Phil Johnson Sermon: How God's Righteousness Is Manifested - [Romans 3:19-26]

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. All right,

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Romans 3 is our text. I'll get right into it, because I want to explore the theme of righteousness.

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It's a familiar word with obvious theological connotations, but I am convinced that the great majority of church members these days don't actually understand what that word means at all.

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And so I want to explore the biblical meaning of the word righteousness, and let's see how the

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Bible uses it, and then we'll look at this passage, which really is the key turning point in all of Scripture with regard to the subject of righteousness, the righteousness of God in particular, a major theme throughout

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Scripture. And in fact, it's such a consistent thread running through the

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Bible that I could actually more than fill our time this morning just by tracing those passages that deal with divine righteousness from Genesis to Revelation.

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If you're paying attention during the Scripture reading, it was a thread that runs through Genesis 6, which we were reading, and I would love to trace the idea of righteousness through all of Scripture, but I won't, because it would just take too long.

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But I do want to start by paying close attention to how the word righteousness is used and what it means in those principal

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Old Testament texts where you find that word being used. That I think will help you to begin to understand what this means in a biblical context, because it's such a profound concept.

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And then I want to spend the majority of our time looking at one important New Testament passage here in Romans 3, starting with verse 19, and we'll cover about seven verses in more or less overview fashion.

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So if you want to go ahead and turn to Romans 3 and then put a bookmark or a finger there, because before we actually get into this passage from Romans 3, we're going to survey a couple of other passages that help us understand how the

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Bible uses this word righteousness. When we hear the word righteousness, most of us think of something like moral perfection.

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And moral perfection is by all means essential to real righteousness.

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To be righteous is to be good rather than evil, or virtuous rather than sinful.

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And that's all quite true, but actually that just skims the surface of what the expression righteousness means in scripture.

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Although the biblical term is rich with meaning, let me start with just a simple definition and a few words.

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I'd like to say, I'd like to give you a definition that's short enough to take down if you wanted to, but really this word is too complex for that.

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So don't try to write this down. Just listen and get the idea. Righteousness is perfect consistency with and faithfulness to all of the moral precepts of God's law.

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Again, I told you you couldn't write it down, and don't try, it's too long, but I'll say it once more, and listen for the sense of it, and then if you want to write it down, you can get the recording.

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I assume they're recording this. So once more, righteousness is perfect consistency with and faithfulness to all of the moral precepts of God's law.

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That encompasses a vast array of ideas, especially justice, and virtue, and goodness, and faithfulness.

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In fact, I use that word, take note of this and we'll come back to it. The key word in that definition

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I just gave you is faithfulness. I think we can best begin to understand righteousness as an attribute of God if we listen to what scripture says about what

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God's righteousness demands from us. When Moses gave the law to Israel, he said in Deuteronomy 6, verses 24 and 25, the

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Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God, and it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the

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Lord our God as he has commanded us. Now, you notice the vast sweep of what

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Moses just said there. We have to be careful to do all of the commandments God has given.

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Here's the key point. Moral perfection is an essential aspect of the biblical idea of righteousness, but we need to be even more specific.

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There is a legal aspect to authentic righteousness. To be righteous is to be in right relationship with God's eternal moral law, and thus with God himself.

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And so there's that legal aspect of it. It is the boundaries of righteousness are determined and defined by the law

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God has given us. One other thing. True righteousness is always both personal and relational.

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Here's what I mean by that. Bearing in mind everything we've said so far, you need to understand that authentic righteousness is not only or even primarily about our relationship to the law, but more importantly, it is about our relationship to God.

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And here's why I said faithfulness is the key word in that definition. There is this personal and relational aspect of authentic righteousness that is summed up in the concept of faithfulness.

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So in fact, listen to the definition one last time. Righteousness is perfect consistency with and faithfulness to all of the moral precepts of God's law.

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Now when you consider righteousness then as an attribute of God, what we're recognizing is that God himself is perfectly consistent with and faithful to his own moral eternal law.

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And that is true by definition because the moral law is an expression of God's character.

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The law teaches us, and this is the purpose of the law, to teach us in precepts that we can easily grasp what the moral character of God is like.

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He is perfectly righteous. And since he's also immutable, he's not subject to change in other words, he always acts in a way that is consistent with the righteous standard he demands of us.

