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Romans 3:21-26
Imagine the
argument. You are sure that
you’re right. You passionately
fight your corner. You make what
you think are brilliant and unanswerable points. And then something is said or
something comes to light and you realise for the first time how wrong you
are. It’s been obvious to
everybody, but now it’s obvious to you too. You are totally and utterly in the wrong, and you have been
all along. How do you feel? No mitigating circumstances, no way of
making it better. You’re just
plain wrong. And you’ve hurt
other people and there’s no excuse. How do you feel? You’re humbled, broken. At the mercy of the other person.
It’s not a pleasant
feeling. But actually, it’s the
kind of experience that can make you as a person. How many people do you know in your
life who you just wish would admit they’re wrong. Just once. About anything.
Because mostly we spend our lives justifying ourselves.
You know the phrase
‘justifying yourself’? Actually
it’s a bible phrase but we use it every day and we probably already know
what it means. When you ‘justify
yourself’ you excuse yourself.
You present yourself to others as someone worthy of approval. You try to appear right in the eyes of
others. Now that can take quite a
brash form when we say to the world ‘I’m quite good, really I am’. It can also take the more shy form of
saying to the world ‘I’m not that bad, really I’m not.’ But either way, we spend our lives justifying
ourselves – to God, to the world, to ourselves.
What would it be like
to stop justifying yourself? To
stop proving yourself. To stop
trying to gain approval from the world.
To stop trying to be right all the time. Wouldn’t it be great to be free from that need to justify
ourselves.
Paul, who wrote these
words we’re studying, knows how to get that freedom. And he’s going to tell us this morning
how any of us can know that freedom.
And these words are for Christians and non-Christians. If you’re a long time follower Jesus
here this morning, these words are for you and if you’re quite new to
Christian things and just thinking it through, these words are for
you.
Because Paul is going
to tell us that everyone: religious and non-religious, good and bad,
clever and stupid, rich and poor – we all have the same problem. But God has made available to all the
same solution.
So what’s the problem?
Imagine a law
court. And you are in the dock
with the rest of humanity.
In the book of Romans,
Paul has spent the opening few chapters basically doing this: He’s been reading out the charges that
God has against the whole human race.
In these early chapters of Romans Paul wants to show us that all
of us without exception are guilty in the eyes of our Holy
Heavenly Father. And he says it
doesn’t matter whether you’re a religious, church-going, bible-reading
type or a non-religious type we’re all the same. Look at chapter 3, verse 9
(p1130). Here is the conclusion
to Paul’s opening chapters:
9 What shall we
conclude then? Are we any better? [He’s speaking about his religious
Jewish compatriots – Are we any better than the rest of humanity?] Not at all! We have already made the
charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.
Every human being is
UNDER a power called sin. So as
you stand there in the dock, you are joined by the whole human race. The arms dealer is to your left and
the amnesty international human rights lawyer is to your right. In front of you is a paedophile,
behind you is Mother Teresa. But
we are all in the dock together.
And in verse 10, Paul
reads out the charges that are against us – and these are all taken from
other parts of the bible. This is
God’s allegation against us:
10
As it is written: "There is no-one righteous, not even one; 11
there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God. 12 All have
turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no-one who
does good, not even one." 13 "Their throats are open
graves; their tongues practise deceit." "The poison of vipers
is on their lips." 14 "Their mouths are full of
cursing and bitterness." 15 "Their feet are swift to
shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17
and the way of peace they do not know." 18 "There is
no fear of God before their eyes."
This is the allegation
of the Word of God. This is God’s
allegation. How do you plea?
Verse 19 gives the
proper response:
19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are
under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world
may be held accountable to God.
Our mouths should be
stopped. We should be like the
person in the argument who know’s they’re wrong. Do you accept these charges? Do you plead guilty to them?
You might have been a
Christian for many years and perhaps you know what the right answer
should be. But do you – do I –
really, deep down, accept these charges?
