Justified by Faith Apart from the Works of the Law

Let’s go to verse 21, Romans 3:21, verses 21 through 31. We are actually going to touch on the whole chapter, but these verses are representative of the content of the rest of the chapter.

It says: “...But now...” There are two very important things there: a “but,” and it also says “now.” Remember that the Apostle Paul is speaking in terms of his own time. Now, why? Because there has been a change in the situation of man, of humanity, in Paul’s time. That “now” is in Christ.

It says: “...But now apart from the law”—another revealing term—“apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested, testified to beforehand”—I put “beforehand” there—“by the Law and the Prophets....”

That is, up until Paul’s time, the righteousness of God had been manifested through the Law and the Prophets; the ordinances, the commandments, and the principles of the Kingdom of God had been manifested through Jewish law, the Old Testament.

“...by the Law and the Prophets, but now the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ...”

That is, Paul says that now the righteousness of God is being manifested in a different way; now it is through faith in Jesus Christ.

“...for all who believe in Him.” That reminds me of that passage, doesn’t it? For the salvation of everyone who believes, everyone who believes in Him.

“...for there is no difference...” Remember that this is a subject the Apostle Paul has been developing continually, this matter of there being no difference. There is no difference between the Jew, the Greek, and the Roman, and we are going to see in what sense it does not even exclude Christians.

“...for everyone who believes, for there is no difference, since all have sinned.”

How many of you know that verse by heart? Say it with me:

“...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely.”

That is also a very important term, “freely”; it means at no cost whatsoever. Why? By His grace. And using what instrument, by what means?

It says, “...through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation.”

What does the word “propitiation” mean? It means something like a ransom; it is like when a person has been kidnapped and a ransom is demanded from the family. The idea is more or less like that, right? The Lord was offered as a ransom for us. He paid the price; He took our place. All those ideas are contained within that idea of propitiation.

“...as a propitiation through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand, with a view to demonstrating at the present time”—Paul’s time, but from then onward this extends to our own time—“His righteousness, so that He might be just and the One who justifies the person who has faith in Jesus.”

Notice that God has a purpose of His own, so to speak, in doing things that way, in making salvation come through Christ and by grace and through faith. He says it is so that He will receive the glory and the credit. God cares a great deal about His glory, brothers and sisters, and we are going to explain a little bit why. So that He may be just and the One who justifies the person who has faith in Jesus.

Then it says here, “Where, then, is boasting?” In other words, this is more of a rhetorical question. Boasting is a subject Paul has been addressing continually: man’s boasting, man’s pride, and the boasting of the Jews, who thought they were better than everyone else, the last Coca-Cola in the desert, as people say. Ah, we have the Law, we have Moses, we have the prophets, we have the revelation of the one true God—and they boasted as though they were really something.

That is why Paul had already challenged them earlier: “Indeed, you bear the name of Jew, and rest on the Law, and boast in God, and know His will, and, being instructed by the Law, approve the things that are best, and are confident that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, etc.”

Paul has already told them, you are nothing—he was speaking to the Jews—and so he says here, “Where, then, is boasting?” There is no boasting. If salvation is through faith, no one can boast; no one can glory.

Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded; in other words, it is neutralized, completely nullified. By what law? By the law of the works of the Old Testament? No. It says, “...not by the law of works, but by the law of faith.”

And here is Paul’s conclusion to all of this, which I am going to elaborate on a little more in a moment. But Paul, as a theologian and as a person writing a logical, coherent, sequential treatise, has been constructing his arguments in a very elaborate, very concrete way. He says:

“...We conclude, then, that man—that is, humanity—is justified by faith without the works of the Law.”

