“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 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. 26 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)
[Remember that today’s passage has already been read before the message.]
My family and I are glad to be back. Thank you for praying for me as I was away in India. Thank you for your kindness to us and to me. We are already feeling at home with you.
This is the sixth message in our series, Creed: 9 Essentials to the Christian Faith. We are exploring the beliefs that form the theological center of Christianity. It is a series devoted to the discovery of what you believe and why it matters. And this morning I want to explore with you the importance of the cross. I have chosen to unpack the meaning of Christ’s cross through the lenses of Paul. The Gospels give you the narrative of how and what happened to Christ. But Paul contributes something unique; Paul tells you why the cross is important. To use a metaphor, the Gospels are the garage where you see how the engine of the cross is made. But Paul’s writings serve as if you are riding in the car where you see the importance of the various components of what is under the hood. We have just heard one of the most important paragraphs ever composed. I came across one individual this week who called this “possibly the most important single paragraph ever written.” One person called this “the acropolis of the Bible.” This is what Paul thinks is the essential message of the Bible. This is what the cross of Christ accomplished.
In this passage, God promises to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. I see this in verse twenty four: “ [you] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 3:24).
Today I want to answer three questions…
What Is It that God Does for Us?
Why Do I This?
How Do I Receive It?
Today’s passage falls into four parts and let me give them to you briefly: 1. The Performance Syndrome; 2. Old Testament versus New Testament; 3. What God Did; 4. Your Connection
1. The Performance Syndrome
What you have just heard read to us is the solution to a big problem. Many of you know there is something wrong with you and us (humans) but you can’t quite lay your finger on the problem. If you were to stand before Jesus Christ and He were to say to you, “Why Should I Allow You into Heaven,” how would you answer? There is nothing that the human mind can ever consider that is any way as important as this question. And I want to spend the next few minutes telling you how the Bible answers this question, “How can a sinful person ever hope to stand before the perfect judgment of God.”
This is a difficult passage for most of us. Note the words “the righteousness of God” is referred to four times in these six verses (verse 21,22, 25 & 26). Note also the verb “justify” is found twice (verse 24 & 26) and the adjective “just” is also in verse 26. I mention this because “justify and “just” are from the same root word as “righteousness.” “The righteousness of God” is the controlling expression throughout the passage. So this passage is all about how to be accepted by God at the end of history’s time. Yet, there is a problem for the word “righteousness” is nearly a negative word in our world. We don’t want to be described as a “righteousness” person. I want you to think of this word in terms of a resume. Many of you are used to building a resume in terms of your career. The resume is your work record and it contains all of your accomplishments and your experiences. You take the resume to the potential employer where the resume proverbially, “gets your foot in the door.” If your resume is good enough, then the door of opportunity opens for you. And the majority of people around the world (and categorically every other religion) believe this is the way God works. People think that God looks at our moral and religious resumes to be accepted. You develop a “righteousness” and you are accepted.
When the Bible talks about “What’s wrong with us,” it does so in surprising ways. If you were to think that the Bible presents a good person as someone who doesn’t lie, steal, or take another’s person spouse, you would be correct. But you would be only partially correct. For the Bible presents “what’s wrong with us” in categories beyond simply “don’t do this.” Let me show you…
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…”(Romans 3:21a).
The Bible measures you beside the yardstick of God. You and I continually measure us by the yardstick of others. This is instinctual to each of us. We do this and we’re oftentimes not even aware that we are doing it. We “justify” ourselves by comparing ourselves to the faults of others. Or we challenge ourselves in comparison to the best of others. But we rarely measure ourselves by the yardstick of God. And it’s this tendency in us, that I am calling the performance syndrome. The performance syndrome is one of the ugliest parts of religion. It’s the idea of climbing a moral ladder where each step up represents a good act that God is pleased with. You can see the ugliness of this by moving your eyes to verse twenty-seven:
“Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:27-28).
Religious people often feel a moral superiority when they do their good deeds. It’s where we compare our religious and moral resume to others and feel a smug satisfaction and contentment. It’s the idea that I spend my time helping others where you don’t. Consequently, even are good and “righteous” are contaminated.
Paul has mounted his heaviest artillery in this letter (Romans 1:18-3:20) to convince us of our sinfulness. Sin is everywhere and in every one of us. “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23). Earlier he has said: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:10b-11).
