The Righteous Propitiation
It Is Well • Sermon • Submitted
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ME: Intro - Questions about the Wrath of God
ME: Intro - Questions about the Wrath of God
Who remembers learning about cause and effect in school?
It was a topic in multiple subjects.
Cause and effect could be used in English class as a literary device.
It could be used in science class as a theory.
Heck, I even remember using it as a code when writing computer programming.
I programmed this little tank game on my calculator that I would play during math class,
And one of the codes included writing out if a person entered the correct angle and correct velocity for their missile,
The effect was that it destroyed the other tank.
Cause and effect has many applications.
On an existential level,
There is an argument that the wrath of God is purely a cause and effect relationship.
In his commentary for the book of Romans,
C.H. Dodd writes;
“The wrath of God is taken out of the sphere of the purely mysterious, and brought into the sphere of cause and effect: sin is the cause, disaster is the effect…[But wrath describes] not…the attitude of God to man, but…an inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe.”
Similarly, Steve Chalke and Alan Mann wrote in their book,
The Lost Message of Jesus,
“The Bible never defines God as anger, power, or judgment—in fact it never defines him as anything other than love.”
These examples are seeking to present a plastic Jesus that does not include wrath.
As if the wrath of God is a shameful quality that we must reject.
An active objection against the condemnation of Christ in our place exists among people who claim to be Christian.
Supporters of this objection argue that the concept of making sacrifices to a deity is antiquated.
Therefore, they conclude that emphasizing Christ as a sacrifice taints the good news of the gospel.
After quoting John 3:16,
Chalke continues in his book by saying;
“How then have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent his anger and wrath on his own Song?…Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.”
So, what do we do?
Does the Bible teach that God planned to offer His own Son as a sacrifice?
If not, then what happened with the cross?
Was Jesus forcibly murdered then?
And if that is the case then what was the point of the cross?
Why would God allow such a thing if there was no redemptive purpose?
These are understandable and important questions that demand answers if we are to affirm what Chalke writes.
And we find answers to these questions in our passage this morning.
Quick overview of out It Is Well series,
Last week, we talked about the irony of One Man’s Death in John 11:45-52.
This morning, we are moving from the Gospels into the NT letter addressed to the Romans,
In Romans 3:21-26 looking at the Righteous Propitiation.
Then, Lord willing, next week, we will move ahead a chapter to Romans 4:25.
The outline for our passage this morning shows:
Our Dire Situation (vs. 21-23)
Our Only Salvation (vs. 24-25a)
Our Justified Sin (vs. 25b-26)
By God’s grace, our belief in Christ will form our obedient behavior.
There is this pattern we find throughout throughout the Bible,
And it goes as follows:
God predicts His action,
God does His action,
Then God interprets His action.
We saw this demonstrated with the Passover in Exodus,
God told Moses in advance what He would do,
God did what He said He would do,
Now, God has recorded this redemption.
So, that we can refer back to and understand the significance of His actions.
This is what He did with the cross as well,
Repeatedly throughout the OT, God predicted.
Repeatedly throughout His life, Jesus predicted it.
Then Jesus willingly and obediently followed through with it,
And now, Romans is an intentional interpretation and explanation of God’s act of the cross.
The Apostle Paul authored this letter,
Which is a purposeful formal argument about humanity’s position before God.
The book of Romans is a letter written by Paul that is outlined as a formal argument for salvation in the gospel.
In formal writing, early on you include was is called your thesis statement,
It is basically a single sentence summary of what you will be arguing.
In his introductory chapter, Paul presents his thesis statement for Romans,
In Romans 1:16-17, he writes;
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Paul introduces the Gospel in these verses,
Arguing that all people, both Jew and Gentile,
Need the righteousness of God shown in the gospel.
Then from vs. 18 all the way up to our passage this morning,
Paul just hammers home that God’s wrath is against all who sin,
Both Jew and Gentile.
The conclusion of this argument comes in Romans 3:19-20;
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.
Paul ends this argument of God’s wrath against sin by saying that none of us will be declared righteous by observing the law.
Therefore, the only way to be declared righteous is through the gospel that Paul introduced back at the beginning of Rom. 1:16.
So, in our passage this morning,
Paul makes a decisive shift in his argument.
Compressing so much theology in one long sentence in Greek.
