who has already been born into the family of God certainly ought to be to become very familiar with the book of Romans lots of helpful books have been written about it whatever method you use for study the main thing is go over it and over it and over it and let it filter through your soul I read that one man said that he never, when he was going to write on a book, he never touched pen to paper until he had read that book through at least a hundred times. Now, if a man who is capable of writing a commentary on a book in the Bible feels it necessary to read it through a hundred times before he starts to write on it, I'm sure that we'll do well if we really want to learn what's in it. If we read it through and through and through and through, The first part of the book of Romans isn't very nice. We don't appreciate it. I used to say it was an untouched photograph. Until a doctor friend of mine one time says, why do you call it an untouched photograph? Why don't you just call it an x-ray? Because it's the picture of the inside of it, and nobody ever retouches an x-ray. Well, I said, that's a good idea. I'll quit calling it an untouched photograph, and I'll call it an x-ray. And it is an x-ray. It's God's X-rays, what God sees when he looks on the inside of you. Brother, it isn't good. But it's true anyway. The first three chapters tell us exactly what we're like on the inside. Why we need the gospel. Maybe that's why more people don't read the book of Romans. They can't get through those first three chapters comfortably anyway. But when it comes to the third chapter, after he has pronounced no difference, between these various kinds of sinners, the down and outer and the up and outer and the religious one. Then he says, after he's proven that they're all sinners, he says in verse twenty-four, being justified freely by his grace. I don't make any apology at all for the necessity for learning a vocabulary to go with the Bible. I think we can oversimplify these things, and I'm not going to attempt to explain the Word of God without the use of the theological terms that are used in the Bible. You've got to learn a new language if you want to learn electricity. You've got to learn some things about electricity. got to learn about ohms and watts and volts, whatever else there is, that's all I know about electricity. And then if you're going to learn about automobiles, you've got to learn the difference between valves and cams and whatever else there is there. If you're going to learn about music, you've got to know the difference between sharks and flats. You've got to learn a vocabulary for anything. If it's worth learning, it's certainly worth learning a few words. And here's a word that you have to learn. Justification. Now, justification does not mean what that silly story says about some little boy or girl or whoever it was who said, oh, I see. Justification means we are just as if we never sinned at all. It does not mean that. That is put us back where Adam was. That isn't justification. Justification means that God imputes to us or counts to our credit, puts down on our credit a righteousness which we never had ourselves, which was his own. And he gave us that righteousness so that he could call us righteous. He doesn't call something righteous but isn't righteous, but he makes us righteous. He gives us a righteousness. Now in the Bible, righteousness is often pictured by clothing. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden found out that they needed clothing and they immediately tried to make some for themselves. I suppose they did as well as could be expected with no more experience, but God came along and fitted them up with the right kind of clothing. Then there was the prodigal son that came back home, and he was dressed in rags, I presume, and probably smelled somewhat of the hog pen where he'd been. But the father said, Bring forth the best robe and put it on him. And so God fits us for His presence by justification. This is something which is given to us which we never had in ourselves. The word justification is connected with the word just, righteous. I'm not righteous. You're not righteous. By nature, we've done most unrighteous things. We're not very proud of our records. If we are, we're not very realistic. If you think back over your record a little bit, you'll say, I have no reason to be proud of my record, and I am not righteous enough to get into the presence of God. Well, when you know that, then you're ready for what he's talking about here, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Because of what the Lord Jesus did for us, God is able now, righteously, As he says later on in this chapter, he can be just and still be the justifier. Now God said, The soul that sinners shall surely die, and I have sinned, therefore I should die. But the Lord Jesus died in my place, and so God can count that as being for me. He can take my sins and put them on Christ. He can take his righteousness and put it on me. And that's what happens in justification. Now that's by grace. You didn't earn it. You didn't deserve it. You're not worthy of it, and you never will be. And you're going to have to accept it as a free gift. I know some people don't like this. They say, well, I just don't want to go on charity. You know, I want to earn my own way. I want to paddle my own canoe. Well, that's just fine in everyday