Now, brothers and sisters, for those here who are not very familiar with this language and these biblical images, who are new, as I say, to the Gospel: when it says “the works of the Law,” it is referring to obedience to all those commandments that God established through the Mosaic Law. When you go to books such as Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Exodus—even part of Exodus as well—and all those books where the Law and its provisions are found, you will see that there were many dietary commandments there, formal commandments about washing one’s hands, doing this, doing that. And you know what? Not content with those commandments, the Jews developed a great many more. The Talmud consisted literally of hundreds and hundreds of treatises and additional commandments intended to ensure that those commandments of the Law were obeyed. So it became an incredible apparatus, a jumble of commandments governing everything, absolutely everything. Every part of a person’s life was... A Jew could not make a move without some law having something to do with whatever he was doing. It had become something cumbersome and overwhelming in the life of the Hebrew people.

And Paul introduces something revolutionary, a revelation that had to come from God, which he is now clarifying, because when Christ came and died on the cross, there was no book out there explaining what that meant and what the detailed implications of the Lord’s death on the cross were.

God had to use a man like Paul, as well as other writers of the Bible, to give people the explanation of what it meant, why it was necessary for Christ to die, what the importance of His death was, and what the positive consequences of Jesus’ death were. People did not understand that. God used the Apostle Paul to clarify for us the meaning of all those things.

So Paul says that man is justified by faith without the works of the Law—that is, apart from all those commandments—because there were many Jews who converted to Jesus Christ and believed that He was the Messiah, but because it had not been explained to them, they thought they had to continue observing the entire Law of Moses, continuing with all those religious bonds and all those commandments and all those rituals, and that Christ was simply like the cherry placed on top of the cake. Boom, a little cherry there that makes it look really pretty and lovely. But Paul says, no, no, Jesus Christ is not the cherry. Jesus Christ is the whole cake. You see, when Christ died, He nullified... a wind came and carried away all that garbage that consisted purely of human commandments and elaborations. Besides that, God established the Law, as we will see later, to provide a background for what was to come, which was grace through Christ Jesus. We will clarify that further on as well.

But all of that is implied in that expression, “man is justified by faith apart from, without the works of the Law.” That is why verse 21 says, “But apart from the Law...” Here it says it in a different way.

“We conclude that man is justified by faith without the works of the Law.”

Now, one of the conclusions from this is what verse 29 says: “Is God only the God of the Jews? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Certainly, of the Gentiles also.”

That was one of the great mysteries God entrusted to the Apostle Paul for him to reveal to humanity. It was that salvation was not only for a small, chosen group of people born in a little nation called Israel, but that salvation was for all humanity. “All flesh shall be saved,” says the writer Joel.

Then, “...also of the Gentiles,” he says, “because God is one, and He will justify the circumcised by faith”—that is, the Hebrews—“and the uncircumcised through faith”—that is, the Gentiles, those who were not born into Judaism. “Do we then invalidate the Law through faith? By no means! Rather, we uphold the Law.”

You see, brothers and sisters, why I am taking this time to work through these concepts. Brothers and sisters, it is important for you, both young and old in the faith, to know the basic principles of the Bible and of the Christian faith.

When I take the time, as I am doing, to comb through different passages in the Book of Romans, I am doing it because I want to give you a subliminal message, a subconscious message—and not so subconscious, because I am explaining it now—and that is that it is important for you to know the Bible; it is important for you to study the concepts contained in it.

It is important to have a people who are biblically literate, because we have many churches and many people who are biblically illiterate. They do not know the principles of the faith; they do not know the terminology of the faith; they do not know exactly what they believe; they do not know the characters in the Bible; they do not know the great events of Scripture; they do not know the difference between the prophets and the kings of the Old Testament and the patriarchs; they do not know what the New Testament and the Old Testament are. There are so many things you should know, brothers and sisters, and in the name of the Lord I encourage you to dig deeply, study the Word of God, and learn these things. And when we take time to break down the Bible, in doing so we are telling you: it is important for you to know what something refers to when you read it. And that takes time, but all of us can get there.

