3:19
“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those under the law…”
The law. What is your idea of “the law” as mentioned by New Testament writers? Moses? Ten Commandments? Exodus through Deuteronomy? Let’s look. Jesus for the most part spoke of the law as that portion of what we call the Old Testament that was written by Moses. When he wanted to go beyond Moses He spoke of the “law and the prophets” as two separate entities. Once however He did refer to one of the Psalms, 82, as the law.
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So it was already acceptable in Jesus’ day to lump those two ideas together, as in John 12:34, when the people challenged one of Jesus’ statements. They said, “We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever…” Of course Jesus talked often of being lifted up, which meant He was going to die and not fulfill what the law said.
But where is such a statement about Messiah? Micah 4:7 speaks of a day when the Lord will reign in Zion forever. That was their belief, and it was true. But the point here is that Jews spoke of the prophet Micah as being a part of “the law.”
Paul uses the word law more than anyone in the New Testament. Over seventy times in the book of Romans itself, and nearly fifty times in the rest of his writings. Generally he speaks of Moses when he brings up the subject. But not always.
1 Corinthians 14 addresses the crisis of women attempting to take men’s positions in church. Paul quotes from Genesis but calls Genesis the law. So we see it is the heart of God we are talking about when we speak of law. Not a law that came from Moses, but from God.
And here you will note that Paul has just quoted the Psalms and a prophet in his indictments against sinners, following up with this verse 19, “whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law.”
So we must interpret “law” a little more broadly than what happened up on Mt. Sinai. God has always had a desire in His heart for men to conform to Him. That did not change at Sinai, and it didn’t change at Calvary.
What happened at Sinai was the written revelation of what God wants. What happened at Calvary was the end of an era, and the beginning of a new way of obeying God, namely God writing His own ways on our hearts. The law lives. The written law died, nailed to the cross, but the will of God, the law, is nailed to our hearts. Don’t think for a moment that God
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has gone soft on sin or changed His mind about Who He is and what he wants from us. The moral law stands. The ceremonial sacrificial law is already fulfilled in Christ.
And so we say to the Jews, you have just been indicted. The law speaks to you. David speaks to you as well as Moses. Solomon and Isaiah join their voices. Guilty, is the verdict!
But wait. That’s not how verse 19 continues. “… that every mouth may be stopped…”
Oh, every Jewish mouth must be stopped. No, read on… “… and all the world may become guilty before God.”
Guilty. Accountable. Hupodikos, under justice. Under judgment. Remember Paul’s teaching in chapter 2, “When Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law… these are a law unto themselves.” Where does all true law originate? From God. The law is inside all of us, Jew or Gentile, and we all broke it.
The indictments are in. The witnesses have all spoken. Paul says the verdict is guilty as charged. Thank God the letter does not end there, but one more summation of the case and restatement of the verdict in verse 20:
3:20
“Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight…”
In conclusion, says the prosecuting attorney, based on all the facts I have brought before you regarding human nature, the human conscience, the equality of Jew and Gentile in terms of their breaking of God’s commands,
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I offer this one final statement. And his words have the authority of Christ Himself, whose apostle he was:
By doing good things, yes, even the good things in your heart and in the book, no flesh will be justified. You can’t do in your human nature all that God says you are to do, no matter how hard you try. You’ll never approach His holiness in fallen flesh. You can’t reach Him on your own. No justification is possible. You cannot be right with God based on keeping the rules.
But why, why? Lost mankind screams to the Heavens. Paul has the answer ready at the very end of the verdict,
“… for by the law is the knowledge of sin…”
Paul brings out elsewhere that the law is good. Holy. Pure. Nothing wrong with the law. And that’s the problem. There’s something wrong with us. I read the law, I like it. I approve of it. But every time the law tells me to do something good, my human nature has an opposite idea. The more law, the more I want to sin. I’m doomed. Even trying my best to love the law of God I go deeper into the law of human flesh and depravation.
I’ll never please God. Never. Always guilty.
