THE WORK OF CHRIST: OUR JUSTIFICATION
Romans 3: 21-26
INTRODUCTION
Did any of you see the news this morning? They found Osama Bin Laden.
They showed pictures of him arriving in Washington, D.C. and being hugged
by President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President
Dick Cheney. President Bush announced that Osama is going to live in the
White House with him and will be his personal counselor. He will be given
a Secret Service detail, his own limousine and access to Air Force One.
He will address Congress tonight and he is expected to receive a very
warm welcome. Senator’s Lott and Daschel were interviewed on one of the
Sunday morning news programs and they were just delighted that Osama has
agreed to be the President’s counselor and they are hopeful that they
will also become good friends in the coming years. The former mayor of
New York, Rudolph Guliani, will be welcoming him to New York this next
week and giving him the keys to the city and then there will be a huge
parade in his honor.
I hope you know that I’m making this up. But if this were happening,
how would you feel? How would you feel if you were the wife of one of
the firefighters whose decomposed bodies were recovered from the World
Trade Center ruins this week? How would you feel if your mom had perished
in the attack on the Pentagon? Wouldn’t you be outraged knowing that the
man who planned and then rejoiced in the deaths of so many Americans was
being treated as a hero? Wouldn’t you be ashamed to live in a country
that rewarded such grotesque evil with such honor? Let me ask you a question.
Can you imagine any way that Osama bin Laden could justly be treated this
way? Is there anything that could be done to make it right to treat him
like this? What if he said he was sorry? What if he donated a billion
dollars to the Sept. 11th Fund? Is there anything he could
do that would make it right for us to forgive him and treat him as an
honored member of our society? You and I know that there is only one thing
that will satisfy justice in the case of Osama bin Laden. He must give
his life because of the lives he has taken.
The Apostle Paul in the first 2 ½ chapters of Romans has proven that
the situation between every human being and God is the situation that
exists between the U.S. and Osama bin Laden. We are enemies. We have despised
God and his laws and we are opposed to him in every way, by nature. We
have thumbed our nose at him and destroyed his good creation. God is justly
angry with us because of our sin. He is storing up wrath to be poured
out in the final judgment upon all the wickedness of human beings. Paul
has also conclusively demonstrated that there is nothing that any of us
can do about our situation. There is no law we can keep, there is no ceremony
we can perform, there is nothing we can do to appease the just anger of
God and earn a warm, loving reception from him.
This means that whenever a human being claims that the eternal, just
and holy God is his Father and loves him and intends to shower unimaginable
kindnesses upon him forever is claiming that God is going to do what I
imagined our country doing for Osama bin Laden. You really have, your
whole life long, despised God in even greater ways than Osama despises
the United States. The difference is that Osama has some ground for his
animosity, whereas we have none, as God has only treated each of us with
enormous kindness. God is infinitely more justified in being angry with
us and hostile to us than the U.S. is justified in being hostile and opposed
to Osama bin Laden. Emil Brunner said it this way, "Forgiveness is
the very opposite of anything which can be taken for granted. Nothing
is less obvious than (God’s) forgiveness." Or in the words of Carnegie
Simpson, "forgiveness is to man the plainest of duties; to God it
is the profoundest of problems." John Piper, in Pleasures of God
says it this way, "God has a great passion to promote his glory.
But the troubling thing that emerges is that God has chosen sinners. He
is honoring and blessing and exalting a people who are sinners. And the
essence of sin is the belittling of God’s glory. Something is askew here.
A God infinitely committed to promote the worth of his name and the greatness
of his glory is engaging all his powers to bring the enemies of his name
into everlasting joy and honor! …. It seems schizophrenic. The Bible makes
God out to love his name and his glory with omnipotent energy and unbounded
joy. And then it pictures him choosing God-belittling sinners for his
court, and rejoicing over the very same people who despised his glory
and cheapened his name. I really don’t believe it is possible to grasp
the central drama of the Bible until we begin to feel this tension."
Paul, in the opening chapters of Romans has gone to great lengths to
create that tension. When he finishes his opening argument in 3:20 he
has established the wickedness of every human being, the righteous anger
of God against human wickedness, the inability of humans to do anything
to escape their sin and the certain judgment of God upon their sin. That
is why the first two words of 3:21 are like the first breezes in springtime.
