans, it's got a depth that should appeal to everyone at all ages, but it's also deep enough where an elephant could jump in. Do not worry, an elephant was not hurt in the making of that picture. that is AI

generated. Now, when I was young, I gave thought for a while into pursuing a career where I would become a translator of the Bible. So, I took all the biblical language classes I possibly could. Took a degree in biblical languages. Uh, just really developed a love for them. And, and I really thought it would be really cool to work on a Bible translation. And I have a question for you. If we just go on a timeline from the year 1600 to now, would you care to guess how many translations of the Bible into English there have been since

1600? The number is roughly

900. Whoops. Oh, it's

Okay, let me cover that up and ask it again. I was working on the PowerPoint at 4 this morning, so there's no telling what's in here. But when they translate the Bible into English, it's almost a bit like going to the eye doctor. Where do you go? A or B? Which one is What do you see clearer? A or B? Because so many times you've got options and you got to pick. You can't Yeah. It A or B. And that's true when it comes to the vocabulary. Do you want to translate? Uh, you know, Pastor Jared introduced second Peter this morning and um there is a a word in second Peter Artase that that is translated um excellence in verse three and then in verse five it's translated virtue. It's the same word. No, I mean the the translators got to pick. I was sent a book that a buddy of mine is publishing. Ever Huffford is publishing a book where he looks at the word glory. And he takes 90 examples of the word glory. Now I've put up here two of my textbooks from college. One of my textbooks was Biblia Hebraica Stut Cartensia. That is a Hebrew Bible. what we would call the Old Testament in Hebrew. Um, and the other was a Greek New Testament. And I had those books and I those I mean they were textbooks and there is a Hebrew word cavode cavode which is translated glory often most times but it has the idea also of honor or splendor. And ever in his book that's coming out soon makes the case and does so rather well that oftenimes we talk about God's glory but we should better understand it with the word honor. That would be a better translation he thinks many times because lots of times God acts and and what God does is something that shows his honor more so than than splendor or glory. And the same is true with dosa, the Greek word which is translated oftentimes glory. It also denotes this idea of honor or splendor or radiance or things of that nature. And so within the framework of the Bible, the translators have got to make a call A or

B. And we're just going along reading it and oftenimes don't even know what call they

made. And it's not simply with vocabulary. They're making decisions on our translations with different grammar points as well. A or B. Sometimes it's not A or B. Sometimes it's A, B, C, D, E, or F. And so the translators need to make a point and and a decision and and we get the translation. And it's one reason, by the way, that it's so useful to use if you're doing serious Bible study, multiple translations, so you can see how different people have chosen A or B or C or D. Now, we get into the passage that we're looking at today, and we can understand it in a way that a kid in BBS can understand the gospel and we're fine. But if we decide we want to be jumping into the deep end, it's a great passage to do it in. So, I don't want to scare anybody off and I don't want you to feel like you're going to drown in class today, but we do have a lot of people in here who are interested in going a little bit deeper than you might just get in in BBS on this passage. And so I want to do this and we'll take a pool floaty as our signal. But um we will we will talk about faith and Christ and then we will talk about boasting and given time we will then introduce the idea of faith and Abraham. This passage in context starts with Romans 3:20 where Paul is summarizing what he's been saying for chapters that by works of law no human being will be justified in God's sight. None of us will be declared righteous by what we do. Not. There's not a person in here. There's not a person on planet Earth since Jesus ascended unto heaven who has ever merited God's love or favor by virtue of their works. It's just not there. There's never been a human being absent Jesus who has lived in covenant faithfulness to God. It's just not there. And it doesn't matter. This works of law could be talking about the Old Testament Torah, but it could also just be talking generically about any law, any principle that

you have achieved enough for God to love you and accept you. It's just not there. In the Greek mindset, they had buckets. They were good at defining life. Plato had a theory of forms that would help him define and pigeon hole things and buckets. And some some of the buckets that they would divide life into were built off of this word. Here argos is the word and it means works or deeds or things you do. And the Greeks would put into two buckets all of life. You could put all of life into aragos things you do or logos things that are thoughts words and unseen. So everything's either word thought or deed action. And Paul's saying that by any action of any principle of law, no human being is going to measure up to God's covenant faithfulness. No human being is going to be righteous and and and walk away scot-free in a court.

