00:00:00 Introduction and Winter Camp Announcement

So good to have you back. That song is an incredible intro to today’s sermon, particularly the line, “dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.” I want you to keep that in mind.

So before we jump into the sermon, one major announcement. We are like a month out from winter camp. So, a month out from winter camp. It’s going to be up at UC. Yeah, that’s right.

>> It’s going to be at UC. So, same place we had it last year. Now, critical is that if you are going to go, you need to have your parents register you this week. Sunday, like a week from today, is the last day to sign up. Please don’t wait because we need to order shirts and get everything locked in that day. We don’t have much time. So we’re going to have a hard time accepting late registrations. So please, even tonight, go home, talk to your parents, say, “If we’re not registered, can you do it tonight?”

And I want you to know, if finances are a problem for your family, if you’re thinking you’re not able to go because there’s a money problem and it’s too expensive, can you have your parents reach out to me? That should not be a problem. So if you’re hearing this, parents, on a recording, or if you know that money is a challenge, please just have them reach out to me in the church or the church office. I think we could take care of it.

So, raise your hand if you need a note-taking sheet.

00:01:58 Luke 18:9 and the Big Question

So, let’s open up our Bibles to Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18, verse 9. And tonight’s message is called, “Whose Righteousness Do You Trust?” Whose righteousness do you trust? So go to Luke 18 verse 9.

I want you to know that everybody in here, everybody in this room, is trusting in somebody’s righteousness. You might not think that. You might think, “I don’t even know what righteousness means. I’m not thinking of righteousness at all.” And by the end of this, I want you to recognize that it’s true.

There are only two categories of people in the world: those who trust in their own righteousness and those who trust in Jesus’s. And the difference between people who will be acceptable to God, who will enter the kingdom of God, who will be with God forever, and those who are cast from His presence forever, the difference between those two groups is based on the answer to this question: whose righteousness do you trust?

And this is why Jesus told this parable. The whole, in this chapter in particular and in this section of Luke, Jesus is addressing the kingdom of God and here particularly how to get into the kingdom, who’s going to get into the kingdom, what the characteristics of those in the kingdom are. And Jesus told this parable. We’re going to read it.

00:04:06 Three Words You Need to Know

Before we read it, I have to tell you, we’re going to do a little bit of school. We have to know some words. So I want you to have your ears listening for three words tonight that you might not usually think about, words that you might not even know the definition of.

I’m going to write them here, and I apologize for my handwriting, because by the end of today you need to know the definition of these words. The first word is righteousness. All right. The second word is going to be propitiation. And the third word is justified, or justification.

Some of you guys might already know what those words are. Some of them might sound completely foreign to you. What I don’t want you to do when you hear those words is say, “I don’t know what it means.” These words are critical to you understanding this parable. And understanding this parable, this might sound like an overstatement, but it’s not. Understanding this parable is critical to your eternity, to your relationship with God. Okay? So you have to know those words, or you have to at least understand the concepts behind those words.

00:06:04 Reading the Parable (ESV)

So let’s read this parable. I’m going to be reading from the ESV. So if your version’s a little bit different, that’s okay. But let’s read together the parable. Jesus, starting in verse 9, also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

Now here’s the parable. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed like this, “God, I thank you that I’m not like the other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”

“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

00:07:35 LUBOT Prayer

Let’s pray. As I pray, can you pray these words in your heart with me? Because remember, every time we open God’s Word, what’s the acronym of what we pray? Who remembers? LUBAT, right? We pray that God would help us. What’s the L? Listen.

What’s the U?

>> Understand.

What’s the B?

>> Believe.

What’s the O?

>> Obey.

And T?

>> Trust.

Trust. Good job. So, we want to pray that God would help you guys listen. I know it’s late in the day. We haven’t done this in a while. That God would help us understand, but I promise that the difficulty here, this parable is pretty easy to understand. The problem won’t be that you don’t understand it or you can’t learn these words.

It’ll be that we need God’s Holy Spirit to make us believe, obey, and trust what we hear. So let’s pray.

God, thank you for your words. Thank you that when Jesus came to die to make a way for us to be with you, he also taught, and that you recorded those words for us here. Thank you that this parable is so easy to understand.

