Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Our Ransom, Redeemed by Blood (Part 3)

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Forgiveness isn’t something that can just be given for free; it always has a cost. When we commit an offense against someone and they forgive us, they pay the price of the time, money, or reputation we took from them. Ephesians tells us our sins against God, too, come with a real cost that only Jesus could pay—and that understanding this can truly transform our lives. Let’s look at how 1) no sin can be forgiven without someone absorbing the cost, 2) why Jesus’s crucifixion was the necessary answer for us breaking God’s Law, and 3) how our lives can be radically changed by this grace. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 31, 1992. Series: Salvation From the Outside In. Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-8. 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. We live in a culture that encourages us to focus on ourselves, our needs, our goals, our fulfillment. But what if our lives only made sense when we see them as part of a much bigger story? This summer, we're featuring one of Tim Keller's longer sermon series in which he teaches about the core truths of the Christian faith and the big picture of God's ultimate plan of salvation for humanity, revealing how we can find real meaning, growth, and change in Christ. We're going to look at verse seven for the last time. So when I get to verse seven, I'll read it slowly, but look at the sentence, look at the unit.

Ephesians 1, verses 4 through 8. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. Let's look at the last, for the last time at verse 7, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

Let's just look at the word forgiveness and redemption for one last time. Last week, well, no, last time. We looked at the first aspect of redemption. Tonight I'd like to look at the second aspect. Redemption, the word redemption is in Greek. It's the word Apollutron, which means a rant. And a ransom means, has two sides to it. A ransom means, first of all, that the parties that being paid for are in some sort of bondage.

There's some kind of, they're in some kind of prison, they're captured. You only pay a ransom if somebody is in slavery or bondage of some sort. Then secondly, a ransom also means that there's an exchange. for the life of the person in bondage. You give some sort of payment, you give some kind of exchange, or some sort of substitution so that the person in bondage can go free.

So when the Bible says Jesus redeemed you, he redeemed us, that means, first of all, that we were in dire straits. We were in a terrible condition. We were in bondage. We were in slavery. We were under a curse.

We were under the threat of death, or we were dead. And secondly, it means that there was a tremendous price paid, a substitution, an exchange, something of enormous value so that we could go free. Something was exchanged and given so that we could have our lives. Now, the last time we looked a little bit at what it means to say, the word redemption, what the implications are, what it means to say that we're in bondage. And the word forgiveness, we have redemption, we have forgiveness of sin, shows that essentially the ransom is paid because we are in bondage

to guilt. Guilt is the great problem. It's the first problem that Jesus' death and his blood shed on the cross deals with. Guilt is one of the big, I called the Big Five. Now what I mean by the Big Five is that if you're not a Christian, you don't. don't have an answer. You have no way to address five major problems in life. The problem of meaning, the problem of guilt, the problem of death, the problem of knowledge, and the problem of suffering. And there's no reason for us to go into the problems now. If any of you came to any other service today, you'll know that I was just dealing with the fact of the problem of meaning. If there is no God, if we don't know if there's a God, then nothing means anything. Unless Jesus is who

he said he is, there's no way to deal with a problem of meaning. And you go down the big five, and one of the reasons that I'm a Christian today is that over the years, I looked at those things that every thoughtful person struggles with. What does my life mean? Is one of them. How can I face death? Is another one. How do I understand the suffering in my life at other people's life is another one? How do I know that I know anything? How does anyone know anything? How can there be any kind of truth? And then lastly, the most important one for us tonight, how do I deal with my guilt? Remember two weeks ago I quoted the place where Macbeth sees his wife, Lady Macbeth,

who is just going crazy, literally, with guilt. And he turns to the doctor, remember? And he says, oh, canst thou not pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow? And with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the bosom of that perilous stuff that weighs down the heart. Now, the perilous stuff that weighs down the heart is guilt. And so Macbeth says to his doctor, can't you mix up some sweet oblivious antidote to cleanse the guilt? And what's the doctor say?

