How can a person go to heaven? It sounds like such a simple question, yet so many people aren’t sure how to answer. The Christian faith has always insisted that the answer to this question of how to go to heaven is found in the cross of Jesus Christ. For the Christian faith, the cross is the key.
Yet many people in our culture today don’t know what the cross means or what Christians believe about it. A study was conducted about five years ago of people in Australia, Germany, India, Japan, England and the U.S. to find how much they recognized certain symbols (Baptists Today 9/21/95). Ninety-two percent could identify the interlinking circles as the symbol for the Olympics. Eighty-eight percent could identify the golden arches as the symbol for MacDonalds. But only half of the people could identify the cross as symbolic of the Christian faith.
I heard recently about a woman who went to an antique shop in England, and asked the shopkeeper if she had any crosses. She pulled out a few and said, "Here’s one that’s empty, and here’s one that has a little man on it." The shopkeeper wasn’t trying to be offensive, but she simply had no idea who the little man on the cross was.
For many the cross is simply a decoration or a fashion statement. What does the cross tell us about God and about how to go to heaven? That’s what we’re going to explore today. We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Romans called GOOD NEWS FOR OUR TIMES. In this series we’ve been seeing that God has good news for our world, but before we can understand that good news we need to understand the Bible’s diagnosis of the human condition. According to Romans, the reason why the world is so messed up is because the entire human race is in rebellion against the creator of the universe. Today we’re going to look at what the cross of Jesus Christ tells us about God’s solution to our spiritual condition. The Bible claims that the cross reveals God’s integrity. Today we’re going to see how the cross helps us UNDERSTAND God’s integrity, EXPERIENCE God’s integrity, and finally LIVE CONSISTENTLY with God’s integrity.
1. Understanding God’s Integrity (Romans 3:21-22a)
How does the cross help us understand God’s integrity? That’s what we see in v. 21 and the first half of v. 22. The phrase "but now" marks a major transition in Romans as Paul begins to speak of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross as the turning point of human history. The death of Jesus opened a new chapter in the outworking of God’s plan for the human race. It’s no accident that there in the west we divide time into B.C. and A.D. with reference to Jesus Christ.
Now the key phrase in this section is "the righteousness of God" or as the NIV puts it "righteousness from God." This word "righteousness" occurs here in v. 21 and also 22; we also find this same Greek word translated "justice" in v. 25 and v. 26. This word "righteousness" refers to God’s consistent character, his faithfulness to keep his promises, his commitment to act with integrity. The righteousness of God is God’s integrity. Through the cross of Jesus, God revealed his integrity in a way that was independent of the Jewish Law. Although the Old Testament part of the Bible the Law and the Prophets testify to this new chapter in God’s plan, when Jesus actually came it was something new, something fresh.
Now our New International Version of the Bible translates the first part of v. 22 "This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe." But in the Greek this literally reads, "This righteousness of God comes through the faith OF Jesus Christ to all who believe." That’s also how the King James Version translates this phrase. I think that’s more accurate, that here Paul is talking about Jesus Christ’s faith not our faith in Jesus. When the Greek word for faith is used in this way it refers to a person’s faithfulness. For example back in 3:3 Paul spoke of "the faith of God" to refer to God’s faithfulness. So it’s not our faith that reveals God’s integrity, but it’s Jesus Christ’s faithful life that reveals God’s integrity (Hays 171-73; Wright 189).
Instead of revealing his integrity through the 10 commandments, God has demonstrated his integrity through the life of Jesus Christ. At his baptism Jesus was faithful to identify with our failures and our need for repentance. At his temptation, Jesus was faithful to resist Satan’s lies and to serve God alone. In his public ministry Jesus was faithful to the Father’s calling in his life, to teach and heal, to love and confront. Jesus was faithful to obey the Father’s plan by going to the cross. The birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are the means by which God has made his integrity known. That’s why the first four books of the New Testament are biographies about Jesus Christ. The law and prophets looked forward to this, but it didn’t happen through the law; it happened through Jesus.
Here we find how the cross helps us understand God’s integrity. We can only understand God’s integrity when we understand JESUS CHRIST’S ROLE in God’s plan.
Until a person understands what Jesus came to do, that person will never understand God’s character. God revealed some his integrity when he gave the 10 commandments that he gave to Israel, but when he sent Jesus, God revealed his integrity even more clearly, more personally, more vividly. Jesus reveals the integrity of God more clearly than anyone or anything else in the universe.