I quote directly from Macarthur, pp 178-179:
“No matter how often a man tells himself he is good, he inevitably sees that he cannot help thinking, saying, and doing wrong things and feeling guilty about it. Guilt drives people to alcohol, drugs, despair, insanity and… suicide…
“men feel guilty because they are guilty… all of the psychological counseling in the world cannot relieve a person of his guilt. At best it can only make him feel better, superficially and temporarily, by placing the
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blame on someone else or something else. That… only intensifies the guilt because it adds dishonesty to the sin…
“Man’s guilt has only one cause – his own sin – and unless his sin is removed, his guilt cannot be. That is why the first element of the gospel is confronting men with the reality of their sin… until a person is convicted of his sin, the gospel has nothing to offer…”
“God loves you” won’t do it. Many people take your good intention and agree with it, saying to themselves, if God already loves me, why do I need your Gospel? Or, Yeah, I know He loves me. I love me too. He should love me. I deserve it.
One more item from Macarthur, which he borrowed from Donald Barnhouse’s commentary on Romans:
“Man stands before God today like a little boy who swears with crying and tears that he has not been anywhere near the jam jar, and who with an air of outraged innocence, pleads the justice of his position, in total ignorance of the fact that a good spoonful of the jam has fallen on his shirt under his chin and is plainly visible to all but himself…”
Man is guilty of sin, and feels it, but won’t confess it, and so must die with it unforgiven.
Now take a deep breath. Let the verdict sink in. Are you lost? Are you in despair yet? Yes? Excellent! Then you are ready for verse 21, but not until…
3:21
“But now…”
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Been to a Bulls game lately? The announcer slowly and boringly wades through the names of the opposing team. So and so, center, so and so, guard….zzzz.
Then what? Lights flash. Excitement in the arena builds. With the sound of a general marching into a city, the suddenly-awakened speaker shouts,
“AND NOW…”
It is the same pent-up emotion I feel is in Paul’s heart as he pens what we call verse 21… Oh, dark dark has been the midnight. The description of sin and guilt and lost humanity is depressing beyond words. BUT NOW…
You Jews and in some way you Gentiles, all depended on the law or your good conscience to save you. I have proved to you that mankind is universally corrupt. BUT NOW….
Your own righteousness? Forget it! You will always fall short. Man cannot be righteous before God on his own. The law is holy but you are not. The law condemns you. BUT NOW…
“the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed…”
What? I can be righteous without the law? There’s justice and goodness and acceptance before God without the law? That sounds like heresy! How can a man be righteous before a holy God?
Why, that is exactly what Job asked in Job 9:2. The question implies that if the law is set aside in some way, there must be something else I must do. The people in John the Baptist’s wilderness asked , “What shall we do?” People around Jesus, the miracle worker, asked, “What can we do to work the works of God?” The rich young ruler asked, “What good thing can I do to inherit eternal life?” Pentecost, ditto, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Even Paul on the Damascus Road, “What shall I do, Lord?” The Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
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Remember that “righteous” in Romans is not about a series of good things we do. The word can just as easily be translated “justified.” In verse 20 Paul is saying no flesh will be justified by the law. Now he says justice is available without the law.
Men who are always calling out for human justice are hoping for something that does not exist in the world. Injustice or unrighteous behavior is with us permanently and universally. We can only appeal to God’s justice, His sense of right and wrong, His sense of making everything fair and good.
And God accomplished that at Calvary, as we will see. Justice has already been obtained. God did it without Moses. That justice is available and at Paul’s writing had just been revealed to the world. Now people all over the planet have experienced it individually. One day the Just King Himself will return and bring righteousness/justice to the government, to every nation. Isaiah 32:1 declares, “Behold, a king will reign in righteousness.”
But we are way ahead of the story. Paul says it has just been revealed to man. Only twenty to thirty years old is this righteous revelation when Paul speaks.
But had anyone even talked about it before? Paul says, if you had read Moses and the Prophets, you would have known about the coming of this righteousness.
“being witnessed by the law and the Prophets,”
Jesus told the Jews one day, “If you had believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.” That’s a challenging statement for any man to make, that the Bible actually says something about me. But Moses did write about Jesus. Moses predicted in Deuteronomy 18:15 that a prophet like himself would one day arise.
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Moses unwittingly asked the people of God to kill a lamb and place its blood on the doorposts of their homes. That was about Jesus.
The rock that followed them through the wilderness was Jesus.
The law about a man hanging on a tree and being accursed was about Jesus.
