Romans 2_17-23： How Religion Will Send You To Hell
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Summary
In this episode of Real Christianity, Dale continues teaching through Romans 2 and confronts legalism and the purpose of the law. In short, we re going to see that religion will send you to hell. All that and more coming up right now on Real Christianity.
Transcript
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In this episode of Real Christianity, I continue teaching through Romans chapter 2
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and confront legalism and the purpose of the law. In short, we're going to see that religion
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will send you to hell. All that and more coming up right now.
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Welcome to Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge. Today's episode is titled Romans 2,
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17 through 23, How Religion Will Send You to Hell. Now, as you know, this show is an audio
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Okay, guys, we're going to go ahead and dive in to the introduction of this message.
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Over the past several weeks prior, if you've been following along on this Roman
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study, we've learned about the universal condemnation of the law. The purpose of the
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law is not to deliver men, but to damn them. The purpose of the law was never to have people work
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their way to heaven. It was to bring about the knowledge of sin. And that is what we're learning
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here in Romans chapter two. We know that chapter three verses 20 sums up really this whole section
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from 118 all the way through chapter 2, all the way into chapter 3. In verse 20, it says,
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for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law
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comes knowledge of sin. We learned that the law of God is really the mirror that reveals the moral
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tragedy of our own lives. It means that we become aware of our Savior or a need of a Savior. The
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reason that we teach our children the Ten Commandments is because they need to know that
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they can't keep them and that they need a Savior. We saw Paul making it very clear that both Jew and
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Gentile were equally inescapable of the jurisdiction of the law. We read in James 2, verse 10, which is
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an important passage of scripture. It says, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point
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has become guilty of all of it. We have to understand that the law, and Jesus makes this
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clear when he comes into his ministry, the law is not just things to do. It actually is something
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that completely saturates. It's supposed to completely saturate our hearts, meaning that
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the law doesn't just demand physical obedience, but actually obedience from the heart.
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It's supposed to permeate. And Jesus would say things like, you heard that it was said this,
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but it actually means this at the heart level. You heard that it means this, but it actually
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means this deeper level. And so you even hear the disciples going like, wow, who can be saved then?
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and the reality is Jesus is leading people to go, nobody can be saved by the law because it's not
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just what you do. It's actually your thoughts, your private life, your internal, your thinking
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life. People might say, oh, I've never murdered someone, but you've hated someone. And Jesus
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would say that that hatred is equal to murder. And so it's a law that permeates not just the
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physical, but also the internal, the emotional and the heart level of the individual. And so
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the law of God becomes a weight that no man can carry. It becomes impossible for us to fulfill
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and to keep. And because of our sinful nature that's given to us from Adam, we are from birth
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inclined to break the law, to hate God. We have a sin nature. We're not sinners because we sin,
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we sin because we're sinners. That's a famous R.C. Sproul quote that really talks about, no,
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we sin because we're born sinners and we're born of Adam and we have this degenerate dead spirit
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that hates God and cannot keep the law. It's when we understand with biblical and theological
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sobriety, how helpless we are outside of Christ to keep the law, we begin to understand God's grace.
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So it's essential that we have a perspective, a right perspective of the law so that we can
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really understand what we've been saved from because the law demands justice and wrath against
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our sin. And when we realize that we've been saved by Christ from that wrath, we can appreciate
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our Savior all the more. But when we don't have an understanding of the law, we really miss
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the beauty of grace. And so, you know, a lot of us, we don't realize that we were like men and
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women walking, you know, across eggshells. One crack would lead to the flames, you know,
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one stopping of the heartbeat, you know, one car accident. And this is how we need to have
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the perspective for the lost, that we need to preach the gospel to the lost, because there is
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a compelling and imploring for them to believe. They don't realize how close they are to standing
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before God. We have this perspective that it's going to be decades from now, or many years
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before we're actually going to see death. We'll have this time before we die to get right with
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the Lord. That's what many people in the world think. There's a book written by, I believe,
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Erwin Lutzer, who penned a book called, what is it, One Minute Before You Die, or One Minute After
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You Die. And it really shows that the process of dying and becoming, you know, being in an eternal
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world out of the physical and into the eternal happens almost instantaneously. The Greek word
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for death is thanatos. And the word that describes the science or the individual that's involved in
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studying death is a thanatologist. They study the scientific elements of actually the process and
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the act of dying. And one thanatologist cited that the act of death, the separation of the soul
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from the body occurs in less than a second. And all of us are that close to standing before God.
