Ruined Sinners to Reclaim - E28

Announcer: Welcome to The Unchanging Truth, the verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Jerod Gilcher, lead pastor of Christ Community Bible Church in Arlington, Texas. Through the living and active Word of God, The Unchanging Truth exists to encourage your soul, transform your life, and help you trust and treasure Christ as Redeemer, Savior, and King. Now, opening the Scriptures and proclaiming the truth that never changes, here is Dr. Jerod Gilcher.
Dr. Jerod Gilcher: I truly believe that in America, we are facing a crisis in the church. Well, multiple crises, which has always been the case. I think this is nothing new. The church will always be at war, always under threat, always in danger, always fighting wolves, always embroiled in a battle fighting for her survival against the powers of darkness, and that's the way it's going to be until Christ comes to claim His kingdom. That's just life, and life is war. That being said, however, the crisis in the church that I believe is a crisis at the top of the heap is the crisis of sin. What I mean is the doctrine of sin. We don't get sin today. What I mean is many pastors don't preach about the issue, many churches don't want to hear about the issue, because many in the church today don't want theology, they want therapy. They don't want truth, they want treatment. They want medication, not meditation. They want self-esteem, not sanctification. And yet, if we're going to be faithful to the Word of God as it stands in the text, that's just not going to cut it. I'm burdened about this and I know you are burdened about this as well—that the doctrine of sin is quickly vanishing in the church and the church is not the better of it. What we have to understand about the issue is it's actually a symptom of a deeper issue. You see, we don't get sin because we don't get God. When we fail to see the glory of God in the beauty of His holiness, we fail to see how monstrous and repulsive sin against Him really is. You see, when God is small, sin is small. If sin is small, it just doesn't take much to sort it out, does it? If sin is a small problem, then salvation only means a cooperative effort in which God chips in to help you out a little bit. But you see, when God is high and magnificent and sin is deep and vile, only then can you see that salvation is a true rescue of the helpless. That is exactly Paul's point in Romans 3:9-20. Sin is a problem because God is a problem. You see, God is righteous and we are not. We are born spiritually dead, slaves to sin, sons of Adam, children of wrath. We were woven in the womb with fallen, sin-polluted materials. We just emerge onto the planet as sinners in need of a Savior. You have to understand, all of that is essential to the gospel. It's essential. Which is why Paul devotes multiple chapters to the doctrine of sin, because the aim of this letter that we call Paul's letter to the Romans, the aim of the letter is instruction in the gospel, equipping in the gospel, clarity in the gospel, part of which includes the doctrine of sin and the ruin of man and the righteous wrath of God that burns against the human race. In fact, the good news of the gospel doesn't make any sense at all without the bad news of sin. Only when we are acquainted with the danger of sin and where it was going to lead forever, only then can sinners flee from the prison of self-reliance and run to Christ. Luther put it like this. He said, "A soul will never flee to Christ while there is still the slightest possible hope that the sinner can save himself." He's right. And there is no hope, no human hope anyway. Sin is worse than you think. It's not a defect or a disease or a disorder or a phase or a sickness, and there is no human cure. There is no way, human way, to escape from what theologians rightly call total depravity. Think about this. This is horrifying. We were born slaves to a darkness within that had the power to send us to hell forever and would have done exactly that had God not intervened. Which means someone had to break us. Someone had to set us free from our idols by an unmatched beauty, and that is exactly what happened to you if you are in Christ. Believe it or not, the study of sin, which is what we're going to do today from the text, the study of sin is theologically nutritious for the soul. It's good for us. The more we come to grips with who we were and where we were headed forever, the more we come to love the sovereign work of grace, the more we love divine election, the more we love the doctrine of regeneration, the more we love particular atonement, the more we love perseverance of the saints, or to put it most simply, the more we come to grips with sin, the more we come to love the gospel that saved us from sin. So this morning, Paul gives us the deepest, darkest reason why all people are born needing the gospel. We are about to visit with Paul the catacombs of corruption and the slough of despond, not as slaves to sin that we used to be, but rather as awakened souls, chosen by God, plucked from the flames, washed in the Savior's blood. When we're done, I guarantee you will love all the more the grace that saved you. Here we go. This morning I want you to see two weighty realities of sin that we must believe and proclaim in the message of the