The patient, he says, must minister to himself. Now, that doctor had a lot more insight than a lot of people today. What he's saying is no human being can give any other human being forgiveness. I don't care how many groups you go to in which every other person in the group has the same problem you do and has done the same thing you have. You go to that group and everybody sits around and says, hey, lower your standards.

Don't feel so guilty. We've all done the same thing. Listen, you feel better because of the empathy. better because that you're not unusual, but ultimately, can that deal with the guilt? See, that Macbeth's doctor was right. Another human being cannot give you forgiveness. That's the reason why when Jesus went around and began to forgive sins, when he went around and says, your sins are forgiven, why did the religious leaders get so upset? Why didn't they say, oh, a new therapy? Are you licensed? That's not what he said.

They immediately wanted to stone him. They wanted to put him to death. They knew that he was guilty of blasphemy, because they had more on the ball than we do, and that is if Jesus is forgiving people and giving them forgiveness of sins, he is claiming to be God. They realize that no human being can give another human being forgiveness.

See, no therapy, no group, nothing can give you forgiveness for guilt. He can help you understand why you feel guilty. It can help you understand the root. roots of your guilt. It can help you understand a lot of things, but it can't get rid of your guilt. It's the problem. It's the big problem. Forgiveness is something that we can't deal with. And here's why. Any of you remember, oh, some weeks ago, in another service we looked at, Paul's wonderful statement in Galatian 6, in which he says, God forbid that I should glory

save in the cross of Christ, my God. we said on that day this, the reason that forgiveness is such a problem is that sins are debts. Some people ask me, they say, why when we pray the Lord's Prayer at Redeemer, do you say, forgive us our debts? Why don't you say forgive us our trespasses? Why do you like debts instead of trespasses? Well, you know, there's a sense in which the two words mean the same thing, and it's neither here nor there. But I like the word debts because I think it gets something across that the word trespass doesn't. And that is, sin always has cost somebody something, and sin always creates an outstanding debt.

If I say, I'm going to meet you at this restaurant at noon, and I forget, very thoughtless, I forget all about it. I didn't take the trouble to remind myself. I didn't take the trouble to organize. I didn't take the trouble and so forth. So I forget. Afterwards, I feel awful. And I say, will you forgive me?

and the person says, forget it. Of course I forgive you. You're out two hours because of my sin. My sin has a cost to it. My sin is a debt. I owe you two hours. You're out two hours. You've lost something. If you lend me your coat, and I say thank you, it's a very cold night. You lend me your coat. And I lose it. You're out the amount of money of the coat. If I slander you, now it gets harder now because you can't quantify these things monetarily. If I slander you, if I tell someone, somebody something about you, which is true, but it really puts you in a bad light, or is not true or is exaggerated. Again, you're out something. You're out, I don't know, some amount of reputation, if you could somehow measure it. Every sin, every sin is a debt, and that means

that when you forgive, you can only forgive somebody by absorbing the cost. There's no way to forgive somebody and have the sin kind of go into thin air. There has never been a sin that was forgiven without at the same moment the forgiver paying the cost. If you say to me, you lost my coat, forget it. In other words, if you forgive me for losing your coat, you are out whatever amount of money it's going to cost you to replace that coat. So when you forgave me, the debt didn't go into thin air, it didn't go like that, what happened? You paid it. What you mean when you say, I forgive you, is I will pay it.

I will absorb the cost. That's not going to thin air. Now, it gets harder when you're thinking of non-monetary things. So, for example, if you know somebody is slandering you, if you know somebody's putting you in a bad light, and you talk with that person, and that person says, you're right, I'm sorry, let's just say that you say, I forgive you. What does that mean?

I'll tell you what it must mean or you don't mean what you're saying. A lot of people, when they say I forgive you, what they mean is, I'm not going to actively hurt you. See, that's what people mean when they say, I forgive you, but I won't forget. Now, what's that mean? It means I'm not going to actively hurt you, I'm going to passively hurt you. That's what it means. See, let me tell you what it means to forgive that person. A week later, you have an opportunity to tell somebody else what they did to you.

