Romans 3:21-31 But Now

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

Opening Welcome and the Need for Hope in Romans

Well, good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. As David said, I'm Don Filsek. I'm the lead pastor here. And a special welcome to those of you that are maybe here for the first time. I recognize that it can be kind of a dicey thing to check out a new place, and so just glad that you've taken that opportunity and that time.

I encourage you to make yourself comfortable. There's coffee, there's juice, there's donuts at any time during the service. You can take advantage of that. And I hope that you have come this week with coming from a week filled with gratitude and worship to God.

I hope that that's been a characteristic of your week. I recognize that on any given Sunday, we are a gathering of people that are coming from a variety of experiences and a variety of places in our lives right now.

Some of you had a great week, one that's worth writing home about, and things were really clicking for you, and things were going great. And then I also recognize that there are some of you here who are barely hanging on to a shred of sanity.

After a crazy week.

And so we come from a variety of places, and I recognize that. And I would confess that there are times when I come to a text of scripture, and it's the next text that I'm preaching, and I ask myself, why this passage?

Well, I ask myself that every time, but sometimes it's like, why this passage for my congregation on this Sunday? Now, don't get me wrong. I believe that all of it is God's word, and therefore, all of it is beneficial.

All of it is helpful for us. But really, as a church with the core value of truth, meaning that we believe that God's word is true, it might sound strange to have your pastor admit that he thinks like this from time to time.

Now, what is the value of this? What is the benefit of this? Why this passage this week? But our text this morning is, it's pretty technical, and that's part of the question in my mind. Why write about the gospel in such technical language?

It's a text this morning that's very deep, and very thick, and very dense, and can even be a little bit difficult to wrap our minds around. It has big theological words that result in big theological concepts that could easily turn into a vocabulary lesson this week.

Like, okay, let's talk about the words propitiation and redemption, and justification and divine forbearance, and all of these concepts that are gonna be covered in our text this morning. And I could completely understand if someone was sitting here this morning thinking, Don, I don't really feel it this morning.

I don't really feel like what I need is a theology lesson, and I certainly need much less of a vocabulary lesson this morning. What I need is some hope for my marriage that's crumbling, or what I need is some direction for my life as I've got some major life decisions coming up, or what I need is some power to overcome fears and anxieties that have been gripping my life this week, and have been keeping me up at night, or some of you moms are just thinking I could really use some advice on how to make sure I make it out of this next week without being institutionalized, right?

Like, there's some practical things that at the end of the day, it's like, why discuss theology? Why get down into these deeper concepts of the faith? Well, we are gonna need to understand the words this morning.

So just as you think about it being a vocabulary lesson, it's not particularly that. It's so that we understand these bigger concepts, and we do need to understand the big picture of the way that all of these big words and concepts tie into the grand scheme of what God is doing to bring about salvation for an unrighteous and ungodly people, and that's fundamentally because we've been covering a bunch of messages at the start of Romans about how we are ungodly and we are unrighteous people.

But even more so, we need to open our hearts and minds to these first two words in our text because this text marks the shift in the outline of the book of Romans from sin to salvation. We are now going to exit, not completely exit.

We're never gonna completely get done with a conversation about what sin is doing to us, but we're now gonna begin that process of seeing that change, and it begins with these first two words in our text, but now, but now, and that changes everything.

That changes the discussion. Something has changed. There's something new. There's something different. You see, for the past three chapters, Paul has been battering all of us with indictment after indictment after indictment.

We're sin-cursed. We're broken. We're fallen. None of us are righteous. None of us, without Christ, are seeking after God. Not a single one of us, apart from Christ, is capable of doing any God-honoring goodness.

And now that Paul feels satisfied in allowing none of us to escape the implications of our complete and utter depravity before our God, he now kicks off an explanation of the inner workings of the salvation that is found in the gospel with the words, but now.

