Romans 3:27-31

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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through 31. We've come to the end of chapter 3. We're chugging along.

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We've been in Romans less than six months, so I think we're at a good pace.

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I mentioned before that Romans is written late in Paul's life, which is why there's so much packed into it.

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Galatians and Corinthians and all of the other epistles that Paul has written all culminate in the book of Romans.

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We're not to the toughest parts yet, but we'll get there.

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I'm going to start reading in verse 21, a quick overview.

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Verse 21 starts, "...but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show

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God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

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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.

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Then what becomes of our boasting? Is it excluded by what kind of law?

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By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the

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God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

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Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold it.

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Verse 27. Then what becomes of our boasting?

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Is it excluded by what kind of law? By a law of works?

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No, by the law of faith. God has worked in such a way to render humanity incapable of boasting or bragging in his own righteousness.

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It is, as Paul says, excluded. But how? Is it excluded by work?

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No, not at all, as works would only allow the opposite to take place.

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It would allow us to boast. If we could do anything at all, we could boast in that.

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But Paul says no, by the law of faith. That is, faith in the salvific work of Christ on the cross.

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That he is our Savior. Now to bring in James here also, that is a fruitful faith.

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It's not just someone who prays a prayer and takes a dunk and then continues to live the same exact life that they lived before, showing no fruit.

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It is a fruitful faith. First Corinthians 1 29 to 31 says, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God, and because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let no one who boasts boast, let the one who boasts boast in the

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Lord, because there is no work that can be done by us that will earn salvation, and because the work of salvation has been done by Christ, and he has done this to save us.

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We cannot boast in ourselves for salvation, nor can we boast in anything else. There is the salvific work of Christ our

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Lord, and there is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. That is it.

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And I say that because human beings in our natural state are wholly prideful, and in our sinful state we are prideful.

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There are natural tendency when we finally, let's say finally, when

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God graces us with the gift of actually doing good, we pride ourselves in it.

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We must make sure that we check ourselves and understand that we would not be doing the good that we do were it not for the grace of God and the work of the

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Holy Spirit. Give me just a moment.

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Okay. Matthew Henry on this says, Now if justification were by the works of the law, boasting would not be excluded.

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How should it? If we were saved by our own works, we might put the crown upon our own heads, but the law of faith, that is the way of justification by faith, doth forever exclude boasting, for faith is a depending, self -emptying, self -denying grace, and cast every crown before the throne.

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Therefore it is most for God's glory that thus we should be justified.

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Observe. He speaks of the law of faith. Believers are not left lawless.

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Faith is a law. It is a working of grace. Wherever it is in truth, and yet because it acts in a strict and close dependence upon Jesus Christ, it excludes boasting.

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Verse 28. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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Just in case Paul has not been totally and completely clear so far in this epistle, he reiterates again that the most wonderful doctrine, or he reiterates that most wonderful doctrine that is both sublime and unequivocally true, that we are justified by faith alone and Christ alone, for the glory of God alone.

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Acts 13 38 and 39 says, Let it be known to you therefore brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

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It is by the grace of God that we are justified. It is the wonderful gift of God that we are given not just a faith, not just a faith, but a faith in Christ and His work.

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And as I said before, I'll say it again, this is not a faith that is devoid of works.

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It is a fruitful faith. On that,

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Luther said many things. One of the things he's most notable for saying is that this doctrine of justification by faith alone is the article by which the church stands or falls.

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This is the difference. This is the difference between the Protestant Church and the

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Catholic Church. Catholics teach that you're justified through works.

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Every other religion on the face of the planet requires justification by works.

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Every cult, every faith, all of it is works -based.

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There is but one that says it's already been done.

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29. Or is God the God of Jews only?

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Is God the God of Jews only? There are two perspectives that you can make in this argument that Paul is making, and I'll make both of them here.

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The first perspective is from the Greeks who would be reading this, that God could be only the

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God of terrestrial Jews, the Jews that live in Israel, that He is the

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God of Israel. In the ancient

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Near East, it was believed that gods very often were tied to the soil of the land to which they made claim.

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This is predominant across many, many, many nations over millennia.

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This is why Naaman, that we heard about before, asked for two mule loads of soil.

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He's a Syrian, so he comes and gets healed of his leprosy, and what does he want to do?

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He wants to carry back from Israel so that he can build an altar to worship the

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God of Israel, because if he doesn't have the soil, he can't do that. God is, to him, confined to the state of Israel, period.

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God doesn't act outside the borders, so he has to bring something back with him.

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So is God the God of the land of the Jews only?

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No. The other perspective is that of the

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Jews, that they had some sort of special privilege through circumcision, through the giving of the law, that simply by their ethnicity, they were somehow better.

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They were marked. They didn't have to do anything other than they were already told.

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Is he the God of the Jews only, as Paul states? Well, let's take a look.

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This is gonna get flippy floppy, and they're short, so you don't have to flip with me if you don't want, but let's take a look at Genesis 1 .1.

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If he was just the God of Israel, how could he have created the heavens and the earth?

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If he created the universe, then obviously he's the God of the universe. He's outside of time and space, and if we need one more,

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Psalm 135 6, God... my apologies,

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I skipped ahead of myself. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on the earth, in the seas and all the deeps.