You have an opportunity to do that and you refrain. What are you doing? You're paying the debt. You're absorbing the cost. You see a person several days later. And you really just want to walk away. You just want to walk around the other side of the auditorium. But you go up and you're warm and you say, how high, how are you?

What's going on? And you act warm when you don't want to act warm. You hold your tongue when you want to say something. You say something nice about them when you really could undercut them. What are you doing? It hurts. It's hard. It's difficult.

What you're doing is you're paying the debt yourself. Do you see that? You're absorbing the cost. There's never been a sin forgiven that wasn't at the same moment paid for by the one forgiving. See, when most people say, I forgive you for having said all these things about me, what you really mean is I'm not going to actively smear you. I'm not going to punch you out. But I'm going to avoid you. I'm going to be cold to you. I'm going to let other people know what you did to me. See, then you haven't forgiven.

Every sin is a debt. Every sin means somebody's out something. Every sin there's a cost to, and no one can forgive without absorbing that cost. Or you haven't really forgiven. See, if you say, I forgive, but you continue to kind of down the person, you avoid the person. What you're doing is you continue to hold that person liable, and you're making that person, pay. Oh, oh yeah, it might be tiny little increments. You're not punching them in the nose. Nothing big. Little increments, but you're still making them pay. You haven't forgiven them. Now think of this for a moment. Couldn't you see something like this happening? Somebody, imagine, for example, that your car goes out of control and you run into somebody's house and you do more damage to the house than you could ever pay for. The debt that you owe is greater than your net worth.

Then what do you do? Now, instinctively, we know that many, many, many of the sins we've committed and the sins that have been committed against us are greater than our net worth. We realize that we couldn't pay it back if we wanted to. We realized we couldn't pay it off if we wanted to. And the Bible says there is a lot of. not only a horizontal dimension to sin. The Bible says there's a vertical dimension to sin. Now, that's something that is absolutely important for you to recognize. If there is any meaning

in life, that means there's a divine law. If you say there's no God and there's no right and wrong, that means, of course, that nothing means anything, and that any discussion of categories like compassion versus violence and oppression are all subjective and they're all relative and they mean nothing. Now, nobody in this room can live like that. We all deeply sense that there is a real distinction between right and wrong. Why? Because we know the Bible says that there is a God. Anybody who believes that some things are really, really right no matter what you believe, and really, really wrong no matter what you believe, essentially what you're saying then is that there is a law deeper than nature. There's a law behind nature. There's a divine law. We all know

that's to be true. And therefore, we know when you read the golden rule, do one to others as you would have them do one to you, there's really two golden rules. There's the two commandments that Jesus said were the summary of all the law. Love your neighbor yourself and love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Those are both golden rules. Do you know that? And they're both utterly reasonable. If God has created you and you owe him everything, then you owe him everything. And if your neighbor, want your neighbor to treat you in this way, then you must treat your neighbor in the same way. Nobody has to teach you that. Everybody knows that intuitively. It's right in the conscience. That's the divine law. And we have an obligation to God, and when we break those laws,

when we break the Ten Commandments, when we fail to love God with all our hearts, all strength, and mind, when we fail to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are running up debts. to God, not just to our neighbors. And how can God forgive us by simply saying, forget it? He can't do it any more than you can do it. If somebody has wronged you, and you say forget it, you're atoning for that sin. If you refuse to take it out of that person's hide, if you refuse to hold that person liable, you're paying for it in the same way. If here on earth, human beings. There's no such thing as forgiveness without payment. How much less can there be forgiveness between God and human beings without payment? God could not simply say let there be forgiveness.

He couldn't just say, forget it and let the sins go off into the air. There had to be payment. There had to be payment. He had to absorb the cost himself. Now, before we go on, do you see that I'm to say this reverently, forgiveness of your sins and my sins is the greatest problem. Now, I know I'm skating on thin ice to talk like this about God. God's all powerful. I'm just trying to be true to his revelation in the Bible. Forgiving your sins and my sins was the greatest problem that God ever faced. How could there be a problem for God? And the answer is because he is both holy and because he is also loving. He's perfect. He's perfectly loving and perfectly holy, and those two things cannot play against each other.