Lots of people think they understand Jesus, but they tend to treat Jesus as an endorsement for what they already believe. For instance, the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) claims Jesus was a vegetarian, so we should be too. There’s no evidence for their claim, but they try to latch onto Jesus to give credibility to what they already believe. The Jesus Seminar pictures Jesus as an intellectual social revolutionary--a lot like college professors who are in the Jesus seminar. Some see Jesus as a magician, or a guru, or a moral teacher, and so forth.
But to understand God’s integrity we have to understand who Jesus really is. This means understanding how Jesus’ life, death, burial, and resurrection all fit together. Apart from understanding that we won’t be able to understand God’s integrity.
2. Experiencing God’s Integrity (Romans 3:22b-26)
Now let’s look at how we can actually experience God’s integrity in vv 22b-26. Because of what Paul’s already said in Romans 1 and 2, we can see that there’s no distinction between religious people and non-religious people in terms of how they stand with God. Everyone has sinned. Both Jews and non-Jews, religious and irreligious, Greeks and Romans, Americans and Palestinians, Al Gore and George W. Bush, all stand guilty before God.
As human beings, we continually fall short of the glory God wants for us. The phrase "glory of God" here probably refers to the fact that God made all humans in his image, with a certain kind of glory, and yet none of us have lived up to that glory we were designed to reflect (Stott 109). In fact, the present tense of the verb "fall short" here suggests that we all still fall short of that glory, even after we trust in Christ. I still fail just as much as you do, just as much as anyone does.
But it’s these very people who’ve failed God and who continually fall short who are the ones who God freely justifies. Now we don’t use the word "justify" very often, unless we’re talking about the "justification" function on a word processing program that makes the margins straight. The word here is a legal term that was used in ancient law courts to describe a person who is declared righteous or acquitted of a crime. Doug Moo puts it this way: "’to be justified’ means to be acquitted by God from all ’charges’ that could be brought against a person because of his or her sins" (227).
God offers to do this for us even though we don’t deserve it. We can’t earn it, buy it, achieve it or produce it from our own efforts. It’s a free gift offered by grace.
This justification is based on the redemption that comes through Jesus’ death. Now once again, we don’t use the word redemption very often unless we’re talking about recycling bottles. The word redemption comes from the world of slavery, and it was used to describe the process of setting a slave free (Louw and Nida 37.128; Moo 229). Whenever Jewish people heard the word "redeem" or "redemption" they thought about God using Moses to liberate Israel from their from slavery in Egypt (Wright 189). Just as God sent plagues on the Egyptians when they refused to release the Hebrew slaves, just as God parted the Red Sea to bring the Hebrews to freedom, somehow Jesus has brought about a new kind of freedom, a new liberation from slavery through his death.
Now usually a slave could only be redeemed at great cost to the person setting him or her free. So in v. 25 Paul describes the cost of our redemption by speaking of Jesus as a "sacrifice of atonement". This phrase pictures the Jewish temple, because in the temple was an ark--the same ark of the covenant Indiana Jones was searching for in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And on the top of this ark was a place called the mercy seat. The mercy seat is where the blood from animal sacrifices was sprinkled to cleanse people from their sins. We tend to get a bit squeamish when we think about animal sacrifices, but in the time of Jesus every known religion in the world practiced animal sacrifices (Wright 1992, 363). In fact, the Christian faith was the faith to not practice animal sacrifices. Now this mercy seat in the Jewish temple was called sometimes called "the place of atonement" or "the sacrifice of atonement" because that’s where forgiveness was achieved for people’s sins. In fact, some Bible translations translate this Greek word "mercy seat" instead of "sacrifice of atonement" (Tyndale, Luther, and Calvin; see Stott 114).
Now in rest of v. 25 and v. 26 Paul’s anticipates an objection to the idea that Jesus died as a sacrifice for human sin. The objection is this: If Jesus had to die on the cross for human sins to be forgiven, how did God forgive people’s sins before Jesus came? If animal sacrifices alone weren’t sufficient how could God forgive sins before Jesus died? Paul’s answer is that the animal sacrifices only worked because God knew the time would eventually come for Jesus to die. In his patience, God looked down the corridor of history at the cross, and applied the benefits of Christ’s death to people who offered animal sacrifices in faith.
All of this reveals God’s righteousness and enables God to forgive people without compromising his integrity. In other words, the cross is God’s way of maintaining his own integrity as a holy and just God and also forgiving people who have offended God’s holiness and spurned God’s justice. Only through the cross can God avoid compromising his integrity and forgive our sins.
