There’s the right way and the other way Romans 3:19-31
This story was told by Napoleon to spark patriotism among his men. Once, while visiting a province he came upon an old soldier in full uniform who had one sleeve hanging empty and he proudly wore the coveted Legion of Honor. Napoleon asked, "Where did you lose your arm?" The soldier answered, "At Austerlitz, sire."
Napoleon asked, "And for that you received the Legion of Honor?" The man said, "Yes, sire but it is a small token to pay for the decoration." Napoleon continued, "You must be the kind of man who regrets he did not lose both arms for his country." The one-armed man asked, "What then would have been my reward?"
Napoleon answered, "I would have awarded you a double Legion of Honor." And with that, the proud old fighter drew his sword and cut off his other arm.
This was a great story of patriotic duty and apparently it was very effective in stirring up in Napoleon's men a desire to sacrifice even more for the cause of France; but there was a problem with the story and it was years before anyone dared to ask Napoleon the question, "How did the soldier cut off his arm when he only had one?" Good questions often lead to the facts.
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. 29 Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, 30 since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. 31 Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.
I The purpose of the law Verses 19-20
II The predicament of us all verses 21-26
III The salvation of God verses 27-31
I The purpose of the law Verses 19-20
Paul has been harping about the law for the past two chapters and he had a good reason. As Churchill once said, “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever but use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack.” I think Paul has come at the issue of the law for the exact same reason. It was an important point.
There were many in the church at Rome who had been raised in an orthodox Jewish home and many of them had spent their youth memorizing and meditating on scripture and yet, they had missed the point altogether. Listen, knowing the scripture never produces spirituality but scripture points the way to spiritualty and Paul was saying, the purpose of the law was not to enlighten your souls but to point out the obvious, that we’re all sinners who are in need of God’s salvation.
For instance, in the ten commandments we’re not told how to become good believers but we’re told to avoid such sins as, idol worship, being dishonorable to our parents, murder, committing adultery, stealing, lying to or about others and coveting other people’s things. These commandments were meant to demonstrate not only the proper way to live but also to point out how all of us have fallen short of God’s expectations. Paul clearly tells us in verse 20, “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Simply put, no one has ever been or will ever be saved by keeping the law.
It’s interesting to see that six times in the book of Matthew, Jesus asked the Pharisees – “Have you never read?” And He asked this not only of them but also of the scribes, the Sadducees, and even the high priests. These were men who had spent their entire lives not only reading but many of them had actually memorized most of the Old Testament.
And Jesus asked them, “Have you never read?” Well, of course they had, they had read it over and over and over again; but they never seemed to have gotten the message. So, His question, “Have you never read?” pointed out the fact that it appeared as though they had never even seen it.
Too many people try to give the impression they’re very spiritual when the fact is, they don’t have a clue. I heard about a pastor, who was visiting a home and during the conversation he asked the lady of the house if he could borrow a pen. She not only handed him a pen but he noticed that it was a monogramed gold pen; which she told him she had received as a gift from her parents when she had graduated college. After his visit he left and she looked everywhere but she couldn’t find her pen. She thought, “He must have forgot and put it in his pocket. He’ll probably give it to me on Sunday.”
Sunday came and went and as the pastor shook her hand at the door, he didn’t mention the pen. A few days went by and she became angry and found herself feeling bitter about her pen; and she said to herself, “What kind of a Pastor would steal a pen?”
Finally, she was so fed up she approached him the following Sunday and asked him directly if he remembered her loaning him her pen. He said “Of course I do, and when I was done with it, I put in inside your Bible on the coffee table”. Maybe he should have asked her, “Have you never read?”
In 2 Timothy 3:7 Paul was speaking to those who were "always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." This referred to those who were always seeking the newest, the latest and the greatest spiritual teaching. At some point, a person needs to recognize that the truth is in the scripture and its no where else.
