1. "There's something that we all like about being liked, what it's like to have your number of friends on Facebook swell from 100 to a thousand, or your channel on YouTube gain more subscribers than anyone else that you know. Researchers have found that such findings release dopamine in the brain so that it literally feels good."

2. "Reality suddenly comes crashing in as we switch worlds, doesn't it? It's like a whole different reality. That's what happens to many people when they begin to think what God thinks of them."

3. "If we want to understand and be able to answer honestly this question, what does God think of us, we have to begin with the biblical teaching that all are wicked. All are wicked. Paul has spent the first three chapters of this letter explaining and demonstrating this."

4. "In fact, friends, if you were having to quickly summarize the message of the entire Bible, you couldn't do any better than this phrase, him who justifies the ungodly. Because the ungodly is all of us. And justifies is what we need. And who is the only one who can do it? Him."

5. "If you have grown up your whole life going to a Baptist church or a Methodist church or an Episcopal church or Presbyterian church, and let's say it's been generations, your parents went there, your grandparents went there, and you've given money to that church all the time, if you don't understand what I'm talking about right now, you do not understand Christianity."

6. "In such a case where God accepts you because of your own worthiness, your own goodness, then your acceptance by God is clearly, as Paul says here, not counted as a gift. So this would be the non-grace way of self-salvation, an idea which seems resident in the fallen human heart."

7. "So, my Christian brother and sister, if we have been justified, declared right in right standing before our holy Creator and judge so that he has become our Heavenly Father, if this has happened to us only by grace, then we need to ask, is that same generosity reflected in the way we deal with others?"

8. "If I'm to be saved, is it going to be on the basis of my own efforts? And the answer fundamentally, you see in the Bible, and you see from the example of Abraham, is no. Friend, if you will be accounted right before God, if you will be justified, it'll be only because of what God has done in Christ."

9. "Some people have asked me if God could have chosen another virtue other than faith, why does it have to be faith? I do think we should understand that faith is not an arbitrary choice for an instrument of our salvation. Faith is simply a receiving, the empty hand of the self-confessed ungodly, held out to be filled with the righteousness of another."

10. "If salvation is not by wages we've earned or works we've done, but by God's grace alone, through faith alone, one other thing that means is that nobody's beyond the reach of God's saving grace."

Observation Questions

1. In Romans 4:1–2, what question does Paul ask about Abraham, and what possibility does he raise about Abraham having something to boast about?
2. According to Romans 4:3, what does Scripture say Abraham did, and what was “counted” or “credited” to him?
3. In Romans 4:4, what everyday situation does Paul use to illustrate his point, and how does he distinguish between “wages” and a “gift”?
4. In Romans 4:5, how does Paul describe the person who is justified—what do they not do, and what do they do?
5. Still in Romans 4:5, how does Paul describe God, and what happens to the believer’s faith?
6. Looking across Romans 4:1–5, what words or ideas related to “counted” or “credited” are repeated, and how are they used in relation to Abraham and to the believer?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it important that Abraham was declared righteous when he believed (Romans 4:3), before his later famous acts of obedience, as the sermon emphasized?
2. How does Paul’s contrast between the worker who receives wages (Romans 4:4) and the one who believes and is justified (Romans 4:5) clarify the difference between salvation by works and salvation by grace?
3. The Old Testament says God will not “acquit the wicked” (e.g., Exodus 23:7; 34:7), yet Romans 4:5 calls him the one “who justifies the ungodly.” How did the sermon explain this paradox, and how does Christ’s work resolve it?
4. According to the sermon, in what sense is faith like the “empty hand” that receives Christ’s righteousness, rather than a good work that earns our justification?
5. How does understanding justification as God counting Christ’s righteousness to us (imputation) change the way a Christian can think about assurance of salvation and their standing before God?

Application Questions

1. Where do you personally tend to think of your relationship with God in “wage” terms—expecting him to accept you because of things you’ve done—and how does Romans 4:4–5 call you to repent of that and rest in grace instead?
2. In light of the sermon’s opening about social media “likes,” how might your craving for approval—online or offline—reveal a deeper need to find your security in being justified by God rather than liked by people?
3. If God justifies the ungodly, how should that shape the way you view and treat people who seem very far from God or “unlikely” to become Christians—including anyone you may have stopped praying for or speaking to about Christ?
4. What would it look like, in your family, friendships, or small group, to build a community where confessing sin and weakness is normal because everyone knows we are saved by grace alone and not by having it all together?
5. For those who influence children or younger believers, how can you practically communicate that Christianity is not mainly about “being good” but about trusting Jesus—what could you say or do differently this week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 15:1–6 — The foundational account of Abraham believing God and having it “counted to him as righteousness,” which Paul quotes and explains in Romans 4.
2. Romans 3:21–28 — Paul’s fuller explanation, just before our passage, that we are justified by God’s grace through faith in Christ apart from works of the law.
3. Exodus 34:6–7 — God’s self-description as both forgiving and yet not clearing the guilty, highlighting the tension that is resolved in “him who justifies the ungodly.”
4. Isaiah 53:4–6 — A prophecy of the suffering servant bearing our iniquities, showing how our guilt can be laid on Christ so that his righteousness can be counted to us.
5. John 20:30–31 — John’s explanation that his Gospel was written so that we may believe in Jesus and, by believing, have life in his name, echoing the sermon’s emphasis on faith as the means of receiving salvation.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Modern Quest for Approval and Its Spiritual Parallel

