Dale Partridge - Does God Require Obedience To Be Justified？ - Dale Partridge

00:00:00.000 In this episode of Real Christianity, I discuss the difference between obedience and legalism.

00:00:04.860 This is an essential distinction for every Christian. In fact, without it, you're often 0.94

00:00:09.160 going to mix up these two and make the gospel confusing. So get ready, all that and more coming

00:00:13.460 up right now. 0.97

00:00:30.000 Welcome to Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge. Now, as you know, this show is an

00:00:36.580 audio and video ministry of relearn.org, where our mission is to bring the church back to the

00:00:42.460 Bible. Question for you. Have you picked up a copy of my new bestselling children's book,

00:00:47.900 Jesus and My Gender? We've sold almost 5,000 copies in the past 90 days, and this book does

00:00:52.860 not introduce unbiblical gender identities to your kids. No, it simply affirms your child's

00:00:58.020 God-given gender. You can buy a copy at Amazon or from our store at relearn.org

00:01:02.800 forward slash gender. Let's go ahead and get started. We are still in Romans, which is an

00:01:09.100 incredible book. And for the past several months, we've had the privilege to hear Paul's Holy Spirit

00:01:13.920 inspired presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now in chapter one, Paul says that the

00:01:20.400 gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes equally with the Jews and

00:01:26.000 the Gentiles. Then he goes on to really defend that claim in this multi-chapter coordinated

00:01:32.120 argument from Romans chapter 1, 18, all the way to chapter 3, verse 20. In those three chapters,

00:01:40.700 we learned a handful of things. I'm just going to do a little bit of a review and then we'll move

00:01:43.640 on. So we learned the impartiality of God's wrath towards sinners. We learned the universal

00:01:47.820 jurisdiction of the moral law over all people, Jew and Gentile. We learned that none are righteous, 1.00

00:01:52.840 not even one. And we learned that just because the Jews were the seed of Abraham, that they had 1.00

00:01:58.420 the possession of the moral law and that they were marked with circumcision did not necessarily mean

00:02:05.100 that those things brought about justification or salvation as a result. So we learned that

00:02:10.220 every person's central need is to be found righteous and to have their sin taken away,

00:02:15.280 to be justified or to be guiltless before their maker. And the great dilemma is that no person

00:02:20.900 can justify themselves through obedience to the law because we can't keep the law. And even if we

00:02:27.720 fail in keeping the law at one point, we're guilty of all of it. James 2.10 says, for whoever keeps

00:02:33.120 the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it, end quote. In other words,

00:02:39.340 because we've all sinned, both in our original sin and our acts of sin, obedience will never be

00:02:44.860 enough to make an unrighteous person righteous. And this is why Paul says that by works of the

00:02:49.600 law, no human being will be justified. And so these words left both the Jews and the Gentiles 0.56

00:02:54.360 with an inward sense of hopelessness. And Paul was essentially cutting off every possible way

00:03:00.020 that a person might attempt to justify themselves before God. And so Paul did this so that he could

00:03:05.820 stop people from looking to themselves for salvation and looking up to Christ for salvation,

00:03:12.100 which leads to the climactic portion of the chapter in chapter three, which is the end of

00:03:16.300 the chapter in verse 28, which says, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works

00:03:22.340 of the law. So because justification was not by works of the law, but by the workless means of

00:03:27.680 faith, Paul closes chapter three by demonstrating how the gospel essentially eliminates all boasting.

00:03:33.520 And so because of faith and faith is the means by which God has saved man and faith is not a work,

00:03:41.020 but it's actually a gift of God. Man cannot boast in his salvation. And so this is the immediate

00:03:46.340 context for our passage right now. And I'm going to go ahead and read here in a minute our passage,

00:03:50.380 but we have to realize that Paul is a master of argumentation. And several times throughout the

00:03:55.200 letter, you're going to see him anticipate a response from his readers, and he's going to

00:04:00.400 provide a rebuttal to his somewhat provocative claims. And so the claim we're going to be dealing

00:04:08.120 with today is that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone and boasting is excluded before God.

