THIS IS WHAT SAVES YOU
I have been processing some old hurts this week, wounds that I thought I had dealt with sufficiently. Apparently not. The Lord really brought these things clearly to mind and the bitterness that accompanied them. His timing was odd, I thought, as I wondered “Why now?” But God’s schedule is a mystery and wonderfully appropriate.
In dealing with these hurts and the danger of harboring them, I kept thinking of the cross of Christ. While nursing these hurts and keeping them alive, somehow believing that they were in some way powerful to motivate me, God kept pointing to the cross and saying “Put them here.” I did surrender but with the feeling of becoming weak as a kitten. All the hurt over the years seemed to be the impetus to fight for justice. But whose justice? My own vindication? Was it to prove that I was somehow better than the things and people that hurt me? Now submitting to the cross I can no longer claim these hurts as the reason for fighting. I feel weaker, yes, but somehow free.
Now consider God’s hurt. We know God was offended by sin, and to put it in plain language, he was hurt by our sin. How did God deal with his hurt? The simple answer is the cross. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross is the most important event in all of human history. We tend to think of the cross from our point of view and how it saved us. Yet here in Romans 3:21-31 we see that God needed to demonstrate his righteousness in saving sinners. On the cross God dealt with his hurt, or as we read it in the text, his wrath.
While we tend to view the cross from a human standpoint and what it does for us, Paul gives us God’s view of redemption in these verses. The interesting thing is that if God had sent Jesus to the cross purely for our sakes the death of Christ would be only partially effective. What we will see here then, is that God sent Jesus to the cross primarily for his own glory and we ultimately benefit from his demonstration of righteousness. This is what saves us.
We have talked in the past few weeks about the wrath of God and the gospel of God; we have seen the four types of people (the wicked, the moralists, the unenlightened pagan, and the super-religious) and found that we all deserve God’s wrath; and we have heard in summary how no one is righteous, all have turned away from God, and no one can become righteous even by obeying the law, as if they could. Now comes an enormously important “But now…”
1. “BUT NOW…”
The great anxiety that builds, the breath we hold as Paul knocks down our props and safety nets, the tension we feel as we finally realize that we are all under God’s wrath, is relieved when we read these soothing words “But now…”
“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known to which the Law and the Prophets testify” (3:21). If the Jews thought that they were in right standing before the Lord because they possessed the law and even obeyed some of it, they were wrong. The law was powerless to save them. Now apart from the law, God revealed his righteousness in a new way.
Although this righteousness is revealed apart from the law, the Law and the Prophets, the OT, still bears witness to it. In a very true sense, it is not new at all since God was showing his grace and truth in all kinds of ways in the OT. But now God’s righteousness has been revealed in the fullest expression possible – the cross of Christ. The phrase “has been made known” points to the historical death of Christ and what it means for us.
We would not know what righteousness was except for the law. God revealed his standard for holiness and the details of sin in the law. It is in the law that we discover we are unable to keep God’s commands and be righteous. And it is in the law that we find that God promised a righteousness he would provide. Because of the law we know that Jesus Christ fulfilled the requirements of righteousness; he was the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. So the law continues to show us that Jesus is the righteous one whom God promised would come to save his people. But this righteousness was revealed apart from the law-keeping of the Israelites. In other words, Jesus didn’t come because the Jews were good or because they all had Bibles and read them diligently. Neither they nor we can contribute anything to the righteousness of God, and in that way God’s righteousness is revealed apart from the law.
2. We all are justified freely
This is the heart of the gospel. In recent years I heard it said that this or that is the heart of the gospel, but I believe this truly is the heart of what we believe. Dr. Leon Morris said that this paragraph is probably the most important single paragraph ever written.
What struck me in verses 22-24 was the word “all” repeated three times. “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
There is an arms-wide-open feel to the use of the word “all” in this passage. Everyone is welcome to this righteousness; everyone has sinned; and everyone can be justified freely by his grace.