II. The Biblical Teaching That All Are Wicked

III. The Worker in Verse Four Shows Us That Justification Is Only by Grace (Romans 4:4)

IV. The Believer in Verse Five Shows Us That Justification Is Only Through Faith (Romans 4:5)

V. Faith in Christ Alone as Our Only Hope of Righteousness

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Detailed Sermon Outline

• 2019 survey: smartphone users check phones 96 times daily
• Most users check phones within minutes of waking

Justin Rosenstein is well known to many in the world of software development. He's the co-founder of the widely used productivity application, Asana. Rosenstein is also well known as being the creator of Facebook's like thumbs up button back in 2009. That thumbs up icon quickly grew to become one of the most popular aspects of Facebook. In fact, throughout the 2010s, the Facebook thumbs up or its heart equivalent in other places, Instagram or Twitter, YouTube, started being used all over the place in media platforms.

A larger number of likes along with a growing number of subscribers or viewers or followers brought with it larger social capital, which in turn meant increased financial capital as the digital sellers of wares sought to turn mere content producers into influencers. Influencers who could use their online platform to promote particular products. This beach chair or that sunscreen, all the way up to more substantial purchases like cars and houses, sponsored by the company that makes the products.

Promoted. What began is, Grandma, I like your quilt, became, Buy this makeup or this game that all your friends are buying.

But you don't have to be paid to suddenly enjoy finding your video has gone viral. There's an excitement of finding that you have more followers or there are more likes to something you just posted. There's something that we all like about being liked. What it's like to have your number of friends on Facebook swell from 100 to 1,000, or your channel on YouTube gain more subscribers than anyone else that you know. Researchers have actually found that such findings release dopamine in the brain so that it literally feels good, so that we become addicted to check more frequently, perhaps even post more frequently, spend more time on creating content, specifically that we think would draw more followers.

That begins to be our motive. We can physiologically feel affirmed by sitting and staring at a screen on our phone or computer.

Will Storr reports that a 2019 survey of nearly 2,000 U.S. smartphone users found that they checked their phones an average of 96 times a day, about once every 10 minutes. This marked a 20% increase from just two years earlier. Another survey of 1,200 users found 23% checked their phones less than a minute after waking, and a further 34% managed to hold out between five and 10 minutes. Only 6% managed to wait two hours or more.

When we were at the beach a couple summers ago, I bought some coasters and one of them said, My kids asked what it was like to grow up in the 80s, so I took their phones away and turned the internet off.

Reality suddenly comes crashing in as we switch worlds, doesn't it?

It's like a whole different reality. That's what happens to many people when they begin to think what God thinks of them. Maybe it's a sudden change in your life. It's something that's good. Maybe you have your first child.

Or maybe it's a trial. Maybe you lose a job or it's a report from a doctor.

But something causes you suddenly to become aware of your status with God, of the ultimate concerns in this world and this life, which had seemed only remote days before, all of a sudden take center stage.

How can I be sure that I'm okay with God. Our passage this morning in Romans chapter 4 is one of the clearest passages on this point in all the Bible. Turn there now. Romans chapter 4 verses 4 and 5. If you're using the Bible's provided, you'll find it on page 941, page 941.

Romans chapter 4. I'll start reading with verse 1.

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift.

But as His due. And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Friends, if we want to understand and be able to answer honestly this question, what does God think of us? We have to begin with the biblical teaching that all are wicked. All are wicked.

Paul has spent the first three chapters of this letter explaining and demonstrating this. He shows that among the people who have God's law written and the people who don't, he's making the argument that possessing God's law doesn't make you righteous, doesn't make you okay with God. It's obeying God's law.

And none of us have done that as we should. None of us, those who have God's law, but also none of us who don't have God's law in writing but know in our hearts through our consciences a good bit of right and wrong and still we don't do what we know we should do.

Friends, that's the argument that Paul's made in the first three chapters to show that the correct way to characterize everyone morally and spiritually is as ungodly. That's been what he's argued in these first three chapters.