And this turn in scripture is not here for our academic study. It is here to begin to expose the glorious, breathtaking, life-giving, amazing salvation that God has provided to humanity through his son, Jesus Christ, so that the troubles of this past week and the troubles of this next week and even the deepest and darkest troubles we will face leading up to our very final breath, all of that difficulty will be dwarfed by the magnificence of his glorious grace brought to us who have faith in his son, Jesus Christ, for our salvation.

So I'm convinced that if we think correctly about these things, if we take this message on, it is eminently practical to our day-to-day lives. These things that are presented in these 11 verses have the power to release us to a lifetime filled with joy and peace, regardless of the storm swirling all around us.

And I'm gonna do exactly what I told you Jesus did for the thief on the cross last week. Jesus didn't heal him physically, he didn't take him down from the cross, but instead he offered him reconciliation with the Father and the promise of eternity with him.

I cannot stand up here and give you what you think you need. I can only stand up here and give you what God declares that you and I need, and I seek to do that one passage at a time. And so that is the charge that is placed on my shoulders each and every Sunday, is to step up here and say what God says.

Not what we think we want him to say, not what we feel we want him to say, but what he actually says to us. And so open your Bibles to Romans 3, verses 21 through 31. Starting in 21 all the way through the end of this chapter, we're gonna read that together.

So open up in a device, if you've got a device to navigate there, your own Bible, you can grab a Bible and there's a seat in front of you.

If you have no other way.

I recognize that's really small print, but if that's the only way you can follow along, then grab that, your scripture journal, whatever. Recast, this is God's precious and glorious word written to us, and ultimately a word that is brought to us this morning for the purpose of transforming us internally, to change us, to give us hope, to give us encouragement, to give us correction, and to help us to understand most importantly how he has saved us.

Starting in verse 21. 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.

For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and 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 God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he has passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? 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. Or is God the God of the Jews only?

Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the book of Romans and this letter that was written by Paul, inspired by your spirit to guide us and direct us into the truth of just the magnificent mysteries of the internal workings of salvation and the way that you brought about a salvation for us that would result in our justification, would result in us being declared righteous and acquitted in your court of law, as we will one day stand in judgment before you, but acquitted based on receiving the righteousness of Christ and that you did so in a way that upholds your righteousness as well.

And so, Father, I pray that as we come with a variety of concerns, some of them that may not seem to be addressed directly by this text, I pray that you would open our eyes to see that they all are. Every need that we have, every substantial and significant need that our existence, our soul requires, is found in these 11 verses.

Everything that you have done for us that will have any eternal significance is found here. And so, Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to that truth, and Father, if there's anyone, if there is anyone here who this is a mystery to, that their eyes have not been opened to the reality of the meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ, that today might be a day of salvation for some.

And for those of us who are here resting in you, I pray that you would give us delight and joy to rehearse these things, Father. The gospel is not the appetizer. It is the full main course. It is the entire meal that you have laid out before us.

And I pray that you would help us to feast on it this morning as your people. I pray that as the people who are redeemed by your Son, Father, that we would lift our voices now in worship and praise to you.

Father, that these songs would be a reflection of our hearts and that the words would become adopted by our hearts in an effort to genuinely honor you and glorify you above ourselves. I thank you for this band, and I ask that you would help them to fade into the background as that is their wish, but that at the end of the day, we would all see you as high and exalted and sing our praises to you this morning in Jesus' name.

Well, you can go ahead and be seated. And a big thanks to David Schrock for filling in for Dave Bunt in his absence. So, I think I actually saw Dave.

Kind of sneaking in back there.

So, but maybe don't shake his hand this morning.

He's not, he's out a little bit, so.

But glad that you're here. And make yourself comfortable. Keep your Bibles open to Romans chapter three, verses 21 through 31. That's gonna be our text this morning. And so, we're gonna dive back into that.

And as we already read it, just have that open and on your lap so that you can follow along. And then remember, if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, use the restrooms.

The restrooms are out the barn doors, down the hallway on the left-hand side there. But our goal is to keep our focus on God's word and to hear from him. Not to hear from Don, not to hear my message, not to hear my sermon, but really ultimately open your hearts even now to what God wants to say to you through this text.