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He cannot lie, according to Titus 1 verse 2. It's impossible for God to lie,

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Hebrews 6 .18. He cannot deny himself, 2 Timothy 2 .13,

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Isaiah 5 .16. The holy God shows himself holy in righteousness,

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Daniel 9 .14. The Lord our God is righteous in all the works that he has done.

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In other words, God is faithful and he's faithful in several senses.

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Number one, he doesn't break his own promises. He doesn't go back on his word. To do that would be to lie.

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He doesn't say one thing and do another. He keeps his covenants. He's faithful and he's faithful to his own moral precepts.

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He's not like the Pharisees whose obedience to the law was cosmetic, it was merely external.

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They were faithless, but by contrast, God is faithful in every sense of the word.

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And that kind of faithfulness is essential to the true meaning of the word righteousness.

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External mechanical obedience to the law is not truly righteous. You could externally obey the law, the

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Pharisees are the classic example of this, and still be unrighteous. The Pharisees' style of righteousness, what they thought was righteousness, didn't really involve conformity to the law at all because the law demands a faithful heart.

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God himself is by nature faithful, and so naturally he demands faithfulness from us.

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Now, think this through. If righteousness is perfect consistency with and faithfulness to the moral precepts of God's law, if that's the definition of righteousness, and it is, then righteousness is laden with legal ramifications.

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It has to do with the law, and let's be honest, from the sinner's point of view, that is a frightening reality, and it's supposed to be.

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It won't do to try to tone it down by redefining the righteousness of God or softening what we think he demands from us.

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The bottom line is that God's righteousness sets up a seemingly impassable barrier for fallen humanity.

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We have no capacity to measure up to the righteous standard God demands from us.

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We can't do it. We've already sinned. We are already guilty. We are already under the condemnation of the law.

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So from our perspective as fallen creatures, the very idea of divine righteousness conjures up the horrifying prospect of judgment.

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And in fact, one of the close synonyms of the word righteousness is justice.

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Those words are, in fact, interchangeable in many contexts, righteousness and justice, the same thing.

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Nothing is more clear in the Bible than the truth that God's law demands justice, perfect justice, including, of course, punishment for evildoers.

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And for that reason, when the Old Testament speaks of the righteousness of God, there is often, very frequently in the

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Old Testament, an immediate connection to the idea of divine judgment. Genesis 18 .5,

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Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is righteous? Psalm 7 .11,

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God is a righteous judge, a God who feels indignation every day. Psalm 9 .4

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says, God sits on the throne giving righteous judgment. So you see, in the Old Testament, this idea of righteousness is closely and deliberately connected with the idea of divine judgment.

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Verse 8, He judges the world with righteousness. He judges the people with uprightness. Psalm 50 .6,

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The heavens declare his righteousness for God himself is judge. Psalm 96 .13,

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He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the earth in righteousness. Acts 17 .31,

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God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness. And that means that when the law speaks of righteousness, it essentially is bad news.

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Righteousness demands justice under the law. And so for those of us who have broken

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God's law, justice means condemnation and eternal punishment. It's no wonder that sinners recoil at the idea of righteousness.

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But the law is not the only message from God that has righteousness as its central theme.

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According to the Apostle Paul, God's righteousness is also the central theme of the gospel.

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You ever thought about that? Romans 1, verses 16 and 17. You know these verses.

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That famous statement from Paul where he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

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Now listen. For in it, that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

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And in the gospel, the righteousness of God becomes good news. And in fact, it's great news.

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It's the best news ever. That's the whole point Paul is making in the context of our passage in Romans 3.

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And he demonstrates with uncanny meticulousness that God's righteousness is revealed in the gospel.

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But as Paul tells it, it doesn't start out sounding like good news.

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Because beginning in Romans 1, Paul spends the next two and a half chapters speaking about the universality of sin and guilt.

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And he proves from the Old Testament that everyone, and he breaks them into categories, pagans, moral

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Gentiles, and Jews as well, all of them, all of humanity, everyone is guilty under the law.

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But in the passage we're looking at this morning, Romans 3 .19 -26, this is the turning point where Paul transitions from talking about righteousness under the law, and he begins to help us understand how

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God's righteousness is also relevant to the gospel. And if you truly understand what

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Paul is saying here, I guarantee you will come away loving the righteousness of God.

