How to Get Right With God

Just two weeks later, he signed up to the monastery. He left studying law, much to his father's anger, and became a monk. But this German man, he never did anything half heartedly. He threw himself into being a monk at this Augustinian monastery. And this is something he himself wrote years later.

He said, I kept the rules of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I. All my brothers in the monastery who knew me will bear me out. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work. See, Martin Luther threw himself into being a monk. He actually was known to spend three days fasting food and water to punish himself for his sins, to try and get right with God, to try and be a good monk.

He'd almost kill himself with his efforts of being a monk. And despite his best efforts, his conscience was not clean. He still had this nagging feeling that he was not good enough for God. That one day he would appear before the God who was uncompromisingly just, and he would be pronounced guilty. And maybe you can relate to that in some way.

Maybe you've walked into this room today and you're carrying shame in your heart. Your heart is weighed down. Your conscience isn't clean. And you put on a good face before everyone else, but you wonder if you can ever get rid of this thing, or you wanna push it down so you can just move on from it. Or maybe you've joined us here or online, and you're coming to check out what Jesus is about.

And if you've come into the building, often people say to me, I'm surprised the roof didn't cave in, you know, like, I'm so not, you know, what you Christian people are and so on. Maybe that's you. Maybe you think, how could I ever be a Christian? How could God ever accept me? I've done so many things wrong.

Or maybe you're listening to this and you're thinking this is exactly what's wrong with religion, all this focus on shame. We need to have more self esteem. We're good people. We can be kind to each other. Let's get rid of shame altogether, and we...

It'll be so much healthier for us. But if that's you, let me ask you if you think that shame really is the deepest problem that we have. What if what if shame is just a symptom of an even deeper problem? And you see, Martin Luther recognised that there was a deeper problem, but he also discovered that there was good news that dealt with that problem. The passage from the bible that Minka just read for us earlier turned Martin Luther's world upside down.

When he finally understood it, his shame left him. He said he felt that he had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. The passage he was referring to was Romans 1:16-17, specifically verse 17. So we're gonna open that up together and see if we can discover the same beauty, the same message that that released this man who was stricken with shame and helped him to feel free and joy again. So let's get into this passage by asking three questions, and the first is this, what is the gospel?

What is the gospel? See, Romans 1:16 starts by saying, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Now the gospel is a very Christian kind of word. What does that actually mean? Well, first of all, let me just say that this passage here is written by a man called Paul.

He was a leader in the early church in the first century to a group of Christians that were living in the city of Rome, and he's what we call an apostle. He was an eyewitness of Jesus, and he was an authorised bearer of Jesus' teaching. He was authorised to teach us what Jesus taught, and he wrote down letters, which now are our scriptures that remind us of what Jesus taught, this authentic Christian teaching, an eyewitness of Jesus. And so he writes here, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. What does that word mean?

Well, it's not good advice. It's actually good news. A gospel is an announcement of something that has happened. And to put it very simply, the the Christian gospel is the announcement that Jesus is God's promised son, the son of David, king David in the Bible, David and Goliath, that David was promised that he would have a son one day whose kingdom would never end. And so the gospel is saying that Jesus is that son, the son of David, the king of heaven and earth, and that He died and rose again, and He is ruling over all things, and one day He will return.

But the gospel was also a word used in the Greco Roman world. So the original Greek word for what we have in our Bibles is euangelion. And in the Greek speaking world, they would use it too. And a Greek or Greco Roman hearer would know that this word has a political edge to it. In the Turkish town of Priene, there is an inscription of an edict issued in nine BC honouring Caesar Augustus.

This is just a few years before Jesus was born, and this is what the edict says, Providence has ordered all things and set them in order by giving us Caesar Augustus, whom she is filled with virtue that he might benefit all humanity, and has sent him as a saviour, same language used for Jesus in our gospels, a saviour for us and our descendants, that he might end war and bring order to all things. The birthday of the god was the beginning of the good news, the euangelion, for the world. See, that's an example of the Roman gospel. It's not good advice. It's an announcement.