Every piece of furniture in the Tabernacle and Temple pointed to Jesus. The sacrificial law and the feasts and the foods, it was all about Him and the righteousness He would produce.
Job, in the midst of his afflictions, knew that his Redeemer lived and would rescue him.
David wrote entire Psalms about the coming Savior, His suffering, His glory. His resurrection.
Isaiah probably came the closest to preaching the Gospel in his 53rd chapter: “He was wounded for our transgressions.” We sinned, He was punished. That’s Gospel. “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” That’s Gospel. “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him… You make His soul an offering for sin…” That is good news, and Isaiah preached it seven hundred years before it happened!
Then that 32nd chapter of Isaiah that I already quoted. A king reigns. Princes will rule with justice. Bodies will be whole. Minds will be whole. Ungodliness will be done away.
Truly the law and the prophets witnessed to the Jews of a righteousness that would one day supersede the law and the prophets. The Old Testament had the New Testament hidden away, to be revealed to us and for us in our day.
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Now Paul becomes very explicit in his definition of God’s righteousness, or justice:
3:22
“even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.”
What does it mean to be right with God? What does it mean for God to be satisfied with us? What does it mean for justice to be served on sin?
That’s all one question. There are two true answers, and one false one. The first true one is only theoretical, but impossible: Just keep the law. Be good, perfectly. Do good deeds, constantly.
The world has it’s take on this answer, a perversion of the true answer that makes it a false answer: Do more good than you did bad. Be a nice person. Be sure your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds on God’s judgment scale. Try your best.
The other true answer is before us now, gratefully, thankfully. It is startlingly simple, but was not easy for Jesus to make it possible. It is wonderfully free, but cost the Son of God His life. It is the answer that is still hidden to the masses though it has been with us for centuries. Faith in Jesus Christ.
Believing, trusting in what Jesus did, not what you can do. Remember, “Abraham believed God and God counted it as righteousness,” Genesis
15. That’s how it works. Faith comes out of you (but even that by God’s grace) and righteousness is imputed to you.
Not “believed in God”. All the angelic hosts of Satan believe in God. The devil inside the Gadarene demoniac of Mark 5 recognized that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Most High God. In Paul’s life, a little slave girl’s
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demon recognized that the message being preached by Paul was the way of salvation, Acts 16.
No. If mental assent could save, all demons would be on their way to Heaven. We are not trying to get people to believe in God when we go to the street. We are presenting to people the offer of this God to forgive them based on the sacrifice, the blood, of Jesus. If they trust Christ’s blood, they are saved.
But we do not want to over-simplify conversion, true salvation. We don’t reduce it to a formula or a sinner’s prayer, however nicely worded. I quote A. W. Tozer here:
“Something has happened to the doctrine of justification… the faith of Paul and Luther was a revolutionizing thing. It upset the whole life of the individual and made him into another person altogether. It laid hold on the life and brought it unto obedience to Christ. It took up its cross and followed along with Jesus with no intention of going back. It said good- bye to its old friends as certainly as Elijah when he stepped into the fiery chariot and went away in the whirlwind. It had a finality about it. It snapped shut on a man’s heart like a trap; it captured the man and made him from that moment a happy love-servant of His Lord.” (from The Root of the Righteous.)
A seventeenth-century English minister named Joseph Alleine wrote along similar lines: I quote from his book An Alarm to the Unconverted.
“ All of Christ is accepted by the sincere convert; he loves not only the wages, but the work of Christ; not only the benefits, but the burden of Christ; he is willing not only to tread out the corn, but to draw under the yoke; he takes up the command of Christ, yea, the cross of Christ…
“Jesus is a sweet name, but men love not the Lord Jesus in sincerity. They will not have Him as God offers, to be a Prince and a Savior. They divide what God has joined, the king and the priest…”
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That’s what saving faith looks like. His yoke is easy, but it is a yoke, for all men serve under some yoke. His burden is light, but it is a burden, for we will either carry the burden of our sin or the burden of His cross. Men need to be told this at the beginning of their walk with Christ, and not have it sprung on them half-way down the road.
And so the righteousness of God is transferred over to any repentant sinner when He truly believes God.
