The Just and the Justifier
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Does anyone know who Shawn Kemp is? Shawn Kemp was an NBA player in the early to mid-90s. I know that because I had his basketball card. And I had his basketball card, not because I liked basketball, but because I stole it from someone. I was eleven years old and I pushed an acquaintance of mine up against a wall, put my hands around his collar, and as tough as I could sound, I demanded his Shawn Kemp basketball card. It was supposed to be a joke. If you knew me at twelve, you’d probably get how it was supposed to be a joke. First I was one of the dorkiest kids in school. Dorks don’t tend to bully others. I was a pastor’s kid. Most pastor’s kids don’t bully, though I knew one or two that did. I did it at church. Bullying should never happen at church. It was supposed to be a joke, but it was anything but a joke to this kid. He was probably ten or eleven and I was twelve. He was scared and I felt terrible. I tried to give him the card back. I apologized and tried to explain it was a joke. He wasn’t laughing. He was near tears. He wouldn’t take the card back. The next day I went to his house and tried to explain and apologize again. He wouldn’t come out. I never saw him again. I had Shawn Kemp’s baskbetball card for years reminding me just how cruel I could be, haunting me that I very well may have ruined Christianity for that boy. Nearly thirty years later I still remember that Wednesday night.
How does one justify that kind of action. You could say that I was only joking around, which I was. But that doesn’t justify the action. It may give a reason but it doesn’t justify anything. One could say I was young and being stupid. That would be true too. But that’s only an excuse. It doesn’t justify the act of bullying and mugging someone at church. To justify is not to excuse, nor to give a reason for doing something. To justify is to show that what was done was just or was right. My actions were neither just nor right. Another way of looking at it would be to say that to justify is to declare not guilty, except I am guilty. I committed the acts. Nothing can justify what I did that day. While there is nothing that can justify what I did that night, there is One who can justify me.
As we get into Romans 3:21-26 this morning, we will see Paul talking quite a bit about righteousness. Righteousness is another word for justification. Both mean to be right in God’s sight. To be made righteous is the same thing as saying to be justified. Both mean to be made right with God or declared “not guilty” in his sight. And what we will hopefully see this morning is that nearly everything that Paul has written in his letter to the Romans culminates on these verses we are studying today. All the talk about Jews and Gentiles, sin and righteousness, faith and repentance, have been built up by Paul in order to show three presentations God makes regarding salvation. The first presentation God makes regarding salvation is that righteousness is peculiar. The second presentation that God makes regarding salvation is that righteousness is particular. The third presentation God makes regarding salvation is that righteousness is proven.
Peculiar Righteousness
Particular Righteousness
Proven Righteousness
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are 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, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Peculiar Righteousness
Peculiar Righteousness
In regards to salvation, God presents a righteousness that is peculiar. In order to attain salvation, one must be righteous. The two go hand in hand. One cannot be saved without also being righteous. But the righteousness that saves us is a peculiar righteousness. Look at how Paul writes about this righteousness. It’s peculiar in two ways.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
The first way that this righteousness is peculiar is that it is the righteousness of God. This is an old definition of peculiar. If you are familiar with the King James Version of 1 Peter 2:9, it says we are a peculiar people. In essence, we are not strange, but are God’s special people. He owns us and therefore we are peculiar; we are unlike anyone else. It implies ownership. So here too, except it goes beyond ownership.
We saw a few weeks ago in that many times, the righteousness of God is not simply the righteousness that God owns.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
This is not just a possessive phrase. This is what is known as a genitive of subject. When we speak of the love of God, we do not just mean that God possesses love or even that God is love. We mean that this is love that God gives to others. The same with the grace of God. It is not just that God possesses grace, but that God gives grace. So it is with the righteousness of God. God not only possesses righteousness but this is righteousness that God gives out to others. So it is peculiar in that God does possess this righteousness, but he does more than possess it. He gives it out.