However, if we look at v. 22 again, we see that the “all” is conditional upon faith. Only those who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God can receive the right standing before God through the forgiveness of sins. Some have said that if Christ’s death was powerful enough to wipe away the sins of the whole world then everyone is saved from God’s wrath. I think we call this “Universalism,” the idea that everyone is saved they just don’t know it yet. Certainly the potential for everyone to be saved is real, and Christ’s death is effective for the whole world, but there is this little clause in Scripture we cannot ignore. The fact is that to attain God’s righteousness for our lives, we must believe in his Son.
With this requirement there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. Both must believe in order to receive God’s righteousness. But Paul’s thought continues that there is no difference because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So our second “all” pertains to the universal human need for God to do something about our corrupted state.
When God created humankind, beginning with Adam and Eve, he created them in his image or with his glory. In a perfect world we would be reflections of the glory of God. We continue to be born with the image of God but we fail to live up to what that means. We all fall short of God’s glory because of sin.
Bishop Handley Moule said, “The harlot, the liar, the murderer, are short of it (God’s glory); but so are you. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and you on the crest of an Alp; but you are as little able to touch the stars as they.”
Here is why the good news is so good. All have sinned but all can believe and all can be justified freely by his grace… it is as simple as believing that Jesus died for your sinfulness. Through faith we are justified.
Justification is a legal term and belongs in the law court. The opposite of justification is condemnation, which we deserve, and consequently the punishment that comes with it. Both justification and condemnation are the pronouncement of a judge. To condemn is not merely to punish, but to declare the accused guilty or worthy of punishment. Justification also is not merely to cancel the punishment but to declare that punishment cannot be justly administered. You are declared innocent and therefore you are innocent. What this means is that we are not just pardoned, there is now no longer any reason and no grounds for punishment. The prosecuting attorney has no evidence against you in this court. You are, as they say, Scott free.[i]
Freedom is the antithesis to slavery. It just gets better and better as Paul describes our salvation. We are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that cam by Christ Jesus. So our justification is possible because Christ redeemed us or purchased our freedom.
Redemption is the act of buying a slave out of bondage in order to set him free. The Jews would have caught onto this imagery quicker than we do. They only have to think of Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage. And later in their history they were freed from slavery in Babylon. But to what are we in bondage? What holds us in slavery? Sin of course, has held us in chains. We long to break free from the patterns and habits and constant failings of our sinful souls. Well Jesus has paid the ransom, paid the price for our freedom from sin and on that basis takes us to court and there justifies us.
The imagery is amazing. First Jesus finds us chained and in bondage, he frees us, takes us to court where all charges are dropped and we are declared not guilty for lack of evidence. All of this happened in one dramatic action of Christ’s death on the cross which paid the price and won our acquittal.
And all we have to do is believe…
3. God demonstrates his righteousness
You may have noticed in this passage as a whole that God is the actor and Jesus is secondary in prominence. God revealed his righteousness; God’s glory was maligned; God presented Christ as a sacrifice. God is in the spotlight as the one doing and sending and giving.
Why is this important? Because salvation is not about what you and I have done, it’s about what God has done. What did God do and why did he do it?
First, this is what God did: “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith” (3:25). Long before Christ the Jews practiced the OT ritual of sacrifice. Once a year they observed a day called the Day of Atonement. Priests would offer a sacrifice before the LORD for the sins of all Israel on this one day. This was called propitiation, a way of appeasing God’s anger and reminding him of his love for his people. However, this was only symbolic and did not really take away the sins of the people.
What God did was to send Jesus to really take away the sins of the people. He did this by becoming a true sacrifice of atonement, clearing our consciences and removing our sin from the presence of God. It was the blood of sacrifices of lambs and bulls and goats that acted as a temporary and symbolic cleansing. But it was Christ’s blood that has permanently cleansed us from sin.
