Saved by Faith, Prepared to Do God’s Work

Dan Chase

Midland SDA Church

September 19, 2015

Introduction

While I was thinking about topics for my sermon, I was struck by the thought or the concern that there are many Christians who are unsure of their salvation. Since I believe that we should preach what is needed most to those right here close to us, I am going to endeavor to give comfort to you by assuring you of certain and sure salvation in Jesus Christ. (As an aside, in keeping with preaching to topical issues my sermon was going to be about how we have apostasy and idolatry right here in beautiful Midland, Michigan and there is no need to feel that everyone must be a missionary to deepest, darkest Africa (no offense to those of you hailing from Africa), to reach needy people with the good news.) So, with that in mind, you’ll just have to wait for a sermon from me on apostasy and idol worship in Midland and instead hear the good news that Jesus died for your sins!

You may have heard that before. I have an illustration from when used to work as a hospice spiritual care volunteer. It will be useful for you to know for the purposes of this illustration that first of all to be on Hospice, a person’s average life expectancy is 6 months, so these people pretty much know their time on earth is drawing to a close, to put it mildly. Secondly, there are five levels of what was known as “acuity”—with 1 being the furthest from death and 5 being “actively dying.”

I would often ask patients how they were doing in their relationship with God. One man told me, “Oh, I talk to Jesus every day. Every day. He and I are best buds.” But then when the patient was down from acuity level three to acuity level five, the pictures the patients described of their relationships with God weren’t so rosy. When death is imminent, things become pretty real and a person realizes that all the games are going to come to a screeching halt and it’s time to have a serious appraisal of one’s situation in terms of what happens in the hereafter.

A preacher once said the best way he found to tell how a person really feels about salvation is to ask him, "If you were to die right now and you stood in front of Jesus and He asked you why He should let you into heaven, what would you say to Him?" If the person hems and haws and says that he was pretty good or tried to be good or led a good life or anything like that, he has the wrong answer and needs to really understand the truth about the gift of salvation

I visited a hospice patient about my age, who just couldn't sleep and it was a real problem. He felt that if he stayed awake he wouldn’t die, and he wasn’t ready to die. When I talked to him, I asked him the question about why he should be let into heaven and when he said he had been pretty good I resisted the urge to say “bzzzt, wrong answer!” but did tell him he was on hospice and since we didn't have time to fool around, I'd just tell him the answer.

I soon learned that he was feeling guilty because he had actually gone to prison for molesting at least one child. He had come to Jesus while in prison. I asked him if he was sorry for what he had done and he said he was. I asked him if he had turned away from doing those things and he said he was actually happy that he was disabled and sick because he couldn't do those things even if he wanted to (this led me to believe he would still have been tempted had he been healthy, but that he didn't want to sin).

I read 1 John 1:9 to him and talked to him about God’s forgiveness. He said that was very helpful and he thought he would be able to finally sleep that night. As I read to him from the Bible he dozed off and I left. I went to his room the next three days and he was asleep each time. Even though he was only at acuity level 3 (of 5), he died before my fourth visit. And I had the privilege of speaking at his funeral and I assured everyone there that he was saved. Those who knew he had been in prison had their doubts—I could see it on their faces, so I asked if anyone there were without sin and said I wasn’t and I only knew of one person who walked the earth who was.

Our Assurance of Forgiveness of Sin

1 John 1:9 is perhaps the best known verse of assurance: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

This is a hard concept to understand with human understanding—the concept of grace—the idea that as Jesus says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

Nowhere in the two verses I just read (or anywhere else in the Bible, as far as I know) does it say anything about the sinner earning eternal life by his or her being good (or righteous). (It was pointed out to me though that Jesus did say in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 that our righteousness must exceed the Pharisees' (the point being though that their righteousness came only from works and they had zero relationship with God)).

But Jesus Himself also tells the young ruler (Matt 19: 16, Mark 10:18, Luke 18:18) that there is no one who is good except God alone. In Ecclesiastes 7:20 it says, “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.” This thought is found in numerous other Bible verses, most notably in Romans 3: 10-18 which quotes from several Psalms as well as Ecclesiastes 7:20. However, in Romans 3: 21-26 we find verses which give us righteousness by what scholars call “imputation” (imputation means someone gets credit for something they did not do). As I read the passage from Romans, see how righteousness is imputed to us who do not deserve it: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the One who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

That little paragraph really packs a wallop. And it is dense with theological implications, which, mercifully, I am not going to go into because they aren’t necessary to understand for you to know you are saved. At this point I will say that the ideas of “imputed righteousness” and “justification” (rather than “sanctification”) by faith, are not settled theology and have been argued about since at least the time of the Reformation. There are two things I will say pretty definitely concerning imputation: one is that I will not accept the belief in “diffusion” of righteousness (the Roman Catholic doctrine that righteousness seeps into you gradually through the sacraments). Secondly, that we are not living under the Law, and therefore we are not trying to get by on our own righteousness, so whether righteousness is imparted to us (we become or are made righteous) or it is imputed to us (credited to us) doesn’t matter as far as our salvation.

