Romans 2:17-29 - Don't Be a Hypocrite
Tom Shrader addresses religious people who trust in their heritage, baptism, or church membership for salvation. Using Romans 2:17-29, he warns that knowing doctrine without matching behavior makes one a hypocrite before God. Salvation comes through Christ alone, not religious activity or institutional affiliation.
“Hell is going to have in it people who've been baptized.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Romans
Recorded: 2013
Duration: 41 min
Themes: hypocrisy, salvation, righteousness, faith, heritage, behavior, doctrine, authenticity, raised in church, religious but lost, struggling with pride, new believer, church member, questioning salvation, elder, pastor
Scripture: Romans 2:17-29, Romans 1:15-17, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, James 4:13-14, Proverbs 11:28, 1 Timothy 6:17, Jeremiah 17:5, Proverbs 11:7, Job 8:13, John 8, Matthew 23:24, Philippians 3
Theological Themes: justification by faith, sola fide, religious legalism, true conversion, sanctification, gospel, biblical authority, soteriology
Full Transcript
The book of Romans, and I taught at the Arcadia campus. We are a multi-congregational church, and Sandy and I have gotten around to all of the campuses in the time since we've seen you. Since we've seen you last, we celebrated our one-year anniversary, which was awesome. And we have a new grandbaby, so Sarah had a baby about a month ago. Everybody's pointing to pictures, because I always bring pictures in, but I didn't know Sarah was going to be here today, and I didn't want to show the pictures without her. I'm teaching again on the 30th of this month, so I'll bring pictures then.
That makes, from Sarah and Haley now, eight grandbabies, whose ages are seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, one month. We have a pattern here that I think is about to get broken. Unless maybe Sandy and I join, no. How awesome would that be? The next time I see you, we'll be having a baby. That would be great. It would be so fun. A little boy, a little bouncing baby boy.
I taught three weeks ago at Arcadia. As I said, we're six congregations united under the umbrella of Redemption Church. One of the congregations up in Flagstaff, I mentioned that to you. Some of you will be up there vacationing this year, and you should go online, get that address. That's a great little congregation to join. We'll be up there in July, attending there. But at all, we're in church, one of the churches, Redemption Church is every week, mostly here. This is home base for me and for Sandy, and Sandy's on her way to work in, she's teaching first grade next hour. So, I have a big job, she has a bigger job next hour.
Paul's Mission to Rome
I was teaching at Arcadia, and my text was chapter two, verses one through five. I don't think we do justice to this teaching of the first three chapters of the Book of Romans if we don't do a summary almost every week. Now, I know that's repetitive, but we have to keep this in context. We have to understand what Paul is doing. He's writing to this church, and he is excited about seeing them.
Look back at chapter one, verse 15. He said, "So for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." And then, verse 17, Martin Luther said, when he understood Romans chapter one, verse 17, the gates of heaven swung open and he walked through. "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'"
Paul's Blanket Indictment
Paul wants to talk about the gospel and all the ramifications of it, but before he introduces this gospel, he issues a blanket indictment against all mankind. So Paul's conclusion here is in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." So he begins by saying, no one is without excuse. He speaks of the heathen, the person that just rejects all of this and says he's condemned. He speaks in chapter two to those who think, oh yeah, the heathen is, but I'm not, and he speaks to them. And then today, beginning in verse 17, Paul addresses the Jew.
The idea here in this whole section is that you would have a sense when we're done or when you get it, that there'd be a sense of desperation, there'd be a sense of you hitting morally rock bottom, that you would come face to face with the fact that Paul has said you're in real trouble. We look around and we realize that, right? We realize the world's in trouble, right? I keep forgetting there's a large constituent from the U of A here. The world is in trouble, right? And then I look around and I go, wow, I have friends. They're in trouble, right?
Then there's a point that you will hit and there's a whole bunch of students that are coming face to face with it at this very moment where you're in trouble, right? And that problem is sin. What Paul's doing is saying, we now begin to get this and then we have to process it.
How People Deal with Sin
If you look at the world around you, the way they deal with it is say, well, man is basically good. Yes, there's sin, but it's really a minority of who we are. It's not who we really are. Or they address the idea of a loving God and say a loving God could never send anyone to hell so we don't need to deal with it this way. And then there's some that just say, well, I'm going to try to be really good. I'm going to see how good I can be.