things, but it won't work when you're facing God. You're just going to have to accept this as a free gift from God. That's what grace means. By grace are ye saved, Ephesians two eight says. By grace are ye saved. That means by something that you did not deserve, that you did not earn, of which you are not worthy. Maybe it would help you to understand grace if you use a simple little acrostic. Take the letters G-R-A-C-E and put a word with each letter. God's riches at Christ's expense. That's grace, isn't it? God's riches at Christ's expense. The Lord Jesus paid my death. He answered to God for my sins. And now God justifies me for his sake. It's wonderful to be accepted on the ticket of another. The worth. of another. When I got married, my wife's family were a little disappointed, naturally, and no girl ever married a fellow good enough for them. That's the thing that seems so strange for me. You know, our girls marry fellows that aren't half good enough for them, and then they have grandchildren that are the most wonderful in the world. Never could figure out how that happened. But anyway, the family's just a little bit disappointed. Maybe they had good reason to be. I wasn't complimented anybody telling me so. But anyway, this is what they said. They said, now, we are going to accept you in the family. You are Nan's choice, and from now on, that's all that's necessary. And they were as good as their word. No matter how badly disappointed they were in me, they did actually accept me for her safety. As I said, I wasn't very complimented. I don't like to ride in on somebody else's ticket, but that's the only way you ever get in with the in-laws. The only reason they'll have you on the place is because you have married one of their families. Now, don't you ever get any conceited notion otherwise? The only reason that you are acceptable with your in-laws is because you have married their loved one. The only reason you're ever acceptable with God is because of his dear son. You're not going to go to heaven because of who you are or what you've done. For my part, I'm quite satisfied to have it that way. I think it's wonderful to be justified by His grace. Now, here in this chapter, he also tells us that we are justified by faith. That's not a contradiction. In the fifth chapter, he says we're justified by blood. That's not a contradiction either. And the book of James says we're justified by works. And neither is that a contradiction. I'll tell you how I understand this. In a country like yours and ours in Colorado, you're accustomed to irrigation. Whether you've ever lived on a farm or not, you know what irrigation is like. You know how it's done. First of all, you have to have a reservoir. And then you have to have a canal to carry this water down to the farm. And then you have to have a headgate to let that water out into your particular field. And then, of course, you have the crops that grow up as a result of that. So I like to think of these four as matching up these four kinds or four ways in which we're said to be justified. We are justified by grace. That's the reservoir. That's the source. If God hadn't been gracious to us, there wouldn't have been any hope for any of us. He would just simply have shut the door and forgot about us and been perfectly righteous in doing so because we had sinned against him. There's no reason why he should love us, but except that he is love and that that was his nature. And because God was gracious, there is a tremendous reservoir of justification. We are justified by grace. Then the canal that carries it to us is the precious blood of Christ. Because the Lord Jesus died for us on the cross, he opened the way for justification to get down to you and me. So that's the canal that carries it to us. And then the headgate that we open up, and this is our job, see, the farmer has to go out and do this himself. He goes out and opens the gate and lets the water run out onto his field, and that's justification by faith. And therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If you haven't opened that head gate, I hope you'll do it tonight. I hope you'll take the Lord Jesus for your Savior, and you know what it is to be justified, not by how you feel, but by what the Bible says. And then, of course, that's where James' justification by works comes in, because it produces a crop. Whenever you let that water out on your field, you're going to be pretty sure you're going to have a crop. And when the grace of God flows down through the precious blood of Christ and is accepted By faith, it produces a crop in the lives of believers. But now I want to think with you about something else. I remember when I was just a young Christian, I was out giving out tracts one time. I'm sorry that we're getting away from this, because I don't think there's any better exercise for young Christians and to go around to the homes of the people and offer them little something to read and get into conversation with him. If he doesn't do anything else, he'll cut you down to size. You find out how little you know, and you run up against these people, you know. And I was out with another young fellow on Sunday afternoon giving out some tracks, and he ran across a man who said to him, well, do you believe in holiness? He said, I should say not. Well, he said, what do you believe in? Unholiness? And he hollered across