Justification is a word that comes from a similar Greek word as righteousness. Justification means to be declared by God to be righteous and God then treats the person who is justified as though he or she were righteous. In researching for this sermon, I was surprised to learn that one view taken by theologians is that justification is similar to their view of imputation--justification does not make a person righteous! So, by our faith and through the blood of Jesus, we are declared and treated by God to be righteous, even though we are not indeed made righteous!

I actually liked this view because we are totally beholding to Jesus and even by our choosing to believe in Jesus and to accept this amazing gift of grace, we are still not made righteous! Nothing we do, not even the making a choice to accept, makes us righteous! I guess I’m pointing out the obvious here, but it just blew my mind when I realized this.

However, the opposing view is that if we are not made righteous then we are not truly righteous and that makes God a fool. Some say that we are not justified but sanctified. If that is true, it must happen slowly or after the resurrection because I don’t feel holy and I sure wouldn’t call myself holy. Certainly a giant step to go from being seen by God as being righteous to being holy. One I am not willing to take.

Let me finish this tempest in a teapot by reading Ellen White:

Righteousness is obedience to the law. The law demands righteousness, and his the sinner owes to the law; but he is incapable of rendering it. The only way in which he can attain to righteousness is through faith. By faith he can bring to God the merits of Christ, and the Lord places the obedience of His Son to the sinner's account. Christ's righteousness is accepted in place of man's failure, and God receives, pardons, justifies, and loves him as He loves His son. This is how faith is accounted righteousness. RH NOV.4,1890 (FW 101)

What do “imputation of righteousness” and “justification by faith” mean to us?

Jesus, the One Anointed by the Holy Spirit at His baptism, imputed righteousness to us, or credited us with righteousness. He died in our stead, meeting every requirement of the law. In other words, Jesus paid the price for our sin. That, however, does not mean that we can continue in sin unabashedly. That is what Paul means when he says we a free from sin and we no longer serve sin.

As Paul says in his epistle to the Romans (Ch. 6), “We died to sin…We who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death [and] were therefore buried with him…in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead…we too might live a new life. “

Paul continues, “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives for God.

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires…For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace…You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness…The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We are justified by faith, through the blood of Jesus and the proof of this is Jesus’ resurrection.

We Cannot Do It Ourselves

As I just said, we cannot attain righteousness by anything we do by ourselves (or even by banding together with others of like mind). We cannot attain salvation by works either.

Paul talks in chapter 9 of his Letter to the Romans about how through Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set us free from the law of sin and death and now that the Spirit of Christ is within you, you are not controlled by the sinful nature but by the Spirit of Christ. Your body is dead to sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you.

Paul concludes this chapter by saying, “…You will live. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you receive the Spirit of sonship…The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory.”

Summary: What Must We Do to Have Salvation?

Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John14:6); no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.
We must accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. He alone must be the Lord of our life. We must be like a sheep that hears His voice, believes His truth, accepts His gift of eternal life, and turns away from sin to follow Jesus.
Salvation is a free gift (through God’s grace) through Christ Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. We did not earn it, nor could we ever earn it. Nothing we do earns it for us, we must accept it through the blood of Christ and it comes only through the blood of Christ.
All we must do is accept His gift—accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, ask forgiveness for our sins, repent (turn away from sin and with Jesus’ help, and sin no more) and, if possible, get baptized. (Note that the thief on the cross next to Jesus accepted Jesus as Lord and was not baptized and Jesus said he would go to heaven.) Ideally, we are baptized and die to sin and rise out of the waters of baptism a new creature, born of the Spirit, indwelt with the Spirit who then changes us from the inside out. Baptized or not, we don't do good works in order to "go to heaven," but those good works come out of us naturally as an outgrowth of our faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I guess we do "try" in the sense that we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God and we obey His commandments out of love for God, but we don't "try" to be or do good in order to get to heaven. And, as Pastor Herthel reminded me, while we do not work for or earn salvation, there is certainly a work to do in the name of our salvation. There is work on our part to resist temptation, to remain consecrated, and persevere in God’s Grace. And that concept totally agrees with Righteousness by Faith.

The struggle though is not to fight against sin; the struggle is to maintain our connection to Jesus. Maintaining the connection means that Jesus will fight the sin in us. If we concentrate on our sin we have lost the battle.

