God’s One Plan of Salvation

Galatians 3:21-22
Richard Spencer | Sunday, March 03, 2024
Copyright © 2024, Richard Spencer

Near the end of the beatitudes, in Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus gave us a very important warning. In speaking about how to get to heaven, he said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” And then, in Verse 15, he said, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” And, as we have seen, Paul deals with the teachings of some of these false prophets in his letter to the Galatians.

And, as with many narrow roads, there are ditches on both sides of the narrow road that leads to eternal life. On one side is the ditch of antinomianism – which is believing that because we are saved by grace alone and that Jesus kept the law for us, we have no need to walk in obedience to God’s commands. On the other side is the ditch of legalism – which is believing that we can, if not entirely, then at least in part, earn our salvation by our own good works.

Both errors result from not understanding the beautiful unity of God’s plan of salvation as given to us in the Bible. And the question Paul poses in Galatians 3:21, “Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God?”, gets right to the heart of the issue because both of these errors spring from not understanding how the law and the promises are properly related.

This question arises because, in the preceding verses, Paul had pointed out that God gave the law to his people 430 years after he had given the promise to Abraham. And Paul had asked, in Verse 19, “What, then, was the purpose of the law?” And he had answered his own question by saying, “It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.” And he also told us that the “Seed” referred to is Jesus Christ. Therefore, the question he asks in Verse 21 is an obvious one to expect someone to ask, “Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God?”

And we want to clearly examine and answer this question today. The Bible is filled, from beginning to end, with both promises and commands, or you could say with gospel and law. And misunderstanding the relationship between the gospel and the law has been a cause of many serious heresies throughout history and has put many people on the broad road that leads to destruction.

And so this morning we want to look at the proper relationship between God’s promises and his commands, or you can say, between the gospel and the law. And that is my first point this morning: the biblical relationship between the law and the promises.

I.       The biblical relationship between the law and the promises

The first thing we should note is that Paul answers his question immediately and emphatically. After asking, “Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God?” he immediately says, “Absolutely not!” In fact, far from being opposed to one another, Paul shows us clearly how God’s law and his promises work together in his glorious plan of salvation.

And Paul’s statement, which our translation renders, “Absolutely not!”, is a very strong denial. The Greek expression used here is also used in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, to translate a Hebrew expression of very strong denial. For example, in Joshua 24:15, when Joshua confronts the people and says, “if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve”, their response is recorded in Verse 16, and in the King James Version it begins, “God forbid that we should forsake the LORD”, which in the Septuagint is rendered with the exact same Greek phrase Paul uses here. J. B. Lightfoot wrote that “The Greek [expression used], indicating the recoil of abhorrence, needs the strength of this English rendering derived from the Hebrew.” [1] Therefore, we can truly say, “God forbid that anyone think his law and his promises are opposed to one another. Not only are they not opposed, they are both part of his perfect plan of salvation and we must understand how they relate to each other in order to have a proper understanding of God’s plan of salvation and to live in a way that glorifies him.

Now, some professing Christians think there is a discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. They think that the God of the Old Testament was angry and wrathful, a God of law and judgment. While the God of the New Testament is a kinder and gentler God who has been persuaded by his Son, Jesus, to be merciful. He is a God of promise and mercy. Such nominal Christians therefore think that the law has been abolished and that Christians need only “accept Jesus” as their Savior but have no need to declare him to be their Lord, or to obey God’s commands. While that is a very different error from the one Paul addressed in his letter to the Galatians; nevertheless, both errors come from misunderstanding the relationship between God’s law and his promises. And both errors reveal a problem with the human heart.

Therefore, Paul immediately adds, in the second half of Verse 21 in our passage, “For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin”. He says quite clearly that if it had been possible for people to earn their salvation by keeping the law, then that would have been God’s plan. Certainly, we can say that Jesus Christ would not have become incarnate and suffered in our place if it had not been necessary to accomplish God’s plan of salvation.

If we could have saved ourselves by keeping the law, God would simply have looked at us at the end of our lives and analyzed us to see if we were righteous in ourselves; if the answer was yes, we would go to heaven, if the answer was no, we would be sent to hell. But Paul immediately goes on to explain why salvation cannot be earned this way. Verse 22 begins, “But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin”, which means that no one can earn his salvation. A prisoner is someone who has been deprived of his or her freedom, and our sinful nature has deprived us of the freedom to obey God. As Paul says in Romans 7:14, we have been sold as slaves to sin.

Paul also makes this important point elsewhere. In Romans 3:20 he wrote that “no one will be declared righteous in [God’s] sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” In other words, the law has a definite role to play in saving God’s people, it is to show them that they cannot earn their salvation by keeping the law! Trying to earn your salvation by keeping the law is hopeless, because no one does, or ever can, keep God’s law perfectly. And perfection is what God demands. Jesus himself said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

Many unbelievers rail against this idea, saying that it isn’t fair. How can God judge us for failing to meet a standard that it is impossible for us to meet? But you must remember that it was not impossible for Adam to meet this standard. He was able to obey God, but he freely chose not to. In other words, he chose to sin. And he was the perfect God-appointed representative for the human race, no one else would have done any better. And because he failed, he died spiritually and all of his natural descendants are born with a sinful nature, or you could say, a sinful heart. In other words, we are born spiritually dead. Dead in our transgressions and sins as Paul says in Ephesians 2:1. But, praise God, he has provided us with a way to be saved. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life and gave his life as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. If you repent and trust in Jesus Christ alone, you will be saved.

The sinful heart is man’s fundamental problem. We are all born at enmity with God. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:7-8, “the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” And Paul’s statement is obviously true if you think about it for a minute. Because God does not just require outward obedience to his commands, he requires that we obey out of a desire to honor and obey him as our Creator. In other words, we must obey out of love, from the heart. And no enemy of God can ever possibly do that.

The fact that God judges the heart is conveyed to us in many ways in the Scriptures. For example, when the prophet Samuel thought that he knew which of Jesse’s sons God wanted to be king, we are told in 1 Samuel 16:7 that “the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’” Also, when Jesus chastised the Jews for obeying their traditions, while missing the real important matters of the law of God, we read in Mark 7:6 that he said to them, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” And he went on to say, in Verses 20 to 23 that “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’” And, obviously, when we speak of our “heart” in this way, we mean the core of our being. Our fundamental nature.

And so, our problem is our heart. Our external conduct is just a manifestation of what is in our hearts. And the word of God deals with our hearts. We read in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” That statement does not mean that God’s word doesn’t also judge our actions, it most certainly does. But the judgment goes deeper because, as I said, and, far more importantly, as Jesus said, evil actions proceed from an evil heart.

That is the fundamental reason why we can’t save ourselves. No man can change his own heart. God must change our hearts. Only then can we repent, believe and strive to obey. That is what it means to be born again, or you can say, born from above. And as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Being born again refers to God’s work in changing our heart, our fundamental nature. And this isn’t just a New Testament idea, it is what God told his people in the Old Testament too. In Ezekiel 36 God speaks to his people about how he is going to gather a people together for his own glory and, in Verses 24 to 27 we read that he says, “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t it wonderful? God changes the hearts of those whom he choses to save. He removes our hearts of stone. God never treats anyone unjustly. We are all born with sinful natures and we sin daily. Therefore, we deserve God’s wrath. But when he changes our heart, we become what Paul calls new creations. We have a fundamentally different nature. A new set of desires and affections and a different set of fundamental presuppositions about the world we live in. We know that God exists. We know that he is good. And we see our sin for the ugly and detestable rebellion that it truly is. And, therefore, we desire to put our sins to death and to walk in obedience to God’s commands. God’s law becomes our delight.

We still have sin in us and, even though we fight against it, we do still sin. But when we sin, we repent, we grieve over our sin and we desire and purpose to walk in holiness, which is obedience to God’s law.

So, you see, the law has two purposes in reference to salvation. First, our inability to keep it perfectly shows us our need for a Savior. Theologians call that the pedagogical use of the law because it teaches us about our problem. And second, if we have been saved, the law shows us how we should live to please God. Theologians call that the moral, or normative, use of the law. In 1 Corinthians 9:21, the apostle Paul noted that he was, “not free from God’s law but [was] under Christ’s law”, by which he meant that the moral law, as properly explained by Jesus Christ, was binding on Christians.

And now we can state the proper relationship between God’s law and his promises, specifically his promise to save a people for himself. That promise is unconditional. It does not depend on anything we can or will do. God determined before creation whom he was going to save. But in order to fulfil that promise, God gave us the law as well as the promise. The law first works to show us our need for a Savior and then, if we have been born again, the law shows us how we should live in order to please God.

And so we see that the law was never intended to save anyone. The letter to the Hebrews explains this clearly. In Hebrews 8:7-8 we read, “For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: ‘The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’” This passage speaks of two covenants and the writer makes clear in Verse 9 that the “first covenant” refers to the Sinaitic covenant made with Moses, in other words the law as summarized in the Ten Commandments. And notice what the passage says, there was a problem with this first covenant. It was not a problem with the law itself, no, God’s law is perfect. But “God found fault with the people”. In other words, the Sinaitic covenant, or we can say the law, is not able to save anyone because people are not able to keep it. That is why God instituted another covenant, the covenant of grace, of which Jesus Christ is the mediator.

The apostle Paul made the same point when he wrote, in Romans 8:3, “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. Notice that the problem was not with the law, but with the sinful nature, which comes from man. Paul also wrote about the difference between what he calls two “ministries”. In 2 Corinthians 3:7-9 we read, “Now if the ministry that brought death [or, we could say, the law], which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit [or, we could say, the promises] be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!” Friends, if we have seen our great need and inability and have trusted in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, then we are united to him by faith and have been given his righteousness. That is indeed a glorious ministry! A wonderful covenant!

At this point, however, we must be very careful. Do not conclude that God was somehow surprised that the law didn’t work and had to come up with a Plan B. No, the whole point, again, is that God had to show his people that the fault was with them. We must see our need and our inability before we can abandon hope in ourselves and trust fully in Jesus Christ alone. God’s plan was fully formed before he created anything.

The first pronouncement of the gospel, called the protoevangelium, was given to Adam and Eve in the garden. In Genesis 3:15, while pronouncing his curse on the serpent for deceiving Eve, God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” And, as Rev. Broderick noted last week, this is really the only covenant, the only plan of salvation.

God has never changed his plan. He has had only one plan in mind from the beginning. That is why this sermon is entitled God’s One Plan of Salvation. God knew that Adam would fail. He knew that all of his natural descendants would inherit Adam’s sinful nature and be born sinners, incapable of saving themselves. But he had determined in eternity past to manifest his glory by saving a certain group of people for himself. And he uses his law as part of the way he accomplishes this purpose. That is why we read in Psalm 19:7 that “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul”, or you could say, as it does in the King James Version, converting the soul.

This group of people whom God has chosen to save is variously called God’s treasured possession, his adopted children, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, God’s temple, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, and God’s elect. Hallelujah! There is no greater privilege and joy than to be a part of this group of people.

And the fact that the law condemns every single person shows us that if we are a part of that group, it is definitely not because we deserve it. No, it is by grace alone. God chose to love us and save us, but not because of anything lovable or good in us. It was simply for the manifestation of his glorious grace. We are told in 2 Timothy 1:9, that God, “has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.”

And now that we have seen the proper biblical relationship between God’s law and his promise, I want to make it very clear that this is not just an interesting theological point. It has tremendous practical significance for us as God’s children.

And, therefore, my second point is the application of this understanding.

II.      Application

There are 3 important applications, or you could say benefits, that I want us to take away from our time this morning. These three benefits are: first, a proper understanding of the relationship between God’s law and his promises can keep us from some serious heresies. Secondly, this understanding can help us see how to properly examine ourselves to make our calling and election sure. And, thirdly, this understanding can give us great confidence and encouragement to persevere in the faith. Let’s look at all three of these benefits.

1 Keep us from some heresies.

First, properly understanding the relationship between the law and the gospel guards against the heresies of antinomianism and legalism, which come in various forms. Strict legalism is not very common in our day and age, but it is certainly not unheard of. And, surprisingly, many nominal Christians engage in a type of legalism, perhaps you could call it “legalism light”. They have a very minimal view of the requirements of God’s law, which comes not from God’s word, but their own imaginations. And they think they will be saved by keeping these requirements, which can often be summarized by saying simply that we should always smile, be nice to everyone, and never judge anyone or anything.

But, as we have seen, no one can be saved by keeping the law. And making up your own minimalist version of the law won’t change that fact. The Pharisees, while much stricter than most modern Christians, were doing essentially the same thing. They tried to reduce God’s commands to a whole bunch of rules that could be kept. But Jesus severely rebuked them for this and repeatedly pointed out that they were missing the point. We see this very clearly in Chapter 23 of Matthew, where Jesus pronounced seven woes on them. For example, in Verses 16 and 17 he said, “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?” And, in Verse 23, he said, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” And, as just one final example, in Verses 27 and 28, Jesus made it clear that it is a matter of the heart when he said, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

Jesus didn’t pull any punches here. He called these legalists blind guides, blind fools, hypocrites, whitewashed tombs and more. It is an insult to the holiness of God to think that we can please him by keeping some rules we make up for ourselves, or even to think that we can keep the laws he has given us in his word.

And Jesus also went to great lengths, most notably in the Sermon on the Mount, to show the Pharisees that their understanding of God’s law was grossly deficient. For example, they thought that the command to not commit murder simply meant to not commit the actual physical act of murder. But Christ made it clear that the command really deals with the heart attitude that leads to murder. In Matthew 5:21-22 he said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.” And, similarly, they thought that the command to not commit adultery simply meant to not engage in the physical act of adultery. But, in Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

There are many more examples of Jesus properly expounding the meaning of God’s law, but that is enough to show you that whenever men make up their own rules, by which they think they can be saved, it is a completely futile exercise.

And so, the first application is that properly understanding the relationship between God’s law and his promises can keep us from serious heresies.

The second application of this understanding is that we see how to properly examine ourselves to make our calling and election sure.

2 Making our calling and election sure.

Once we understand that the heart is the central issue, it should be obvious that making our calling and election sure requires examining our hearts. It is true that our speech and our actions flow from our hearts, so examining our hearts certainly includes examining our lives. There should be external conformity to the law of God. It will never be perfect in this life, but it should be there and, in general, should get better and better as we go through life.

But external conformity can be achieved, at least to a degree, by unbelievers. And true believers can sin greatly and have their external conformity be very poor at times. So the most important thing is the heart attitude. You must examine your motives and your desires. Why do you come to church? Is it because you want to? Or is it just habit? Or because your parents make you? Or do you think you are doing something worthy of a reward? And why do you read the word daily? Why do you pray? Why do you abstain from certain activities that you know to be sin? We should examine our motives for doing all of these things.

And probably even more telling, if you don’t come to church regularly, or you don’t read or pray regularly, why not? And how do you feel when you sin? Does it grieve you? Do you have a sense of having offended God? Or is it perfectly OK with you so long as no one finds out? And if someone does find out, are you troubled only because of the earthly consequences?

These are important questions that depend on your heart. And no one but you can answer them. So examine your behavior, but even more importantly, examine your heart. Our attitude toward God’s law constantly points to the condition of our heart; before we are saved it shows us our need, and after we are saved it shows us our desire! And if you see that your heart is not right, then cry out to God to have mercy and change your heart.

But, if you do see that your heart is right before God – and note carefully that I said “right”, not perfect – then you should receive the third benefit, or application, of this understanding, which is that you gain confidence and encouragement to persevere to the end.

3 Gaining confidence and encouragement to persevere.

This confidence and encouragement derive from the fact that God is the sovereign Lord of all creation. He knows all things. He controls all things. He has planned all things. He has only one plan of salvation. There is no need for a Plan B! Our confidence is in his sovereign power and his faithfulness, not in ourselves. And once we see clearly that God is working all things out according to his own purpose and plan, that should give us great confidence and encouragement to persevere. Nothing and no one in all creation can thwart God’s plan. Even our sin cannot cause it to fail.

Just imagine how much joy and enthusiasm you would have for some large and difficult task if you knew for absolute certain that your plans were going to succeed. Well, you can be absolutely certain that God’s plan of salvation is going to succeed! So do your part with great joy and enthusiasm.

In particular, you can take confidence from four characteristics of God’s plan of salvation: it is eternal, it is progressing, it is perfect, and it will succeed. Let’s briefly look at each of these.

First, God’s plan of salvation is eternal. 2 Timothy 1:9, which we looked at in part a few minutes ago, says that God, “has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time”. And in Ephesians 1:4, Paul tells us that God, “chose us in [Jesus Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” And 1 Peter 1:20 the apostle Peter tells us that Jesus Christ, “was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” And, of course, he was chosen to be our Redeemer, so this verse attests to the eternal nature of God’s plan of salvation.

The eternal nature of God’s plan, when contrasted with the short time we are allotted on this earth, should give us confidence. We experience only the tiniest imaginable part of God’s creation, but he has it all completely under control and has had since before the beginning of the universe. Be encouraged, brothers and sisters, by the eternal nature of God’s plans for you. As he tells us in Jeremiah 29:10, “‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

Second, God’s plan of salvation is progressing exactly as he laid it out. Just think of all that God has done so far. He gave the promise of a Redeemer to Adam and Eve in the protoevangelium as we saw earlier, and then he worked through thousands of years of human history to fulfil that promise. And all through that history he progressively revealed more of his plan to his people.

And think of the times it appeared God’s plan might fail. Satan has been working from the beginning to try and thwart God’s plan, but he will not and cannot succeed. The first time he tried to destroy the plan may have been when Cain murdered Abel. It is possible that Adam and Eve thought Cain was the redeemer God had promised[2], but surely this murder put an end to any such thoughts. Then, much later, we see the wicked queen Athaliah attempting to murder all of the descendants of King Ahaziah, which would have extinguished the royal line from which the promised redeemer was to come. But as we read in 2 Kings 11, one of the sons, Joash, was hidden away and saved. And later still we see both the northern and southern kingdoms taken into captivity and bondage, but God worked through even pagan rulers to restore his people to Jerusalem. And then, most prominently, we see the Messiah himself, Jesus Christ, crucified by the Roman authorities. But even this most heinous of all sins could not stop God’s plan. In fact, it was exactly in accord with God’s plan! We read in Acts 2:23 that Peter, in his famous sermon on Pentecost, told the crowd that Jesus, “was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”

Let me assure you, Satan will continue his futile attempts to destroy God’s plan. He will try to bring down every true believer. But he can never succeed. Jesus himself said, in John 10:27-29, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” Brothers and sisters, you cannot be more secure than you are. If God has regenerated you, your eternal destiny in heaven is absolutely secure. The world and Satan will oppose you, but they can never take away your salvation because it is part of God’s immutable eternal plan. So be encouraged and persevere to the end.

The third characteristic of God’s eternal plan of salvation that should provide great encouragement is that it is perfect. God’s perfection is a clear teaching of Scripture. For example, we are told in Deuteronomy 32:4 that God, “is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” And in Psalm 18:30 we read, “As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.” And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commanded us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

The fact that God and all his ways are perfect means that we can be certain that it is impossible for our salvation to be accomplished in some better way. Therefore, any trials that we are called upon to endure are necessary. There is no better way of salvation possible. And that should encourage us to persevere.

The fourth and final characteristic of God’s plan of salvation that should encourage us greatly is that it will be successful. God wins and all who oppose him lose. We are called to put on the full armor of God and fight. And we have a battle to fight that can be extremely difficult at times. But we need never worry about the outcome. Jesus Christ has already won the war. God has a good purpose in making us all go through the process of sanctification, but the end result is guaranteed. Remember what it says in Romans 8:29-30, “those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” The verbs are in the past tense, not the future tense. It is not that we will be glorified, we are glorified. It is as certain as if it had already happened.[3]

And so, brothers and sisters, examine your heart! And specifically examine your heart attitude toward God’s law. If you think of God’s law as restraining you from living a more enjoyable life. Or if you think his law is too strict and that he must, surely, not really expect you to try and keep it. Or if you think his law, as presented in the Bible, is just an old-fashioned set of rules written down by a pre-scientific group of somewhat uptight men. Or if you have any other negative views about God’s law, then be warned. Your heart is telling you that it is your same old sinful heart and you need to be born again.

But, if your heart tells you that God’s law – as presented in his word – is perfect and glorious, and if it is the desire of your heart to keep that law, and you are grieved when you fail and you cry out for forgiveness and seek to do better, then be encouraged! You are a child of God, a new creation in Christ Jesus, and God has promised that he will continue his work in you and will bring you to himself without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless in his sight. Or listen to what Paul wrote in Colossians 1:21-23, he said that “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.”

What a glorious promise God has given to his people! And his law is a wonderful part of the same plan of salvation. It drives us to Christ and it gives us a transcript of God’s holy character to guide us in living for his glory.

And our hearts are the ultimate test for where we stand with respect to God. The heart is the center of our being and, as we will sing in a moment, the Lord should be the heart of our heart, in other words, at the very center of our being. God has a marvelous plan of salvation, and he is bringing it to fruition. We can depend completely and totally on him and focus on living lives of joyful and grateful obedience.

 

[1] The same Greek phrase is used in Romans 3:4. See John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, pg. 94, footnote 1.

[2] See the sermon given on December 12, 2021, Two Destinies, One Lord from Genesis 4.

[3] See P.G. Mathew, Romans: The Gospel Freedom, Vol. 1, Grace & Glory Ministries, 2011, pg. 653