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So let's look at our passage. Now, first a bit of context. Romans, you know, is

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Paul's longest, most systematic discourse on the gospel. His aim is to show how the gospel manifests the righteousness of God through the salvation of sinners.

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And righteousness is the key word in all of Romans. As a matter of fact, you could break this whole epistle down into three major segments, where he's making this three -point argument, starting in chapter 1 through verse 20 of chapter 3.

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He's talking about the problem of sin. That's why there's so much focus on sin and the universality of human guilt in those early chapters of Romans.

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He basically condemns the entire human race for living in defiance of the law and the will of God.

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And again, his point is that we are all condemned according to every conceivable standard of true righteousness as righteousness is defined by the law.

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So that first section of Romans, three chapters or so, two -and -a -half chapters, you could title that Righteousness Defied by the

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Sin of Human Man, Righteousness Defied. And then he spends the next eight -and -a -half chapters, really the heart of the book of Romans, explaining the doctrine of justification and the implications of that.

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And the central message there in those main chapters of Romans is that God in Christ has supplied on behalf of sinners everything they need, all the righteousness they need for salvation.

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So you could title that central section of the book of Romans Righteousness Supplied. And then for Romans 12, 1 through the end of the epistle, he explores the practical ramifications of being justified by faith.

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You could call that section Righteousness Applied. So you have a very simple outline of what Paul is doing in the book of Romans.

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Chapters 1 through 3, Righteousness Defied. Chapters 3 through 11, Righteousness Supplied.

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They show us the way of salvation. And chapters 12 through the end, Righteousness Applied, helping us to understand what the practical outworking of our sanctification should look like.

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And the passage I want to examine with you this morning comes right at the transition between the first and second sections.

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He basically makes a very abrupt transition from sin to salvation.

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He turns from showing how God's righteousness has been defied to showing how

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God's righteousness is actually supplied to the very ones who had made themselves enemies of God and enemies of everything righteous.

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And it's a shocking reality if you grasp it. And the scandal of it is not lost on Paul having proved that we are utterly guilty under the law.

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He's now eager to show how nevertheless we can attain a standing of perfect righteousness in the eyes of the lawgiver who is the righteous judge of all.

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And still, without compromising his righteousness, he can forgive us. Here is the answer to perhaps the greatest mystery of the

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Old Testament. How can a truly righteous God justify sinners?

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How can God declare unrighteous people perfectly righteous without either overturning the rule of law or compromising his own perfect righteousness?

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How can he do that? That was a mystery in the Old Testament. How can God justify the ungodly and yet remain faithful to his own law which clearly demands the punishment of sinners?

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And the answers to all of those questions are right here in our passage. So let me read the passage, and then we'll try to unpack it as carefully as time permits.

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Romans 3 verses 19 through 26, and I'm reading from the ESV. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. Since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

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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's 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

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

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This was to show 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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Now it's a long passage, and it is theologically rich. We're obviously going to need to focus on the big picture this morning rather than deal with every meticulous detail and every word in that text.

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It is truly a big picture. This is the vital passage that helps us make sense of every other reference to the righteousness of God in Scripture.

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You can't understand God's righteousness at all if you don't grasp what this passage is saying.

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This is the crucial section of Scripture where Paul reconciles what the law says about righteousness with what the gospel says about it.

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This is where he shows how it is that the justice of God is perfectly compatible with the mercy of God.

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This is that vital nexus in the New Testament where Scripture explains what

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Psalm 85, verse 10 means when it says, mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

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Here, the righteousness of God is reconciled with the justification of ungodly sinners.

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And that, by the way, is precisely the language Scripture uses. I wouldn't say that if the

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Bible didn't. Look at verse 5 of chapter 4. We're in this same context where Paul says that God justifies the ungodly.

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Anyone steeped in the doctrine of the Old Testament would find a statement like that shocking, scandalously so.

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In the verses we're looking at, Paul summarizes how the righteousness of God is manifested in the law, in the gospel, and in the justification of sinners.

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And let's let that be our outline this morning. I'll try to make it as easy as possible to follow. There are three key points.

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We're going to see how the righteousness of God is manifested in the law, in the gospel, and in the justification of sinners.

