Grace Pipeline, The

His Righteousness Justifies

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Shelley Quinn

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Series Code: GPL

Program Code: GPL000008


00:01 Hello, I'm Shelley Quinn.
00:02 Did you know that our loving God
00:04 is willing and able to pardon you of all of your sins?
00:07 Please join us now on "The Grace Pipeline"
00:09 and we will look at what the Bible has to say
00:13 about God's amazing gift of righteousness by faith.
00:40 Welcome to "The Grace Pipeline."
00:42 Today, our hearts will be blessed as we consider
00:45 God's promise of justification by grace
00:49 through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.
00:54 This is the first stage of salvation, justification.
00:58 It is the foundation of our hope for eternal life.
01:02 In this series, we are following a Bible study book
01:05 that I was given the privilege to write.
01:08 And if you're following along in the series companion book,
01:12 "The Grace Pipeline," we are beginning today on chapter 5.
01:16 One thing that we have previously established
01:19 in this series is that Jesus Christ
01:22 is the greatest gift of grace that God
01:25 ever gave to humanity.
01:28 But have you ever wondered how could the Lord
01:33 of glory be nailed to the cross?
01:36 How could the heart of humanity devise an execution
01:40 of such appalling savagery?
01:43 How could the jealousy of religious leaders
01:47 inflict such intense cruelty on the sinless son of God?
01:53 Though we may struggle with these thoughts,
01:55 we must accept what Peter said in 1 Peter 1:20
02:00 and Revelation 13:8 also, reveals that God's eternal
02:05 counsel determined Calvary's event before He established
02:11 the foundations of the world.
02:14 To indict all who are guilty of the death of Christ,
02:18 we must look beyond the Romans
02:20 and the highest Jewish council of the Sanhedrin
02:24 to include you and me.
02:26 The Savior suffered to secure our justification by grace.
02:30 It was the will of God to provide
02:32 the Calvary plan for our salvation.
02:36 God has--in His unique knowledge,
02:39 He has knowledge of the future and tells us
02:43 in Isaiah 46:10 that He declares the end from the beginning.
02:48 Being the very essence of love Himself,
02:51 He knows the power of love is the power of choice.
02:56 And if you think about that for a moment,
02:58 a forced or coerced response cannot be defined as love.
03:05 So by His design, all created beings have free will.
03:11 The Lord declares in Jeremiah 31:3,
03:14 "I have loved you with an everlasting love.
03:18 Therefore with loving kindness, I have drawn you."
03:22 Our creator sought to establish a relationship of trust
03:26 with humanity by wooing us with unfailing love.
03:31 But the all-knowing God had foreseen the future of mankind.
03:35 We would break His gracious commandments of covenant love
03:40 and reject our Lord, the holy one we would reject,
03:44 resolved to be our redeemer before He created us.
03:50 To provide the guilty human race of His forgiveness
03:53 of sin by grace, God initially instituted
03:57 the sacrificial system.
03:58 And that served His purpose well until the fullness of time,
04:02 a perfect time predetermined by the Lord when God Himself
04:07 would step in to save us.
04:09 The willing servant of salvation, Jesus Christ
04:12 could have at any moment called upon His Father
04:16 who would have sent legions of angels
04:19 to save Him from the cruel cross of Calvary,
04:22 but He did not.
04:23 The Son desired to honor His father
04:26 by fulfilling God given promises.
04:29 God had gladdened the heart of the patriarch Abraham
04:33 when he showed him the day of Christ.
04:35 Jesus actually said in John 8:56,
04:39 "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.
04:43 He saw it and was glad."
04:47 Abraham, foreseeing the death and resurrection
04:50 of God's sacrificed son, Abraham's faith
04:54 prompted him to obey a very severe test
04:58 of his own willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac
05:02 who was his son of promise.
05:05 Genesis Chapter 22 records the account
05:09 of how the patriarch proved his faith and loyalty.
05:13 God proved His plan, too, of extreme grace.
05:17 What Abraham did, laying the wood
05:20 for the altar of burnt offering on his son's back,
05:23 Abraham took the fire pot and a knife
05:26 and he began the journey to a mountain
05:29 which God had appointed.