And what they were announcing there is that Augustus Caesar is the saviour of the world, and he brings good news. He's gonna bring salvation and bring prosperity and peace to the world. The Christian gospel is the announcement that the promised kingdom of God has arrived in Jesus. He is the promised one through His... who through His death and resurrection has begun to reign as king in heaven and earth.

Jesus is Lord, so Caesar is not. There's the political edge. There's what got early Christians into trouble. Because if Jesus is Lord, does that mean you're against Rome, that you're gonna rise up and rebel and and kill Romans and so on and so forth? Well, clearly not.

If Jesus came to set up an earthly military kingdom to kick Caesar and the Romans out of Israel, why did He actually get killed by the Romans? He was crucified by the Romans. And yet Paul says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation. Salvation from what? Jesus didn't come to save us from this wicked empire called Rome.

They were a savage empire. They were brutal. What was he saving us from? What did Paul mean by that word for salvation, for rescue? Well, Paul was talking about salvation from God.

The gospel is the power of salvation from God. You see, our biggest problem is not that some human evil empire is too powerful. Our biggest problem is not that the Australian economy is struggling. Our biggest problem is not that AI might potentially take over the world one day. Our biggest problem is that we are sinners before a just God, that we are guilty before God.

And as you read on in the book of Romans, Paul begins to show that every one of us is actually a rebel to Jesus' reign. See, the gospel that announces God's reign, initially, that's not very good news for us if we're rebels to that reign. All of us have rebelled against against God's reign. None of us actually naturally want to submit to His authority. In Australia, we want to rule over our own lives.

We want to make our own decisions. We think we belong to ourselves and that we should live how we want to live. We don't want an outside authority standing over us telling us how to live. Without a change of heart, we run away from God's reign so that we can rule ourselves or at least ignore it. Now if you rebelled against Caesar in the first century, you'd be crucified for it.

And he was a powerful... He was powerful, but he didn't rule over the whole world. God made the whole world. He made you, and He rules over the entire cosmos. What do you think the penalty should be for rebelling against His authority?

One day, the slow to anger God will get angry and judge all those who've refused to acknowledge His reign. If you reject the only kingdom that will remain standing at the end of time, where else will you have to go? God will judge the world one day, and that's actually good news because He will judge all the evil that breaks our hearts that makes news headlines all the time, all the school shootings, all the terrible things that we see. God will judge all evil. He will rid our world of it, and He will renew this world.

Heaven will come to earth. But it's also bad news because the same evil we see in the headlines, it's also in our hearts. And you might be like, woah, Ben, I'm not that bad. I'm not a murderer. But you who condemn murder, Have you ever hated someone in your heart?

Jesus said that God actually cares not just about your external actions, but about what's inside of you and what you're thinking. If you hated someone, Jesus said you've broken that law in your heart. You've murdered that person in your heart. You've wished them dead. You who condemn adultery, who say, oh, I couldn't believe that someone would cheat on their partner.

Have you ever lusted over someone that's not your spouse? Have you desired them who's not yours? Jesus said that God cares about your heart. If you've lusted over someone else, you've committed adultery in your heart. You who hate false religions, false teachings, and so on.

Have you ever robbed the poor by refusing to give the money that God wants you to share with them? Have you ever been an idolater of money, trusting it too much, refusing to give it away? We who condemn idolatry are ourselves idolaters. None of us are without sin. All of us are idolaters and rebels, and God will unapologetically remove every rebel from this world when Jesus returns.

That's what hell is for. It is a place of God's eternal punishment reserved for the devil and his angels. That's good news. He's gonna kick the most evil beings out of this world. But everyone else who allies himself with that snake will experience the same fate.

How could it be otherwise if we remain allied to him? God has set a time for the world to repent and believe the announcement that Jesus is king. On the surface, that seems like bad news because we're all rebels to God's reign, But the Bible calls it good news because it's a message of salvation, of rescue from God's judgement against our rebellion. That's what we're being promised to be saved from, from God's judgement. But how?

Why is this news about Jesus the power to save us from God's judgement? Well, let's take a look at that next. Under the second question, why is the gospel powerful? Why is it powerful to save? And here's Paul's answer, verse 17, for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed.