“…for there is no difference…”
What is the apostle saying? What He said before. There is no partiality with God. Whether Jew or Gentile, all sinners are equally unable to please God in their own flesh. And whether Jew or Gentile, anyone who has faith in Christ’s work is automatically made righteous. God sees only His Son Jesus when you are in Him. Anyone in the Son is immediately in the Father’s good graces.
Then he repeats the entire concept in those next two verses we learned as children:
3:22
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
“Fall short” is from hustereo which has the idea of being inferior, or behind something else. The glory of God is out in front of us. It’s the prize. It calls us forward, but we never can reach it. Luther struggled with this coming behind for years. He tried everything to please God, to please the church. He wanted to be a holy man and the more he tried the worse it got. Holiness, God’s glory and majesty and perfection, were always out there tantalizing him. But he never caught up until he got hold of a verse in the book we are studying.
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Every honest man admits that he falls short. But what most men don’t understand is that falling short is a death sentence. Falling short means there is sin in your life. Sin brings death, eternally.
But those who get hold of faith in Christ will be, as it says in the next verse,
3:24
“being justified freely by His grace…”
A ton of treasure in these verses. So much there that we don’t want to be in a hurry. You just got a mouthful of meaning and it is important to chew your food a long time before you swallow.
We like to talk about being saved. Paul talked equally about being justified. One cannot be saved or delivered until justification has taken place.
Note that justification and sanctification are not the same, but they cannot be separated. As Father Son and Spirit refer to separate personages of the Godhead but are inseparable, so one cannot be justified without starting that sanctification process at the same time.
Justification makes you right before God in a legal sense. It is as though you had never sinned. Everything is forgiven. The declaration is made that [enter your name here] is righteous.
You say, I never heard such a statement being made when I first came to Christ. No, it is unlikely you heard it, because it was said on a Judean hillside by an act of the Son of God on a Roman cross.
When Jesus died that day, He paid the penalty for your sin, believer. I say your sin, because the unbeliever is not included in that sacrifice. God is just. He would never make someone pay twice for his sins. The unbeliever will be paying for his sinfulness in a lake of fire. Your sins were paid for on Calvary.
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You say, that’s not fair! If you are beginning to see that, you are beginning to understand grace. Why me? If you are asking that, you are asking the right question, but don’t expect an answer any time soon! There is no human answer to the question.
We call this unmerited favor, this undeserved blessing, grace. You were made just, made righteous, the very righteousness of God Almighty, by an act of grace.
Freely. The word dorean in the Greek does not mean many of the ways we use the word in English. We talk of spending freely, a gate swinging freely or without hindrance, or freely translating a verse, that is, not according to the normal rules. No, the word here means “gratuitously.”
You say, that doesn’t help much! Okay, it means unearned. It means a gift. It means no cost. No way you can repay or earn.
I stand before you having been made right with God before I ever did anything good. I am in right relationship with Heaven not by anything I could pay or earn. I have no claim of my own to God’s righteousness, but I have every claim there is to it anyway because God decided, for His own purposes, to declare it so, and He made it possible
“through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Another word has been added. Every word is important when the Spirit of God takes the trouble to put words on paper via an inspired apostle or prophet. Look at every word.
Apolutrosis. Redemption. Ransom. Payment.
We lump together being saved, being justified, being sanctified, being redeemed, as though they were all the same thing, some nice experience we had many years back. Experience is good, and Paul had some of his
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own, and we will too. But we must learn to appreciate the full bag of gifts laid on us at the cross.
Ransomed! Sold out to the devil, but bought back by Jesus. You could not pay the price that was being required of you. No way! How much does it cost for you to sin against God? Here, Lord, let me offer you some money for that sin?
In Rome, such talk is commonplace. Want a soul out of purgatory a little sooner? They are there for their sins, right? Well, buy an indulgence. Give the priest an offering and he will pray officially for you in the next mass.
You say, they don’t teach it like that. No but the people hear it like that. I’ll give some money to the priest, he’ll pray, and my dear departed aunt Susie will spend a few days less in torment.
Think you can buy off God? Do you remember what happened to Simon the magician of Acts 8, when he offered money for the Holy Spirit?
Remember what happened to the Jews when they offered their dead works and rituals and sacrifices to God without heart?