They can't contradict each other, and that created a problem. See, in Genesis, all God had to do was say, let there be light, and there was light. God had to say, let there be water. And there was water. God had to say, let there be animal life, and there was animal life. But why is it that God couldn't just say, let there be forgiveness? why do we know from the Bible that it took him thousands of years in the fullness of time when the time was ready his son had to come to earth and in a very carefully laid out plan

had to be put to death for our sins that proves that even though God is loving he's holy which means on the one hand if God's not a holy perfect judge there's no hope for the universe because there's no solution for evil but if God is a God is not a holy perfect judge there's no hope for the universe because there's no solution for evil but if God is a wholly perfect judge and there's no hope for us unless payment was made and on the cross both the holiness and love of God were perfectly they perfectly join and they shine forth do you understand that for your forgiveness was a problem

do you understand that God couldn't just say let there be forgiveness unless you understand it unless you understand this, you really don't understand Christianity. As a matter of fact, I can prove to some of you you don't understand Christianity. For example, some of you believe that Jesus Christ is wonderful. Christianity is a wonderful religion, but there's plenty of other people in other religions who are decent and they're loving and they're kind and they're humble and they ask for forgiveness for their sins and God forgives them.

Right? Isn't that what you believe? You think it's tremendously narrow-minded to say, that only Christians who believe in Jesus would ever go to heaven. That proves you have no idea about the difficulty of forgiveness. Why, why on earth would God ever put forth his son as a redemption if there was any other way to be saved? When you say a person in another religion, without believing in Christ, without relying on his blood, a person in other religion, by being a good person, to heaven. What you're really saying is what Jesus did is not necessary. Not absolutely necessary.

Do you struggle to find the words to share your faith effectively with others? Most Christians, pastors included, have moments where we have trouble articulating what we believe and why our faith matters. In his book preaching, communicating faith in an age of skepticism, Tim Keller shows how to communicate the Christian message in a way that's clear, compassionate, and accessible, whether you're speaking to a group or having a casual conversation with a friend. Drawing from his decades of experience connecting the gospel to real-life circumstances, Dr. Keller shows how the gospel message can speak even to the most skeptical or spiritually curious people. During the month of July, we'll send you a copy of preaching as our thanks for your gift

to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospel and life.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Look, if I'm on a boat, you know, I try to find variations on this principle, variations on this illustration, but I got it from my professor in seminary, Dr. Nicole. Dr. Nicole once said, if I'm in a boat and we're in a swift river, and I'm in a boat with a friend, and a friend says to me,

you know, I just don't know how to tell you how much I love you. I know what I'll do. I'll jump out of the boat and drown myself. Then you'll know how much I love you. If the person jumps out of the boat, will you be moved? Will you say, now there is a man who really loves me? Or will you say, I wish I had grabbed him so I could have taken him to a hospital so we could have had put him under medication.

The poor man's obviously deranged. Why? Because your life wasn't in jeopardy. If he didn't have to die, then for him to voluntarily die is not. an act of love, it's an act of derangement. Do you hear that? If he didn't have to die, then his death is ridiculous, it's senseless, it's illogical, it's frivolous, it's trivial, it's perverted. But on the other hand, if the boat's sinking, and I can't swim, and he drowns but saves my life. And it's the only way that I would have been saved. Then I know that he loved me. He gave

his life for me because I really was in peril. He gave his life for me because I was really dead unless he got me out. You see? If you say that God could forgive sins apart from faith in Christ, you have no idea of the Christian understanding of sin as a debt. You have no no idea what a difficult thing forgiveness is for God. And you also have completely trivialized and made absolute mincemeat of the logic behind the death of Jesus Christ. It is now evacuated of its glory. You can't have it two ways. Either Jesus Christ's death is the only way to God or Jesus Christ's death is utter absurdity. You choose. You tell me. I'm trying to prove to a lot of you that you really don't understand the glory of what God did on the cross. If you think anybody else,