But, and here's the paragraph beginning, apart from law, apart from this principle of merit and favor of justice and what you're entitled to and what what is your right apart from law, there is a righteousness of God that's been manifested. It's been

shown. It's one that the law and prophets, the Old Testament, bear witness to. This is a covenant faithfulness. This is a righteous declaration of court, but it's a character trait of God that has been shown to

everyone apart from what we do. And then it says the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there is no distinction. this righteousness deyiosune in the Greek this righteousness this idea that that that is four-fold as I've discussed over the last few weeks from the DK word group it can mean a courtroom verdict the declaration of God of not guilty where he sees us as not guilty it can mean a covenant faithfulness, God's covenant faithfulness, God's loyalty to do what he promised he would do from the very beginning of the fall of humanity. That through the seed of woman would come one who would make right what had gone wrong in Eden. That through the seed of Abraham would come one through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. that God would be faithful and loyal to his

covenant, that God would conform to his own

behavior, that God would take us and conform us to his behavior. That process that Pastor Jarrett was preaching about this morning with sanctification could be included in there, but also just God's own character justice, God's God's

consistency. And then another way of seeing it, God setting right something that's wrong, taking that tangled ball of string and making it straight. All of that's wrapped up. And I've used that slide and I urge you to go back and listen to those classes if you want to know about it the last two. But I have also put on this same slide that you can translate this faith in Jesus Christ or you can translate this faith of Jesus Christ. It can be my belief, my faith, my trust in Jesus or it can be translated the belief and trust and faith that Jesus had or some would even take it the faithfulness of

Jesus. And so if we take that verse and we start looking at it, you wonder where does that come from? the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. In the Greek, it says faith and then it says Christ Jesus Christ. The Greek didn't have the word in that's used there. They had an in word, but it's not used there. They didn't have the word of that's used there.

It's all built in the way Jesus Christ is written in the

Greek. Then it's unto all who are believers, who are believing. And so the question becomes, how do we translate this? And I'll talk to you about it in more detail in a minute, but you this is in Greek. We class 101 we would be told to that this ending at the end of Jesus Christ generally means of or from or even

in what is it here the English standard version which is what I generally teach out of and the new international version, which is also a best-selling version translated by incredible scholars, and I have friends on both of those committees that do this, are translating this faith in Jesus Christ. But not all Bible translations do. Let me show you a different Bible translation. Romans 3:22, namely the righteousness of God through instead of faith in Jesus Christ, it says the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. So we have the ESV here and we have the New English translation over there. See the difference? A or B? Not just the New English translation. Let me throw up another one. Here's the common English Bible. God's righteousness comes through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who have faith in him. And you say, "Whoa, whoa, they also changed the word believe." Well, believe is just a verb form. It's the same word as faith. So, it's it's in the Greek. There's no change there. But it's the faithfulness of Christ. So you sit there and say, "Well, which one is it?" And here's what I'd like to do for a minute. I'd like to get in the elephant deep into the pool, but I want to ask two questions. I want to ask the question, why is there this difference in translation? And then I want to ask the question, so what what difference does it make other than the fact that when I was a young biblical language major, we would sit around for hours and debate this this very passage. We would sit around and and you've got the same issue that comes up in Galatians 2. We would sit around for hours and hours and debate it.

So if I were to tell you what are the major arguments in favor of translating it Jesus's faithfulness or Jesus's faith as opposed to faith in Jesus if I were to take that more um I think it'd be okay to say less traditional way of translating it and try to tell you The reasons that people use for that I can divide those reasons into basically five. Reason number one, you have to first know something. The O U or omocron oopsilon ending is one of a group of endings in Greek that form what's called the genative case. Now you may be saying I don't even know what the genative case is. Don't worry about it. We don't have one in English. We use prepositions in English much more specific in ways that in Greek they didn't have to use prepositions for some of this. And so this isn't the only way to form a genative, but this is a good example of a masculine um singular genative. put me on a noun and I'll make it a genative. Now, I got to get another lady up here to help me out. What she means is by genative, we relate to other nouns or to adjectives or to any number of different things, but in the sense we're talking about today, we're talking about how one word Jesus Christ relates to another word, faith. And Jesus Christ has this ending that makes it a genative. Now let me put it up here. Puos, which means faith and you see the ou ending on both of those. That's Jesus Christ in the genative case.