gospel. Two weighty realities about sin that we must believe and we must proclaim in the message of the gospel. Just to warn you, should you believe these things and should you proclaim these things, these could possibly make you lose friends and these could possibly get you hated, and yet, if we want to see lost people saved and we want to see Christ exalted, these are absolutely non-negotiable. Reality number one: the ubiquity of human depravity. I've always been looking for a reason to say the word "ubiquity" and here it is. The ubiquity of human depravity. What I mean is, sin is pervasive. Depravity is total. Every part of who we were when we were born was polluted. Genesis 6:5, we were only controlled entirely by sin all the time and on our own we could not break free from sin's control. The worst part of all is, we didn't want to either. Any estimation we have of ourselves before we were saved that is higher than that and we are living in a dream world. We loved the sin that kept us captive. At least for a while. In verses 9 through 20, Paul gets to the end. He gets to the end of an argument. You remember that chapter 1, 16 and 17, is the thesis of the whole letter. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. The righteous shall live by faith. That is the thesis of the letter and everything after that and to the end is what the gospel is. And yet, you remember that part of what the gospel includes is what sin is and what sinners have to be saved from, which is exactly what Paul unfolds in Romans 1:18 all the way to chapter 3, verse 20. And what they need to be saved from is the wrath of God. You remember chapter 1, Paul reveals the condemnation of the nations. And then in chapter 2, verse 1 all the way to chapter 3, verse 8, Paul reveals the condemnation of the Jews. So now in chapter 3, verses 9 through 20, Paul takes the guilty Jews, he takes the guilty nations, and he adds them together. And what do you get? You get an entire human race guilty and condemned, which is exactly what Paul declares. Look at verse 9. Starting in verse 9, look at the text. "What therefore? Are we better than they?" he says. "Not at all; for we charged already both Jews and Greeks to be under sin; as it is written, 'There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.'" Stop there. Now you can tell that verse 9 is responding to verses 1 through 8. Do you see that? "What therefore?" he says. "Are we better than they?" And just so you remember, the "we" there is, of course, the Jews. Paul asks the Roman church, "Are we Jews better than the Gentiles?" The reason why he asks that question is because the Jews did have incredible advantages, didn't they? They were chosen by God, they were adopted by God, they had covenants with God, they were chosen to be His special possession and His instrument of blessing to the ends of the earth. Out of all the nations on the face of the planet, God picked them. That is pretty profoundly advantageous. And yet, God's sovereign choice of Israel never, ever meant that they were superior to the other nations who weren't chosen by God. I mean, you remember what Yahweh said, Deuteronomy 7. You don't have to turn there, but listen to what He says to Israel. "You are a holy people to Yahweh your God. Yahweh your God chose you to be His special people out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. He did not set His love upon you because you were more in number than all the nations, but He chose you because you were the least of all the peoples; but rather He chose you because He loved you." There was nothing about the Jews themselves that made them chosen. You understand, God chooses whom He chooses apart from any considerations outside His own sovereign will. The Jews were never better than the nations. That's why Paul says, "Are we better than they? Not at all." Not at all. He says, "We are not superior because, look at verse 9, we charged already, we've said already both Jews and Greeks to be under sin." And that right there has been the point of Paul all the way back from chapter 1, verse 18, that all are under sin. And that's a problem. That is a devastating problem. Sin. And it hasn't always been this way. We know that. Once was a time when there was no sin, when there was no separation from God, when there was no curse, there was no death. God and man dwelt together and everything was right in the world. But our first parents unleashed the virus of sin into the world. In Romans 5:12, death spread to all men because all have sinned and all are under sin. Which means, apart from sovereign grace, beloved, every single person is born spiritually dead, slave to sin and under the wrath of God. There are no exceptions to that. Except the one who came to save us from our sin. That's it. We are sinners. We are sinners by nature. We are sinners by choice. And that's a problem. I know you believe that. And I know you know that and that is a part of your theology and that's a really good thing. But the question I have for you is, how bad do you think sin really is? Like, how serious is it really? How far down does the corruption really go? How far deep and down has the corruption really spread? Are we really all that bad? Are we born partially good? Are we born neutral? What does it mean, Paul, that all people are under sin? To prove