Gooding, David: 3 - The Wrath of God

In this session, my aims are very modest. All I propose to do is to sketch in the major steps of the argument of the first movement as I understand them, and then to hand over to you in your study groups to amend what I have said, and then to proceed to the detail. But if we are correct in diagnosing that this first section tells us, the first movement tells us why we need to be saved. The first reason is we need to be saved from the wrath of God. Then it is understandable that Paul should proceed now to explain why it is men stand under the wrath of God. Here it would, it seems to me, be very significant that there is no mention here of Adam's sin or the wreckage. When it comes to the wrath of God, we each one stand personally under the wrath of God on account of our personal behavior. You'll see, that is not to deny that our trouble goes back eventually to what Adam did, but to bring in that as a reason and an explanation of why we sin, true as it is, is a reason and explanation that has to do with that context, explaining how we came to be wrecked, and what the result of the wreckage is, and how we can be delivered from that wreckage and brought at last to final glorification. When it comes to the question of the wrath of God, Scripture does not let us, so to speak, hide behind what Adam did. God has an argument with us for what we ourselves have done. And therefore, chapters one to three, verse, uh, twenty, are geared to showing us that not only are we sinners in the sense that we come short of the glory of God, but we are, in that sense, guilty sinners. You say, what's the difference? Well, ladies and gentlemen, one of these days you may get the flu, and you'll be in great misery. No one will s- suggest that you are guilty of having the flu. And it is conceivable that we might imagine that our being sinners is merely a wretched state into which various things have led us. It isn't only a wretched state, it isn't only the fact that we come short of the glory of God. It is that mankind is guilty before God. Or to use the word that Paul uses, they are without excuse. So, as we know, in chapter one verse twenty, we read, for the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and deity, that they may be without excuse. And chapter two verse one: wherefore thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest. And finally, in chapter uh three nineteen: we know that whatever things the law says, it says to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, that is, nothing to say for themselves, no excuse. You will remember how the Lord Jesus used this word prophasis, excuse, recorded in John chapter fifteen. said he, talking to the apostles about Israel in general, he said, if I had not come and done among them works which none other had done, you see, they wouldn't have had sin, meaning not that they would have been sinlessly perfect, but they couldn't have been be held responsible to have sin in the Gospel of John and in the Epistle of John, chapter one and the end of that first chapter, the first epistle of John, to have sin means not to be sinful, it means to be responsible and guilty. If I had not come and done among them works which none other had did done, they would not have had sin. But now, as it is, they have no excuse for their sin. Why not? Why they have both seen and hated both me and my father. Therefore, they have no excuse. They cannot plead blindness. They cannot plead lack of evidence. They have no excuse for their sin. So here, likewise, Paul, uh, takes these groups, whether you count them as some do three or some do two, I shall not quarrel with you, and shows that these various groups of mankind, which one by one, sooner or later, include us all, have not only sinned, but have no excuse for their sin. Why are they without excuse? The reasons given, it seemed to me, have here, as our Lord pointed out in John fifteen, to do with the evidence. You'll see it says verse nineteen, verse eighteen: the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteous godliness and unrighteousness of men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has manifested, and he's manifested, it says, verse twenty, to the end that they may be without excuse. Their perversion of the idea of God, their reducing and changing the glory of the incorruptible God, cannot be attributed to ignorance. Mankind originally knew God. In the creation around us is a manifestation of two things about God, his eternal power and his deity, his godhood. It's not said that his love is thus revealed. For creation is ambivalent, isn't it, when it comes to the matter of love. But his existence, his power, his godhood are made manifest. And men can see it. In that they have suppressed the knowledge of God, in that they have perverted it. Man will be held responsible, and therefore guilty, for in that he has sinned, he has sinned in the first place against the light of creation. As we think of that, we might in passing notice what the apostle lists as the consequences of that sin, the God-imposed consequences. For it seems to me to be very instructive. When men suppress the knowledge of the truth of the true God, change the glory of the incorruptible God, first downwards to man, and then down further still to beasts and creeping things. God, so verse twenty four says, gave them up. And similarly, verse twenty eight, God gave them up. And yet again, God gave them up to a perverted moral judgment. Verses twenty four and twenty five: to dishonor their own bodies. First of all, then dishonor, to cheapen the human body. You cannot deny or suppress or pervert