apart from faith in Christ, could possibly come to God without it, then you have no idea. It's crucially. Gosh, you know, the English word for crucial comes from the Latin word for crux, which means cross. You don't understand the cruciality of the cross. Well, let me give you another example. A lot of you say, I'm a Christian, and I believe Jesus died for me on the cross, But let's be honest, your lives are not transformed. One of the most interesting things about this text is right here. Actually, right in front and right after the verse, it says, He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ

to the praise of His glorious grace. Now listen, in verse 7, then it says, In him we have redemption through his blood according to the riches of his grace. You know what it's saying? It is saying that the greatest manifestation of the glory of God is the transformed lives of the people that he's redeemed. I'll put it another way. It says he has adopted you, he has redeemed you

to the praise of his glorious grace. That means that you are the greatest evidence of the glory of God in the universe. This is not the only place it says that. Ephesians 310 says that we have become a display case for the glory and grace of God. The angels long to look at the wisdom of God that's manifested in the church. Every so often, now, let me be personal. Every so often, I look around the congregation. Now, one of the problems that as the church has gotten bigger,

it's more and more my job to feed the shepherds and the shepherdesses, who are feeding the sheep. And as a result, I don't talk as much to people who are just coming over the line into faith in Christ as I used to. And so to some degree, I have to actually go back a year or two, but when I sit around, I can look around the congregation, I can look around on Sundays and other days, and I especially look at a lot of you that I've known for two or three years.

And I look at you sometimes and I say, what a trophy of grace that is. You know, in some ways, being a pastor, I'm privy, at least in the early days, I was privy to an awful lot of your pasts. And I know what revolutions have happened in some of your lives. And I begin to realize, when I look around, that you are trophies of God's grace, and the Bible says, ultimately, the transformed lives of the people who have been redeemed, standing in the church, is the greatest evidence of the glory of God in the universe, that the angels longed to look into it.

They're amazed with what he's done to you. They're amazed at what has actually happened to you, knowing where you were and now where you are now. We are supposed to be a people whose lives are so changed that people on the outside look at us and say, what a glorious, hear this? What a glorious God those people must have. That's what it says.

Are you adopted? Have you been redeemed? Really? That means that you will be bringing praise to the glory of God as people see what the grace of God has done in your life. Everything that's happening to you is to the praise of His glorious grace. Everything that's happening to you is an evident of His glorious grace. You are the greatest thing in the universe that shows forth the glory of God. There's nothing else like a redeemed man or a redeemed woman. Nothing. The angels don't know about it. They long to look into it. They say that we're experiencing sides of God's glory that they can't even understand yet. They're looking into us like clear glasses.

You know those glass bottom boats down in Florida? You look down. You know, if you're looking outside, you know, if you're on the boat and you're just trying to look down, you know, you have all this reflection, or I don't know what it is, but the surface makes it impossible to look down, but the glass bottom boat helps you look all the way to the bottom and you see all kinds of wonders, and we are glass-bottomed boats on the surface of the heart of God and the universe and the principalities and powers of the universe long to look into it.

Have you been changed? Have you been revolutionized? A lot of you haven't. A lot of you say you're Christians. A lot of you recite the creed. A lot of you have been professing believers for a long time, and a lot of you know darn well that you're not trophies of grace. You know darn well when the angels look at you, they don't see a whole lot. They surely don't see much unique. You know why I think? I believe it's because many of you still don't understand the doctrine of the cross. Paul says, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of Christ my God.

