Intro:
By way of introduction allow me to relate to you the reason this particular passage (Romans 3:21-26) has had, and continues to have a profound impact on and in my life.
Though I did grow up in a devoted Christian home, I very consciously decided the philosophy of my life would be, for lack of a better term, agnostic when I was in middle-school. For I believed there was some sort of higher level of being, some sort of creator, but that any one religion could know him I thought prideful and foolish.
So practically I lived under the thought of, “I’ll just be good, and then whatever god is real will have to accept me.” This was the thought running through my head throughout junior high and High school.
However everything changed when I first read Romans 3:11 which says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” well Uh-oh! The whole philosophy of my life was turned on its head. This text is saying I can do no good, that no one can do good! If this is true than I’m in trouble!
Quite frankly at the time I was devastated, how am I to be enter heaven if I can’t even be good enough to live up to the required expectations? I had no other choice but to keep reading. That is when I came to the passage we are going through this morning. So let’s read it and be encouraged, broken and thankful for and by it.
Romans 3:21-26
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart form 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.”
The righteousness of God manifested apart from the law…
Jesus the God-Man is the righteousness of God manifested apart from the law and the prophets. Our hope cannot be in anything else. Our flesh will wither and die; our mind will forget; and our heart will fail. Our friends will betray us and hurt us; our lover will fail to meet all our expectations; and our cars will rust away. Though the law was given to instruct it was not given to redeem it was given to point to the Redeemer.
The law shows our complete ineptness to carry the law out perfectly. For we constantly place things, creations, in the place that only the Creator should occupy. It is our constant struggle we are fighting desperately and failing in it often, to not have any other gods before God. More often than not, I would dare to say we have other trivial gods before the God. We look to things to save us, to redeem us, to give us hope and peace and comfort.
But when those things break, or fail us we are devastated. You know the feeling well. That sinking feeling in your chest, the one that sucks all joy out of sunny days and happy smiles from dear friends. The one that makes a full room feel empty; the one that makes the cool night bitterly cold; the one that drives you to turn down being with good friends.
And thus here is our desperate plight revealed truer than we ever thought imaginable: The demand that is placed on us is impossible for us to live up to. The demand is clear in Matthew 5:48 says, “You therefore must be perfect, as your Father is perfect.” We MUST be perfect! No gods must ever be placed before our Father, ever! We must for all of our lives, from birth to death, constantly and continuously worshiping the Creator never the creation.
This means never placing your hope in your marriage or special someone. This means never clinging to anything besides Jesus, not your phone, or computer, or skills in speaking. Not your giftings of leadership or humility or faith. You must only ever live in constant hope in the Creator of the Universe and nothing else. But here is the same problem I realized, which brought me to my knees and belief in the Gospel… You cannot do this, I cannot do this; there is no possible way to uphold all of the law from birth to death. I simple man cannot do this. “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” (Rom 3:11) And thus the law, though itself is good, proves to be death for us, if we are not in Jesus.
For Jesus is perfect as God is perfect, because Jesus is the exact imprint of God the Father (Heb 1:3). Therefore because Jesus is not merely man, and thus subject to the woes of our sinful nature, we may find hope in him. But Jesus is not only God either He is the God-Man.
The only mediator between God and man is the God-Man Jesus Christ. For in his divinity he is able to bear the law on his shoulders and live a perfect life, the life we could not live. Yet in his humanity he was able to bear the just punishment of men, for only a man can pay for man’s sins, and thus he died the death we should be constantly dying.
No bleeding goat, or hyssop, or olive branch, or burnt offering would do, for how could a goat pay for the sins of men? A man must die for men, and only God can uphold God’s laws. Therefore see your need for Jesus. The righteousness of God manifested apart from the law.
… Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it – the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
We have seen that the Law points to Jesus in the fact of the impossibility of upholding the law perfectly. But every time I read this passage I remember Rich Mullins’ song ‘My Deliverer.’ The whole idea of the song is the captive Israelites are singing that their Deliverer is coming,
“My deliverer is coming, my Deliverer is standing by.”
But there is one line of this song that, in particular makes this idea of the law bearing witness of Jesus come alive to me,
“He will never break his promise though the stars should break faith with the sky.”
Though the stars will fall from the sky he will not break his promise! Though all this world will rot and die, he will not break his promise! Though friends will fail you, and though toys will break, and though marriage will die with death, and though your body will decay he will not break his promise. The serpent’s head will be crushed. Sin will be put in Christ’s grave. Satan will be thrown in the pit. Righteousness will be given to those who have faith in Jesus. Redemption has come and though all hell will attempt to march against God’s elect there is not chance in hell that those believers will end up there. For his promise he will not break!