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We don't realize that we are very fragile. And so it's important that we compel individuals to get
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right with the Lord. This reality of how close we are to God and how close we are to the judgment
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for those that are outside of Christ haunted Charles Spurgeon. He once said,
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if sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish,
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let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be
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filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions and let no one go unwarned and unprayed
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for. So there's an element that we need to be out there preaching the law of God, preaching the grace
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of Christ in the gospel. So in today's text, Paul shifts from his focus to demonstrate the
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universal judgment and condemnation of the law to really stripping the Jews of their privileged
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perspective. They have put their hope and faith in law following and their ethnic heritage rather
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than in the grace and person of Jesus Christ. And so they had these perceived advantages over
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the Gentiles. And Paul is now in this passage of scripture, stripping out the religion and
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leaving them naked so that their only hope is to turn to Jesus Christ. And so he wants to remove
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every possible lie and deception and prideful thought that moral works have somehow reserved
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And this is something that is absolutely prevalent
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is contributing to our righteous standing before God.
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but none of those things actually justify us before the Father in regards to the law. So
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Paul is exposing the Jews and divesting them of their pride so that he can present the only hope
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in Jesus Christ. So we're going to read Romans 2, 17 through 24. We're going to go a little
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bit further. So it says, but if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and
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know his will and approve what is excellent because you are instructed from the law and if
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you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind a light to those who are in darkness an
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instructor of the foolish a teacher of children having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and
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truth you then who teach others do you not teach yourself while you preach against stealing do you
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steal you who say that one must not commit adultery do you commit adultery you who abhor
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idols? Do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For as it
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has been written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. So this is
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Paul speaking to his people, to the Jews. As a Jew, Paul knows the posture of his people. He
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understands the culture of the Jews. He knows their pride. So he actually, when you look at
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what's going on here. He's actually flattering the Jews by pointing out four common characteristics
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of the Jews. They viewed themselves as, number one, people who rely on the law. Number two,
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people who boast in God. Number three, people who know his will. And number four, people who
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approve what is excellent. That's basically verses 17 through 18, which we went through.
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And they do all this because they're instructed by the law.
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So those are the elements that they have relied on salvation because of those things.
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He's a smart, sharp, incredible man of argumentation.
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And he's complimenting this unconverted reader who's Jewish in Rome
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with the intention of getting them to listen, to nod their head, right? He wants them to agree,
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yeah, I'm one who relies on the law and boasts in God and knows his will and approves what is
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excellent because I've been instructed by the law. He wants them to say, yes, that's me. Yes,
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that's me. Yes, that's me. And as we're going to see in a few moments here, he's going to use
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their own words to expose the contradictions in their own life. And so this is a classic tactic
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of debate, to have your opponent agree to what you're saying, and then point out the inconsistency
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between what they say and what they do. Ultimately, this is a tactic of revealing hypocrisy. And
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that's really what this passage is about. It's Paul really pointing out the hypocrisy of the
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Jews. So in the last sermon or the last episode, I noted that early Christian historians recorded
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a common phrase among the Jews to Christians preaching the gospel. They often would say,
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I don't need your gospel because we have our law, or we have our law, we don't need your gospel.
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So they were so heavily dependent upon the law of God.
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And we have to remember that the Jews really found redemptive hope in three things as a
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Number one, that they were children of Abraham.
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Number two, they had God's law and the rest of the world didn't.
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And number three, they were circumcised where they had the mark of the old covenant.
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So they had a lot of redemptive hope in those things.
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It's why you see in scripture of saying, you know, you don't have to be born not of blood.
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In John chapter one, verses, I believe it's 10 through 12, he talks about you need to
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be born not of blood, not of the blood of Abraham.
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We hear also the idea of, I can raise up children of Abraham from these stones.
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There's, again, this kind of onward trend throughout the New Testament of the Jews really finding hope in who they were as an ethnic individual country or nation rather than finding their identity in Christ the Messiah.
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And so they rested in these external conditions, but didn't understand the need for an internal
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They didn't see what the prophets and Ezekiel talked about.