On the other hand, we are not free to live as we did before we found Jesus (or He found us), or to live as the heathens; we must turn away from sin. I think some people think that if they do something sinful after they are saved and baptized that this makes Jesus' sacrifice null and void. I think that if we confess these sins, we are still under grace. I guess the only question or worry I have is that if a person continues to do the same sin day after day (for example, a hired killer who claims to be Christian), that somewhere along the way Jesus may say that the repentance is lacking. (Or, as I said, if a person continues to live in disobedience, like he did before, believing that the law has been "nailed to the cross.") Hebrews 10:26 addresses this: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left…” The footnote to this verse in the Geneva Bible says, “For it is another matter to sin through the frailty of human nature and another thing to proclaim war as it were to God as to an enemy.”
I have heard it said that being born again is a daily struggle to continue to follow Jesus (though, as I said earlier, not a struggle not to sin)—it is not having a free pass. We still have a sinful nature and must ask Jesus to be in our hearts (through the Holy Spirit) and to direct our lives. We must be Christ-like in our activities and in our thoughts. We must take up our cross and follow Jesus every day. But, the burden is light. Although works will not get us to heaven, faith without works is dead (James). And James 4:17 also says, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” Every day, we become more like Jesus. Those who love Jesus follow his commandments. Being a Christian doesn’t give us a license to disobey the law.

Paul often uses terms that indicate there is personal effort on our part to maintain a saving relationship with Jesus. Such as: running the race with endurance, pressing forward to the upward call, etc. And in Revelation there are many references to "enduring to the end" and then you'll be saved...

Conclusion:

In John 14: 1 Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in Me. In My Father’s house there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you with Me that you may also be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” When Thomas replied, “We don’t know where You are going, so how can we know the way.” Jesus responded in verse 6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” When Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus says in verse 9, “Don’t you know Me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I say to you are not just My own. Rather it is the Father, living in Me, who is doing his work….”

I want you to believe in Jesus, but not just a superficial belief that doesn’t change you and make Jesus the center of your life, for as James 2:19 says, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder.”

John, in 1 John 3:7-9, in effect, denies the idea of imputed righteousness when he wrote, "Let no one deceive you. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he [Christ] is righteous…he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

As Jesus says in Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

Jesus has knocked on the door of our hearts and it is up to us to invite him in, to establish a close friendship with Him that grows closer day by day. Not only should we know his voice, but he should know ours! We, in drawing closer to Jesus, draw closer to others within the church, as close as the members of a body, with Christ as the head. We have become the body of Jesus—we have become one with him through the Holy Spirit. When we call on Jesus, Jesus will respond because we have become part of him. We are one in the Spirit.

Our physical beings are like a veil or filter over the outpouring of pure light coming through us, through the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. Our lives are our testimony—God’s words in flesh, so to speak—God’s words written on our hearts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus prayed in John 17 that He and we would become one just as He and His Father were one. That is why we need to pray to the Holy Spirit each day for the renewing of our spirit and for the death of our carnal nature and the transformation or our minds to make them like the mind of Christ.

Talk to Jesus, Know his Voice, Act on His Word

If you have a close friend, you talk to him or her, do you not? You don’t have a friend who you last saw in the obstetrics wing of the hospital where you were both born and haven’t seen or talked to since, right? You probably wouldn’t call your best friend on your cell phone only when you need help or before you eat or go on a trip or once a week and talk for an hour and never listen for your friend to say even one word back to you, would you? How would you get to know that friend if you never heard their voice?

In John 10, Jesus says that his sheep know their shepherd’s voice. Having a relationship with Jesus implies that we know Jesus. In Matthew 7:23, Jesus says of some in the end, “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers!’” He says this even to those who prophesy in His name, in His name drive out demons, and perform many miracles!

I heard Pastor Bohr, on 3ABN, preach on this very subject of Jesus not saving all who call on his name. He found a scripture that refers to God’s will and I will quote it here. It is 1Thess. 4: 3-6 and states, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.”

So, God’s will involves more than just a passive belief in Jesus Christ. As I said before, in James 2:19 it says that demons believe in God. Passive acknowledgement of Jesus’ existence will not help us, nor can we beat sin using our own strength; that’s why we go to Jesus and ask for his help. There are people with addictions, who said they just could not beat the addiction until they turned it over to the Lord and then the desire for alcohol or cigarettes, or whatever, just melted away and lost its power over them. They were no longer struggling with it like they had been. Sometimes they would have a temptation to use the substance again, but it never had that all-consuming claim their lives that it had before. In my opinion, sexual sin can be an addiction every bit as powerful as an addiction to heroin. For one thing, you cannot go on the internet and find enticements to use heroin.

