Jenny and I are making payments on our kid’s college loans. We considered it an investment to send them to Christian colleges and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It has been one of the wisest choices we have made for our children. But it came with a cost we couldn’t pay for without credit. We look forward to the day when they are paid in full.
Recently we got a note from the bank where Tim has his school loans saying: “Congratulations, your loan is paid in full!” Jenny and I were real excited until we found out what happened. Tim had taken a loan for graduate school and as it ended up, he didn’t need it, so the funds were returned. They made it sound like his entire four years were paid in full. But no… Lord willing, they will be, but not yet.
Is there anyone here today that owes money on something you bought on credit?
Debt is a big problem. Many people close their eyes or pretend that debt isn’t a problem, but it is. Our national debt is at around 7 trillion dollars and growing. Do you know how much that is? A trillion seconds is more seconds than have passed since Jesus was born.
As staggering as this debt is, we can still pay for it eventually. But Romans reveals a debt we owe that we can’t pay for and yet eventually it demands full payment.
In Romans 1:18-3:20 we read of a debt of humanity that reveals that we are bankrupt, ruined, hopeless, lost in the darkness of our own moral decadence, and powerless to help ourselves in any way. Man has mortgaged his eternal soul. If all we had of the Bible was Romans 1:18-3:20 there would be nothing to look forward to but hell.
If you will read it carefully, slowly, and thoughtfully, you will see that the Bible proves that we are in a mess of our making leaving us all totally out of control, spiritually over the edge of the pit of disaster and destruction and condemnation. One commentator said, “There is no ray of light, no flicker of hope and no prospect of rescue” in Romans 1:18-3:20. All have sinned. None is righteous, no not one.
Sin is a spiritual debt. Yet some people can know that, and take it lightly. Listen. One of the devious things about sin is how it makes us underestimate its destructive nature so that we even excuse it as acceptable or at least a necessary alternative. The deeper we go into darkness, the more we rationalize away the horror of our sinful condition. Sin allows us to believe that we are still not lost, that we are still under control, that it is not as bad as God thinks and says it is.
We must realize how bad it is, or we will never appreciate how God saves us from it.
But listen to the first two words of Romans 3:21 “But now…”
Did you catch that? Those two words mark what ought to be the next chapter of Romans. But now… What? What now? After painting us into a corner of sin so that we are bunched together and wrapped into a package stamped and addressed to hell, what now?
How many of you get credit offers in the mail? Do they ever make you mad? They even call you on the phone at dinner time and interrupt your meal to offer you a zero percent interest rate for six months credit card!
There’s only one problem with these offers. Besides breaking in on a good meal or cluttering the post office garbage can. If you transfer all your debt to one of these cards, guess what? You still owe every penny!
But now… what if there was a call that offered to pay off all your debts in full? Would you be interested?
Well, in fact, that’s just what we find here in beginning in Romans 3:21 and following.
God offers to pay off your debt. Not your school loans or your house or your car, but something infinitely more valuable, the cost of your sins.
By the way, you and I are so bad off, we can’t even contribute to it! It’s a trust. The entire payment has already been applied through Jesus death on the cross and there is no other access for the credit offered by God, except by faith. If you accept, you do so on God’s terms by faith. The currency of salvation is “righteousness.” Something we are lacking in. All our righteousness is as filthy rags.
You will notice here that Paul doesn’t rush to talk about baptism or anything we might mistake as our own effort to attain this righteousness that comes from God. He even delays speaking about baptism for two and a half chapters just so we will get it!
Too many members of the church today want to rush to the water to prove the necessity of baptism before forming the foundation on which it rests. Paul doesn’t do that. In fact, he says things on his way to baptism that can leave us scratching our heads or worrying that someone might think that you are saved by faith… and that, without baptism!
If that makes you uncomfortable, I would argue that it is not Romans that needs to change, but your understanding.
Therefore, let us be honest with what we read in God’s word. If the Bible says, Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH."
Let us believe it and agree with God.
And, when the Bible says, Romans 3:21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; Let us believe it. Let’s agree with God.
And, When the Bible says, 3:28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.
And, When the Bible says, 4:4 Now to the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due.
5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness,
And, When the Bible says, 4:22 Therefore also IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.
23 Now not for his sake only was it written, that it was reckoned to him,
24 but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
And, When the Bible says, 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. 5:1-2
Let us believe it and agree with God.
If the Bible says 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
What God is calling us to do is not try to figure out what we do, but to celebrate what he has already done! Take time to rejoice in the work of God for a while!