I remember attending the Bill Gothard Seminars and I thought he had to be the greatest teacher in the world. I had used his materials in Bible studies and counselling and when the news came out that Bill was just as sinful as the rest of us, I had a hard time believing it; but then I realized that the source of my faith was the word of God and not man. Bill Gothard seemed to know the scripture like the back of his hand but I’m afraid it was all in his head.
I’m a great believer in education and I think every pastor needs to learn all he can so he can be able to teach others. However, there are some who think their spiritual credibility depends on their education.
There was a former pastor who had been in one of the churches I attended and people said when he came to the church, he was a very good preacher. And then he started spending all his free time and even his holidays working on his doctorate. They said the day he found out he graduated, he changed his title on the sign outside, on the door of his office, on his business cards and in the bulletin. And he made it known to everyone that he was to be called doctor.
The strange thing was, he became so intellectual in his preaching that he lost the ability to communicate, and became so boring that the church let him go in less than a year. He became a victim of his education. I wonder if he ever preached on the verse, “Have you never read?”
Dennis Lee Curtis was an armed robber who was arrested in Rapid City South Dakota. In his wallet, the police found a sheet of paper, on which Dennis had written his moral code.
His list was as follows:
1. I will not kill anyone, unless I have to.
2. I will take cash and checks - no food stamps.
3. I will rob only at night.
4. I will not wear a mask.
5. I will not rob Mini-Marts or 7-Eleven Stores
6. If I get chased by the cops on foot, I will get away. If I get chased by the cops while in a vehicle, I will not put the lives of innocent people in danger.
7. I will rob only seven months out of the year.
8. I will enjoy robbing from the rich to give to the poor.
Dennis had his own sense of morality but his morality was based on his sin nature and he rationalized breaking the law by giving the impression he was a good thief. But obviously, he was one who had his own law but never read the real one.
Listen, the purpose of the law was so every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
II The predicament of us all verses 21-26
In verse 21 it says, “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.”
Paul says the righteousness of God has been revealed through faith in Jesus Christ. The word “righteous” means “to move in a straight line.” It was used to mean living in the right way and the right way is found in the word of God because the word reveals what is absolutely right. The Bible’s standard of righteousness is God’s perfection and it’s the plumb line by which He measures human righteousness and God’s standard of righteousness is impossible for anyone to reach because all of us were born sinful.
The good news is, that true righteousness is ours through the cleansing of sin by Jesus Christ. In and of ourselves we were all born doomed to hell and there’s absolutely nothing any of us can do to achieve God’s standard but 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “But God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
On the cross, Jesus took our sin and gave us His righteousness so we can stand before God totally and absolutely justified. And here’s the really good news, God won’t even see our past sin but when He looks at us, He’ll only see the righteousness of the Lord Jesus.
On account of what Jesus endured on the cross we’ll be treated as though we personally had fulfilled the Law of God and had never been liable for its penalty. It’s hard to get our head around this; but we can do nothing to get saved but accept it and then we become part of God’s work to reach others and listen, the work we do isn’t to save us but because we’re grateful to be saved. It’s like we’ve been saved from a burning building and now we’re concerned with those still inside.
When Jesus hung on the cross, He could see all of our sin because that was the reason He was there. But listen, Satan knows about our sin too; and he keeps telling us that we weren’t worth saving and when we do get saved; he tell us we aren’t worth keeping; but Jesus doesn’t agree with him and given the choice I’d rather listen to Jesus than the devil.
There always seems to be some sort of news of a scandal or something concerning professing Christians. Somewhere a pastor or a well-known believer’s secret life of sin gets revealed. As a result, all of stomachs turn and we ask, “Why? How did this happen?” I remember hearing John MacArthur say, “Nobody just falls out of a tree. They climb up in it, move around a bit, and then they fall out.” His point was: any act of immorality isn’t something that happens because we weren’t paying attention. The problem is, we were paying attention to the wrong things.