How about you? Have you been offering things to God hoping that would save you, make you right with Him? There is no way you can ever be more right with God than you are by virtue of the facts of Calvary. When you accept that sacrifice as your own, you realize the price has already been paid. From that moment nothing you can do at church or at home or in your prayer closet will ever make you more righteous in His sight. He sees you through the blood of His Son.
Ransomed. Redeemed.
You know how ransoms work. One morning, in the mailbox, a parent receives a note from a kidnapper. Their child is away at college, but he has just been abducted. He will be returned only after an exorbitant price has
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been paid to the kidnappers. The parents panic and call friends and relatives and desperately try to raise money. But they can’t. It’s just too much. They try to negotiate, but the abductors are firm. This amount, or you will never see your son again. Sometimes the story ends there.
In other cases, a hero emerges. Someone with deep pockets steps forward, gives the parents the money to pay the ransom. The son is restored. Through effective investigation and with time, the kidnapper is caught and brought to justice and everyone lives happily ever after. Even the money is returned.
That’s your story. One morning you get the message somewhere deep inside of you that you just can’t keep resisting temptation. You give in. You start sinning. And you sin more and more. You aren’t happy with yourself. You want out. You receive messages from the whole round of false teachers. Rome says you can make it if you join them and are willing to spend eons in Purgatory. Other religions come along and tell you to just keep trying to be good. God is just. He knows that if you try your best, you’ve got just as much chance as anyone.
You try it all. Nothing relieves you from the original lostness, the original bondage. Then one day, you are told of a hero that already emerged many years ago and paid the price for your bondage. If you will put your hand in His and believe the Redeemer, you will find peace and freedom and deliverance. The debt has already been paid.
So you do that. And let me tell you, the abductor of your soul has already been discovered, tried, and found guilty of crimes against all humanity. His punishment is just and sure. And you will live happily ever after.
Everything that was stolen from you will be returned a thousand-fold and then some.
In other words, you’ve been redeemed. Bought back with a price unimaginable, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
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You know the song,
He paid a debt He did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay ,
I needed someone to wash my sins away. And now I sing a brand new song, Amazing Grace,
Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.
My debt He paid upon the cross,
He cleansed my soul from all its dross,
I thought that no one could all my sins erase. But now I sing a brand new song,
Amazing Grace,
Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.
O such great pain my Lord endured, When He my sinful soul secured,
I should have died there but Jesus took my place. So now I sing a brand new song,
Amazing Grace,
Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.
He didn't give to me a loan,
He gave Himself now He's my own,
He's gone to Heaven to make for me a place. And now I sing a brand new song,
Amazing Grace [the whole day long],
Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.
Justified, made right with God. Redeemed, bought back with a price, the very blood of God. Great words. But there’s more. Propitiation is next.
3:25
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“whom God set forth as a propitiation [through faith in] His blood…”
The “whom” is still Jesus. We are in the middle of a long Paul-type sentence that stretches from verses 21 to 26. You might want to read those verses again before you move on here.
“Set forth” comes from a word that means “to place before,” or exhibit, or display, or even purpose or plan, as in Romans 1:13, “Often I purposed to come to you.”
This plan that began in God’s secret purposes was manifest publicly. You can believe or disbelieve what happened at Calvary, but you can’t ignore it. This is not theory, this is historical fact. Those who try to claim that it wasn’t really Jesus on that cross, make fools of themselves, as history cries out against them. Whether in the Bible or out, this thing that Jesus did is proclaimed as a part of the historical documents of our planet. God made a public display, exhibit “A”, if you please.
What was God displaying?
He was displaying a propitiation. That word means, something that gains someone’s favor. Something that appeases. In the case of the human race, we needed someone to gain God’s favor for us. Someone to appease God’s wrath. He was mad at us! He is angry with the sinner every day, says my Bible. Only what Jesus did turns away His anger. You can say you’re sorry, but the damage has been done. God has to have a reason to forgive you, and that reason is Jesus, the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice that was displayed at Calvary.