God, I pray that we would listen, that you would make these kids hearers of your word, that as they hear the warning about trusting in their own righteousness, and when they hear about the offer of propitiation, the offer of justification, that you would make them believers, that you would make them put their faith in you.

God, I pray tonight that you would cause faith, establish faith, and strengthen faith. Make us trust your word. Change us through the preaching of your word. Help me be accurate and clear as I teach.

And then, God, I pray for discussion groups, that they would be fruitful, that you would guard, that you would guide the time, that the kids would be open and honest with themselves, with each other. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

00:09:57 Point 1: Jesus’s Targeted Audience

All right. So the first point we have: Jesus’s targeted audience. Who is Jesus talking to here? He tells us the very reason why he said this parable. We don’t always get the reason why somebody teaches a lesson, but here we get the reason why this parable was taught.

You guys see what it is? Look at verse 9. Jesus also told this parable. He’s told lots of parables, but he told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and they treated others with contempt.

So there were some people in the audience who trusted in their own righteousness, and Jesus is like, they need to hear this story. This story will help uncover the fact that they’re trusting in their own righteousness and that they’re treating others with contempt because of it.

Who here is self-righteous? Raise your hand if you’re self-righteous.

Everybody’s hand should go up right now to some degree. Hopefully you’re not trusting in your own righteousness to stand before God. But I’ll tell you what, this parable uncovered for me ways in which I actually trust my own righteousness.

What does that mean? I’ll show you what that means as we go through this parable. But I want everybody’s ears to be open, because Jesus told this parable for people like you.

00:11:42 Defining Righteousness and Justification

So, first off, what is righteousness? If you’re trusting in yourself for righteousness, another translation says they were confident in their own righteousness. What does righteousness mean? Does anybody here know what righteousness means? Anyone have a guess?

We have a taker. What’s—

>> Godlikeness?

Godlikeness. That’s good. God is righteous. Yep. You’re onto something. I don’t think that’s exactly it, but God is righteous. So if you’re righteous, you are like God in this way.

>> Holiness is a standard. God is holy, right? Remember when we were in Isaiah, we learned, what did the seraphim say? They say, “holy, holy, holy.” God’s holiness. Do you remember what holy means?

>> Set apart.

Set apart, otherness, separate. So God is holy. Righteousness relates to holiness, but it’s not holiness. God is holy. He’s set apart. He’s other than us. And we can’t approach him without being righteous.

So righteousness is being right before God. You can hear it in the word, right? It’s being right before God, or meeting God’s standard.

God is holy. He’s also just. Wait, do you guys know what just means?

>> Fair.

Fair. Do you know what just, another word for just, actually is? Righteous. It’s fair. In the Bible, the word “just” and the word “righteous,” those words are based on the same Greek word.

So God is a fair, just judge. He does what’s right. Which means when he sees a sinner, he can’t just say, “You’re okay. Don’t worry about it.” If a judge were just, and he was overseeing a murder trial, and the defendant says, “I did it,” what would a just judge do? Would he say, “Well, at least you admitted that you did wrong. You’re okay to go”?

You see, just and righteous, they’re terms that relate to judgment. A just judge, doing what’s right, can’t look at a murderer who says, “I did it,” or a murderer who obviously did it, and say, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just ignore it for now.”

So righteousness means that you meet God’s perfect standard to be right before him.

Okay. So there’s a related word, and it’s the third word we have down there: justified. Being justified means to be made or declared righteous.

So let’s say it. What is righteous? Being right with God. What’s righteousness? Being right with God, or meeting God’s righteous standard. And what is justification? It’s declaring somebody to be righteous. Justification is God declaring me to be righteous.

So do you see the connection between the word just, the word righteousness, the word just, and the word justified?

00:16:05 Self-Righteousness and Contempt

So Jesus is teaching this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. And what was the effect of them doing that? They treated others with contempt.

So the reality is self-righteousness doesn’t just stay private. These hearers thought, “I am good enough in myself to stand before a just God,” and their result was that they treated others around them with contempt. We’re going to see why that was.

So, I have a question for you. Do you ever think, “I’m not as bad as other people”?

The reality is none of us here are the worst people in the world. If you look out, you’re going to find somebody else who’s worse than you. And what that does for people who trust in themselves for their own righteousness, they think, “Well, because I’m not as bad as somebody else, I think God should be okay with me.”