And my hope and prayer every week is that God would just use me as a conduit through which his word would come to you and become alive to your context and where you live. And so, Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, not Martin Luther King Jr., but Martin Luther, the great German reformer of the Roman Catholic Church, called verses 21 through 26 of our text, the ones that we're looking at this morning, this is what he said of this text.

Now remember, he was transforming the world by coming back to the gospel. The church had gone astray into all kinds of works, all kinds of things that you had to do.

In order to be saved,.

And all the hoops you had to jump through, even down to how much you had to attend church and what church you needed to be connected to and all of that. And so this is what he said of the verses 21 through 26 of our text.

He said this is the, quote, the chief point and the very central place of this epistle. That is, he's talking about the letter to the Romans. But then he goes on to add this phrase,.

And of the whole Bible.

The central text. Martin Luther declared this, and his opinion, of course we're talking about a man, we're talking about another human, but he said this is the most important text. This is the hinge point of the entirety of the Bible.

Now that's a pretty extreme statement. How many of you think that that's a pretty extreme statement to say about anything? I mean, it gets your attention. When somebody as notable and as scholarly as Martin Luther is saying this, I'm gonna pay attention to it.

But I'm also not gonna just take it wholesale. I'm gonna try to figure out why he's saying that. Although it seems like an exaggeration, because how many of you know that already, you already knew, raise your hand if you already knew that all of the Bible is important.

All of the Bible is important. So why does it matter if this is, is this more significant than other passages? Is this more valuable? But I would agree with him on this one simple point. We find in these six verses of our text, we're gonna look at 11 of them, but in those first six, we find the most concise explanation of the way that the gospel works.

The way that the gospel works. This is explaining why the gospel is able to save you. That's the point of this text. In context of all the crud, all the mess that we've looked at over the last several weeks going through the book of Romans,.

All of the mess of our lives,.

You ought to have finished last week going. How can a person be saved? How is it possible that God could remain righteous.

And set us off the hook?

How could it be that we could be set free? How is it possible that someone as evil and as wicked and corrupted as I am could be acquitted in any way, shape, or form from the almighty, holy, righteous God?

How could he set me free? How am I not condemned is the question that this text is gonna set out to seek to answer for us this morning. After spending nearly three chapters clarifying the desperate need of humanity for a salvation from outside of ourselves, Paul is now going to launch into a couple of chapters describing the way that God has reached down to rescue us, and it all begins in this first two words of our text, but now, as I said in the introduction.

A major shift here occurs in verse 21. The focus is shifting from the darkness of our unrighteousness and our ungodliness to the righteousness of God being manifested in the salvation of his people. In verses 21 through 26, in Pauline fashion, this is one of the fun things about taking apart God's word and trying to figure it out from the basics of the original languages and trying to dissect it and figure out.

Verses 21 through 26 are one long run-on sentence in Greek. That's what Paul loves to do. He tacks on all kinds of clauses and subordinate clauses and all kinds of things in there, and so I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful for translators that break those clauses down into smaller sentences for us and try to use prepositions to show and to demonstrate the way that they relate to one another, because otherwise, if this was all written in one long sentence, you'd have a hard time keeping all the pieces together.

It's hard to keep all that in your mind at once, trying to figure out what the relationship of these clauses and phrases are together, so I'm glad for translators who break that down for us, but verse 21 sets the backdrop of our salvation in the character of God, and this is really important.

It's important where Paul begins when he's setting out to describe the gospel, which is the purpose of the book of Romans. When he sets out to explain that, he begins with God and his righteousness. We might be tempted to think that God's salvation of people starts with us, that it begins in a sense with our importance or our value or something like that, and it's not that at all.

See, we might think that the starting point of salvation is wow, God was in a catch -22, because he really, he let us go and needed to get us back,.

And that's not the case.

He saved us. You see, the mindset might be there that he saved us, therefore we must be special, but the reality is, to think of it this way, he saved us, he must be special. There's a book that I read a few years ago called Cat and Dog Theology.