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So point one, here's how the righteousness of God is manifested in the law. And remember, as soon as Paul finished his opening words of greeting in this epistle to the

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Romans, he starts the meat of this epistle with a declaration that the gospel is all about the righteousness of God.

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I read it to you earlier, Romans 1 .17. In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

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That's the key verse, that's the whole theme of the entire book of Romans. But then,

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Paul actually begins this long treatise on the gospel by reminding us what righteousness means from the perspective of the law.

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And so turn back a page or two to Romans 1, and I want you to notice that there is a jarring note of discord in the space of two verses between Romans 1 .17

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and verse 18. Verse 17 is the one that says, In the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed.

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But then immediately, verse 18 answers with this, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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So in one verse he says, The righteousness of God is revealed. In the very next verse, it's the wrath of God that's revealed.

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The gospel is supposed to reveal the righteousness of God. Gospel means good news, it should be good news.

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But before Paul ever gets around to explaining how the righteousness of God is manifested in the gospel, the first thing he says is revealed is the wrath of God from heaven.

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That's not the way most of us would begin a discourse on the gospel. The word gospel, as I said, means good news.

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But in Paul's version, it doesn't start out sounding like good news because Paul starts right where the law leaves off with the wrath of God from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.

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The law tells us we are condemned because we have offended God's righteousness.

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That's the main message of the law. That's the summary of the law's message. So God's righteousness is the very reason we're cut off from him in the first place, alienated from God, or as Paul says in Romans 5, enemies of God.

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That same righteousness means God must judge evildoers.

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And Romans 2, verse 5 says, impenitent sinners are storing up wrath for themselves against the day of wrath when

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God's righteous judgment will be revealed. So God's righteousness, the whole thought of it, according to the law, this is something that should make us tremble.

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That's actually the culmination of everything the law says about God's righteousness.

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And Paul makes it the starting point for his exposition of the gospel. Bottom line, when the law is finished manifesting

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God's righteousness, all humanity stands guilty before him. Paul painstakingly brings us to that point through two and a half chapters before he ever once considers what the gospel has to say about God's righteousness.

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So it's an important point. Paul devotes that much space to it. You're in Romans 3. Look at the end of verse 9 where he sums it all up.

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We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. And then starting in verse 10 and going through verse 18 of Romans 3, he quotes a string of verses from the

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Old Testament as proof of what he's teaching here, showing that there is none righteous, no not one.

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And that whole section consists of diverse quotations from the Old Testament.

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It shows you how Paul handled Scripture, how well he knew it. He surveys several texts where Scripture condemns all of humanity.

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All these verses, all these quotes he makes are about the universality of sin. And he uses those verses like proof texts to show that in our natural fallen state, we are condemned already.

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And that, of course, is just what Jesus said in John 3 .18. Whoever does not believe is condemned already.

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And the already aspect of condemnation is a chilling reality if you think about it.

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What it means is there is no hope whatsoever for any sinner ever to redeem himself from past mistakes by doing a lot of good things to make up for it.

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That's what most people spend their lives doing, most religious people. Trying to make up for past sins, you can't do it because the law demands absolute perfection.

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And so if you have once sinned, and we all have, you've fallen short already.

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And Paul says that. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The law has just one message for sinners, and it's a curse.

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It's not a frivolous curse either. It's a message of eternal damnation, a verdict that speaks with a note of hopeless finality.

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The law by itself has nothing more to say after that about the righteousness of God.

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And no one can claim to be free of imperfections. The whole point here is that depravity is both universal and total.

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And to drive home the truth that depravity is universal, which is the main point he's been making for two and a half chapters,

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Paul quotes this array of texts drawn mainly from the Psalms, verse 10. And notice the universal expressions.

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None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.

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All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

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Six verses from the Psalms, cited in just three verses here in Romans, and he purposely includes eight expressions that underscore the universality of sin.

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None, no, not one, all. This is all about universality.

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And two of those eight expressions are as emphatic as possible. No, not one.

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Not even one. And then Paul establishes the principle that depravity is total.

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And he does that with a string of texts that illustrate how depravity comes from within us.

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You remember Jesus said in Mark 7, verses 20 and 21, what comes out of a person is what defiles him.

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For from within, out of the heart of man, comes everything that is evil. And Paul has noticed this.

