I want to begin this morning by looking at a few pictures and asking you to tell me what you see. [Show “optical illusion” faces and ask people what they see].
With every one of those pictures, what you saw depended on your perspective. And by changing your perspective, it was possible to see what other people had seen in those pictures that you might have missed at first.
The same is true with how we approach the Bible. Depending on the perspective with which we approach the Scriptures, we are going to see things differently. And what I’m discovering more and more is that there are basically two ways we can view Scripture and which of those two approaches we choose will tremendously impact what we take away from the Bible.
The first approach, which I believe is probably the most natural and the most common, is to approach the Bible from a man-centered perspective. When I approach the Bible from this perspective I’m looking for what the Bible says to me, how it impacts my life, and, most importantly, how it benefits me. If I approach the Bible like that I will have a tendency to “cherry pick” verses that seem to promise things like financial prosperity or happiness or that I’ll spend eternity with Jesus.
The other approach, which is much more unnatural, is to approach the Bible from a God-centered perspective. When I approach the Bible from that perspective, I am primarily looking for what the Bible reveals about God and His purposes, plans and ways. I use the Scriptures as a tool to better understand what my life looks like from God’s perspective.
Notice that I’ve used the word “primarily” in describing these approaches because I don’t think this is completely an “either/or” proposition. I’m certainly not suggesting that the Bible shouldn’t impact my life personally or that I shouldn’t look for the promises that God has for me in His Word, or certainly not suggesting that there is not tremendous personal benefit for me in reading, studying, and applying the Bible to my life or that I won’t be blessed when I choose to apply God’s Word in my life. But what I am saying is that those things should be secondary to putting God, and not myself, at the center of the Scriptures.
The passage that we’ll look at this morning will demonstrate the difference between these two approaches quite vividly when it comes to how I view the gospel.
As I studied for and prepared the message this week, the words that Paul wrote here in Romans 3 caused me to realize that ever since I first heard the gospel, I have been viewing it primarily from a man-centered perspective. I have always viewed the gospel in terms of what it has done for me personally – how it has provided the way for my sins to be forgiven, for me to have a relationship with God and to guarantee that I’ll spend eternity in the presence of Jesus. And my guess that most of you have primarily looked at the gospel from that perspective, too.
But what today’s passage shows us is that there another way to view the gospel – to see it from God’s perspective. And when we do that, we discover that…
The primary purpose of the gospel is to
display God’s righteousness,
not just to make me right with God
Once I came to realize that, I spent quite a bit of time this week just reflecting on that idea and even more importantly, confessing to God my sin of having made the gospel more about me than about God. It’s my prayer this morning is that God’s Word might do a similar work in your life if you, too, have been viewing the gospel primarily from a man- centered perspective.
Before we get to our passage in Romans 3, let’s go back to a verse in Romans 1 that we looked at last fall that will help us to put our passage in context:
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.”
(Romans 1:17 ESV)
Here Paul summarizes the primary purpose of the gospel – to reveal the righteousness of God. You’ll want to keep that theme in mind as we look at our passage this morning. Then, beginning in the next verse, Paul embarks on a “big parenthesis” in which he explains why the sinfulness of all men – Jews and Gentiles – makes the gospel necessary. Now that he has made that case thoroughly, Paul will return to his explanation of the gospel, which is the treatment for man’s spiritual disease of sin.
With that in mind, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 3 and follow along as I read verses 21-26:
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.
(Romans 3:21-26 ESV)
Before we go any further, I want you to take a minute to read through this passage and underline every time that Paul uses the phrase “the righteousness of God” or its equivalent in this passage. [Give people time to do that].
Hopefully you found four instances where Paul writes about the righteousness of God in this passage. He uses that exact phrase in verses 21 and 22. In verse 25 he uses the phrase “God’s righteousness”. Finally in verse 26, he uses the phrase “his righteousness”, where “his” clearly refers to God.