They are like the first whisper of rain falling upon land parched by long
drought. "But now", God has made a way for sinners to be pardoned
and welcomed as righteous and for God to do it without compromising his
own glory, his own justice and holiness. God has made a way for sinners
to enter the courtroom of heaven and face a perfectly just judge who knows
every secret and yet not only escape eternal punishment but gain eternal
happiness with the judge now their father. All this without God giving
up his own justice, his commitment to uphold the glory of his own reputation.
That is what Romans 3: 21-26 is all about. Martin Luther said these six
verses… "are the chief point, the very central place of the whole
letter to the Romans, and of the whole Bible."
The main point of this paragraph is that contrary to all expectation,
shockingly…
MAIN POINT
God, the judge of all men, declares hell-deserving sinners not guilty
but perfectly righteous. He does this…
I. For all who believe in Jesus (vv. 21-23)
The "but now" refers to the coming of Jesus Christ into the
world. Now that the Messiah has come and suffered and died and been raised
from the dead it is plainly known that God makes people righteous. The
cross of Jesus makes plain that the only people fit for heaven are those
who God makes righteous in and through Jesus. But notice that the righteousness
that comes from God is not based on law. Paul is merely repeating what
he said in v. 20. No one will be declared right in God’s eyes by keeping
religious laws of any sort. The righteousness that God gives has nothing
to do with law keeping. The reason that God won’t declare you innocent
and acceptable to him based on your keeping the law is because no one,
except Jesus, ever kept the law. All the law can do for you and for me
is to prove that we are guilty and deserving of God’s condemnation. I
want to help you understand the foolishness of thinking that God will
accept you because you do good things and are sorry when you do bad things.
It’s like Osama bin Laden while he continues to promote and fund terrorist
acts in the U.S. also funding an orphanage for the children of the people
he kills and publishing weekly letters saying how sorry he is for killing
people. Would it be right to forgive him and welcome him as our friend
under these conditions? Of course not! That is exactly what people are
doing who think that God is obligated to accept them because of the good
things they do. They think that somehow the good things they do can atone
for the evil they also are doing.
While God’s righteousness does not come to us through the law, yet the
entire OT bears witness to the fact that God’s righteousness is not based
on law keeping. The OT makes plain that the only people who are right
with God are made right by his action in and through the coming Messiah.
The OT doesn’t present a different way of being made right with God than
the NT. The OT is in full agreement with the NT in saying that those who
belong to God do so by the work of God, not their own obedience. The difference
between the OT and the NT is that the way that God’s righteousness is
given to sinners is now made fully known in Christ.
I want to give you an expanded translation of vv. 22-23. "This right
standing with God, that God gives us, is through faith in Jesus
Christ and is for everyone who believes. The reason God’s righteousness
comes through faith in Jesus and does not come based upon observing the
law, is that God makes no distinction between people based on their religious
performance or ethnic origin. The reason he makes no distinction based
on performance or ethnic origin, is because every human being has sinned
and all are failing to prize and love the glory of God above all other
things. In fact, every human being, by nature is currently loving created
things rather than the one who created them, thus despising the goodness
and kindness of God."
Right standing with God comes simply through our faith in Christ. It
is not in any way based on our performance, because if it were none of
us would be right with God because the only thing any of us do is sin
and fail to prize God above all else. Faith is simple reliance upon Christ.
It is trusting in, depending upon, holding fast to, prizing, loving, and
desiring Christ and him only. It is being completely persuaded that the
only reason God will accept me into his heaven is because of Christ. The
only people who are made right with God are those who trust Christ. We
will see in a moment why only Christ can save us but for now we
must see that the righteousness that God gives to sinners is only given
to sinners who believe in Jesus.
Faith is not some strange and mystical thing. Everyone lives by faith
all the time. When you put your money in a bank you are living by faith.
When you write a check on your account, you are living by faith. When
you drive your car down the street you live by faith. When you eat the
food your mom cooks for you, you live by faith. When you take the pills
the doctor prescribes for you, you live by faith. Faith is simply trusting
that what a person says he will do, he will do. It is depending upon another
to fulfill their promise to you. God says that he gives his righteousness
to all who believe in Jesus. He will not give his righteousness to those
who depend upon their own obedience to the law.