Any of you ever heard of that, Cat and Dog Theology? The funny notion behind that is a cat says, you feed me, you love me, you pet me, I must be God, okay? The dog says, you feed me, you love me, you pet me, you take care of my every need, you must be God.

You see the difference? How do we approach God in those terms? Do we think, wow, he blesses us, he does great things for us, he saves us, we must be awesome, or do we say, wow, you did all that for something like me?

You must be awesome, and so the way that he starts with the righteousness of God being manifested, do you think of your salvation as an expression of God himself, his character? It's saying much more about him than it is about us, that he would reach down and save us, that's the point.

And we see it stated clearly that his salvation of humanity has been an expression of his righteousness. He is showing us his character of justice, even in the method, even in the way that he has brought about salvation.

We know he is holy and righteous by the cross of Jesus Christ. You can be assured that if there was some other way that he could save us and remain just and righteous, he would have done it that way. But his holy righteousness requires the expression of wrath and judgment toward all sin.

Therefore, all sin had to be punished. Even that for which we will no longer give an account for, it had to be punished, it had to be reconciled. And that's what the cross is all about. So in verse 21, we also see another important character of this salvation.

It is simply this, that it has been manifested apart from the law. Over the last few chapters, Paul has been going, over the last couple chapters, Paul has been going to the nth degree to try to explain to us that you cannot save yourself.

You cannot be good enough, you cannot obey laws enough, you can't follow and cross all your t's and dot all your i's and bring about your own salvation. It's not the way that it works. And so this salvation is manifested apart from the law, a major theme that he's gonna be carrying forward in the next couple of weeks in this text, really talking, mining down deeper into what is faith.

But even though the law pointed to, he's gonna say the law has a role to play, and even by the end of our text, he's gonna say, no, by being saved by faith, it doesn't abolish the law, it doesn't nullify the law, it actually upholds it to some degree.

But even though the law here is said to point to salvation, coming through the Messiah, the law is not the means of salvation. The law points to the need for salvation,.

But it doesn't save.

Ravi Zacharias said it this way, it was really interesting because I just, I stumbled upon this, somebody had a clip of Ravi Zacharias responding to a Muslim student in one of the video that I watched this week, somebody posted it on Facebook, so I watched it, and I was like, that's my message, that's crazy,.

I'm gonna use that.

So this is from Ravi, but he's responding to a Muslim student who stood up at one of his debates. How many of you know Ravi Zacharias? Am I just, a handful of you. He's an apologist, Indian man, Indian American, who has just brilliant mind.

But this Muslim stood up and said, hey, our law is comprehensive, it tells you how to brush your teeth, okay? It tells you everything about your life. Your law, your rules are mamby-pamby as Christians.

What you have isn't comprehensive. How do you reconcile that with the law? And Ravi Zacharias said, well, we see the law differently. You believe that the law is for your salvation, but we believe that the law points us to the need for a savior, and he went on with this illustration.

He said, the law is like a mirror. How many of you have heard that illustration before? The law is like a mirror. It shows you who you are. You look into it, you gaze into the law, it reflects back to you how you fall short.

So in a sense, it's like a mirror. You look into the mirror, and a mirror performs its duty consistently. If it's clean, if it's a good law, if it's a good rule, it shows you that your face is dirty. Just say, you've been out working in the yard, you come in, you look in the mirror, your face is all scrubby, you're gonna have guests, so you need to get cleaned up.

So you look in the mirror, and it says, yes, you are dirty. But nobody then, says Ravi, nobody then goes to rub their face on the mirror to get clean. That's not how you get clean.

All that the mirror is good for.

Is showing you that you are dirty, and that you need some soap, you need something to wash your face with. The mirror shows the problem, but you need something else to make you clean. And think about the way that the Old Testament does that for us.

The Old Testament is rich. I meet people all the time, and there's even some of you that have said to me before, I'm a New Testament kind of person. I don't like the Old Testament, it doesn't make sense to me.

I get in there, I get lost, I just get, you know.