Now that word righteousness, the Greek word, it can be translated as justice, and that's how people traditionally read it. And that doesn't sound like very good news at first. The justice of God is revealed. If I'm a rebel to God's reign and God is uncompromisingly just, that sounds like bad news. How is this good news?

Martin Luther himself was really troubled by this phrase when he studied this letter. He writes this about it. He said, I had conceived a burning desire to understand what Paul meant in his letter to the Romans, but thus far there had stood in my way that one word which is in chapter 1, the justice of God is revealed in it. I hated that word, justice of God. I'd been taught to understand it as referring to that justice by which God is just and by which He punishes sinners and the unjust.

But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God, I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn't be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction, by my efforts. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punished sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme then, certainly, I grumbled passionately and got angry at God. I said, isn't it enough that we miserable sinners lost for all eternity because of original sin are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the 10 commandments?

Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the gospel, and through the gospel threaten us with His justice and His wrath? This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered Saint Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant. See, Luther's life itself demonstrates to us that if God is merely just, it's bad news for us. If Romans 1:17 is saying that it's just the justice of God that's revealed, his moral integrity, then that would be bad news for us.

In God's divine court of law, he could bring out evidence upon evidence upon evidence of all the things I've done and thought and said. He could show all my lovelessness and pride and distaste for his reign. If God only gave us justice, I'd be done for. But you see, the righteousness of God in verse 17 isn't talking about God's justice. It's actually talking about the righteousness that God grants as a gift to rebels who are otherwise hopelessly guilty.

That's what verse 17 is talking. The righteousness of God there is talking about a gift righteousness given to sinners and rebels that God loves. The the word, that's the word to to make righteous, to to justify, it comes from legal metaphors, courtroom metaphors. So what's going on here is is Paul's kind of picturing as if we are in God's courtroom at the end of time, and Satan is the chief prosecutor and accuser, and he comes before God, he says, how can you accept this Christian? And he brings out all of our of our shames, all of our darker sequences, points to this and this and this.

He says, if you're gonna be just a just judge, God, you cannot accept this Christian. And then God says, bangs the gavel and says, actually, I declare this person innocent, not guilty, righteous. That's what the word is referring to. It's this legal righteousness. It's this status that we're gifted.

But how can God do that without being unjust? Like the way I've shared it just then, it sounds like he just put on the wrong arm. I'm just gonna ignore it. Righteous. How can God do that?

Martin Luther discovered that that this gift existed, and this is what he said. He said, I meditated night and day on those words until at last by the mercy of God, I began to understand that in this verse, the justice of God is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God. I exalted the sweetest word of mine, the justice of God with as much love as before I had hated it with hate. This phrase of Paul was for me the very gate of paradise. But again, Martin Luther and I haven't explained how God can do that without being unjust.

So now we move to Romans 3, where Paul says, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, made right, declared righteous by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Here's why God can do it without being unjust. It's because it's through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood. That's a big word, but propitiation just means it turns God's wrath away from us, God's judgement against us.

See, Jesus is this redemption gift. This is why He let the Romans crucify Him, because He let Himself be judged by God in our place. He was our place taker. He represented us. He took our sins in His body on the tree, and He was treated like a sinner, and that is the way that He propitiated God's judgement against us because all of God's judgement was poured out on Jesus for our sins, so that through faith in Him, we can receive His righteousness as a gift.

It's this beautiful exchange. Paul goes on, it's to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness. Now I think he's talking about this is why God is just. He's not immoral to choose all these sinners, to give mercy to them.

Because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. People like Moses and Abraham and all those people, the Lord knew that Jesus would pay for all their sins one day when He accepted them by faith. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and a justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. It's a confusing thing for a gospel about God's reign to include the fact that heaven's king was killed by Caesar's empire, unless that is how God planned to establish a kingdom where sinners could be welcomed. Jesus was treated like a rebel by Rome.

They used crucifixion to stamp out rebels because Jesus chose to be given over to judgement and death for our rebellion against God. The crucifixion of God's king makes no sense otherwise. Jesus chose to be our place taker, to die the death that we should have died, and His blood is powerful enough to cleanse us from all sin and is precious enough to pay all of our debt to God, past, present, future. God put Jesus forward as a propitiation by His blood. Now the reason blood is mentioned, if you're new to church, like this is so morbid, why is Jesus' blood and everyone's celebrating Jesus' blood?