I assure you that this is not just for the gifted; all of you can receive this kind of teaching. Now, remember well that Paul has already cut off the heads of the pagans, the Romans, and the Greeks. He said, “They are under sin; they have disobeyed God; they have turned Him into an idol; they have turned Him into an image of reptiles, animals, and men; and God is angry with them, and their sins disqualify them from being saved.”

And then, after addressing the Romans and the Greeks and all the rest of humanity that does not know the true God, he turns to the Jews and says, “And you too, Jews, do not think too highly of yourselves, because you too—you say that you keep the Law and this and that—but you too sin continually. No one is saved by the works of the Law.”

And then Paul also strips the Jews of any claim to righteousness and says, you too, as we saw in Chapter 2, have sinned and disobeyed God, and you too are children of sin. No one is saved by the Law.

But do you know what? Now in Chapter 3, he also says the same thing even about Christians who think they can be saved by their good works.

How many evangelicals do you know who think that because they come to church, give money, dance, belong to the group of deacons, or whatever else, they are saved? Some people have a sense of personal righteousness and think that, well, because they belong to Lion of Judah, or because they are evangelicals, or because their father was a pastor, or their grandmother was a woman of faith and prayer, they are saved.

And Paul says, look, no one can be saved by anyone’s work, nor by their own works. That is why Paul says here in verse 9: “...What then? Are we better than they?”—speaking of the Jews—“By no means, for we have already charged,” Paul says in verse 9 of Chapter 3, “that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin.”

It is very important for Paul and for us to understand that. Brothers and sisters, there is not a single human being walking on this earth, nor anyone who has ever walked the earth, who can say that through his good works he can enter the Kingdom of God.

That is why so many people, when you tell them, look, receive Christ as your Lord and Savior; turn away from your sins, say, “But why do I have to convert and repent? I do not kill anyone; I do not steal; I do not harm anyone; I do not go around kicking little dogs in the street. I am a good person. I do not need to repent of anything.” Brothers and sisters, all of us, all of us, the Bible says, have offended God in one way or another. Whether in thought, through things we have not done, things we have done, looks we have given, desires we have entertained in our minds, small things or great things we have done—no one enters the Kingdom of God through his works.

How many say amen to that? The only thing that could allow a man or a woman to enter the Kingdom of God through their works would be if that person were sinless and perfect. From the moment you committed even one sin, you were disqualified. The only thing that would allow you to pass God’s exam through your own intelligence, cleverness, or resources is a perfect A. And what human being can say, “I have never done anything wrong”?

And that is what Paul wants to develop here. He says, “There is none righteous, not even one”—quoting the Bible, right? He is quoting Psalm 14 here. If you go to Psalm 14, it says the following, speaking about humanity: “They have become corrupt; they do abominable deeds.” That is you and me, brother. There is no one who does good.

It says, “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any who understood, who sought God.” And do you know what his conclusion was at the end of that search? It says, “They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one.”

When someone tells you that he is a good person and has nothing to repent of, he is making God a liar, because God has already said it: there is no one who can be saved by his own goodness.

And that is what Paul has wanted to make clear before getting into the positive. First he has said: Humanity, all of you are deserving of hell. No one can be saved by obeying a religious system. No one can be saved by behaving well and doing what is right. Everyone—and he proves it one by one—pagans, Jews, Christians, all are under the same condemnation, except—and this is where he begins to become positive—except through faith in Christ Jesus.

Paul says that salvation is ultimately by divine grace; it is by divine favor; it is because God has purposed to do it that way. So look at what verse 25 says. It says:

“Whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed.”

In other words, the Lord said, Do you know what? No matter how hard these people try, they will never save themselves, so do you know what? I am going to forgive their sins through the blood of my Son. I am going to overlook their sins, and I am going to save them all.

How many of you have been to a public library? You know that libraries sometimes have days when they forgive people’s fines. They want them to return their books, and they say: Today we are going to forgive everyone who has fines, so bring us the books and we will forgive your fines. What they care about is having the books brought back. Why? Because some people do not want to show their faces at the library because they owe money, so they keep the books at home. They say, Come today, and we will forgive all your fines, but return the books to us.