Listen, you go bad in private long before you go bad in public. A person cannot be regularly pouring out their heart in praise, confession and petition to the God of heaven with a mind full of sin and corruption. Charles Spurgeon often said, “God does not allow his saints to sin successfully.”
I’ve heard several politicians and a few preachers confess their mistakes but a mistake implies an error in judgment or something someone did unintentionally. A mistake might be: turning the wrong way onto a one-way street or pouring salt into your coffee because you thought it was sugar. Mistakes are made when we’re not paying attention or even when we’re careless.
But; a sin is more than a mistake. Sin is a deliberate choice to do something we know is wrong. And there are a couple of other words to describe sin. The word “transgression” implies deliberately stepping over a boundary. And the word “trespass” implies entering someone else’s property without permission. And unlike a mistake, when we sin, transgress or trespass we need to take responsibility and confess our wrong and be willing to accept the consequences that follow.
What can we do to make sure we preserve this distinction between sins and mistakes? I suggest five very simple things:
1. Choose your words carefully. If you’re confessing a sin never minimize it or refer to it as a mistake. We need to confess which means we are to agree with God by saying the same thing about our sin that He says about it.
2. Take responsibility for our actions. There are times when we might feel as though the other person is 90% responsible but our goal is to accept 100% responsibility of our 10%. In other words, there’s no room for excuses. So, never follow your confession with the word “but” because the word ‘but’ is simply the beginning of an excuse.
3. Acknowledge your guilt. It is normal to feel guilty when you sin because guilt is one of God’s gifts and it’s designed to motivate us toward an attitude of repentance.
4. Change your behavior. After all, words are cheap and it’s easy to say you’re sorry when your real goal is to get someone off your back but repentance is not only a change of mind; but it’s also a change of behaviour and unless we our behavior changes, we haven’t really repented.
J. Edwin Orr, a professor of Church history described the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Welsh Revivals of the nineteenth century. As people sought to be filled with the Spirit, they did all they could to confess their wrong doing and make restitution. But it unexpectedly created serious problems for the shipyards along the coast of Wales.
Over the years, the workers had stolen all kinds of things, from wheelbarrows to hammers. However, as people sought to be right with God, they started to return the things they had taken and the result was, the shipyards of Wales were overwhelmed with returned property. There were such huge piles of returned tools that several of the yards put up signs that read, "If you have been led by God to return what you have stolen, please know that the management forgives you and wishes you to keep what you have taken." Listen; that’s genuine repentance.
5. Ask for forgiveness and hope the person you’ve sinned against will be forgiving. Can you imagine what would happen if a true spirit of repentance came upon our church? People would love one another, in spite of their differences. Our services would be full because everyone would want to not only want hear the word but fellowship with everyone who loves the Lord and everyone would be looking for ways to use their spiritual gifts.
The unsaved like to give us a hard time because they don’t want anyone pointing out their sin. One of the ways they do this is to try to distract us by describing heaven as the most boring place anyone can ever imagine. After all they say, ‘What is anybody going to do for fun and excitement if there’s no such thing as sin?’ The assumption is: sin is exciting and righteousness is boring and by thinking this way they’ve believed the devil’s lie because he wants everyone to think that sin brings fulfillment.
I remember as a kid watching TV and back then everybody smoked; from cowboys to talk show personalities and movie stars; and everybody had their favorite brand; from Lucky Strike to Pall Mall.
I couldn’t wait to try that still, smooth, cool taste and then one day I did. I remember the joy of having my first cigarette; my eyes watered, my head hurt and I threw up; but I was determined that I was going to be just as cool as everyone else and I continued to smoke until I got used to it and then I was hooked.
And when I think about it now, it occurs to me that if I saw a horse eating a bale of hay that was burning on one end; I’d think that was the dumbest animal I’d ever seen.
Listen, sin doesn’t bring fulfillment; it’s the very thing that robs us of fulfillment. Sin doesn’t make life interesting; its makes life empty and this emptiness leads to boredom. I think we’ll be amazed when we fully understand that temptation and sin were the greatest obstacles we ever had to enjoying life on earth.