the street to me, and he says, Hey, Johnny, come over here and tell me what I believe. Well, it was embarrassing for both of us, but good exercise for us. You know, after we left that man, we went and sat down and had a long talk about that. And he said, You know, I never knew before about these things. He said, Of course we believe in holiness, don't we? Well, certainly we do. You can't be a Christian and not believe it. in the Bible teaching about holiness, but of course there is holiness, the false, and the true. And that's the title of a very fine little pamphlet, by the way, by Dr. H.A. Ironside that you ought to have and read. It'll help you to understand the difference between true holiness and the other kind. Well, this fellow said to us in the course of our conversation, he said, I feel sorry for you, boys. He said you've only been justified, and you ought to also be sanctified. Well, I didn't know how to answer him. I was not too far along in the Lord's things, but I have learned little about it since. I remember meeting up with another of the same persuasion some time back, and he said to me, well, have you been sanctified? I said, oh, yes. Well, praise the Lord, he said. Tell me about it. Well, I said I was sanctified before I was justified. He did a double take and said, what's that? I said, oh yes, I was sanctified before I was justified. Well, he said, that's a new one on me. How did that happen? So I said, well, Second Thessalonians two-thirteen, First Peter one and two, tells us very plainly that the Spirit of God set us apart. That's what the word sanctify means. Don't be afraid of it. The word sanctify means to set apart. Usually it's with a view toward holiness, but not always. You read about some in the Old Testament that sanctified themselves to do evil. That means that they set themselves apart to live that kind of a life. They chose that kind of a life. And then, of course, sanctification may be of things, and that doesn't affect the thing at all. I had sanctified potatoes for dinner, but didn't change the potatoes any. It says that the food that we eat is sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer. and the things in the tabernacle and in the temple were sanctified. They were set apart for that particular use. In fact, the matter is that's what we do with everything. There's a clock up here in case any of you're worried. This clock is set apart for a certain purpose. You don't fry eggs with it. This clock is set apart for the purpose of telling time. That's all the world is good for. There's nothing decorative about it. It isn't musical. There's nothing about it at all that's good for anything except for that purpose. It's set apart for that purpose. So this man learned, I think, that day that sanctification begins long before you and I are aware of it. The Spirit of God begins to set us apart. And I think you can look back in your own life now and see that God began to deal with you long before you wanted to be a Christian at all. And I know of people. who were actually set apart from the world before they became Christians. They lost their appetite for the kind of things that they were in before. I think of my own dad and mother in show business and playing with a dance orchestra and God began to take them out of that. And they were taken out of it and joined the church. They weren't saved yet. But they just lost their appetite for those things. and decided I was the firstborn child, and they decided before I came along, well, this is no life for anybody expecting a family, and so we're just going to be religious. Well, now the Spirit of God was working with them. They weren't saved yet, but they were being set apart for God. And God did that with us. But sanctification goes further than that, and I want you to read something with me in the fifth chapter of Galatians. Galatians chapter five, here we'll see how the grace of God operates in sanctification. Here is another word which you do not need to fear, just learn its meaning and learn how it is used in Scripture. While you're finding it, let me say this, that there is such a thing as positional sanctification. This is brought out in the book of Hebrews, where he tells us that we are set apart by the body of Christ and by the blood of Christ. In other words, when the Lord Jesus gave himself for us as his people, when the Lord Jesus gave himself for us, he bought us to himself, and therefore he set us apart for himself. He said, I'm going to save that man, I'm going to save that woman, that boy or that girl for myself. And when we received Christ as our Savior, by means of what he had done, we were set apart to himself. Well, now comes the practical side of it. Let's get some handles on it so we can use it in our everyday life. God intends for us to be set apart to himself. And this is how it works. Galatians chapter five. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. That is, if you go back to law-keeping, if you're trying to make yourself behave by putting yourself under rules and regulations, that's what I said. Somebody here is surprised. Every time I say this, People come up to me and say, well, aren't we supposed to be under rules and regulations? Aren't we supposed to keep the law now since we're Christians? We're supposed to do a great deal more than that. We're supposed to allow God to do something in us that far surpasses what the law did. Why, we're plainly told in the eighth chapter of Romans what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh. You know what happens when you prohibit something, don't you? You tell people they shouldn't do it. Why? I remember back during the Roaring Twenties that people made bathtub gin who never thought of drinking before, just because there was a law against it. All you need to do is to tell your children, don't do so and so, and that becomes the most attractive thing that they can think of. Somebody asked a little boy in Sunday school, what is sin? And he said, It just looks to me like you pick out everything we want to do and call that scene. He was just confessing that he had that kind of a heart. But the minute you put a prohibition on it, it becomes attractive. That's exactly what I want to do. That's the perversity of our fallen nature. Well, now the Lord did put the children of Israel under law, but he did it only for the purpose of proving to them and to us that man cannot behave himself because of rules and regulations. The law never made anybody righteous. The law never helped anybody to behave themselves. Now, I don't suppose I'm speaking to anybody here tonight who thinks that he ought to keep the Ten Commandments as a way of life, but I'm sure that you've got some kind of a system of rules and regulations. unless God has shown you better. You're trying to be good, and you're trying to build a kind of a hedge around yourself so you won't get too far to this side or to that side. Or you're putting some kind of handcuffs on yourself to keep you from doing what you want to do all the time. Consequently, you just feel like you're bound and feel like you're frustrated. I do think there is such a thing as people... suffering from frustration just because I haven't learned what to do about this old nature that is within us. Now, God's answer to this is sanctification. Let me read on with you and show you what I mean. I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that is, takes the law, sign that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ has become of no effect unto you. as the spiritual living, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. I don't ever say that we don't believe in falling from grace. We do believe in it, and the sad thing is we practice it. Of course we believe in falling from grace. We don't believe that a Christian can be lost again. But that isn't what falling from grace means. I'll tell you what falling from grace means, according to the book of Galatians. It means this. that the law is a certain standard. It's too high for us. But the law is a certain standard. The law said, for instance, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You knock my tooth out, I've got a right to knock yours out. That's law. But grace is higher than that. Grace is way on up here. Grace says, if you hit me on one cheek, I should turn the other. Now, that's a far higher standard. The law said, Thou shall not kill. But grace says, He that hateth his brothers are murdered. That's a much higher standard. Grace is so much higher than law that now that we as believers are under grace, we're not excused to misbehave. We're not to be antinomian, that is, against law. But we are to live on a higher standard, not by our own efforts, but by a new power that's put within us. A new power that God has given us will raise us to a point where we can live by grace. And when you come back down to law keeping, you are fallen from grace. That's all the word means. Don't be afraid of it at all. Now look at the next verse. For we through the Spirit. Now get that phrase because that's the key to this verse. we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith." Now we're told very plainly that in the eighth of Romans that whatever a man seeeth and has he doesn't hope for, I am not hoping for justification righteousness. I've had that for forty-nine years, next month. I'm not waiting for righteousness that fits me for the presence of God. But there is a hope for righteousness. That's what I'd like to bring before you. Many of you here tonight already have trusted Christ as your Savior. And you may feel like the girl who came to a preacher friend of mine with tears in her eyes, and she said, Oh, I'm so miserable. Well, he said, have you decided that you're not a Christian? No, she said, I know that I accepted Christ for my Savior. But she said, and then she began to cry. She said, Mr. Brown, won't I ever be any better? And he was just as blood as they come, and he said, nope, not a bit, which didn't dry her tears at all. Nope, she said, not a bit. Well, she said, what am I going to do? She said, I'm so disappointed in myself. Well, he said, do you think God's disappointed? Well, he must be. Well, then, he said, if he was disappointed, he didn't know what's going to happen, did he? Well, of course he knew. Well, then, if he knew what was going to happen, he isn't disappointed. God isn't disappointed in you. He never expected that you'd get any better. You're making a mistake if you think that you can improve the old nature that is within you. Strange thing, you know, that Everybody thinks he can improve the world. Nobody tries to improve the devil. And most of us spend our lifetime trying to improve the flesh. You can't improve the flesh of the world any more than you can improve