Or you ever think, “Well, at least I’m trying hard. God knows that I try, so maybe he’ll be okay with me.” Or, “I’m not that bad,” or, “I’m not a bad person.”

At work, when people ask, “How’s my day going?” Do you know what I answer all the time? I say, “I’m better than I deserve.” And do you know what people regularly try to tell me? They say, “You are a good person. You deserve a good day. You deserve good things.”

Or people hear about all the good deeds that I do, the good works that I do, the trust that I have in God, and they tell me, “You know what? If anybody’s going to get into heaven, it’ll be you.” I’ve had people at work try to cheer me up telling me that. They’re trying to tell me I’m not sad when I say I’m better than I deserve. You’re going to see in this sermon why I say that.

But the world’s standard, the world out there, they think, “Who’s going to get into heaven? The good people. The people who are better than the bad people.” You know, Hitler won’t get into heaven. Maybe the people who are extortioners, who steal people’s money. Maybe adulterers, people who cheat on their wives. Maybe people who steal money from others. Maybe those are the kinds of people who won’t get into heaven.

But, you know what? I try hard. I go to church. I keep the rules. I don’t break the law that bad. I think I’ll be okay before God. You think, “I’m religious. I read my Bible. I pray.” All of these reveal a self-trust.

You know what else reveals a self-trust? Thinking that you’re okay with God and not even thinking about righteousness. Thinking, “I’m going to come to church. I’m going to sing songs to God. I’m going to pray, and I think I’m going to be okay with those things because God is okay with me.”

We actually learned, you guys remember last year, we read a story from Leviticus about some guys who forgot they had to meet God’s righteous standard and they approached God, maybe not even worried about whether they were righteous or not. Do you remember their names?

Who remembers their names?

>> Nadab and Abihu.

Do you remember what happened to them?

>> That’s right. God’s justice was had. They were incinerated.

So this is critically important, that we understand in whose righteousness we’re trusting.

00:20:18 Two Men Go to the Temple

So let’s go to this parable. We’re going to read in Luke 18:10. These two characters. There were two men. Look down at verse 10. They went up into the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.

So culturally, these two people couldn’t be more different. The Pharisee, when the world looked at the Pharisee, they would say—right, we hear Pharisee and we think bad person. In Israel in this time, people would look at the Pharisees and they’d say, “If anybody’s getting into heaven, it’s those guys. Those guys are respected. They’re the religious elite. They are outwardly clean.” It might be like somebody saying, “I’m a pastor. I give my life to serving God.”

And so the Pharisee, the good guy, went up to pray. And then there’s the tax collector. This was a despised collaborator with evil Rome. It was a Jew who sold himself to the Romans, saying, “I’m going to go steal money from my own people.” And they usually did steal money. They not only got money and gave it to Rome, but a lot of them kept money for themselves, stealing from their own people. And regardless, they were seen as morally corrupt, like the worst of the worst people.

So you have a good guy who’s the Pharisee. The hearers of the story would have thought, all right, you have two people praying. You have a good guy, the Pharisee, and now you have a bad guy, a really bad sinner, the tax collector.

And they went up to the temple to pray. So this isn’t just they’re going to pray to anybody. They’re going to the temple in Jerusalem. So they are praying to Yahweh. They’re praying to the right God, the only true God.

And they were going to actually present themselves to God to pray, something that Jews would know through the sacrificial system you don’t do lightly. When you go to the temple to pray, do you guys remember what would have to happen? You would go and there would be sacrifices.

What was going on at the temple? You guys remember there were sacrifices all day, every day. Some days there were bigger deals like the Day of Atonement, but all day, every day, when people went to the temple to pray, they would purchase doves, or purchase sheep, purchase lambs, purchase bulls, bring their own and kill them so that they could approach God.

There should have been a warning here. You don’t approach God without blood. But this just became background for many people. Background. Just what happened. “I’m going to go to the temple. I’m going to bring my sacrifice. The priest will kill it for me, and I’ll pray.”

And so the question is, which one of these two men would be acceptable to God? If you hear the end of the story, you already know, and you’ve grown up around the church. But to the hearers of this, if you had two men going to pray, which one would they think would be acceptable to God? The good religious one, or the wicked sinner?