So would you agree that the righteousness of God is a major theme in this passage, just as it was in Romans 1:17? Now that you’ve identified those four times Paul writes about the righteousness of God – five if you count Romans 1:17 – look at the verbs that are associated with those occurrences:
• In Romans 1:17, the righteousness of God is revealed
• In Romans 3:21 and 22, it is manifest
• In Romans 3:25 and 26, it is shown
Although, as we’ll see in a moment, the gospel has tremendous personal benefit for each one of us, do you see why I’ve said that…
The primary purpose of the gospel is to
display God’s righteousness,
not just to make me right with God
In order for us to understand that idea better, we’ll look first at what this passage reveals about what Jesus has done for us. But in order to make sure we see this from God’s perspective we have to then use that knowledge to help us understand why Jesus did that. So let’s begin by discussing…
What Jesus has done for me:
In this passage, Paul uses three theological terms to describe what Jesus has done for us. All three terms are used frequently in the Bible and though they are related, they describe three distinct aspects of our salvation that are made available to us through the operation of the gospel. While many of us may have some degree of familiarity with at least a couple of these terms, what they convey is so important that we’ll take time to make sure we have a good understanding of each one.
• Justified (v. 24)
In verse 24, Paul writes that those who have faith in Jesus ”are justified by his grace as a gift”. The first thing we notice is that the verb justified is a “passive verb”. That means that someone else is doing the action to us. That is further emphasized when Paul writes that being justified by Jesus is a “gift”. So we learn quickly that being justified, whatever that is, is not something we can do ourselves, it is something Jesus does on our behalf.
So what does it mean when the Bible teaches that I have been justified?
o I have been declared “not guilty”
Being justified is not an act of God that makes me righteous, but rather an act of God that declares me righteous. That difference is clearly demonstrated in this passage where the same verb that Paul uses here in verse 24 is used:
When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John,
(Luke 7:29 ESV)
The verb in bold is exactly the same one Paul uses here in Romans. Clearly the people did not make God just or righteous. He has always been just. They merely declared him to be just.
When we are justified it doesn’t change our nature or character, but it does change our standing before God. It is an act of God in which our sins are forgiven and Christ’s righteousness is considered as belonging to us. I want to be clear that responding to the gospel through faith in Jesus does change us, but it does that through the process of sanctification, not justification.
In his book, Key Words of the Christian Life, Warren Wiersbe shared this illustration of justification:
It seems that there was a man in England who put his Rolls-Royce on a boat and went across to the continent to go on a holiday. While he was driving around Europe, something happened to the motor of his car. He cabled the Rolls-Royce people back in England and asked, “I’m having trouble with my car; what do you suggest I do?” Well, the Rolls-Royce people flew a mechanic over! The mechanic repaired the car and flew back to England and left the man to continue his holiday.
As you can imagine, the fellow was wondering, “How much is this going to cost me?” So when he got back to England, he wrote the people a letter and asked how much he owed them. He received a letter from the office that read: “Dear Sir: There is no record anywhere in our files that anything ever went wrong with a Rolls-Royce.” That is justification!
• Redeemed (v. 24)
The verb Paul uses here is a compound word that includes the Greek word for “ransom”. So when Paul writes that we have “redemption that is in Christ Jesus”, he is conveying the idea that…
o I have been released by the payment of a ransom
Once again, it is clear this is something I can’t do for myself. It’s pretty hard for someone who has been kidnapped or in bondage to pay his or her own ransom, after all.
Jesus described this idea of redemption with His own words:
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
(Mark 10:45 ESV)
His death on the cross was the ransom that freed us. But freed us from what? From the guilt and condemnation and power of the sin that Paul has been writing about for nearly two chapters now. This is the universal need of all men that Paul confirms again in verse 23 when he writes that “there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
• Served as a propitiation (v. 25)
My guess is that most of us have some idea of the meaning of justification and redemption, but that this idea of a propitiation is a little less clear since it’s not a word we use very much.