He probably drove grammar teachers out of their minds,
But the content of this sentence is so rich!
Our passage this morning gets at the heart of this entire letter to the Romans.
Paul’s run-on sentence explains the path to salvation!
He teaches that righteousness is provided to us through Christ.
And it was revealed through the cross.
As a result, Paul argues,
Sinners are granted a pardon from God’s wrath,
Again, this is not because of our obedience to the law,
It is by God’s grace through faith in the only One who was righteous on our behalf.
The entire OT is correctly understood in the light of the person and work of Christ.
WE: Our Dire Situation (vs. 21-23)
WE: Our Dire Situation (vs. 21-23)
So, let us begin to approach our passage by first understanding our dire situation.
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,
In vs. 21, Paul brings up the law of Moses.
This is the law that Paul himself,
As well as the Jewish people,
Sought to uphold as a way to save themselves.
It was their divine prescription for how to live.
And the law includes punishment for a lack of obedience.
It is specifically, the first five books of the Bible,
This is called the Torah, or the Law of Moses.
All of God’s people are bound by this law,
In fact, the Bible teaches that it is the source of our morality,
Our conscience is hinged to this law,
So, we tend to feel a sense of guilt or remorse when we disobey God’s law.
There are also detailed prescriptions for ceremonies or rites of worship in the law as well,
Similar to the Passover and the Day of Atonement which we looked at earlier in our It Is Well series.
But the law also includes the judicial law which directed the civil policies of the Jews.
So, the law was obviously a big deal.
Now here in Romans,
Paul says that the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from that law.
By saying this,
Paul is saying that the righteousness of God has been revealed separately from that law,
In other words, he is telling all these good godly people, that the law cannot save us.
He reinforces this in Galatians 2:16 and Philippians 3:9.
This is the point of Paul’s argument in chs. 1-3.
Ultimately, the law is a mountain so big it makes Everest look like a pebble,
And works-based righteousness is our attempt to scale that mountain in our own strength.
It confronts us with the reality that we are not righteous,
And we can not make ourselves righteous.
It drives us to the point of confession that we need another way.
Therefore, since our acts of obedience to the law do not produce righteousness in us,
God reveals that the opposite is true.
It is His gift of righteousness that produces our obedience to God’s law.
And it is this gift, not our works of the law,
That brings us into a right relationship with God.
So, you could imagine how crushing this would be to those who held their hope in the law,
It would be shocking and offensive to these good, law-abiding people of God.
So, immediately after telling us that the law cannot save us,
Paul makes it clear that this does not make the gospel lawless.
He says the Law and the Prophets,
The entire OT,
Bear witness to the righteousness of God.
Meaning, they testify to God’s righteousness.
This tells us that the gospel is not contrary to the OT,
Rather, the gospel has been proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets.
But now,
Paul said at the start of vs. 21,
Now that Christ has come,
The OT is filled with this redemptive significance.
Because the righteousness of God has become a historical reality through the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
So, Paul continues with his emphasis on the righteousness of God in vs. 22.
Saying, now that the righteousness of God has been manifested,
There must be belief.
And Paul implies three parts to belief here,
First, belief must have head knowledge of the content of the gospel.
Second, there must be a mental affirmation of this content,
Then third, and most important, there must be trust,
There must be dependence on Jesus Christ as both Lord and Savior.
This is takes the head knowledge and makes it a matter of the heart.
So, from our heart, we declare Jesus as the object of our faith!
We embrace that He is the means by which we obtain God’s gift of righteousness.
Making the gospel both inclusive and exclusive.
It is inclusive in the sense that it welcomes all who believe,
But it is exclusive in the sense that only those who believe are given the righteousness of God.
It is not an exclusivity based on heritage or ethnicity,
As the Jews thought.
Paul says, there is no distinction.
As he goes on to say in vs. 23, all have sinned,
Regardless if a person is a Jew or Gentile.
Regardless if a person grew up in church or not,
It does not matter,
All have sinned,
Which also means, all who trust in Christ are granted the righteousness of God.
This reinforces the reality that the link between belief in behavior is not that you can behave yourself into believing,
In other words, you will not obey God’s Word then trust Christ.
Rather, by God’s grace, your belief in Christ will form your obedient behavior.
