Questions & Answers, Bad News & Good News Series

Questions & Answers, Bad News & Good News

Romans 3:1-31

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Intro

Questions, Questions.

We all have questions sometimes.

Sometimes when we have grown up believing something or living a certain way and someone comes and contradicts what we learned growing up or what we have believed for most of our life, we have a few questions, don’t we.

Baptism Example

For me, I was raised in a religious system where people were baptized as infants. I was baptized as an infant. I remember when I started attending a church that was preaching the Bible, and I saw a baptism by immersion, I was like, what in the world, that is crazy that grown people would do get into a tub of water and do that.

Why would someone do that?

What did they think it accomplished?

I had some questions because it was different from what I learned my entire life up until that point.

Well, Paul has been confronting the Jews with some news that if they did not trust Christ and repent, they too would be facing judgment.

The Jews had believed that they were special and that they would not face judgment simply because of their heritage so it did not matter how they lived.

Paul tells them otherwise.

And now the Jews have some questions and Paul begins answering their questions and gives them some bad news but then leads them to some very Good News.

Turn with me to Romans 3.

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We are going to look at some of these questions and the bad news and good news that Paul has for all of us.

So, after telling the Jews that they too will face judgment just like the Gentiles, he states some questions they have, he begins in Chapter 3 responding to some of the questions they have.

Let’s read together Romans 3.

Romans 3

3 What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? 2 Much in every way! First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God.

3 What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written:

"So that you may be proved right when you speak

and prevail when you judge."

5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, "If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?" 8 Why not say — as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say — "Let us do evil that good may result"? Their condemnation is deserved.

9 What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. 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 practice 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."

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

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.