the knowledge of the Creator without it having, under God's providential judgment, a deleterious effect on your attitude to the human body. It will lead to the dishonoring of the human body, to the cheapening of the human body. And then verse twenty six to twenty seven, not only to a dishonoring, but to a perversion of the human body and its function. Notice that it is put across as a consequence. The perversity of moral judgment, ladies and gentlemen, in these things that we see abroad in the Western world could be more serious than we think. It's not only evidence of sin, it could be evidence that God himself has revealed his displeasure, and that men's suppression of the knowledge of God and of belief in God has been met in God with his handing them over to a moral judgment that is perverse. For that is the final stage, isn't it? First the dishonoring of the body, then the perversion of the body's uses, and finally to a perversion of the moral judgment. As the law of God is being revealed, here and now, in man's experience on earth. Man will be held guilty, if indeed he is that type of man, for suppressing the knowledge of God. Sinning against the light of creation. And then comes chapter two: You are without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that judges. I personally sum up that paragraph by saying it's sinning against the light of conscience. It is not true that man is so dead in trespasses and in sins and so morally blind that he can't see that he's sinning. He can see that he's sinning. And notwithstanding God giving them up to their perverse moral judgments, nonetheless, it is true that man still retains a great deal of moral sense. If you doubt that, go and steal your next door neighbor's Jaguar or four set and see whether the man has any moral judgment left. And the common habit endlessly going on of men and nations criticizing each other, accusing each other, sometimes excusing each other, is evidence enough of a conscience that still works. And men sin not without knowing they sin. They sin against the light of conscience and must be held guilty, therefore, of so doing. I take the argument from verse six onwards to verse fifteen, where Paul stresses that God is not looking simply for theory, but for practice. I take it not to be contradicting in advance what Paul will later say, that we are saved and justified by faith. The drift of the argument in those verses in chapter two is presumably to drive home to our consciences that we mustn't try to wriggle. You'll see. Sometimes we do, don't we? We like to think we're on God's side, and we criticize other people. And because we are on God's side and agree with God that, uh, this and that is wrong in other people, we think, well, we're on God's side, God won't be so unkind to us. I mean, I mean, goodness me, we support him. Surprising what you could get away with if you support Margaret Thatcher, if you see what I mean. That is done by the other side might be denounced. But away with that in God. God is looking without respect of persons to actual performance. The performance of us all comes short. And that is true, whether we are Gentiles or Jews. Whereas Jews had the revealed law of God, Gentiles, we are told, have a law written on their very hearts. No man is completely without the light of conscience. All must be held responsible for what they have done with that light of conscience. But of course, the Jew is a special case. Paul is about to argue it from chapter three verse uh seventeen onwards. Because he has had the revealed law of God and occupied an exceedingly privileged position. Paul warns the Gentile, the Jews, therefore, that having the law of God and the special revelation of God with all its spiritual advantage doesn't save them from the wrath of God if they, like the Gentile, disobey and break that law. In fact, in a sense, the judgment upon them will be more severe. It is so easy, is it not, if I may speak for myself, to fall into the trap of the man who wrote a moral essay on goodness and thought he had discharged all his ethical duty by writing the essay, because he could argue ethics with a precision that was magnificent, and thus had made his contribution to ethical behavior of the world and left the letter fry actually to behave ethically. It would be easy for the likes of me to fall into the snare of thinking that understanding scripture is the same thing as doing it. Isn't it it? In fact, the more we understand, the more serious our failure to behave is, which led Jude to say, my brethren, be not many teachers. For not only to understand, but to pretend to teach other people. That adds to the seriousness of breaking God's law, if eventually we break the very law that we have taught. The Jew was in that position, wasn't he? Imagine, for instance, the old question of the dangers of smoking. They'll say, when I was a boy, smoking was the normal thing, and anybody who didn't smoke was thought to be a bit queer, religious fanatic or something. Now, uh, science has shown the dangers of smoking, they'll say. You can imagine a man appearing before his surgeon council, and his lung is bung full of cancer, the surgeon saying, you're a foolish man. We'll say, you, uh, have destroyed yourself by smoking. Couldn't you see how you were getting progressively short of breath? And nevertheless, you went on with it, you fool. Didn't you see the advertisement on the packets of the government health warning? And in spite of it, you s- you went on, in spite of all those warnings, you fool. Now you've ruined yourself. Here comes patient number two. Says the surgeons, hmm, it's nice to see you here, old