Turn back a page to a
couple of verses in chapter 1 that have really affected me this
week. Have a look at Romans
chapter 1 and v29 (this is all
part of God’s allegation against the human race):
29 They
have become filled with every kind of wickedness,
evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant
and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they
disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless,
faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Look at that
description – there you see everything that’s wrong with the human
race. But look again at that
description – that’s YOU. That’s
ME.
Gossip and
God-hating. Arrogance and
murder. Greed and disobeying
parents. Do you know how natural
disobeying parents is? The
parents here know. It’s second
nature. But it’s our nature. Human nature. Depraved from the very beginning. Bent, perverted, dark. That’s YOU and that’s ME. As I climb up into the pulpit my heart
is FULL of these things. As I
speak to you now I AM FILLED with this wickedness. And so are you.
But you say – I’m not
really that bad.
Flick back to Romans 3
and look on to verse 23:
All of us have sin –
we all fall short of God’s glory.
One bishop put it like
this – “The harlot, the liar, the murderer, are short of 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.”
(Quote by Bishop Handley Moule from Stott’s Romans commentary,
p109)
23
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Line up on the beach –
swim to America (Rom 3:23)
23
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Whether you swim 50
metres or 50 miles, at the end of the day, you’re dead in the water. And swimming instructions are not
going to help you.
That’s the point of
verse 20.
Therefore no-one will be
declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the
law we become conscious of sin.
You might think that if we’re all so bad in
the eyes of God then the solution would be to try harder to be good. Take His law seriously, obey the Ten
Commandments as best we can, just BE better people. But look what the bible says: no-one will be declared righteous in God’s
sight by observing the law.
That’s what the BIBLE
says. No-one will ever
be accepted by God because they’ve obeyed the law. EVER.
In fact if you try observing the law you’ll realize very quickly
just how sinful you are. Being
good won’t get you to God. Just
like swimming instructions won’t get you to America.
You and I are in the
dock, the charges have been read, they are incontrovertibly true, our
mouth is stopped and there’s nothing WE can EVER do to alter God’s
verdict. Feel the weight of
that. That is our problem.
What is our solution?
These verses. One bible scholar has called our New
Testament reading this morning the most important paragraph ever
written. He might be right. These 6 verses show us God’s solution
to the greatest problem humanity faces – our guilt before God. Verse 21 comes like a shaft of
dazzling light bursting into the deepest pit. Let’s read these verses together:
21
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to
which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness
from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is
no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through
the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him
as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to
demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins
committed beforehand unpunished-- 26 he did it to demonstrate
his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who
justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
You know what these
verses mean? They mean that you
and I – guilty sinners though we are – can receive from God Almighty
JUSTIFICATION.
Look at verse 24: we
are justified freely by God’s grace.
Or look at the end of verse 26: God is the One who justifies those
who have faith in Jesus.
So picture the scene:
we stand in the dock, our condemnation is entirely deserved, the gavel
comes down and God the Father pronounces us NOT GUILTY. Justified. In fact justified doesn’t just mean NOT GUILTY – it means
POSITIVELY RIGHTEOUS in God’s eyes.
Isn’t that amazing news?
God pronounces the
guilty, not guilty when they trust in Jesus.
Wonderful news – but
I’m sure you’re asking yourself, How can God do that? How can He pronounce the unrighteous,
righteous.
Let me put it this
way: How can God be right and call wrong people right? Wouldn’t He have to be wrong to do
that? I mean He could call wrong
people wrong and be right. And
(if He could find any) He could call right people right and be
right. But how can He call wrong
people right and still be right?
That’s wrong, right? Did I
get that right? It’s right to
call wrong people wrong. But how
can it be right to call wrong people right? That’s the question – do you understand the problem?
Or let me put the
question in the words of verse 26:
How can God be just and the One who justifies believers in Jesus?