Do you know what? God has said the same thing to humanity. Look, do you know what? I am going to forgive your sins; I am not going to hold them against you, but there is one thing we have to do. Do you know what it is? Receive Christ’s sacrifice as applying to us. That is what Paul is saying.

For each one of us, the only way we can be saved is when we admit, Lord, on my own, I am toast; on my own, I would go to hell right now. But now I accept Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross of Calvary as a substitute for my sin, and I believe that by blood I am saved. And I receive him as my Savior.

Do you understand now what it means to receive Christ as Savior? It means: I recognize that I cannot save myself by my own strength, but Christ died for me, and so you pay the price for my sin. And that saves you.

And what Paul is insisting on here is such an important doctrine in the Christian life: that salvation is free, that salvation is by grace, that salvation is through faith, and that salvation is through Christ Jesus, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is no human remedy that can prevail against man’s sinfulness. Only the blood of Jesus.

So, because of that, look at what verse 27 says:

“Where, then, is boasting?” In other words, when one understands that—that I cannot save myself, that only Christ saves—that immediately cancels out any pride I may have.

Remember that I have told you that one of God’s great controversies—in fact, God’s greatest controversy—with humanity concerns human pride and arrogance. Notice that God has been contending with pride ever since Eden. The first proud being was Lucifer, the most exalted angel God created, who, the Bible says—the Bible suggests—wanted to make himself like God and put himself in God’s place. He became filled with pride.

If you read there in Ezekiel, it speaks about this. It says that he became filled with arrogance and wanted to put himself in God’s place, and for that reason God cast him out of heaven. And that is the Satan who nowadays causes us so many headaches here on earth. And that Satan tempts man, and man, in turn, does the same thing. God tells him, Do not touch that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and man does it and rebels against God.

And then you go on to the Tower of Babel, with men once again doing the same thing, becoming proud and saying, Let us build a very tall tower as a monument to our wisdom and our greatness. And what does God do? He kicks that sandcastle down, confuses their languages, and scatters them throughout the earth—pride again.

And afterward, he brings a people out of nothing, from a poor Bedouin wandering around out there named Abraham, already old, dried up, and almost dead, and he gives him a son and creates a nation. And those ungrateful, proud people come out of Egypt, out of slavery, and no sooner have they come out than they are already complaining about God and rebelling against him in the wilderness.

And afterward, they betray him and commit adultery with other gods while God blesses them and blesses them and blesses them. And they think they are the best of the best, and they rebel against the Father, violate his kingship and his paternal dignity, and continually insult him.

And the Romans do that, the Greeks do it, all humanity does it, even though God has given them natural revelation so that they may know, because man knows; he instinctively has the outline of the divine personality written in his genes. Man knows in a general way who God is, and even so, he persists in belittling him.

So, brothers, I see God as a being, a king, who is tremendously conscious of his dignity, his kingship, and his holiness, yet is continually ignored by his children.

Listen, those of you who are parents know what I mean. A rebellious child, a child who neglects his father and his mother—the Bible says that this is why God abhors it. Why does God take children who are rebellious, insulting, disobedient, and neglectful toward their parents so seriously? Why is one of the first commandments, “Honor your father and your mother”? Why? Because God knows what he is talking about. Because God knows the offense of being continually neglected and despised by humanity.

And for that reason, do you know what? God has made sure that man can never save himself. Because if he could save himself, they would take God completely out of the picture. That is why it says here, then, “Where, then, is boasting?” It is excluded. Do you see?

And in verse 26, “...with a view,” it says—God established things that way, with a view, that is, with the purpose “of demonstrating at the present time his righteousness, so that he might be just and the one who justifies.”

