Transcript

Well, grab your Bibles and let’s go back to Romans 5 as we will now cover the other side of the coin of the great truth that Paul is bringing out to us in this section of Scripture.

We talked last week about the holiness of God. I call it a primer to some foundational things about the holiness of God. And while this text doesn’t use the word holy or holiness, it certainly teaches us about His holiness by teaching us rather thoroughly about our sinfulness, fallenness, depravity in contrast to God. And we see that throughout scripture, how God will say, I’m like this, but you’re like this, or I have these attributes. You don’t have them. You have these characteristics, et cetera, et cetera. And that’s one of the ways we get a grasp of the infinite transcendent wonder of God is by seeing who he is compared to us. So we looked at the holiness of God last week. Now let’s look at the fallenness of man this week. And I call the unpacking of this part a primer on the fallenness of man. A primer, foundational teaching, if you will, on the fallenness of man. And once again, we’ll note these four devastating descriptive terms about us, about mankind. That is how we stand in contrast to the one true triune Holy God.

And they’re devastating. We’ll unpack them, but let’s read it all first. Romans 5:6-10. Paul writes, for while we were still helpless, that’s the first one, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. That’s the second one. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man, someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, that’s the third descriptive term, Christ died for us. Much more than having been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies, now that’s the fourth one, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

Now, these four terms, we’re helpless, we’re ungodly, we’re sinners, we’re enemies of God, are used to point out the woeful, desperate condition of natural man, of how we stand in and of ourselves and in and of our own strength and supposed goodness or virtues, which we really have none before God. Now, you can compare yourself with other people and feel pretty good about yourself sometimes. but not before God. And that’s where Paul’s coming from. How do you line up when you line up beside this God, this one true God? And the scriptures give us so much about the character of God or the attributes of God because he’s not like any other so-called God that men have ever developed, if you will, and worshiped. He is unique and one and only.

So let’s look at them one at a time. First of all, up in verse 6, for while we were still, here’s the word, helpless. Helpless. The idea of helplessness in this context means literally without strength. We are altogether unable to help ourselves out of this present predicament that we have before God. God is holy, he’s creator, he’s king of all. So he rightfully expects and he rightfully demands all to love him, all to honor him, all to respect him and obey him. It’s right for God to expect that. It is right for God to demand that.

Mark 12:30, Jesus says it this way. And you shall love the Lord your God with not part of it, not the biggest part, but all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Friends, are you listening to me? That’s normal. That’s as it should be. That’s the only righteous way to approach this God. Get God out of the compartment you have him in and make him Lord of all. Your life is not a pie diagram where God is one of the slices of the pie. He’s everything, or he’s not God. So it’s normal to love God with all of your heart, all your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength, because God is God. Why wouldn’t man fully honor and obey him? I mean, he’s the one true God with all wisdom and beauty and power and glory.

But as rational and right and proper as that is, no man does that. No man loves God with all of his heart, soul, mind, or strength. Matter of fact, before you’re converted, You don’t love God with any little part. You don’t devote any little part of your soul, you can’t, because your innermost being, we’ll amplify on this a little bit, your innermost being is hopelessly corrupt, and anything that comes out of polluted, corrupt sinfulness cannot honor God. So there’s a thorough tainting, like a drop of dye affects the whole gallon of water. It’s from the innermost being of your core. So anything you do is not acceptable to God. So we don’t honor him, we don’t love him, we don’t serve him fully, and we cannot.

It’s been going on since Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. Satan tempts Eve and says, Eve, you don’t really need to obey God. Eve, you know better than God, Eve. You don’t really need Adam on this, Eve, because you know what’s best for you and Adam. So Eve, you take the lead. You make the decision. This is Satan. I’m amplifying things a little bit. So she does. Adam comes along, and Adam has the same kind of sinful problem. Adam says, even I don’t need God. I don’t see why it would matter if we eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, why we know best for ourselves. So Adam goes along with it, and he sins, and we’ve been doing the same thing ever since. We know best. We don’t have to honor him, yield to him, submit to him, obey him. We’re smart enough to do that.

So it’s normal to honor God, but we’re all abnormal, all subnormal. We are helpless. We’re helpless to resist sin. We are helpless to do good. We are helpless to rid ourselves of this predicament. And we are helpless to be able to avoid the righteous retribution and judgment of God for being in the state we’re in. You could not be more helpless, brothers and sisters, than we are in our natural state. That’s what Paul is bringing about when he uses this word. And God is just. He will condemn and punish all of those who are sinful. And we are absolutely helpless to fix this problem.