To believers God says,
“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died – more than that, who was raised – who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels not rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:31-39)
His promise he will not break. His Law bears witness to his promise that the Redeemer has come and we are the benefactors of what that Redeemer accomplished and therefore we are free from our sin. Righteousness has come to those who have faith in Jesus Christ.
Not only does the Law bear witness to Jesus but the prophets do as well. Here I could go for hours about different passages that speak to the person of Jesus, but I will suffice with just a few, but be assured that reading for 5 minutes in the prophets of the Old Testament will give you at least one picture of Jesus, the Messiah. For all of Scripture is about this one God-Man.
Isaiah 35:1-7
Psalm 22:1,14,15
The coming of the Messiah was the first thing prophesied after the fall and he is the fulfillment of all the prophecies in the Old Testament. Jesus is the one that all Israel look for.
For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…
First, there is no distinction; meaning there is none that has not fallen short of God’s glory save one. Man is not inherently good, he is not worthy of the love of God, he does not have the ability to be righteous, nor is he free. His intentions are sinful and his idol is himself. Allow me to be blunt, a man’s intentions may be the best in the world, but good intentions do not nor cannot set a man free. Our sin is deserving of eternal punishment.
Why? Why is our temporary sin deserving of an eternal punishment? Because our sin is against an eternal Being, you see when you sin you are defying the eternal God of the universe and therefore because your sin is against him and him alone, the punishment must be eternally long. Thus we face an eternal punishment for our sins.
We all have fallen short of God’s glory, we have all gone astray, and we have wandered away from our God. We are all dead in our trespasses and sins; we are all following the course of this world; we are all sons or daughters of disobedience; we are all living in the passions of our flesh; we are all children of wrath; we are all unable to do good.
Without Jesus our plight is desperate and our future bleak. Without Jesus there is quite literally no hope. Though your job may be successful and your family loving your eternity is made sure by your unbelief. Though ease and comfort may be found now, they are the only peace you will ever know for all eternity. For God must be just, it is his nature and therefore sin must be penalized.
Look around you. Do you see this world, as everything you hoped and dreamed it would be when you were a kid? Murder, strife and decay on every corner. Broken love and broken marriages; shatter hearts and shattered wrists; crippling illness and crippling drugs; fading beauty and fading dreams is this the life all you’ve always hoped for? Are you satisfied by all this disaster? Hurricanes and tornados, earthquakes leaving hundreds dead in a day, civil unrest and deep dark depression, suicide and anorexia do you see it? This world is broken!
We are shattered by the fall unable to do a thing to save ourselves, lying dead on the ground under the cliff of our own destruction. We have all fallen short, the future looks bleak and if there is no Savior there is no hope.
… But God…who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us made us alive together with Christ.
Therefore…
… And are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus
It is Jesus who justifies us, who makes us worthy of love, who makes us able to do good, who frees us from our sin. In Jesus and in Jesus alone is our hope, our peace, our comfort, our foundation and our salvation. In Jesus alone is the grace that saves you, the mercy that redeems you and the justification you so desperately need.
It is Jesus that gives us a hope for tomorrow. It is Jesus who turns this broken world upside down to show us that he is to be our only satisfaction. It is Jesus that restores us from the fall, who picks us up and carries us before his Father, who saves us from our own destructive nature, who stoops to our level and teaches us to look to the Reward. That there is more to life than all this struggle, that this is just the beginning and that for ever we will be going further up and further in to the wonder of the beauty of the goodness of the greatness of our glorious God.
For in our place condemned he stood. Crucified in your place for you sins. He is the one…
… Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith…
Propitiation means: the just removal of the wrath of God.
Because of our sin we justly deserved to have the wrath of God poured out on us forever but Jesus stands between God and believers and takes the punishment we should be constantly enduring. It is through faith that we receive this gift.
But here is an interesting question, where does faith come from? Since faith is how we receive the propitiation that is Jesus, since faith is how we receive salvation. Where does it come from? “Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Rom. 10:17) We do not choose to have faith. Faith comes from hearing the word of Christ. Our dead ears are awakened by God to hear the word of Christ, AKA the Gospel and in that hearing we understand the necessity of believing the Gospel, because we see our need of it and our desperate situation outside of it.
C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun: not only because I see it, but by it I see everything else.” The idea of it being the sun is extremely biblical that before belief came there was spiritual darkness and deafness but when God said, “’Let light shine out of darkness’ and he shone in our dark hearts to reveal the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 4:6) so that we now live and breathe and have our being because God has made us alive together with Christ. Now we see the beauty of God and run to him. Now we hear our God calling us by name and have fallen in love with the sound of his voice.