chap. You've got lung cancer too, been caused by smoking, but if I, if I got it right, you're the chap that got out the advertisements, aren't you? And went around giving lectures to people and criticizing people for smoking, and you've gone and smoked as well? Well, you're a double fool then. What would he say if a third patient was a fellow surgeon? And he did the research that showed the connection between smoking and lung cancer. And all was revealed to him in his laboratory, and he kept on smoking too. So the Jew, not merely like the Gentile philosopher doing his best to in uh uh uh, uh, follow the ethical argument, but not always fulfilling it himself. To the Jew, a special revelation was given, and he has sinned against it also. And therefore, he mustn't try to hide behind the rituals of the symbols of his religion. Granted that the Jew is outwardly circumcised, but what use is it, says Paul, if your life doesn't match up to the symbols that you use? And we could listen to it, couldn't we? I expect all of us are baptized, and if we're not, we should have been. All of us attend the supper of the Lord. Yes, but that won't do to hide behind them if our lives are not lived according to God's holy commandment. Before then he finally comes in chapter three to the climax of his arraignment of the Jew, he interposes a short paragraph from verse one to, uh, verses eight and perhaps nine, that at first sight is a little, little difficult to construe. How did it fit into the general run of the argument? I take it, but I shall be very pleased to hear from you, uh, uh, better explanations, if they are forthcoming. But as Paul comes to this point, going to argue that the law of God, the Old Testament, shows that the Jew is equally guilty as the Gentile, in fact more guilty. But Paul remembers arguments that he has heard a thousand times in the synagogue. From Jews, who, when they protested to Paul that his gospel was wrong, protested on these grounds. Look here, Paul, you're saved by faith. We don't need this gospel. We believe that God gave us the law, and if only we keep the law, that will be all right. In Mrs. Smith's parlance, if we do the best we can, we shall get to heaven. But the Jew, more refinedly would say that, well, God gave us the law. He gave us to us so that we should keep it, didn't he? And we're doing our best to keep it. Not absolutely perfect, but we're doing our best honestly to keep the law in order to please God. What are you saying? That that isn't good enough. And that you cannot be saved by keeping the law. The law cannot save you. And that we need to be saved by faith. And Paul proves to them that that is the case. The law, in fact, far from saving them, will condemn them and expose them as sinners. Right, says the Jew, getting in a bit of a huff. Right, all right. So instead of my keeping the law to be saved, you're going to tell me the law condemns me, are you? And that if I behave rightly, I should be contradicting the law because the law says I'm a desperate sinner. Well, perhaps it's true. And God's law says that the best I do to keep his law isn't good enough, and I shall, I shall, at the end, I shall still come short. Well, I'll come short then and prove God's law true. And if my sinning simply proves that God's word is true, how does God judge us? How can he find fault with me for doing what his law said would do, I would do? And Paul has to argue the case to them. But the fact that God's law does say that we are sinners and demonstrates it. The fact that in advance we may know it now, that salvation is not to be had by keeping the law, for we all come short and will have to abandon faith in the law for salvation. Does not mean that God has any less cause to be wrathful with us for breaking his law. And how that is, the detail of the argument will show. Because now to come towards the climax, uh, uh, uh, uh, this first minor climax of movement one. Jew and Gentile, both according to the law, are proved incorrigible sinners. Verse nine onwards. What then, are we better than they? No. For all, be it Jew, be it Gentile, have gone astray. Sinning against the light of conscience, of creation, sinning against the light of conscience, sinning against the light of God's revealed law, whether one or the other or all three. So we come to the minor climax, verse nineteen. Now we know that what things soever the law says, it speaks to them that are under the law, whether under the law in the sense that the Jew was, or with the law written on their hearts as Gentiles were, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world be brought under the judgment of God. So we may conclude that by the works of the flesh shall no of of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. The crude analogy that I use, ladies and gentlemen, forgive my inflicting upon you yet once more, but I have found it helpful to putting it across, uh, to folks who don't normally think about these things and find it difficult when they are first faced with the notion that you can't be saved by doing your honest best to keep God's law. I liken his law to a thermometer. Yes. And when you're running a temperature and you don't feel too good, but you're inclined to press on regardless, somebody persuades you to see the doctor, and the doctor puts his little thermometer where he puts it and comes up with a reading of one hundred and nine and says, you are ill, my dear, and you must go to bed. Thermometer exposes how ill you are. Without that thermometer, you would have felt groggy, but have not really had it all spelled out how very groggy you were. Yeah. But you would be ill indeed if thereafter you sat in bed sucking the thermometer, in the hope thereby of getting better. Yes, and many people try to do it. If only they could bring the thermometer down by a degree or two, they would feel they were getting rather better. And of course, thermometers expose our illness, they cannot heal it. But now, apart from the law, a righteousness revealed. Though it is witnessed to by law and prophets, note the emphasis we as we pass by, it concurs with, it is witnessed to the Old, by the Old Testament. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe. For there is now no difference, all, Jew or Gentile, have sinned, and more or less, in the past, and still in the present fall short of the glory of God. But can be and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, which is altogether a different way of being justified from being justified through the law. God has set him forth to be a propitiation through faith and in his blood. And God does it in order to show his righteousness because of two things. The passing over of the sins done aforetime into the bareness of God. The sins of all those who, before Jesus Christ came into our world, genuinely repented and believed what God had told them and believed God himself. And their sins were passed over. Question arises, how could God do that justly? The answer is now seen to be through the propitiation that is in Jesus Christ, his son. Secondly, to show his righteousness at this present time, that he might be himself just and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. Notice the term. To have faith in Jesus, you must have heard the name Jesus, mustn't you? Millions lived and died without ever hearing it, of course. But at this present time, now that the Savior has been manifested and we know his name is Jesus, and we believe in him, and God acquits us. God has done it in such a way as to show that he himself is righteous. Righteous in passing over the sins of those who repented and had faith before the Savior came. Righteous in forgiving the sins of those who now trust in Jesus. So where is our glorying now? Taking up that verb from earlier parts of the movement. Why, it is excluded. On what principle of works? No, but by the principle of faith, so that we reckon that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. It applies equally to Jew and Gentile, says verse twenty nine. For God is essentially one. He cannot have one method of salvation for the Jew and a different method of salvation for the Gentile, nor incidentally, ladies and gentlemen, have one method of salvation for the church now and another method of salvation for people who live in coming ages. God is one. It says, verse thirty one: this method of salvation, though it is apart from the law, doesn't make the law of none effect, it establishes the law. And at its lowest level, it obviously does. We'll see all those people that preach salvation by keeping the works of the law, in the end, degrade the law, don't they? For in popular parlance, they talk like this: do the best, old chap, do the best you can. And then when it comes to the final judgment, God will say, well, la, you did come a bit short, but not all that badly short, so never mind. That is to degrade the law. The gospel upholds it and enforces it. It says, so to speak, that if you kept the law ninety nine percent and failed in one point, as James put it, you're guilty of the lot, and God's wrath must express itself in that failure to keep the law. In the great propitiation that is in Christ, God has upheld his law. The great moral governor of the universe cannot acquit us and forgive us in a way that would suggest that sin doesn't matter. Why, if he took the view that our sin didn't matter, we wouldn't be well advised to go to heaven, because if it doesn't matter now, it wouldn't matter then. In forgiving our sin, God has to have regard to his own character and his own reputation throughout his universe, and must forgive us in such a way as brings no aspersion on his character. He must be demonstrated to be just, and therefore the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. When we begin to see that God can remain just and yet forgive and acquit guilty sinners like you and me, then it begins to change the face of things, doesn't it? And we begin to trust not only in God's mercy, but in his justice. I was being taken out for a walk around the country lanes of Essex one day by a senior Christian who thought it appropriate to examine my soul. Said he presently, David, my boy, for I was but a youth, on what are you resting for your eternal salvation? And he wasn't being frivolous. I was about to say the grace of God, you know. And I would have been right, wouldn't I? When I suddenly bethought myself, ah, I know what he's at. I said, I'm trusting the justice of God, my good sir. I passed that little exam hundred percent. Marvel it is, isn't it? You can be saved through faith, not just in God's mercy, but in his very justice. For he has found a way of acquitting us and forgiving us that upholds his law. That vindicates his wrath against sin, and yet can acquit the sinner of guilt. It is found in what is here called the propitiation that is in Christ Jesus. Now here I am a little old fashioned, and go against all the notable theologians. Who'll say, never mind. What does the word propitiation mean? Some people say it's a noun, some people say it's an adjective, some people say it is a reference, it's a term taken from Old Testament, and some people say it isn't. For my own part, I find at least this to be true, that what the effect of propitiation is, is well illustrated, even if Paul isn't