“It’s Never Enough”
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-31
This morning we are beginning a sermon series on the Book of Romans.
I hope we can at least get a little taste of the rich depths of this letter written by the Apostle Paul, and I hope you will stick with me.
Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians of the early Church contains some of the Church’s most important theological writings.
At the same time, they can be difficult to understand and difficult to preach, so I will try and make them as accessible as possible.
It is important to get a grasp of Romans, the reason being a lot of our understanding of salvation by grace through faith is contained in these pages.
And the reason I started with Romans 1:16-17 is that these verses contain the summary statement for the entire book.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel,” Paul writes, “because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”
This sums up the entire letter, and though it may sound simple, it is often very difficult for us to grasp.
(pause)
A long time ago there was a guy who, more than anything wanted to get to know God and know that God loved him, accepted him and had saved him.
And so he read his Bible.
He studied it hard.
He got to know all the “Thou shall nots…” and the “Thou shalls…”—the whole shabang!!!
He even went off to a really good seminary—one of the best—where he studied about God and the rules of the Church.
And then, he himself became a priest.
And he found a group of like-minded folks, who wanted to please God.
They got together and formed what would soon be called “The Holiness Club.”
And “The Holiness Club” worked really hard, trying to follow all the rules in the Bible correctly.
They figured that if they just tried hard enough they could be perfect and acceptable to God.
But this was a frustrating thing to try and do because try as they might, they were just human beings with temptations, flaws, sinful inclinations, and so forth just like everyone else in the world.
They did a lot of things.
And their intentions were good.
But ultimately, they were left feeling defeated and alienated from the God they were trying to emulate.
Eventually, the young priest who had set out to make himself the perfect Christian decided to give up.
He realized that he couldn’t achieve his goal.
And oh, was he depressed.
And oh, did he feel like a failure.
He had really hit rock bottom.
He felt that he would never, ever be able to measure up to the high standards of God as written out in so many pages of the Bible, the Old Testament in particular
One night a friend of his invited him to go to a special Bible study.
And he didn’t want to go.
He’d been to enough Bible studies to last a lifetime, thank you very much, and see where they had gotten him?
But his friend was persistent.
So, reluctantly, he went.
And this Bible study, well, it wasn’t an incredibly academic affair.
It wasn’t like his seminary classes.
There was no highly educated scholar upfront using high and lofty words.
Instead, someone was reading something that someone else had written.
It was something that a man named Martin Luther had penned some 200 years earlier—a commentary on the Scripture passages we are looking at this morning.
But as the down-and-out priest listened to these monotone and straightforward words —something started to stir deep in his soul.
And an epiphany started to come upon him.
His heart started to beat faster, and he felt perspiration begin to form on his skin.
And then something unique happened.
This man who had been reading the Law in Bible and trying to follow what it said for so long experienced something he had never experienced before.
And the best way he had to describe it is this: he said that he felt his heart become “strangely warmed,” and for the first time in his life, he did believe that Jesus Christ had died for his sins—even his—and had forgiven him and saved him from the law of sin and death.
He then, spent the rest of his life growing in his new relationship with God through faith in Christ and sharing it with others.
This man’s name was John Wesley.
He went on to lead the most significant Christian revival the world has, perhaps, ever known.
The Methodist Church is a direct result of God’s actions in and through his life.
As are many, many other churches—arguably the majority of protestant churches in the United States and the rest of the Western world.
The problem John Wesley and many others like him face is the supreme mystery of life: how can we get into a right relationship with God?
How can we feel at peace with God?
How can we escape the feeling of estrangement and fear in the presence of God?
The answer offered by Judaism was: “You can have a right relationship with God by meticulously keeping all that the law lays down.”
But to say this is to simply say that there is no possibility for any of us to ever have a right relationship with God because it’s impossible to keep every commandment of the law.
So, that brings up the question: “What is the use of the law?”
The answer is that it makes us aware of sin; the law is designed to show us our own weaknesses and our own sinfulness.
No wonder Wesley had been so frustrated.
There was no way he could earn his salvation.
He could never, ever be good enough, no matter how hard he tried: as Paul writes in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Have you ever tried to stop sinning on your own, ever tried to be perfect?