05:31 As the old father and his son Isaac
05:34 made the trek to Mount Moriah,
05:36 the strapping young man asked,
05:38 "Father, where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
05:43 And Abraham spoke prophetically
05:45 when he answered in Genesis 22:8, he said,
05:49 "My son, God will provide for Himself
05:53 the lamb for a burnt offering."
05:56 That very day, God supernaturally provided
05:59 the ram caught in a thicket as the pledge
06:03 of his promised son Jesus Christ.
06:06 And nearly 2,000 years later, Roman soldiers laid
06:10 the wood of the offering on Christ's back.
06:14 Carrying his cross, they led the supernaturally
06:17 provided Lamb of God outside the gates of Jerusalem
06:21 to a little knoll, the Hil of Calvary,
06:25 the appointed place near Mount Moriah.
06:28 Abraham as a prophet and all the prophets of God
06:33 throughout ancient history knew this day was coming.
06:37 It is written in 1 Peter 1:10, 11,
06:41 "Of this salvation the prophets have inquired
06:44 and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace
06:48 that would come to you, searching what, or what
06:52 manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them
06:56 was indicating when He testified beforehand
07:00 the sufferings of Christ
07:02 and the glories that would follow."
07:06 Isaiah prophesied of Christ's death
07:08 and the unsearchable riches of his sacrifice in chapter 53
07:12 of the Old Testament book identified by his name.
07:15 And the prophet compared humanity
07:18 to dumb, straying sheep.
07:21 A people prone to wander from a loving shepherd
07:24 and inclined to transgress his holy laws.
07:28 It paints a pretty fitting picture, don't you think?
07:32 Well, in verse 5, he says that he saw that
07:35 "Christ was wounded for our transgressions."
07:39 And then in verse 12, he saw that
07:41 "Christ poured out His soul unto death."
07:45 The God of heaven would descend to become flesh
07:49 and stand in as the suffering servant of humanity.
07:53 In an act of lavish love, the Messiah would offer His life
07:58 as a ransom for everyone who calls
08:01 on His name for salvation.
08:04 Let's look at what the prophet recorded in Isaiah 53:10 and 11.
08:10 And he says, "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him,
08:15 He has put Him to grief.
08:17 When You make His soul an offering for sin,
08:20 He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
08:24 and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
08:28 He shall see the labor of His soul and be satisfied.
08:32 By His knowledge my righteous servant shall justify many,
08:37 for He shall bear their iniquities."
08:43 The heavenly Father revealed to Isaiah,
08:46 He would lay all of our sins on His Son at the cross
08:51 and be pleased that justice would be served.
08:54 Divine mercy would be multiplied to miserable mankind,
08:59 the sacrifice would not be in vain.
09:02 Perhaps one of the most glorious scriptures in the Bible
09:05 is that found in 2 Corinthians 5:21 which says,
09:12 "He made him, speaking of Jesus, who knew no sin
09:17 to be sin for us, that we might become
09:21 the righteousness of God in Him."
09:25 In the covenant transaction of the cross,
09:29 God reckoned our sins to Christ to count that he could reckon
09:34 or impute Christ's righteousness to us through faith.
09:38 This exchange puts repentant sinners
09:42 in right standing with God.
09:44 Isaiah saw God's Calvary plan in vision
09:48 and joyfully proclaimed in Isaiah 61:10,
09:53 "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
09:56 my soul shall be joyful in my God,
10:00 for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
10:04 He has covered me with the robe of righteousness."
10:09 Are you wearing that blessed robe of righteousness?
10:13 To be made righteous involves
10:15 the whole proceeding of God's justice.
10:17 And let me tell you, nothing you can do
10:19 will satisfy that process.
10:22 He brings you into a right relationship with Himself
10:26 by causing you to be everything He calls you to be.
10:30 In other words, your maker makes you all that He requires
10:34 you to be through your relationship with Jesus Christ.
10:39 Righteousness by faith is the only way
10:42 that unholy humanity can acquire
10:45 right standing before a holy God.
10:47 That which we vainly consider our own righteous acts,
10:51 maybe it's our best human efforts
10:53 to decontaminate ourselves from sin is revealed
10:58 by Isaiah 64:6, to be nothing more
11:02 than polluted filthy rag in the brilliant light
11:06 of God's Shekinah glory.