So, what does the always good, always right, always holy God think of us? Knowing that we humans were made specifically in His image to reflect the truth about the to the creation, how does he view our failure in that mission? What is God's attitude to the wicked, the ungodly, the guilty?

Well, we know from the Scriptures. Paul had the Scriptures before him. What did the Scriptures tell him? We know from Exodus 23:7 where the Lord says, Keep far from a false charge and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. Or in Exodus 34:7, when the Lord is revealing Himself, when He's giving the Ten Commandments to Moses, He says, the Lord describes Himself as forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

In the wisdom literature, we read in Proverbs 17:15, He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike, an abomination to the Lord. So that's the Law, that's the writings. Then turning to the prophets, we find in Isaiah 5, woe to those who acquit the guilty for a bribe. Friends, for whatever reason, God hates wickedness being ignored. Wickedness being ignored lies about Him.

And it lies about Him to the whole world. And those lies are unchallenged and unanswered. So when we come to our passage, how can we possibly understand these words there in verse 5? You see that? You see the words I'm talking about in verse 5?

God justifies the ungodly. Him who justifies the ungodly. What a way to describe God. Now in one sense you don't have to have these words for this passage to work. This is a several word long description of God himself.

If you just put this in parentheses and just put the word God there, the passage works just fine. So you have to wonder why this surprising, even awkward, counterintuitive way of quickly describing God, Him who justifies the ungodly. It's a famous and famously shocking description that is parenthetical to the main sentence, but at the same time, it really does sum up this whole section.

Indeed, it really sums up the whole letter of Romans. In fact, friends, if you were having to quickly summarize the message of the entire Bible, you couldn't do any better than this phrase: Him who justifies the ungodly. Because the ungodly is all of us, and justifies is what we need. And who is the only one who can do it? Him.

He is the one who justifies the ungodly. So the question now is how? How does he do that? How do we become justified? So understanding this paradox is the very heart of understanding the good news of Christianity.

So let me just be really clear. If you have grown up your whole life going to a Baptist church or a Methodist church or an Episcopal church or Presbyterian church, and let's say it's been generations, you know, your parents went there, your grandparents went there, and you've given money to that church all the time. If you don't understand what I'm talking about right now, you do not understand Christianity. Not just your denomination, it's a small matter. You do not understand Christianity if you do not understand this phrase, Him who justifies the ungodly.

So you would like this to dominate your lunchtime conversation today. It's four little words, Him who justifies the ungodly. It's five, Him who justifies the ungodly. Yep, five little words. And they're words that are useful for us to be able to go over and make sure that we are understanding.

As we thought about last time, In Romans 4, what we find here is that God accounts Abraham as righteous with a righteousness that is not inherently his own. It didn't come from Abraham. Remember Jewish interpreters of his day had presented this statement in light of Abraham's famous obediences that were later on after the statement that's quoted here in verse 3. But Paul comes back and rereads it in context and he points out that actually this is said before Abraham famously offered Isaac up.

So Paul puts the verse back in its historical context and you see that Abraham's righteousness wasn't something earned, but it was something from outside of himself that was credited to him, or we use the word last week, imputed to him. That means accounted, credited.

In our verse for today, in verses 4 and 5, Paul uses an everyday example to make his point. He contrasts the man who works Verse 4, with a man who believes. Verse 5, look at verse 4, Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted to him as a gift, but as his due. Paul points out that word counted there. He's picked that up from Genesis 15:6 that he just quoted that had been used in Abraham's case.

And Paul says that such a word would never be used of a man who gains salvation as wages. When would that word counted be used? Well, he goes on in verse 5, and to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is, and then he grabs that word that had been used about Abraham, counted as righteousness. So you see in 4 and 5 he's explaining Abraham's salvation. And he says, Abraham cannot be said to have been justified by works, but rather only by God's gracious gift.

So chapter 3 has shown us that salvation is found only in Jesus Christ and ourselves we are morally helpless. Now here in chapter 4 Paul is developing the theme that the Lord Jesus had taught His disciples to see in the books of Moses and through the Old Testament. Scriptures, that sinners, the ungodly, can be justified, declared right with God. And here in these two verses we see an explanation of what we should deduce from God's counting Abraham's faith as righteousness. We see these two clear deductions that Paul draws out here in these verses.

Number one, the worker there in verse 4 shows us that justification is only by grace. Justification is only by grace. And number two, the believer in verse 5 shows us that justification is only through faith, is only through faith. And if you want to just hop into historical theology for a minute, those of you who like it, Augustine is great in verse 4, and then Luther comes along and helps us out in verse 5. Four is great on grace, and five is the means.