I know a preacher who was going to visit someone who was possessed by a demon, and the preacher was worried about how he was going to get rid of the demon. He worried and fretted and suddenly a statement entered his mind and his fear and anxiety was gone. The phrase was God’s name—“I Am.” He thought immediately when this came to him, this thought, as if God were speaking to him: “You are not going to get rid of this demon, I Am!” It was so simple—you do not do any of the things that God works through you, through the Holy Spirit within you to do. God does. The eternal “I Am” does the work. We do nothing without God (John 15:5) and can do anything with God. (Phil 4:13) You are not going to beat your addiction, God is.

It is one thing to have a passing acquaintance with Jesus—as in, “Yeah, I’d recognize him anywhere—I see him once a week in church—he’s the guy up on the cross when I sit in church.” Or, you can have him inside you, having eaten his flesh and having drunk his blood. You are immersed in the Word of God (Jesus Christ is the Word of God). You are connected to him as a branch of a grape vine to the trunk and root of the vine so the life force of the vine flows through you. You and the vine are one. Anything that is alien to the vine hinders the union. Jesus’ blood now flows in our veins. We are blood brothers.

We have been saved by faith to do God’s good work, with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Amen

Children’s Sermon

I’m going to give you an idea of what Jesus did for us by redeeming us from sin by giving you an example through a story that I hope will make it easy to understand. I am going to give you a crazy example so that you won’t “try it at home.”

Let’s say your dad told you not to play baseball in the house. Whether your dad told you not to play baseball in the house or not, I hope that none of you actually do play baseball inside your houses. But let’s say your dad and your mom are not at home one day and you decide that even though you were told never to play baseball in the house you don’t see why you shouldn’t do that, especially since it’s raining outside and the living room seems like a fine place to have a game, so you take your Louisville Slugger and you have a friend who is there pitch a nice easy pitch over home plate (you use a dinner plate for home plate) and you drill a line drive right to the pitcher. Unfortunately, this is not the pitcher who pitched you the ball, but the cut crystal pitcher your mom bought at the antique market that’s sitting on a doily on the piano. SMASH! The ballgame ends abruptly.

When Mom and Dad return, you ask them to forgive you—you see the consequences of your sin of playing baseball in the house, (in other words, you see that maybe Dad was right and baseball in the house isn’t a good idea because things can get broken), you are sorry and you promise never to do it again. Mom and Dad accept your apology and Dad says he will even buy Mom a new pitcher because the pitcher is so expensive that it would take all of your money from now until you were like 30 years old to pay for it.

That is what we call “grace” and it is what Jesus gives us when he dies for our sin. He didn’t do anything wrong, but he pays for what we did wrong.

But, there is one thing that is required with this redemption from sin—it is called “repentance.” Can any of you tell me what “repentance” is?

Right—repentance is turning away from sin or doing wrong. So, what is the lesson we learn from this? Tell me which one of these lessons is right:

1. After you tell Mom and Dad how sorry you are for playing baseball in the house because the result of doing that was that you broke a very expensive pitcher and made Mom and Dad sad, the next time it rains it’s okay to play baseball in the house because you said you were sorry? Once forgiven, always forgiven?

2. Dad is really mean for not letting you play baseball in the house?

3. You can play baseball in the house, but if you get caught, or if you break anything, just say you’re sorry and it’s okay?

4. Don’t play baseball in the house because Mom and Dad love you and you love them and they asked you not to?

Same with Jesus: After we ask for forgiveness and we repent and we receive grace, we ask Jesus to change us so that we don’t continue to disobey Him. We may look out the window on a rainy day and see our bat and ball and glove and think that it would be fun just to toss the ball around the kitchen or hit a grounder down the hallway, but we pray for the strength to resist that temptation.

Now, the baseball in the house simplification of redemption leaves out one important part—the part where Dad sends the Holy Spirit to help us resist the temptation to play baseball in the house!

Let’s pray:

Dear God, We know you are our loving, heavenly Father and you made rules to protect us and to help our lives be better. Even though we don’t always understand why we need to obey the rules, because we love you and trust you as our loving Father, we know that you only want good things for us. We also know that you have sent the Holy Spirit to help us. When we are tempted to break your laws and to be selfish, we know that if we pray, we will receive help and your grace. If we fail and we do bad things, we know that Jesus has already paid the bill for our sins and all we have to do is tell Him we are sorry and ask His forgiveness and turn away from doing bad things, with God’s help. If we are truly sorry, Jesus will forgive our sins and the Holy Spirit will help us to obey the commandments of God.

Thank you, Jesus, for dying for us so that we can live forever with you and your Father. This is hard for us to understand, but we know that you want only good things for us because you love us. Thank you that we don’t have to worry because you will always be with us and will always love us. Amen.

Call to Worship Righteousness by Faith 761

Hymn of Praise My Hope is Built 522

Scripture Romans 3:21-26

Sermon Salvation by Faith, Not by Works

Hymn of Response If You But Trust in God 510