the devil. I hope you're properly confused with this time, because I want you to feel this deeply. I want you to feel that I am simply hopeless unless God does something in me. the point you had to reach before you became a Christian, as long as you thought that you could save yourself, you never trusted Christ. As long as you felt that you could make it some way or another, you weren't interested in salvation by grace. And as long as you think that you're getting better, day by day in every way, as long as you think that you're improving, as long as you think that you can make it some way or another, you're not going to be ready for this hope for righteousness. But when you say, Lord, I'm not what I ought to be, then he says to you, why don't you turn this over to me? Why don't you give yourself into my hands? Why don't you allow my Holy Spirit to work in you? Now notice my verse again. Are we through the Spirit? You see, God put something in me that I never had before. There wasn't anything in me that he could use. There wasn't anything about me that he could improve. So he said, I'll just count old John Walden dead, and I'll put the life of God in him. That's what eternal life is. Eternal life is not endless existence in a happy state. Eternal life is God's kind of life. And he says, I'm going to put my life in you, and then that life, by the energy of the Spirit of God, that life will be lived out through you. Let me see if I can help you by explaining this a little further. We do what we do because we have a certain nature. Human nature, we say, is a fallen nature. And that's very true. That doesn't mean that everything that human beings do is bad because the devil hasn't soured all the milk of human kindness. We try to do a few things for each other. But the point is, I do what I do because I have that nature. I have tendencies in a certain direction. psychology is simply the study of human nature it predicts what human beings will do and it produces certain actions in human beings that's why a leader can sway people he knows what it takes he knows that certain kinds of stories he knows that certain actions will produce certain things in people he gets to know what people are like because he knows human nature well now God has a nature and when God saves a person He puts his nature in that person. I don't blame anybody for being afraid to trust Christ, for being afraid to get saved. I remember how disturbed a man was when he came to me, and he said, you know, I've been thinking seriously about this. My wife is a Christian, and I'd like to be a Christian, but he said, I'm just afraid I couldn't hold on. I said, how right you are. You could never make it. And he said, huh? He thought I was going to give you some encouragement. You thought, oh, sure, you could make it now. You'd come right on. No, I said, you never could make it. You never could hold on. He said, what am I going to do? I said, you're going to have to trust a God who can hold you. You're going to have to put yourself in the hand of a God who can do something for you. And it's when I forget this that I get into trouble now. when you forget it that you get into trouble. Actually, God didn't improve you a bit when he saved you, but he put a new nature within you. Now, that means that we have two natures. Now, don't get scared about this. This is not schizophrenia. We're not split personalities. It's simply that we have two natures now. We have two natures. We have a nature that still wants to do wrong things. We have a nature that wants to do the will of God because it is God's nature. Through these promises we are made partakers of the divine nature. And there's a warfare between the two. And you have that right here in this chapter. If you come down to verse sixteen, you read, This I say, then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary, the one to the other. so that you cannot do the things that you would. But if you be led of the spirits, you're not under the law. And then he lists all the things that people do because they have this old, fallen nature. And then at the beginning at verse twenty-two, he lists the things that will happen in your life if you have received a new nature. And he says, the fruit of the spirits. That is the product, the result of the Spirit of God living in a believer is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such things there is no law. This is what God produces in the life that is given over to His will. Now these are not things that you do. You can't do these things. These are the things that are produced in the heart and in the life of a believer once we give ourselves to him. So this is the grace of God acting in sanctification. God is very good to us. God is very kind to us. To be willing to do in us what we cannot do ourselves. What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and force in, condemn sin in the flesh. And then what's the result? That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, not by us, in us. Something is happening in you, brother and sister. And when you're willing to let God do it, you'll see the grace of God acting in your daily life. producing sanctification. I'm not going to take time for the third one, but First Peter One and Thirteen tells us that when the Lord Jesus comes back again, grace is going to be brought unto us at the appearing of our Lord Jesus.