We talked about earlier how in chapters 1-3 of Romans,
Paul drives home our troubling situation,
That our sin separates us from God,
Leaving us as slaves to sin, spiritually dad, and bound for eternal condemnation.
If you were to peruse the first three chapters you would find lists of wickedness.
And if we are honest with ourselves,
These lists describe us;
Judgmental, hypocrites, faithless, and unrighteousness.
We have rejected God.
We are depraved.
Scripture warns us of this!
It is a beacon shining bright into the darkness of our hearts that do not love God.
Pastor Mark Dever observes this;
“There is something in us that resents God and that resents being told what to do.”
If you are honest, you know this is true.
Huge companies prey on this rebellious nature of ours.
There is this Pure Leaf Tea commercial I saw recently that begins with this seemingly ambitious woman waking up a 5:30 in the morning to go for a jog,
The narrator is going on about how some times you have to say yes,
The scenes go on to show her staying late at work,
Designing a picture perfect penguin cake,
Taking repeated pictures as a bridesmaid in multiple weddings,
And decorating at some sort of congratulations party.
Then, the narrator changes her tone and says,
I guess you have to say yes to that too, I don’t know.
Next, the scene cuts to a gender reveal party,
And the narrator says,
“More?! Wow! I mean, seriously though, do you really want to do all of this?”
To which the seemingly ambitious woman speaks for the first time and says,
NO! Emphatically.
Then it goes through showing the alarm going off,
And her saying, “No!” and going back to sleep.
Next, she is in the middle of decorating the congratulations party and throws the decorations up in the air and says, No!
Then, she pushes the entire table her that her picture perfect penguin cake was on, again shouting, No!
And the cake smashes to the ground,
And she takes a picture of it.
Now, the narrator has changed tones again,
Cheering this woman in her rebellion on,
Saying, “That’s right! You go girl!”
Lastly, the commercial ends with her getting up from work,
Grabbing her pure leaf tee from her desk and walking out of the office,
While all her coworkers stare at her.
And while she is walking out,
The narrator says this;
“Let them hear that no, because no is beautiful. Here at Pure leaf, we believe “no” makes life better.”
The reason they believe this is because “no” works pretty good for their tea.
Because the tea has no artificial sweeteners,
No artificial flavors,
And no extra stuff.
Do you see how pervasive our rebellion is?
These marketers are comparing the lack of artificial sweeteners to our inherent desire to tell others no!
It is crazy!
But that is what sin does.
It makes us bristle against being told what to do,
Even if it is a perfect God in His perfect love telling us what to do.
And guess what?
In vs. 23, Paul essentially repeats himself.
First, he says that all have sinned,
then following this simple statement up by giving a short but direct definition of sin.
To sin is to fall short of the glory of God.
Meaning all people have missed the mark God intends for humanity,
We have lost God’s glory,
We fall short of it now.
We do not set the bar,
God does.
And we do not reach the bar that God has set.
Sin is so much worse than this idea of not reaching our full potential.
And it is not just about breaking God’s laws,
But about damaging our relationship with God.
Our sin is a direct offensive insult to God.
It is our rejection of Him as our loving Father.
So, because God is holy,
The consequence of our opposition is His wrath against our sins.
And what vs. 23 is saying is that all people,
Every single person,
Are sinners.
This is a universal reality.
You know, falling short of the glory of God is not only the definition of sin,
It is also the consequence of sin.
If you think back to the Garden of Eden,
Before sin entered the world,
People were made in the image of God,
Made in the image of glory.
They walked with God in the garden,
They enjoyed the glory of God,
In the presence of God.
But when they sinned,
As Paul says in Romans 1:23,
They exchanged the glory of the Creator,
For idolatry of the creation.
This distorted the holiness of God’s glory in people.
And the result of this human unholiness is falling short of God’s glory.
No longer could people behold God in all His glory.
We are no longer in God’s presence,
We no longer experience the fullness of His glory and goodness.
Instead, we endure the plagues of a fallen world;
War, misery, destruction, murder, dissension, hatred, disease, and death.
This is our dire situation.
So, we fall short of God’s glory when we sin,
And because we sin, we continue to fall short of the glory of God.
If you are not a Christian,
You may be thinking I am laying it on a little thick,
Or perhaps that I am exaggerating the situation a bit.
