The Secret Of Romans 7 Part 4

INTRO: We'll do a little review to get back on track. In these messages our goal is to understand Romans 7. In the first message we skimmed over Romans 1-3. The major point of these three chapters is to prove that all are sinners. There are no exceptions, even among God's chosen people, the Jews. We saw that most of mankind is religious and all of mankind has a faith of some kind, even the atheist. But by far the majority of mankind is religious, that is, they believe there is a Higher Power of some kind.
All those who are religious but don't believe the Bible is the Word of God have some kind of faith that makes good works a requirement to enter a better life after death. All those who use the Bible believe in a big G God. And of all those who claim the God the Bible is the Word of God, by far the vast majority also depend on good works to get to heaven.
But salvation is not by good works. There are two major doctrines that are most important to understand. There is first, justification. In an earlier message we saw that justification, which is to be declared righteous before God, is by grace through faith. No amount of good works will ever justify a sinner.