The good religious one. They’d say, “If anybody’s going to be acceptable to God, it’s the Pharisee.” And so these hearers who say, “Well, if I’m going to go to God, I trust in my own righteousness. I wish I had righteousness like the Pharisees.”

And so now Jesus is going to tell a story that’s going to uncover their self-righteousness. So let’s look down at verse 11. Let’s see what this Pharisee does.

00:24:15 The Pharisee’s Prayer

The Pharisee, standing by himself, he prayed like this: “God, I thank you that I’m not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.”

So the Pharisee felt that he was holy. The Pharisee was like the ones that Jesus was warning. You see what he did? He stood off by himself. The translation might mean that he stood off praying to himself or about himself. But regardless, his prayer was very self-focused.

He felt quite comfortable drawing near to God. Do you see that? He felt comfortable going to God. Who did he separate himself from? Who did he back away from? Was he close to the tax collector? Was he close to all the other people? No. He drew near to God confidently and pulled away from all the other people.

We heard who’s holy in this story: God, the one they were coming to pray to. He’s the one that is separate from us. And the Pharisee said, “I’m going to get close to God, away from these other people.” And he prayed, “God, thank you that I’m not like them.”

His prayer was very self-focused and self-confident. He then tells us the basis, the reason why he separated himself away from the other people and the reason why he felt like he would be okay with God. He said, “I’m not like the other men.” Who was he measuring himself against? Other people.

God, I thank you that I’m not these other men. And he gave all the reasons, all the bad things he saw in them. You might think that way. “I’m so grateful I’m not like those bad kids at school.” You’re not really right. You’re actually making yourself feel pretty proud. “Well, I’m not that bad because at least I’m not like that kid,” or, “I didn’t do all the sin that maybe I could have done.” So, “God, thank you. I’m not like that.”

But what you’re doing is you’re focusing on yourself. And in so doing, the Pharisee wasn’t thinking at all about the ways that he had sinned. He was very aware of the way that other people had sinned, and he was like, God should accept me because I am not like them.

Do you know what God should have said, or what the Pharisee should have said? God says you must be holy for I am holy. The Pharisee should have been like, “God, why would you hear my prayer? Because I am not like you.”

But he, without even thinking, just approached God, prayed about himself, and then started listing all the things that he did that God should be impressed with. “I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I get,” things that the law demanded and even went beyond the law.

He says, “I am better than others, and surely I’m acceptable to God.”

00:27:59 God Demands Perfect Righteousness

And the reality is that his righteousness, the Pharisee’s version of righteousness, looked nothing like the righteousness that God demands. God demands perfect righteousness.

Right? Righteousness means being right with God. Was the Pharisee right with God? No. Why? Because the Pharisee was still a sinner. His tithing, his good works, and his avoiding sin couldn’t undo all of the sin that was in his heart, including his pride. He was measuring himself according to his own standard and not God’s.

Jesus said, “You are to be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Who here is perfect, then? None of you. That’s right. Nobody here is perfect. And that means that none of us should think that we can be okay with God based on our own righteousness.

It doesn’t matter how much good you do, you can’t earn your way to God. And it doesn’t matter how much less sin you do than that other person in terms of your standing before God.

The Pharisee was confident in his own righteousness. He didn’t see any need of confession, no mention of mercy, no need of a savior. His thanks wasn’t gratitude. It was boasting.

00:29:31 When You Pray Without Thinking

So I have a question. When you ever come to church—those of you who pray—when you come to church and pray, or when you pray in the morning, have you ever prayed maybe after you sinned? After you sinned and you knew you sinned really bad and you’re like, “I don’t even feel right praying right now. God shouldn’t listen to my prayer because I’m a sinner.”

That’s a right posture to have. You’re right to question, “God, why would you listen to my prayer right now?”

But then have you ever, when you aren’t particularly aware of your sin, just start praying without thinking about it? You just start praying, and you don’t ask the question, “God, why would you even listen to me, a sinner?”

In that case, you’re being a lot like this Pharisee. You are trusting in your own righteousness. I’ll tell you what, I do that a lot. When I have a good week, a good day, I’m not prone to think of myself as a sinner. I’m prone to think of myself as pretty okay.