Because we have seen this, brothers: every time man can do anything by himself, he immediately takes God out of the matter. Why did God take Gideon and tell him: Look, you have thirty thousand men against an entire army of hundreds of thousands, but that is too many, because if you win with those thirty thousand, you are going to think that you were the ones who did it. So take them there and tell everyone who wants to leave to go. And afterward he says: There are still too many. They may still say that perhaps it was because of a good strategy, or their courage, or their military skill. He says: No, take them to the water and test them for me—and he left him with 300 men. Why? So that when they won, they would have to give him the glory.

Brothers, it is fascinating. If I had the skill of a novelist to express all of human history, it is God seeking recognition from his creature, seeking to make his creature understand that there is nothing more important than submitting to him—the Father, the sovereign, the King, the Lord. That, brothers, is why God loves humility and meekness so much. That is why the Bible says that God will not despise a contrite and humble heart. That is why, brothers, it is important to respect our authorities. It is important for young people to learn to respect gray hair. It is important not to go around with a rebellious attitude that questions everything, criticizes everything, and belittles everything, like this present generation, because God abhors the rebellious heart. He knows, and that is why God always does things in such a way that no glory is left for man, but rather that the glory goes to him, because everything that exists exists because God created it.

Ultimately, brothers, everything is an illusion except the mind of God that conceives man. Without God there is nothing. Without God there is nothing. So that is why God arranged to establish a system lasting thousands of years in order to lead humanity little by little into a dead end. It is like cowboys who take cattle and drive them along little by little until they get them into the corral. God devised a system called the law and placed it before man. He says: Well, do you want to justify yourself? Okay, no problem. We are going to give you the way to do it: some commandments, and when you fulfill those commandments, then you can save yourself.

And do you know what? In the end man is going to have to conclude: I cannot do it. Exhausted and weary: Lord, the truth is that I cannot save myself. The law was a ruse; it was a trap God set for man, something God used to trip man up. That is the law. It was God’s way of establishing a backdrop of black velvet on which to place the diamond that is the figure of Christ Jesus—I even became poetic there.

It is the black backdrop of man’s failure, man’s sin. And God established that entire system of the law. That is why Paul says it is not that the law is bad; on the contrary. It plays a very important role. It is a mirror before which man can see his inability to save himself, so it plays a very important role.

You remember the bronze basin the priests had in the Old Testament. Before ministering, they had to look at themselves, and if there was a stain or something, they had to wash their hands and feet—symbolically, the extremities—before ministering before the Lord. They had to look at themselves in the bronze mirror of the basin, and then they could wash. The law is the mirror that has enabled humanity to conclude that it cannot save itself, forcing it to go and throw itself upon the mercy and grace of God.

So how wonderful is what Paul is saying, right? Humanity, you have sinned; you fall short of the glory of God; you are entitled to nothing from God. Now you have only one option left: Christ Jesus, the blood of Christ—the propitiation that comes through the blood of Jesus.

How many say amen to that? The truth, brothers—the truth is that I would not dare come before the throne of God on Judgment Day and pretend that I could argue in my own favor, because, brothers, I disqualified myself thousands of years ago. It is only by the mercy and grace of God.

How sad it will be for those who do not have Christ as their advocate and who intend to appear before the throne of God and argue on the basis of their own arguments, which is something Paul has also said.

He says there are Gentiles who do not know about Christ. How many have wondered, Well, what will happen to that Indigenous man deep in the Amazon jungle who does not even have a transistor radio, who has never heard that Jesus Christ saves, and whom Yiye Ávila never reached or anything like that? What will happen to that person? Can God condemn him if he never heard about Christ? That is a subject that, as they say, has eaten away at the brains of so many theologians. But what Paul intimates and suggests is the following: When those people arrive at Judgment Day, according to the way they have lived and according to their personal arguments, God will tell them: Okay, you may defend yourself. Let us see: within what you knew and received, within the light you had available, how did you behave according to what you knew?

And the Bible says—Paul says—that their own reasoning will have to defend them. It is as though you were to go right now to the court here in Boston to resolve a child-support case, an insurance case, or whatever, and there is no lawyer there, and you have to struggle there with Boston law when you do not even speak English—just imagine. And you have to be your own lawyer. They say that a person who defends himself has an idiot for a lawyer, or something like that.