Perhaps you think more along the lines of the country singer, Luke Bryan,
Who has a song that says “I believe people are good.”
Our situation revealed in the Bible is far more dire than this.
Most of believe or act as if we deserve to have good things happen to us.
I mean, think about how often we hear people talk about how so and so deserves this great and wonderful thing,
But no reasons are given as to why they deserve this.
It is just assumed by most of us.
This is not what the Bible teaches.
In fact, to put it nicely, the Bible teaches that we are basically bad.
Because, the Bible says,
After we were made in God’s image,
We turned inwardly to serve ourselves instead of God.
This is what it means to reject God.
This is our dire situation.
Dever calls this the strange truth about Christianity.
So, because of our dire situation,
We understand that no job, no relationship, no amount of money, no government, and no president will ever end the fallen nature of our world.
People can, and have, and will continue to, do good in this world.
But the world will remain fallen until Christ returns.
This is where our hope resides.
As R.C. Sproul simply says;
“Now people are morally and spiritually ugly…Grace renews and restores humanity’s lost glory in believers.”
Belief in the gospel kick starts the process of restoring the glory we have lost.
As Paul said at the start of this section,
“But now!”
Like a beam of light pierces through the darkness of night,
The light of God’s hope cuts through the effects of our dire situation.
I love Dever’s illustration here;
“A lightning strike of grace has lifted forever the night of our condemnation.”
Friends,
Before looking at our only salvation in the next verses,
You must understand that there is no salvation without the realization of the hopelessness of your own self-righteousness.
If you are holding out hope that your own righteousness might save you,
Then you are not hoping in Christ alone.
You cannot just add Christ to a list of potential options,
He plainly states that He is the One Way,
The One Truth,
The Only Life.
No one comes to the Father,
Except through Christ.
And you will only trust in Him,
When you are fully aware of your desperate need for Him,
Which comes from understanding our dire situation.
Jesus helps us when we realize we are helpless.
Jesus saves us when we realize we need saving.
Jesus gives us life when we realize we are dead.
The conviction of our dire situation always precedes salvation.
We are all sinners.
You may be a married sinner, a single sinner, a parent sinner, a child sinner, a male sinner, a female sinner, a heterosexual sinner, a homosexual sinner,
The point remains we are all sinners.
And being a Christian means you know that you are a sinner,
And you have confessed that and pursued after Christ for salvation.
We may grow out of a bad habit, a poor interest, or an unhealthy relationship,
But we will never grow out of our sin.
We cannot escape it in our own power.
So, we need another way out of our sin.
GOD: Our Only Salvation (vs. 24-25a)
GOD: Our Only Salvation (vs. 24-25a)
And Paul explains what Our Only Salvation is in Romans 3:24-25;
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.
In the broadest sense,
Our only salvation is God.
And He does so through His righteousness.
That is what Paul said in vs. 21-22.
This means, brothers and sisters,
We are saved only because of God and His righteousness.
And we are given this righteousness in the gospel from God.
This is what Paul said back in Romans 1:17,
“In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.”
As Dever writes;
“Before, there was the wrath of God revealed against the wickedness of men, but now there is the righteousness of God made known.”
This is why the gospel is good news,
The righteousness of God has been made known to us in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
And this righteousness, Paul emphasized in vs. 19-20,
Is known apart from the law.
It is known through Christ.
This is what Peter preaches to Cornelius in Acts 10:43;
To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
The law could never do this.
The law bore witness to the One who could do this.
Paul teaches this here in Romans using the concept of justification.
This is courtroom language.
To justify is to declare righteous,
To make right,
It is freedom.
In the Bible, justification is the opposite of condemnation.
Which, as sinners, we stand condemned in God’s court.
To justify is to declare the condemned sinner “not guilty” because of Jesus and His work on the cross.
God makes this declaration only through the means of Christ’s righteousness being imputed onto the believing sinner.
That is why both here and in Rom. 5:17 Paul refers to this as a gift.
But this language has been very controversial throughout Church history.
Because some have argued that Paul is saying we have made ourselves righteous with God’s help.
But this completely ignores what Paul says one chapter later in Rom. 4:5,
The God justifies the wicked.
What Paul is saying is in the legal sense,
Believing sinners are in possession of Christ’s righteousness.