Faith alone. Verses 4 and 5 present a contrast between what was and is commonly believed and what was really the case with Abraham and what is really the case today. So in these two verses we have a summary of the Reformation. And I pray that as we proceed these two points through this message that you will see clearly how you, as ungodly as you are, can be justified.

Counted as right. What a wonderful thing to be counted as right and to know that we're counted as right by God, counted as right, declared not guilty. How can we be accepted by God? Well, number one, the worker in verse four shows us that justification is only by grace. It is not wages given for work.

Verse 4 is showing us that justification is by grace alone, not as wages from our work. Look again at verse 4. Now to the one who works, and he doesn't mean someone who is employed, someone who has a job. He means specifically works for their standing with God. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

It's a parenthetical explanation of Abraham's salvation. That Paul quotes in Genesis 15 up in verse 3, the verse just before. So Abraham was saved, we were considering last time, because of the righteousness of another, of Christ, imputed to him, accounted to him, accredited to him. And Paul just parenthetically inserts this reasoning about someone unlike Abraham. He's saying, this is not how Abraham was saved.

And he uses a simple image of work. So So, sorry, so the image is of work, like common everyday work, but he's using it about the spiritual reality. And what Paul says here is the one who works, this is really the perspective that Paul has raised all his questions from in the last two chapters. So if you, over lunch, want to do something more with this sermon, pick the best reader among you and get them to read out loud Romans 2:6-10. And three and on up through this verse, through verses four and five.

So 2:1 to 4:5. Just read it out loud and you'll see how logical Paul's argument is, how much it makes sense. Read it slowly and listen and you'll see what he's doing here and how this is just such an excellent example. I think you'll see that Paul is destroying any idea of working for our salvation in any way that we could ever boast about it. There's no way that we can ever boast about our salvation.

And he includes in that our own works is the ground of our salvation that would give us a basis for boasting of the kind that he's excluded. Back in chapter 3, verse 27, when he says, Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. There's no ground for us boasting before God about being saved. But if we were to take Abraham, as he was so often taken then, as one who was completely good, completely godly, then his acceptance by God would simply be, let's use Paul's image here in verse 4, wages.

Wages for Abraham and all his good works. Friends, wages for us as believers when that is not the way that Jesus presented our spiritual state and our salvation. By giving this example of a worker and the wages due him for his work, Paul is giving a simple example from everyday life of the principle that he's saying, Look, it would be like this if this were the case. In such a case where God accepts you because of your own worthiness, your own goodness, then your acceptance by God is clearly, as Paul says here, not counted as a gift. So this would be the non-grace way of self-salvation, an idea which seems resident in the fallen human heart.

I've had a number of people ask me, well, isn't this really what this religion or this way of thinking or this denomination teaches? Friends, it's what all of us naturally believe. All of us naturally think that we live well enough for God to approve of us, though we all also have a slight inkling that, no, actually we don't. But we all have a tendency to justify ourselves by our own works. And Paul here presents hypothetically what would have been the case had Abraham or had any of us lived a perfectly good life.

Then our acceptance with God for such a perfect worker would simply be, as he says here in verse 4, his due. And if it's his due, then the worker has saved himself. The worker is his own savior. So that's the self-salvation. That's the opposite of the Bible's message.

We all know that employers are obliged to pay their wages. You don't thank your employer when he pays you. I mean, maybe it's been a rough time and you're glad the company's still alive, but generally, you know, it's the oblig-- you've literally worked for it. They are obliged to pay you. It's not generally surprising or unexpected.

When you get the pay that you've labored for, the employers owe that to the employees. That's why Paul here calls it the workers' due. But if that is true in salvation, then it is a ground for our boasting, and Paul has already excluded this. All of this is simply underscoring the fact that Abraham's salvation, and for that matter, our salvation, if we're Christians, cannot be of works, but it is by God's grace alone. Friends, if you want to read more about God's grace, there is so much good stuff you could read.

We can just stop right now for a little testimony time of good stuff to read on God's grace. Let me tell you something good. John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. It's his story of trusting in Christ alone for his salvation. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.

He's the one who wrote Pilgrim's Progress. It's a great account. Or if you want something older, a thousand years before that, read Augustine's Confessions. Augustine's Confessions, that's his autobiography, which he wrote all to God as one long prayer. It's a beautiful account of someone depending on God's grace for his salvation.

Augustine uttered that famous prayer, Give me strength, O Lord, so that I may do all things. Give me the grace to do as you command and command me to do what you will.

If you want to read more in Augustine, just find his anti-Pelagian writings. Want to know more about that? Just ask any one of the pastors at the doors on the way out. Find Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings. Or if you don't want to read anything, just again in conversations afterwards, share with each other how you have come to understand and experience God's grace in your own life.