Up until Christ’s death sin had been piled upon sin, the wrath of God increasing as people continued to sin in his presence. Though we see God’s wrath enacted in part in the OT, the flood of Noah and other smaller instances, God restrained his wrath. With the crucifixion of Jesus he poured out his wrath on his own Son. Why did he do this? Paul said, “He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished…” (3:25b). The holy name of God had been dishonored and his righteousness needed vindication – someone must die.
Some may feel that they are not worthy of such a horrible fate. They ask, “How can God be loving and yet condemn people with such little sins?” But the real question is, “How can God be righteous if he acquits such miserable sinners as we?”[ii] Our sin is certainly at issue, yet more at issue is the righteousness of God and the existence of sin in his sight. That’s why there had to be sacrifice. And not just any sacrifice, but the sacrifice of the Son of God. Nothing else and no one else could repair the damage to the name of God and his righteousness wrought by our sins. Jesus died for the glory of the Lord and satisfaction was made. Righteousness was demonstrated.
And let us not forget that with his glory restored, God is able to justify those who believe. “…he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (3:26). If the cross is a demonstration of the righteousness and justice of God, it is also a demonstration of his mercy. Those who believe are justified. It is both an easy and a hard thing to do. It is hard because it means confessing that you are guilty before God and can do nothing to make yourself right. We don’t like being wrong and we don’t like being helpless. It is easy though in that all we have to do is become like a child, as Jesus said, and lean on him, trusting him, and believing that Jesus finished the work, paid the price, and freed us from our sin. It’s a free gift. All you have to do is take it.
4. The new relationship of law and faith
There are three implications of the gospel of justification by faith alone in verses 27-31. These lead into next week’s text very nicely so we will only look briefly at them. Paul asks three questions which open the way to answer the Jews concerning their criticism of how God’s righteousness was revealed.
a) Can we boast in anything we have done? Remember the Jews had the law and they had the temple at one time. They thought they were special people and exempt from the wrath of God. Paul replied that justification by faith alone humbles the sinner and excludes boasting. We have nothing to boast about. We have our Bibles and our degrees and our works, but Christians, brothers and sisters, we have nothing to boast about. In the sight of God we are all sinners having fallen short of God’s glory.
b) Is God the God of Jews only or of Gentiles too? Is anyone excluded? Honestly, what we are asking is, is God the God of only the spiritual people? Does your pedigree save you? Does going to church save you? Are you better than those who don’t go to church? No, according to justification by faith alone, God is God of all, and God will save whom he will save, if they believe in his Son Jesus Christ.
c) Are we done with the law? Here the Jews had the biggest problem. Do we just do away with the law as useless? Absolutely not. It was the law that showed us how sinful we were. It is the Word of God which both reveals our inability to measure up to God’s standard and reveals Christ’s righteousness which has become our righteousness. So now we are able to live by the law through Christ.
The law and faith are not in opposition. They work together to recreate us in the image of the glory of God. This is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, which we will see more of later in Romans.
This is what saves us.
Did God do this for us or for himself? I hope and pray that we see in this passage that God was doing this for his own glory first and foremost.
We sing this song with the words concerning the death of Jesus “he thought of me above all else.” Other believers have said, “If I were the only person on earth, Christ would have died for me.” But what Scripture teaches this? How can we view God’s salvation so self-centeredly? This kind of thinking is strikingly similar to the Jews of Paul’s day. It steals from God’s grace. It causes us to think that God is partial to us. It makes us think of ourselves as special, rather than as sinners. God did not choose us because we are special but because we were lost. There is nothing to boast about in this.
God accepts us because of who Christ is. If we believe in Christ, then we have been punished for our sins, in Christ. We are what we are in Christ. We are accepted by God, through Christ, and not because of anything we are or anything we have done.
From a human perspective we see salvation as God serving us and doing a great thing for us. From God’s perspective we see that God has done great things for his name’s sake and by the grace of God and the mercy of God and the love of Christ we are humbled with the realization that God saves us for his glory.
This is what saves us! Praise the Lord!
AMEN
Ephesians 1:3-14 closing words
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