“The Divine Conjunction”
Romans 3:21-26
October 19, 2008
Ah, the joys of a 13-year-old daughter! She had me at “hello”, on that cold February morning when she awakened her mom 22 days earlier than the doctor said she was supposed to, announcing that she was ready to make her debut in the world. I tell people that she just couldn’t wait to meet her dad. She’s had me wrapped around her little finger pretty much ever since. Now, she’s developed a little way of getting around just about anything; here’s how it works. I’ll call attention to something she has failed to do, like clean up her room, or clear the dinner table, or what-have-you, and she’ll respond by looking deep into my eyes and saying, “but I love you!” As if that makes up for it! Of course, sometimes it works…I’ll refer you to the “wrapped around her little finger” comment I made earlier…
“But”…a little word with great power. I decided to look up its meaning on Dictionary.com, and I was surprised that that little word had so many different shades of meaning:
• “on the contrary”
• “except”
• “unless”
• “without the circumstance that”
• “otherwise than”
• “that”
• “that not”
• As an exclamatory expression – “but I love you!”
• “than”
• One little word…so many meanings!
The meaning for the Christian, though, is literally life-changing, this little word “but”, the “divine conjunction”, leading us from the darkness and death of sin to a life lived in the freedom God intends!
Last week, we talked about the fact that the predominant theological issue of Paul’s day, among pious Jews, was the question of God’s righteousness. What did that mean? That God’s righteousness was tied to His faithfulness was not at issue, but many Jews believed that they themselves were the first object of His faithfulness, and that nothing in Heaven or earth would cause God to allow a single Jew to face eternal judgment. Paul takes a different position, though; God’s faithfulness is first to His own character and nature. Today, Paul expands upon that theme of “the righteousness of God”. Further, the words “just” and “justify” are here as well, and the interesting thing is that in the Greek, all of those words come from the same root. This is a theme that we’ll explore for some time. So you know, we’re going to be “camping out” in this passage for several weeks; there is much to unpack!
Leon Morris calls today’s passage “possibly the most important single paragraph ever written”. Luther called it “the chief point, and the very central place of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible.” Paul here is picking up the theme that he began, before a two-chapter parenthesis on the sinfulness of man. Note the parallel between 1:17 and 3:21:
“For in it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (1:17)
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it…” (3:21)
“But now…” – Paul begins here to offer us the hope that we need. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, the dawn after a long night, the bright sunshine after the perfect storm. We’ve turned a corner in the argument. Paul has talked about the unrighteousness of men, and about the self-righteousness of some; now, he talks about the real righteousness that of God, seen in His character and His actions in taking the initiative to save us from sin. Note first that
I. God’s righteousness does not come through His law
This righteousness of God is seen totally apart from anything you or I can do to keep God’s law or follow rules of good, clean, moral living. Those things have categorically nothing to do with it. There are no qualifications, no laws or rules, no measuring up to specs, no self-improvement schemes. In the early church, there were people known as Judaizers; these folks tried to make Gentiles become Jews prior to becoming full-fledged Christians. And so they tried to add circumcision and Sabbath-keeping and all sorts of Jewish rules and regulations to the equation. They added do-it-yourself baggage, and that’s why Paul wrote the book of Galatians, to say that there are no good works we can add on our own to merit our salvation, to achieve the righteousness of God by our effort. “Wait a minute: you mean I can find the righteousness of God without doing one single thing to clean up my act in any way, shape, or form? Is that what you mean to tell me?” Let me be clear: that is precisely what I mean to tell you! 2nd,
II. God’s righteousness is built upon His self-revelation
The law doesn’t bring God’s righteousness; you can’t experience it by doing the deeds that the Law prescribes, or by avoiding the sins that it proscribes. That said, this revelation of God’s righteousness doesn’t come to us as a surprise, as though it hadn’t ever been seen until this moment when Paul reveals it. The Law and the Prophets—i.e., the Old Testament—presages this understanding of God’s righteousness. Jesus brought nothing new, in one sense; the coming of a Messiah Who would deliver His people is found in seed form in Scripture as early as the third chapter of Genesis. It was one of those Old Testament prophets whom Martin Luther was studying when he came to the realization that salvation was not something earned or achieved; Habakkuk 2:4 tells us that the just will live by faith. Though the advent of Christ marked a decisive chapter change in God’s program of salvation, it was nothing but what the Law and Prophets had foreseen. But how does God’s righteousness take effect in a person’s life?