Brothers, in a courtroom everything is constructed.... It is a language; it is an entire system of symbols; it is a cryptic system for which you need specialized knowledge. Imagine appearing before God and trying to defend yourself with your own arguments. Oh, my mother did not treat me well; she slapped me when I was three years old, and that traumatized me. And from there I became a criminal, a drug addict. The Lord will say, Yes, but when they told you that God loves you, that you should repent, and that he can heal you, and that there.... then.... The point is that no one will be able to defend himself. We need an advocate, Christ Jesus, who has never lost a case.

Let the Pentecostals say, “Glory to God.” Hallelujah!

That’s it. So I conclude with this, brothers and sisters: What does that say about how we should conduct ourselves, then? First of all, Christian, what are the consequences of that knowledge? Number one is that you no longer have to live in agony, wondering whether or not they will pass you at the end of the exam. Because God has already said, “Look, I know you are a scoundrel anyway, but I am going to pass you anyway.” So what God says is, “Look, we can rest.” We do not have to live under condemnation, feeling guilty all the time: Will I be saved? Will I not be saved?

If you entrust your life to Christ Jesus and know that he has paid the debt, you are saved. The Word says that if we confess our sins, if we believe that he is the Son of God and that God raised him from the dead, we are saved. It is not by works; it is not by anything you can do. At the end of the day, there would be a thousand ways God could condemn you if it depended on your doing everything right. When you come to the end of the day, after trying everything you can and failing, you can say to him, “Father, now I entrust myself to your grace and mercy, because I know that it is not by the works of the flesh, nor by the works of the law, but by your mercy.”

When you have done your part, God will do his part by covering the shortfall, the debt. So you can be confident; you can rest in the Lord. So that is one of the things: It is not by works, but by God’s mercy.

Number two: I believe that one of the things we must do is give glory to God, give thanks to God, give thanks to that merciful Father who has forgiven our offenses and has told us, “Do not worry, my child. I know you cannot do it by yourself, but I forgive you.”

I believe that the Christian must continually be possessed by a sense of deep, all-consuming gratitude and humility toward God. That is why we must always give glory to the Father and praise him for this salvation that he has freely given us. And we must say to him, “Lord, thank you for rescuing me from hell. Thank you for not holding all my sins against me. You are good; you are merciful.”

A third very important thing is that we likewise show mercy to others. Because if I know that I am a sinner, that I cannot save myself, and that I am saved only by God’s mercy, that means I cannot go around boasting in front of others who are in sin. There is no room for passing judgment on others. There is no room for despising the sinner.

The Bible says, “If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness, watching yourself lest you too be tempted in the same way.”

God continually calls us to recognize that, since I am a sinner, I cannot go around pointing an accusing finger at everyone else. I must first look at my own failing and look at others with that same eye of mercy, kindness, and grace.

When you look at the homosexual, when you look at the drug addict, when you look at the adulteress, when you look at the addict or the alcoholic, when you look at the person who is mired in some kind of sin, see yourself there, were it not for the grace and mercy of God.

Do not judge. Remember that we talked about passing judgment on people, about judging with that eye that delights in seeing the stain of sin in others. No. When we look at others, let us first see our own inability to be saved, and then let us show mercy, try to help that person come out of their sin, bless them, and be merciful. First look at the beam in your own eye that would keep you from entering the Kingdom of God, and then look at the speck in someone else’s eye.

How good God is, and how beautiful the Gospel is. We are saved by grace, not by works, so that no one may boast.

Let us stand. And this afternoon I would like to invite my brothers and sisters, first of all, to recognize that on our own we are disqualified from the Kingdom of God. Let us confess right now, “Lord, I cannot be saved by myself.”