The word “propitiation” has its roots in the mercy seat. In fact the only other time this specific noun is used in the New Testament, in Hebrews 9:5, it is appropriately translated “mercy seat.”
We read about the purpose of the mercy seat in Leviticus 16. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, after making a sacrifice for himself, the high priest would take the blood of a goat and enter the Most Holy Place. Within the Most Holy Place was the Ark of the Covenant that contained a jar of manna, Aaron’s rod and a copy of the Ten Commandments (Hebrews 9:4). On top of the Ark was the mercy seat, a lid made out of pure gold with 2 cherubim carved into the ends facing each other.
The high priest would take the blood of the goat and sprinkle it on the mercy seat to make atonement for the sins of the nation of Israel. While the Ten Commandments were a constant testimony against the sins of the people, that one day a year God would look down on the mercy seat and see the blood of the goat and that His wrath against the sin of the people would be satisfied.
As the writer of Hebrews explains, that is what Jesus did for us through His shed blood:
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
(Hebrews 2:17 ESV)
The idea here is that…
o Jesus has satisfied God’s wrath on my behalf
On the cross, Jesus willingly absorbed the wrath of God that was rightfully ours.
Although we’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing what Jesus has done for us, what I really want us to take away this morning is why He did that. And once again I would suggest to you that when we do that, we’ll confirm that…
The primary purpose of the gospel is to
display God’s righteousness,
not just to make me right with God
Why Jesus did that
We’ve really already answered that question. Jesus did what He did for us…
• To display God’s righteousness
But in order to understand the significance of what Jesus did, we need to understand why it was necessary for God ‘s righteousness to be displayed in the first place. The answer to that question is found in verse 25 and introduced by the word “because”:
This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
In the past, God had exercised divine forbearance. A couple weeks ago in our Monday morning Bible study, Steve Ponzo explained what the word “forbearance” means from a banker’s perspective. I’ll see if I can’t accurately summarize what he said and let him correct me if I get it wrong.
When a borrower is unable to make timely payments on his loan and the lender doesn’t want to foreclose and take back the collateral, they will often enter into a forbearance agreement. In that agreement, the lender agrees not to foreclose on the loan and they may also agree to change the terms of the loan or even to forgive some of the principal or interest on the loan. But the important thing is that in that forbearance, the bank does not give up any of its rights to enforce the terms of the loan in the event the borrower doesn’t live up to the terms of the agreement.
Paul points out that is exactly what God has been doing with our sins throughout history. If God was only just, that would require to Him to immediately pour out His wrath on man’s sin. That would mean that beginning with Adam and Eve, every person should have immediately suffered death as a result of his or her sins. If God did that, no one could question that He was righteous.
But God has obviously not done that or none of us would be here today. Instead He has been patient with us, exercising divine forbearance. The Psalmist summarized that forbearance like this:
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
(Psalm 103:10 ESV)
I often marvel that some people seem to view the God of the Old Testament as mean and vindictive. But in fact, He was just as much a God of grace and mercy as we see in the New Testament. While there are a few occasion on which God meted out immediate justice, what is far more common is the patience and tolerance and forbearance of God.
But that divine forbearance gives rise to the primary issue that Paul is addressing in this passage: How can God be just and at the same time not exercise immediate justice for man’s sin? Certainly that is a question that we see the Jews posing throughout the Scriptures, usually something like this: God how come you allow the wicked to prosper while your people suffer? One problem with that question, as Paul has pointed out here in Romans, is that in reality the Jews were no more righteous than the Gentiles. But the fact that the question is asked at all demonstrates that it is an issue that must be addressed.
I really like how Pastor John MacArthur describes the “problem” that Paul is addressing here:
The real “problem”, as it were, with salvation was not the matter of getting sinful men to a holy God but of getting a holy God to accept sinful men without violating His justice.