Some translations say, God forbid that I should boast. Now, if you understand that forgiveness was impossible apart from the cross, that it was the greatest problem in the history of the world, in the history of the universe, was how to forgive you and me. It was so great that even the almighty God could not snap his fingers, but took years to bring it about. And that there is no other way possible for you to be forgiven except through the cross and what Jesus Christ did on it

and the shedding of his blood, if you believe that, which means, of course, Jesus is the only way to God. If you believe that, which means complete commitment to him is necessary. If you believe that, then when you look at what Jesus did on the cross, you'll be transformed, you'll boast in it. You see, what does it mean to boast in something? It means this is the thing I turn to when I feel weak. This is the thing that I turn to when I feel unworthy. So what do you really boast in?

what do you look at that you can really be proud of? For a Christian, it's the cross, it's the blood. You know, there's a place where one writer puts it this way. To please God, to be a real ingredient in his joy, to be loved by God, not just pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in her work or a parent in his child, that is a weight of glory our thoughts can hardly sustain,

but so it is. Now, you see, I believe that if you're willing to accept the doctrine that this verse teaches, that you were guilty, that you were under penalty of death, and that only shed blood could possibly save you, unless you're willing to admit those doctrines, the cross will never melt you. The trouble with those doctrines is that they're completely unpopular, they're completely unmodern. Can you understand me? See, for example, some people hate the idea that Jesus had to shed his blood for you to be forgiven, You know what that means? It means that your sins are capital offenses. The ransom was not money.

It says in 1st Peter 1, verse 6, 16, 17, and 18. It was not with silver and gold that you were ransom, but with his own blood he bought us. What does that mean? It means that the penalty we owed was death. Only his life poured out, his violent death. That's what blood represents, could have saved us. That means that your sins are capital offenses. Every one of your sins deserve death and damnation. Wait a minute. You say, do I hear myself? Do I hear right?

Am I in Manhattan in 1992? Talking to somebody that probably has more than a high school education who's saying that? Do you really believe that? I'm telling you, yeah, I believe that. But, you know, listen, I don't have to beg you. I can just tell you, until you believe that, the cross will never be a glorious thing to you. It will never melt you, it will never transform you, you will never be a trophy of grace, you will never see changes in your life.

Don't you see, in order to boast in the cross, in order to have it lift you up high, first you have to get down awfully low. The only way to be exalted is to be humble and admit, yes, I deserve to die for my sins. Yes, forgiveness was such a problem to a holy God. I was so wicked and I was so lost that he had to put forth his son as a propitiation, as a sacrifice, as a substitution for my sin. Somebody says, I don't believe that my sins are capital offenses. Well, you don't know yourself. In the acorn, in a single acorn, there is enough power to fill the earth with wood. You know, if there was not a tree in the whole world, one acorn would be all it would take.

It would take a while. But one acorn, out of that one acorn would come a tree, which would come other acorns, which would come other trees, the entire world, the entire universe. All the plants of the universe could eventually be filled with the tree. the wood that came out of one acorn cup. And the Bible tells us that every one of your little resentments is like an acorn. And you know what's in there? Murder. Under the right conditions, the acorn could fill the world with wood. Under the right conditions, the power in your lustful thoughts, every lustful thought wants to be adultery, every resentful thoughts wants to be murder, every doubt wants to become atheism. Every sin is cosmic treason.

against the throne of God. And when we finally got our hands on God, when he was finally made himself vulnerable for a little while, we killed him. Do you understand that your sins, your desire to live your own life, your resentments, your impurities, your dishonesties, they're masquerading, they look like little acorns, but inside them is every possible violent thought, every possible sin.

You are worthy of death. The only way for you to be freed from your guilt was for Jesus to shed his blood. And if you believe that, then when you look at the cross, you say, for me, you know, there was a great Scottish, there was a great Scottish seminary professor. I don't even know his first name because he was a Presbyterian minister, but he was such a great teacher that he was nicknamed Rabbi Duncan.

And there was a famous story about how Rabbi Duncan would get caught up when he was lecturing on the doctrine of the death. of Christ. And at one point, he got overwhelmed in his lecture, and he lost his voice, and then suddenly he says, do you know what Calvary is? Do you know what it is? Do you know what it is? It's damnation. And he took it for us lovingly. You see, unless you see it is damnation, unless you see all these dire doctrines that everybody hates today, that your sin is worthy of death, you ought to be damned for your sins. Your sins are capital offenses, that God is a holy God who couldn't just let go of our sins, that he had to put forth his son, Jesus Christ, is a propitiation for our sins. If you don't