And then there's a group, and my suspicion would be there'd be some in this room this morning who would say, yes, I'm a sinner, but my religion will save me. Not my faith, my religion. And what Paul is saying is that if you're trusting your religion to save you, you are in very serious trouble, that your security can't be found in your religion.
The Search for Security
John MacArthur, in his introduction to this section, writes about security, writes about us and the human condition, really. He writes this, and I quote, "People long for economic security, job security, marital security, national security, health security, home security, security of social position, any other kind of security. It is the natural impulse of self-preservation to want security, yet despite the claims of independence and self-sufficiency that many people make, they know instinctively that they in themselves are not completely secure."
So let me tell you what we're going to do. I'm going till 10:30. We're going to get back, because the issue here is a group of people who are trying to find security in their religion before God, but I want to talk about just a smidge, maybe five minutes, about what MacArthur touches on. So this is highly practical in asking you to maybe examine your own life, to look at the things that you put your faith and trust in. Now we're not talking about salvation. We're talking about where you find security. Just dealt with this this week.
I'm teaching a series in Priority Living called "How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain." It's been at this a long time, circling. We produced this series in 1999, so it's been a long-sucking sound that we've heard around us. But when things start to get this way, there are things that you begin to trust.
So hold this up as a mirror, and just use it as a little time of self-examination. I have five things here.
Trusting Your Plans
Number one, you tend to trust your plans. I've been in a John Wooden phase for three decades, and been listening to a lot of John Wooden stuff lately. Especially in the last three days, I've absorbed a lot of His teaching, but then the discussion of the men who played for Him. One of the things that Wooden would say is, "Failing to plan is planning to fail."
Now that rings true, and we like that. So we say, we're going to get a plan, and some of you have plans, strategic plans. In the old days in business, you'd have a three-year, five-year, ten-year plan. Now it's a three-month, five-month, twelve-month plan, and even then, it's pretty much subject to change at any moment. But you trust that plan, and people will say, "How you doing?" "I'm good, I got a plan."
Here's what James writes, James 4:13-14: "Now listen, you say, 'Today or tomorrow, we'll go to this city or that, spend a year there, carry on business, make money.' You do not know what will happen tomorrow. Your life is like a vapor." The way we say it always is this is not anti-planning. It simply says make your plans, write them in pencil, and give God the eraser.
Trusting Your Assets
So you may also try to find some sort of security in what you have, in your stuff, in your assets. Proverbs 11:28, "Whoever trusts in his riches will fall." At the end of his letter to Timothy, 1 Timothy 6, Paul says this: "Instruct those who are rich"—1 Timothy 6:17—"instruct people who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches."
Now my friend and mentor Larry Wright used to illustrate the point this way. He would say riches, stuff, is like a greased pig. Larry's arms didn't work so well and he would go, "It's like this. You squeeze it and poof it's gone." Well the uncertainty of riches is that, but let me take that just a little bit deeper. The uncertainty of riches is the idea of if I have this stuff I'll find life there.
Yesterday was really hot and I was just listless so I was just sitting around watching TV. Now it occurs to me as I say it, I have the same phenomenon when it's really cold. By the way, since I last saw you we made the switch to DirecTV. It's worked out really well. I'm flipping through and I said to Sandy, "Come and look at this." There was a show on lottery winners. It's almost like a series and they're tracking these people down.
There was a guy that won sixty-two million dollars. He seemed, by the way, to be okay. He was getting twenty letters a week from people. He had a guy he didn't even know come to meet him who wanted eight million dollars. So that's a lot of courage. But most of these people were stunned by how fast it went.
There was one guy who was having a last party. This guy had won a lottery. He'd been through it all. He was about to lose his house. He had fifteen bucks left. So what did he do? Exactly. He went and bought lottery tickets. Then lost his house and that was the end of it. There's a tendency to say if I have stuff I'll be happy.
Personal Experience with Trusting Assets
I had a little bit of a problem. Several of you said you look great. Thank you. I added the "great." They said "good" but I figured what the heck. You look great. How do you feel? I feel great. I got a little junk going in my hand. So this week I had the electrode test. You know what I'm saying? Where they shoot the electricity in your arm. I learned this: I would not be a good prisoner of war. She put that on me and I confessed to being on the grassy knoll. I mean that's how fast this went.
I'm waiting. So I'm at the neurological diagnostic lab and this sounds so terrible when I say it and judgmental but I don't mean it that way. I'm trying to get the picture of it. So there's a couple there. She's in a lot of pain and he said, "Baby, all right?" and she said, "Yeah I'm okay." They would have to clean up their act to be on Swamp People.