Or using the two terms that Paul uses in verse 26, how is it possible for God to be both just and the justifier at the same time? Those two ideas seem to contradict each other from our human perspective. I think we would agree that God would be just, or righteous if He chose to pour out His wrath on all men because that is what our sinfulness deserves. But when God justifies us, when He declares us “not guilty” even when we obviously are guilty as a result of our sin, that seems to contradict that righteousness.
But we have to keep in mind that in His forbearance God never gave up His right to exercise judgment. He merely held off on His justice for a time. So, as Paul points out in verse 21 with the word “now”, God has put into effect the plan that He had designed from before creation that would allow Him to be both the just and the justifier. He would now exercise his judgment on sin and be just, but he would do that in a way that also allowed Him to be our justifier.
He brought those two seemingly contradictory roles into complete harmony in His Son, Jesus. Through His sacrificial death on the cross God both punishes our sins and forgives them at the same time. He is both just and the justifier. Through His shed blood, Jesus is declared guilty in our place, He paid the ransom to free us from the guilt and bondage of sin and He satisfied God’s wrath on our behalf.
And when we view the gospel from God’s perspective like that, we see clearly that…
The primary purpose of the gospel is to
display God’s righteousness,
not just to make me right with God
Why this matters to me
My greatest fear this morning is that we’ll leave here this morning thinking that this was nothing more than an interesting theological discussion that really isn’t all that relevant to our day-to-day lives. But what has become really clear to me this week is that in many ways, this may very well be the most important idea that we’re going to run across in our study of Romans. Because how I view the gospel – whether we see it from God’s perspective as the display of His righteousness or from a human perspective of what’s in it for me – will have a tremendous impact on how I live my life.
Let me close by just sharing two of the most important ways that whether or not I view the gospel from God’s perspective matters to me:
• It will determine how I relate to God
If I look at the salvation we receive through the operation of the gospel from a merely human perspective, I will distort it and abuse it. When I think of Jesus’ death as being something that God did primarily for my benefit rather than to preserve His glory, then it is not long until I begin to think of God as the “One who meets my needs”. And that inevitably leads to the idea that God is somehow subservient to man, that He is somehow obligated to do what I want Him to do. Instead of seeing God as the Gift, I begin to regard Him as the “Gifter”.
That mindset is clearly evident in a lot of the posts that I see on Facebook, often from those who claim to be Christians that claim if you just share the post God will bless or reward you. These types of posts are all predicated on the idea that if I just promote God like this, He is somehow obligated to do something for me.
I am not saying that the gospel doesn’t have tremendous personal benefit for those who respond to it. Nor am I saying that God doesn’t richly bless His children. I’m just trying to point out that if this is the reason I choose to respond to the gospel, it will eventually warp my view of God and damage my relationship with Him.
On the other hand, if I see the gospel from God’s perspective and recognize that it is primarily about revealing His righteousness, then I will see myself as His servant and will submit everything in my life to His purposes, plans and ways. I won’t add God to my agenda, I’ll add my life to His. And that will greatly enhance my relationship with God
• It will determine the nature of my faith
We only have time to scratch the surface here. Fortunately the concept of faith will come up again frequently in the book of Romans and we’ll have a chance to revisit it again.
Paul points out the critical role of faith twice in this passage. In verse 22 he writes that the righteousness of God is received by faith in Jesus Christ. And then he comes back to that idea in verse 26 and tells his readers that God justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
If I look at the gospel from a man-centered perspective then my faith is going to be based on what I think God will do for me. And it’s going to be really hard to maintain that kind of faith because the first time that I run into difficulties in my life or God doesn’t do something that I think He should do, then I’m going to be tempted to abandon that faith.
But if I look at the gospel from a God-centered perspective, my faith will be based on what God has already done for me through Jesus. That kind of faith is much more likely to be unwavering because I know that God is never going to undo what He has already done.
From which perspective do you view the gospel? From a man-centered point of view in which the main purpose of the gospel has to do with what God has done for you? Or from a God-centered perspective in which the purpose of the gospel is to display the righteousness of God? How you answer that question may very well be the most important decision you make in your life.