This justification is a judicial pardon for our sins because we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ.
It is through Christ we are justified.
And here is what is beautiful about God’s work of justification,
When God declares a person justified,
They are permanently justified,
It can never be undone,
And He gives it freely by His grace!
But it is even better than that,
Marcus Loane explains;
“The voice that spells forgiveness will say: ‘You may go you have been let off the penalty which your sins deserve.’ But the verdict which means acceptance will say: ‘You may come; you are welcome to all my love and my presence.’”
This acceptance is our justification.
Brothers and sisters, if you are justified,
You must understand that God is not just letting you walk without having to pay the penalty for your sin,
All grounds for condemnation are removed by Christ.
Therefore, you need not live in fear of death,
You need not live in fear of hell.
You are living on the verge of heaven!
You are living on the verge of God’s presence for all eternity!
There are no charges against you,
Christ took them.
Your punishment has already been taken by Christ.
Justification was one of the gospel-centric doctrines that was recovered by the Protestant Reformation.
The fear of the Catholic Church in Rome was that this doctrine of justification would result in people living immoral lives.
The problem is this way of thinking is allowing fear, shame, and guilt to navigate our sense of morality.
But the morality in the Bible is navigated by hope, the gospel, and God.
It is centralized around the holiness granted to us in Christ,
The righteousness He has freely given to us,
Therefore, we pursue after Him,
With this unshakeable hope and longing to be with Him for all eternity.
This is the foundation of being a Christian
Justification is often confused with another closely related Bible word you might be familiar with,
Sanctification.
Warren Wiersbe gives a good definition for sanctification,
He writes;
“Sanctification is the process whereby God makes the believer more and more like Christ.”
He goes on to compare sanctification and justification,
“Sanctification may change from day to day. Justification never changes. When the sinner trusts Christ, God declares him righteous, and that declaration will never be repealed. God looks on us and deals with us as though we had never sinned at all!”
Another way to understand it is to think of being sanctified as being obedient to the law.
So, here in Romans, Paul is completely flipping the way people think about salvation.
During Paul’s time,
And still for many of us today,
We base our justification on our sanctification,
Meaning we act as if God offers forgiveness based upon our obedience to God’s law.
Or that we slowly become righteous until we are righteous enough to then be justified.
Thank God that is not what the Bible teaches!
That would be a hopeless situation.
Our hope is in the fact that Christ died for the ungodly.
Our hope is in the fact that the opposite of justification being based upon sanctification is true.
That is what Paul is teaching here;
That our sanctification is based upon our justification.
Dever also gives a short and helpful explanation;
“Justification marks the initiation of our sanctification.”
Meaning, in His grace, God offers us forgiveness through Christ,
And once we receive that forgiveness,
Then we progressively increase our obedience to God’s law.
This means, you do not become perfectly obedient once you are justified.
But your justification remains grounded in Christ,
And His perfect obedience,
His flawless fulfillment of the law,
And His sacrificial death on the cross that took the just penalty of God’s wrath against our sin.
This is so magnificient,
This means all who believe in Christ,
Share the same righteousness as the risen Savior Himself.
Because, as it says in vs. 24, we are saved by God’s grace.
When we believe in Christ,
We are united with Him both now and for all eternity.
And then, by God’s grace, that belief in Christ forms our obedient behavior.
Just like in vs. 23,
Paul essentially repeats himself for the purpose of emphasis.
In vs. 24, he says we are justified by God’s grace,
And as a gift.
He is driving home the point that salvation is initiated by God,
It is a freely given as a merciful and gracious gift from God.
And notice it is from God,
Not just from Jesus.
You see, sometimes people make the mistake that Jesus persuaded His wrathful Father into being merciful.
That is not what we see in the Bible.
The Father was not reluctant with His grace.
He planned salvation,
He initiated salvation,
He gave salvation as a gift.
He gave it freely by His grace.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Perfectly crafted our salvation.
God is the only One who can save us,
Any other claims of salvation are a lie.
So, if we are to be saved,
It is only by God’s grace.
We are desperate for His grace.
Nothing else grants us salvation,
Not our citizenship, not the color of our skin, not our gender, not our voting party, not our marital status.
It is only God’s grace that grants us salvation.
So, I ask,
How are you modeling God’s grace?