The second way, and this is what I want us to focus on, that this is a peculiar righteousness, is that it isn’t the righteousness that people would expect. In this sense, I’m using it in the more modern way: it is strange. What makes it so strange is that it isn’t attained by the works of the law. Let’s back up for a moment and look at the last couple of verses we studied last week and go into this verse today.
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.
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
As we saw last week, the law becomes a prosecuting attorney. We could say that it is the star witness against us. The charges it makes against us will silence us for good. The conclusion is that no one will ever be justified in God’s sight. Now remember that the word “justify” can be substituted with the words “made right/righteous” in his sight. The law cannot show that what we have done is good or right. It cannot put us in good standing with God. It was designed to show us what sin is. So if we cannot be made right with God through the law, then how can we be made right? Only by the righteousness that God gives out.
To fully appreciate what Paul is saying, we need to understand that he is using courtroom language throughout this text. The words righteousness and justification are forensic terms. In other words they are legal terms. Paul talks of the law. He talks about bearing witness. In the Greek, the forensic terms are undeniable but in English, they are some terms that are a little harder to see. The idea of this righteousness being manifested means that it was displayed as if entered into evidence. This is a perfect passive participle which means that this is an act God has already accomplished but continues to have an effect. So God had already accomplished this act of putting forward and displaying this peculiar righteousness, so that it continues into effect even until judgment day. It’s like buying your child Easter clothes before Easter comes, except they get to wear them before Easter Sunday.
Keep in mind here that God is the judge. He holds our eternity in his hands. In order to go on into eternal life, we need to be seen as righteous in his sight. Yet, we just saw in verse 20 that that is impossible if we are trying to use the law. But God displays a peculiar righteousness. The very judge whom we need to be made right with puts forward evidence of an altogether different type of righteousness, something that can cause us to be declared “not guilty”. Before the judgment day ever comes, the Judge offers us a way to be declared “not guilty” on that day. It is a righteousness that is without the law. It travels alone. It can be attained and must be attained without reference to the law because the law prosecutes and kills! Even though the actual Law (the Mosaic Law) and the Prophets bear witness to this righteousness that God displays and gives, it cannot immitate it; this type of righteousness is separated from it.
So strange this righteousness is. It goes against every inclination that human beings have. We want to earn our way into God’s heart. We want to do enough and be enough. So to hear that the righteousness that we must have cannot come from our own doing seems so strange, so peculiar.
Particular
Particular
The first presentation God makes about our salvation is that the righteousness is peculiar; it’s strange and unexpected. But the second presentation about our salvation that God makes is that righteousness is particular. This righteousness is not given to everyone. It is given to a particular people.
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
The righteousness of verse 21 is the same righteousness of verse 22. It is the righteousness that God gives out and that he has displayed in the courtroom as evidence. It is this same righteousness that is on display that God gives out, but he only gives it out to through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. No one else gets this type of righteousness. Every single person who desires to be justified—to be made right; to be declared “not guilty”—in God’s sight must be made right with the righteousness that he has displayed. But the only way to attain that righteousness is to put one’s faith in Jesus Christ. Neither you nor I can be made right in God’s sight with the law, so we must be made right without the law. That means we take the peculiar righteousness that God offers through faith in Jesus Christ.
It is imperative that we understand what Paul means by believe. That word is a present active participle. That means that it is not a one time belief somewhere back in the day. It is a present and constant reality. It is continuous faith. So the verse could be translated, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who are believing.” Or even, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all believers.” There’s no “I used to be a believer,” only believers.
This is why Paul woud write to the Colossians:
he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,
if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
We are presented holy, blameless, and above reproach, if indeed we continue in the faith. To not continue, to not persevere, is to show that what may have happened was a religious experience, but it was not salvation and no righteousness was given. This righteousnessness is for those who believe but not just in anything. We must put our faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way to gain righteousness. There is no other way to be saved! That means every single person must gain it in the same way. Why? Because as we saw last week, we are all in the same boat. Everyone sins. There is no one righteous, no not one. There is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Why?