How you have seen God treat you not simply as your works deserve, but based on His own merciful nature and the forgiveness that He provides for us in Jesus Christ and His atoning death. It's a glorious thing to realize that our salvation has not been earned by us, but it's been earned by Christ. It's been given to us as a gift. That's the word that Paul uses here in verse 4 about what wages are not, they are not a gift, but Abraham's salvation and ours too Mine is, yours is if you're a Christian, is a gift. So my Christian brother and sister, if we have been justified, declared right in right standing before our holy Creator and Judge so that he has become our heavenly Father, if this has happened to us only by grace, then we need to ask, is that same generosity reflected in the way we deal with others?

I mean, if we call ourselves a follower of Jesus, a Christian, do we have that smell about us in the way we deal with those who become indebted to us or who offend or transgress against us? It's a good question for us to ask. How are you known by those around you? Does your manner with them reflect the fact that you know that you yourself are in God's good books only because of His gracious kindness and mercy toward you.

I know that God and His kindness gives us natural reasons to love others, but here in this congregation, I think I witness His care and kindness again and again that go beyond merely the natural. I see members committing themselves to care for older members. I see various older members here right now who I am very thankful for. Who I've seen here the entire 30 years I've been here, and all of them are here with the help of other members. And I'm very thankful for those other members without number who care for them and who make sure that they're here.

I see in that that kind of love and care. Another category that's so common in our church are the care of young mothers for their children. And young dads, too. The way young moms and dads are again and again caring for their kids at the same time while desperately trying to be here, trying to be part of our meeting, part of our fellowship. Friends, it's a good thing.

And when you watch them as they care for their kids, you see how their kids are not caring back in the same way.

It's just, it doesn't quite work like that. And one of the fun things about getting old is you get to watch your kids realize that as they grow up. Hmm. And then there's just this long satisfaction.

Friends, even that kind of care that God has built into the nature of human life shows a kind of care that's not deserved. But it calls out of us a love that then stands as a good example or a pointer toward how God has loved us in Christ. Friends, if we are those who have known mercy, we will show mercy. If you can see it in everything from the way they care for the children to the elderly, from their conversations at work to the treatment of others online, those who have known mercy show mercy. One question to ask yourself as you reflect on the fact that our salvation is not wages paid for works is what the people around you in your school or at your workplace think.

So if you're a follower of Jesus, you know many of them around you naturally think that religion is just a matter of virtue. It's a matter of living well. Being good, doing the right thing. I wonder what you've done to show them that Christianity presses further in than that. So kids, if you're here and you're in high school or you're in grade school and you mean to be a Christian and you've told your friends that you are, do they think that you just mean that you're going to behave and follow the rules?

Or do they understand that you mean something more than that? What are you doing to make the gospel clear to those that you're around each week? It's so interesting that for all his virtues, Abraham is not presented by Paul here as a model worker, but as being a man whose works did not earn him salvation. So have you told people around you that part of your hope goes beyond just religion that makes them better to religion that brings them reconciled to God? Friends, this is our hope.

This is the good news that you need. If you're here today as one of these people, naturally wicked and ungodly, doesn't mean you never do anything good, but it means you fundamentally serve yourself rather than God. And you can tell because when the two conflict, you at least sometimes go for yourself, which suggests that even when you're serving God, it may just be a appearing to serve God, and you may be always serving yourself. It's just a good thing to look and to ask, if I'm to be saved, is it going to be on the basis of my own efforts? And the answer fundamentally you see in the Bible, and you see from the example of Abraham, is no.

Friend, if you will be accounted right before God, if you will be justified, it'll be only because of what God has done in Christ. God sent His only Son to live a life of perfect trust and to die on the cross as we read about Isaiah 53, taking the transgressions that we have committed upon Himself, paying the penalty for them so that His righteousness could be counted for hours as we are united to Him by faith. And come to understand what it means in your life that you could follow Christ and do that today. Don't wait till tomorrow.

Today, begin following the Lord Jesus Christ. Come to know Him and to know God through Him. Fellow members, I also want to just thank you while we're on this topic for being such good people to confess sin to. You know, I fear that there are some churches where doctrines of self-salvation by works have subtly crept into the thoughts of the teachings of the church, and in such a place, one must be very careful to never put a foot wrong or never be seen to. And while we all long for holiness to honor the Lord, it's also the experience of every true Christian that we sin and that we repent.

And a normal part of that is talking to other Christians about our sin, confessing them. And from what I know both in my own experience and what I hear repeated testimonies of, I praise God for how gospel rich your tender hearing of others' confessions have so often been. I know I've experienced that, but I also hear that from others. I mean, even last Sunday night, we were here for the commissioning time for Bobby. Alina, I don't know if you're still here, but your testimony about how Bobby had loved you to the point where he'd even contacted your mom when he was confronting you in your sin, and how that made you love him and this congregation all the more, and wanting to go be a part of his church plant, That's a wonderful testimony, and it smells like this kind of stuff, this knowledge that God saves us by grace.