Historian Daniel Boorstin documents a momentous shift that has taken place in North America in the nineteenth century. He says we stopped calling people who went on trips travelers and started calling them tourists.
The word traveler literally means “one who travails.” He labors, suffers and endures to get where he wants to go and when he gets there; he immerses himself in the culture, learns the language and customs, he lives with the locals, imitates their dress and eats whatever is set before him. He takes risks, some of them enormous, and makes sacrifices, some of them extravagant. He has tight scrapes and narrow escapes. He is gone a long time. If ever he returns, he returns forever changed.
But a tourist isn’t like that. The word tourist means, literally, “one who goes in circles.” He’s just taking an exotic detour home. He’s only passing through, sampling wares, acquiring souvenirs… He stops every night to where it’s safe and familiar. He picks up a word here, a phrase there, but the language, and the world it’s part of all remain strange and even a little scary. He sees what he wants and tastes what looks good and then comes home with a bunch of pictures, a few trinkets, a couple of T-shirts and a cheap hat that he’ll never wear. He’s happy he went but he’s even happier to be home.
The strange thing is, we’ve made a similar shift in the church. At some point we stopped calling Christians disciples and started calling them believers. A disciple is one who follows and imitates Jesus. They are the people who have lost their lives in order to find it. They spend so much time and energy digging into the word of God that the word redefines who they are.
A believer isn’t quite that committed. They might hold onto certain beliefs, but how committed they are might depend on the weather or even on their mood. They might even be defensive about what they believe but they wonder if it’s worth the risk of offending the non-believing crowd.
The interesting thing is, you can’t be a disciple without being a believer but you can be a believer without being a disciple. You can say all the right things, think all the right things, believe all the right things, do all the right things, but still not follow Jesus. The kingdom of God is made up of believers but many of our churches are simply filled with tourists.
In a book called ‘Not a Fan’ by Kyle Idleman. He makes the point that there is a distinction between the fans of Jesus and His followers and says: “Many of our churches in America have gone from being sanctuaries to becoming stadiums. And every week all the fans come to the stadium where they cheer for Jesus but for the most part, they have no interest in truly following him. These people want to be close enough to Jesus to get all of the benefits, but not so close that it requires anything from them.”
A cartoon shows a young boy in front of the classroom. His math on the chalk board says 7 x 5 = 75. His statement is "It may be wrong, but it’s how I feel." The fact is, faith is dead, reason is dying, but "how I feel" is still going strong.
III The salvation of God verses 27-31
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. 29 Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, 30 since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. 31 Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.
As verse 27 says it’s not our works but our faith that saves us. As a younger believer I always wished I had the faith of evangelists who reached thousands, or missionaries who travelled over land and sea to establish churches for Christ or even pastor a church that saw such tremendous growth we had to expand our facilities to hold the people, but I am what I am, just plain and simple. I’m normal and sometimes normal has a certain appeal.
On March 21, 1556, there was a crowd of curious spectators who had packed the University Church in Oxford, England. They were there to witness the public denial of the faith by Thomas Cranmer who had been one of the great English reformers. He was about to turn his back on his faith and tell the congregation that the Catholic Church was the only way of salvation.
Cranmer had been arrested by the Roman Catholic authorities nearly three years before and at first, he had stood strong for the faith but after many months in prison, and under daily pressure from the guards and the constant threat of being burned at the stake, he came to the conclusion that his faith wasn’t worth dying for. His enemies convinced him to sign several documents that renounced his Protestant faith.
In a moment of weakness and in order to prolong his life, Cranmer had decided to deny the truths he had defended throughout his ministry, the very principles upon which the Reformation itself was based.