Do others see your dependence upon God?
Or do they see a person who acts like they have it all together?
I pray God will help all of us model His grace by living in a way that shows our dependence on Him.
We must reflect the gospel in the way we live.
By thinking and living this way,
Our confidence in God’s grace should increase.
You see, when we base salvation on what we do,
We are much more fearful because we know we are not doing enough.
However, because salvation is based upon what God does,
We have a rock solid confidence that He has done enough.
We do not have to tread water our entire lives to keep ourselves from sinking.
In His grace, God has freely offered to pull us out of the water and save us.
Not only does this increase our confidence,
But it should increase our forgiveness.
If we are truly convicted of our sin,
Then we understand the punishment we deserve.
And if we understand that,
The fact that, in His grace, God freely offers salvation instead of that punishment,
Should make us quick to forgive and slow to become angry.
As ones who have received mercy,
We should have a spirit of mercy.
Another virtue this should encourage is humility.
When you think you save yourself by how many hours you log in church,
How much tithe you have invested,
or how many conservative initiatives you have supported,
The only fruit you have produced is pride.
When you think and live that way,
You are clueless to the fact that salvation does not come from anything you do.
And if you have been living this way,
Paul asks some great questions you must consider in 1 Cor. 4:7;
For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
It is so important we understand that we do not deserve God’s forgiveness.
We treat salvation like it is a job,
Generally, if we work hard, do good work, we earn an income that reflects that work.
But we can be clueless to the fact that we are not doing good religious work,
We are not some sort of super-elite moral people.
We are offenders of God’s law,
Sinners against God Himself.
And yet, for our sake, God took on flesh,
Made Himself nothing, and died in our place to take the penalty that our sins deserve.
This is a humbling truth,
That our only salvation is by God, in His grace.
Paul continues in the second part of vs. 24,
By showing that our only salvation is by God, in His grace, through Christ.
He says salvation is given through the redemption in Christ.
The idea of redemption is being released through payment.
In this context, it is speaking of the idea of purchasing a slaves freedom.
But in our context, we can think of it like a manufacturer coupon,
You have a coupon for a free loaf of bread.
On the coupon it says redeemable at Price Chopper.
So, when you bring that coupon to Price Chopper,
Because the manufacturer has already paid the cost of that loaf of bread to Price Chopper,
Price Chopper releases the loaf of bread to you.
This obviously takes on a much greater level of significance when we begin talking about the souls of people.
We are like the loaf of bread,
But instead of being held at a grocery store,
We are in bondage to sin.
So, Christ, like the manufacturer,
Paid the cost to release us from that bondage.
Which was His blood,
Paul says in vs. 25.
Blood is clearly in Paul’s mind as he is explaining redemption.
The blood speaks of Christ’s death,
Which is the object of our faith,
And death is the consequence of sin.
Rom. 1:32 says that all who sin deserve death.
So, Jesus’ death became the punishment for all sins,
Because He had no sin,
He was perfectly obedient to the Father’s will in every way.
So, instead of dying for His sins,
He died for our sins.
He was our substitute on the cross.
He was the ransom for many,
As we saw Jesus explain this in Mark 10:45,
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was the ransom price for our salvation.
The author of Hebrews also explains in Heb. 9:15,
Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
This means that the free gift of salvation came at a cost.
So, yes, salvation is free,
But it is also costly.
As Col. 1:14 and Eph. 1:7 say,
In Christ we have redemption through His blood,
Meaning through His death, we have forgiveness for our trespasses.
And this is according to the riches of His grace.
Vs. 25 begins by saying that God put Jesus Christ forward.
Christ was presented as the propitiation that satisfied God’s judgment against our sin.
The propitiation is the sacrifice for atonement to be made.
The official definition is;
“The means of appeasing wrath and gaining the good will of an offended Person.”
So, God put forward His own Son to be the means of appeasing His wrath toward us for offending Him with our sin.
What Paul is saying here,
Is that it is Christ’s sacrifice that removes the penalty of our sin by taking the wrath of God and bringing us God’s forgiveness.
It is more than just a removal of sins,
It is the satisfaction of God’s wrath against our sins.
His death justifies us.
This is the extent that the word propitiation communicates,
The satisfaction of God’s righteous anger against us.
