You cannot change society by external means, top down. The only way a society or a culture is changed is by changed lives. That’s why Paul narrows it down in (Romans) Chapter 3 again and in verse 10 he says, there’s no one righteous, not even one! You see we don’t have a problem this morning talking about our culture, do we? We’re happy to talk about our culture. We’re not abortionists. We’re not feminists. We’re not these bad people. Oh, man, what a culture we have! We’ve got the Bible. We’re evangelicals. We hang close to God. We come on Sunday’s. We’re okay.

No we’re not!

That’s what the Jews were doing in Romans chapter 2. They said, “The Gentiles? What a bunch of scum. Man do we hate those Gentiles. Messing up the culture. All those godless people. But us the Jews? We’re the holy ones. We have the law. We wear it here. We wear it here. We walk around, we’re sure that God’s going to accept us, ‘coz we have the law. We have the 10 Commandments.”

Then what does Paul say to them? Paul says, “Listen you are in an even worse position. At least these characters don’t even have the 10 Commandments and they stand condemned. You have got the very things that condemn you and you’re walking around holding them.”

“And the thing you’re holding in your hand, and that thing you’re strapping on your forehead and tying to your wrist condemns you!” “Who are you to judge somebody else”, he says.

Who are we to judge other people? Who are we to condemn the culture in which we live. We are the culture. We are the people. We are the sinners.

That’s the condition.

Now you answer me this, is this the kind of message that contemporary bourgeois americans want to hear? Not on your jolly life, it isn’t.

Only a mad man, a fool, would stand before a congregation and proclaim the Word of God in this way.

I listen to the radio in Sunday mornings, I listen to all these different sermons. Again I heard the same old this junk this morning. And he’s telling the congregation, “What are we supposed to do? We’re supposed to do this kind of thing, that kind of thing, and the next kind of thing.” Never once did he say we’re supposed to proclaim the good news of the Gospel. Why not? Because they don’t believe that it is necessary.

Because they don’t believe that God’s wrath has been revealed from Heaven against wickedness. Because they do not believe that man is wicked. They do not believe that he is godless, and they don’t believe in a God who would exercise wrath on the sins of men and women.

So ipso facto you would have no Gospel. You have got nothing to proclaim.

The reason why some of us this morning sit in this congregation still in our sins is because we have never been brought by the Spirit of God to face our true condition before God’s righteous standard.

Some of us who are wondering about where we are in relationship to spiritual things are no where because we have never been truly converted by the Spirit of God.

We have exchanged one set of external circumstances for another. We once didn’t go to church and now we go. We once weren’t interested in religious things and now we are. We once didn’t really care, didn’t have a conscience and now we do. And so we add all of that together and say, “Therefore I must be in!”

I wanted to have a friend and somebody told me that Jesus is a friend. I wanted to have purpose and somebody told me that Jesus gives me purpose. I wanted to be free from anxiety and somebody told me that Jesus gives freedom from anxiety.

But did you ever once hear Jesus say, “I have come in order that you might have purpose”? He said that, “I have come in order that you might have life.”

Now why would he want to give life to people who have life? Because the life we have is not actually life, it is actually death. We are spiritually dead. But nobody’s going to say, “Jesus give me some of that life.”

Until of course the Spirit of God says, “You are a dead man. You are dead woman.”

It doesn’t matter how idealistic we may be or how apparent our righteousness is, none of that stuff transfers in the currency of God’s kingdom.

- Alistair Begg, Parkside Church, Cleveland, OH

Listen to more of Alistair Begg at TruthforLife.org