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Sounds like the God of the universe. Now, I could go on and on and on, but how many times in Scripture has

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God acted outside of Israel? I doubt Abraham had some dirt in his pocket.

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He's not the God of the Jews only. He existed in eternity. He simply chose them out amongst the people of the world to reveal himself and reveal the law and give them prophets, so he's not the

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God of the Jews only. Where have...

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sorry, I keep wanting to skip ahead of myself. Is he the

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God of Gentiles also? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?

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Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one. Where have we heard that before?

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God is one. Deuteronomy 6 verse 4,

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Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Paul's making specific reference to this, a reminder that God is one

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God who is sovereign over all things, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

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God justifies both Jews and Greeks with the same means, the same means, and always has through faith, and if there are those who wish at some point to argue the difference between the words by and through, let me clarify that practically speaking in the way that Paul used them here, there is no difference.

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There is as much difference between his use of the word by and through, then there's a difference between a duck and a mallard.

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He is talking about the means by which people are saved. In verse 29 and 30,

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Paul is again coming up against this idea that there is a difference between Jews and Greeks, and it's not just Jews and Greeks, it's all peoples.

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Now why, may you ask, is Paul consistently addressing the difference, or the lack thereof?

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The answer is that Paul had to. He had to constantly fight against this everywhere he went.

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You see it in every epistle. Ethnic segregation was a constant problem that he had to call out, most notably with another apostle.

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Notice that I said ethnic, not racial. I simply,

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I don't like the word race. That's not what the word race means.

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There is one race. There is the race of Adam, and within the race of Adam, there are multiple ethnicities.

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The Jews fancied themselves better or higher in the eyes of God because of their traditions.

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This is a long -standing issue that the Gentiles hated them for.

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Not converts. Unconverted Greeks. They hated them for it.

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How is it that you can go into a place in a time when most people ate in mass gatherings and segregate yourself from everyone else?

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How does that make everyone else feel? It would irritate them.

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You've been in a high school lunchroom. It's irritating enough. Can you imagine with adults? But after the conversion of the

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Gentiles, it did not go away as quickly as it ought to have. This is something that he constantly had to address, was the tradition of the

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Jews eating by themselves. So in these places, you had converted

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Jews segregating themselves from converted Greeks. And Paul says, what are you doing?

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We are all one in Christ. Theologically, there is one

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God with one means of salvation, and he is the God of all who believe in Christ Jesus, no matter who they are or where they're from.

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Paul also addresses this in Romans 10. So you're jumping ahead of myself.

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Romans 10, 10 through 13, Paul says, for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

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For the Scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.

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For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same

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Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the

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Lord will be saved. There is no one who is justified by anything other than the gift of faith in Christ our

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Lord. Verse 31. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

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By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law Paul here is addressing another issue that he's constantly coming to contact with.

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This is a teaching called antinomianism. This was taught by many false teachers, notably to Alexander and Hymenaeus.

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Hymenaeus went a little bit further, but the idea is that we have been saved, therefore we cannot sin.

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The moral law is void, overthrown, and we don't have to worry about it.

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We can do whatever we want. We're saved. We're good. But on the contrary, we now have the ability, as Paul says, to uphold the law.

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We can now properly use it as a judge, or we can now properly use it to judge the past, the present, and the future of ourselves and others, and recognize that this is the rule by which our sovereign

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Lord Christ also judges. In this way, we now know that the law can be used to show others that they, in fact, also need a

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Savior. This also means that now that we are indwelt with the

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Holy Spirit through his sanctifying work in us, he will help us to be able to keep the law more and more.

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That doesn't mean that we do not sin, or that we will ever be sinless, but that we will become more mature

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Christians as life goes on.

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Our life will be marked by growing in holiness and obedience through sanctification, not because it is necessary to be obedient to the law for salvation, but we are more obedient to it out of gratitude and love for our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Because he did for us, we do for him as he commands.

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Calvin says, For the moral law is in reality confirmed and established through faith in Christ, and as much as it was given for this end to lend man to Christ, or to lead man to Christ by showing him his iniquity, and without this it cannot be fulfilled, and in vain will it require what ought to be done, nor can it do anything but irritate lust more and more, and thus finally increase man's condemnation.

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But where there is a coming to Christ, there is first found in him the perfect righteousness of the law, which becomes ours by imputation, and then there is sanctification by which our hearts are prepared to keep the law.

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It is indeed imperfectly done, but there is an aiming at the work.

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Similar is the case with ceremonies, which indeed cease and vanish away when

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Christ comes, but they are in reality confirmed by him.

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For when they are viewed in themselves, they are vain and shadowy images, and then only do they attain anything real and solid when their end is regarded.

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In this then consists their chief confirmation, when they have obtained their accomplishment in Christ.

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Let us then also bear in mind so to dispense the gospel by our mode of teaching the law may be confirmed, but let it be sustained by no other strength than that of faith in Christ.

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This is a short one, so I'll end it here. I'll end with John 14 15 through 24, the words of our

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Lord. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the

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Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the

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Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

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You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans.

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I will come to you yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me, because I live.

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You also will live. In that day you will know that I am in the

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Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my

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Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas, not

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Iscariot, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?

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Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my

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Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

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Whoever does not love us, whoever does not love me, does not keep my word, and the word that you hear is not mine, but the