I want to say three things about faith. First, faith doesn’t make us
righteous. God makes those who trust in Jesus righteous. If I sit in this
chair, I trust it to hold me up. What keeps me off the floor, my faith
in the chair or the chair itself? The chair keeps me off the floor; my
faith enables me to experience the reality of the chair. It doesn’t say
that we are made righteous because of faith in Christ but by
means of (through) faith in Christ. Faith is the instrument God uses;
it is not the reason he makes us righteous. Second, faith is not
merely assent to truth. If I tell you that I believe the chair next to
me will hold me up, is that faith? No, faith is sitting in the chair,
not saying I believe it will hold me up. If you go to the doctor and he
gives you a prescription to make you well. You do not trust the doctor
until you take the pills, no matter what you say you believe about the
doctor. Third, faith requires repentance. If I’m going to trust in that
chair I have to stop trusting in this chair. In the same way we must stop
trusting in our own ability to keep God’s laws and trust in Christ alone.
We must stop trusting false gods and false promises and trust in the true
and living Christ alone. Faith in Christ requires that I abandon all other
hopes and all other loves. It’s like marriage, I must leave everyone else
and cleave to my wife alone if I am to be married.
God, the judge of all men, declares hell-deserving sinners not guilty
but perfectly righteous. He does this…
- For all who believe in Jesus
- And…
II. As a gift, by his grace (vv. 23-24)
I want to give you a more literal translation of vv. 23-24. I actually
will begin with the end of v. 22. "For there is no distinction, for
all sinned and all are falling short of the glory of God while
being justified—as a gift, by his grace…" The tenses of the verbs
that Paul used make this an incredible thing to say. The people who God
is right now declaring fit for heaven are at the moment he makes the declaration,
mocking heaven, despising him. This is just as astounding as what he says
a few verses later in Romans 4:4-5, "Now when a man works, his wages
are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the man who
does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith
is credited as righteousness." You have to feel how amazing these
statements are. At the very time that people are despising God he is declaring
them not guilty but perfectly righteous. He is declaring wicked, hell-deserving
sinners, beloved children, his very own heirs.
In v. 24 Paul says that this is a gift given by his unmerited favor.
The reason Paul uses such scandalous language is because he is trying
to humble us and exalt the glorious grace of God. Listen, you have to
know that the only reason anyone is a Christian is because of the amazing
kindness and tender mercy of God. He isn’t out looking for good, spiritual
people. He isn’t looking around for people who are working hard to have
faith. He is justifying those who are despising him, who are not believing
he is a treasure. He is saving sinners, people in the midst of sin. He
doesn’t declare people fit for heaven because they are fit for heaven.
He declares people who are completely unfit for heaven fit for heaven.
That is the meaning of grace. You don’t earn gifts. They are freely given.
Why does Paul make this emphasis at this point? To keep us from seeing
faith as something we do. Faith is a gift from God. God is declaring righteous
those who have faith but he is declaring righteous those who are falling
short of the glory of God. How can this be? God gives the faith that is
the condition of being declared righteous. It is as Charles Spurgeon titled
one of his books, "All of Grace". The point of grace is that
God does not give people what they deserve but rather he gives them the
opposite of what they deserve. God makes people right with himself and
promises them heaven as a free gift. The only reason God makes a particular
person righteous is because he has freely, according to the purpose and
pleasure of his own will chosen to make that person righteous. He does
it through faith and through Christ but because he is gracious.
How often in my life has this reality rescued me from despair. I cannot
recount the number of times I have been overcome with the guilt of my
sin and how right it would be for God to abandon me and to forget he ever
knew me. Then I recall that God justifies those who are falling short
of the glory of God. I remember that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners of whom I am the worst. I meditate upon the fact that
God is the one who justifies the wicked. I bring to mind that it is by
grace I have been saved through faith, this not from myself, it is the
gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. I am a sinner, deserving
of hell, but God, as a gift, by his unmerited and unearned favor has declared
me not guilty, but perfectly righteous. And so I worship him for his mercy
to me. I would suppose that there are some here who do not believe that
God can accept them because of the sins you have committed. You despair
of being forgiven and found acceptable because you are so aware of how
sinful you are. Take heart. The only people God declares not guilty but
perfectly righteous are sinners, those who at the moment he declares them
not guilty are despising him, sinning against him. If you know yourself
to be a sinner, deserving of hell, with no ability to appease God’s just
anger against you then you should be full of hope because you are exactly
the kind of person that God saves. God does not save people who do not
view themselves as hell-deserving sinners. God does not save people who
think they are better, more deserving than others of his mercy. He only
justifies the wicked.