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This is very clever. He has chosen his texts carefully. They begin with the throat, and they move outward from the tongue to the lips to the feet, almost as if he is purposely describing someone who spews depravity like vomit.

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Look at verses 13 through 18. This is as thorough a statement of denunciation aimed at all humanity as you can possibly imagine.

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And it's drawn verbatim from the Old Testament Scriptures. Verse 13. Their throat is an open grave.

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They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Verse 14.

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Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

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In their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

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Now, pay attention to what Paul is doing here. He's drawing short statements from a very wide array of Old Testament contexts.

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You can look these up later if you like. Everything I just read, he's quoting verbatim from the

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Old Testament from several different verses, and he puts them all together to substantiate what he is teaching about the universality and totality of human depravity.

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Now, occasionally, someone in these postmodern times will claim that this is not a legitimate way to understand the truth of the

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Old Testament or the Scriptures. In fact, it's becoming fairly commonplace to hear people champion narrative theology as opposed to systematic theology.

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In fact, they'll denigrate systematic theology as if these two, narrative theology and systematic theology, were somehow opposed to one another.

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Narrative theology is truth taught in story form, like the parables of Jesus.

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The four Gospels and the historical books of Scripture are given to us in narrative form, obviously.

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That's the nature of history. And every now and then, lately a lot more than ever, someone will come along who chafes and complains if you use the method

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Paul employs here. He is taking statements and propositions, short statements, short propositions, that deal with a single topic from diverse places in Scripture, and he brings them all together because they all deal with the same subject, and he uses them to shine the light brightly on a particular aspect of the doctrine he's teaching, in this case, human depravity and the totality of it.

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That's systematic theology. That's what systematic theology does. And here you see proof that this methodology is not foreign to Scripture.

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If anyone ever tries to tell you that the systematic approach to doctrine is rooted in Greek logic and it's completely at odds with Hebrew thinking and all of that, just show them the book of Romans.

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There's certainly an important place for narrative theology as well, but Paul is clearly doing a systematic study here.

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He's concerned specifically with hamartiology, which is the doctrine of sin.

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That's his subject. That's his focus. And the singular point he makes by drawing together this wide -ranging assortment of verses is the simple point that guilt is both universal and total.

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We're all condemned by the law. We're all guilty before it. That is the verdict of the law.

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That is how the law manifests the righteousness of God, by declaring us guilty. And Paul sums it all up in the first two verses of our text.

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Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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Other translations, and this is what it means, other translations say it like this, the whole world may stand guilty before God.

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For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

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So the whole human race is devoid of true righteousness. That's what he's saying.

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The law condemns us all. Moses' law condemned the Jews who continually violated that covenant that they had made with God.

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And the law that's inscribed on our hearts and our consciences condemns the rest of us.

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We're unrighteous and we know it. So that every mouth is stopped and the whole world stands guilty before a truly righteous

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God, and that's where the law ends. It offers no hope for redemption because it manifests the righteousness of God in a way that merely reveals and condemns our sin.

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The law demands justice. Now, if that were the end of the story, we'd be in an impossible situation.

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But Paul doesn't bring us to this point to leave us in despair. Immediately, he begins to explain how the righteousness of God is also manifested in the gospel, and that's our second point.

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Here's how the righteousness of God is manifested in the gospel. I ought to mention that Martin Luther, the great reformer, was very nearly stymied when he came to this point in his study of Romans because he understood how the law reveals

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God's righteousness, and he just couldn't get past that. Let me read you his testimony in his own words.

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Actually, these are the English words translated from his own German words. He wrote it in German, but here's the exact translation of what he wrote.

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As he describes his study of this passage, he says, I hated that expression, the righteousness of God.

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He says, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, he says,

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I was angry with God and said, as if indeed it's not enough that miserable sinners eternally lost through original sin are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the

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Decalogue, that's the Ten Commandments, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel, and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath because he read where Paul said the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, and he put that together with what the law says about the righteousness of God, and he said, how can that possibly be good news?

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But then he writes, finally, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, in it, that is in the law, or in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed as it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live.

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And Luther says, there I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith.

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Here's the crucial distinction, and this is what dawned on Luther as he thought this through.

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The law focuses on the righteousness that is demanded of us.

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The gospel is all about a righteousness that is provided for us.