As one commentary puts it;
“By means of Jesus’ blood—His sacrificial death—God’s holy wrath against sin was appeased, and the sins of those who place their faith in Christ are taken away.”
Jesus taught this when He revealed that His death fulfilled the prophecies of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53.
That is what propitiation means,
A satisfaction of God’s wrath that turns away God’s wrath.
And there is nothing shameful about God having wrath.
If He did not have wrath toward sin,
It would raise a question about His goodness.
How could God oppose evil if He refused to judge it?
He would be a hypocrite.
So, God, both the Father and Son in harmony,
Oppose evil and they satisfy their wrath against sin by putting Christ forward to be the propitiation.
It is important we understand that the result of our justification does not cause God to love us.
It is just the opposite.
As we looked at in John 3:16,
Because God loves us,
He put forward His one and only Son to atone for our sins.
As Paul says later in Romans 5:8,
God demonstrates His love by offering Christ to die for our sins.
And we receive Christ’s propitiation by faith, Paul says.
He emphasized this back in vs. 22,
And he reiterates here again to underscore the significance of believing in Christ.
As Paul says in Ephesians,
It is by grace through faith that we are linked to the righteousness of Christ that results in our salvation.
But I love the important distinction R.C. Sproul makes,
“Faith is the instrumental cause, not the ultimate cause, of justification.”
What Sproul is saying, which Paul would affirm,
Is that faith is obviously important,
That is abundantly clear.
But ultimately,
Our justification is by God’s grace.
If not for God’s grace, our faith is empty.
We can never have enough faith to be justified.
We can never work enough to appease God’s wrath.
God provides the way,
He presented Christ to be the propitiation.
John Stott comments on this;
“God’s own great love propitiated his own holy wrath through the gift of his own dear Son, who took our place, bore our sin and died our death. Thus God himself gave himself to save us from himself.”
Christ is our substitute.
He took our penalty.
He was condemned so we would be forgiven,
He died so we could live.
YOU: Our Justified Sin (vs. 25b-26)
YOU: Our Justified Sin (vs. 25b-26)
So, we see that Our Sin is Justified in Romans 3:25b-26;
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.
God’s grace is the power source of our justification,
And our faith is simply the conduit,
The channel,
That God’s grace flows through into our heart to produce righteousness and obedience.
This means that the benefits of God’s power for justification comes to us only through faith in Christ
This faith is what we talked about earlier,
It is a knowing of information,
An affirmation of that information,
And a trusting of that information.
For example, you know that airplanes fly.
You may likely affirm, that you agree airplanes do fly,
You have likely seen it happen before.
But actually getting on an airplane and flying somewhere requires you to trust that airplanes fly.
These are the three parts of faith.
Like the example of airplanes,
It is not your trust in that airplane that makes the plane fly.
It is going to fly whether you trust it or not.
So, your faith does not save you,
It is simply the instrument God uses to save us by His grace through Christ.
And why did God do this?
These verses show that it was to show God’s righteousness.
And His forbearance,
By passing over sins that had previously been committed.
The gospel demonstrates God’s righteousness,
It proves His loving restraint.
Similarly, Acts 17:30 says God overlooked the times of ignorance,
But now He commands all people everywhere to repent.
Because when we repent,
It is evidence of our faith.
And our faith will produce God’s righteousness in us.
This means it is more than a removal of sins,
It is being granted a position of righteousness which unites us in fellowship with God!
And central to this, is faith in the death of Jesus of the cross.
As our passage has taught us,
It is through Christ’s death that God’s wrath is propitiated,
And we are both justified and redeemed.
This means whoever has faith in Christ is saved.
That is it!
There are no additional qualifications,
No extenuating requirements,
No other standards.
This is amazing!
Despite all the human divisions we make along the lines of religious backgrounds, ethnicities, and political parties.
The way of salvation is the same for all people,
It transcends our divisions.
All who trust in Christ are saved.
This is the only qualification,
Believing in Christ and His death on the cross for you.
Trust this and you will be saved,
Justified,
Redeemed.
If you are not a Christian,
My friend, this is a call to you.
God has made you in His image to have a relationship with Him.
But you have sinned against Him.
Chapters 1-3 of Romans describes your life and my life.
But God, in His grace,
Sent His Son to live the perfect life we should have lived,
And He died the death we deserve.
