“A Sermon on God's Awesome Grace and Sinfulness of Actual Transgressors”

1. The grace of God is the life and death of Christ alone in behalf of poor sinners.  There is no other religion that offers full and complete and true reconciliation.  We know that the life and death of Christ is true through the evidence of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.  Spiritual salvation comes to a sinner through the Spirit and the Word.  There is no power that changes hearts and minds like the power of the Spirit and the Word.  There is no sin so deep as to break or hinder or undo the absolute forgiveness of the Cross of Jesus.  The Cross of Jesus provides great and small sinners with abundant forgiveness.  There is no religion that offers to elect sinners complete restoration with God than biblical Christianity.  Sin cannot outdo or outperform the Cross of Jesus.  This must motivate in all godly obedience to demonstrate our faith in Jesus.  The infinite worth of the Cross of Jesus is beyond comprehension and understanding.  No sinner can sore to its heights or plumb its depths.  The sinner also needs the divine righteousness of Jesus Christ.  Without the unified merit of Jesus no sinner would be righteous.  The Cross provides the sinner with forgiveness and the life of Jesus provides sinners with His imputed righteousness through focus on Him and Him alone.  The sinfulness of sin is not enough to destroy the Cross of Jesus for the intended sinner it is meant for.  No devil of God’s creation can undo the absolute power of the Cross of the undestroyable Lamb of God through His all-triumphant resurrection.   The resurrection is the divine sign of God through Jonah’s story; Jesus rose in three days to verify His life and death as authentic grounds for how to be right with God.  Let us never presume that the Bible speaks of co-heirs as if we can partake of His meritorious work.  No, no!  No mere sinner can be meritorious, but only to merit hell.  We have no delight or glory of works in us.  We possess no goodness or righteousness in us to avail to some sort of worth before God (Rm 3ff).  We dare not glory in our works as if it is some sort of satisfaction for sin.  How arrogant!  How puffed up with idolatry!  The only answer to sin is Jesus Christ and it is not something or someone else.

2. Sin is disobedience to the law of God.  It is defined as a transgression, being full of unrighteousness, omission of known duty, not born of faith, and submission to foolishness.  Sin is also abominations, cruelty, various kinds of sexual fornication, and thoughts of lustfulness, radical corruption, totally depravity and a hellish drive to commit great and extraordinary iniquity.  There no sinner pure from sinfulness.  The only Person who lived among us in human flesh who was free from total sin was our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The Bible teaches us that Christians do not sin in First John.  What does this mean?  It refers to the soul being spiritually sinless or spiritually clean.  It also says in First John that if anyone sins we have an Advocate with God the Father.  Who is our Advocate?  It is none other than our Savior and God Jesus Christ.   It refers to sins of the body because the body still has remaining corruption.   The sins of the body puts a shadow from the sinfulness of sin on the soul.   We need the purification of the Cross of Jesus Christ to make us spiritually clean.  No one can get clean through confession and absolution of a Roman Catholic priest or the alleged propitiatory Mass.  No one can get clean through doing good works or some sort of meritorious suffering.  We are called to redeem the time.  However, this does not mean it remits our personal and tainted sins.  The only way our sins can be removed is through the shining light of the Cross of the divine Lamb.  We are not saved through personal faithful repentance.  However, we are commanded to repent and believe the good news of Jesus.  We are only saved through Jesus Christ alone.  Do you have Him as your personal Savior and Lord?  Do you know Him though you still fall into some sin?  Do you confess your sin before God though all hell seeks to undo you?  Focus on the Cross of Jesus Christ and never let that holy thought go away. 

3. What are the sources of the sinfulness of sin?  The spiritual sources of sin are Satan, man’s heart, the lustfulness of lust, Adam’s first transgression and natural birth.  We ought to pray that God delivers us from the world, the flesh and the devil.  It is a shock to me that totally abominable sinners are not born in hell.  All of us are radically abominable sinners that deserve God’s abundant and overflowing wrath.  None of us are safe except through Jesus Christ.  We see that in Jesus Christ we are safe and secure.  The Father’s wrath cannot touch us in the arms of Jesus Christ close to His blessed Cross.  The Father is not a Person who never wanted Jesus to come and die for His people.  Rather it was the Father’s designed and planned good pleasure to send His Son to die for His people.  The Father loves us as He loves His Son because we are in Christ.  No devil can undo this eternal and unbreakable love.  This love is a guarantee of a love that will never go away.  The Lord keeps us to Himself and protects us even as His own Son.   It does not mean we are divine or sinless like our Savior and Creator.  Rather it means we possess His abundant forgiveness and love and we are forever His possession.  There is no source of sin that can take us out of God’s invisible Hand.  There is no sin itself that can remove God from us because no devil can remove the Cross.

4. What are the different kinds of sins that break the law of God?  There are national, personal, secret, presumptuous, open, shameless, youthful, public, known, unforgivable, ignorant and willful sins.   We see national sins in our day like the murder of the unborn children.  We also see the redefining of traditional marriage that involves its destruction, figurative family murder and desecration.  We see that everyone suffers from personal sins.  Sin will come but how will you deal with your personal sin?  What do you do when sin happens?  Do you let it go?  Or do you being it before the throne of grace?  There was an unconverted time when I had personal sin but never brought it before God.  This is a grave error and a sin in itself.   After I was born again, I take every sin no matter how great or small to the Lord for spiritual pardon, forgiveness, cleansing and grace from His all-shining Cross.  There is secret sin in everyone’s life.  It is still possible to confess secret or unknown sin.  Say, “Lord, I acknowledge my totally and radically depraved sin that is secret and hidden.  Forgive me through Christ crucified.  Amen.”  There is presumptuous sin.  Sinners presume things about God, His Word, and His people.  It is a way to cause an unholy division.  It is a way to destroy relationships.  There is open and shameless sin.  That is, we see in our day that people engage in homosexual unions and marriages.  It is no doubt open sin and shameless iniquity.  There is public sin!  It is when the sons and daughters of Adam are exposed.  God sees us exposed all the time and we can never get out of His presence.  Always have a heart of humility before God and man.  The unregenerate man wants nothing to do with confession of sin on God’s terms.  The only unforgivable sin was blasphemy of the Spirit of God.  The non-elect never come to Christ, never have any sin forgiven.  The pre-converted elect will respond to the gospel in God’s divine providence.  The elect who have already responded have all their past, present and future sins forgiven.

5. The sins of the unregenerate are absolute blindness, a slavehood of sins, an irreconcilable relationship with God devoid of His dear Son, and natural and spiritual death.  The blindness of the unregenerate man and women is the invisible Hand of God.  This is because of the consequence of sins.  It is a divine judgment and wrath upon man for his radical corruption in original sin.  We are blind by birth through the only God of heaven and earth.  I think Satan is also able to blind sinners through granting them natural prosperity to distract them from a holy God.  Sinners are slaves of sin.  It is the master of sinners.  Sinners also have a master and he is Satan.  The unconverted do not know a holy God.  It is possible that they are aware of a divine Creator through His awesome handiwork in creation.  There is also a spiritual war going on between sinners, God and Satan.  God is changing lives through the person and work of the Spirit and His Word preached.  Satan is fighting a losing battle because he is not all-powerful and we have cosmic victory in Jesus in the future of the local church according to the written Word.  He can only go as far as God will allow him.  He is powerful but not like the Almighty.  God is putting His enemies under His feet and conquering through His banner of the Cross.  There is natural death which came from sin and there is spiritual death.  Spiritual death is the absence of being born from above and knowing Jesus as Lord and Savior.  There is also a second death where sinners who do not know Jesus are cast into eternal fire.  Be sure if you know Jesus Christ.  It is possible to know Him.  Get to know Jesus through His awesome written Word.

6. What is God’s attitude toward sin?  He stops men from sinning through His retraining grace.  He also punishes men for their sins and provides His Son for forgiveness for a lost race.  He also blots out sin and casts away our sin.  He also forgives our sin and remembers it no more through the blood of His Almighty Son.   God is able to stop men from sinning against Him.  He holds the wills of men in His Almighty Triune Grip.  He directs the wills of men at His good pleasure.  There is no one who can charge an accusation against Him and say, “What are you doing?”  He can also take away His invisible Hand and allow men to fall into sin so He may humble them.  If God did not hold all of us back as the good God that He is, we all would be devils incarnate!  He provides forgiveness through His dear Son’s Cross for the human race alone.  There is no pardon for angels who fall with Satan.  Jesus fought the demons in the New Testament where they begged Him not to let them get tormented.  Demons will seek forgiveness but it is like Esau and Saul; the dead hearts of demons will never be forgiven!  The New Testament says that Satan and demons are damned forever.  God’s people ask for forgiveness from hearts made alive by God’s Spirit and Word.  We could not do it by ourselves in anyway.  Rather it must be by God’s supernatural intervention.  Those who do not believe in the exclusive divine intervention of God in a pre-converted elect sinner are committing the sin of idolatry.  Let us not be deceived, many brothers and sister in Christ hold to a “libertarian free will” touching spiritual rebirth.  However, we may argue with gentleness and respect for a defense of God's Word alone that God’s Word is clear; God saves alone and not man in anyway.  Those that think there is free will touching regeneration have not understood the written Scripture rightly nor the saving message of the total righteousness of Christ alone for the totally abominable sinner.  My hope for them is that Jesus forgives them through His Cross for their sin on a man-made view of spiritual rebirth and adding to the perfect work of the Trinity.  Dwell on the all-sufficiency of the Triune God alone and the awesome power of His Word.

Peace be unto you!