Because of Jesus we stand before the throne of God just like Jesus, dearly loved children of the King. The wrath that we so justly deserved has been poured out undiluted on Jesus; Jesus drank every drop of punishment until the cup ran dry. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 5:8)
This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
This is a question that needs to be asked, if Jesus had not yet been crucified then how did those who lived before have faith? If faith comes from hearing the word of Christ, but Christ had been to speak them yet, how did those of old have faith?
The simple answer is they had faith in the coming Messiah that would propitiate God’s wrath. God looked forward, so to speak, to the cross and his wrath was appeased there by Jesus. Just as we are saved by looking back to the finished work of Jesus so too those of old were saved by looking forward to the finished work of Jesus. For an example look at Hebrews 11: 24-26,
“By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ of greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”
Moses was redeemed by faith in looking to the Christ, the Messiah who would come to save him. All believers are saved by faith in future grace. That God will in the future look to Jesus as the one who has propitiated his wrath and thus made us sons and daughters of God.
God had passed over sins by looking to the penalty that would be paid by Christ on the cross. If Jesus had not come and God still passed over sins then he would not be just and not be good and therefore not be God. But because Jesus came and paid the penalty God is Just and good and God. Therefore the crucifixion of Jesus was completely and absolutely necessary because God had passed over former sins.
The reason God passed over former sins was because the crucifixion was, from the beginning of the world the plan of God. It is the climax of all history; in fact we separate history by the crucifixion. It is in fact, as John Piper says, “The blazing center of all of creation.” Thus if it is the blazing center of creation then it ought to be our focus; if God has separated all of history by this one event then it is something of immense importance.
In the cross we see the righteousness of God most clearly. For he is bound by his nature to be perfect and therefore to be just; he must, for he is bound by his character punish sin, and we see him do this in two ways, either on the cross of Jesus or in hell.
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 is just in the redemption of sinners because Jesus pays the penalty for sin. Sin must be dealt with; it cannot be merely swept under the rug and forgot about. It cannot come into the presence of the perfect God for it is directly against who he is. Therefore it must be put to death. And this is exactly what God does at the cross of Christ. Jesus lived the life no one but God could live, and paid the penalty all believing men should be paying.
God is the justifier of the redeemed because it is he who makes a way for the elect to be redeemed. Therefore we again see the righteousness of God most clearly in the Gospel because in the Gospel he does exactly what he says he will do and crushes the head of serpent like he promised in Genesis. In the Gospel the full righteousness of God is put on display for all creation to see, because by his righteousness he has redeemed his sons and daughters. In the Gospel all of history is divided so as to point directly to the righteousness of God.
So though we have turned away from God and sought to be satisfied by everything else in all of creation, and though we have spit in the face of God by sinning, and though all of life has been one of running away from him, he pursues us and runs to us like the father of the prodigal son and embraces us and covers our sin with his righteous robe and puts a ring on our finger and calls us, “beloved child.” He has created in us a new nature one not of sin, but one that is free to worship him as God; one that has eyes to see him for who he is; one that has ears to hear his voice speaking to us through his word; one that has feet so as to take the Gospel to the ends of the world.
It is here, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that God redeems undeserving sinners. It is here, in the righteousness of God, that all heaven and earth rejoice for it is here that the fall is no more, and it is here that the world will be remade new. It is here that God gives the creation Himself and says, “For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it from you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Isa. 48:9-11)
Conclusion:
Therefore come before this throne grace and have your needs supplied by our gracious God; come to the throne of grace, that you might know that God is the Just and Justifier. That He is from first to last. Before all things were, He was God. You must not bring Him anything, just your sinfulness, that He might show you His awesome power in His awesome Son.
“Come then you who are poor as poverty itself, having no merits and destitute of virtues and reduced to beggarly bankruptcy by Adam’s fall and your own transgressions.” (Spurgeon) “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price (Isaiah 55:1).”
It is the free gift of God for those that believe. “…Because if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved (Romans 10:9).”
It is not by works, but by God. Excluding boasting because man does nothing in his own salvation, it is entirely a work that can only be initiated by God and finished by Christ.
“Come, then, you who are not only poor but also wretched, whose miseries make you long for death, and yet you dread it. You captive ones, come in your chains; you slaves, come with the irons upon your souls; you who sit in darkness, come forth all blindfolded as you are. The throne of grace will look on you if you cannot look on it and will give to you, though you have nothing to give to in return, and will deliver you, though you cannot raise a finger to deliver yourself.” (Spurgeon)
“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 of Christ Jesus…”(Rom 3:22-24)
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