What Does "Justified by Faith" Really Mean? Romans 5

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Oh, now we are. Okay, we're ready to go. So those of you in the studio, you turn with me a moment to Romans chapter 5. We're going to pick right up where we left off. And again, as we realize, every week we have new listeners. We like to let folks know that all these past programs, my, we've been on the air almost five years, and so we've come all the way from Genesis up through now to the book of Romans. And so all those past programs are available on videotape. And again, we try to keep it as nominal in cost as we can. We put six hours on one video, and we sell them or sell them, however you want to put it. We put them out for about the same cost as most people get for 15 or 20 minutes of video. So we feel like it's a pretty good economic thing. And then volunteers have now transcribed all the programs into the printed page, and so every videotape is now available also in a little printed booklet, and those little things are catching on. My, we had 200 along up to Minneapolis last week, and I guess those 200 books went in less than five minutes. Ira said I should have had a thousand of them. But anyway, for those of you out in television, why don't you just write to us or call us, and we'll send you the information. Okay, for those of you now in the studio as well as those of you out in your living rooms or your den or wherever you happen to be, let's turn to Romans chapter 5. And remember that the main subject for the last chapter or two now in Romans is justification. Now always be aware, and I've mentioned it ever since we started in Genesis, that when the Scripture repeats something two, three, four times in a rather short period, it's for emphasis. And same way here now with this whole theme or doctrine of justification. This is something that you don't take lightly. This is not something to just be glossed over and say, oh well, I don't understand it anyway. But delve into it, and I just put the definitions on the board again of a couple things that I think are crucial. And number one, faith is simply taking God at His Word. In other words, what He says when we believe it, this is what God is pleased with. And that's all that faith is. You can't put any more on it. It's just simply taking God at His Word, believing what He said. And then to this term of justification, it's that judicial act of God where the sovereign God in all of His holiness and righteousness, the moment He sees the sinner believe the gospel, then God declares him justified, just as if he had never sinned. Now that's hard for us to comprehend, and certainly none of us feel it. You know, that's the word that so many people use mistakenly when it comes to our Christian experience. Well, I don't feel this, and I don't feel that. Listen, the Bible never uses the word feel. We're not supposed to feel justified. You're not supposed to keep hammering away at people. Don't try to feel something. Don't try to figure it out in the human. It can't. It can't be done. But we just simply have to rest on what God has said. And the Word says that when we recognize that we are indeed a child of Adam, and then there's that with Him, is by believing the gospel, that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose from the dead. And the moment we believe that with all our heart, God just does everything on our behalf. And I put all those terms on the boards several programs ago, but one of them was justification. All right, so now as you come into chapter 5, we covered a few of those early verses in our last program, but let's just run over them quickly. Therefore, being justified by faith. See, the very two terms that I have on the board. Justification. Just as if we've never sinned by virtue of our taking God at His Word. And then we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith. See how this is emphasized? We have access into this glorious state as a believer now in relationship with the Creator Himself. My, you know, when I see the world and all their activities, and they think they, I guess, are living it up. And even if they can live it to the full for a whole 70 years, what is that compared to the billions upon billions upon billions of years that eternity will be? And if only people could get that perspective, that we're not talking about just limiting ourselves and ignoring all the pleasures of this world that we might have a few years of bliss. But for us, it's an eternity forever and ever and ever. And for the world who are out there thinking that they're living it up, it's at most if they could live the whole lifetime, 70 years. But see, out of that 70 years, how many years can most people really live it up? 10, 15, 20. The old body can't take it much longer than that. And then instead of an eternity of bliss and glory, they're facing an eternity of regret and of doom and of separation from the Creator. It's so ridiculous. You wonder how in the world can people reject it. I can't comprehend it. I mean, if God was expecting us to cross a raging river and hope that we could make it, or if He was expecting us to climb some sheer cliff, as you see some of these rock climbers do, I mean, if God was putting that kind of a requirement on our salvation, then I could see, well, no wonder people don't buy it. I mean, after all, that's just too difficult. But here He's made it so easy. He's made it so simple, and the rewards are so great, even in