directly referring to it, by the law and the prophets, so to speak, by some of the ancient symbols of Israel. In the tabernacle, as you know, if you passed through the veil and went into the holiest of all, you came across the ark of God with its lid, the ark being made of wood overlaid inside and out with gold, the lid at the top being made of solid gold with cherubim upon it. There, to show you the two pieces of furniture distinct, there they are. The bit lifted up is the lid, called in Hebrew kaporeth, which means two things. It means literally a cover, but it also means a place where atonement was made. Inside that ark, as you'll see, there was, among other things, the two tables of the stone of the law. Now that is very interesting in the light of our passage, isn't it? Because we've been talking about God's law and how it condemns us, and that by the deeds of the law there is no flesh justified in his sight. Yet on the Day of Atonement, when Israel's high priests came as their representative into the presence of God. He didn't, of course, throw the law outside. He came to that ark in which the law of God was kept and kept inviolate there, and honored and upheld, forming the very basis of the throne of God. There's no idea of lessening its standards or throwing it out. It must be kept inviolate. But Israel have sinned. How then can man approach God and God forgive him and accept him, and God still remain just? And the answer to it is, of course, as we know, on the great day of atonement, when propitiation was made, the high priest came in and sprinkled the blood of the atoning sacrifice before and on the mercy seat, saying in his silent symbol as follows: Yes, God, we have broken your law. We don't pretend otherwise. We sorrowfully and humbly confess it. Moreover, we accept the verdict of God that such sin deserves our death. We don't try to escape the verdict. But in the mercy of God, God himself has allowed us to offer a sacrifice, to take our place, to die our death. That death has taken place. See here the evidence of that death, placed now upon that, uh, slab of gold, the propitiatory or mercy seat, and before it. The virtue of which God accepted the high priest and all he represented. So that the law that demanded the death of the sinner was upheld. And honored and vindicated, and God remains just, and yet at the same time is able justly to accept the sinner and accept him into his presence. Good. Well, now I take the rest of the argument to be going as follows. If Paul has shown now that, uh, man is not justified by the works of the law, but through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and they, uh, uh, uh, justified by faith without works, and that this is illustrated in Old Testament by the symbolism of the day of propitiation, the day of atonement. Now he must face practical examples in the lives of Old Testament people. And he says, therefore, what then shall we say that Abram our forefather hath according to the flesh hath found? What does scripture say about him? For if Abram was in fact justified some other way, if Abraham was justified by his works, that would shatter the validity of this new method. But Paul proceeds to show that whereas if Abraham was justified, uh, by his works, uh, uh, as some Jews think, uh, uh, um, that would accept, that would upset what scripture itself actually says. That is not as, uh, as, uh, Cranfield untranslates it, that is not how God sees him, end of verse two of chapter four. For what says the scripture? Explicitly, scripture says that Abraham was justified by faith. And faith in the sense, as verse five has it, to him that worketh not, but believeth. Faith here does not mean that we have the faith to believe that if we cooperate with God, by God's grace and power working in us, we shall eventually achieve the result that God will be able to approve of. No, no, it's not working at all. Not working on our own bet, not working with God's help. It's to him that worketh not, but simply believes. His faith is counted to him for righteousness. Or take that other great saint, David, for Abraham and David are the two cardinal saints of the Old Testament. Was he justified by works? Well, read his Psalms, read his history, and see at once the straight impossibility. Hear his own testimony that his joy was the joy of one forgiven solely by the grace of God, the joy of a man who knows that God will not impute sin to him. Secondly, we must inquire from the Old Testament, if the theory is to be b- to be backed home by the Old Testament. Well, what was the relation of circumcision to Abram's justification? Did it help? Did it add something? And verses nine to twelve show that circumcision in that sense had nothing to do with his being justified. As Paul shows from the order of the scripture in Genesis, Abram was justified, that is Genesis fifteen. Abram was subsequently circumcised, that's Genesis seventeen. He was justified before he was circumcised. Circumcision was not a condition of his being justified. It helped nothing towards his justification. It was but a sign and a seal of the righteousness of that faith that he had before he was justified. Paul argues the case then from the order of the history in the book of Genesis. Notice how that im- what that implies about Paul's belief in the inspiration of Genesis and in the very order of the chapters of Genesis. And not only, says Paul, was he justified through faith, but all the great promises that were made to him that he should be heir of the world, they are given to faith by grace so that the promise should be sure to all the seed. It could not be made dependent upon