This word hilasterion translated “propitiation” appears again in Hebrews 9, where the writer is talking about the tabernacle and its furniture. Let me read beginning in verse 4:
“… the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the
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tablets of the covenant [the ten commandments]; and above it [the ark] were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat [hilasterion]…”
Picture a golden chest, a box, roughly 4 by 2 by 2. Inside the box a pot, a rod, two tablets. Now look at the lid, the covering, of that box. Two golden angels facing one another, pointing to the center. And there, says God in Exodus 25:22, “I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel.”
A cloud would appear at this special Lid. God Himself would be in the cloud. He would rest there, dwell there. Later Jews and now Christians came to refer to this resting residence of God on the mercy seat as the Shekinah, literally the residence.
Many today want to experience that same Presence of God for themselves. Well and good, let’s always seek His Presence. But the mercy seat appearances were not just for experience. They were for conversation. Communication. I will talk with you about everything I will give you in commandment, says God.
See the big picture. Mercy covering Law. God’s Voice covering His written words. The promise came later that God would write those very words on our heart. You who know Christ have heard His very voice speaking to your heart. You have learned to love Him and obey Him.
But all of this possible because of the act that that seat foreshadowed. The writer of Hebrews and the apostle Paul both use the same word. One time it is referring to Tabernacle furniture. The other time it is referring to something that Jesus did to fulfill the picture of that lid. Same word. Same heart of God. To show mercy to men who cannot keep the Law inside that box. Oh the law is a part of the picture. The law is eternal, God does not change His mind. But mercy has triumphed over law and saved us from our carnal disobedience to it.
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Through faith in His blood. [NKJV has “by” his blood, through faith, awkward and not called for in the Greek.] I know that Catholics believe they contact the blood when they have communion. And I know of a Protestant group that believes they contact the blood of Jesus that went into the ground when they are baptized in water, which also comes up out of the ground. And there are others who imagine the substance of blood available to them to use as a magic wand over all ailments.
I believe the blood is effective not because we can touch it physically today, but because it was shed. Period. The sacrifice was made. Jesus cried out “It is finished,” and He meant it. The sacrifice was offered, atonement was made, God was appeased, satisfied, and we look to a historic fact, not a magical rite or wand, for our salvation.
So we have faith in his blood. We believe that the shed blood of Jesus saves us. Colossians 1:20 says God made peace and reconciliation through Jesus’ blood. Romans 5:9, we are justified by His blood. Ephesians 1:7, we have redemption through His blood. Ephesians 2:13, we are made near by the blood of Christ. 1 Peter 1:19, redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:7, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. Revelation 1:5, Jesus loosed us, or washed us, from our sins in His own blood. Revelation 12:11, God’s people in the Tribulation overcame the enemy by the blood of the Lamb.
What can wash away my sins? Nothing! But the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing! But the blood of Jesus. For my pardon, this I see. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
For my cleansing this my plea, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Nothing can for sin atone, nothing but the blood of Jesus, Naught of good that I have done, nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus, This is all my righteousness, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
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Oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow, No other found I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus!
“… to demonstrate His righteousness…”
This brings us back to verse 21, that a righteousness separate from the law of Moses has been revealed in Christ, and the first part of this verse, where God “set forth” or “displayed” this mercy seat, this atonement.
Made it public. Nothing hidden here!
This same apostle, when speaking of the death and resurrection of Jesus with the Edomite king of the line of the Herods, Agrippa, Acts 26, he says clearly that these events were well known by Agrippa because they were not done “in a corner.”
Every other time the word “corner” appears in the New Testament, it is talking about the foundation of a house. Jesus was made the head of the corner. Foundations, and all corners, for that matter, are secret places, hidden. Go stand in the corner, the old teachers use to say. We don’t want to see you.
Jesus’ shedding of His blood was not done in a corner. He didn’t go to a secret room and stick a knife in Himself. He endured a public trial, a public condemnation, a public beating, a public walk up a well-traveled hill, a public crucifixion.
God “demonstrated” it. The word occurs again in the next verse. It is “declare” in the KJV. A public statement. You can say something by words, or you can say it by actions. We have the words of Christ for sure, but we also have a public action of God Himself.
For it was God Who “put Him to grief.” It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, Isaiah 53:10.