00:04:15.200 So to us, it might seem unnecessary to see what Paul is doing, but to a Pharisaical culture of 0.78

00:04:20.740 the Jews, justification apart from works is like a knife to the jugular. That's like the whole 0.99

00:04:25.100 Jewish culture is about justifying yourself by works. And so this is something pretty profound 1.00

00:04:32.800 to say that the gospel essentially eliminates

00:04:35.100 all of their grounds for self-justification

00:04:37.840 or self-praise or self-aggrandizement. 0.89

00:04:41.540 It's really an attack on the Jewish way of legalism. 1.00

00:04:45.360 And so this is exactly what Paul is expecting from the Jews. 0.97

00:04:49.560 And his expectation is that someone might use Abraham. 0.99

00:04:53.460 We're gonna see this.

00:04:54.240 He might use Abraham, the father of their nation,

00:04:57.140 the friend of God, as an example of a man

00:04:59.460 who justified himself before God

00:05:01.560 through the obedience to circumcision. And so to a Jew, if anyone could claim 0.97

00:05:06.000 that they were justified by works, it was Abraham. And here in chapter four, verses one through eight, 0.76

00:05:13.360 Paul demonstrates how even Abraham is justified by the workless gift of faith. And as a result,

00:05:19.640 even the venerated patriarch of the Jews was not an exception to the way of justification before God

00:05:25.220 under the dispensation of the gospel. So to grasp the concept, I'm going to read

00:05:29.640 Romans chapter 3, 26 through chapter 4, verse 3. So it's a decent chunk of scripture. You just

00:05:36.700 follow along with me for a second. It says, it was to show his righteousness at the present time

00:05:41.920 so that he might be the just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what comes

00:05:46.940 of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.

00:05:52.320 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of the

00:05:57.600 Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will 0.61

00:06:04.240 justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow 0.99

00:06:08.720 the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. What then shall

00:06:13.400 we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was

00:06:17.420 justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the 0.84

00:06:22.000 scripture say, Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. All right. So let's go

00:06:27.700 ahead and work through chapter four, verses one through three, verse by verse here. In verse one,

00:06:33.900 it says, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh.

00:06:38.320 So at this point, Paul is speaking to the Jews in the Jewish paradigm. What I mean by that is that

00:06:44.240 Paul understands that Abraham is the father of everyone who has faith. But as a hypothetical

00:06:50.740 question coming from a Jewish paradigm, the Jews really essentially view themselves as the only

00:06:55.460 legitimate children of Abraham. And so when it asks this question, what was gained according to

00:07:01.540 the flesh? It's speaking to Abraham's circumcision. That's what, what was gained according to the

00:07:05.480 flesh? Well, the flesh is talking about his work of circumcision. So to the Jews, they viewed 0.77

00:07:11.100 circumcision as an act of justification and making themselves right before God, or at the very least

00:07:16.140 as the means which to procure salvific blessings. 0.98

00:07:20.980 And so the question that Paul is anticipating from the Jew 0.87

00:07:24.080 is really, of what use was the obedience of circumcision 0.79

00:07:28.740 if it doesn't give a man the right to salvation?

00:07:32.620 And possibly another way of thinking about these questions is,

00:07:36.660 does Abraham's obedience mean nothing to God?

00:07:39.400 Can he not confidently stand before God

00:07:41.580 because of his faithfulness to circumcision

00:07:43.980 and to the law or to, you know, being the father of the faith? And this is an important question,

00:07:51.500 even for us, because if baptism or the Lord's table or obedience or God's word does not secure

00:07:59.020 salvation, then what value do they have? I mean, that's a valid question for us to ask. If these

00:08:03.900 things don't procure salvation, are they really even valuable to us? And that's really the Jewish 1.00

00:08:08.120 paradigm that's been asking, well, if justification is by faith alone, then what value do these

00:08:12.860 sacramental things, you know, Passover or keeping the Sabbath or having the law or being marked by

00:08:19.880 certain, do these things have any value? And so first we have to understand that obedience

00:08:23.600 is always good for us. We are always the beneficiaries of obedience to God. God is

00:08:29.680 not the beneficiary to obedience. We're the beneficiary to obedience. And so second, we have

00:08:34.680 to understand that God extends to us a certain degree of grace through the sacraments of baptism

00:08:42.240 and the Lord's Supper in the same way that he extended a certain degree of grace in circumcision

00:08:47.260 and the Lord's in Passover. These become essentially physical practices of spiritual

00:08:52.680 realities that teach us important truths about the promises of God. And so for the Jews, it was

00:09:01.740 pointing forward to the cross. And for the Christian, it's pointing back, baptism in the 0.88

00:09:06.920 Lord's Supper is pointing back to the things that were fulfilled on the cross by Christ. And so these

00:09:11.760 things are important. So while our obedience to these things doesn't produce salvation, it does