After Jesus died,
He rose from the dead,
Showing that Christ’s sacrifice in our place was accepted.
Now His wrath is satisfied for all who confess their sins and trust in Christ.
I plead with you to do that now.
Have faith in Christ and be saved.
The Bible says faith comes by hearing,
And this does not have to take place here at church.
Acts records the accounts of a variety of people getting saved in a variety of locations.
An Ethiopian was sitting in his chariot.
The author of our letter was walking on a road to the city of Damascus.
A man named Cornelius was just sitting at home.
A woman named Lydia was outside gathered together with other Jewish females for a prayer meeting in Greece.
Regardless of wherever the message is heard,
Regardless of whoever speaks the message,
It must be this message.
So, brothers and sisters,
Who do you want to see come to Christ?
Is it your coworkers? Your family? Your neighbor? Your classmates? Your friend?
Whoever it is, how will they be saved if they never have this message shared with them?
If faith in Christ is the most important thing in your life,
Would these people that are coming to your mind be able to say they know that is true?
If so, why not be the one to share this message with them?
And emphasize that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone
This is how our sin is justified.
WE: Conclusion
WE: Conclusion
In vs. 26, Paul once again repeats himself for emphasis,
By stating that God justified our sin as a way to put His righteousness on display.
This is really what the gospel demonstrates.
Think about it,
Going back to the OT law,
The sacrificial system taught that forgiveness was granted through an animal sacrifice.
Now, the NT is enlightening the OT,
Showing that the sacrifice of animals does not sufficiently cover our sins.
So, the NT teaches us how the OT sacrifices were pointing forward to a perfect sacrifice.
And the gospels reveal that this sacrifice was Jesus Christ.
It is through Christ that God is able to adequately deal with our sins.
Through the Lamb of God,
God remains righteous as He passes over our former sins,
As Paul said at the end of vs. 25.
Christ’s death on the cross demonstrates the justice of God.
The Father punishes sin,
And He poured out that punishment on His son.
So, Paul concludes this section of his letter by once again pointing out that the way of salvation God provided is by faith in Jesus.
This both displays God’s righteousness and declares us righteous.
And it makes God the One who brings us into a right relationship with Him.
Once again, R.C. Sproul gives a helpful comment here;
“In dealing with Christ as sin-bearer and the human person as sinner, God does not compromise His own holiness, nor the necessity of sin’s being atoned for. Yet He graciously provides a salvation that mankind was incapable of obtaining.”
This is why the cross is a magnificent display of God’s glory and justice and wisdom and grace and mercy and love and wrath and holiness and righteousness.
As Paul also writes in 1 Cor. 1:23-24;
but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
There was no way for us to pay for our sins prior to Christ’s death.
So, to think about this beyond ourselves.
God’s righteousness would not allow Him to leave sins unpunished.
So, Christ’s death on the cross was God’s solution to the problem of sin.
While also solving the riddle of how a merciful God could punish sin.
The cross is God’s holy wrath and gracious love meet perfectly.
God explained this as early as Exodus 34:5-7;
The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
God’s declaration in Exodus seems like a contradiction.
How could He both forgive iniquity and transgression and sin,
Yet will by no means clear the guilty?
Our passage this morning provides the answer.
Keeping consistent with His character, God shows that He did this on the cross.
He demonstrated His justice in punishing sin,
And He demonstrated His mercy as the one who is just and justifies those who have faith in Christ.
Now, He demonstrates His righteousness in our salvation.
He displays His glory in our justification.
He shows His character in our redemption.
As Paul asks rhetorically in Romans 9:22-24;
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
Mark Dever summarizes this well;
“We Christians are walking demonstrations to the world of God’s character, of His justice and mercy…We have His character stamped on us. We’re made by it. His Spirit re-creates it in us.”
This is at the heart of why God does what He does.
It is all for His glory.
Our salvation,
Our justified sin,
Brings Him glory.
Did you realize that is what is going on with your life?
Did you realize that is what is going on with our church?
We are not glorifying God by obeying the law in our own strength.
By God’s grace, our belief in Christ will form our obedient behavior.
And our obedient behavior that is formed by Christ glorifies God and makes God known.
So, believe in this message, and watch God use you for His glory.
Pray.