Well, it's because in the Old Testament, the sacrifices of those animals that were used to sort of guilty people would come before God and they place their hands in the head of the animal, and they would confess their sins over it as well, and it'd be slaughtered as a substitute. Instead of me being put to death for my sin, this animal was, and Jesus was fulfilling that symbol. And in Leviticus, it says that the life of the animal is in the blood. You see the blood represents the life or the value of a life, and it was also a symbol of cleansing in Leviticus. And so that's why we talk about Jesus' blood.

That's why it's so precious to us as Christians. Because Jesus' innocent blood was spilt, you could be cleansed of everything that you're ashamed of. William Cowper famously wrote the hymn Praise for the Fountain Opened in the eighteenth century. And this is what it says. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains, Lose all their guilty stains.

Lose all their guilty stains. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away. Wash all my sins away. Wash all my sins away.

And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away. Did you come in here with a troubled conscience, carrying shame, carrying guilt over something you did this week, this morning, ten years ago. Maybe you've suddenly, without realising, you've started to think about Christianity as good advice for good people, But it's not. It's actually good news for bad people. That's what the gospel is.

We all come in here on the level ground of the cross. All of us have rebelled against against God's reign in our own ways, and all of us are offered free gift of righteousness to be justified by God as a gift by simply trusting in his son. Jesus has paid for your sin, church. You do not honour God by holding onto him and saying, no, can't forgive myself. That's setting yourself up as a higher judge than God is.

He has said, no, My son's blood is way more valuable than your petty sin. Your sin is not greater than His grace and His love and His sacrifice. But you might be thinking, but I still don't feel clean. How do I get clean? I can't walk up to some fountain and be cleansed.

We're gonna finish our time together by asking this final question. How do I get clean? How do I receive this saving righteousness that Paul talks about? Verse 17, Paul says, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed, we know that's the gift righteousness of God, from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Now Paul says as it is written because he's quoting from an Old Testament verse from the prophet Habakkuk. And this is what it says in Habakkuk 2:4. Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him. God is talking about the Babylonians there.

But the righteous shall live by his faith. See, Habakkuk was a prophet in Judah about six hundred years before Christ, and he saw violence and injustice among God's own people and asked God how long he would let it go on. And God answered Habakkuk by saying, I'm raising up Babylon, but then that made things worse in Habakkuk's mind because he's like, well, Babylon, they're even worse than your people. They're even more unjust. They're cruel and prouder than Judah is.

So Habakkuk waits for God's answer. And God's answer is that the proud, the one who trusts in themselves, will not last, but the righteous will live. The righteous will survive that Babylonian onslaught by faith. That is by faithfully waiting on God for his deliverance. Now this debate here, I'm not sure how much I'm not sure how much I should get into it amongst scholars about whether this word means faith or it means faithfulness, because that changes the meaning of it.

Well, it could change the meaning of it. Does it mean faith as in through trusting in God, or does it mean our faithfulness as in my righteous integrity before God? Because that changes the gospel a bit. And actually, truth is the Hebrew word in this passage normally means faithfulness. I think that is the best translation.

But to separate these things too sharply seems a little silly to me, because the faithfulness that Habakkuk is talking about is faithfulness in trusting God that this vision will come to pass. It's faithfully staying with God and... It's not faithfulness as in Habakkuk, you need to live morally and righteously. It's faithfulness as in keep trusting in God, though everything seems like it's gonna go to poop. Even though the Babylonians seem like they're gonna get their way, stay faith, like keep trusting in me.

So it means to keep faithfully having faith. So it's really hard to separate the two. But when Paul says, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, it's clear, and I could take you elsewhere in Romans, that he's talking about from faith for faith. It's just his way of saying this is about faith. This is about trusting in God from beginning to end.

You can't contribute to it. It's about faith from beginning to end. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith, by trusting in God. The righteous person is not the one who keeps a squeaky clean record or the one who goes to church every Sunday, but the one who perseveres in faith, who keeps believing when everything seems stacked against them, even your own moral records seem stacked against you. He is the one who faithfully trusts.

