Who Needs the Gospel? Everyone

INTRODUCTION

Review:

Since Romans 1:18, Paul has been building to a conclusion.

people need the gospel

people need the gospel:

, good people, but people who judge others need the gospel.

Those who only have God’s law written need the gospel.

Those who have God’s law out need the gospel.

We need the gospel, 9-12

We are sin, 9

Proverbs 20:9

Ecclesiastes 7:20

Key word: : weighs us down, crushes us, us.

We don’t just sin or have a habit of sinning. We are its . We sin because we can’t escape the tyranny of sin.

Current vogue is to blame all bad behavior on genetics, poor upbringing, mental issues, prior abuse, growing up disadvantaged, our society, etc.

The Bible says the world’s problem is that all of us are and are under the control and mastery of . As a result, we make selfish choices, choices that are against what God knows is best.

The Biblical worldview is that the biggest problem facing the world is human sin. Inequity, injustice, hatred, war, abuse, and all other evils are the result of sin. Laws, conferences, organizations, education, reforms, and money cannot solve the sin problem. Only through faith in Jesus can release us from the tyranny of sin.

We are not , 10

We do not , 11

We do not for God, 11

We have turned , 12

We have become , 12

We do not do , 12

Our condemns us, 13-17

Our condemns us, 13-14

Our throats are open , 13

Psalm 5:9 (ESV)

We use our tongues to , 13

Our lips are , 13

Psalm 140:3 (ESV)

.

Our mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, 14

Psalm 10:7 (ESV)

James 3:6–10 (ESV)

Our condemn us, 15-17

Our feet are swift to , 15

Proverbs 1:16 (ESV)

Isaiah 59:7 (ESV)

Our paths are filled with and misery, 16

We don’t know the way of , 17

Isaiah 59:8 (ESV)

Our condemns us, 18

We have no f.

Psalm 36:1 (ESV)

Obedience to the law save us, 19-20

Keeping the law get us to God, 19, 20a

Instead of saving us, the law us, 19

Instead of making us approved by God, the law makes us to God, 19

The law cannot result in being justified by God, 20

The purpose of the law isn’t to save us from sin but to , 20b

John Stott:

I think he (Martin Luther) got it right:

The principal point … of the law … is to make men not better but worse; that is to say, it sheweth unto them their sin, that by the knowledge thereof they may be humbled, terrified, bruised and broken, and by this means may be driven to seek grace, and so come to that blessed Seed [s^[1]c. Christ].^1[2]5[3]

SUMMARY:

John Stott:

So this is the point to which the apostle has been relentlessly moving. The idolatrous and immoral Gentiles are ‘without excuse’ (1:20). All critical moralists, whether Jews or Gentiles, equally ‘have no excuse’ (2:1). The special status of the Jews does not exonerate them. In fact, all the inhabitants of the whole world (3:19), without any exception, are inexcusable (hypodikos) before God, that is, ‘under accusation with no possibility of defence’.^[4]9 And by now the reason is plain. It is because all have known something of God and of morality (through Scripture in the case of the Jews, through nature in the case of the Gentiles), but all have disregarded and even stifled their knowledge in order to go their own way. So all are guilty and condemned before God.^[5]

CONCLUSION

sins.

We must all give an of ourselves to God.

needs the saving gospel that Paul proclaimed.

1. sc Seneca ↑
2. ¹⁵ Luther, Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1531; James Clarke, 1953), p. 316. ↑
3. John R. W. Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 104. ↑
4. ⁹ Käsemann, pp. 88f. ↑
5. John R. W. Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 102. ↑