God, the judge of all men, declares hell-deserving sinners not guilty
but perfectly righteous. He does this…
- For all who believe in Jesus
- As a gift, by his grace
- And…
III. Through presenting Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement (vv. 24b-25a)
The end of v. 24 and the first clause of v. 25 give the reason that it
is right for the holy and just God to declare hell-deserving sinners not
guilty but perfectly righteous. I’m going to quote from the English Standard
Version as it makes the logic of Paul a bit clearer than the NIV. While
being justified by his grace as a gift, "through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood…"
There are two words in here that most of you would be hard pressed to
explain. They are grand words. They are Bible words. They are words that
convey the very heart of the gospel of Christ and you must understand
them and so exalt in them if you are going to be among those who are justified.
Both of these words come out of the OT law. They both refer to things
that the nation Israel did for thousands of years in obedience to God’s
law.
The first word is "redemption". Our being pardoned from sin
and made fit for God is through the "redemption that is in Christ
Jesus." What does this mean? God made you and gives you everything
you have and are. He has done this so that you will use the life and gifts
he has given you for the purpose of knowing and glorifying him. However,
we have taken all the gifts he has given and squandered them on other
gods and for other purposes. Therefore we are in debt to God. We owe him
our life. It’s like we have been given $10,000 by the bank to start our
own business. Instead of going into business, we took the money, went
to Ho-Chunk casino and lost it all gambling. The bank wants us to pay
it back but we have no money and no business. We are in debt with no way
to pay back the bank. Should the bank lend us more money? Of course not!
Is God obligated to give us more gifts, more life, when we have squandered
what he has given us? In order for the bank to give us more money, in
order for God to give us more life, the debt must be repaid, the obligation
must be removed. The bank doesn’t care who pays the debt, they only care
that it is paid. So, if your rich uncle gives the bank a check for $10,000
plus interest on your behalf, they will be happy to do business with you
again. Jesus Christ, used the life he was given to do what God gives life
for, he lived to the glory of God. Jesus didn’t squander the life he was
given on bad investments, so he is not in debt to God. He did this in
the place of all those who believe in him. Therefore, Jesus, by his death
repaid the debt we owe. Jesus by his life and death redeemed us, paid
off the debt that every one who believes in Christ owed to God. He is
our redemption. He paid the debt so that now God is just in giving us
eternal life.
He also is the "propitiation by means of his blood", that God
put forward. The first thing to note is that God the Father is the one
who offered God the Son as a sacrifice of atonement. I know that some
don’t like this language but it is the plain meaning of this passage and
many others. Who killed Jesus? The ultimate answer is that God the Father
put God the Son to death as the sacrifice for the sins of God’s people.
This clause summarizes what the entire temple, priesthood and animal sacrifice
of the OT is pointing towards. The Day of Atonement captures the meaning
of this clause most graphically (see Leviticus 16). The word used by Paul
here is the word for atonement. On the 10th day of the 7th
month in the Jewish year, the high priest, after going through a complicated
ceremony of ritual cleansing, would bring a year old, male goat without
blemish into the temple. He would kill it and drain its blood into a bowl.
Then he would take that blood and go into the Holy Place and then through
the curtain into the Most Holy Place. In the Most Holy Place was the ark
of the covenant that contained the tablets with the 10 commandments. This
is the place where God said that he would dwell among the nation Israel.
No one could enter here except the high priest and then only on this one
day, for this purpose. He would take the blood of the goat and dip his
fingers into it and sprinkle it 7 times on the cover of the ark of the
covenant which was called the place of propitiation or atonement. The
death of this goat was in place of the death of all the people of Israel.
God ought to kill every Israelite because of their sin. Instead he has
the high priest kill this goat and by means of its blood his wrath against
Israel is turned aside. The author to the Hebrews makes the point that
if the blood of goats could really take away sin then they would have
stopped being offered. However, the sacrifices were simply a reminder
of sin. But Jesus, being perfect man and divine Son, offered himself,
once, for all the sins of all God’s people. It is by means of his blood
that God’s wrath against the sins of his people is turned aside. God pours
out his just wrath by taking the life of his own Son in place of killing
all those who have faith in his Son. God is the high priest who takes
the life of the lamb of God, his own dear Son, in the place of the life
of all who believe in his Son.