So how do we get clean? How do we receive the saving righteousness of Christ? It's by faith. It's by believing the gospel that not only did Jesus rise from the dead, and not only does He reign as king, but He also died for your sin and my sin. He made a perfect payment and provided a complete cleansing.

Do you believe that? If you do, that's what faith is. It's belief. It's trust. Trust in Jesus.

Trust in God's son. Trust in the message of the gospel. This is the treasured doctrine or teaching that Luther discovered as he studied these verses. It's called justification by faith. Being declared righteous by simply trusting in God.

And when Luther realised what the gospel was about, he took God at His word, and he felt like he'd entered the very gates of paradise. This man who had this tortured conscience finally realised I'm right with God as a gift by simply trusting. He realised the generosity and the kindness of God. It's not too good to be true. There is no other way to be right with God than to simply trust in Jesus.

I love this quote from a Lutheran theologian since we're talking so much about Martin Luther, and he says, we are justified freely for Christ's sake by faith without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age old question, what shall I do to be saved? The answer is shocking. Nothing. Just be still.

Shut up and listen for once in your life to what God, the Almighty, creator and redeeming is saying to His world and to you in the death and resurrection of His son, listen and believe. God is offering this to you as a gift. You cannot receive it while holding on to hope that you are a bit better than you are, that you can earn it a little bit. You cannot receive it while believing you're not really undeserving. Listen, so many people come to church thinking that we're here to become...

To be better people. And yes, God transforms us. But the only reason that we're Christians is because we've realised we're not good people. This is why we follow Jesus, because we need a sacrifice. The gospel is not good advice for good people.

It's good news for bad people, because Jesus has paid for our sins and has justified us as a gift. And the only way to receive this gift is not to try and pay God back. There's no payment plans in the kingdom. The only way to receive it is by simply trusting God as his at his word, letting go of your own self justifications, and trusting in God's son, Jesus Christ. Being right with God begins and ends with faith.

This is what Martin Luther rediscovered a little over five hundred years ago. This was so heavenly to him that he felt that he was at the gates of paradise, and this is the message that was so powerful that it spread like wildfire across Europe, and commoners and peasants and all sorts of people finally heard the gospel taught in their own language. You see the mass back then, it was all in Latin. People in Germany didn't understand it. They finally heard in their own language.

They finally began to get access to the Bible. They finally realised, I don't have to keep buying these indulgences. I don't have to keep doing penance. Actually, I'm justified as a gift. It's good news for the soul.

And it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. Don't think it leads us to become less moral and more evil. It actually is what transforms people from the inside out. And it's the same message that we proclaim in the Gold Coast today. We haven't outgrown our need for God over the centuries, because we've never been able to deal with this fundamental problem.

Our fundamental problem is not shame. That's a symptom. Our fundamental problem is sin. So we all come into this place on an equal playing field. We're all sinners in need of grace.

Have you let go of your self justifications and humbly admitted your flaws? The gospel is good news of God's love for the world. Is Jesus' kingdom offered to rebels because Jesus died for them? Have you emptied your hands of your own self righteousness, so that you can receive the perfect righteousness of Christ? Let me close with these words from the hymn Rock of Ages.

Not the labours of my hands can fulfil Your law's demands. Could my zeal no respite no? Could my tears forever flow? All for sin could not atone. You must save and You alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to the cross I cling. Naked come to You for dress. Helpless look to You for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly.

Wash me, Saviour, or I die. Let's pray together. Father, we thank You for the precious gift of Your son, Jesus. We thank You that You're not actually against us, but You're for us in sending Your son. You so love the world.

Thank You that You are just and You will rid this world of corruption. And thank You that You are gracious to deal with the corruption in our own hearts. Father, we put our faith in Jesus alone. We give up on the self justification. We don't pretend to be good enough to be a Christian.

We just come to Jesus. We put our trust in Him, and we thank You, Jesus, for what You did for us. It is such a gift. We receive it by simply trusting in You. It's in Your name we pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.