Answer: Jesus Christ
dying on the cross. That’s how
God can be just and justify we guilty sinners. Because Jesus took our place. He stood in our guilty shoes and accepted the guilty
verdict so that we, who trust in Him, can receive the not guilty. That’s the answer in a nut shell. But Paul unpacks that answer by taking
us to three different scenes.
The first scene we’ve
already thought about – it’s the court-room. In that scene, the charge of verse 23 is read out: ALL HAVE SINNED. There can be only one verdict. But then the gavel comes down in verse
24: AND ARE JUSTIFIED FREELY BY
HIS GRACE.
The court-room is
abuzz – how can this be? How can
the guilty go free? Well to
explain, Paul continues verse 24 by whisking us out of the court-room and
taking us to the slave market.
See in verse 24 he speaks about the REDEMPTION that came by Christ
Jesus. Redemption is the payment
you make to release a slave.
And here is the scene
Paul is hinting at. We’ve traded
the court-room dock for the shackles of a slave. We’re helpless under the power of our
master called sin and there’s nothing we can do to free ourselves. Then Jesus Christ comes into view to
redeem us. And it’s clear that
the payment He gives for our freedom is His very life. Jesus gives Himself, His very life, as
a ransom payment to free us.
And just as we’re
getting used to that imagery, Paul takes us away from the slave-market
and we find ourselves in verse 25 coming to the temple.
And perhaps this scene
is the most shocking of all.
Jesus and His cross is here shown to be a sacrifice of
atonement. So imagine yourself as
a Jewish person bringing to the temple your own lamb as a sacrifice. You’ve sinned and so you do what the
law requires you to do, you bring a sacrificial animal, and you line up
with all the other sinners to make your sacrifice of atonement. When you get to the front of the queue
you will lay your hands on its head and confess your sins over it, and
you will shed it’s blood. The
lamb was innocent, you were guilty, but the innocent lamb would take your
punishment instead – that’s how the sacrifice of atonement worked. You knew that this blood didn’t really
pay for your sin, but you also knew that it pictured something far far
deeper – it pictured the cross of the LORD Jesus.
Well imagine one day as you wait in the queue
for the sacrifices, that from deep within the temple a voice booms out
‘Stop the sacrifices.’ You all
drop your animals in fright and they scurry away. And then the LORD God Almghty Himself
emerges from the Most Holy Place in the temple. You are stunned.
But not half as stunned as you are about to be. In His strength the LORD strides
towards the altar. He lays down
on it, and carrying the sins of ALL the people the LORD is slain and His
blood is spilt.
That’s what happened at the cross. When you think – why did Jesus die on
the cross? Here’s your
answer. Jesus died AS the
sacrifice of atonement. He the
innocent one, He the LORD!, died in the place of we the guilty.
Now do you see how God can be just AND the one
who justifies? Because of the
cross. God has not forgotten
about justice – He’s not just illegally forgiving people. Justice matters to God – the cross
proves it. You see God forgives
us because Jesus was willingly condemned. God pronounces us NOT GUILTY because Jesus was willingly
pronounced GUILTY. God frees us
from slavery because Jesus willingly offered His life as a ransom
payment. God makes atonement for
us because because Jesus willingly died as our sacrifice.
So how do you feel
walking away from the law court, justified. How do you feel walking away from the slave market,
free. How do you feel, walking
away from the temple, forgiven.
By His death on the
cross, Jesus has secured all these things. He came down into our situation – into the dock, into the
slave market, into the queue for the altar – and He took the consequences
FOR US. That’s what the cross is
– look at the cross and know Jesus is dying FOR YOU. That should be you up there – but
Jesus is dying FOR YOU. That you
might be free, justified, forgiven.
Well how do I get hold
of this? How do I really benefit
from what Jesus has done for me?
Paul speaks about
faith three times in these verses.
Twice in verse 22:
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to
all who believe.
The words faith and
believe are basically the same.
And then once again in verse 25 he says:
[God] justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
We benefit from these
things when we BELIEVE in Jesus.