believe that, you don't have to believe that, but you will never understand the power that the cross has in the lives of people whose lives are being revolutionized by it. It's the dynamic of the Christian life. God forbid that I should glory at anything except the cross of Christ. Anything else I glory in, anything else that programs my self-appreciation, anything else that gives me hope, anything else that I base my life on, anything else that I boast in, evacuates me from my power. I don't have any power, but when I boast in the cross, and when I say, I matter to the only one that matters, the only eyes that count see me as a beautiful, beautiful son or daughter of the king,

because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross. He took my damnation. You see, a Christian looks at that. And every time you look at that, your heart melts, your sin is sort of burned off at that when you look at the cross like that. Just like putting ore through a furnace, the dross comes off. You look at it and you say, how in the world can I, look what he did. How in the world can I fail to be a forgiving person? Look what he did.

How in the world can I fail to give God what he's due? Look what he did. How can I feel sorry for myself? Look what he did. How can I be depressed? Look what he did. Look what he did. Look what he did. Until you see, the problem of forgiveness and the crucially of the cross, there is no hope for change. You'll never be a trophy of grace. Do you really believe in the doctrine of the cross?

Is your life something that angels would want to study? One last thing. If you don't understand how hard forgiveness was, we said you won't understand why Jesus is the only way to God in the Christian faith. If you don't understand how hard forgiveness is, you won't understand the glory of the cross and you'll never be changed by it. And also, if you don't understand how hard forgiveness is, you don't do the work of forgiving your brother and sister and your neighbor. You see, here's something that could make our church something that the angels wouldn't mind to come to study.

A church of people who are radically forgiving all the time. A lot of you know how I love to quote Martin Luther's first thesis of the 95th. Theses of the Reformation? What did he say? The first thesis, all of life is repentance. I wish he'd added also, all of life is forgiveness. Are we going to be a group of people who cannot keep a grudge for more than an hour? Are we going to be a group of people who see that the God, the omnipotent God, was able to snap his fingers to do everything else. But when it came to forgiveness, it was even a problem for him. It was tremendously expensive for him. Of course, forgiving the person who's wronged you, your neighbor, your friend, your family member, your

brother, your sister, of course it's going to be expensive. But look at what he did. What's holding you back? Until you see the difficulty of forgiveness, you're never going to go through it yourself. How many times as a pastor, if I talk to people and I say, you have to forgive and they say it's too hard? Of course it's hard. If you think it's too hard, you're not looking at what it cost him to forgive you. Do you believe in the crucially of the cross? Can you really boast in it? This is the acid test of whether you're really a Christian or just a kind of nominal believer. A Christian doesn't just say, sure, I believe in the God, I believe in the cross. A Christian boasts in it. When you listen to that great hymn, when I survey the wondrous cross, you see the difference

between a Christian and a nominal believer. A nominal believer says, I believe in the cross, but a Christian surveys the cross. A Christian revels in its eternal paradoxes. The Prince of Glory die? Thorns compose a crown. Holiness and love intertwining and meeting and both triumphing together. Holiness and love, they seem to be contradictory, but not on the cross. And when you pour contempt on all your pride, you will finally be free. Don't just believe in the cross survey the cross. don't just believe in a general way, but see, in him we have redemption through his blood. Forgiveness of sins. According to the riches of his grace, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Let's pray. Father, during the offering, what we ask is that you would help us to see, some of us need to give you our grudges and our bitterness because we haven't seen the difficulty that forgiveness of sins was to you. We're not thinking about that. and I pray that you would enable us, enable us to forgive. Father, there's some people here who need to give you their lives, though, because they have maybe, up until now, never seen what it means to believe in you, to glory in the cross, to boast in the cross.

I pray, Father, if there's people here struggling with the teachings of this verse that runs so counter to the modern mindset, that you would help them to see the coherence of your truth. And you would help them see the responsibility they have to commit to that truth. Oh, Lord, make us all, appoint us all to live for the praise of your glorious grace. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast.

If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life Month. monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1992. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, will Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.