00:09:19.700 absolutely have a benefit. There's a value in this, in pleasing God and reaping the benefits

00:09:26.680 of obedience, of learning spiritual truths, of being reminded by these physical practices that

00:09:31.200 they're a value to us. And so 2 Corinthians 5.9 says, so whether we are at home or away,

00:09:37.060 we make it our aim to please him. So there's a distinguishing matter that we have to talk about

00:09:41.700 for a second. Our job as Christians, as people that are saved by grace, isn't to obey the law

00:09:48.100 or to be obedient to whatever passage of scripture simply because those things bring about

00:09:52.480 justification. That's our salvation is not resting upon our own righteousness. No, we obey because we

00:09:59.360 want to please God. And that's a beautiful thing. That means that our motive for obedience at that

00:10:04.280 point is love instead of fear or duty. And so we do want to obey, but it's to please the Lord.

00:10:11.360 It's not to actually secure ourselves and our salvation and our justification before God. 0.88

00:10:16.160 So ultimately, Paul is preparing in this passage to address the Jews' poor covenant theology. 0.92

00:10:22.740 They need to distinguish the difference between the sacramental practices and the way that we're justified. 0.69

00:10:30.420 Paul actually dealt with this a little bit in chapter 3, verses 1.

00:10:33.560 It says, then what advantage has the Jew or what value is of circumcision? 0.85

00:10:38.100 Again, he was already doing the same thing he's doing here. 0.91

00:10:40.220 anticipating those responses to the idea that you're saved by faith alone. And so Paul is

00:10:45.420 trying to disconnect this outward administrations of the covenant, circumcision, Passover,

00:10:54.000 these elements from the inward administrations of justification by faith. He doesn't want to

00:11:00.660 have the Jews just throw out that these things are just absolutely like they were meaningless.

00:11:07.540 No, they weren't meaningless.

00:11:09.360 They had a purpose under the old covenant.

00:11:11.640 Just the same way we don't throw out baptism in the Lord's Supper.

00:11:14.000 No, these things have value for us.

00:11:16.440 And so we don't throw them out, but they aren't the things that save you,

00:11:19.560 which is an important distinction because there's a lot of people in Christianity

00:11:23.380 that think that their baptism or their church membership

00:11:26.400 or that they do communion keeps them saved.

00:11:29.240 It doesn't.

00:11:29.740 It has nothing to do that.

00:11:31.400 Salvation is by faith alone.

00:11:34.360 And so he just wants them to see

00:11:35.660 that these were physical signs and seals

00:11:37.260 that prepared them for and pointed them to Christ.

00:11:40.440 They weren't the thing that actually secured salvation.

00:11:44.540 Only faith can do that.

00:11:46.140 And so in the next verse,

00:11:47.320 he defends his claim further in 4.2.

00:11:49.940 He says, for if Abraham was justified by works,

00:11:52.260 he has something to boast about, but not before God.

00:11:54.900 So again, the works that Paul is speaking to primarily here

00:11:58.740 is the work of circumcision,

00:12:00.460 but also the outward works of the covenant,

00:12:02.500 and obedience to the law, et cetera, could be included here. And Paul is clarifying that even

00:12:06.260 Abraham, the man known for his obedience to God, was not justified by his works, but justified by

00:12:13.140 his faith. Now, it's difficult to convey the degree of veneration that the Jews had regarding

00:12:20.400 Abraham. The Mishnah, which is a collection of rabbinical writings on the law, I found some

00:12:27.200 quotes that said, quote, we find that Abraham, our forefather, had performed the whole law

00:12:33.760 before it was given. For it is written because that Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge,

00:12:40.080 my commandments, my statutes, and my laws, end quote. So there's this view of Abraham that was

00:12:45.800 almost messianic in terms of fulfilling the entire law, which Paul is declaring that that is false.

00:12:52.540 The earlier book of Jubilees says, quote,

00:12:56.380 for Abraham was perfect in all his deeds with the Lord

00:13:00.020 and well-pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life.

00:13:03.360 Again, this is a false way of viewing this.

00:13:06.240 The only thing that I can think about 0.99

00:13:08.240 to compare the Jews' false view of Abraham 0.88

00:13:12.560 is to compare it to the Catholics' false view of Mary. 0.79

00:13:18.120 This is a highly inflated, unbiblical, and untruthful view of Abraham.

00:13:26.960 And so the perception of Abraham was so inflated that Paul had to bring some painful clarification.