this life. And yet the world just passes it by and walks it underfoot, something I'll never understand. All right, now then, verse 2 again, "...by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God." See, that's indeed what we're looking forward to. "...and not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience works experience, and experience hope. Hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us." Now I'd like to come in at verse 6 and begin our study today. "...for when we were yet without strength." Now you remember how often times I'll take my class people back to Israel on the shores of the Red Sea? Because to me, it's as vivid an example as there is in Scripture. How that the nation of Israel stood there on the shores of the Red Sea, the Egyptian army behind them, ready to destroy them, forbidding mountains to their right, and no possibility of going left. Here they are, they're locked in. They're without strength, and they knew not what to do. And instead of trying to hurry up and build bridges, or find a boat or a raft or something, God just said what? Stand still, and wait for the power of God. Of course, they didn't have to wait long, and God opened the Red Sea, and Israel went through on dry ground. You all know the account. But see, that's exactly where we found ourselves before we had salvation. We too were without due strength. We were without hope. We were helpless. There was nothing we could do. And then God just opens the way through His grace. So in due time Christ died for, and again we emphasize this back in chapter 4, what kind of people? Ungodly. Now the word ungodly does not mean necessarily that they have to be down on skid row. It doesn't always mean that they have to have come to the end of themselves, because the little prefix un- simply means what? Without. See? So these people are without God. They may be good people. They may be the very epitome of society. They may be the best of church members. But if they've never experienced God's saving grace, they're ungodly, because they're without God in their lives. See that? So depravity before God can reach down and save him. I think you've all heard the expression. I've heard it since I was a kid. God saves the down and outer, but He also saves the up and outer, and everything in between. All right, so now in due time then Christ died for those that were without God. Without God. Now, I've thought of a verse last night in my class, and it just comes to mind now. Honey, that'll be in Corinthians. I'll have to leave and look a minute whether it's 1st or 2nd. 2nd Corinthians chapter 4, and this again says it all. And for those of us who try to enlighten the unbeliever, those who are going their merry way to a Christless eternity, we sometimes wonder, why can't we get through to these people? Even in the broadcast, I can tell from our letters, of course, and our phone calls, we are getting through to a lot. But I understand that this is what the book says about it. Verse 3, but if our gospel, and gospel, of course, is good news. So if our good news is hid, it's hid to them who are what? Lost. See? The believer understands what the gospel is all about. It's what got him where he is. But for the lost masses of humanity, they really don't know the plight that they're in. They really don't understand why they are what they are. But see, the Bible makes it so plain. The gospel is hid to them. Now, who's hiding it? A lot of times I teach that God hides things from the human race, and that was His prerogative, as we've seen so often from Luke 18, when He told the twelve, you remember, that they were going to go up to Jerusalem, and He'd be crucified, and He'd rise again the third day. And then the next verse says, "...and they heard none of these things." They didn't hear a word of that. Why? Because it was hid from them. But God did that. But now we're dealing with the other side of the coin. Our gospel is hid to them that are lost. In verse 4, "...in whom," that is, in these unbelievers, in the lost of this world, "...in whom the God of this world has blinded the minds of the blinders on them." And you and I can't take on the world. Now read on. "...lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ," who is, of course, the image of God, "...should shine unto them." Now doesn't that say it all? This is why we have such a hard time convincing the masses of their need. They are blinded by the God of this world, and I don't have to tell you who that is. That's the old devil himself. And unless God can somehow strip away that blindness, even you and I are helpless. Well, in that same light, now I'm just having to think of Acts chapter 16 and Lydia. And this, again, is what every one of us, as we try to deal with people, have to understand. Yes, we have to do our part. We have to open the Scriptures, but we cannot stuff it down their throat. We can't force them to believe it. That's going to take an act of God Himself. In Acts 16, and come down to verse 14, where Paul and Barnabas are now in the Greek city of Philippi, up there in northern Greece, and they have just begun their work in the continent of Europe. And as they went out to a little place where evidently some Jews were permitted to worship since they didn't have a synagogue in Philippi, he comes to this little park along the river, and some Jewish women were there who believed in God, but they were as lost as lost can be. All right, then verse 14, and a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, who