Father, I am the first to confess that it is only by grace and mercy and faith in Christ Jesus, and I thank you, Jesus, because you died on the cross for my sins. That is why I am saved, and that is why I am certain that if I die right now, I will go to heaven, because you paid the price. You paid the ransom, Lord, and I thank you for that.

Father, I admit that I have offended you many times. We have offended you, and we cannot claim to have our own righteousness, our own holiness.

Forgive us for judging others; forgive us for looking at others with contempt or arrogance. Help us to be people of mercy, humility, and grace, and to extend grace to others just as you have extended grace to us as well.

Father, may this church always have a fragile holiness, a conditional holiness, a transparent holiness—a holiness that always keeps its eye on you, its gaze fixed on Jesus, and its hand tucked into your hand, Lord, not trusting in ourselves but always clinging to you, our heavenly Father.

Help us to be a church of holiness, but also a church of love and mercy, of grace toward the fallen, and of people who continually confess their sins before you so that you may heal and save us.

Lord, we want the spirituality of that tax collector who said, “Have mercy on me, O God, because I am a sinner.” And help us to be such a church, Lord, one that is always conscious of the importance of Jesus; and by your grace we will succeed in being so, Father.

Brothers and sisters, I also want to invite anyone here this afternoon who has not yet given their life to Jesus Christ to raise their hand now and do what the Apostle Paul says: Make Christ your substitute.

I want to ask whether you have not yet taken that step of faith and whether you would like to do so this afternoon. I do not know your life, but if anyone wants to take that step of faith, I want to invite you this afternoon to say, “Lord, I receive you as my propitiation, that is, my substitute.”

Is there anyone for whom I can pray this afternoon who wants to take that step of faith? Wherever you are, raise your hand if you have not done it before, and place your life in the Lord’s hands. Is there anyone who has not yet done that and who wants to do it now in Jesus’ name? Is there anyone? Amen.

God bless that sister here. God bless you, sister. You are saying, “Lord, I cannot save myself, but through Christ Jesus I can be saved.” That is what you are saying. Amen.

Another hand has been raised over here too—where is it? Here, beside Araceli. Okay, amen, glory to God. Yes, I see the sister back here. Amen.

Is there anyone else who wants to take that step of faith this afternoon, so that we may pray for you and commit you into the Lord’s hand? That gentleman back there is raising his hand. You are doing what the Bible says, aren’t you? You are admitting, “I cannot save myself, only through Christ Jesus, so I want to sign that contract. I want it to be clear: It is not through me, but through Christ.”

Does anyone else want to take that step of faith this afternoon? We want to pray for you. Anyone else?

Why don’t you come up here quickly? Come here. Someone accompany those brothers and sisters who have raised their hands. Come this way for just a moment. Come here; do not worry. We are going to pray. That is all we are going to do: Commit you into the Lord’s hands, bless your life, and place you in Jesus’ hands. Come this way for just a moment.

You have already taken the most difficult step, which is to declare that publicly. Just come here for a moment. We do not want to embarrass you or put you on the spot, but simply to pray for you.

The Word says, “Whoever confesses me before men, I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven.” And that is all. You are not committing yourself to Lion of Judah, or to me, or to anything else. It is to the heavenly Father; that is all. There are no human bonds here, only bonds of love in God.

Father, I bless this man and this woman who have come forward, and that woman who also raised her hand back there; I bless her as well. You know her heart, Father; be with her too.

Father, you have said that if we confess our sins, we are saved through the blood of Jesus, and they are doing this this afternoon. So send your grace upon their lives now, straighten what is crooked, and enter their hearts, as your Word says: “I will come in to them and dine with them, and they with me.”

Bless their lives and establish them in the faith, Father. Enlighten their minds so that they may understand your mysteries, and cancel every accusation of the devil, every claim upon their lives. We neutralize it now and declare them free to live that victorious and abundant life in Christ Jesus.

Thank you, Lord. Your people say, “Amen.” Thank you, Jesus. Brothers and sisters, God bless you. We love you. Continue in the faith.