Romans 8:31 reminds us, if God is for us, who can be against us? Now that’s wonderfully encouraging, but that’s not all it says. But, the conjunctive is there, but if God is against us, it doesn’t matter who’s for us. So we’ve already laid out to quite an extent, we’re gonna get more thoroughly into it, God is so against us, what does it matter who could possibly be for us? It doesn’t matter, you know what that means? That means you’re helpless. You’re like the quadriplegic. No use of your arms, no use of your legs, and you’ve been taken out into the middle of a vast wilderness with dangerous animals and insects and diseases, and you’re laying there and somebody gives you a compass and a map. But you have no use of your legs. You have no use of your arms. You can’t help yourself, period. You’re helpless. You’re helpless.

Man in his foolishness tries to help himself, but to no avail. Proverbs 16:25 reminds us there is a way which seems right to a man. Well, this seems right. This seems logical. This seems understanding to me. Back to Adam and Eve’s problem. We know best, but it’s the way of death. So man’s helplessness is on vivid public display all the time as we grow up with philosophy and making an idol out of science. Remember the phrase, trust the science? Then we found out it wasn’t good science. And then man looks to philosophy, and he looks to psychology, and he looks to psychiatry. And then he tries religion. And oh, don’t we have all over the world, even under the broad banner of Christendom, all kinds of man-made religion to try to make us feel better about ourselves. trying to put on something in the way of sacraments, our ritual, our ethics, our works, to make us feel better before God. But at the end of it all, we are only deeper in the muck and the mire of sin and helplessness. Because the Bible says, if you do self-cleaning, I’m going to clean myself up, maybe God will like me. The Bible says that demon will go out and get seven more demons and you’ll be worse at the end than you were when you started. If you try to fix yourself and your strength and your power and your ability, you will make yourself more corrupt before God and more accountable to the judgment of God than you were when you started. You know what that means? That means you’re helpless, destitute.

Well, secondly, Paul gives another devastating descriptive term to define what we are before this holy God in our natural state. He uses the word ungodly. Look at it there down in verse 6 again, the last phrase. While we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. The word ungodly in its simplest form just means irreverent. destitute of reverence for God, including that we are opposite, are contrary to God. It’s the idea that we don’t fit with God. Not in any way to be trite in illustration, but this always comes to my mind. Do you remember when the 7-Up soft drink company advertised themselves as the Un-Cola? Same idea. Everything you know about our C-Cola, our Diet-Rite-Cola, our Pepsi-Cola, our Coca-Cola, well, they’re all in one category, but we don’t even look like them. We’re clear. They’re all dark and caramel-looking, and we’re clear and citrus-based. We’re the un-Cola. Well, God says, you’re right the opposite of who I am. You’re the ungodly. You’re in every way a contradiction of me, a contrast to me, a deficient parallel. compared to me, the ungodly.

This ungodliness means we’re guilty, we’re sinful, we deserve to perish, and even there is a vileness and a repulsiveness of our very being before this triune holy God. Look, folks, there cannot not be that. God can only cherish and welcome that which is in harmony with who he is. You may remember some time ago when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and very few stories have impacted me like this, but the report came out that when people were put in the Superdome to protect them, that some little girls in the darkness went to the restrooms and some vicious men caught them in the restrooms and molested them and raped them. And I thought, in the horror of the hurricane, these men did this unbelievable, vile thing to these precious little girls. You know what you find that? You find that repulsive. But we’ve got to remember, when you understand who God is and how holy he is, our being, even on our best day, is repulsive to God. Our offensiveness to God is greater than that kind of offense is to mankind in general. Powerful stuff Paul is laying out here when he says we are ungodly.

Isaiah 64:6 reminds us that all of our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment. put on the best righteous works you can put on. And God says, I look at that, and it’s like a filthy garment. That represents the menstrual cloth, or a piece of cloth that’s covered in evicted sore, and the cloth has become saturated with infectious ooze out of a sore. Is that not repulsive? God says, that’s what you are when you try to please me in and of yourselves.