his point, Paul could legitimately quote statistics of crime and murder and rape and theft and that would probably be persuasive. He could cite history and gruesome examples of atrocity and that would probably be compelling. Maybe he could go to psychology or sociology or logic or reason or philosophy to try to prove that all are under sin. Or, he could simply quote God's own holy Word and settle the issue at once. Which he does. In verses 10 through 18. Let's read that whole section, 10 through 18. All are under sin, he says, "as it is written." There it is. "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who does good, there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; swift are their feet to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." Oh, how I'd love to put a copy of that text on the desk of every politician, every social worker, every police officer, every school teacher and psychologist on the face of the planet. Why? Because that text reveals what people truly, actually are. The true nature of man. People are not born good. People are not blank slates. But they are in fact, when they are born, with every single faculty that they possess, irreparably corrupt and polluted by sin. Maybe you noticed there, every word in verses 10 through 18 comes from Scripture. Did you notice that? In particular, Old Testament Scripture. Why does that matter? It means two things. Number one, to prove that all are born in sin and totally depraved, Paul appeals to the highest authority on the face of the planet, namely the sacred text of holy Scripture. Meaning this isn't negotiable. This isn't debatable. This isn't just Paul's opinion or some PhD dissertation. No, this is what God has spoken. Therefore it is real and it is reality. Number two, citing the Old Testament in particular is indicative of how ancient the witness and testimony of the sinfulness of man really is. This is not a recent phenomenon. This is not some New Testament invention by Paul or the apostles. This isn't some cutting-edge hot take psychological fad for Paul. He didn't make this up. This isn't the latest trend. Rather, God has declared for ages that all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. This is why God is angry. And even more than that, this is why all people, Romans 1:16, need the saving righteousness of God in the gospel. Believe it or not, that text, 10 through 18, it's highly structured. It's even artistic and it comes with a logical power that unfolds in three parts, which we'll look one at a time. Part one I call the totality of depravity. The totality of depravity, meaning every single person without exception is born in sin and under condemnation. Starting in verse 10. Paul says, "There is no one righteous, not even one. There is not one who understands, there is not one who seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is not one who does good, there is not even one." And you can see it and hear it, the "all"s and the "no one"s. Do you see that? That's a problem. "There is no one righteous, not even one." The thing about that word righteous is that that's law court language. That's the language of the courts. To be a righteous person in secular Greek thinking meant that you met a legal standard. You fulfilled what the law required. When it comes to the Bible, that word righteous is absolutely loaded because, get this, to be a righteous person biblically speaking, do you know what it means? It means that you value supremely what is supremely valuable, namely the glory of God. That's God's standard of righteousness. That you treasure Him as matchless and supreme, that God is the treasure and the prize. This is what we were created to do, this is what we were created to be. Since no one is righteous, well then that very simply means that we were all born with a reflex to idolatry and a craving for poison. Bottom line, to be unrighteous very simply means that you and I were born guilty of treason. We take what's not God and we love it, and we worship it, and we try to be satisfied in it as if it were God. And you can see in the text, this isn't just the lowlifes or the dirtbags of the world. What does it say? "No one is righteous, not even one." No one on their own meets the qualification of righteous. We have a tragic solidarity with every single human being in that we are totally, judicially, and cosmically unrighteous, which is exactly why we needed the saving righteousness of Christ that comes in the gospel and that's called justification by faith, and we'll get there. But the problem is, sinners don't get it. They don't understand. They think they do. They think they get it, but they don't. And that's what Paul says, verse 11. "There is no one who understands." Do you know why? Because "there is no one who seeks for God." No one seeks for God. Did you know that? No one. Unless God intervenes first with the miracle of regeneration and awakens them from the inside out, no one seeks for God. And that phrase, "There's no one who understands," that's interesting because if you notice carefully at the text, it doesn't have an object. It doesn't say what they don't understand, which I think the implication is everything, or in this case, nothing. Unsaved, unbelieving, spiritually dead sinners, they don't understand. We didn't understand anything.