Or even the other flip side, I just like the stories, just give me the stories. I like the Old Testament for the stories, for those Sunday school classes or whatever. But think about how the Old Testament, what it shows us regarding the salvation that was to come.

So much rich depth in the way that it foreshadows and tells us about what the Messiah was gonna be like and what salvation was gonna be like. There was the pledge all the way back in Genesis 3 to Eve and the guard that one born of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

A rich and beautiful picture of the salvation that was to come. Abraham was given the promise that one of his descendants would be raised up to be a blessing to all the nations. An image and a picture that for their time and for their era that was saying, this is not a Jewish thing.

This is a worldwide scope of salvation.

All the way back in the Old Testament being clarified.

You have the Passover lamb, all the imagery that goes into the Passover where the blood was sprinkled and then the firstborn was saved through the sprinkling and the shedding of blood. David was promised one from his royal line that would sit on the throne of an eternal kingdom.

This is not just a kingdom for this earth, an eternal kingdom that would go on forever and ever. All of these amazing promises, the day of atonement, the Old Testament Jewish holiday and festival, the day of atonement foreshadowed the need of the wrath of the father to be appeased by sacrifice.

And even that entire sacrificial system of the temple and the tabernacle showed the need for the shedding of blood for the removal of sins. All that rich history and the depth of the, we don't throw out the law, we don't throw out the Old Testament because hey, we live under grace now.

No, we read it to study it, to see the beauty and the glory of the way that God has unfolded this awesome, awesome, global, cosmic story all the way begun back in Genesis. And by the way, these things that I've shared here are just scratching the surface of the ways that the Old Testament points to the way that God would express his righteousness through saving us, as Paul mentions here in Romans.

Really, verse 21.

But verse 22 goes on to clarify the most pointed, pointedly, in a pointed way, that this righteousness of God is available for all. It's available for everybody, anyone. It's available for all, but not applied to all.

We see that in verse 22. You might start off reading this text and say, doesn't it not imply that everybody is under this grace, that everybody receives the righteousness of God in Christ? Notice the delineation between those who have the righteousness of God and those who do not.

And it's stated twice in two different ways in verse 22. To say that there's something that delineates, there is indeed a barrier between those who are children of God, redeemed, and those who are not, and it is this simple, these two phrases in verse 22.

Through faith in Jesus Christ.

Faith is the delineator.

And then second of all, it goes on to say,.

For all who believe.

Faith and belief in Jesus Christ is the line between being made righteous in Christ and sitting in your own unrighteousness and ungodliness before the judgment seat of God. The way of salvation, the way that it's applied to an individual's life is through faith.

And we're gonna talk a lot coming up in the next couple of messages about what faith is, but remember that faith, for the purposes of this text, is remember that it's an open-handed, empty-handed approach to God.

It is a way that comes to God and says, I have nothing to offer in exchange for the free gift that you would give me in your son, Jesus Christ. That is what faith is. It is by nature the very open-handed approach to God.

And Paul now goes on to state that all need this righteousness from God that comes by faith in Jesus Christ, because all of us are in the same boat. And he's gonna reemphasize some of the major themes that he's clarified for us in the last couple of chapters, but he's gonna restate in a different way in verse 23.

He's beaten that reality into us over the last couple chapters, but he recaps for us by saying, beginning at the end of verse 22, there is no distinction. In other words, by saying there is no distinction, there's nobody that has a special in with God.

There are no VIP backstage passes given in this case for the special people in the world. Nobody gets through the doors based on any other standard than having the ticket of faith in Jesus Christ and his blood covering your sins.

All must come through the door of faith in Jesus Christ, because all have sinned and all are falling short of the glory of God. In verse 23, he covers both our behavior, the way we act, and our status, our very being, the essence of who we are.

He begins by saying all of us have sinned. It's an interesting point because he reverses this sometimes. Sometimes he talks about our heart first and then goes to the behavior. This time he chooses to deal with the behavior first.