Somebody might ask, and by the way, People do ask, but what about all the good things that people do? Here’s my question to you, friend. Who told you those were good things? Whose definition of good are you coming from? Good in reference to what? To God’s standard of good or to fallen man’s standard of good? There’s not really good folks who need just a little bit of help and they might get into heaven. There’s only really bad folks who need the blood of Jesus to get into heaven. No good thing dwells in us, the Bible says. There is no one good, no, not one. And you see, the height of human badness is when we try to do good in our own strength to appease God. So sometimes the hardest working person, the person with the, from a human perspective, with the greatest amount of outward goodness, have the greatest evil before a holy God. because they substitute good works for the new birth, for looking at Christ and to Christ alone.

You see, God loves the divine holy attributes that he himself embodies. Likewise, God finds abhorrent the ungodliness of fallen man. Matter of fact, the church at Laodicea in Romans, God looks at that church and sees that they’re trying to do good in their own strength, trying to gain God’s acceptance in their own ability. And God says, when I look at you, I want to vomit you out of my mouth. You’re repulsive. Isaiah 64:6. For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all of our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment, and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind take us away.” Further evidence of our ungodliness, Jeremiah 17:9, the heart is more deceitful. than all else. Your ungodliness is reflected in your emotional, man. Your sentimentalities will come to one conclusion that are very much in contrast or in opposition to God’s conclusion. In other words, your heart lies to you. But I feel so deeply this is right. Who cares? What does God say? You feeling deeply doesn’t change the character of God nor the fallenness of yourself.

That’s why the psalmist reminds us in Psalm 50:21, you thought I was just like you. You thought I was like you. I like to say most people don’t think God’s just like us. They think he’s a little higher version of us. He’s a little better version of us. No, he’s not like us at all. God, you thought I was like you. You thought that I reason like you reason. You thought that I think like you think. You thought that I came to conclusions like you come to conclusions. Well, you ever heard a person say, well, I think God is like, it doesn’t matter what you think. God’s God. Who are we to blasphemously suggest that God’s like something we came up with? Can’t be.

You may not feel like you’re ungodly, That’s because, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, your heart’s deceiving you. You have a lying heart. You have a limited and perverse view of God. That’s idolatry. You’ve created a God of your own understanding, and that’s not who God is. This idolatrous view of God can appease the conscience a little, but it is a fatal error. Our evil hearts, our corrupt minds, Our errant behavior proves us as ungodly and therefore loathsome in God’s eyes.

Okay, Paul, you’ve studied it pretty clearly. You’d have to know the ancient Roman culture because they were full of themselves. The ancient Roman culture was a culture that says, we are the supreme ones. We’re the greatest that’s ever been on the earth. And Paul says, oh yeah, you sure are great. You’re helpless and you’re ungodly. And he said, and I’m not done.

So not only do we have the devastating term that describes who we are, naturally speaking, before a holy God, as we’re hopeless and as ungodly, but thirdly, sinners. Look at there down in verse 8. God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You remember the verse Romans 3:23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That’s exactly what this word sin means to fall short. Failing to reach the God-ordained purpose for which he made mankind. Can I say that again? Sin means you failed to fulfill. You failed to flesh out the God-ordained purpose for humankind.

God made man to be the highest of creation. We are image bearers. We’re made in the image of God. We were meant to live in such a way that we would show all the rest of creation who the creator is. People should look at how we handle things, how we deal with people, how we conduct ourselves, and look at us and say, oh, that’s what God is like. But we’re sinners. We all fall short of that. Woefully short.

You remember the story I told you about my childhood, and I don’t know how this ever happened, but me and about six or eight other boys in the neighborhood would love to fly kites in the springtime and early summer, and I think the kites in that day cost 25 cents apiece. We’ve had a little inflation since then. And basically they were yellow or blue or red, just two or three basic colors. And one day we were flying our kites and coming up on a string several blocks from behind my house was this large gray kite. And it caught our attention because, now wait a minute, that wasn’t one of the 25-cent kites we put together, bought down at the dime store. That’s unique. And I had to find out where did that, I was impressed, where did that unique gray kite come from? And I followed the string all the way down, several blocks back, and you know what? I might have been nine years old, 10. There was a teenager flying that kite. I was so impressed. Teenagers were just, wow. And I said, tell me about that kite. That looks nothing like our kites. And he said, well, I made it myself. I got an old wooden yardstick. I split it in half. I made the vertical beam and the horizontal beam, and I bent it back, and I covered it with newspaper. That’s why it looked gray. And I’m flying the kite I made by myself. And all of a sudden, he says, you are right there close to God, in my opinion, right now. That’s amazing. I was so impressed. You see, the kite was flying in the heavens, showing off the greatness of that kid to me. That’s the way I viewed it. And I thought, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re God’s kites. God wants to fly us before all the rest of creation and say, look at that one. That’s what I’m like. Do you know what we’re like? We’re the kite that goes. That’s where we are. We all fall short. People can’t look at any of us and say accurately, that’s what God’s like. At least not in our natural sinful fallen state. We are all miserable failures, all falling short.