Between them they had eleven, twelve teeth I'm guessing, and I know how bad that sounds but I want you to get this picture. He said, "Baby you want something to read?" and she said, "No I can't read I'm in too much pain." So he said, "Well all the magazines are movie magazines," and so he picked one up and he said, "Hey who's this? She's really pretty." She said, "I don't know." Then he said the name—if he said it I didn't hear it which is possible—but he said, "He's made so much money he has nothing to worry about and his kids have nothing to worry about and his grandkids have nothing to worry about."
I thought you're better off not having any because then at least you have the illusion or dream that if someday you got something you'd be okay. But God's Word said over and over again nothing wrong with money. Love of money is a problem but it also teaches us that whoever has money never has money enough, and many of you can give testimony of the fact that you trust those assets but they're unreliable.
Trusting Your Network
How about your network? People you know. This is what the Lord said Jeremiah 17:5: "Cursed is the man, cursed is the one who trusts in man who depends on flesh." So I have a tendency to say I found value in what I know, what I have or who I know.
I'm teaching a Priority Living study one Thursday. There's a guy there, very high profile guy in the community, and he comes up and he said to me, "This is the worst day of my life and I don't know what I'm supposed to..." I don't know if you're telling...
So now I have a burden, or if you're telling me that to fix it. I don't know. So I said, "Well, is there something I can do?" And he said, "No, no, no. I don't even know why I'm here." Well, that's not very encouraging to me. But he said, "I don't even know why I'm here. I'm on my way to the attorney. I've lost everything. Everything's gone." And then he left.
Then a young man came up and he said, "I saw you talking to so-and-so," and he made reference to the guy. He said, "Do you know him?" And I said, "Yeah, I do." And he said, "Can you do me a favor? Can you introduce me to this guy?" And I said, "Why is that?" And he said, "Because he's so successful. He runs such a great company, and if you know him, maybe you can introduce me to him, and I could be a vital part of that company. I think I could bring value to it." And I thought to myself, "Well, too late for the value part." But I said to him, "Why don't I do this next week? Let's do it then."
But sometimes we go, "I know this guy. That's my ticket." Or maybe it's your resume, what you've done.
The Danger of Trusting in Credentials
Paul writes in speaking about salvation in Philippians 3, "For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, but I put no confidence in the flesh." Maybe it's that resume, all those things that you've done. Or maybe it's not just your past. Maybe it's your position.
Proverbs 11:7 says, "When a wicked man dies, his hopes perish. All he expected from his power comes to nothing."
I don't know if you've ever been fired. I have. I was working here in town for Motorola. Motorola is essentially a manufacturing engineering company, but they had a sales division. It's a screwed-up division. And I was worried when I came to town. I got hired by them, and the guy sat down. He said, "I'm not really sure where to put you, but I see you're from Iowa. I'm going to put you in agribusiness." And I said, "I'm a city guy. I don't know agribusiness."
So the first call I ever made was on Dwayne Dobson. I think Dobson Road—all these roads are named after families. So I called Dwayne Dobson. I said, "I'm the new Motorola guy. Tom Schrader's my name. I see you've been a faithful customer of ours. I'd like to meet you. I'd like to review what you have, look at the license, make sure everything's legal, ideally sell you more stuff. So I'd like to meet. Maybe we meet for breakfast?"
He said, "Perfect. How about Monday?" I said, "Monday breakfast is great." He said, "You know where the ranch house is?" And I said, "No, I don't." He gave me directions, and I said, "All right." He said, "I'll meet you for breakfast Monday morning at four o'clock." And I said, "Well, why don't I meet you at eight for lunch?" "Four o'clock." I met him at four.
The False Security of Position
So I do very well in that. They said, "We'd like to put you into management." I said, "I don't know. Management? More responsibility, longer hours, less money? I don't think so." They said, "No, you have a career here. You got a career." I said, "All right." "But you're going to have to move to Colorado." I said, "Colorado? Colorado? Vail? Mountains?" And I said, "All right." And they said, "Pueblo."
Now, if you've never been to Pueblo, think this way: think Tucson, but nicer. That's Pueblo, right?
I go there, and I get there, and the thing is in total disarray. The guy that I replaced—when they went to get his company car, it was on blocks, and he'd sold it for parts. All of the legal stuff and we're wired with the government—all of the legal stuff—everybody's operating illegal.