And when I sin, I now feel the weight of my sin. That’s good and right to feel the weight of my sin. But what I must never do is feel like my righteousness, like my good works, get me to God or make me acceptable to God.

00:31:06 The Tax Collector’s Posture and Prayer

And so Jesus compares, verse 13. He compares that self-righteous prayer with a humble, dependent prayer.

So the good guy comes and says everything that he knows, pulls himself off by himself, prays about himself, trying to impress God. And here’s what the tax collector does. He stands far off.

He recognizes, “I can’t just go approach God.” He stands far off from a holy God. He doesn’t walk right up to God mindlessly, walk up to the place where the sacrifices are. He knows inside the temple is the holy place. He stands far away, very aware of his own sin.

He would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. You could imagine this guy’s posture, right? What did he look like? Humble.

And he beat his breast. That’s a sign of sadness that day, a sign of contrition. And do you guys hear what he said? “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

00:32:26 “Be Propitious” and Propitiation

I want you to write another word next to that word “merciful” in your Bible. It’s actually a better translation for that word. It would be weird for the translation to say this because it’s not a word that we usually say, and it’s related to the second word up there, propitiation.

He actually said, “God, be propitious to me, the sinner.” That’s the word there translated “mercy.” Propitious. That’s a big word that we don’t use that often.

Listen to me as I tell you what it means. Propitious refers to the word propitiation. Propitiation is a sacrifice that satisfies. A sacrifice that satisfies God’s righteous wrath.

So what was this man saying? What was this tax collector saying? “God, be satisfied in the sacrifice” that was probably taking place yards away on the altar. The sacrifices that were being offered. He knew, “I cannot approach God. God, be propitious. Accept this sacrifice for me, the sinner, and be merciful.”

00:34:00 When Mercy Feels Cheap

Sometimes we think of mercy or grace as cheap. Have you ever confessed sin to God and just been like, “God, will you forgive me?” and then just go about your day as if that’s confession, not even thinking about the cost of what that forgiveness, or that mercy, what the cost would be?

Or thinking, maybe it’s not that bad. Like one of my kids when they were young and they did something wrong. And I said, “They lied.” I said, “What did you do?” “Well, I lied.” That’s right. “Well, what is lying?” “It’s sin.” That’s right. It’s sin. And sin separates us from God. Sin earns us hell. Sin is why Jesus had to die.

And then that kid raised their hand and said, “Yeah, but dad, everybody sins.”

Have you ever thought that? What did that reveal in that kid? And I get it, I feel that way. Sin’s not that bad. Everybody sins.

When you feel that, whose standard are you measuring sin by? You’re comparing your sin to everybody else, like the Pharisee. “Well, I’m not as bad as that guy,” or, “I feel confident in my own righteousness.”

00:35:34 God’s Standard and Justice

If the standard is God’s perfect righteousness, and you sin, do you know what the right response is? What God’s just response would be, what justice demands? Immediate and forever separation from God. Judgment in hell.

When you look at the world and you say, “Everybody sins. That’s ridiculous,” and when you compare your sin to everybody else’s, you might think it’s not that bad. But when you compare your sin to God’s holiness and his perfect standard, and if you see your sin rightly, do you know what you will do?

You’ll put your head down. You’ll beat your chest and you’ll say, “God, be propitious. Accept the sacrifice for me, the sinner.”

00:36:45 The Temple, the Cross, and Christ the Propitiation

Jesus told this—these guys weren’t just praying anywhere. They were praying in the temple where there were animal sacrifices going on.

Shortly after this, Jesus, who is called the Lamb of God, would go to the cross. He would be sacrificed in the place of all who would put their trust in him. He would die.

First John, in chapter 2, calls Jesus the propitiation. It says Jesus Christ the righteous one, the propitiation for the sins of all who would put their trust in him.

So when we say, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner,” God, be propitious, you’re saying, “God, accept the sacrifice.”

And what’s so sweet is you and I, we don’t put our hope in the blood of bulls and goats. That’s all that this tax collector, before the cross, could put his hope in, that God would accept that sacrifice.

We have a far better one, Jesus. A sacrifice that doesn’t have to happen day after day after day, but a sacrifice that happens once and for all for sin, but a sacrifice nonetheless.

