For Sinners Slain (Romans 5:8)

Transcript

JR 40
04/18/2025
“For Sinners Slain”
Romans 5:8
Jesse Randolph

Well, good evening. It is a privilege to bring a brief message to you from the living God this evening. And specifically from His Word. I’d like to direct your attention to the screens behind me as I will be showing you a portion of Scripture that will kind of guide where we go for this short devotional and message.

But you see those words up behind me? “Christ died.” Those are actual words from an actual Bible verse, Romans 5:8, you see it there. And what I’ve done is I’ve clipped out those two words for you from that verse in order to take us all on what is going to be a bit of a methodic experiment. Here’s the question I’d like to put before you this evening. If you saw those words for the first time. Maybe this is the first time you’ve seen these words. If you saw these words for the first time and you had no other information at your disposal, no pre-existing familiarity with what the Bible teaches elsewhere and you came across this language that “Christ died,” what would you do with those words? Well, I suspect you’d have questions as you looked at those words. Who is this Christ and how is it that He died and where did He die, and when did He die, and how did He die.

Well, if you were to probe a bit further, you’d learn that this man who is called Christ was given the name “Jesus” by an angel who visited His mother Mary. You’d learn that He was the virgin-conceived Messiah of Israel, the Promised One, the Anointed One. You’d learn that He lived in a region on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea called Judea in the days of the Roman Empire some 2,000 years ago. You’d learn that He was the son of a carpenter, some say stone mason. You’d learn that He was a teacher and He had disciples. You’d learn that He performed various miracles healings and resurrections and fish and loaves and water and wine. And then you’d learn as it says right here in Romans 5:8, that at some point He died. “Christ died.”

So if you had those two words, “Christ died,” and that’s all you had, you would know that there was this individual who lived in real flesh at a real point in time in real history, in a real historical moment, and that He died. And if you had no other figure in world history, Alexander the Great or Oliver Cromwell or Joan of Arc or George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt or John Lennon or Princess Diana. He was this significant historical figure and then He died. So what?”

Well, if we were to widen out the angle a bit, with which we’re viewing this text, we’d note, we’d see next, that “Christ died for us.” In other words, Christ didn’t merely die. He didn’t just die any death. No. He died in the place of someone. Better said, He died in the place of someones. He died in the place of people. He died in your place. He died in my place. He died in our place. He died for us.

Now, if you’re especially skeptical, hard-hearted, close-minded, unbelieving, you might find yourself yawning or scoffing even at those words, that “Christ died for us.” You might say, “Okay, well at best, Jesus Christ was a hero. He was brave and He was heroic. He was willing to jump into harm’s way, the way a Secret Service agent might jump in the way of the President to protect his life. He was willing to sacrifice Himself. That’s noble. He died a noble death. That makes him bold and courageous. It makes him a garden-variety hero, but that’s about it. I don’t need to swear my allegiance to Him. I don’t need to put my faith in Him. I don’t need to follow Him.”

Well If we were to widen the angle out a bit further and zoom out a bit more, we’d see not only that “Christ died” and not only that “He died for us.” But we’d see this, that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And that’s what we’re here, friends, to commemorate this evening. That Christ died for sinners. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

I mean, of course, today is Good Friday. And on Good Friday and Easter, churches will typically have a larger number of visitors and what that means is that there will be many of you in the audience tonight who have not heard as much teaching about sin as maybe some of the regulars here. Perhaps you think that sin is an outdated concept that’s been replaced by modern day notions of medicine or psychology or psychiatry. Maybe you simply disagree with the concept of sin, because you consider yourself, by and large, to be a good person.

Well, recognizing that sin is an unpopular topic to talk about in our day -- recognizing that the world in which we live not only tolerates, but embraces all forms of sin -- and given sadly that churches are more and more looking the other way when it comes to sin -- I think it’s important that we go through a bit of a crash course here on what the Bible teaches about sin, because sin is essential. An understanding of sin is essential to knowing what the Good Friday message is all about. What the good news is all about.

So, what is sin? Well, the word “sin” in the Greek language means literally to miss the mark. The way an archer’s arrow might fall short of the bullseye, or the way a bowler’s roll might miss the head pin, or a pitcher pitch might miss his catcher’s target. Sin, fundamentally, is missing the mark.

So if sin is just about missing the mark. If we’re talking about archers or bowlers or pitchers. And if sin is just about being a little off center with our lives, what’s the big deal? Why is sin such a big deal? What is the issue? Why is sin so problematic? Well, the problem is this. When we sin, when we “miss the mark,” and we all do, we’re not committing some morally neutral act like spitting into the ocean. No. When we sinned, we sin against Someone. And we spit in the face directly of Someone. And that person we offend and are acting against is God Himself. The God of the universe. The God of heaven and earth. This is the God who has revealed Himself in nature and creation.

Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God.” This is the God who has revealed Himself in history, in providence, down through centuries. This is the God who reveals Himself and impresses the reality of His existence on our consciences, even though we as when we are in an unbelieving state try to suppress it. This is the God who has revealed Himself in the person of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the God who has revealed Himself in His holy Word, the Scriptures.

Sin is an offense against that God. A God who is described in the Scriptures as a consuming fire, a jealous God, a holy God, a God who’s described as being a God of vengeance and wrath and who feels “indignation every day” toward not only sin, but sinners. That’s the God who has set up the standards for us to live by. That’s the God if you want to think about it this way, who has set up the pins for us to knock down. And tragically, we continually and repeatedly failed to do so. Instead, we sin.

Now, it wasn’t always supposed to be this way. God didn’t create us to fail Him. And it certainly isn’t our place to place the blame for our sin at His feet. No. When God made man at the pinnacle of His creative works back when He made everything in the six days of creation, He declared all things He had created in Genesis chapter 1 to be very good. And He created us, mankind, to have eternal fellowship and perfect communion with Him. He designed us to live with Him forever, and to enjoy Him forever.

But that’s not the way it turned out. What happened? Sin happened. Romans 5:12 says, that “through one man sin entered the world.” Through one man. Sin has historical roots. It has this provable lineage. It goes all the way back to the first man Adam who along with Eve back in the Garden of Eden did the one thing the Lord commanded them not to do, which was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was through that one act of disobedience, that initial act of rebellion, that sin entered the world.

That same passage that I just quoted, Romans 5:12, then says that death “spread to all men.” Meaning that though sin initially entered the world through Adam and through Eve, as he and his wife procreated, and as they and their descendants populated the earth, that plague of sin spread to all men. And the result now is that every nationality has been impacted by sin. Every church denomination has been impacted by sin. Sin has landed on the shores of every continent. It’s spread to all of mankind, to everyone, everywhere, in all centuries.

Sin is a universal plague. It’s a global disease. Romans 3:23 says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Note, it doesn’t say, “a few sinned.” Or “only the really bad people have sinned.” Or “only the guys in the penitentiary have sinned.” Or “some sinned” or “many sinned.” It’s says, “all sinned.”

The cutest little baby girl you’ve ever seen, with the curls and the dimples and the twinkle in her eye? Sinner. That dear old grandfather of yours who never spoke a cross word to your grandmother? Sinner. That community service-minded little old lady who works and volunteers her time at the library or the cross walk or the soup kitchen? Sinner. The most gracious, gentle, kind, loving person you can ever imagine or think of? Sinner. You on your best day? Me on my best day? Sinner. “All have sinned.”

See, as a consequence of Adam’s fall all the way back in the Garden of Eden, everyone in his line, meaning everyone who has ever lived on planet Earth, everyone in this auditorium tonight is a natural-born sinner. Ephesians 2:1 says, when you were born, we all experience that, that’s why we’re here, you were born “dead in your trespasses and sin.” Everyone here including the man speaking, was born spiritually stillborn, totally depraved, completely unable to please God. Romans 3 says, “There is none righteous not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.”

The reason we can’t get over that feeling of never being quite ‘good enough’ is that we aren’t. The reason we can never get over that hopeless feeling that we’ll never be able to please that God that everybody is talking about, is that we can’t. There’s nothing we can do in our power at least, to rid ourselves of this sin condition. In our natural state, from the moment we take that first breath of air in the delivery room, we are dead, we are damned, we are cursed, we are condemned, we are doomed sinners.

And I say, “doomed,” not to be sensationalistic, but to be biblical. See, the Bible again teaches that sin comes with a consequence. Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death.” There is multiple components to that. Physically, spiritual, eternal. The reason we die physically, the reason these bodies of flesh will eventually give out, the reason you’re feeling those aches that you do right now is sin. The reason that we have pediatric cancer wards, the reason that we have tsunamis and earthquakes and tornadoes is sin. The reason that shooters shoot up college campuses is sin. The reason you have that lump in the throat feeling every Christmas when such and such relative is no longer there, and you’re grieving that they’re not there at the table, that’s sin. The grief we feel, the mourning we go through, the hurt we experience, it’s all rooted in sin. The reason hospice care exists, the reason that we’ll one day be lowered into a grave, the reason that our ashes may be one day spread over the ocean is sin. Sin has brought about physical death. “Six feet of dirt makes all men equal,” once said Charles Spurgeon. And He was absolutely right. And the reason we have that “six feet of dirt” that will one day go above our noses, is sin.

Well, the “wages of sin” not only is bringing about our physical death, it not only has the consequence of physical death, sin also brought spiritual death. Meaning on account of our sin when we came into this world, we were already estranged from God. We already were relationally separated from God. We could have been church kids, we could have heard about God, but the minute we were born, we were separated. Your sins “have made a separation between you and your God,” says Isaiah 59:2.