So it relates somehow to the word faith. Now how does it relate? Well, we know that in the genative case, which this is in the genative case, you

have a choice. You may, it may mean of, it may mean from, it may mean in, it can mean a number of different things. It's it's the question of what the relationship is. And a lot of times you determine it by context.

But if this is one where we're talking about Jesus as the subject, it's faith of Jesus. It's Jesus's faith. In English, we would do that with an apostrophe s. If we want to talk about Jesus's faith in Greek, they would just put it in the genative and it could mean Jesus Christ's faith. Now we could also have it as faith in Jesus Christ where Jesus Christ is the object of faith. It's faith in him the object of the faith as opposed to him the subject of the faith. And all of that's just wrapped up right there in that Greek phrase. And you get to figure out which one it is. And people who say it's Jesus Christ's faith point to the fact that often times when Paul uses this word pistoos or pistus followed by a specific noun like that he uses it to mean the faith of the p of that person that that person's faith. Here's an example. Romans 4:16. The one who shares the faith of Abraham. Well, he doesn't they don't translate faith in Abraham because that's not what he's talking about. It's very apparent. And yet, it's that same structure. It's pistuos

Abraham in a genative form. And so people say, look, one of the reasons this should be translated Jesus Christ's faith or faithfulness is because that's the way Paul uses it. That's the linguistic argument, the argument of the way the language works. Now, a second argument is what we could call a theological argument, the theology involved. Paul is talking in the context of Romans here about how God has been faithful to his covenant. And he's about to launch into Abraham as an example of not only our inadequacy, but God considering our faith as the basis for his covenantal obligations and promises. And so there is a an point to be made that Paul is pointing out that God is being faithful to his covenant. That by works of law, no human being will be covenantally justified. But now apart from law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, although the law bears witness to it. And that's through the faith of Christ. This righteousness with all that it means and all of its implications is all the faith of

Jesus. That's God being faithful. That's God being faithful to his covenant. And if Paul's talking about God being faithful to his covenant, it makes sense that he'd be talking about the faithfulness of Christ that then extends to all who believe.

Now, some will translate then that word puos as faithfulness of Christ as we saw. But it doesn't have to be faithfulness. It's still, I think, a good idea to bear in mind that Jesus Christ was a man as well as God, fully divine, but a man of perfect faith. And faith includes deeply embedded in it. The Greek word faith that we're translating faith or belief is trust. And Jesus trusted holy wo l y as well as h o l y. H wholly upon God. Jesus lived and died in perfect faith. Hebrews 12:2, look to Jesus, the founder and perfector, the completion of our faith. He is the totality. He's the perfect one of our faith. He had perfect faith. I know people who've said to me before, I don't I know that faith saves us before God and and faith restores a relationship and faith is the basis of our covenant, but I don't know that I have enough faith. to which I said, 'Well, time out. Nobody does except Jesus. But we get not just his righteousness, we get his perfect faith attributed to us through our faith, no matter how feeble. Jesus prays in the go on the cross, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." What greater faith could there be? He says, "I am about to die, but I trust

you. I have full faith in you." This is the faith of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Father, if you're willing, remove this cup from me. But not my will, but yours be done. I trust you. It's your call. I'll do it as you say.