And I spent a year taking the three sales people who won't produce, adding five to it, getting legal. And then right after Christmas comes the call from El Segundo that you got every year, which said, "We've got to let somebody go." And I said, "Ah." They said, "Listen, we got to get rid of two guys out of your area." I said, "I don't have two guys." They said, "Well, we got to get two guys." I said, "I might have one, but if you give Him a chance, He could make it." He said, "If you got one, we got two, because you're gone."
And to this day, I don't know what happened. I'm sure I did something. I'm confident with that, but I don't know what happened. But ten seconds before that call came, if you said to me, "How's your position?" I would have said, "Rock solid, and I can count on it for a long time."
Job writes this in Job chapter 8, verse 13: "Such is the destiny of all who forget God. So perishes the hope of the godless. What He trusts in is fragile. What He leans on is a spider's web." What a great picture. "He leans on His web, but it gives way. He clings to it, but it doesn't hold."
The Ultimate Issue: Religious Trust
So I think MacArthur's exactly right. We look for things, and then we put our security and our trust in them. And it's only natural to try to find security in your plans, or your assets, or your network, who you know, or what you have, or your resume. But ultimately, all of those will fail you.
That's not the discussion for today. The discussion for today is to move to the ultimate issue for us, and that's the religious side of this.
At this point, my suspicion would be that as the pastor or elder got up and read the letter to the church at Rome, and they heard about the heathen, they said, "I understand why they're in trouble." They heard about the guy who thought He was basically good, and they said, "I understand why He's in trouble, but you know what? We don't have a problem."
Verse 17: "We're Jews," which was a source of great pride for them. They were very proud of their heritage. They were right about the value of Judaism. They were wrong about trusting it and trusting it alone. This is what they boasted in.
Now, if we want to take it—because this is the challenge, I think, in teaching a section like this—we're going to talk about Judaism and circumcision, and you're going to go, "What does that mean to me?" Well, let's put it in our context. There would be people in this room who would say, "I get how messed up the world is. I understand it's a problem, but I don't have a problem. You know why?"
I was a charter member of Redemption Church. Not circumcision, but baptism. This is what I'm trusting. And Paul would come along and say, listen, you're proud of your Judaism. You still need the gospel. Why? Because God's not interested in these outward signs.
The Jewish leaders at the time struggled with this same idea. Jesus comes along, and He says to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am." "I am" brings that idea of Jehovah, Yahweh, eternal. He's making these claims. At one point in John chapter 8, they get the claims. "Why do you, being a mere man, claim to be God?" And they pick up stones to stone Him. They're concerned not about some sort of inward transformation. They're concerned about their heritage.
The Problem of Religious Heritage
Our context. My dad, my dad's dad, my dad's dad's dad was a Baptist minister. My mom and my dad, they've been in this thing forever. Right now, that's part of the problem that you face over at summer camp. You got all these kids. Some are just there. They're there because somebody said, "It's hot, we can go to San Diego," and they said, "Fine." Some of them are there because that's what you do as a religious kid. That was always a challenge I had for Sarah and Haley—there has to be a recognition that your mom and I own this and believe in this, but you need to also.
I've been doing a lot of teaching and speaking, and I was in a deal the other day with a Q&A, and this question came out of left field, because it wasn't the topic. They said, "I'm alarmed, and I assume you are too"—which is not always the right assumption—"by the fact that 90% of church kids that go to college, by the end of college, 90% of them will not be going to church, and we're losing our kids. They're walking away from their faith." And I said, "Well, I don't know if those numbers are accurate. I read them too. Let's say they are, but they're not walking away from their faith. You never had them to begin with."
That's what can happen in a great church like this. Great church with conscientious parents can produce compliant kids, but not converted kids. "Yes, Mr. Jones, no Mrs. Jones." They know all the Bible verses, but if you push them, they're going, "Of course I'm okay. This is my heritage." And Jesus is dealing with them and saying, "You can't count on your heritage."
Knowledge Without Transformation
In fact, He moves down to the last part of verse 17 and following: they rely on the law and boast in God and know His will—the will there are His commands—and approve the things that are essential. Not only that, they're instructed in the law and are confident that you yourselves are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth.