worshipped God. See, she believed in God. She was religious, but she was still lost. Paul didn't open it. Barnabas didn't open it. Who did? The Lord! See, and we never can lose sight of that. We have to do our part, but God has to open their spiritual heart. He has to open their understanding that they can believe the gospel. And so this is what I call one of the perfect examples whose heart the Lord opened. See, God used the human instrument, Paul, but He had to open her spiritual eyes. Now verse 7. Remember the last word of verse 6 were the ungodly. "...for scarcely for a righteous man will one die." Now that makes sense, doesn't it? Why should Christ die for a world of people who didn't need salvation? It would have been ridiculous to the extreme. The example He used in His own earthly ministry was who needs a physician? Well, not the well person. It's the sick one, and it's the same way here. He wouldn't have had to die if the world was righteous, but the world isn't righteous. It's quite the opposite. "...so scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet peradventure for a good man, some would even dare to die." But, oh, and I love this verse. I've memorized it for years. I think I've known it since I was a kid. But God, see? And remember I'm always pointing out that three -lettered word, but. Now here's a good example again. See, for righteous men, there'd be no need for Christ to die. Even if people were good, it wouldn't still be quite as mandatory. But, see? But, God commendeth His love toward us. We were dealing with a young lady when we had our seminar out in Denver, and hopefully by now she's into the tapes, and so she'll probably hear me rehearse this. But as we dealt with her that evening around the dinner table, the first opposition she had to it, she said, "'Less I'm not that bad.'" She was 30-some years old. "'I'm not that bad. I've never really sinned.'" She said, "'I've never done anything immoral. I've never stolen from anybody. I'm not that bad.'" So we had to go all the way back to Genesis and show the young lady that it all began with Adam. And there's a lot of people that need that. She wasn't unique. There are hosts of people who do not understand that their sin problem, as I put on the board here several weeks ago, we're not sinners because we broke God's law. That isn't what made us a sinner. We broke His law because we're sinners, and that began with Adam. And so we took the young lady all during the dinner hour to these various concepts that it was in Adam that every human being became a sinner. And I guess by 10 o'clock that evening while she was beginning to almost bat her eyes for hearing things that she had never heard before. And she'd been in church the Sunday before, but she had never heard this. And so this is where we have to come from with people is to show them that they're unrighteous, they're ungodly, not because of what they're doing, not because of their lifestyle, but because God has decreed every child of Adam as being a sinner. Now we can have good sinners, we can have wet sinners, we can have dry sinners. They're all sinners until we recognize it and are saved, of course, by believing the gospel. All right, so verse 8 again. So God commendeth His love toward us that while we were yet sinners. Now I always have to emphasize that Paul writes to what class of people? The believer. And so he's writing to those of you and I who have become believers of this gospel, and he's telling us again what God did on our behalf because we too were at one time sinners. We're sons and daughters of Adam just as well as everybody else. All right, and while we were yet in that sinful state, God already took the pains to go to the cross to purchase mankind's salvation. In fact, I was thinking again driving up here today. You know, I love to teach this book and I love to teach the beginnings back in Genesis. I love to teach the endings in Revelation, but as I mentioned here a few weeks ago, it's kind of hard to get people to zero in on where we are in the Book of Romans. But you know, the Lord's been answering our prayers and I think Iris will agree with me. We're getting almost as many calls and letters. Now these are good ones. We've only had one or two crank calls in five years. These are all good ones. But we're getting just about as many now commenting on the Book of Romans as we did on the Book of Revelation, and I would have never expected it. So we just trust the Lord is using even this. But anyway, that how many times Iris has heard it, I've heard it, and I'm sure you have. Someone will say, well, when I can clean up my life, when I can quit this bad habit, I'll become a Christian. I remember several years ago, and this dear lady was the first one that would come. She was there a half hour before anyone in the morning, so I said to her, and finally one evening I said, now Miriam, tell me, why in the world don't you just simply believe the Gospel and enter into this glorious life? And you know what her answer was? Les, if I could just quit the booze, I would. Now do you hear that? She was probably a borderline alcoholic, and she said, if I could just quit the booze, I'd become a Christian. And listen, that isn't the way it's done. You become a believer, and then God helps you quit the problem. But oh, they can't see it that way. But see, this verse makes it so plain that it was while we were yet sinners, just exactly where God finds us is what we have to