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Here's how Paul says it, verses 21 and 22 of our text. But now, and Paul is saying that as if, at last, turning from law to gospel, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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In other words, the gospel isn't something that comes so far out of the blue that we never heard of it. The law and the gospel did prophesy this.

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And what is it? It's the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for, not against, but for all who believe.

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So in other words, Paul is saying, here's a whole different way of looking at the righteousness of God.

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The law merely shows us how high, how impossibly high God's perfect standard is set for us.

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This is true righteousness, and it's impossible for us. But the gospel shows us how the very righteousness of God himself is supplied by God to those who believe.

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The law reveals the righteousness of God as a hopeless dilemma for sinners.

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The gospel answers by revealing that God's righteousness is, in fact, the answer to that dilemma.

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God supplies the perfect righteousness, his own righteousness, which is imputed to those who believe to make up for a shortfall that none of us could ever possibly remedy on our own.

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Imputed righteousness. That's exactly what Paul is talking about here. The righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus for all who believe.

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I love the King James expression in this verse. It says, the righteousness of God which is by faith unto all and upon all of them that believe.

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He's clearly describing an alien righteousness that is legally transferred or imputed from God to the sinner.

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And it's clear that Paul has imputation in mind in this context.

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He uses that very expression in chapter 4, verse 3, where he's quoting from Genesis 15, 6, one of the key

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Old Testament texts about this. Abraham believed God and it was counted or credited or reckoned or imputed to him as righteousness.

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Again, in chapter 4, verse 6, David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom

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God imputes righteousness apart from works. This is the heart and soul of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith.

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I know you're a pastor well, so I know you've heard this. Perfect righteousness. The very thing we need for a right standing with God is imputed to or put to the account of those who lay hold of Christ by faith.

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That is the gospel. That's the heart of gospel truth. There are many biblical expressions that embody this truth, by the way.

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Our spiritual union with Christ, for example, means in the words of 1 Corinthians 1 .30,

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you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.

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Because we're united with Christ. He becomes to us everything we need for favor with God.

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It's the same thing portrayed in the imagery of Isaiah 16, verse 10. I will greatly rejoice in the

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Lord. My soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation.

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He has covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest.

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It's what Paul meant in Philippians 3 when Paul said he counted all of his religious upbringing and all of his pharisaical legal obedience, all his scholastic accomplishments, all of it, he said he counted as dung.

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Leaving all of that behind for, in Paul's words, this single -minded purpose, as Paul says, that I may gain

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Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that righteousness which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

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It's what Paul was describing in 2 Corinthians 5 .21 when he wrote that God made him who knew no sin, that's

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Christ, to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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We become the righteousness of God by imputation. Just as the sins of every believer were put to the account of Christ and he paid the price for them, in the same way his righteousness is imputed to those who believe and they gain the benefit of that perfect righteousness.

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It's the principle of imputed righteousness, and that is the central truth of everything

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Paul ever taught about the gospel. It's the linchpin of gospel truth, and normally when the

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Apostle Paul confronted false teachers and phony apostles, this was the main point of doctrine he had to defend.

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Virtually every heretic who has ever come along has tried to teach that justification must in some sense be earned or cooperated with by our works.

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That's the common thread of all false religion. All of them teach that the way to have a right standing before God is through something you must do for him.

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Biblical Christianity is absolutely unique in all the world's religions because it teaches that God himself provides everything for sinners that they need for redemption and they lay hold of it by faith alone.

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So the ground of our justification is the perfect righteousness of God imputed to us by faith.

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No good works, neither good works nor legal obedience can ever earn us a righteous standing with God.

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Only the imputed righteousness of Christ can do that. That's the central theme of not only

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Romans but also the book of Galatians, and wherever Paul mentions the righteousness of God or the gospel, this is what he has in mind.

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In fact, it will help you to understand all of Paul's epistles better if you see that ordinarily when the apostle

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Paul mentions the righteousness of God, he is not talking about the divine attribute per se.

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Usually he's talking about the righteousness that is imputed to believers by faith alone, the righteousness that justifies the ungodly.

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Now, lots of people stumble when they encounter this truth. The Galatian heresy in the first century stemmed from a rejection of this doctrine of justification by faith alone.