Have you ever tried to change your nature and found yourself totally exasperated, frustrated, and perhaps even filled with self-loathing and self-hate?
Have you ever felt as if there was nothing you can do to please God?
Well, God has a response to our sorry state: “all are justified freely by [God’s] grace through the redemption that came through Christ Jesus.”
Here Paul uses a metaphor from a court of law—the word justification.
The metaphor paints a picture of an individual as if they are on trial before God.
And the Greek word, which is translated as “to justify,” means not to make someone something, but to treat, to reckon, to account that person as something.
Now, if an innocent person appears before a judge, then to treat that person as innocent is an acquittal.
But the point of our relationship with God is that we are utterly guilty, yet God, in God’s amazing mercy, treats us, reckons us, and accounts us as innocent.
That is what justification means.
When Paul says that “God justifies the ungodly,” he means that God treats us as if we had never sinned.
That is what shocked the Jews to the core of their being.
To them, treating guilty people as good was the sign of a wicked judge.
But Paul says that is exactly what God does.
How do I know that God is like this?
I know because Jesus said so.
Jesus came to tell us that God loves us, as bad as we sometimes are…
…that, although we are sinners, we are still dear to God.
And when we discover this and believe this as Wesley finally did, it changes our entire relationship with God.
As a matter of fact, it changes our entire lives!
We are conscious of our sins, but we are no longer in terror and estranged from God.
And so, repentant and broken-hearted, we come to God, like sorry children coming to their father or mother, and we know that the God we come to is Love.
That’s what justification by faith in Jesus Christ means.
It means that if we believe with all our hearts that what Jesus told us about God is true, we are no longer terrorized strangers by an angry God.
We are erring children who trust in their heavenly Father’s love for forgiveness.
And we could never have found this right relationship with God if Jesus Christ had not come to live and die to show us how much God loves us.
Paul goes on, in Romans Chapter 3, to talk about sacrifice.
Under the old system, a sacrifice was brought to God when the law was broken.
The aim was that the sacrifice should take on the punishment that should fall on the one who had broken the law.
To put it another way—someone had sinned: and that sin put that person in a wrong relationship with God: to get back in the right relationship, the sacrifice was offered.
But animal sacrifice failed to do that; it didn’t work.
Just read Psalm 51 and Micah 6 for God’s Word on that.
So, Paul says, “Jesus Christ, by his sinless life of obedience and his death on the Cross, made the one sacrifice to God which can truly atone for sin once and for all.”
Jesus’ death on the Cross opened a door to a right relationship with God that every other sacrifice was powerless to do.
Paul writes, “Where, then, is boasting?
It is excluded.
Because of what law?
The law that requires works?
No, because of the law that requires faith.
For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
But then, the Jews ask, “Does this mean the end of the law?”
To this, we might expect Paul to say, “Yes.”
But he says, “No.”
He says that it strengthens the law, and what he means is this: up until Jesus came, the Jews had tried to be good and to keep the commandments because they were afraid of God and were terrified of the punishment that breaking the law would bring.
But that day is gone forever.
What has taken its place is the knowledge of the love of God.
Now we want to do the right thing, not because we fear God’s punishment, but because we feel indebted to God…we want to strive to deserve God’s amazing love.
We strive for goodness, not because we are afraid of God, but because we love God—and that is because God has first loved us.
And we know that sin is not so much breaking God’s law as it is breaking God’s heart, and that is much more terrible.
To use a human analogy, people might be tempted to do wrong but don’t do it, not so much because they fear the law, but the simple fact that they couldn’t meet the sorrow that they would see in the eyes of the people who love them if they ruined their lives.
It’s not the law of fear but the law of love that keeps them from doing wrong.
And, when we are walking in a relationship with God, this is how it is with God and us.
In 1st John, we are told that “God is love” and that “there is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
My friends, if the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed!
Let me ask you this morning: Do you understand what God has freely given you?
Do you understand what it means that Jesus Christ gave His life in order to save you?
Do you understand that it is by grace you are saved through faith?
And that this salvation is a gift of God, that there is nothing you can do to deserve it or get it.
And God has saved you because He loves you and has great plans for your life.
And these plans are the reason God created you in the first place.
Do you know this?
Do you believe this?
Has it warmed your heart?
Has it changed your life?