Roman Catholic Queen Mary I, known to church history as “Bloody Mary,” saw his retractions as some kind of trophy in her campaign against the Protestants. But Cranmer’s enemies wanted more than just to have him write something, they actually wanted him to make a public statement denying his faith.
And so, on March 21, 1556, Thomas Cranmer was taken from the prison and brought to University Church. He stood in the pulpit dressed in ragged clothes, totally broken, and dishonoured. The message of his public denial of faith had been approved; and all of his enemies sat there waiting to hear this preacher deny the evangelical faith.
But then something unexpected happened. In the middle of his speech, Thomas Cranmer stopped reading from his text and refused to turn his back on the gospel but instead he renounced his earlier statements and announced to the crowd:
“I’ve come here to renounce my faith but now I refuse to do so. I was afraid of dying and wanted to save my life but now I cannot deny the One who died for me.” He went on to say that, “If they should burn him; his right hand should be the first to be destroyed, since it had signed all these false claims” and then, just to make sure that everyone understood where he was coming from he said, “And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and antichrist, with all his false doctrine.”
The crowd went crazy and Cranmer was seized, marched outside, and there he was burned at the stake. But true to his word, he put his right hand into the flames so that it might be destroyed first. As the flames engulfed him, he died with the words of Stephen on his lips: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. I see the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”
I remember when I became a Christian and I had only been saved for about two years. I had to do laundry one day and I also needed to buy something for lunch; but I was broke and I hate to admit it but I was also really angry with God. I had been singing in coffeehouses around the city of Toronto and sharing my testimony everywhere I went but now I couldn’t even afford any soap to wash my clothes and I had nothing to eat. I sat down and figured out what I needed and the total came to two dollars and twenty-five cents. That was back when you could still use a couple of dollars to buy something.
During what I would call my prayer time; but others might say I was simply griping to God; a friend had dropped by and said he had left a note in my Bible which was on the kitchen table. I thanked him and went back to my prayer time or whatever you’d want to call it.
In a little while I looked in my Bible and there was a thank you card that had been made by a group of mentally handicapped children that I had sung for the week before. In the card which was signed by all these children was an envelope full of change. These children had taken up an offering for me and when I counted it and I found two dollars and twenty-five cents. And then I went back to prayer with a new attitude as I realized afresh how great God was and how dumb I was.
The fact is, there are times when God does the miraculous for us and there are also times when things go wrong and we simply have to do without. God’s will is never dictated by our wishes.
There’s a passage in Hebrews 11 that describes the walk of faith and it says in verse 32, “For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: 33 who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35 Women received their dead raised to life again.” Listen, these people all experienced the miraculous but then it goes on to say that; “Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. 36 Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented— 38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. 39 And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, 40 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.”
Sometimes, we’re blessed beyond belief and other times our faith is truly tested.
In verse 27 Paul asks us a question, “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.”
We all know there’s absolutely nothing we have to boast about when it comes to salvation. We didn’t earn it; we can’t even keep it and we all know we certainly didn’t deserve it. It’s a free gift and all we can do is to respond by admitting our sinfulness and asking His forgiveness. In other words, if we respond in faith we’re saved and if we ignore His invitation we’re lost for eternity.
So, the Bible says, “Whosoever will; may come” but if you don’t come; then all the powers of heaven itself can’t and won’t change your mind.
So many people are demanding their rights as believers but they’re ignoring the penalties and consequences of sin. They say, “I want salvation and everlasting life but without any strings attached. Eternal security with no responsibility. We come by faith but as James says so clearly, “Faith with out works is dead.”
Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Faith in God is hard to explain but we exercise faith every day. We have faith in those who serve us in restaurants that the food is good and the kitchen is clean. We have faith in those who build our houses that the roof won’t fall in when it rains. We have faith in the bank where we keep our money. We have faith in whoever designed our cars and the planes we fly in. We have faith in the doctors with our health and at times with our very lives when we’re facing surgery. The fact is, we have faith in people all the time and often without even thinking. And by faith we can trust God for salvation.