This is why Jesus should occupy your attention all day long. This is
why he should be our only hope and receive all our trust. There is nothing
more amazing in the entire universe than Jesus, the perfect Son of God,
hanging on the cross, abandoned by God, bearing the wrath of God against
our sins. We should weep over our sins and rejoice in Christ all the day
because there is nothing more remarkable than this.
God, the judge of all men, declares hell-deserving sinners not guilty
but perfectly righteous. He does this…
- For all who believe in Jesus
- As a gift, by his grace
- Through presenting Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement
- And…
IV. To prove that he is not a corrupt judge and so worthy of all praise
(vv. 25-26)
The second half of v. 25 and verse 26 give us the bottom line, ultimate
reason why God has chosen to save us in this way. "He did this to
demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance he had left
the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it at the present time
so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
There are two things that ought to shock us as we observe the world and
read the Bible. We ought to be shocked that there is so much beauty and
joy and delight among people who treat the God who gives these gifts with
such contempt. We ought to be asking with the Psalmists, "Why do
the wicked flourish?" How can God not be an unjust judge if he continues
to pour out such kindness and gifts upon such thankless, rude, unloving
people like us? Why does he not punish people the way they deserve? The
fact that suffering comes to people is not what is shocking in the world.
The fact that all of us are not suffering in hell right now is what is
shocking.
But the second thing that should astound us, especially as we read the
Bible, is that God treats some sinners like beloved sons and daughters.
It is shocking that God put up with and forgave the nation Israel and
then brought them into the land of Canaan and drove out all those other
wicked nations when Israel is clearly no better than any of the nations
that God drove out. When you read that God calls David a "man after
his own heart", makes these amazing promises to him, and gives him
such great fame and success, you have to wonder at God’s integrity. David
committed adultery, tried to cover it up by tricking the husband of the
woman he committed adultery with into having sex with his wife and when
that didn’t work, he had him murdered. Then he married the woman of the
murdered man, she had his baby, and they were living a happy little life.
When God, a year after the murder, confronted David, God forgave David.
According to God’s own law, David should have been stoned to death for
his adultery and for his murder.
How is it right for God to let David off the hook? How is God not an
unjust judge for not only permitting him to live and die a natural death
at a very old age but also to be making him infinitely happy right now
in heaven? God demonstrates that it is fair and just for him to forgive
David and to bring him into the enjoyment of heaven because he redeemed
his life in Christ and poured out his anger against David upon Jesus.
Whenever anyone criticizes God’s forgiving a sinner, he simply points
to the bloody cross and says, "My Son satisfied my just anger against
this sinner and therefore it is right for me to love him or her, to forgive
and declare this sinner righteous." God is just and he is able to
justify the believing sinner because he put Christ forward as the satisfaction
of his wrath by means of his death. In punishing Christ for the sins of
all those who believe he shows that he is just, that no sin will be left
unpunished. All sin will either be punished eternally in hell or has been
punished in Christ. God can justly love sinners because he has punished
his Son for the sins of all who believe.
My dear friend, your greatest problem is your own sin. The greatest danger
that you face is standing before the God who made you and who is your
judge to give an account for your sin. It is a terrifying thing to fall
into the hands of the living God with no one to defend you, no one to
plead for you. What will you say on that great and dreadful day? How will
you appease the just anger of God against you and your sins? God has made
a way for you to pass safely through the courtroom of his justice. He
has put Christ forward as a sacrifice, atoning for your sins. He has made
Christ the redemption price for every sinner who will believe. Won’t you
trust Christ? Won’t you turn away from all false hopes, all false gods,
all your sin and come and trust this Christ, who lived and suffered and
died for sinners like you? I beg you to not despise what Jesus has done
but to give yourself wholly to him.
God, the judge of all men, declares hell-deserving sinners not guilty
but perfectly righteous. He does this…
- For all who believe in Jesus
- As a gift, by his grace
- Through presenting Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement
- To prove that he is not a corrupt judge and therefore worthy of
all praise
BENEDICTION
Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before
his glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God
our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ
our Lord before all ages, now and forever more. Amen
© Copyright 2002
John Swanson.
You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material
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If you would like to post this material to the web, or if your intended
use is other than outlined above, please contact River Hills Community
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