This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our daily drive time devotions. We're in Romans chapter 3 this week
and we're in our fifth day at looking together at this incredibly powerful
chapter scripture. Romans 3 ends with these verses beginning in verse 27 and
reading through verse 31.

Where then is boasting? It's excluded. On what principle?

On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a
man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

Is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles too? Yes, of
the Gentiles too.

Since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the
uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then nullify the law by this faith?
Not at all.

Rather, we uphold the law. This is the conclusion of Romans chapter 3 and the
conclusion is one people, one God, one way. One people equally in need of one
God.

God who made us all through one way. Faith in Jesus Christ. At the close of this
chapter, Paul asked some very important questions.

He asked some questions about boasting. He asked a question about God being the
God of the Jews and he asked a question about the law. The first question he
asked is where is the boasting?

And he says it's excluded. He says there is no pride. There is no boasting.

That is great good news to me about salvation. If there were boasting in our
salvation, what would heaven be like? I've often thought that.

If we could boast about how we got to God, the good things that we did, the ways
that we prayed, the sermons that we preached, the people that we served, if we
could boast about it, all of heaven for all of eternity would just be listening
to people boast about how they got there. That wouldn't be much like heaven,
would it? Boasting is excluded because it's by faith.

God is able to take all of us into the very presence of Jesus Christ. It's like
we all get on this elevator together and he takes us together into his presence.
We experience together what it means for him to lift us, to do for us what we
could never do for ourselves.

Where is the boasting? There's no pride. And then Paul asked the question, is
God the God of the Jews only?

And as he asked that question, he's emphasizing for us that there is no
prejudice. There's only one way, but that's not the way of prejudice, it's the
way of Jesus Christ. If you and I were to say that we were the only ones that
could come to faith in Jesus Christ because we understood it better than someone
else, or we had the privilege of hearing it better than someone else, then that
would be spiritual prejudice.

But Paul says, God's not the God of the Jews only, of one people, he's not the
God of the Gentiles only, he's not the God of the Americans only, or the
Europeans only. He's the God of all. When you and I allow spiritual prejudice to
creep its way into our lives, we're denying the very character of God.

God, in his very character, is loving towards all. And then Paul asks the third
question. He asks, do we nullify the law?

When we say we have faith, are we saying that the law is worth nothing? We're
going to look at this more and more as we go further into the book of Romans,
but here Paul makes it very clear that we do not nullify the law, we uphold the
law. It's not as if because I have faith in Jesus Christ, now I don't have to
live according to God's standards anymore.

He says there is no pride when he talks about boasting. He says there is no
prejudice when he talks about God being the God of the Jews only. And here he
says there is no license.

There's no license to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. The
good news upholds the law in its purpose. The law has moral direction.

The law shows us that we need Jesus Christ. No pride, no prejudice, no license.
By the way, the answer to each of these questions that Paul gives is the answer
to three of the greatest heresies of the Church.

One of the greatest heresies of the Church is something called Gnosticism, the
idea that I can know more than you know, or by some great knowledge that I have
better than you, I can get closer to God. Pride. Paul says there's no pride.

We're all equal before him. Where is the boasting? A second great heresy of the
Church is what I would call exclusivism, the idea that one certain group can get
closer to God than anyone else.

That's a very popular heresy in all kinds of religions. Paul here reminds us
there's no prejudice. Jesus Christ gave himself for us all.

And then a third great heresy of the Church, and there's a big word behind this
one, it's antinomianism, which is anti-law. The idea that grace means that there
is no such thing as a moral law anymore. Paul says very clearly here, grace
doesn't mean that at all.

Grace means grace. I come to Jesus Christ through grace. I get to know him
through grace, but then I live out the kind of life that he's made me to live.

Grace doesn't throw out the law, it shows me the purpose of the law. Now these
three heresies, gnosticism, exclusivism, antinomianism, the Church has battled
these heresies for 2,000 years in different forms by different names, but the
truth is we battled with these personally. That's why the Church has battled
them.

The truth is I'm prideful. The truth is I'm prejudiced. The truth is I sometimes
take license with the grace of God.

The real truth is we can take these great truths about salvation that we've
looked at together this week, and we can become prideful about them. We can
become selfish with them. We can become unfaithful because of them by taking
these truths to mean I don't have to live my life by God's grace and strength
and for his glory.

These are not just truths for the Romans 2,000 years ago, or just truths that
the Church as a whole has struggled with. These are personal struggles in all of
our lives. Pride and prejudice and the tendency to take license with God's grace
are things that we all struggle with.

How do you deal with it? The best way is to be honest with God. And so as we
close this look together at Romans chapter 3, I'd like to give you an
opportunity for an extended prayer time to talk to God about these very issues,
to talk to God about your pride, to talk to God about your prejudice, our
tendency to exclude others, and about the times when we take license with his
forgiveness.

Let me suggest some things we can talk to God about and then give you some
moments to talk to him. Play some music in here and then I'll come back at the
end of this time and pray together and share some closing thoughts. But right
now as we pray to God, would you take a moment to talk to him honestly about
your pride?

Talk to him about those times when you've allowed your pride to get in the way
of praising him and understanding him for who he really is. And then take a
moment or two to admit to God those times when you've been exclusive about his
love, maybe by being prejudiced toward some group of people, or more often it's
just that we fail to share his love with somebody. Just be honest to God about
that.

Ask for his forgiveness and his renewed strength. And then take some moments to
talk to God about those times when, because you knew he would forgive you, he
went ahead and sinned. Tell God not only that you're sorry but that you repent.

You want to turn around. You want to live a new way. Jesus, we pray together
that when we face our own pride, our own selfishness, our own tendency to go our
own way, that instead of running from those truths you help us to run to you.

Run to your love and your grace and your forgiveness. Because we know that
because of Jesus we will always find acceptance in you, but not only acceptance,
but also find strength to change, strength to live out the kind of life that you
made us to live. So we ask for that strength, depending on Jesus, in his name,
amen.

There are three inevitable results to understanding these truths, these truths
about pride and prejudice and our tendency to take a license with the truths of
God. When I get a hold of what God says about this, I can replace pride with
praise. Praise for what he's done in my life, for who he is.

Instead of living a prideful life, I live a praiseful life. When I get a hold of
these truths, I replace prejudice with passion, with passion for telling others
what he can do in their lives. And when I understand these truths, I replace
license with purity, the purity of not only knowing who God is, but allowing who
he is to begin to be seen through my life.

Praise, passion, and purity. That's a pretty good test. It's a pretty good test
about whether I've understood these truths about salvation.

If studying these truths results in pride for what I'm doing for God or an
apathy towards what God can do for others, then somehow I've missed it. But if
it results in increasing praise and passion and purity, then I've got it. I've
got this incredible truth of God's salvation and what it can mean in my life.

Next week we're going to look together at Romans chapter 4, a chapter that's all
about faith and how faith can work in every one of our lives.