law, for law works wrath. And if all those glorious promises made to Abraham and to his seed depended on the law, then instead of inheriting those blessings, both Jew and Gentile would but inherit the curse of a broken law and the wrath of God against us for breaking that law. Thank God, not only is justification dependent solely on faith, but all those great promises of being heir of the world, they too are given to faith, and they're given on those terms that the promise may be absolutely sure to all the seed. Hmm. Don't count it too hard or too solemn. You know, if one of these days you receive a letter from the local solicitors saying that your Uncle McGrath in Texas has died and left you so many preferential shares in BP and, uh, two ocean-going yachts and five or six ranches, let alone a Cadillac, a Rolls-Royce, and the aforesaid Jaguar, uh, with some preferential bonds and shares, and you're required to go down to the solicitor's office to listen to him read this. Well, you'll find it boring, won't you? You'll say preferential shares, oh, cut it out, make it simple, old chap. I don't want to know about these things, you'll say, won't you? Because it is a bore reading about it and all that technical detail. Horrible. Make it simple. He's left me a bag of sweets. Oh, juju, that beautiful? Would you? Oh, and here are the promises not only of justification, but ladies and gentlemen, if you're believers, you're going to be heir of the world and of this gigantic universe along with Christ, and it's so gigantic you need to know right now, on what terms do I inherit it? Is it faith plus my performance? Or do I get it simply by faith in the Lord Jesus? Oh, what multi-millionaires you are, and God has not only given it to you by faith, but he's gone and done it deliberately that it shall be by faith, so the promise shall be absolutely sure to you. What a magnificent God he is. And when I read it, I say, Lord, there's a lot here I don't understand. Lord, don't make it simple. Make it as detailed and complex as you possibly can, because I don't mind the extra galaxy also that is going to be thrown in as well, you see. Make it complicated, Lord. Make it last. Yeah. Ha. And so it applies not only to Jew, but to Gentile as well. Uh, says verse 17 onwards. And now finally, what does it mean when it says Abraham believed? What is faith in this context? And Paul now gives the example to show what faith is. Case law, the precedent is Abraham. God promised him that he would have a son. Sarah was already beyond childbearing. He himself was getting progressively older. And God left him waiting. And he saw before his own very eyes his body becoming dead and deader and deader and deader. And he just went on believing. When all hope in human nature and human effort was past and simply believe God, who calls the things that are not as though they were, and can bring life out of death. That is faith. Then Paul applies the analogy that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. That's case law. We believe God and it's counted to us for righteousness. But now there comes an analogy to explain the nature of faith. What is faith? Well, consider Abram's situation faced with two dead bodies. How were you going to get life out of death? God would have to do it. That's the sole answer. We are asked to believe in the same sense, in a God who brings life out of death. But this time for us, it is that the dead body concerned is the dead body of the Lord Jesus. He was delivered over for our, our trespasses. See him now, ladies and gentlemen, in the tomb. That would have been some experience, wouldn't it? If you'd have been able to stand by the tomb the very first day he was put there and say, do you know he was delivered from my offenses, but um, if he's not raised again, that's the end of him, and that's the end of me as well. We must, we must somehow get Jesus Christ raised from the dead. And you stand by my side and you say, now, now there's a time to test your faith, my boy. We're going to get the Lord Jesus raised from the dead because our very salvation depends on it. Now start believing. Start believing and see if we can make it happen. Go on. Are you believing enough? He's not moved. I don't think he's moved. Your faith isn't strong enough, my boy. If you don't get some more stronger faith than that, you'll, you'll ruin the whole thing. Go on, believe, chap, and if you believe hard enough, the body will come out. Is that faith? Nonsense, of course. It is not working ourselves up into some kind of state of confidence. It is dependent on God to do it all, all magnificent things. And if you'd have been in the garden with Mary Magdalene, so weak was their faith, they didn't think it was going to happen at all today. But they'd been told it was going to be, and they saw that God did it all. So chapter four has not only shown from the Old Testament that justification by faith is the method of salvation the Old Testament teaches, but it's also, in its end of the chapter, showed us what you mean by faith when you say that salvation is by faith. Now, therefore, we have reached a quarter past twelve. I myself am going to break off there. There is one final paragraph in the first movement, and I have talked of that at some length this morning earlier. I shall steal five minutes tonight to talk about a little of it again. But, uh, as far as I can see, what I tried to do is to sketch in the main flow of the argument, wherein it has been obscure, that is either because I got it wrong or, getting it right, have poorly expressed it. But now you have time to discuss it in your study circles and to fill in the detail.