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They didn't see what the prophets Isaiah and Daniel were talking about.
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So later in this chapter in Romans 2.29, Paul even says, but a Jew, meaning a true Jew,
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is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart.
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by the Spirit, not by the letter, the letter of the law. His praise is not from man, but from God.
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So again, he's just diminishing these elements of redemptive hope that are not in Christ. And so in
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verse 17, Paul begins to really attack this idea. He wants to demonstrate specifically that clinging
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to the law without being able to fulfill the law's demands is absolutely foolish. To rely on the law,
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to boast in God, to know his will, and to approve what is excellent is actually not sufficient for
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salvation. That's what Paul is getting across. He's saying, hey, great, you rely on the law.
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Great, you boast in God. Great, you know his will. Great, you approve what is excellent.
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You're not saved. Because unless you turn to Christ, you cannot fulfill that law.
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You are under God's wrath for your failure to maintain justice or to keep that law perfectly
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at the physical level, externally, but also at the heart level internally. Romans 2.13 says,
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for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers
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of the law that will be justified. You cannot do the law perfectly. And if you're going to
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be justified, you need to do it perfectly. And that is an impossibility for anyone to keep.
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And so this is, again, he's really clarifying, hey, you want to try to keep the law, you got
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to keep it perfectly, but you can't keep it perfectly. Therefore, you need to turn to Christ
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who did keep it perfectly, and he will impute his righteousness to you by faith. That's the gospel.
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Again, Paul is attempting to highlight the inconsistencies between what they do
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and what they say and what the law demands of all mankind. And so in the next verse,
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we see Paul shift from really talking about what they do as Jews to who they think they are
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because of the law. So Paul moves from action to identity. And again, he's still kind of stroking
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their ego here because he's about to hold up a mirror to their face and show them their wretchedness
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before the law, but he doesn't get there quite yet. So verse 19 and 20 says, and if you're sure
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that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor
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of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth.
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You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? And that's the kind of introduction
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to that mirror going up before them. So if light could be a weapon, Paul basically is taking this
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giant light, this flashlight, and shining it right at their weakness, essentially saying,
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you who tell everyone else to follow the law can't even follow it yourself.
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The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat,
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so to practice and observe whatever they tell you,
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and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with
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their finger. Galatians 6.13 says, for those who are circumcised do not even keep the law themselves,
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but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. It's just all
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throughout Galatians, all throughout Jesus's ministry, you cannot keep the law. You must turn
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to Christ. Again, Paul's aim is to highlight the inconsistencies and remove any false sense
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of comfort that the Jews might have in their relationship with the law. And this is you too.
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Pay attention. If you have any comfort in your obedience to maintain your justification,
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this passage is speaking to you. There is no obedience in your life that maintains your
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salvation. Yes, obedience pleases God. Yes, it's a fruit of the Spirit. Those who are truly saved
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will obey. But your obedience, if you're disobedient, it's not going to send you to hell.
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If you disobey and disobey and disobey and disobey, it's not going to change your status
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as a child of God. And we know that because it's not your obedience that keeps you saved,
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but the perfect obedience of Christ. So often, we forget these basic truths. This week, I actually
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tweeted on, I put on Twitter, I put, quote, Christian, your obedience pleases God, but it
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does not make you more saved, secure, or loved. So even today, again, Christians cling to law
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following for salvation. It's not the gospel. They think if they maintain their obedience,
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they're going to somehow maintain their salvation. It's bad thinking. It's thinking that you can
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contribute to your justified status. And their problem, again, is the same as the Jews. They
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overestimate their good works and they underestimate the power of the law. No man but Christ can keep
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the law. Your good works do not contribute to your salvation. This is Paul's objective. I'm
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going to say it over and over and over so that you guys understand this. We need to basically
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strip out the self-confidence of our culture and go, no, there's nothing good in me. I by myself
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without Christ is absolutely worth nothing except hell. But that's why I need Christ. And that's why
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I cling to the cross because he is the only hope that I have. And he closes this passage, verses
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20 through 24. He says, while you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must
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not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast
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in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For as it is written, the name of God is blasphemed
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among the Gentiles because of you. So this is Paul, again, pulling out that mirror. He's putting
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it in front of the Jews' face. He's showing them the ugliness of their souls, their inability to
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keep the law of God. But while Paul is speaking to the Jews, he's really giving a lesson to all
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of us. And the lesson is just because a person relies on the law, even loves the 10 commandments,
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boasts in God, knows his will, approves what is excellent, is a guide to the blind, a light to a
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dark world, an instructor to the foolish, and a teacher to children does not mean they're saved.