Praise the Lord for His kindness. The worker in verse 4 shows us that justification is only by grace. But let's go on to verse 5 because there, having laid aside a common misunderstanding Paul gives us more explanation of the salvation of Abraham and of every one of us here this morning who are saved. So point two, the believer in verse 5 shows us that justification is only through faith, only through faith. Look again at verse 5.

And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Verse 5 teaches us that justification being declared right before God is only through faith and not by works. The word here in verse 5, for believes means to trust or put faith in, to rely on, to cling to. It's the verbal form of the noun which you see is also used just a few words later in the sentence. So but believes, that's the verb, in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith, that's the noun form of the same word, is counted.

We spoke in the beginning about this amazing description of God as him who justifies the ungodly, which really summarizes the point that Paul is making here. And again, if we're going to understand this, we have to remember that Paul is saying this an explanation of the salvation of Abraham that he's mentioned in verse 3. And that means that Paul is thinking of Abraham as someone who needed to be justified because he wasn't in himself okay with God. As good as he was, perhaps, in comparison to others, he was most fundamentally a sinner, a fallen son of Adam, described here as ungodly. Or if you keep reading into chapter 5, Paul describes us all as God's enemies.

That's how he understands all of us, Abraham and himself by nature, you and me. And that's why we all need to be justified. This justification is God's stunning declaration of us having a new status, a status that our own works could never give us. Through faith, God accepted Abraham. God accepted Paul.

God will accept you. God's accepted me as someone who has lived a life of loving trust and submission to God, though I haven't perfectly, but Christ has. And I have been justified by faith in Him. He is the one who has lived a perfect life. And this is true of us if we're trusting in Him, that we are justified, if we're trusting in Christ.

Just like Abraham is described in verse 3 as having his faith counted as righteousness. Because like Abraham, we are rightly described here as the ungodly. When he says the ungodly, it's us. Again, God's people have never been a the Good People Club. We tend to think of church naturally because God does do sanctifying work in us.

He does change us. There are the fruit of His Spirit in us. We do tend to think of ourselves sometimes as the good people's club. That's a bad way to think of a church. We can be a becoming better people club, that's okay, you know, but we're not the good people's club.

We are those who know that we're not good and we need a perfectly good Savior and that's what God has given us. We had that passage read to us earlier by Adrian in Deuteronomy 9 about God telling His people then that, no, look, I'm not doing all this because of your virtue. God does things ultimately for His own glory. Paul had argued back in Romans 3 that none are righteous, all have sinned and are ungodly. So here Paul is being clear that Abraham was justified apart from his works when he was not yet circumcised before he had God's law.

When he had simply received God's promise and he believed it. It seems that part of becoming an object of God's saving mercy is realizing we need it. That we in and of ourselves are, as Paul calls us here, ungodly. So friend, I just have to ask you, what is your hope when you stand before God? Is it something in yourself about how you yourself are or is it something outside of you?

As a Christian, I would say my hope is outside of me. It's in Christ and His righteousness, and I trust in Him. This is the hope that we've been given.

Does the way you're using your social media lead people to think that you have a perfect all put together life?

Or does it delude yourself to think that you can obtain a perfect life that somebody else seems to have online? Friends, if so, how does that help your being a witness for the gospel of Jesus Christ, where the ungodly are justified by grace alone, through faith alone?

I remember when Connie and I first got married, we had our share of arguments. And one thing we always had to do was figure out Do we want to do this with other people around or not?

There was more than once when we would like be in an argument, somebody would walk in and we would pause and go like, Hmm, what do we do right now? Do we keep going? Or should we probably do this in private? Well, I'm not getting into a bunch of marriage counseling right here, but I am saying that I think the way we relate to each other honestly with problems visible actually helps get rid of false gospels and helps us to present the true gospel. It's not the true gospel, but it's consistent with it.

So friend, if you want to be very careful about how you present your image to everybody else and that it's always only all buttoned up and just right, you can do that. Be very careful about what space that leaves for you in communicating your reliance on Jesus Christ for your salvation.

How do you communicate the Savior that Christ is for us?

Kids, I just want to ask you, do you think of yourself as someone who is a good kid?

Do you think that's what God's shooting for?

God certainly wants you to do the right thing. But you know, Christianity is about more than that. Because even if you do the right thing, if you want to do the wrong thing, then that kind of, that's a problem all in itself. Christianity is sort of deeper than just what we do. And so you have to figure out, what does it mean for me, not just to do the right thing, but what if I do the right thing, but I want to do the wrong thing?