III. God’s righteousness comes by faith in Christ, our Propitiation
“Through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe”, he says. Hasn’t Paul already been talking about all people? Sure…for two chapters! And what he’s said about them is that they are hopelessly under the bondage of sin! Now, he says that the righteousness of God is available through faith to “all who believe”. That’s it. Believe, place your trust in Christ, and you who are a miserable sinner condemned by a holy God will experience, not His wrath, but His righteousness. Have we lost the sense of how incredible that statement is?
Note that this faith is placed in Christ. God volunteered His own Son, Jesus Christ, to be a “propitiation” through His blood. That’s not a word we use very often: “propitiation”. Propitiation is the work of Christ on the cross, by which He fulfills the wrath of God and conciliates Him who would otherwise be offended by our sin and would demand that we pay the penalty for it; it connotes the appeasement of a holy God that He might not exercise His wrath. It’s a word that embarrasses some people, even professing Christians, because it means “to placate the anger of someone”. Some think it conjures up the idea of some pagan, tribal deity, demanding his pound of flesh through some act of sacrifice or pious devotion. They see it as unworthy of God, that He’d be angry in the first place, and that He’d require that His wrath be satisfied in the second. Some picture “Great Grandpa God”, who says, “kids will be kids”, and everybody gets a Tootsie Pop in the end. “Propitiation” is the height of political incorrectness, and they’ll have none of it.
So do we drop the word? No…we define it Biblically! Stott points out 3 differences between the pagan idea of propitiation and the Biblical one:
• The need is different. Pagan gods were fly-off-the-handle deities whose capricious anger might erupt at any time, and needed continual appeasement; God’s wrath is His settled opposition to that which is unholy.
• The author is different. It was the pagans themselves who would have to appease their gods of wood, stone, and imagination; in the Christian understanding, it is God Himself Who has taken the initiative to do so.
• The nature is different. Bribery was the order of the day; the terrified pagans would offer up animal or vegetable, even human sacrifices in order to satisfy the whims of their deities. God offered up, once for all, His only Son, Jesus Christ, as the satisfactory propitiation for all our sins.
A. The context: God’s wrath
Paul has already told us this, that all people are under the just judgment of a holy God. “Grace” is a meaningless word without the possibility of wrath; “saved” makes no sense to describe us unless/until we can answer, “saved from what?” Paul writes in verse 23 that “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory”. That’s where we are; he’s made that so abundantly clear that we’re squeamish about hearing it any more. God’s glory suggests His awesome presence, a glory that we are destined to share; we will be with God “in glory”. But naturally, we fall short of that standard, and incur His wrath!
B. The motivation: God’s love
God’s love is directed toward us; He perfectly hates the sin, but loves the sinner at the same time. Verse 26 says that He is both “just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus”. Look at verse 24: there’s that word “justified” that we saw last week. Paul introduced the word to us in verse 20, telling us how it didn’t happen: “by the works of the Law no one will be justified in God’s sight”. Nothing we can do. Now if you’ll be patient, it’s next week when we’ll unpack that word in a fuller way; here’s the short version: to be “justified” is to have a standing before God as a person who has never once committed a sin. It is for God to see me as a person with no stain on my name. Zero. Zip. Nada.
And it happens “by God’s grace” as a “free gift”. Grace is God giving me what I in no way deserve, giving me something free that I didn’t and couldn’t earn. Further, grace means that God is not required to do anything. He’s not obligated to me in any way. He does what He does as a free gift. And what He does is to “justify” me, a sinner. In other words, there is a way in which God considers me, the awful sinner that I am, as standing in His sight as though I had never sinned, and He does this in a way that is without cost to me. Free. What, are you kidding me? Nope, I’m not…and it happens through “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. We’ll unpack that 2 weeks from today, so hang with me.
