Sunday, August 10, 2008 
Scripture reading: Romans 3: 21-31
21 But now, irrespective of law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ* for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement* by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.*
27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
Sermon Title: "THE DOUBLE CURE" Sunday, August 10, 2008
PASTOR HUDSON: Today we're exploring
something that I've chosen to identify as the double
cure. As believers, we come to our Christian faith
both with a struggle and with a great gift, that
struggle and that gift are both wrapped up in the
phrase, the double cure. The gift is we have been
marvelously justified freely by grace and faith.
The struggle is we find ourselves limited in contrast to that
gift in a very significant way.
Good News! God has given us the gift of
righteousness, yet we also need to be
sanctified through the faith and the grace that
God has provided. Our struggle is exactly at the point of our
need to be holy in our motivations and walk.
In this text we're actually seeing the first movement of a
larger discussion, namely how it is possible for you and I as
individuals to
overcome the limitations of our temporal life and
live out of our gift of righteousness in applied ways.
The first movement is a description of the objective act of God in
declaring us righteous.
Listen to how Paul describes every single one of
us in this passage: There is no one who is righteous,
not even one. There is no one who understands, who
gets it, there is no one who seeks God. All have
turned away and have together become worthless. There
is no one who does good, not even one. Their threats
are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit. The
poison of vipers is upon their lips. Their mothers
are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are
swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know. This description is not
very flattering of our human condition.
The truth of the matter is God has justified us,
and that's hard for us to understand in two ways.
First, every single one of us has those moments where
we realize just how inadequate and limited we really
are. I call it those cringe moments where you
remember something you said or did, that decision you
made that was your opportunity and you passed it by.
You look back on it and say, man, I am a mess.
It's at moments like that that the concept of
Christ being a propitiation becomes a marvelous idea.
The word simply means a covering. It's a covering
that lays over you in the spiritual realm. God does
not see your limitations.
Now I didn't always know that. I grew up in one
of those worlds where my grandmother believed in a
couple of things, that rapture was going to happen
like in the next couple years; and number two, you
could backslide in a heartbeat. You put those things
together and that is a frightening combination for any
young guy growing up.
I remember going bowling once with my friends. We
lived in a small town, so we drove to the big town
where they had a bowling alley. On the drive home
that night, some of my rowdy friends actually brought
along a package of cigarettes. When I got home, it was
kind of late in the evening. My grandmother was in
the kitchen. I walked on up to the porch of the
house, came in the door, I'm standing in the living
room, and two rooms away in the kitchen my grandmother
immediately asked, Have you been smoking?
That night Grandmother grilled me with what would
happen if the rapture had taken place right then while
you're sucking on that cigarette. You see, Jesus is
covering.
Now I'm not suggesting that you take up tobacco,
but what I am suggesting is simply this: God gives a
covering that offers to us the peace that even when
our performance is less than what we might wish it to
be, we can rest with certainty and peace in the
relationship that is established, not based on law,
but based on grace and the work that Christ has done.
Now that really ought to do two things for us.
Number one, it ought to help us relax and be a little
more kind to ourselves. How many of you beat up on
yourself? Some of you beat up on yourself because
your performance is a little less than what you
believe it ought to be. Let God do the work within
you.
Number two, there is an even bigger group of
people that say, well, it's a lot more fun if I beat
up on somebody else. They think you ought to be doing
things their way. You don't walk or talk or dress the
way they think you should. You build the list.
Now, indeed, righteousness is based on faith in
Jesus Christ and the work that he has done for us.
The regenerative part, the sanctifying part is an
ongoing process in which God works to polish the rough
edges off of us. Would it not be reasonable to
suppose that the very same grace you can give to
yourself when you're less than perfect you might be
able to offer to your brother or sister that you've
been so hard on? Say to them, hey, look, you're just
exactly what you ought to be in Christ because you're
just like me because Christ has paid a price for us.
No matter what your day or week is like, no
matter how rotten or onery you've been, you are
forgiven. Christ loves you. He is your covering,
that's the first half of the cure. The second half of
the cure is that God doesn't want to leave you in that
rotten state. He wants you to become like Christ.
When God looks at you, he does not see your
limitations. He looks at you and says you're a pretty
good person.