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Everyone sins. We saw that last week. But if you’ve been in church for a while or in Christian circles you may have heard that sin is missing the mark. That’s not what Paul was writing here. It’s not like God’s glory is the target and we are taking aim and just can’t get the arrow to go the distance. The word that Paul used is the word from which we get hysteria. One who suffers from hysteria suffers from a lack of reality or rationality. Now Paul was not saying that we all sin and are hysterical. What he wrote was that we all sin and lack God’s glory. Why is it that we are all in the same boat? Because we all sin and we all have lacked God’s glory.
What Paul was doing was pointing back to the first part of his letter. I told you just about everything is culminating on these verses. We read back in
Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Every human being has done this. We have exchanged God’s glory and traded it for lesser glory. We traded in the Ferrari for the jelopy. That means that we lack the glory of God. God sees us without righteousness and lacking glory. That’s true for the Jews, the Greeks, the barbarians, the wise, and the foolish. Every single one of us from the moment we are born suppress the truth by our unrighteousness and exchange God’s glory for lesser things and when the day of judgment comes in God’s courtroom we will be tried for what we have done. All have sinned and lack God’s glory. That’s how everyone will stand on judgment day, unless that is, we can somehow get things right before judgment day.
That’s why Paul wrote the words, “But now” in verse 21.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—
But now, in this moment, at this time, in the present reality, God has put his righteousness on display so that everyone who will put their faith in Jesus Christ will be saved. The offer is made to all who will hear, but it is only good for those who believe. It is given by grace as a gift. It cannot be worked for. It cannot be paid off. It is a gift. It is only made possible by the redemption that is found in Christ Jesus. That’s why it is only by faith in Christ Jesus that it can be attained. He holds redemption. The only way to gain it is to trust in his work on the cross and not yourself. That is the gospel. It is a radical gospel. It turns everything on its head. God the Judge offers this righteousness to any and all, but it is only good for those who believe. It is a particular righteousness.
Proven
Proven
This leads us to the last presentation God makes. He is presenting evidence. The first presentation God made about our salvation is that the righteousness he gives is peculiar; it’s strange to us; it goes against our very inclinations to earn God’s respect and love. The second presentation God made about our salvation is that the righteousness he gives out is particular; it only goes to those who continuously put their faith in Jesus. But this last presentation that God made about our salvation is that the righteousness he gives out is proven. It is a proven righteousness.
whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
The reason I keep saying that these are presentations of God is because God keeps putting things out there for all to see. He made manifest/displayed righteousness without the law. He gives this gift of righteousness made possible by Christ’s redemption. Now he puts forward Jesus as a propitiation by his blood. Once again, the Judge of all the universe puts forth evidence: his own Son. And his own Son is put forward as a propitiation by his blood.
Propitiation is such a big theological word. But it is an important word, which is why the translators, for the most part, keep it in the text. Some might use the word “atonement,” but that doesn’t go deep enough. Propitiation is the process of satisfying God’s wrath against sin and sinners. It is the process of satisfying God’s wrath against sin and sinners. So let’s think for a moment. God, the judge of the living and the dead, put forward his Son to be the process in which his wrath against sin and sinners can be satisfied by his blood.
The interesting thing here is the order of words in the Greek as to “his blood.” It’s as if he is emphasizing Jesus’s blood. The reason is two-fold.