Here we find how the cross helps us experience God’s integrity. We can only experience God’s integrity when we EXPERIENCE THE BENEFITS OF CHRIST’S DEATH.
Paul zeros in on three benefits here, and we’ve already mentioned them, but let’s explore them a bit more. JUSTIFICATION pictures us as being like guilty criminals who’ve been acquitted of our crimes. God is our judge, and we all stand guilty of violating the judge’s perfect law. We can’t appeal to parts of the law we haven’t broken to compensate for parts that we have broken anymore than a kidnapper can appeal to laws against murder to justify kidnapping. Breaking any part of God’s law turns us into lawbreakers before God. Perhaps we look moral and upright to other people, but before God’s court we’re guilty. So Christ dies as our substitute on the cross, taking upon himself the penalty of our crimes, so God the judge can acquit us without compromising his justice as God. In the cross, God banged his gavel and said, "Not guilty because of the cross."
REDEMPTION pictures us as being like captives who’ve been liberated from our slavery. Although our sins got us in our mess, we end up so tangled up in our failures that we can’t get ourselves untangled. Those of us who’ve battled addictions know what it feels like to be held captive to our sins. Whether it’s drugs or alcohol like it was with me, or gambling, or spending money, or pornography, we feel like we’re spinning out of control. We’re powerless to set ourselves free. We need someone else--a Power greater than ourselves--break the power of sin in our lives. We need redemption.
Finally the SACRIFICE OF ATONEMENT pictures us as objects of divine anger who’ve been restored to favor. Our sins have provoked God’s judgment, not because God loses his temper, but because judgment is God’s natural reaction to sin. But instead of zapping us, God brings forward Jesus as the mercy seat, the place where God’s judgment is averted, the place where our sins are washed away and we can be restored to favor with God. We all know what it feels like to feel dirty because of our failures. No amount of showers can wash away our feeling of defilement and failure. We know we’ve let God down, we’ve let people around us down, we’ve failed. And Christ is the one who through his death on the cross provides restoration, cleansing and forgiveness.
So as you can see these three pictures are very powerful images of how we can experience God’s integrity. Since we’re all on equal ground when it comes to sin, we can only experience God’s integrity by experiencing the benefits of Christ’s death.
3. Living Consistently With God’s Integrity (Romans 3:27-31)
Now let’s look at how to live consistently with God’s integrity in vv. 27 to 31. Our tendency is to think we can live consistently with God’s character by trying real hard to be good, moral people. That’s how a lot of the religious Jews back then were, they thought that by keeping the 10 commandments and all the other laws they would live consistently with God’s integrity.
But when we do that, we have a tendency to start comparing our lives with each other. And of course we can always find people who are less moral than we are, so we start feeling pretty confident in our own integrity. We start bragging about how humble we are, boasting about how righteous we’ve become.
Paul says that misses the point because we can’t live consistently with God’s integrity simply by being moral. For every commandment we keep, there are more commandments that we’ve broken. We tend to divide sins into really bad sins (which are usually other people’s sins) and less serious sins (which are usually the ones we struggle with). But Paul says we are all guilty of breaking God’s law, and we can’t find an acquittal before God’s justice by being moral. Whether it’s obeying the 10 commandments, following rules, or whatever, we can’t achieve our own justification by trying harder. We can only find acceptance with God through faith, by receiving God’s pardon as a free gift that we can’t earn. This means there’s no room for bragging about how moral we are, because acceptance before God comes as a gift to everyone.
Now Paul anticipates another objection in v. 31, that somehow by rejecting the law as a way to earn God’s favor he is throwing out the law. In fact, some Christians do that; they think God’s law has no place in the spiritual life. But Paul says that by receiving justification by faith we are then in a position to understand the proper role of God’s law in our lives. God’s law is our manual for how to live, our roadmap for the spiritual life, but it’s not the way for us to come to know God. Faith shows us where the law fits.
So here we find how to live consistently with God’s integrity. We can only live consistently with God’s integrity when we EMBRACE THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH.
The principle of faith simply admits that no matter how hard we try, we can’t earn God’s favor. The principle of faith means moving from the mindset of achieving to the mindset of receiving. Faith is simply the empty hand that receives the free gift of God’s forgiveness.