Well, that's what the Bible calls sin.

And if you're confused about that, talk to your parents. If you don't have a Christian parent, if you don't have a Christian parent, find one of us at the doors, one of the adults at the doors on the way out, and we will talk to you about that. Because that's exactly what it means to be ungodly. See, even ungodly people can obey a lot of rules, and we're really glad they do, you know. But ungodly people who are not Christians don't have a reason necessarily or finally an effective reason to trust in someone else.

They're relying only on themselves. And what happens when you become a Christian is you realize you can't finally rely on yourself. If you're standing before God, you have to ultimately rely on Christ. And becoming aware of your own faults, your own flaws, your own sins, the wrong things you do, the wrong things you love, all of those are things God uses to help us come to Christ. Is we exhaust trusting in ourselves and we build up trust in Christ alone.

That's what we want to encourage. Some people have asked me if God could have chosen another virtue other than faith. Why does it have to be faith? I mean, why not love or patience or mercy that we'd be justified through? Well, I don't want to say what the Almighty can and can't do other than what He said Himself.

But I do think we should understand that faith is not an arbitrary choice for an instrument of our salvation. Unlike, say, love or mercy or patience, faith is simply a receiving. Faith is a description of the empty hand of the self-confessed ungodly held out to be filled with the righteousness of another. To be justified, declared righteous through faith. Not with faith itself as a kind of substitute righteousness, but with faith as our reception of Christ's righteousness.

So this believing Paul speaks of here, he naturally contrasts with the working in verse 4, because to work for my salvation would be to be full of my own works. When instead by faith we're to rely on the righteousness of another given for us. So we believe, we have faith, but this believing is no meritorious work on our part. Rather faith is the means, the instrument, the empty hand that receives the blessing given as a gift by God's grace. This is the theme of this letter Paul has written.

Look back in chapter 1.

Romans chapter 1 verse 16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Paul's whole letter is built around this glorious idea of our being justified through believing alone, through faith alone. And this faith, he says here in verse 5, is then counted as righteousness. It is not righteousness, it is counted as righteousness. Abraham was not righteous in himself.

Abraham was brought up as an idolater, remember. He didn't always seem to protect his wife as he should. But his faith mentioned in verse 3, by implication, our faith in God's promises in Christ is counted as righteousness. This is imputation. We thought about this idea last week when we were looking at verse 3.

This suggests the image of an accountant imputing or crediting to our account something that had been earned by another but is given to us. The language of faith then is the language of receiving that gift, bringing us into an even closer relationship with this alien righteousness. So faith unites us to Christ and so His righteousness is accounted as ours. Faith unites us to Christ, and so his righteousness is accounted as ours. Do you remember what John wrote at the end of his gospel?

Now Jesus did many other signs and wonders in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that By believing you may have life in His name. My friend, you may be here this morning following another religion or none.

Religions around the world teach something normally about what you do to save yourself. And I just want to make it very clear to you that is not the religion of the Bible. Don't assume the Bible just falls in the religion category because the Bible is very unusual at this point. Here we see that our salvation is only by grace and it is only through this very believing, this faith that you see here. We rely on another to save us, to justify the ungodly.

My Roman Catholic friend, if you understand justification only as something that happens to us when we are completely sanctified, and that until that moment we are not justified, then I think you misunderstood the good news that the Bible holds out to you here. Bible has some excellent news for you here in God's Word. Here there is a confidence in salvation entirely apart from our being proud of miracles that we have done or unusual holiness that marks our lives. Rather, we are saints as Christians. Our confidence in our salvation is solely by faith in the Redeemer's blood, whereby His perfect righteousness is accounted to us.

Only with this understanding can we enjoy the steadiness of assurance of our salvation that we're supposed to be able to know and enjoy as Christians, and that can stay with us through days that are hard and days that are easy. And if salvation is not by wages we've earned or works we've done, but by God's grace alone through faith alone, One other thing that means is that nobody's beyond the reach of God's saving grace.

You know, if you have a more worksy idea of salvation, you can just look around and ignore the bad people, go for the marginally good people and try to help them be a little better. But that's not Christianity and that's not evangelism. I asked a group of friends the other day, before you were a Christian, were you one of the people around you thought would never become a Christian? About half of us were that. And I was one of those.

I was one that they thought, that guy is never gonna become a Christian. And here I've been standing for 30 years telling people about the gospel. Friends, there are amazing things that God does, even with the people you think least likely. And the more you understand this gracious nature of salvation, the more you will see, you gotta put some people back on your prayer list. There are some people that you've dropped out in hopelessness that actually you should probably put right back on there because God delights in grabbing people like the idolater Abram or the Pharisee Paul.