reckon ourselves to be. All right, now then let's go into verse 9 as we have a couple minutes left. "...much more then, being now," and here it comes again, "...justified by His blood." In other words, through faith in His blood. I do not ascribe to this that we have to drink of the literal blood of Christ, as some are taught, but by faith we have the power of His shed blood applied to our need. I think it was old Dr. M. R. D. Hahn, the old radio Bible class. I remember hearing him years ago, and he made the statement one morning that I never forgot. He said, you know, according to our physical chemistry, if you were to place something into a little basin of blood, it's going to come out blood red, or at least a dark shade of brown. But he said, in God's chemistry, and I hope you'll take this to heart, in God's chemistry, when something is placed in the blood of Christ, it comes out white as new fallen snow. Now that's God's chemistry, see? And this is what we have to understand. We sometimes think, well how can it be washed in the blood and come out white? Well in the physical, it can't be done. But in the spiritual realm, in God's chemistry, the red of the blood of Christ makes us as white as snow. Alright, so being justified, declared by a judicial act of God, that we are now just as if we've never sinned. Now think about that for a moment. Just as if what? When? Adam, before he fell. Now not in the physical. This old body is still going to be corrupt. This old body is still going to get saved. Don't expect that body that has been wrecked by alcohol and cirrhosis of the liver, just because he's become a believer, that all of a sudden he gets a new liver. Isn't that right, Merlin? He's not going to get a new liver. Now the Lord can, I know, do a lot of things. But when a body has been ravaged by sin, salvation is justified. Yes, God sees us as Adam was before he ever fell. Because see, this is the whole theme of this book, from cover to cover, that God wants to reconcile the human being back to what he was in Adam before sin entered. And you see, this is exactly what God can do then when we believe the gospel. He can declare us just as if we had never sinned. I'm going to keep almost shouting that at people for months to come, because so few professing believers even realize that we are to reckon ourselves just as if we had never sinned, because that's what God has declared us to be. Now, I think psychology even comes in here, and I've got nothing against psychology if it's used right. Some of it can be abused. But psychologically speaking, if you were to tell a young man coming up out of his high school years, well, you're never going to amount to anything, you're never going to be anything but a drunk, you'll probably end up in prison, I can just about guarantee, what's he going to end up? Just exactly that. Because he is psychologically programmed, well, all anybody expects me to be is a drunk in a Reform School dropout. But on the other hand, if we encourage a young person, now you can be this and you can do that, and you can be a very glory of God in person, you'll quite likely be that. All right, now you bring this into this same psychological mindset, that if I constantly remind myself, and my wife and I help each other throughout the day and throughout the week, look, in God's eyes, we are just as if we had never sinned. Psychologically, what's that going to help you to do? To be just that. Just that. Listen, if I am a justified person, then I better live accordingly, because this is the way I've been programmed to operate. But you see, the lost person doesn't have that going for him. And so he says, well, everybody else is doing it, why shouldn't I? And so then they find themselves in broken homes, and they find themselves in prison, they find themselves in all sorts of problems. And it's just simply because they won't take God at His Word. All right, finishing verse 9, I imagine that'll just about eat up our few moments. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, and we can't go around that. You remember I put that on the board here several weeks ago as one of the absolutes of Scripture, that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. The liberals and the preachers can do whatever they want with it, but you can't go around it. You can't go over it or under it. You have to face it head on, that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. All right? Now, for justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath. Through Him. Not for anything we've done, but by simply believing in that finished work of the cross. And I can't put it in any other simpler word. The finished work of the cross. How that Christ died for my sin. His blood was shed that I might be declared just as if I've never sinned. He rose from the dead in power and victory. And when we believe it, God has guaranteed, as we're going to see in our next program, that we're going to have eternal life. Oh, we're not just going to have it better for the 50 years that we've got in this world, but eternal life, which means forever and ever and ever in His presence. And I think too many people lose sight of that. And I guess the best little glimpse we've ever gotten is when Paul, in 2 Corinthians, had just a glimpse of it, and then he came back and he says, "...Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard the things that have been prepared for them that love him." Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.