Do you remember what First John said? Jesus Christ the righteous one, the propitiation for our sins.

00:38:29 Whose Righteousness Was the Tax Collector Trusting?

Whose righteousness, ultimately, was the tax collector trusting in? He didn’t know it at the time, but it wasn’t his own. He knew, if I have a righteousness that’s going to get me to God, it’s not going to be mine. I need it to be somebody else’s.

God provided a different sacrifice. So now we see Jesus’s verdict. How would Jesus deal with these two men? The one who did some good deeds, who before the law kept the law better than many others, and then the law-breaker who knew his position before God and just cried out, “I need a savior.”

00:39:14 Jesus’s Verdict: Justified

What did Jesus say? First, look down at verse 14. Jesus said—and this is the judge of the universe speaking. He knows what happens. Jesus says, “I tell you this man,” which one? The tax collector, “went down to his house justified rather than the other one.”

He went down to his house declared righteous. Was he righteous on his own? No. Absolutely not. Far from it. He was a horrible sinner. He did a lot of sinful things. Even by worldly standards, nobody would look at him and say, “That guy should go to heaven. That guy should get into the kingdom.”

But you know what? He went down to his house justified, declared righteous.

This is shocking. This is preposterous. The bad guy goes home justified. The good guy goes home hopeless, unjustified.

When they die, the bad guy gets into heaven. The good guy, Jesus says, “Depart from me. I never knew you.”

00:40:36 How Can God Justify the Guilty?

So how can God, the just judge, the one who must uphold justice, justify a guilty man and still be righteous himself? This verse is the key.

How could he do it? And you see these same words here. This is from Romans 3. God the Father put Christ forward as a propitiation. What’s a propitiation? A substitute, a payment for the just penalty that we deserve. And there’s only one way that payment can be received: by faith.

Which one of those two received the payment by faith? The one who said, “God, have mercy on me.”

And why? Why did he do that? Well, it was to show God’s righteousness. He says in this verse, it was because he passed over sins—sins of people like Abraham. If you’re in the Bible reading plan, just this week you read, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Abraham was a sinner. We see lots of things that he did that were sinful. And yet when God looks at Abraham, he says, “Righteous.” Not because it’s his own righteousness, but it was because Jesus’s righteousness was put on Abraham.

Jesus’s righteousness was put on this tax collector. And Jesus’s righteousness can be put on me and on you, declared once and for all that apart from anything that you do good, and despite everything that you do bad, when God looks at you, he says, “Righteous, just.”

And it was so that God could be the one who is just and justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

00:42:43 What Defines a Christian

Kids, students, this is definitional of who a Christian is.

We don’t come to God cleaning ourselves up. So you don’t come to church hiding your sin, saying, “Oh, I can’t let them see that sin. I have this problem in my life. I can’t let God see it. I can’t let my friends see it. I can’t let my pastor see it.” That’s the opposite of who a Christian is.

You don’t come to church thankful you’re not like the world. “Well, at least we believe the right things. We’re Republicans and we read the Bible and we do all these good things here,” and you look—this is the way a lot of religious people do it.

None of those things help you at all before God. In fact, if you look at those things and feel good about yourself, they will make you like this Pharisee. You will go home and your unrighteousness will still be on you.

00:43:54 The Only Right Posture

So, a Christian is one who sees themselves and sees God, and you have one response. And I want you to have this picture of the tax collector. And I beg you that this would be your posture, that you would say, “God, I am a sinner. I need a savior.”

You would beat your chest and you would say, “God, have mercy. God, be propitious with me, the sinner.”

Nobody in hell will have prayed that prayer and meant it. Nobody in hell will be trusting in Jesus’s righteousness and have it fail. You get that? Nobody who trusts in Jesus’s righteousness will ever be cast out.

And the flip side is also true. Nobody, no matter how good you are, how many good deeds you do, how good your theology is, how much Bible you know, how authentic you are—no matter what—if you trust in your own righteousness and you don’t trust entirely in Jesus’s, even if you trust 99% in Jesus’s and 1% in your own, that disqualifies you from being God’s child.

You must say, “I have no righteousness at all of my own. God, be propitious to me, a sinner.”

Nobody in heaven will be trusting in their own righteousness. Nobody in hell will be trusting in Jesus’s.