00:13:32.500 And so first, Paul needed to remove the perception that the Jews had of Abraham.

00:13:37.940 And second, he needed to teach them that there's a right relationship between faith and works.

00:13:43.660 Sproul, R.C. Sproul, who's one of my favorite theologians, said,

00:13:46.400 quote, salvation is by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone. Namely, saving faith

00:13:51.880 will always be accompanied by good works. That's a reality. Saved people obey. Those good works

00:14:00.540 are not the means of your justification. They are the means to please God. And you may have heard

00:14:05.680 the other famous saying, good works are the fruit of salvation, but they are not the root of

00:14:09.680 salvation. We know that the fruit of salvation is good works because it's coming from the motive

00:14:14.060 of a saved heart and a desire to please God and a desire to save yourself. But the root of

00:14:19.080 salvation is the perfect obedience of Christ who kept the law and fulfilled the righteous demands

00:14:22.700 of the law on your behalf. And his righteousness was imputed to you by faith. So essentially,

00:14:28.060 Paul is demonstrating the great equalizing power of justification by faith alone. He's continuing

00:14:34.560 to prove his point regarding the exclusion of boasting by showing that even the greatest man 0.55

00:14:41.000 known to the Jews, had no grounds for boasting because he was not justified by his obedience to

00:14:46.820 circumcision or obedience to the law. He was justified by his faith in his belief of God's

00:14:53.000 promise. And so as it pertains to being found right before God, Abraham and the thief on the 0.50

00:14:59.040 cross, they're the same. Peter and the Philippian jailer, they're the same. The former slave trader,

00:15:05.920 John Newton, who wrote the song Amazing Grace, and the theologian Jonathan Edwards, they're the same.

00:15:11.000 The murdering cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer,

00:15:13.680 who came to Christ and John MacArthur, 0.55

00:15:16.240 they're the same before the Lord

00:15:18.500 in the way that we are justified.

00:15:19.740 We're not justified by our works,

00:15:21.080 we're justified by our faith in Jesus,

00:15:23.900 which is a gift of God by the grace of God

00:15:26.220 to the glory of God.

00:15:27.540 William Newell writes, quote,

00:15:30.380 to discover that the greatest saints

00:15:32.560 have no better standing than the weakest saints

00:15:36.140 is a lesson that is difficult for all of us. 1.00

00:15:39.320 So now for the Jew to find 0.89

00:15:40.640 that the great Abraham has nothing in the flesh, 0.79

00:15:43.540 but must be justified by simple faith. 0.94

00:15:47.220 Like any other sinner is a great shock," end quote.

00:15:50.780 So ultimately, Abraham's salvation 0.96

00:15:53.460 was never built upon his circumcision

00:15:55.540 or his obedience or his good works,

00:15:58.680 but on the gift of faith given to him by God.

00:16:02.620 So Paul goes on to prove this in verse three.

00:16:06.180 He says, for what does the scripture say?

00:16:09.820 Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

00:16:14.120 So first, let's just take note that Paul appeals to scripture here,

00:16:18.780 which indirectly affirms that Paul trusts the infallibility of the Old Testament.

00:16:24.140 And in particular, he's talking about the book of Genesis,

00:16:27.940 which is vital because the book of Genesis

00:16:30.760 essentially sets the stage for the entire Bible.

00:16:33.900 So just that's a little sidetrack.

00:16:35.780 But second, Paul is referring to Genesis 15, 6,

00:16:39.100 which says, quote, and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness, end quote.

00:16:46.060 So it's easy to minimize the degree of faith that we see in Abraham if we forget the context of the

00:16:50.400 promise that was made to Abraham and the reality of Abraham's life at the time. And so this is

00:16:54.900 important because it demonstrates a magnitude of faith that is supernatural and significant.

00:17:00.380 Genesis 15, Abraham believed from a vision that God was going to make his descendants as numerous

00:17:07.180 as the stars. Now, this promise was made to a man who had no child and was married to a woman 0.86

00:17:14.500 who was way beyond the years of procreation. In other words, Abraham believed in the impossible. 0.75

00:17:22.260 I mean, this is a miracle that is going to occur here in Abraham's life because God gave him the

00:17:28.020 gift of supernatural faith. In Romans 4, 16 through 22, which we'll get to in a few episodes,

00:17:35.380 Paul illustrates the degree of this faith and affirms us that our faith as Abraham's children

00:17:43.080 will be like his faith, which is important because he is the father of the faith and our faith will

00:17:49.400 be like his faith. And we all have the same faith because our faith is given to us as a gift of God.