The Bible says that each one of us is hard wired to sin. We are hard wired to do the wrong. It’s a story that shows that sin is deeper than our behavior. Indeed, sin is a power. Sin is equal in all of us, religious and unreligious. The street hustler, the crook, and the murderer are all short of God’s yardstick, but so are you. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and you are on the crest of an Alp. Yet, you are no more able to touch the stars that they are. We are single sinners, married sinners, sinners with kids, male sinners, female sinners – but we are all still sinners. And sin even affects our good deeds.
1. The Performance Syndrome
2. OT versus NT
Many people who have even a rudimentary understanding of the Bible feel that God has changed between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the OT, God was capricious and volatile. Where in the NT, God is loving and merciful. This understanding is mistaken and it plays a significant role in the way we think about our question: If you were to stand before Jesus Christ and He were to say to you, “Why Should I Allow You into Heaven,” how would you answer?
A closer reading of the Bible shows us that this distinction is misleading. I want to call your attention to two words that begin verse twenty-one: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it…” (Romans 3:21). These two words mark a change in how God is dealing with people. They signal a transition from an old way of doing things to a new way of doing things. Hence, the change in they we divide the Bible, Old Testament versus New Testament. But the change is not what you think. It’s not that God was in a bad mood in the OT: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it…” (Romans 3:21). Yes, the cross represents something fresh but it doesn’t mean “God got in a good mood all of sudden.” Let me give a couple of reasons why this idea is wrong: He has always been compassionate and gracious: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8-9).
Second, God is still angry in the NT. Indeed, the Bible present’s God future anger at sin and sinners as worse than anything presented in the OT:
“Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse's bridle, for 1,600 stadia” (Revelation 14:17-20).
In the imagery of this passage, people (yes people) are being thrown into the winepress of God’s wrath and they are being trampled down until their blood flows a distance of 200 miles at the height of a horse’s bridle.
“although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it” marks a continuity between OT and NT. God is love and mercy and wrath — all have been ratcheted up in the New Testament. The cross is signals that a new age has arrived. You can escape this upcoming wrath. When a person fully understands the “But Now” of verse twenty-one, no wonder one person called this “the acropolis of the Bible.”
1. The Performance Syndrome
2. OT versus NT
3. What God Did
If you were to stand before Jesus Christ and He were to say to you, “Why Should I Allow You into Heaven,” how would you answer? What is surprising about the Bible is that after it describes your problem, it doesn’t call you to do something. Instead, it tells us that God did something. And this passage shows you three ways God acted to help you. And all three are found in verse twenty-four and the first part of verse twenty-five: “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood…” (Romans 3:24-25a).
I have time only two of the three ways the Bible presents God’s work on the cross.
3.1 God Justified You
Salvation doesn’t merely consist in our receiving the forgiveness of sins. In the cross, we are justified. More than having my sins removed, I am credited with Jesus’ good actions.
“But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’” (Matthew 22:11-13).
You cannot buy a car by having your debts wiped out. You must have money to buy a car. You cannot stand before God without a righteousness.
3.2. God Redeemed You
3.3 God Absorbs His Own Wrath
“whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood…” (Romans 3:25a). “Propitiation” is the removal of wrath or anger. God is angry over sin. Why? Because sin is mainly about God. The essence of sin is declaring that you do not need your Maker. You are fine, thank you very much, without Him. Sin’s essence is degodding of God. Sin is the belittling of God. Wrath is God’s settled opposition to all that is evil. This rises from God’s very character. Sin profoundly offends God. God is not angrier in the Old Testament and more loving in the New Testament. If God were not angry at evil, we would rightfully question whether God was good. God is good. God does what good judges do. No sin will go unpunished.
“and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood…” (Romans 3:24-25a).
Forgiveness is only part of what God did on the cross. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves. Where we missed the mark, He hit the mark.
1. The Performance Syndrome
2. OT versus NT
3. What God Did
4. Your Connection
Remember the question we began with: If you were to stand before God, and He were to say to you, “Why should I let you into My heaven,” how would your respond? So, how do you receive it? “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Romans 3:21a). “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28).
How is a person made right before God? The cross performs its saving work in and through faith alone. There is no other qualification, no other thing you must do. We are told that you can only be made right with God by faith. And faith acts much like a rope in that it is only strong when it is attached to something. In this case, the rope of faith is attached to Jesus Christ. There is no other standard you must meet.
You must make Christ the center of your life as the sun is the center of the universe. You cannot move the cross to the outside of your life. For if the sun is moved to place of Neptune, all of life stops as we know it. You must keep the cross at the center of your life.