11:08 Only Christ's spotless robe will suffice.
11:13 My Heavenly Father knows how I struggled to be right
11:17 with Him during my earlier experience
11:20 and how utterly discouraged I became.
11:23 No one ever told me that He never intended
11:26 his commandments to serve as a precondition of salvation.
11:30 My family and my church instructed me,
11:33 I had to be perfect before God for Him to love me.
11:37 And perfection was beyond my grasp
11:40 but I continuously strained to reach it.
11:44 At times I felt so defeated, I simply quit trying.
11:48 And I couldn't measure up to God's standards,
11:50 so I quit trying and I walked away from Him.
11:54 Rules without relationship most frequently result in rebellion.
11:59 You know, God taught me finally,
12:02 that righteousness was mine for the asking.
12:05 A gift he offered freely and as I tapped into
12:09 the grace pipeline, His flow of virtue flooded
12:14 and relaxed my anxious heart.
12:16 God accepted me in his beloved son.
12:19 Drawing near, I allowed him to embrace me
12:22 and I learned to respond to my Father with respect
12:27 for our covenant relationship of love.
12:29 And obedience became an expression
12:33 of my appreciation for salvation.
12:36 Justified by His grace,
12:38 I learned to live in His power by faith.
12:42 I finally learnt what the Apostle Paul
12:44 had learned and stated so eloquently in Romans 1:16, 17.
12:51 Paul writes, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,
12:57 for it is the power of God to salvation
13:00 for everyone who believes.
13:02 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed
13:06 from faith to faith, as it is written,
13:10 'the just shall live by faith.'"
13:16 These words written by God's most ardent ambassador
13:20 for righteousness by faith resulted from Paul's personal
13:24 encounter with the Shekinah glory of Jesus
13:28 on the road to Damascus.
13:30 The religious zealot formerly called by the name Saul
13:34 had been vainly striving to serve God.
13:38 Instead, in his educated egotistical efforts,
13:42 he persecuted God's cause until he met the Lord of glory.
13:46 Paul immediately, when he met Jesus,
13:50 he immediately surrendered his will to the perfect will of God
13:54 and recognizing that no one can be justified
13:58 by the works of God's law but only by faith in Jesus.
14:03 He dropped his filthy rag endeavors and received
14:06 the robe of Christ's righteousness.
14:09 In Philippians 3:9, Paul later described righteousness
14:14 as coming by faith from God through faith in Christ.
14:20 How many people are there today who call themselves Christians
14:24 yet spoil the Lord's plan of salvation with dependence
14:28 upon their own filthy rag efforts?
14:31 Miserable in life, their actions are absolute nonsense to God
14:36 and often a nuisance to their neighbor.
14:39 The Bible warns those who attempt to earn salvation
14:43 by works and who attempt to be justified by keeping the law,
14:48 that they have become separated from grace,
14:52 separated from Christ and fallen from grace.
14:56 Look at Paul's warning found in Galatians 5:4,
15:01 "You have become estranged from Christ,
15:06 you who attempt to be justified by law,
15:10 you have fallen from grace."
15:13 Paul told the Galatians in Chapter 2:21,
15:16 he said, "I do not set aside the grace of God,
15:20 for if righteousness comes through the law,
15:22 then Christ died in vain."
15:24 If we want to take Paul's thought a step further,
15:27 if God can make us righteous by forgiving our sins
15:31 simply because He loved us, by necessity,
15:34 we must count the cross of Christ a mockery.
15:39 God's great moral law, the Ten Commandments,
15:41 are the foundation of His government
15:44 which He cannot simply ignore.
15:46 He spoke and wrote them in words laced with echoes of His grace.
15:51 Even the preamble to his law of love
15:53 which began in Exodus 20:2, it starts with these words.
16:00 "I am the Lord your God who brought you out
16:03 of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."
16:06 Do you see what God did?
16:08 He first established the fact
16:10 that He was their loving redeemer.
16:12 And then in Exodus 19:4-6, God told his people,
16:20 "You have seen how I bore you on eagle wings
16:24 and brought you to myself.