He said, "You've got the law, and you've been taught it, and you've taught it. You've taught it to those who are godly. You've taught it to your kids. You've taught it to the Greeks." But He said, "Just having the law and knowing the law doesn't save you." You've been approved. You've approved the things that are essential. "Approved" carries the idea of testing, instructed. You've given this. It comes to the law. You know it.
Jesus would sit down with the most knowledgeable in His day, the Pharisees, and they got kind of a bad rap from us, because we say "Pharisee" now, and we all know the end of the story. One giant eyebrow. But the people—they were the spiritual leaders of the day. When Jesus wanted to make a point about you trying to live righteously, He said, "Unless your righteousness surpassed that of the scribes and the Pharisees." And then they said, "Well, we don't have a chance." They knew the law cold, but Jesus had said to them, very similar to what Paul says here, "You have all of this confidence. You think you're a guide to the blind," but in Matthew chapter 23, verse 24, as He's speaking to this, He said, "You take somebody who comes to you, and they're worse off at the end. You're not closer to God."
You're supposed to be a light to those who are in darkness. That's the idea of you being unique, but you're not. You're not distinctive. You're not a corrector. You may do it in terms of word and deed, but here's the problem: Your words and your actions don't match up.
The Hypocrisy Exposed
Verse 21: "You therefore teach one another, do you teach yourself? You who preach that one shouldn't steal, do you steal? You who say that one shouldn't commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?" Here you go. Here's what He's saying: Your orthodoxy is in place. Your orthopraxy isn't. You've got right doctrine, but you don't have right behavior. You become a hypocrite.
You say don't steal, but you rob one another. You say don't commit adultery. I don't know that He has in mind here the idea of somebody going out, for example, on his wife, although that was part of the problem, because they were issuing these decrees of divorce for the slightest thing, literally. You screw up the evening meal or the morning meal, and you get a certificate of divorce so this man can move from one woman to the other.
Jesus comes along in His day, and He's harsh as He begins to deal with these. He said, "Everyone who looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery"—He takes it to a new level. He may have in mind here, by the way, what James writes when James says, "Friendship with the world is adultery from God." He may have that in mind. Whatever He's saying, in the largest sense of this, is that you're saying one thing and you're doing another.
Put it in our context. I read last week—and we happened to have come through and Sandy and I were proud to be part of and participate in the building fund for remodeling and expanding the conference center—I read somewhere that about 80% of pledges that are made are not fulfilled. Well, to me, that's the sense of this whole idea of steal. It's saying one thing and doing another.
What Paul is doing to the Jews who will hear this, maybe to us who are the church-going people, is saying you're putting your faith and trust in something. In fact, he goes on here now to talk about circumcision. You're putting your faith and trust in a heritage or in an institution. But there's nothing that's changed inside. Your behavior undermines what you say.
A Personal Illustration of Hypocrisy
I was doing a business deal toward the end of my real estate career, and it falls apart, and the guy screws me. Now, there's two sides to every story, so let me give you the two sides. Side one, he screwed me. Side two, he screwed me. Those are the two sides to this story. I could bring ten of you in there, give you the facts, that's it.
So for some totally fleshly wrong motivation, I go to meet with the guy. I'm going to try to make him feel bad, I guess. The deal's done, I'm not going to get paid, and I guess I just want to heap coals on him. I'm sitting there, and he's in his chair, and I can see over his shoulder on his credenza the world's biggest Bible, size of this monitor, big Bible.
I'm just getting lost in the emotion of this, and the more he talks, the more frustrated I get, and finally I said to him, "You know, part of me doing business with you is based on the fact that I thought you were a Christian." There's no point in saying this, and he said, "I am, but I don't let my Christianity affect the way I do business." And I said, "Here's my cell number. If anybody has any questions about that, you can call me, and I can confirm that that's the way you do business."
The Reality of Hypocrisy
That's what hypocrites produce—all those standard lines. "I don't want to be part of the church that's filled with hypocrites." Well, there's always room for one more. If you find the perfect church, don't join it. Why? You're a hypocrite, you'll screw it up.
That's what's going on here, not collectively, but individually. He's saying, "I want you to take a look at this. I want you to understand that what you're doing is putting your faith and trust in your religion and your church going, and it's not going to produce for you what you want."
Verse 23: "You boast in the law. Through your breaking of the law, do you dishonor God?" Of course you do. "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you"—there's the hypocrisy.