00:17:55.700 And I'll read this passage for you. Again, it's chapter 4, 16 through 22. It says,

00:17:59.700 this is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all

00:18:06.280 his offspring, not only to the adherent of the law, but also to the ones who share the faith

00:18:12.920 of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you the father of many

00:18:19.320 nations in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls

00:18:25.000 into existence the things that do not exist. In hope, he believed against hope that he should

00:18:30.800 become the father of many nations. As he had been told, quote, so shall your offspring be.

00:18:37.440 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was

00:18:43.340 about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No, unbelief

00:18:49.780 made him waver concerning the promises of God,

00:18:52.740 but he grew strong in his faith

00:18:54.520 as he gave glory to God,

00:18:56.200 fully convinced that God was able to do

00:18:58.880 what he had promised.

00:19:00.480 This is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness,

00:19:03.560 but the words it was counted to him

00:19:05.860 were not written for his sake alone,

00:19:07.660 but also for ours.

00:19:09.600 It'll be counted to us who believe in him

00:19:11.420 who was raised from the dead, Jesus, our Lord,

00:19:14.120 who was delivered up for our trespasses

00:19:16.460 and raised for our justification.

00:19:18.720 Man, what a powerful passage of scripture.

00:19:20.660 We are going to demolish that thing.

00:19:23.140 We're going to eat it all up once we get there later in Romans chapter four.

00:19:26.800 Ultimately, Paul is reaffirming that it's not just,

00:19:30.780 or it's not man's work that brings about justification.

00:19:34.160 But again, the workless means of faith.

00:19:36.920 Now, to be clear, faith itself is not what makes anyone righteous.

00:19:41.500 It's simply the means or the vehicle or the channel

00:19:44.580 by which the righteousness is delivered to us.

00:19:47.860 The thing that makes us saved is the righteousness of Christ.

00:19:53.040 So we get that delivered through faith.

00:19:55.540 And when the channel remains by God's grace,

00:19:58.740 because it's God's power, it's a gift.

00:20:01.260 Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith.

00:20:03.900 He who began a good work and you will finish it.

00:20:06.180 When that channel of faith remains by God's power,

00:20:09.760 the righteousness will remain by God's power.

00:20:12.720 This is part of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints

00:20:15.280 that once saved, always saved.

00:20:16.500 If you're truly saved, you won't lose your salvation because the faith that actually makes your salvation possible, the channel that receives the righteousness of Christ is not going to go away because the faith is a gift of God that's being sustained by God and kept on your behalf.

00:20:33.280 And we see this plainly in the sinfulness of Abraham.

00:20:36.640 If you've read the book of Genesis,

00:20:38.660 you understand the poor decisions he's made

00:20:40.520 regarding his wife,

00:20:41.860 the sinful decisions that he made 0.61

00:20:43.420 with his relations with Hagar,

00:20:46.000 Hagar, Hagar,

00:20:47.160 and the many sinful acts that he did in his life

00:20:51.740 that didn't dismantle his salvation.

00:20:55.060 And so again, it wasn't resting upon his obedience.

00:20:57.380 It was resting upon his faith.

00:21:00.120 And so like us,

00:21:00.940 his righteousness was secured by the just and the justifier of the one who has faith. And for us,

00:21:08.160 it's faith in Christ. For him, it was faith in the promise of God. Essentially, the Old Testament

00:21:13.200 and the New Testament were both saved by faith. Just the content of our faith is slightly

00:21:17.940 different. The faith is the promises that God made regarding the Messiah. And for us, it's in

00:21:24.460 the righteousness and trust of Jesus Christ himself. And so again, all this points back to

00:21:28.820 the mega theme of Romans, that justification is by faith alone in Christ alone. And for that reason,

00:21:35.240 no man, including Abraham or you or me, can boast. So hopefully that's helpful and edifying for your

00:21:41.920 walk with the Lord, giving you a better understanding of the gospel so that you have

00:21:46.080 greater biblical and theological literacy. We need that in the church. If you're a regular listener

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00:22:09.480 On that note, thank you for listening

00:22:10.980 to this episode of Real Christianity.

00:22:12.300 My name is Dale Partridge.

00:22:13.280 I'll see you next time.

Dale Partridge - February 02, 2023

Does God Require Obedience To Be Justified？ - Dale Partridge

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