16:26 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice
16:30 and keep my covenant,
16:32 then you shall be a special treasure to me
16:35 above all people and you shall be to me
16:39 a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
16:45 God was saying in essence, I have delivered you because
16:49 I desire a relationship with you.
16:52 If you love Me, you will keep My law of covenant love
16:56 that I give You to provide boundaries
16:59 for the blessed and holy life.
17:02 You know, in the original Hebrew language,
17:05 His Ten Commandments are written
17:07 in positive language not negative.
17:10 God was giving them ten promises that His love
17:14 would empower them to live by.
17:16 The people committed rapidly to a covenant
17:19 relationship with their deliverer.
17:21 Then, in a display of His power and holiness from Mount Sinai,
17:26 God reinforced His eternal moral principles
17:30 and standing at a distance,
17:33 the witnesses of His awesome glory trembled.
17:37 God purposed His commandments to serve as guard rails
17:41 along life's treacherous path
17:43 to protect humanity from falling into sin.
17:47 Those who accept righteousness by faith will receive power
17:52 from a spirit filled life to prove that God's commandments
17:56 circumference the abundant life of righteousness.
18:00 Although the cross of Christ became Paul's great boast,
18:04 he clearly pointed out faith does not nullify
18:08 or make void the law, but rather established it.
18:14 Scripture describes two types of righteousness
18:17 God pours out by grace.
18:19 Let's look at those.
18:21 First, there is the imputed righteousness of Christ
18:25 that's the record of His perfect moral character
18:28 and His complete conformity to God's commandments
18:31 that's credited to us and this reconciles us to God.
18:36 And then second, there is the imparted righteousness
18:40 of Christ which empowers us to live a holy life.
18:45 We will consider imputed righteousness now.
18:49 If this is your first time to examine the process,
18:53 you are heading toward a discovery
18:56 that will delight your heart.
18:58 If this is only something that serves as a review for you,
19:03 it is something maybe you previously studied,
19:06 may the reminder of God's promises revive you.
19:10 To impute means to reckon or take into account.
19:16 As a figure of speech, it means to credit to a person's account.
19:21 To help explain imputed righteousness,
19:24 let me first offer an illustration.
19:27 Here is my related but certainly imperfect concept.
19:33 Let's say through foolish and deceptive practices
19:36 you have amassed a bank debt of $10 billion.
19:41 Although you are now remorseful and desire to make things right,
19:46 the fact is, you could work overtime
19:48 for the rest of your life
19:50 and never earn enough to pay off your load.
19:53 The legal action that you now face just grips
19:57 your heart with anxiety.
19:59 Will the judge sentence you to perish in prison?
20:02 Aware of your pitiful plight,
20:04 the CEO of the world banking organization
20:08 steps forward to be your benefactor.
20:11 International law prevents him simply from erasing
20:15 the records of your account.
20:18 Rather with mystifying mercy and generosity,
20:21 he covers your debt by assuming it.
20:25 He hands you a legal draft to transfer your debt
20:28 to his personal account and his good credit to yours.
20:32 You don't know him, why is he being so generous?
20:37 Still, in faith of his honorable reputation,
20:40 you rush the document to the bank to execute
20:43 the transaction and see if it's real.
20:46 And your bank ledger is changed, your debt is canceled
20:51 and the account is reconciled.
20:53 Now the banking institution looks on you
20:56 with favor prepared to do business with you again.
21:00 Can you imagine the feelings of new found loyalty
21:03 you would have for your gracious benefactor?
21:07 Well, as imperfect as that illustration may be,
21:10 it gives you an idea of the incredible heavenly
21:14 transaction that imputes Christ's righteousness
21:18 to repentant sinners.
21:20 All the natural descendants of Adam, including you and me,
21:24 are born with a propensity to break God's holy laws.
21:28 Our fallen nature is not in right standing
21:31 with a righteous God.
21:33 We owe a sin debt,
21:35 we could never repay since penalty is death.
21:39 A lifetime of good works could not earn eternal life.
21:44 Now we understand the problem our loving
21:47 and just heavenly Father faced.
21:50 Justice demanded that he take--not take an indifferent
21:55 approach to his laws of love set in stone.
21:59 Justice must be served.