I mean, this is this is his perfect trust. And so when we get to these translations that say the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe or the righteousness that comes through Jesus's faithfulness, Jesus's faith for everyone who believes, that is a an argument that's a theological argument of God being faithful to his covenant and Jesus living and dying in perfect faith. Now a third argument that is used is what I would call the contextual argument. Look at the context of where this comes in with Paul. Paul is saying that our righteousness before God is God's initiative. It's not ours. While we were yet sinners before we went looking for him, he came for us. Before you ever had it within you to cry out to God, help, God had already provided the help. God came to you. God made the initiative. God calls you. It is God's Holy Spirit. That is if you don't know God yet, you haven't embraced him yet and you're sitting there saying, that is responding to the Holy Spirit talking to you right now and bearing witness to

Jesus. But before the Holy Spirit could even bear witness to Jesus, Jesus had to go through the ordeal of the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection. He even said in John, "If I don't go do this, I can't send the Holy Spirit to you to bear witness to me because there's not anything he's bearing witness to." And so this justification is God's initiative. And that's what he's saying. All have sinned. We're all sin, but we're justified by his grace as a gift. This is God's initiative through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. It's God's initiative. And so the justification is in all of its form. This is God's initiative. It's his grace as a gift. He's a propitiation. It's God who put him out there to be this. All of this is God. God. God. God. God God doing it. So that's the contextual argument. Now, let me give you a fourth argument as I categorize these, and that's what I'll call the narrative theological argument. My friend Tom Wright's going to be speaking at the library this Saturday, and Tom espouses this better than anybody I know. But the whole purpose of a meta narrative within scripture, not I didn't word that well. There is a meta narrative in scripture that is of supreme importance that says Jesus Christ succeeded where Israel failed. I'd go further and say where all humanity failed. Jesus Christ lived in covenant purity with God. Israel couldn't do it. Adam and Eve couldn't do it. Abraham couldn't do it. But Jesus Christ lived in covenantal purity. And so Tom makes the point that there's this narrative theological argument that makes it well suited to read this as Christ's

faithfulness. It's this idea of a fourth argument. And then the final argument, what I'll call scholarly momentum. Uh, you know, I I told you about the New English translation of the Bible, and I put it up there. They put like eight gazillion translation notes in this version of the Bible. And here's the footnote where they said they translated it the faithfulness of Jesus Christ's faithfulness. But they do put a note that says or faith in Christ, which is the more standard. A decision is difficult here. Though traditionally translated faith in Jesus Christ, an increasing number of New Testament scholars are arguing that pistu and similar phrases in Paul here, verse 26, Galatians 2:3, Ephesians 3, Philippians 3 involve what's called a subjective genative where Jesus Christ is the subject of the faith. So, it's Christ faith or it's Christ's faithfulness. And so, they give you some explanation, but there's a growing ground swell of modern translators and theologians who see this. uh noteworthy among the arguments for this view of Christ's faith is that when Pistus takes a personal genative which you all know what that is now it almost never an objective genative in other words it's not faith in Christ when Paul writes about faith in Christ frequently he'll use a

preposition he'll put a preposition in there so you've got all of these different arguments scholarly momentum at least five different arguments. That's some of the why people translate it that way. Now, the so what any of y'all ever read these books or your kids read them? These were these um what are they called? Um choose your own adventure. So, our kids read these books back in the 80s, 90s. And and I read them because my kids are reading them. I want to know what it is. It's kind of a cool idea. Deian Mills. So, um, here's what the Our books are a lot better than this. Um, but what they do is you read a page and then at the end of the page, you've got a decision to make. What are you going to do? And it says like, if you want to explore the mysterious cave, turn to page 47. If you want to follow the trail up the mountain, turn to page 23. Then you turn and you read that page. And at the end of the book, where you go and what happens to you is entirely dependent upon what you read, choices you made. You might want win the treasure or you might get eaten by a dragon. It all

depends. That's not the way this is with Paul. I'm making a decision here. I would suggest instead that you wind up in the same place. Either way you translate it, you reach the same point, but you do have different emphasis along the way. It's like different routes to the same place, but you see different billboards, you see different restaurants, you have different traffic. I mean, there's there's differences in the journey even though you reach the same point. And the point is, one, sin is worse than you think. Sin is not, you

know, the culture of the age would have us think that sin is no big deal. But in God's mind, sin is a cancer that destroys your life. It destroys your relationship with him. It destroys your insight into what life's all about. It's a deception. It's an insidious, sticky mess that can suck the life from you. And God doesn't like that. So sin is worse than you think. Either way, it requires God to deal with

it. You and I don't have what it takes to overcome sin in an eternal sense, in a covenant relationship sense.

in a here and now sense it takes God and you get there either way. So that's a little bit of um that's your you you you made it through that without getting up, running out, screaming, pulling your hair out. You have just um you did your deep Bible study for the

day. Paul doesn't end it there. He moves on to

boasting. Think about this for a

minute. Then what becomes of our boasting?