God’s law and God himself should be a joy to us. We should love him. But nevertheless, we don’t. We actually loathe God, and we loathe God’s law because we’re constantly forgetting God and constantly breaking His law, at least in our natural state. God says, do not tell a lie, and we’ve all lied. God says, do not steal, and we’ve all stolen, at least in some capacity. God says, do, absolutely, do honor your father and your mother, and we find ways to dishonor them. God says, don’t commit adultery, and everyone, to some esteem in their hearts, has committed adultery. Even the ladies, we fall short. We’re sinners. We miss the mark. We fail the holy creator’s purpose to properly represent him in this world.

Well, Paul, writing to the esteemed, arrogant, worldly Romans, you pretty much made the point that they need to understand who they are before this one holy God. You said they’re helpless. They’re ungodly. They, like us, also are sinners. Paul said, well, I got one last devastating descriptive word here. Look at verse 10. For while we were enemies. Wait a minute. Okay, I might be helpless, and I may be anti-God. I may not fit God. I’m an ungodly one, and I may have fallen short of the purpose God may be to reflect Him and show Him to the world, but I’m not an enemy of God. I’m not against God. Oh, yes, you are. You are the enemy of God.

Actively hostile. That’s the idea of the word here for enemy, an active hostility against God. You see, everything we are, everything we say, and everything we do is actively for God or against God. And before you’re saved, it can only be against God because it comes out of a corrupt core, a corrupt heart. And it’s active. There’s no neutral ground. We do so much against God. God says, you’re my enemies, naturally speaking. You’re traitors. You’re rebels against God.

Just two quick thoughts here. You can preach several sermons here, but two quick thoughts. First of all, we are enemies of God and in active rebellion against God in our minds. Think about that. Think of how often we explain away sin. Oh, I’m the exception. I don’t have to really obey that section of scripture. I’m the exception. I think you can interpret that a different way. With our minds constantly, actively working against God and against his word, softening the edges on God’s truth or God’s law, whatever we need to do to make ourselves more comfortable. Look, you’re not designed in the sense that you’re fallen to be comfortable for God. You’re designed to love him and respect him. If you come in here and you say, you know, about 90, 95% of the time when Pastor Jeff preaches, I leave comfortable, then I failed. Then I have not preached to you as the Apostle Paul told the Ephesian elders, the whole counsel of God.

It’s good to come to church and feel uncomfortable from time to time. Enemies of God in our minds. With our minds, we ignore Him. With our minds, we explain Him away. With our minds, we reject Him. That is when we redefine Him so that we’re more comfortable with Him. We’re trying to find a God that fits us. God helped these men that are so-called called to preach, filling these pulpits who constantly work hard to try to find a way to make everybody who comes to church feel happy instead of holy. The Bible says, let God be found true in every man a liar.

So in our minds, we become the active enemies of God, traitors and rebels, but also in our actions, we’re the enemies of God. Every unrighteous action is an attack on God. It’s the strike of a hostile enemy. It’s the action of a traitor or a rebel. I know you haven’t thought this true, and you may revolt at this to a degree, but since you’re God’s enemy, Before you’re converted in your sins, if you could, you would charge into heaven, drag God off the throne, cast him aside, and place yourself on that throne. That’s what we do as the enemies of God, or what we would do if we could. But you know, look, that’s not the main thing.

The horror of being the enemy of God is that God is our enemy. Did you hear me? God is opposed to the proud. It means God raises up to say, I’m taking you on. I’m against you. That’s a quote of scripture. God’s opposed to the proud. God is our active enemy, and he’s active, by the way. Listen to Romans 2:5. Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath. God hasn’t unveiled hardly any of his wrath against sin yet, but he’s actively planning it. He’s actively planning to come against his enemies. Storing up wrath for yourselves in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. One day in full holy judgment, God will act out his wrath and his retribution against all his enemies.