So we have physical death, spiritual death and then there’s eternal death. Meaning what waits the unrepentant sinner if they don’t put their faith in the One we’ll talk about in just a moment, is the righteous punishment of a holy God in the eternal flames of a literal hell. A place where, the Bible says, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. A place where the Bible says the worm never dies. A place where 2, Thessalonians 1:9 says, the unbeliever will “pay the penalty of eternal destruction.” And what that means is that putting that all together in our natural condition, we are in big, big trouble. Because the reality is when that hospital monitor stops beeping on that last day, when that cold dew of death on our forehead finally dries up, when that death rattle stops and our eyes shut for the last time, what we face is the righteous wrath of God.

You’re thinking to yourself, “Man, that guy has some issues. This is really dark. Did his wife not kiss him on the way out before coming to work this morning? I should have gone to the Methodist Church. I hear they’re doing pet blessings tonight. I thought this was Good Friday.” This is Good Friday. And it’s good because God has provided a solution for all of the problems I just articulated. And that’s really why we’re here this evening, is it not?

Look at this next slide taking us to the rest of Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us,” it says, “in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” So, it’s not just that Christ died, and it’s not just that He died for us. He died for us “while we were,” we just saw, “yet sinners.” And now we consider this last piece of the puzzle, that Christ’s death fundamentally was a demonstration of God’s “own love toward us.” The very God that we have sinned against. The God of heaven and earth, the God who formed us in our mother’s womb, the God who is giving us breath and movement right now, the God that our sin offended has given us a way. He’s offered a solution for our sin problem. He’s offered us a way to be reconciled to Him. Though He is a holy God, who cannot tolerate or excuse sin in His presence. Though He is a God of justice who will not fail to dispense perfect justice in His perfect time. Though He is a God of wrath, as I mentioned, is angry with the wicked every day.

He is also, and hear me now, a God of grace, a God of patience, a God of mercy, and a God of love. He is a God as it says in 2 Peter 3:9, who does not desire that any would perish, but that all would come to repentance. He is a God who so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever might believe upon Him, would not perish, but have everlasting life. And so though we, on account of our sin, deserved to face God’s righteous wrath and judgment, He offered us a way out. He offered us a means by which we might be spared and rescued and saved. And He did so because He somehow changed His mind about this whole sin business. He didn’t reverse course. He didn’t decide to withhold judgment against sin. No, He did pour His judgment out on sin, but instead of pouring out His judgment on us, He poured His judgement out on His Son.

On the cross. On the Mount of Calvary. It was there that God’s measured fury, His perfect justice, His righteous wrath, was poured out upon Jesus, God the Son. His wrath was poured out through the insults and the taunts and the jeers of the Roman soldiers and the curious onlookers there on that scene. It was meted out through whips and the cords that ripped through Jesus’ flesh as He was violently flogged. It was dispensed through those five-to-seven inch nails which were driven into Jesus’ hands and feet. It was shown through the mocking robe and scepter which was thrust upon the Lord of glory. It was given through that crudely-twisted-together of crown of thorns that was hammered into Christ’s skull. And it was displayed ultimately in Jesus’ battered and bruised and bleeding body as He hung upon that cross from morning until the early afternoon.

In other words, the condemnation and the punishment that we deserved was transferred fully and furiously onto a Substitute, Jesus. And eventually, with His body heaving and His energy depleting and His life leaving Him, having drunk down the dregs of the cup of God’s wrath, down to the last drop, the Lord cried out with His final breath, “tetelestai,” “it is finished.”

Through His death, Jesus declared victory over sin, and death, and Satan, which is why we now if we believed upon Him can declare with Paul who says in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting?” Through His death, Jesus Christ offered Himself up as the perfect and spotless sacrifice for sinners like you and me. 1 Peter 1:18 says, “you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your futile conduct inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”

And through His death, Christ provided a way for sinners like you and me to be reconciled to the holy God that we’ve sinned against. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might be the righteousness of God in Him.” God the Father, out of His great love for mankind, decreed that the Son would die on the cross and die He did. Look at our passage again, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Friend, He did that for you and He did that for me. That is good news! That is why we can call Good Friday, “good.” Do you understand these things? Do you understand what Jesus did on the cross on your behalf? Do you understand how pitiful your plight would be had He not gone to the cross for you? Do you understand the depths of the anguish that He experienced on your behalf? Do you understand the unfathomable love that was demonstrated on Calvary for you? Do you understand that these truths must not only be grasped intellectually, but they have to be clung to as a matter of personal faith? Are you willing to bank your entire eternal existence, not on any sense of inflated sense of self-importance, or self-worth, or self-value, not on the basis of any resume of good deeds that you think you’ve done, but instead on what Christ did, the One who is of matchless value, the one who is of matchless worth, has already paid it all. It’s been paid in full.

If you still have a heart of unbelief here this evening, my call on you, I beg of you, is that you would come to Jesus Christ. Come to the One who offers eternal hope. Come to the One who offers life abundant. Come to the One who hung on a tree for you. Come to the One who right now with His nail-pierced hands, is extending them to you, offering you forgiveness for your sin.

I’ll close with these words from Romans 10:9. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”