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And in putting His own Son on a cross, God was saying, “This is My righteousness. This is the way to favor with Me. I totally approve of this sacrifice. As far as I am concerned, and I am the only one who needs to be concerned, it is finished. All sins are now forgiven to the person who accepts this sacrifice. This One has fulfilled the law in every respect. This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him. See what He is saying to you. I wrote my laws in a book and you broke those laws. Now through this sacrifice I see only the laws written on your heart, when Jesus is in that heart.”
“… because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed.”
So important to see the Greek text here. Not sure how the KJV people came up with what they came up with, but here is a case where the NKJV makes more textual sense. Notice I said “textual”. We care not for “common sense” or “I don’t understand that” or “that does not compute.” What we must care about is what did the Spirit say to Paul.
Here is the order of the Greek text from the Greek out of which the KJV was translated:
“in respect of the passing by of the having-taken-place sins in the forbearance of God.”
We’re talking about a group of sins that have been passed by. That KJV word “remission” is not a translation of the Greek word paresis. Rather it was the relaxing, the passing by, the passing over, the ignoring of a group of sins, temporarily. No sin is ignored permanently. But there was a collection of sins that were ignored for a season, due to the forbearance of God.
So what is forbearance? Back to the Greek. The word here means “self- restraint” or “tolerance”.
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God is tolerating sin? God is restraining Himself, and letting things pass? God is overlooking sin? Where in the world do you get a doctrine like that? Glad you asked. It is from this same apostle in Acts 17.
Paul is at Mars Hill, talking to the philosophers of Athens. Just before Paul is graciously – or otherwise – escorted from the stage he makes a startling declaration. He has been talking about how men worshiped so many different things ignorantly. As in Romans, he is cataloguing the sins of mankind, and then he says (verse 30) “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked (KJV, “winked at”).
“But now he commands all men everywhere to repent!” Why?
“Because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.”
The implication being… that judgment is imminent. Yes, it has been hanging over the human race since Jesus died. The Jews have already begun to taste of the judgment of God. One day we will all stand before the Judge of all the earth, unless we acknowledge Jesus as Savior.
This Acts message is a preview of the Romans message. It was spoken just several years before this letter was written. The message is consistent:
• All men are sinners.
• God has not judged sin yet, though it may seem so at times. Look at all the sinners even in our own day that “get away with” sin.
• God has overlooked, passed over, sins because He is going to demonstrate His justice at a particular time by pouring out wrath on His Son
• That particular time has come and gone. God has made a public display of Jesus before the world.
• That Son will be the one by whom he will eventually judge the world.
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• Meanwhile, since that awful day at Calvary, all men can be forgiven of the judgment they deserve, and that is surely coming.
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“to demonstrate [I say, KJV] at the present time His righteousness…”
The KJV adds “I say” to let you know that Paul has already said something about demonstrating his righteousness in the previous verse, which is actually a part of one long sentence that started in verse 21! Paul is repeating himself because he interjected an explanation of that demonstration, the passing over of sins.
The thought goes, “God has displayed Jesus on a cross now, at this particular time in history to culminate His justice on mankind. Many have sinned, but God has waited until now to judge that sin for all time. That judgment was on His Son.” It’s Isaiah 53 again: He was wounded for our transgressions. We sinned. He was punished. And God said, “That’s good.” It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. God was satisfied with that arrangement.
Now if people aren’t interested in this deal, they can ignore the sacrifice and try to pay up on their own. But that will literally take forever. As long as God lives, sin cannot be wiped out by any other method than the blood. Refuse the blood of Jesus, and you suffer on your own.
That’s how God sees justice. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” Most of us understand the “faithful” part, maybe we never considered the “just” part. Justice now demands, and I say it reverently not with an attitude, demands that upon our confession, we are forgiven. Because of us? No, because of the blood that was shed. He won’t punish us again. The punishment was laid on Jesus. That satisfied the bill. Paid in full.
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Suppose you buy a house. On credit of course. A mortgage. But some millionaire comes along and pays off the house. So the next month you send in your mortgage payment as usual and it is rejected. It would be unjust of the mortgage folks to take your money. The debt has been paid.
He is faithful and just to forgive us. It is required by His own laws! “…that He might be just and the justifier…”
God needed a way to justify you while remaining holy and just Himself. I quote Macarthur here: (p. 219 of his commentary, Volume 1)
“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.”