The first is that the word propitiation was the word that the translators of the Greek Old Testament used to describe the mercy seat. The mercy seat was the top of the ark of the covenant. The second is that the mercy seat was the place where the blood of the bull and goat would be sprinkled on the Day of Atonement which would absolve the Jews of their sins until they sinned again. Paul is now making a distinction between the atonement that the Jews were used to where the blood of bulls and goats were used, and the protitiation that is made now by the blood of Jesus. As the writer of Hebrews wrote,
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)
he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh,
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Christ was not only the High Priest but the sacrifice as well and by his own blood he secured an eternal redemption for everyone who believes! Some people can’t understand how God can be so wrathful. I can’t understand how God could be so merciful to a sinner like me who dares bully and steal some kids property in a place that is to represent his love and grace! That’s just one of my sins! But not just mine, but all who are willing to believe.
Adam and Eve, Seth, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, Moses, Aaron, David, and the list goes on all redeemed by the propitiation that is in Christ. And you may say, “wait a second; they all died before Christ was born, let alone died. Surely they had to be justified some other way.” Paul wrote otherwise. God, in his divine forebearance, passed over those previous sins. In other words, God delayed his justice. Some would say that justice delayed is justice denied. Not so. Justice would have its day. That day came when Jesus’s blood was shed. If God never dealt with the sins of those of faith in the Old Testament, then we could never say that we serve a just God. But he dealt with it the same way he deals with every believer’s sins: on the cross of Christ.
God is just. He is righteous, and the evidence that proves it is the propitiation he put forward. That’s what the word “show” literally means. This was the evidence of God’s righteousness. I told you there were some ways the English didn’t present the judicial language and this is where we see it. The fact that God punishes sin whether of Old Testament saints or saints yet to be born proves he is righteous. Every sin must be punished to God’s satisifaction, and for all who are willing to believe it, Jesus became the satisifaction that took God’s wrath against their sin. This is evidence that God is righteous at the present time. It is a proven righteousness.
Thus, God is both just and the justifier. He is both righteous and the righteous-maker! I wanted to keep presenting to you the fact that the Judge of all the universe, the living and the dead, was the very one putting forward evidence. The Judge made a peculiar righteousness available. The judge gave a particular righteousness as a gift of grace in Christ’s redemption. The Judge put forward as evidence of his righteousness, his own Son to satisfiy the wrath he would otherwise have to pour out on us.
God did this!
Conclusion
Conclusion
Beloved, is there any doubt as to why Paul wrote at the beginning of the letter that he was both under obligation and eager to preach the gospel? This is God’s radical gospel, that the judge whom everyone fears has made a way to bypass judgment and wrath. We don’t have to stand guilty before the Judge; he has already shown us a way to be declared “not guilty.”
As we finish Romans 3:21-26 this morning, I hope we can see how radical this gospel really is. I hope you see how God has gone above and beyond to bring us a peculiar righteousness we could never gain on our own. I hope you can see that this is a particular righteousness that is given only to those who believe. It is a proven righteousness as God put forward evidence that propitation is lawful and Christ’s blood makes for an eternal propitiation.
If you have never put your trust in Christ, do you see what you are missing? Do you understand that you will have to face God’s wrath on your own? No one can stand up to such judgment. Put your life in Jesus’s hands. Clothe yourself in God’s righteousness. Jesus lived fully by God’s law. He didn’t abolish the law; he fulfilled it. He kept it 100%; he never failed in obedience, not even once. He died to absorb God’s wrath on behalf of all who are believing in him. He rose in power to prove he had attained such a great salvation for us. Trust him.
If you have trusted in Christ for such a great gift of righteousness as we’ve seen this morning, when is the last time you have given thanks? Beloved, you have been set free from the consequences of sin. You’ve been redeemed. You’ve been atoned for. You’ve been saved from the wrath that is to come. Let us give thanks to the Judge who remains righteous while also making us righteouss. Pray for God to grant repentance and faith to those you know who are yet to believe. Ask God to give you opportunities and to see them when they come to present his radical gospel.
We have heard the joyful sound:
Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Spread the tidings all around:
Jesus saves! Jesus saves!
Bear the news to ev'ry land,
Climb the steeps and cross the waves;
Onward! 'tis our Lord's command;
Jesus saves! Jesus saves!