Then after having accepted the wonder of God’s credit plan where we make no payment at all but receive the cancellation of our spiritual debts as paid in full at Calvery… then we turn to look at ourselves again and ask the important question:
What is this faith that saves me? What does the Bible say? If God says I am saved by it, then for heaven sake, (literally) what is it?
Some of you may be able to quote Hebrews 11:1 Substance, evidence, says KJV. Sure... certain... says the NIV.
Hebrews 11 is a great faith chapter of the Bible, where the word faith occurs 27 times in 39 verses.
Now though, instead of going to other books of the Bible, what we really need to do is find out what Faith means here in Romans.
I learned in school, before you chase the word down in other books of the Bible find out how it is used in its context. Then see if other books support your conclusions.
Let’s read Romans 4:7-25 Let’s see if we can discover what this chapter says that real faith is.
There are 4 paragraphs in this reading telling us three things faith is not about and then ending with a definition of faith, one that God credits as righteousness.
1. 9-12 tells us that it’s not about circumcision.
2. 13-15 tells us that it’s not about keeping the law.
3. 16-17 tells us that it’s not about a physical relationship with Abraham.
So it is faith: not with circumcision, not by the law, not even through a physical relationship to Abraham…
But what does this faith look like? What is this faith that God saw in Abraham and credited to him as righteousness? This is what we need to know. If we are to be children of Abraham and heirs of the promise of forgiveness, and recipients of the righteousness and justification of God, WE MUST HAVE THIS FAITH. This faith is where we either are approved for God’s credit or not.
So what is it?
This is the fourth paragraph. It is something you have, or you don’t have. It is something that makes the difference in whether we are justified before God or condemned by him. Out of this grows all of our obedience. By this we overcome the world. Through this
we know the grace of God. It is called faith. And faith here defined is that quality that separates the saved from the lost.
Look carefully at verses 18-25.
Look at this!
Abraham in hope believed against all hope. He considered the obstacles to what God had promised and refused to give in to them. Does that mean he never doubted? No. It means that if he did doubt, his doubts were overshadowed by his trust. Faith overshadowed doubt. He trusted God when God spoke. He gave glory to God for what God promised, even when he didn’t have what was promised in hand. Faith is giving God credit for his word. God in turn gives us credit from the cross.
And because his faith was real, it worked. It was that quality of faith in Abraham that responded when God said, "Go sacrifice your son Isaac." It was that hope against hope kind of belief.
His was not an ignorant hope that blindly believed. No. Abraham considered the situation well. He realized that he was way too old to be a dad. Sarah was already receiving social security. 90 years is a bit old for a woman to start having kids. And they had tried to have children for years and finally just gave in to the reality that it wouldn’t happen to them.
Then God said, “You will be the father of many nations.” Abraham could have thought: right… I can’t even father one child, much less a nation of them. This was when Abraham was about 75 years old. But Abraham believed God’s Word!
For the next 25 years every time God spoke to Abraham, he would say things like, “I will make your numbers increase greatly.” “I will make you a father of many nations, I will give you so many offspring you can’t count that high, like the number of stars in the heavens or the number of the grains of sand on the earth.”
It must have seemed almost like a joke. God talked about it like Abraham and Sarah already had a host of offspring. Abraham and Sarah began to think it was pretty funny too. Once Abraham laughed when God said it, Gen. 17:17, and later Sarah laughed too. 18:12.
So God said, when you have this baby, you will call him Laughter. So they named him Isaac, which means, "He laughs."
But it also says of Abraham, he believed God, Abraham gave God credit for his word and God credited it to him as righteousness.
Because Abraham believed God in this way, every time God told him to do anything, what do you think Abraham did? He did what God said.
What made him do it? Faith. Tadaaa! Here it is! This is the kind of faith that God credits as righteousness. Devils believe in God, but they don’t trust God. They don’t do what he says. They know God is real. They know what he can do. But they do not love him or trust him. Abraham’s faith has a certain look about it. A very active quality full of submission and confidence and willingness to heed whatever God said. God’s word to Abraham was as good as done when God spoke. This is the faith God credits as righteousness.
Did Abraham follow God perfectly? Don’t forget about Hagar and Ishmael and the trip to Egypt where he called Sarah his sister to protect his own skin. Also remember that these things occurred AFTER it says He believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness.
Real faith will not make us act perfect. Abraham’s faith didn’t make him perfect either. But real faith will be credited to us as righteousness. It will bring us into a relationship with God where we can grow and develop into the likeness of Christ. Do you believe God?
Have you accepted his offer of payment for your sins? You can, you know. Not by something you do, but by something done to you as you are buried with Jesus Christ and raised to walk with him in newness of life. Through faith, we find the working of God because we give credit to his word and receive his credit of righteousness.