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Every subsequent corruption of Christian teaching from the Pelagian heresy to the

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Roman Catholic Council of Trent, all of them, and every cult you could name, likewise reject the truth that God justifies the ungodly by faith alone through the imputation of his perfect righteousness.

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And let's be honest, if we didn't find that expression in Scripture, Romans 4, 5,

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God justifies the ungodly, our natural inclination would be to think there's an unsavory sound to that.

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Surely there ought to be some requirement that the ungodly become righteous before gaining

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God's favor, because Proverbs 17, verse 5, says he who justifies the wicked is an abomination.

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It's an abomination to justify a wicked person. What does a free pardon for the wicked have to do with justice?

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How can God freely justify ungodly people and yet remain perfectly just?

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And the answer to that question is the third and final point in our outline. Here's how the righteousness of God is manifested in the justification of sinners.

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By the way, this was a major dilemma for believers in Old Testament times. How can

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God forgive sins without compromising his perfect righteousness? How can that happen?

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We don't think deeply enough today to be troubled by that, but that was a huge problem for anyone who thought about righteousness, morality, the demands of the law in the

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Old Testament. How can God, though he promises to forgive, how can he do that? They understood, of course, why

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God would depose King Saul because he was unfaithful, but how could

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God also freely forgive David and restore David to the throne in spite of his failures?

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How could God be just and justify sinners? That question and all others like it touch on the central mystery that is finally answered for us in the gospel.

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It's also what Paul is referring to. Whenever he talks about the cross, he's not talking literally about the wooden beams.

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When he mentions the cross, he's talking about the payment that was made that makes our forgiveness possible.

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And in fact, look at our text again. We left off in the middle of verse 22. Let's pick it up there.

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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.

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Now, here's the key. 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 like David's, right?

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So how can He do that and be righteous? This is how. 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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What he's saying is this. Jesus Christ offered a sacrifice to the

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Father. Jesus didn't die on the cross as a martyr or a victim of evil men.

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He offered Himself willingly to God as a propitiation. That's the word used here.

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And it's an important word. It's not that complex either, though it sounds like a big word. In simple terms, a propitiation is a complete satisfaction of all the demands of divine justice.

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Satisfaction. That's the important word. That's what the word propitiation means. That Christ became a scapegoat for the full outpouring of divine wrath against sin.

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He stood in the place of sinners and took what they deserved. Their guilt was imputed to Him and He bore the penalty for it.

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And now His perfect righteousness is imputed to them and they stand before God arrayed in the elegant perfection of Christ's perfect righteousness justified by a righteousness they didn't earn and don't deserve.

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But because Christ willingly paid the penalty, every claim of justice, the perfect justice of God, has already been fully satisfied.

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The sacrifice of Christ. It also applied retroactively to David and Abraham and every saint in the

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Old Testament who was ever justified by faith and therefore the righteousness of God and the forgiveness of those past sins was fully vindicated.

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That's what verse 25 means when it says this was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance

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He had passed over former sins. And so the righteousness of God, which apart from the work of Christ, could only demand punishment for our sins is now turned in our favor and now

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God's own perfect righteousness pleads on behalf of all who believe. God's righteousness is now on our side.

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That's why 1 John 1 -9 stresses that God is both faithful and just to forgive.

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God's perfect righteousness has thus been reconciled with His mercy. The law and the gospel are both vindicated.

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What the law says, what the gospel says, and what the judge of all the earth says turn out to be perfectly consistent with one another.

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When nobody ever thought that possible prior to the cross. And in the words of our text,

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God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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That's what true righteousness is and that's why the gospel is genuinely good news.

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Let's pray. Father, we come as needy sinners.

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We confess we are wholly unrighteous by nature. Utterly impotent to manufacture any kind of authentic righteousness of our own.

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And the utter perfection of your righteousness is infinitely beyond any capacity we would ever have to even understand.

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This is an intimidating subject and we're grateful for the way the gospel manifests your righteousness as good news, glorious news about the way of salvation.

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I pray that any who may be here today who have never laid hold of Christ's righteousness by faith would do so now.

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And for those of us who belong to Christ, use these truths to fan the flames of our love for your righteousness.

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And may that love for righteousness be reflected not only in the thoughts and meditations of our hearts, but also in the way we live our lives.

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Make us heralds of this good news and make us living reflections of the glory of Christ.

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We pray in his name, amen. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.