He delights in grabbing the people that you right now are thinking are not very likely converts. Friend, if you're here and you're not a Christian, let me just caution you, you probably think you're the best judge of your own merit. And I just wanna let you know you're not. And I'm saying that not because I know you so well, but because I know human tendency. We all will hear morality coming at us and we all will say something like, well, I'm not perfect.

But however I've acted is just on the right side of acceptable. And then anyone who's kind of a little worse than I am, now that's bad. That's not good. We have a moral clarity that comes to us when things are just worse than we ourselves are. And that should let us know that something's off in the way we're thinking about ourselves.

So my Christian friend, if this greatness of God's grace is true, if no one is beyond salvation, then how do we do a better job publicly of making much of such a God and of such love and grace and mercy as to justify the ungodly. That he saved me, that he saved us as a church family. What can we do to better make this known? How could this be done other than by Christ's perfect righteousness being given for us and our receiving it through the means of our faith as our very own, united with him now through faith? We've already confessed in song no list of sins I have not done, no list of virtues I pursue, No list of those I am not like can earn myself a place with youh.

Oh God, be merciful to me. I am a sinner through and through. My only hope of righteousness is not in me, but only youy. The believer in verse 5 shows us that justification is only through faith.

So just to recap, we've seen that salvation according to the Bible, our being justified before God, is not some spiritual wages we earn by works we perform. The worker in verse 4 shows us that justification is only by grace. And the believer in verse 5 shows us that justification is only through faith. Of course we have to remember what we said last time. The point is not faith in faith, the point is faith in Christ.

I used the image that some of you liked, the window. Talk about the beautiful view through the window, a friend buying the window for me and bringing me and giving me the window as a gift. That's not quite the point. You know, it doesn't carry the view with it. And that's like faith, it's what you view through the window.

So please don't hear me as extolling faith just as faith. It's faith particularly in Christ. No faith in the world will help you. None. It's not a matter of summoning your own spiritual powers.

Only faith in Christ. The point of faith is what fills the view, what fills the empty hand. And the view is filled with Christ, and the empty hand is filled with His righteousness, accounted, credited, imputed to us by God's grace alone. Through faith alone, only in Christ. It is His that is the righteousness that we need.

We are justified, we are saved only by grace, only through faith, and that faith is in Christ. In the past, Bible-believing Christians have sometimes been misunderstood to be saying that we believe our faith has earned justification for us. But, friend, if you've listened carefully today, we don't see anything like that in the Bible. God, Him who justifies the ungodly, shows grace to us. We don't manufacture our own grace, but the great righteousness of Christ comes to us through faith.

It is Christ's work. It is His righteousness that is regarded in our place. So just as Paul had argued in chapter 3, we are saved not because of ourselves, but only because of Christ. God's grace has come only because of Christ. Only faith in only Christ.

God counts the righteousness of the one we're united to by faith as our own. Of course, it's not that faith is so great. Don't misunderstand that. Faith is kind of wretched. You know, faith is just, it's an admission, I don't have and I need.

It's an emptiness. It's something that we will get rid of one day. But right now, it's the frank admission of our complete poverty, of our being spiritually bankrupt. And of there being an infinitely superior provision made for us by God's Son in the giving of Himself for us in our place. So our justification is a gift of God's grace.

As the Westminster Confession beautifully puts it, Faith is receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness. Faith is receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness. This whole way of saving us is for God to shine the spotlight on His own holiness and on His own mercy at the same time. Where do both beacons of light join their lights but on the cross of Jesus Christ where both God's justice and God's grace are supremely displayed. What better being in the whole world to devote ourselves to completely from our praise to our contemplation to our serving to our compliance.

Brothers and sisters, it's in Christ that the gospel hangs together and makes sense. That's why He is our joy and exaltation. In Spurgeon's devotional Morning and Evening, his June 28 devotional read like this: Remember, therefore, it is not by the hold of Christ that saves thee, it is Christ. It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee, it is Christ. It is not even faith in Christ, though that be the instrument.

It is Christ's blood and merits. Therefore look not so much to thy hand with which thou art grasping Christ as to Christ. Look not to thy hope, but to Jesus, the source of thy hope. Look not to thy faith, but to Jesus, the author and finisher of thy faith. That's what we want to do.

As Christians, we want to look to Christ. Take your bulletin, take your bulletin and look at that hymn, We Rest on Thee. In the second stanza, we address Jesus, our righteousness. In the third stanza, we pray, We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling, and needing more each day, Thy grace to know.

Friends, let's take a few moments in quietness now just to read over this prayer together that is our final hymn, and then we'll stand and sing.