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okay that's just religion and religion will send you to hell because if you rely on your own works
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you will not stand before god and please him he will absolutely pour out his wrath upon you
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as a sinner and so the same is true for a person who goes to church and reads their bible and
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leads a small group and raises their hand in worship and serves in the youth ministry if
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they have not been born again and the imputed righteousness of Christ has been given to them,
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they've not repented and turned away from themselves and relied on Christ alone, they're
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going to hell. That's absolutely certain in what the scriptures teach. None of those things will
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make you saved. And so under our outward work and identity, we're all thieves. We're all lawbreakers.
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We're all adulterers at heart. We're all sinners and blasphemers that deserve death.
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We need to see an accurate depiction of man so that we can look at Christ because basically
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we see God and his righteousness and his holiness. And then we see man who is so much lower and we
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cannot approach God. We are outside of God because we cannot be in God's presence because of our sin.
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we need a savior to essentially become the bridge between us and the father. And this is why Jesus
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said in Matthew 23, 27 through 28, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are
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like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's
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bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are
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full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. So God hates the pride of a person that is blind to their own
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sin or blind to the degree of their own ugliness. Charles Spurgeon once said,
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if any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him for you are worse than he thinks you to be.
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If you think that you're good or someone calls you a name and tells you you're a terrible thing,
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just go, you know what? To be honest, I'm way worse. I'm way worse than that. I saw a meme
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on social media. Someone put out a thing that said, someone calls you a bad name and someone's
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laughing and say, I sing hymns. They call me worse things than that. And the reality is true. We need
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to realize how depraved we really are. Self-love is blinding and we really like to think of ourselves
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much more highly than we are. And so the takeaway is that out of repentance and faith in Christ,
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or outside of repentance and faith in Christ, we're doomed. We're just absolutely doomed.
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Our good works do not make us good. Moralistic religiosity is empty and will lead you to hell.
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Religious activity does not equal spiritual security. That's essentially what this is
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teaching in this passage of scripture. And so this is tragic news for the Orthodox Jew or for the
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Muslim or for the nun and the priest or for the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness or for the
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preacher at Church of Christ, which I believe is absolutely a legalistic movement. If Paul
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can strip the spiritual assurance for those on earth who at that time appeared to be the most
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spiritually mature, the most devout, the most divine, the most religious. What does this mean
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for any of us who think that following religion is actually going to save us? It means that we're
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done. We're doomed. You must, must turn to the righteousness of Christ. And it means really the
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same for all of us, right? God demands perfect obedience, and we can't offer that to enter his
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kingdom, we need that perfect obedience. There's no Jew or Gentile or man or woman or monk or
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priest who can meet the demands of the law. All of us are in this desperate need for forgiveness
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against, forgiveness of our sins against God and the imputed record of righteousness from Christ
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to us in order for that justice to be fulfilled. So one thing that I want to close with is we often
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in the Western church believe that, I'll say this, we talk about the death of Christ. Christ
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died for us, but we fail to realize that Christ also lived for us. So yes, Christ died for your
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sins. Somebody had to die for your sin and Christ died for your sins. But we also need to realize
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that Christ lived for us. He lived a perfect life, completing the demand of the law so that he can
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impute his righteousness to you. So Christ didn't just die for you, he also lived for you. So
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hopefully that episode was helpful and edifying for you guys to understand the demands of the law,
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where religion ends, and how we must completely rely on the righteousness of Christ. If you're
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a regular listener to this podcast, thank you guys for just being faithful. We love that you
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guys are here. Would you guys consider leaving a review wherever you're listening to? You don't
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even need to write something. You could just tap the stars, maybe even leave a comment below if
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you're watching the video. We love that you guys are consistent in watching what we're doing here
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at Real Christianity. On that note, next week, we're going to continue our journey through
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Romans. Thanks for listening to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge,