Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - By the Blood of Jesus Christ

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

In Romans 3, we have the heart of Paul’s message about what God has done to put the world right in Jesus Christ.  Christianity alone says that God prepares a perfect righteous record through Jesus Christ and gives it freely to you. So you’re saved not by performance—you’re saved by faith. And that faith is not just faith in general—it’s faith in the blood of Christ. But what does that mean?  There are three words that help us grasp the meaning of the blood of Christ. We’re told here 1) what we need, which is redemption, 2) what he does, which is propitiation, and 3) what it means for us, which is demonstration. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 15, 2009. Series: Bible: The Whole Story - Restoration and Redemption. Scripture: Romans 3:21-31. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel and Life. If someone asked you what the main story of the Bible is, what would you say? Today, Tim Keller is preaching through the central storyline of the Bible. What went wrong with the human race? What God has done to rescue us through Christ? And how God means to restore the world? We're glad you're listening with us.

The scripture reading this morning is taken from the Book of Romans chapter 3 verses 21 through 31. But now, a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness comes from God, comes through faith and Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference for all have sinned and all for short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace

through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Christ presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his four bearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the Lord? No! But on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles to yes of Gentiles to since there is only one God who will justify their circumcise by faith and the uncircumcise through that same faith.

Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law. This is the word of the Lord. Every week we're saying that the Bible is a single story, comprises a single story of what is wrong with the human race in this world, what God has done to put it right in Jesus Christ, and as a result, how

history will turn out. And here, not only in chapter 3, but especially actually in chapters 3, 24, 25, and 26, we have the heart of the heart of Paul's message about what God has done to put the world right in Jesus Christ. We're justified freely through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice so that we can be, that He can be both just

and justifier of those who believe. Now, last week, we looked only at that first term justified and we said that every other religion in the world calls you to prepare a righteous record and give it to God. But Christianity alone says that God prepares a perfect righteous record through Jesus Christ and gives it to you.

And so you're saved not by performance, you're saved by faith and received by grace. But what is that faith? That faith, we're told here in verse 24 and 25, it's not just faith in general that connects you to God, it's faith in His blood. Faith in His blood. The blood of Christ. What does that mean? What does that represent? It's obviously crucial. It's at the heart of the heart of what God did to put things right. And to understand it, there's three words that Paul gives us and we're going to unpack each of the three. Two of the three are in the English version one is not. The three words are redemption,

propitiation and demonstration. Redemption, where it says sacrifice of atonement is the word propitiation and then later on demonstration. Just in those three verses, those three words tell us pretty much what we need to know to grasp the meaning of the blood of Christ. And we can look at it another way. We're told here what we need, which is redemption, what he does, which is propitiation, and what it means for us, which is demonstration. What we need, what he does, and what it means to us.

First, what we need, which is we need, what he does and what it means to us. First, what we need, which is, we need redemption. We can only be justified through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ. Now this word redemption, obviously, is the English translation of a Greek word, but fortunately for us, the English word has a kind of background that helps us. It's pretty close to the Greek word because even the word redeem, if you think about it, its background is it means to buy back. To redeem something means to liberate through a purchase. Now, the background of the biblical word lies in the fact that lies in the fact that in ancient times there was no such thing as bankruptcy law. There was no such thing as declaring bankruptcy.

If you owed creditors more than you could pay them, you lost your freedom. First, you lost your land, of course, and then you became a tenant farmer, let's say. But ordinarily, you also lost your freedom. You became a slave. You had to work for that person. You had to work for your creditor until you paid it

to person off, and it could easily be, and often happened. That would be years and years, and maybe you would die before you paid it to person off and it could easily be and often happen That would be years and years and maybe you would die before you paid them off and therefore you lost your freedom Now Because that happened in the book of Leviticus in chapter 25 in verse 25 You can go look this up Because we knew people do get into poverty, things go wrong. There's famines, there's mistakes, and people do get into enormous debt.

And they did lose their freedom. In Leviticus 25, 25, it says, we have to make a provision. And the provision was for what the Hebrew text calls a goel. Because people are going to fall into poverty. They are going to fall into slavery. See, and this slavery here means, of course, you know, indebtedness. Because of this, there needs to be what they call goels. A goel was a Kinsman Redeemer. There needs to be a redeemer. And a goel, or a Kinsman Redeemer, had to have three characteristics. One is a relative.

If somebody fell into debt, someone fell into poverty. The Kinsman Redeemer, first of all, had to be of the same flesh and blood relative. Secondly, this person had to act not out of compulsion, but out of love, freely voluntarily. But then thirdly, the go well, the Kinsman Redeemer, had to buy their Kinsmen, buy their brother, their sister, buy their liberation by bearing the cost themselves, by bearing the debt, taking all the cost of the debt on himself. And therefore, because of poverty, because of indebtedness, because this happened, there was a provision

in the Mosaic Law for Kinsman Redeemers. But here we have Paul saying, we all need redemption. Everybody, the whole human race needs redemption. And that must mean something a little higher level here. For Paul to say we all need redemption means, we're all in slaves in slavery. We're all spiritually slaves. What does he mean then? What do we need redemption from? In what does our slavery consist? And there's at

least two things we ought to keep in mind if we understand what the blood of Christ actually accomplishes. One reason we need redemption is we're enslaved to guilt, shame, and the law. We are enslaved to the idea that we're not measuring up. We feel inadequate. We feel guilty. We're not measuring up to standards. Now I got to do a little bit of, I need to work on you a little bit here. Here's why.

Traditional cultures, and there's a lot of traditional cultures in the world, you know. Generally not North American and Europe, but there are traditional cultures in the world. And they are shaman guilt cultures. In other words, in those cultures, shaman and guilt is not looked like such a bad thing. In those cultures, shaman guilt gets you to do your job. They lay shaman guilt on everybody all over the place. And everybody says, that's fine. It's how you get people to do their job.

In our culture, however, Shaman Gilt's a bad thing. In our culture, we tell people, you need to write your own scripts for how you want to live your life. You should not try to live up to anybody else's standards. You ought to decide what is right or wrong for you. And in our culture, Shaman Gilt is something for, well, in an older generation used to call that a neurosis. Today we say, you haven't taken control of your life. So, shame and guilt, we don't have a problem with shame and guilt because we decide what is right or wrong for us. Well, yeah, Franz Kafka, the great writer, Franz Kafka, was not fooled. And in his diary, he was a very modern person in the 20th century, modern Western civilization,

but he wrote in his diary, the state in which we find ourselves today is sinful, quite independent of guilt. Sinful, yet independent of guilt. Now, what he means by that, we know, is this. We live in a relativistic culture. We say, oh, truth, morality, right or wrong, it's relative to me. We live in a culture that doesn't have the concept of guilt or the category.

And we live, we intellectually tell ourselves, there is no right and wrong, except what I'd say. And yet we can't shake the fact that we feel a sense of shame and condemnation, that we're not adequate, that we're not living up to, we're no where close to being what we ought to be. So what he's saying is, we feel like sinners, even though we don't have the concept or the category for sinners, we think, no, there's not just things that's going to happen, and yet we're driven by it anyway. And actually, in some ways, it makes it harder to deal with than it does in traditional

cultures. And so this is the reason why many, many folks have said, many psychologists and sociologists and various sorts of observers and analysts have noticed that even though we all say we're free of guilt and shame in Western culture but we're workaholics, we're obsessed with our looks. You know? We have a great deal of problem with, we feel that we need to promote ourselves, we need to prove ourselves, and we're just riddled with anxieties. We don't call that guilt, but that's what it is.

All that comes from a need to prove ourselves, you know, a concern about how we look, that in traditional cultures, the work of holism sometimes, concerned about how we look, that in traditional cultures, the workaholism sometimes, certainly, it's a way, in traditional cultures, you see the gilton shame. It's sort of like the oil leak is above the water lines you see where it's coming from. In western cultures, because we tell ourselves, no, there is no gilton shame, yet we're all driven, we're all anxious, we're all upset, you know, we can't take criticism. We're always having to prove ourselves. We have the same problem because we're human beings.

And we know, as Kafka says, there's something wrong with us. We are enslaved to guilt and shame, but it's like an oily coming from below the water line. We can't really tell where it's from. But that's not all. Oh, and by the way, let me give you one great reason why we'll never be free of guilt and shame. Andrew Dombanco, in one of his books, comments on an incident in one of Walker Percy's novels called Love in the Ruins.

Max's psychiatrist, for whom pleasure without guilt, is the essence of happy and lightened life. He believes that, hey, we're modern people. We realize that you have to decide what's right or wrong for you. So you should never feel guilty. You should never let other people standards oppress you. But he has a patient named Tom, who's just had an affair. And he's having trouble understanding Tom, because Tom says,

look, I don't feel guilty about the affair, but I'm still troubled. So one point, Max says, the psychiatrist, well, then what worries you if you don't feel guilty? Tom says, that's what worries me. I don't see then what is it that is a problem? If there's no guilt after your fear, what is the problem?" And Tom says, it means you don't have life in you. And Dobanko comments this quote, what the psychiatrist does not understand is the guilt he no longer feels had been his last reassurance that there existed something in the world that transcended him.

And what Delmaca goes on to say is this, if there's no guilt or shame because you decide what is right or wrong for you because everything is relative, yeah, there's no guilt, but then there's no meaning. Because if there's no truth out here above us, not created by us, sitting in judgment on us so that we can have guilt if we don't live up to it. See, there's no truth, there's no really right and wrong out here, then it really doesn't matter how you live at all, which means everything is meaningless. There's no guilt, but then there's no meaning. Because you know, the world's going to burn up someday, and nobody even be around or remember anything you've done. So whether you live a loving life or a cruel life makes no difference at all. No guilt,

no meaning. But you know what? We know that there's meaning. We know some things are right and wrong. We know there's a way we need to live and therefore we're guilty. We're enslaved to guilt, shame, inadequacy, it drives us. But that's not all. The other thing we need to be redeemed of is not just from the law, as it were, not just from guilt and shame and the need to live up to standards. We also need to be redeemed and liberated from what

the Bible would call false masters. If, and we all do, if you feel the need to prove yourself, because we have this sense, as Kafka said, of being a sinner. We turn to our job. We turn to academia. Some of us, we're good students, and then we're going to try to be professors. We're going to try to be scholars. Some of us go into career, and we're going to make money, or we're going to try to be scholars. Some of us go into career and we're going to make money or we're going to have professional success.

Some of us go into relationships and if this person loves me and I have a family, but if we're looking at those things as are significance and security, they're not just a job, they're not just a school, they're not just a family, then they become a master. Here's what a slave master is. A slave master is someone who has no boundaries and someone who beats you up if you fail. See, we often say, oh, my boss here in New York City is a slave master. Well, you don't know what a real slave master is.

A real slave master has no boundaries. They can do anything they want to you and they do. And when you feel a little bit, they beat you. And how do you know whether you're family, how do you know whether you're career, how do you know whether you're school is a slave master or just a family a career in a school? And the answer is you can't say no to them.

Say they're slave masters. You work too hard, say. You can't say no to them. Say they're slave masters. You work too hard. Say, you can't stop them. If you are enslaved in a relationship, that means you can't say no. You can't walk away. Say, you've got to have them. They're your significance, your security,

your very self-guidedity. Same thing with making money. Same thing with your career. These things aren't, this isn't just a job, this isn't just your money, this isn't just a school, this isn't just a relationship, they are slave masters and if you don't live up, they beat you, it's that self-hatred, it's that self-load, and they beat you. You need to be redeemed. You need to be redeemed from the law, you're enslaved to the law, you're enslaved to guilt and shame.

You're also need to be redeemed from the false masters that we set up in order to shield us from this sense, cover our shame, this sense that we're not what we ought to be. So we need redemption. What does he do about it? Second word is propitiation. What he does Second word is propitiation. What he does about it is propitiation. Now, by the way, everything I just told you about redemption that God wants to save you and redeem you from your false masters,

from being enslaved to the things we do, from guilt and shame. Everybody in our modern Western culture loves all that point. That you love point one, okay? No matter who you are, hey, point one, I like point two They you love point one okay no matter who you are. Hey point one I like point till you're gonna hate. Because the second thing we're told here the thing God does to affect the redemption is God presented him as a sacrifice of Atomin. That's three words but it's actually translating one word and it's a word holastrium which means propitiation in the Old King James Bible, the word propitiation, it's an Old English word, and it means to turn away wrath.

Propitiation means to turn away wrath to appease or satisfy anger. The word propitiation means the Lord pays the debt to justice himself. There's three things in there. Pays the debt to justice himself. Now here's the place where modern folks really, really freak out about what the Bible says about the cross.

So let me slow it down. Now let's talk about those three things the perpetuation means. Let's do it in this order. First of all, it's all about justice, wrath or justice. God's wrath is his anger against injustice and sin and evil. And that's the reason why all through here, the whole reason why Jesus had to die,

is demonstrate justice, to do justice, to deal with justice. He can't just forgive, he can't just let things go by. Justice has to be done. That's what you see there. God's wrath is his settled opposition to that which is wrong, evil, sin. It's not emotional crankiness. Nevertheless, we really don't like this idea

of an angry God and people say all the time, let's not restress the anger and justice of God. Let's stress the love and goodness of God. But that shows you don't understand even how a heart works. You can't pit anger and justice against love and goodness. It's the love and goodness that makes you angry at injustice. Here's a woman some years ago, a Christian woman writing an essay about this, and she struggled with

this idea of God being angry and, you know, a just angry God. But then she remembered a time in her life when she was watching two talented people that she loved very much, thinking into drug abuse. And she said, quote, I felt fury. Everything in me wanted to shake them. Can't you see? I said to them, don't you know what you're doing to yourself? You become less and less yourself every time I see you.

Don't you see what you're doing to the people around you? And then she goes on, real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Anger and love are inseparably bound in experience. And if I, flawed narcissistic woman that I am, can feel this much pain and anger over someone's condition out of love, how much more a morally perfect God who has made them? Anger isn't the opposite of love.

Hate is, and the final form of hate is in difference. Anger is not the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is in difference. What she means is rather simple. The reason why God is so angry at the sin and evil that destroying the human race that he loves and made, destroying the world that he loves and made, the reason he's so angry is because he's so filled with love and goodness. If he wasn't filled with love and goodness. If he wasn't filled with love and goodness he wouldn't care.

So the more loving you are, the easier you get angry, the easier you get angry at sin, wrongdoing, things that are destroying the things that you love. And so it's a pit love and justice against each other is silly, that's the first thing. So, propitiation means justice must be satisfied. So, you don't put that against love. Well, then the second thing, the second aspect of propitiation is that the blood of Jesus Christ pays the debt to our justice. Most Christians, even pastors, struggle to talk about their faith in a way that applies the power of the gospel to change lives, especially in our skeptical culture. Tim Keller's book of preaching, Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism is a guide for anyone who wants to become more

effective in communicating about their faith. Pastors and laypeople alike. Drawing on his years of experience, Dr. Keller will help you share your faith in a more engaging, passionate and compassionate way from the pulpit or in the coffee shop. Preaching is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the hope of Christ's love with people all over the world. So request your copy today at GospelOnLife.com slash give. That's GospelOnLife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. When someone wrongs you, wrongs you deeply, there's only two things to do and both of them entails suffering.

The one thing you can do is someone really wrongs you, really harms you as they've robbed you of something. They've robbed you of happiness, they've robbed you of reputation, they've robbed you of money, something've robbed you of happiness, they've robbed you of reputation, they've robbed you of money, something. And if they have wronged you, then the one thing you can do is you can find a way to hurt them. It's a lot of fun, at least to start with. It takes a lot of ingenuity,

and we have a lot of creative people in New York City. And you find ways to hurt them. You find ways to rob them of their happiness. And so you go after them. If they've hurt you and you hurt them back, pretty much as much as they hurt you. And maybe a little more after all they started it. Next thing, you feel that the debt is gone.

I mean, they don't owe you anymore, right? Because you made them suffer. But there's a problem with that. Because if someone wrongs you and you pay them back and make them suffer, evil wins. How? Well, first of all, you become a harder person. You become a harder character. You become somebody who doesn't trust people like you did. You're a cooler. You're more able to do something, pretty cruel. You thought it was all justified, but now you've done it. You'll do it again, easier, faster than last time.

Not only does the evil win because it makes you a hard character, but the perpetrator, if you're paying that person back and making them suffer, they'll never see the truth. They'll never see what they did. And then they'll come paying back, coming to you. They'll think, well, I'm going to pay you back. And then you'll pay them back. People will be involved in it.

There's always other people involved with it. And on and on, it goes. And evil wins. So if we make them suffer and pay the debt, then what should we do? So evil doesn't win. We forgive, but you know what that means? Then we suffer. We bear the loss of reputation.

We bear the loss of money. We bear the loss of having. We suffer. But it's the only way, perhaps the perpetrator will ever see the light. It's the only way you will stay a soft-hearted person instead of a hard-hearted person. It's the only way evil doesn't win. Now you realize what happens. When a wrong is done, there's only two things that can happen.

They suffer or you suffer. If a wrong's done to you, they suffer. You suffer. That's the only way to deal with it. That that cannot be willed away. It has to be paid through suffering. Wait a minute. If you see, even at your individual human level, that when someone wrongs, when someone does the wrong,

the debt cannot be willed away, but has to be paid through suffering, that there's a debt owed to justice, and you can't just will it away, justice is owed something, and it can only be paid through suffering. If you understand at the individual level, as that writer said, us, flawed, narcissistic, sinful people,

then how much less can an absolutely just, because he's an absolutely loving God. Just let the sins go that is destroying the human race, that is destroying the world. He can't. But he loves us and he wants to forgive us. So what is he doing on the cross? He's doing on the cross cosmically what you have to do, even if you want to forgive us in individually.

He's paying the debt to his own justice. He's satisfying his own justice. And that leads to the last part of perpetuation. See, some people say, I hate this idea of a wrathful God. Well, then you don't have a loving God. Well, I hate this idea that this sin has to be paid for like a debt. Why can't you just forgive? Well, you can't just forgive either. All right, well one thing I really hate is this idea of blood sacrifice that a God needs blood to be appeased.

How awful and primitive and you sit there saying, I remember back in school, junior high school, I read a book once by a guy named Homer, can't remember his last name. And I remember there was this place where Agamemnon, one of the Greek generals, he had gotten on the wrong side of one of the goddesses, Artemis, you know, and she wouldn't give him fair winds to get the choice.

So they were all going to lose the battle over there. And so what did Agamemnon do? You know, to appease the wrath of Artemis, he sacrificed his daughter, if a genoa. And when Artemis looked down from heaven and said, ah, okay, well, you killed your daughter. Well, all right, maybe you really do honor me. Okay, I'll give you a fair of wins. And you say, that's primitive, that's barbaric,

that's horrible. That idea of God, thank goodness that that kind of religion has sort of died out in the world. I hope, at least it's, I think it is. And guess what, Here you have Paul bringing it back. How awful this God that needs to be appeased, you know, this begrudging angry God that needs to be appeased by the death of his son, but you're forgetting something. It says here, God presented this. God himself presented this, in verse 25? And look, this is a, everybody,

the Trinity boggles the mind, that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are one God in three persons, one God in three persons. I know it boggles the mind, but right now, it's a huge help. Because on the cross, it was God Himself coming in the form of Jesus Christ and demanding not

our blood and not your child's blood, but shedding His own blood. It's the opposite of paganism. It's the opposite of barbarism. It's the opposite. Not at all. Jesus Christ was the propitiation for our sins, and as a result, we're redeemed. But that's not all. There's one more thing we have to look at.

There's one more very important word. This incredible atonement, the death of Jesus Christ, the redemption of Christ on the cross, the propitiation of Christ on the cross, was a legal transaction, but it's also a public demonstration. The word demonstration that's used again and again means a public presentation. In other words, the cross was not designed simply to change our status but to change our hearts. Not just to change our status through a legal transaction,

but to change our hearts by showing us who God really is and who is He, both Justin, Justifier, those who believe. Here's how we go at this. You want to have your heart changed? First of all, listen. In the Old Testament, the principle of a Redeemer is there. It's in Leviticus 25, 25, a Goel, a Kinsman Redeemer, someone of the same flesh and blood who voluntarily and lovingly bears the debt himself. And we have a great case study in the Old Testament.

The greatest Goel, the greatest Kinsman Redeemer in the Old Testament, is in the book of Ruth. Now, the story of Ruth is heart-rending and also heart-warming. Ruth was a mollibitis. She was not a Jew. She was not Israelite. She lived in another country. And there was a Jewish family that was so journeying in this other country. It was called Moab.

Ruth was a mollibitis. And they had a couple of strapping young men and Ruth fell in love with one of them and marry him. But then a plague came through and all the men in that whole family died. And that left Ruth a widow. And it left her mother-in-law Naomi a widow. And Naomi turned to Ruth and said, I want to go home.

I want to go back to Israel. I don't have anything here, but I don't have anything there. But at least I have some family there. And I want to go back. And of course, that's the place where Ruth gives the very famous speech, and treat me not to leave the, where you go, I will go, your people will be my people and your God, my God.

And so Ruth and the other daughter-in-law go back with Naomi to Israel. But there in Israel things are hardly any better at all. Because there Naomi's family had owned some land, but because of debts she had lost it. And when you have a band of widows, women, widows, in a patriarchal agrarian society, you have absolute economic marginalization. They were in danger of starving to death. But so that they wouldn't starve to death, Ruth began to glean. Ruth decided to go out to glean.

And gleaning was what the poor could do. You could go out into a field, and they would just take the sheaves that were at the margins of the field, the leftovers, as it were. But Ruth was a mulbiteist. She was a foreigner. And as a result, she was a young woman, and therefore she was in tremendous danger when she went out in public and did that,

of being abused. So she got up her courage, though, in order to save the family, and she went out and began gleaning. And Boaz, the owner of the field where she was gleaning, saw her, and was kind to her, and came and said to her, I have told my men not to touch you. which shows how brutal that society was at the time,

to a racially other woman. I've told my men not to touch you, and I want you to glean here, but don't go to any other field because you could be in real trouble there. You just come back here every day. So she picked up her shoes and she was very happy and she went home and told Naomi and Naomi says to her, Boaz, the man who owned the field was Boaz, why he's a kinsman and then Ruth decided on a very, very bold plan. And the next day, Boaz wakes up in the morning in his bedroom and there at his feet is Ruth. And he startled who is this and recognizes her and then suddenly Ruth says,

spread your garment over me and be my Kinsman Redeemer. Marry me, love me, and redeem me and my family. And Boa's, like a good Kinsman Redeemer, looks down upon her and says, this realizes who Naomi is, same foot, because you are of my flesh and blood, and because I do this voluntarily, he says, I will be your Kinsman Redeemer, I will buy back the land, I will pay the debt, I will bear it myself, and buy back the land, and redeem pay the debt. I will bear it myself and buy back the land and redeem the family.

But more than that, he doesn't just cover her debt. He marries her. He loves her. He doesn't just cover the debt. He doesn't just give us pardon. He gives her justification, is it worth? All that he is and all that he has becomes hers. And so instead of just covering the debt,

he floods her life with love and honor. How wonderful, what a nice story. Wouldn't it be nice if it happened to you or me? It can, it does. It has. Because Jesus is the ultimate Kinsman Redeemer. First of all, what did it take for him to come to Kinsman? For him to be our flesh and blood. He had to come from heaven to earth. He had to empty himself of all of his glory. He had to be found in likeness as a human being. But secondly, what did it take for him to be?

Not just a Kingsmen, but a Redeemer. It didn't just cost him his money. It cost him his life. Because our debt wasn't finite. It was infinite. But look at what he has done. Propitiation, say, he bore the cost himself. Do you not see now what it means to be a Christian? Being a Christian is not to say,

I promised to truly try hard. I'll try to live like Jesus. I'll try to come to church. I'll try to obey the thinking of him. It's no, what it means to become a Christian is to say, spread your garment over me. You know, be my redeemer. And you know what Jesus will say?

I will, even though it costs me everything I will. And he won't just pardon you. He won't just cover your debt, don't you understand? He unites with us. He takes us into his life. He comes into our lives. And all that he is, and all that he has, that's what we were talking about last week,

becomes ours. Now, this is what's demonstrated. And what's demonstrated now is he is both just unjustified of those who believe. Now, look, look, that's what demonstrate means. Look and be changed by this. There is a kind of God of traditional religion that says, he's a demonstrate means. Look and be changed by this. There is a kind of God of traditional religion that says he's a demanding God.

It's a God of all demanding. You better be good, you better be good, and if you try hard enough, maybe I'll take you to heaven. But this God, the God of the cross, is more just and holy than that. Because Jesus Christ's action of going to the cross is the most perfect obedience. When Jesus Christ went to the cross and He didn't deserve it, He didn't need to, but He did

it for us voluntarily. The go well, the Kinsman Redeemer. He perfectly loved God with all his heart, so strength in the money. He perfectly loved His neighbor, as himself. He fulfilled the law, that's what Paul says. This absolutely fulfills the law. The God of the cross doesn't just want you to try hard. The God of the cross wants perfect obedience to the law

and in Jesus Christ he gets it in your place. So see, on the one hand, the God of the cross is more holy than just the demanding God of, in a traditional religion, but on the other hand, he's more loving than the secularized liberal view of God that says, oh, I just believe in a God who loves and accepts everybody. And whenever I had somebody say,

I just believe that God loves and accepts everybody. I always say, what did it cost your God to love you? And they say, well, I don't know, nothing. But the biblical God, because he's a holy God, is an infinitely loving God, because he's so holy,. He's an infinitely loving God. Because he's so holy, he couldn't just forgive. He had to suffer and he did. And so what you have on the cross is a God,

do you believe in the blood? Do you believe in the need for the wrath of God to be appeased by the blood of Jesus Christ? Then you have a God far more holy than the most moralistic, legalistic religion and far more loving than the most secularized, liberalized religion. At once, why? He's both just and justifier. That's what demonstrates it and that will change the heart.

See fear alone never changes the heart. You better be good or you're going to go to hell. That doesn't change the heart. I have a pastor friend once that was on call at a hospital. You know, one of those where you're pastor locally and if somebody in the hospital suddenly wants, you know, pastor, they call you in the middle of the night. And one night in the middle of the night, you got a call. And he ran in and when he got there, the, it was amid the, the man said, I'm so sorry pastor, I am so sorry to

bother you. You know, I thought I was going to die. They came in and said I had one month to live. And then 15 minutes later, they realized it was the wrong X-rays. And I'm not a very religious guy. And, you know, I'm really not interested. But I mean, for a moment there, I really thought I needed you. This is true story. You know what that means? Fear cannot awaken love.

Only love awakens love. Fear cannot awaken love. Only love awakens love. But I'll tell you another thing, this idea of a God who just loves everybody except everybody, how can I change your life? That electrify you? Does it amaze you at his love? Of course I say, well, you know, no, an absolutely abusive parent and an absolutely permissive parent, ruin the kid. If you're totally a permissive,, ruin the kid. If you're totally permissive, no boundaries,

totally abusive, always demanding, always been out, it ruins the kid, the guy to the cross is neither. Neither. If you look at him, it'll change your life. I mean, it'll really change your life. Do you not believe that? I was reading the autobiography of Billy Graham recently, and he tells about the fact that

in 1955 he was invited to speak at Cambridge University to the students at Great St. Mary's Hall. And when it came out in the public that he was going to be doing that, just in August, just before he went, there were letters to the Times of London really upset. I mean, in other words, the culture was upset that this fundamentalist, Baptist American before he went. There were letters to the times of London really upset. I mean, in other words, the culture was upset that this fundamentalist, Baptist American preacher, was going to come and speak to our best and brightest

about a primitive kind of religion, the blood, and atonement, and hell. Now, the letter said, we believe religion is good in its place. But we've gotten past that. That's Americans. They're all so conservative, they're also fundamentalists. And this freak poor Billy Graham out,

when he read all those letters and he felt like everybody said, you're just a country bumpkin and you're coming and talking to our students at Cambridge. And so the very first three nights he was there, he tried real hard to quote the intellectuals and quote the scholars and he felt flat on his face. And after that, he got down on his knees, he said, my last talk is tonight and I'm just going to forget it.

I'm just going to preach the cross. And there's another man who remembers being there and I got this off a tape a few years ago of what happened that night. He said, I'll never forget that night. I was in the totally packed chancel sitting on the floor of Great Saint Mary's with the Regis Professor of Divinity sitting on one side of me and the chaplain of a college, he was a future bishop on the other side of me. Both of these were good men but completely

against the idea that we needed salvation from sin by the blood of Christ. And Dear Billy Graham got up that night and began a genesis and went right through the whole Bible and talked about every single sacrifice in it. The blood was just flowing all over the great hall, everywhere, for three quarters of an hour. And both my neighbors were horribly embarrassed by this crude proclamation of the blood of Christ and also smug, knowing that no bright sophisticated young British person is going to listen to any of this stuff, and it was everything they disliked and dreaded, but at the end of

the sermon, to everyone's shock, 400 young men and women stayed to commit their last to Christ, and there were only 8,000 students in the student body then. I remember meeting a young pastor some years later, a Cambridge graduate at Birmingham Cathedral, and over a cup of tea, I said, where were the Christian things begin for you? Oh, a Cambridge in 55, he said, when, Billy Graham, what night?

It was Wednesday night. How did that happen? Well, he said, all I remember is that I walked out of great sitmarries for the first time in my life thinking, Christ really died for me. What was unbelievable to the dawns was that a man like that, preaching a sermon like that, could have totally changed the life of a young person like that.

But so it did. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that you have demonstrated to the redemption and propitiation of the cross of Jesus Christ that you can be both just and just a fire of those who believe, Oh my, that's what changes the life. You are infinitely holy and infinitely loving at once because of the cross. And we pray that the kind of unique lives that should flow from the grasp of that,

lives that are filled with a passion to be like you, to be as honest, to be as courageous, to be as true, to be as sacrificing, to be as loving as you. And yet at the same time, we know that when we fail, that we're covered by Christ. So this passion, to live like you at the same time, this gentleness with each other and with ourselves when we don't. This unique kind of community, we wanna be that, we wanna be that. And we ask that you would help the cross of Jesus Christ

to be smack in the middle of our hearts, our consciousness, our feelings, let it liberate us from our false masters, let us liberate us from guilt and sin. We pray this in Jesus name, amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller. If you were encouraged by this podcast, we invite you to consider becoming a gospel and life monthly partner.

Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 2009 and 2016. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

While Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.