If we have no shot at being right with God based upon what we do, if what we do is deplorable, if we can't even do a good

deed, if even our best human deed is tainted with some selfishness which is repugnant to the purity of God. If the best we've got is not enough and if we are totally reliant upon a God reaching down on his own taking initiative to restore us to what we were made to

be. Then what right do any of us have to puff out our chest? Say, you know, I'm actually doing pretty good. I mean, I've seen some people. There are some bad people in this world. I ain't one of them. I'm uh I'm not one to brag because I've got

humility. But if I didn't have humility, I'd be all over this. You know the the Barney F if you remember Mayberry you and you know and he sniffs that nose and thinks he's something on a

stick. What becomes of our

boasting? It ain't there. It's not called out. It's excluded. By by by what kind of law? By a law of what you do? Argos again that does it fall into that category of things you do.

No, it's a law, a principle if you will of faith puos. And we know that's faith that we have in Christ. But arguably also that's faith that Christ had that made this right to start with. It all goes back to the cross of Christ where Christ showed utter faithfulness to the covenant, utter faith in God and extended it out to us. So last week, uh, I talked about this song and I left out one of the verses that's like a really important one and Charles Mickey pointed it out to me and I thought, well, that's really bright, Charles. I mean, I left it out. I'm so sorry I did. So, I thought it only fitting without warning him at all since he's here this week to have Charles come up and lead us in singing this song. So, Charles, come on up here. And uh um now look, y'all are all going early church here. The early church was ac cappella. Uh they didn't invent even organs back then. Um so uh uh y'all are going to have to shed your Baptist skin for a moment. You've got lyrics up here. Is this Yeah, this is a hot mic. Um you may not be able to read those lyrics, but uh you do the best you can. Um is this on? Yes. And I'm turning mine off so I don't mess up the singing, but I'll sing. I don't know if this is working, but let's try it. Beneath the cross of Jesus, I fade would take my stand. The shadow of a mighty rock within a weery land. Can't hear you. A home within the wilderness. A rest upon the way from the burning of the noon tide heat and the birdens of the day. Second verse. Upon the cross of Jesus, my eyes at time can see the very dying form of one who suffered there for me. And from my contrite heart with tears to wonderers I confess the wonder of his glorious love and my own worthlessness.

Third verse. I take cross thy shadow for my abiding place. I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face. Content to let the world go by. You know no gain nor loss. My sinful self, my only shame. My glory all [Music] the Thank you, Charles. Amen. Hey, don't go far. I've got another song to surprise you with in a minute. I I from my smitten heart. No, uh we contrite in this version we grew up with smitten. From my smitten heart with tears to wonders, I confess the wonders of his glorious love and my unworthiness. Here are uh that's a a good way of saying it. And then content to let the world go by, to know no gain nor loss, my sinful self. nothing to boast in. My sinful self, my only shame. The only thing I want to boast in is the cross of Jesus

Christ. This is what Paul's saying. We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of law. Don't think it's

both. That's A or B. You don't get C. All of the above. If you went to school and they gave you a multiplechoice test and the choices were A or B and that's it. If you put C, you're going to get it wrong. Don't think that you are justified by faith and

works. Don't think that, okay, well, I'll put my faith in Jesus, but I got to keep my salvation by how good I do because I've messed up. No. That's the glory of the

cross. Keith Green had this line in a song. And when I'm doing well, help me to never seek a crown, for my reward is giving glory to you. I mean, that's what we're about here. That's what Paul's saying. And God's not the God of the Jews only. He's God of the Gentiles. This applies across the board. Since God is one, who's going to justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised by faith? It applies to everyone. Paul says, Jew and Gentile alike. We're not overthrowing the law. This is upholding the law. This is the whole point is to teach us who Jesus is and what he did on our behalf. This is the point of the cross. This is what it's

about. So, Charles, come on back up here. We need all four verses of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.