Circumcision and Religious Rituals
Now, he introduces in this last section, verses 25 through 29, the idea of circumcision. "For indeed, circumcision is of value if you practice the law, but if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision." What he's saying is, it's not of any value. Circumcision was an outward sign of this covenant with God. But he said it really becomes a mark of judgment. By taking that, you're acknowledging that you understand all of this, and your behavior doesn't line up with your profession.
So it would be in the context of baptism. You saw the videos last week, and some of the most moving services you'll ever attend will be the baptism services. It's like that time over there at summer camp—it's not baptism, but it's that time of incredible testimony, and this is what happened. But hell is going to have in it people who've been baptized.
The Danger of Misplaced Faith
You can tell, again, in prison ministry, I get a lot of this because there's not an instruction necessarily like you'd have in church. People come in from a vast background, and they'll come in and say, "Man, what church you at? I want to get baptized right away." And then I've learned to push on that a little bit and say, "Why do you want to get baptized right away?" Almost always, when there's that level of intensity, there's some idea that the baptism has salvific merit to it, meaning it contributes to my salvation.
And he's saying no, Paul's saying no. This isn't it at all. You can trust it, I get it. I get that you put your faith and trust in this, but listen, here's the bottom line. Church people, heathen people, good people—Romans 3:23—all people have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And all people need a savior.
The True Solution
That's why we go back. See how we tie it together? I'll spend more time on kind of bringing a unity and closure to this on the 30th. But that's why we go back to Paul in Romans 1:16: "I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of God for salvation."
If you want to see kind of the conclusion or drawing together of it, in Romans 6:23—that's a new addition to the conversation here this morning—Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death"—all of sin, what sin has earned me is death—"but the free gift of God is eternal life" in redemption church, baptism, confirmation, first Fridays? No, "in Christ Jesus." That's one of Paul's favorite phrases, in Christ Jesus.
It means to come to that point where I acknowledge I've hit rock bottom, I'm desperate, I'm hopeless and helpless on my own, I've tried to be good, I can't, the standard's perfect, I've joined a church, but that hasn't saved me because it hasn't changed me because God changes me from the inside out, the focus is on the heart.
Paul's Conclusion
So here's Paul's conclusion in this section: these people possess the law, they brag about their relationship to God, they know the law, they understand what the law says and they understand that there's truth in it, that it is truth, they instruct in the law, but they come to people and their light is not light in the midst of darkness. What they say and what they do doesn't match up.
Here's what Paul says: let's, for the next two or three minutes, forget the Jews, forget circumcision. Let's talk about you. Here's what Paul says: you are guilty. You're guilty of sin, you sense something's wrong and what's wrong is your sin and you can't fix it. What Paul's going to get to, and this is the challenge of us dealing in sections like this because we could leave you hanging right here, but you need some sort of solution to this and the solution is Jesus. It means to believe that Jesus is who He claims to be.
said He was, you are who He says you are, that apart from Christ, you cannot get into a right relationship with the creator God of the universe, it's through Jesus and Him alone. In his commentary, William Barclay offers this sentence: to the Jew, a passage like this must have come a shattering experience to him.
A Shattering Truth for All
Now, one of the commentators picks up right there and we'll close. He said, he's right, of course, but it's not only for the Jew that a passage like this is or should be shattering. It should be shattering to all of us, particularly if we find ourselves thinking that our case is something different from that of other people because of our religious leanings.
If you are trusting in your baptism, if you are trusting in your confirmation, if you're trusting in your church membership, or your knowledge of the Bible, or of doctrine, or your generous stewardship, if you're trusting in your Christian upbringing, if you're trusting in anything other than Jesus Christ and His death on the cross in your place, throw whatever it is completely out of your mind. Abandon it, stamp it out, grind it down, dust off the place where it lies, and then turn to Jesus Christ alone and trust Him alone.
That's what Paul said. Paul speaking today to the church and saying you can't trust the church for your salvation.
Response and Communion
So my sense would be for some of you, new information or information that you're processing and you want to talk to somebody about that, there'll be men and women in the front of the room here after the service that would love to meet with you. For the rest of us, this is a time when we come together for communion, when we come together with an understanding that we respond now to what God has done in our life, those of us who are truly saved. So Jake's going to come and lead us in communion, let me pray as he comes.
Father, thank You for this awesome and amazing truth. God, thank You that You have brought us Your word to convict us of our sin and our need for a Savior. God, I pray that we would feel a sense of hopelessness in ourselves, so much so that we would reach out to You and You alone. God, thank You for Jesus and we pray in His name, amen.