We've all committed actions, we've all sinned, all have sinned, all have committed actions, behaviors, thoughts, and failures that are an affront and condemnable in the face of our holy creator. But further, we're all in a state, it goes on to say, of falling short of his glory.

Another way of explaining this is just to remind ourselves of where we've been, that none of us do righteousness, but none of us are righteous, he had said earlier in chapter three. Every single human has not reached their potential.

We have not come close to the glory that God has designed us for. Did you already know that? And further, we haven't scratched the surface of his glory. Not only are we not like him, but we're not even what he wants us to be, what he's designed us to be yet.

And the verb in the Greek for fall short here is a present tense verb meaning simply that all humanity is in a perpetually fallen state. That defines our lives, perpetually fallen. We are moment by moment coming up short of the glory to which we ought to attain.

And that flavors your definition of sin a bit, doesn't it? Perpetually and always short of what you were meant to be. That's the status of the human heart, aside from the righteousness, the gift of righteousness from Christ.

We bear his image, but we are broken mirrors, always casting a broken and unrecognizable image.

Of the glory of our creator.

We were made to represent him to the created world, and instead, we consistently misrepresent him.

To others around us.

And that's, by the way, one of the things, just a little side note, that's one of the beautiful things about Christ. He's called the image of the invisible God. He is the perfect mirror, the one who perfectly images his father to us.

And he came to live among us. He is what we were made to be, and that's why we talk in terms of the Christian life being more and more like Christ. Christlikeness as a goal of the spirit of God alive in us, that we would live out his meekness, his kindness, his forbearance, his love, his anger at sin, all of the things that he showed us in his life here on this earth.

Those are the things that the spirit is seeking to work in us and through us. We are meant to image the glory of the father, and if you want to know the glory of the father,.

Look to the son.

And one day, one glorious, precious day, church,.

We will be like him. We will be like him,.

Because of what comes next in the text. Really, verses 21 through 23 have shown the overall solution to the problem, the problem back in chapter one, verse 18. It's been one long argument, and it's gonna be one long argument throughout the book of Romans, so it's beneficial for us to go back and identify what Paul has said is the problem that faces every single one of us.

Well, some of you are thinking, my boss is the problem, or my kids are the problem, or my parents are the problem, or this illness is the problem, but he's identified the real problem, the biggest problem, the deepest problem that any human faces, and that is that the wrath of God is being poured out on all unrighteousness and ungodliness.

How many of you see that as a problem? That's a big problem, especially for those of us that have woken up and finally realized, I am unrighteous, I am ungodly. Wait, what did the text say? His wrath is being poured out on the unrighteous and on the ungodly, and it will be in a finality in condemnation at the end of time.

And so that's the problem that these verses are seeking to resolve. But now, we in our unrighteousness, we in our ungodliness, but now the righteousness of God is available to all through faith in Jesus Christ.

This solves our problem. We as an unrighteous humanity are under the wrath of a holy God, but now by faith in Jesus,.

We can receive the very righteousness,.

The very righteousness of God himself. How does that work? What could Jesus have possibly done to divert the wrath of God from us who deserve it? I'm glad you asked. Because now, verses 24 through 26.

Are gonna go on to explain.

The amazing way that salvation has been worked so that God remains both gracious and still righteous, merciful and still just. In verses 24 through 25, Paul gives the mechanism of salvation. He's giving us the inner workings of it.

And before we dive deep into some of these technical terms that he's gonna say here, I wanna be sure that you understand why this even matters. Because we can talk about terms like propitiation and justification and redemption and all of those things and define them and you can write them in your little journal or whatever and walk away going, I learned something.

I learned how to define this word or whatever. There is no other mechanism by which a person will be declared righteous on the final day of judgment aside from understanding these things. This is the white hot reactor core of the Christian life.

And either you have these things that we're talking about.

Or you are under the wrath of God.

There is no middle ground. There is no halfway saved. So buckle up and let's dive deep into the most fundamental, most basic of truths that we can ever discuss. Things that we ought to never outgrow. Things that we ought to never, I feel it sometimes and I see it.