God made rules. We all disobeyed them. Can God just say, no problem, just try a little harder? No. We all deserved death. But kill them all? Then what purpose, creation? No, He wanted to save people. He decided to have only one Man, a perfect one, be a sacrifice for everyone. Sacrificial salvation. Substitutionary salvation. One dies, all others forgiven.
That’s what the whole Jewish system of sacrifice is about. God was teaching the Jews and all of us how very much someone’s blood needs to be shed so that we can live. Animals were only picture of what that supreme sacrifice would one day do. We learn later that in fact animal sacrifice can never take away sin.
That’s where the forbearance of God kicks in. He demanded the sacrifices, but not one sin was ever forgiven in that method. They were rolled back until Calvary, and Calvary covered it all. That’s what the display of the cross is about. God found a way to justify all of us who are interested, and remain just Himself.
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The legendary King Arthur had a problem like this. He and his lovely queen Guenevere allegedly ruled England somewhere back in Britain’s murky past. How Arthur loved this beautiful woman. But one day it was discovered that the Queen had another love interest. The King was crushed. She was guilty of high treason, not just adultery. It was an assault on the Kingdom, a betrayal of the first order.
But what could he do? He loved this woman. But he loved justice. He was establishing a rule of law in his kingdom with which no one could be allowed to interfere. Love or justice, which would it be?
The answer. He would step aside, as Sir Lancelot, the lover and the leader of an uprising, would sweep into the palace grounds and rescue the Queen, taking her to a convent to live out the rest of her days.
Not a perfect picture of the grace of God but there are some parallels. Our King had a problem. He loved us. But we committed high treason against heaven. How can he save us from His own holy laws? The one we love, Jesus, not an antagonist of the Father, but One sent by the Father’s plan, swept into the Kingdom of Moses and the law, put us on the back of His horse and rescued us from death. And the Father was happy about it.
Mercy and truth had won. Grace and law had won. Mercy and justice had won.
“…of the one who has faith in Jesus…”
Let’s not skip over this detail. The salvation that Jesus bought is not for everyone. Hear me well. God did not suddenly say to the whole world, “You’re all free. I forgive you. Go on your way rejoicing.”
This awful doctrine is called universalism. This is the notion that regardless of the evils men have committed or continue to commit, when it’s all said and done, God’s heart is so big He will just forgive everyone whether they ask forgiveness or not.
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Can you imagine the trampling down of Heaven’s beauty and glory by un- changed un-repentant foul-mouthed loose-living earthlings? The unholy suddenly made partakers of God’s Holy places without once ever giving a nod to Jesus Christ?
God is seen by these folks as the great Psychologist in the Sky, who looks at each poor human and says, “I understand. You had it rough. You were poor. You were rich. You were not parented well. You got some bad teaching. You were abused. You were hurt. You lived in the wrong part of the city or the nation or the world. I understand. You are excused, come on in.”
That’s partly true. All of it is partly true. God will come down to our level and forgive everything in our past, if and only if we place our confidence in what Jesus did on the cross. Paul spells it out better in chapter 10 of this letter. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is the Lord Jesus in whom they must be made to believe. This is a faith that will come by hearing from the preached Word of God. He is very specific. No Gospel, no salvation and no entrance into Heaven.
God will justify anyone. But finish that sentence, “…who has faith in Jesus.”
We’re not talking here about intellectual belief in a Man called Jesus who lived long ago. We’re talking about a supernatural faith that invades your soul and tells you, as you hear God’s Word about the crucifixion, the resurrection, the promise of the Spirit, eternal life, it’s all true. You just know it’s true. No one has to convince you or pound it into you. You’re reading or hearing , and you just know.
Please include the reading part. Or the hearing part. No one is saved by a dream or a vision or a personal thought. No one is saved without the Word that comes from Spirit-filled apostles. All the false religions have begun by a notion inside the head or from a demon spirit or a fallen angel or a dream or a vision.
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The truth must come from the Word.
But it comes. And it’s real. And your accepting of God’s Truth is one of the ways you can know you have been born again. One moment you did not believe. You did not care. The Spirit comes, and with the heart you believe and you start doing the things God said you should do. You confess this faith to others around you. Life is new.
And the true believer knows that what Paul is about to say is so true…