And the Bible says that God justifying us shows His righteousness (:26). It’s about God demonstrating that at one and the same time, He is just—He does things equitably, honestly, “above-boardly”—and He also says of sinful people, “I don’t see anything at all wrong with you; nothing”. How can God do that without rigging the system, cooking the books, shaving the coin? Look at Romans 4:5; it tells us that God justifies the ungodly. Drink that in…the holy God of the universe declares that some people who are patently ungodlike are, in His sight, perfect. ‘Sup with that? How do we react when innocent men are found guilty, or when guilty men get off the hook on some technicality? We react with outrage! And we are in line with Scripture to do so: “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 17:15). So how in the world can God get away with doing that? How can he do it habitually, unapologetically, wearing as a badge of honor, as it were, the title, “the One Who justifies the ungodly”? It’s preposterous, ridiculous, beyond belief, a miscarriage of justice of the highest order! How can a righteous God throw the whole moral order topsy-turvy, and still consider Himself righteous? Our next point answers this question:
C. The impetus: God’s initiative
He does it this way: the same God Who rightly demands that our sin be atoned for, Himself provides that atonement in His Son, Jesus Christ. God’s answer to the question, in other words, is the cross. This is why the cross is at the center of our faith; why it is the symbol of our faith. Without the cross, there’s no answer to the question; without God’s paying the price He demands, He cannot both be just and justify godless people like us. And there are those who want to claim to be Christians, but who believe that there are many ways to God. No…if that’s the case, then the cross was unnecessary, and if the cross was unnecessary, then God is monstrously cruel. No…it is His plan!
Notice: all we can do is respond. We do not initiate. As we saw last week, “there is no one who seeks God”. Naturally, we might know that we are lacking, but we do not naturally seek the God the Bible describes. Any theology that involves man taking the initiative to find his way to God is a flawed theology. If that’s true, then the only way we’re going to be brought into relationship to that God is if He seizes the initiative to bring us back to Himself. Which is exactly what He does; He “put forward” Christ as a propitiation for our sins. This is what sets Christian faith apart from the other religions of the world: they all suggest some way of self-accomplishment in order to attain whatever form of salvation they pretend to offer. But if Christian faith is true, there can be no other path to God, and I can prove that Scripturally and logically.
D. The response: our faith
We accept this atoning sacrifice, Christ, “by faith”. Now we’re back full-circle, to the fact that it isn’t by us doing things to prove we are good enough for God that we are made right with Him; it is by faith by trust in Jesus. We place our trust in Him, not in anything else—our good works, our church membership, our moral living; nothing else—and on that basis, we stand before God justified, as though we had never sinned.
Further, there is nothing meritorious about faith; it’s not like God contributes grace, and we contribute faith. The value of faith is not in itself, but solely in its object, Jesus. There are some Bible teachers who would tell us to “have faith in our faith”; that’s a wholly misguided and unscriptural teaching, for Christ is the object of faith, not faith itself. John Stott paints this word picture for us: “faith is the eye that looks to him, the hand that receives his free gift, the mouth that drinks the living water.” And it’s not the depth or even the quality of faith that is the issue, but rather the Object. I remember having this conversation with a dying friend a few years back, a man who professed faith in Christ but who doubted the strength and consistency of his faith. I told him that he needn’t worry about how good or how strong his faith was, but that he concern himself with how good and how strong Christ was. Our response is faith. Finally, note the great news about that faith in Christ:
IV. God’s righteousness is available to everyone who believes
Everyone who believes. Nobody is excluded on the basis of what he has done; nobody’s sins have rendered her beyond the pale, unable to be saved. The murderer? “Everyone who believes.” The child molester? “Everyone who believes.” The self-righteous prude? “Everyone who believes.” The continual failure? “Everyone who believes.” The winner? The loser? The ugly? The beautiful? “Everyone who believes.” Nothing earns it; nothing disqualifies from it, except for a lack of belief in the Christ Who died on the cross and rose again. It doesn’t matter who you are; what matters is Who Christ is. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done; all that matters is what Christ has done. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been; it only matters where Christ has been. He’s been to Calvary, died there, and then beat death. It doesn’t matter what you’ve said; what matters is what He said, and He said, “come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” God’s righteousness is available to everyone who believes—and it’s available to you, right now.
Table Talk
Romans 9:33 and Galatians 5:11 speak of the cross of Christ, and of Christ Himself, as being a “stumbling stone” and an “offense”. The Greek word is “skandalon”, from which we get our word “scandal”. The gospel of the cross of Christ, Paul is saying, is “scandalous”. Looking back at what we’ve said today, in what ways is this true?