But what is
faith? I once heard the story of
a couple who went to Africa to translate the bible into a tribal language
that had never had the bible before.
They ran into a big problem.
This tribe had no word for ‘faith.’ We have lots: trust, rely, depend, believe. This tribe had no word for ‘faith’ and
that’s a problem when you’re translating the Bible – because the Bible
keeps saying we need to trust in Jesus and that if we don’t trust in
Jesus the guilty verdict remains over our heads and we face a terrifying
and eternal judgement. Faith is
important. So what did these
bible translators do. Well after
a while they realised there was no word for faith, but there was a word
that meant: “To sit down with your whole weight.” At the end of a long day you collapse
into your chair and you ‘sit down with your whole weight.’ And they said ‘That’s it! That’s the word we’ll use for faith.’
Because faith is
really sitting down with your whole weight on Jesus Christ. He is strong enough to catch us, when
we rely on Him. It means stopping
working, stopping trying to be right, stopping trying to look good. It means having your mouth stopped
because you know you’re wrong, and then looking at Jesus Christ dying for
you to forgive all your sins. You
see that you are weak, but you see that Jesus and what He’s done for you
is strong. And you sit down with
all your weight, saying ‘Jesus, I surrender. Thank you for the cross.
I can’t save me – but you have saved me, thank you.’
That’s faith. And anyone who has faith in Jesus is
entirely and eternally forgiven – for free, forever.
You know, thinking
back about the challenge to swim to America, imagine now that there was a
rescue rope dangling above the heads of all the swimmers. And that all they had to do was stop
swimming and grab hold of the rope.
Who would live to fight another day – the best swimmers? No, not necessarily, and certainly not
if they kept on swimming.’ The
difference is not between good swimmers and bad swimmers but between
those who grab hold of the rescue and are saved, and those who keep
swimming, and drown.
The world is not
divided into good people and bad people.
The world is divided into those who grab hold of Jesus Christ, who
hook their faith into Him, who trust in Him and His work on the cross –
they are saved, forever. On the
other hand there are those who plough on in their own strength – they are
lost, forever.
Where do you stand
this morning? Perhaps all of us need to look at Jesus Christ on the cross
again. Perhaps we need to
re-imagine ourselves in the court-room, guilty as sin – and the Father
pronounces you not guilty. Or the
slave market, in shackles until Jesus gives Himself up as the ransom to
free you. Or the temple,
confessing your sins over Jesus’ head and having Him slain on the
altaryou’re your forgiveness.
This is the good
news.
NOW. What do you think God wants you to do
with this good news – forgiveness for free, forever in Jesus Christ. What does He want you to do with this
news? I know what you think I’m
going to say. You think I’m going
to say “Go and tell the good news to others.” We’re in a mission fortnight after all, isn’t that what I’m
meant to say? Take this good news
and give it to others. But that’s
not what I’m going to tell you – you’ll do that anyway if you really know
how good it is. No here’s what I want us to do about this news – here’s
what God wants us all to do with this news… BELIEVE IT.
So often we hear from
the bible and think – oh that would be an interesting point, for someone else. ‘I wish so and so was hear to listen
to this’ Or ‘I wish whatshisname
would read this.’ Or else we hear
from the bible and then say: ‘Yikes I’d better go and do a whole pile of
things.’ That’s not what God
wants you to do with these truths.
First and foremost He wants YOU to BELIEVE them.
Sit down with your
whole weight on Jesus who died for you.
Allow this to be true for you.
Let it settle down into your heart and soul and mind. Wrap these truths around you, make
them the very atmosphere of your life – JESUS TOOK YOUR PLACE. If you simply let Him deal with it,
YOUR SIN IS PAID – for free, forever.
BECAUSE OF JESUS, GOD LOOKS ON YOU RIGHT NOW WITH JOY AND WITH UNQUENCHABLE
LOVE – for free, forever.
Believe it. The good news really is that good. Believe it. Look at the cross and be wowed by the love of God.
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