22:01 To remain the just one, He became the justifier
22:05 demonstrating His unfailing love toward us
22:08 in sending His son to assume our debt
22:11 by standing in as our substitute in death.
22:14 At the moment that we accept Christ as our Savior
22:17 and the propitiation of our sins, He eliminates our debt
22:22 and becomes the source of our credit.
22:25 His atoning blood covers our sin.
22:28 His perfect character of righteousness and the perfect
22:32 obedience of his record are metaphorically credited
22:37 to our overdrawn spiritual account.
22:40 The books of heaven are reconciled,
22:42 the ledger of our balance sheet is changed
22:46 because of our vital connection to Christ,
22:49 the debt of our past sins is blotted out and a divine quality
22:54 that is not ours is accounted to us.
22:58 God restores us to His holy favor.
23:00 Now our natural response is a surge of loyalty and love
23:06 for the one who loves us and gave Himself for us.
23:12 In Romans 4:11, Paul defines that process
23:16 as imputed righteousness.
23:18 By God's abundant grace given in the person of Jesus Christ,
23:24 he puts us in right standing before Him,
23:27 which makes it possible for him to declare us justified.
23:32 Then Paul wrote these amazing
23:35 words in Romans 5:17-18,
23:41 "For if by Adam's offense death reigned through the one,
23:48 reigned through Adam, much more those who receive
23:51 abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness
23:57 will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
24:01 "Therefore as through one man's offense"
24:05 through Adam's offense, he's speaking of,
24:07 "judgment came to all men,
24:09 resulting in condemnation even so Christ's righteous act
24:15 the free gift came to all men
24:18 resulting in justification of life.
24:21 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners,
24:25 so also by one man's obedience many will be made righteous."
24:31 Oh, I love that.
24:33 Through the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness.
24:36 God's gospel of grace is so exciting.
24:40 Everything that we have considered thus far,
24:44 has been leading us up to this climactic moment,
24:48 justification by grace through the imputed
24:51 righteousness of Christ.
24:53 This is the first stage of salvation.
24:57 It is the foundation of our hope for eternal life.
25:02 And at this point, it is our record that is changed,
25:06 not necessarily our character.
25:09 Since God loves us too much to leave us
25:12 in our miserable condition, he affects a change
25:16 of our character in the second stage of salvation,
25:20 labeled sanctification.
25:23 And we will explore that exciting truth
25:26 in our next program as we gradually
25:30 unfold God's marvelous plan of grace.
25:34 Remember, God's love
25:37 is the compelling force behind His grace.
25:40 Grace is the pipeline
25:43 through which all blessings flow from heaven to earth.
25:47 Faith is the faucet, it is the how we tap into God's
25:52 grace pipeline and our faith regulates the release
25:56 of blessings from His great reservoir.
25:59 Now what is prayer?
26:01 It's the handle that opens the faith faucet
26:05 and trust is the foundation for the prayer of faith.
26:10 Now what's a foundation for trust?
26:14 Has to be relationship.
26:15 You don't really trust people you don't know all that well.
26:19 But when we have that relationship
26:22 as the foundation for trust, we have to ask ourselves,
26:26 what is the foundation for relationship?
26:29 Love, love is the foundation for relationship.
26:34 And when we recognize how much our God loves us,
26:40 then we begin to have reciprocal feelings of loving Him.
26:46 So that is what is important to us,
26:48 is to understand God's love.
26:52 For us to learn to love Him
26:54 with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength,
26:57 and develop that intimate relationship
27:01 and that would develop our trust.
27:04 And when that trust has been developed,
27:07 we will pray with all of our might and that will help us
27:12 with our actions of faith so that we can
27:14 tap into the grace pipeline.
27:16 Well, our time is fast slipping away today.
27:20 We hope that you would join us again on our next program,
27:24 where we are going to define
27:26 the legal transaction of justification.
27:31 You won't want to miss this upcoming program.
27:34 Because what we will learn is how to live at peace
27:39 with our past when you tap into God's grace pipeline
27:43 and receive the abundance He wants to give you.
27:48 Now don't forget what we just looked at in Romans 5:17,
27:52 that those who receive an abundance of grace
27:55 and the gift of righteousness
27:57 will reign in life through Christ Jesus.


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Revised 2014-12-17