Oh my goodness. Thank you, Charles. I love that second verse of the beneath the cross. That ending two wonders I confess the wonders of his glorious love and my own worthlessness. This is the same message. Sing it with me. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of gloryy died, my richest gain I count but lost and poor content. on all my pride. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast. Save in the death of Christ my Lord. All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood. See from his head, his hands, his feet. Sorrow and love flow mingle down. Did there such love and sorrow me or thorns composed so rich a crown were the whole realm of nature mine that were A present far too small. Love so amazing, so

divine, divs, my heart, my soul, my all. Little bit different words, but the same. Charles, before you put down the microphone, before you put down the microphone, pick it back up, please. How many years have you been singing those

songs? 79. 79. And um do they still mean something to you more than ever? Tell me why. Tell us why.

Hard to say, but I'll try. The longer I live, the more I realize the civil war in me between flesh and spirit. And the less worthy I feel of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And I feel like you were talking about earlier, the feeble faith because of which God awards me the perfect faith of my Lord. Amen. Thank you, Charles. Thank you.

Thank you, Charles. I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but uh I appreciate you pointing out that I'd missed one of the verses last week.

I missed his favorite verse and it's mine, too. All right, that's boasting faith in Abraham. We'll get into this more. But Paul goes to the well to pull out an example. And when Paul wants to talk about justification by faith, he doesn't go to the thief on the cross. He doesn't go to Cornelius. He doesn't go to any New Testament figures. Paul goes to

Abraham because this is not God's plan B. This is the covenant relationship that God has declared from the beginning. Jesus Christ is setting right what went wrong. And God had this plan from before the foundation of the earth. God I I I I get saddened when people say if there was a loving God, would he have created a world where there was misery? And I just want people to understand that God was willing to do everything it took to remove the misery of this world that we bring into the world. And he will make this world right. He will restore a new heaven and a new earth. And he will give us a glorified body to live to his glory and honor for eternity. And Abraham is just a wonderful way to show it. So what do we say? Abraham Whoops. I go back. What shall we say? Whoa, there we go. Was gained by Abraham, our forefather, by how good he was. Ab if Abraham was justified by what he did, then he might have something to boast about. But he doesn't. Not before God. Hey, go back and look at Abraham. Abraham. Yeah, father Abraham. And we'd do the song for VBS and all the rest,

but he he had some flaws. He had no trouble lying about who Sarah was to try and save his skin, putting his wife up for the Pharaoh or for some kings. He had no trouble being a little shifty in his business dealings. His faith in God wasn't all that strong all that time. He doesn't have anything to boast about. But Abraham did trust God and it was counted to him as righteousness. That word counted is a good accounting term in the Greek. that word it it is it is um it was entered into his bank

account and that's the beauty of Romans. We can swim in the shallow end and be totally blessed and have a ball, but we can also get in with the elephants. And either way, we are going to learn that God is the savior and Jesus is the

savior. Period.

And the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is God's power to save everyone who has faith. Everybody who trusts God and Jesus Christ will be redeemed by the blood of the lamb. That doesn't make sin irrelevant. It doesn't mean we should just go off and do whatever we want because we're forgiven.

S is so critical. You know, Dietrich Bonhaofer's book, The Cost of Disciplehip does a great job at saying there's no such thing as cheap grace because the grace of God costs the life of his son. It's the most costly gift we could ever have, but it's one he so generously gave us of his own initiative and his own valition. For God so loved the world that he gave and Jesus so loved the world that he came.

So, hey, there's no

boasting because the gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. All there's room for is boasting in the cross because we are blessed and we should be thankful and we should be grateful regardless of how you translate Romans 3:22. All right, blessings. Let me pray us out. Lord, in the name of Jesus, I pray for everybody who hears this message, not to get lost in the grammar, not to get lost in the presentation, not to be distracted, but to focus in on the clarion call of your spirit, testifying to the love that you have for us, demonstrated through the supreme sacrifice on the cross. and that resurrection power which is a promise of restoration to us that we can hope and trust in confidently because it's your initiative. It's your work. We embrace you as our Lord, our Savior, our King, our father in the best ways possible through Jesus our Lord. We pray. Amen.