Sometimes preachers say, and I kind of get the context of what they’re saying, but it’s not an accurate statement. Well, God hates the sin, but loves the sinners. I’m going to tell you something. He’s not coming back in wrath for sin. He’s coming back in wrath for sinners. whom the text says are God’s enemies, and God says, well, I’m your enemy.

So here we have it, helpless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies. So in conclusion, can you be saved in your helplessness? Can you be saved in your ungodliness? Can you be saved in your woeful sinfulness, sinner? Can you be saved as an active hostile enemy of God? I can answer that and I want to answer it emphatically. No, you cannot. Left to yourself, you’re doomed forever. I mean, what can you do if God says I’m your active enemy?

Would God love you? Would God have mercy on you as a helpless, ungodly, sinner, and traitorous enemy? Would God love you? Yes. A thousand times, yes.

In verse 6, verse 8, and verse 10, we have a very interesting phrase. Look at it real quick with me. Here’s the phrase, for while we were still sinners, that means you have that status and you’re continuing in that status and Christ died for you. And then down in verse 8, God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were in that status, continuing in that status, Christ died for us. His death is mentioned all three times in association with that phrase. Verse 10, while we were enemies in that status, continuing on in that status, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. You see, everything centers on the death of His Son. So he would love you. He has done something for you and you’re helpless, ungodly, sinful, hostile position before him.

It’s as if while we are screaming in his face with ultimate contention and contempt and disdain, he yet dies for us. Oh, that’s exactly what happened on the cross, isn’t it? That’s what they were doing while he was dying. And that’s what we all do while he’s dying for us. So he’s done something about this condition. But first the question, why would he do something? Because we got to go back to who he is. He would do something because of who he is. He’s not like you. You would crush somebody if they were all these things to you. And justly so, but not God. You see, he’s holy. He’s the God of holy grace. He’s the God of holy mercies. He’s the God of holy forgiveness. He’s the God of holy love. That’s why Romans 5:8 says God demonstrates his own love, his unique and one and only type of love. And that while we were yet in that condition, Christ died for us. You see, my friend, his love is not like the love that we have. His love is holy love. Love that led him to be the sacrifice and the guilt offering for us, dying on a cross.

dying on a cross. Verse 6, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Verse 8, God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we’re yet sinners, Christ died for us. Verse 10, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. All about the death of Christ and love. His is a holy love. It’s a life, or rather a holy sacrifice for us, the sacrifice of a loving Savior that wrought for us a holy justification and a holy reconciliation to God. That’s why you and I must find it of gravest abhorrence when anyone scarcely suggests that there’s some ordinance, some sacrament, some ritual, some new moral ethic, some new work you might do to aid your salvation. Blasphemy! It’s a holy salvation. That means set apart unto God. You can add nothing to it, but receive it like a bankrupt, helpless, ungodly, sinful enemy.

You see, through Christ, God loves the helpless and gives him both the direction and the strength to find his way home. Through Christ, God loves the ungodly and makes the ungodly one attractive, even desirable to God. Through Christ, God loves the sinner and begins to accept us as if we perfectly fulfilled the purpose for which he made us. And through Christ, God loves his enemy and makes him his cherished friend. No, even more, his beloved child.

Songwriter wrote, if that isn’t love, the ocean’s dry. And there’s no stars in the sky and the sparrow can’t fly. If that isn’t love, then heaven’s a myth. And there’s no feeling like this if that isn’t love. You see, His love is deeper than the ocean. His love is higher than the heavens. His love is broader than the universe. His love is too glorious for the poet’s pen. His love is too marvelous for the singer’s song. His love is too amazing for the scientist to observe. His love is more beautiful than the rose. His love is more fragrant than the most costly perfume. His love is more precious than the most expensive diamond. His love is more enduring than the universe itself. And His love is more pleasure-producing than all of earth’s delights combined.

He’s the one true holy God who loves us with his unique and one and only kind of love, loving those who are helpless, ungodly, sinners, and enemies. You will come to him in your radical, depraved bankruptcy and receive full forgiveness and salvation, or you cannot come at all.