Maybe some of you saw the movie "Saving Private Ryan." In the movie Tom Hanks portrays an Army Ranger during WW II who’s given a mission to find Private Ryan and bring him safely home because all of Ryan’s brothers have been killed in the war. Tom Hanks and his soldiers hit obstacle after obstacle until he finally finds Private Ryan, but Ryan refuses to leave his post. So the Rangers led by Tom Hanks say, "We’ll stay and fight with you then." Well almost everyone dies except Private Ryan, and as Tom Hanks is on the ground dying he whispers in Private Ryan’s ear, "Earn this."
I read a movie review of Saving Private Ryan written by a former Army Ranger and he was upset with that ending. The reviewer pointed out that the motto of the Army Rangers is sua sponte, which means "I chose this." A true Army Ranger would never say, "Earn this." Instead he’d say, "I chose this. You don’t have to earn it. This is free. I gave my life for you because that’s my job." (from PreachingToday.com).
Embracing the principle of faith means realizing that God never says, "Earn this." It means realizing that Jesus was like an Army Ranger who chose to die for us, not because he had to, but because he chose this role. It means accepting God’s gift of integrity as a free gift, not an achievement to be earned, but a gift to be received.
This principle of faith not only applies to how we come to know God but it also describes how we live the Christian life. The principle of faith means that God calls us to live lives of bold trust in God, to believe God for things that are doomed to fail unless God is in them. If you’re comfortable in your spiritual life, if you haven’t been taking risks, then you’re not living by the principle of faith.
And this principle of faith not only applies to us as individual Christians, but it also applies to us as a church. Part of our vision statement says, "We believe God wants our church to be a place where we believe God for the impossible." That means we want our church to be a place where we don’t play it safe but where we embrace this principle of faith. When our church started back in the early 1970s and the original elder board went up to San Antonio Dam and looked out over this valley and believed God to use them to reach the people in this valley with the good news of Jesus Christ, they were embracing the principle of faith. When we bought this property back in 1977 and 22 families believed God to provide $380,000 in three years through their giving, they were embracing the principle of faith. When we build this ministry center in 1996 even though we only had half the money committed, we were embracing the principle of faith. God will have new risks for us in the future, new challenges, new ventures that will scare us to death, opportunities that are doomed to fail unless God is in them. When we were building this ministry center, before the drywall and carpet went in, many of us wrote our favorite Bible verses on the framing and the floor. Right where this pulpit sits I wrote Ephesians 3:20-21:
"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!"
I believe God wants to use this church to impact our community in bigger ways than you and I can even imagine. And please believe me when I say that it’s not about building a big church or our leadership team’s ego, but it’s about the size of the spiritual need in this Inland Valley. There’s simply too many people in this community who are on a crash course with eternal destruction for us to be content with business as usual. I believe when all is said and done, this church will have literally reached thousands of people in this community with the good news of Jesus Christ. I don’t know how that’s going to happen, or where we’d put them, but I believe it’s going to happen. Embracing the principle of faith as a church means we take risks to see that happen, it means that we will move forward even when we know exactly how God’s going to provide, it means that we buy more property when we can, it means that we go through the open doors God places before us. Embracing this principle of faith goes back to the way this church started, it’s part of our legacy as a congregation, and it will be part of our future as long as I’m a pastor here at this congregation.
In this way we as individual Christians can live consistently with God’s integrity, and we as a congregation can also live consistently with his integrity as well.
Conclusion
What does the cross reveal about God? The cross shows us God’s integrity, his righteous character. But can only understand God’s integrity by understanding Jesus’ role, we can only experience God’s integrity by experiencing the benefits of the cross, and we can only live consistent with God’s integrity by embracing the principle of faith, both as individuals and as a church family. This is what the cross reveals about God.
Have you understood Jesus? Have you personally received the benefits of the cross in your life? Have you embraced the principle of faith so you stop trying to earn your way and can truly live consistently with God’s integrity?
Sources
Hays, Richard. The Faith of Jesus Christ: An Investigation into the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4. Scholars Press, 1989.
Moo, Douglas. 1996. The Epistle to the Romans. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Schreiner, Thomas. 1998. Romans. Baker Exegetical Commentary. Baker Book House.
Stott, John. 1994. Romans: God’s Good News for the World. InterVarsity Press.
Wright, N. T. 1992. The New Testament and the People of God. Fortress Press.
Wright, N. T. 1999. "New Exodus, New Inheritance: The Narrative Substructure of Romans 3-8." in Romans and the People of God. Eerdmans Publishing.
